Anthropic’s $1B to $19B growth run: how Claude became the fastest-growing AI product in history | Amol Avasare
4/5/20261 hr 53 min
Amol Avasare is Head of Growth at Anthropic, which is going through the most unprecedented growth trajectory in history—scaling from $1 billion to over $19 billion in ARR in just 14 months. Previously, Amol worked on the growth teams at Mercury and MasterClass. Before that he was a founder, and he cold emailed his way into the Anthropic role when no job listing existed. Most remarkably, he overcame a traumatic brain injury from a Muay Thai match that meant he couldn't work for nearly a year.
In our in-depth discussion, Amol shares:
1. How Amol landed his role by cold emailing Anthropic’s CPO Mike Krieger
2. How Anthropic is automating growth experiments with Claude (their internal tool called “CASH”)
3. Why the ratio of PMs to engineers might need to flip (more PMs than engineers) as AI makes engineers exponentially more productive
4. Why activation is the single highest-leverage growth problem in AI
5. Why Anthropic indexes 70/30 toward big bets (the opposite of most growth teams)
6. How he uses Cowork to detect team misalignment in Slack
7. How the company’s focus on AI coding created a research flywheel that accelerated their models
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Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run
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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0
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Where to find Amol Avasare:
• X: https://x.com/TheAmolAvasare
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amolavasare
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Amol and Anthropic’s growth
(03:15) The story of cold emailing Mike Krieger to get the job
(08:28) What it’s like leading growth at the fastest-growing company ever
(10:46) What the growth team actually does at Anthropic
(12:16) The concept of “success disasters”
(13:55) Why activation is the biggest challenge in AI products
(18:05) Improving Mercury’s onboarding experience
(20:57) The importance of adding the right kind of friction
(25:10) Anthropic’s org structure
(27:06) Why Anthropic focuses on big bets over micro-optimizations
(33:34) Automating growth experiments with Claude (CASH)
(38:20) How AI is starting to identify what experiments to run
(41:07) The future of PM, engineering, and design roles
(47:19) Why you might need more PMs as engineers get more productive
(51:13) How Amol uses AI to prototype ideas and skip PRDs
(58:10) Amol’s morning routine: AI analyzes 20 to 25 charts automatically
(1:03:31) Getting coaching from an AI version of your manager
(1:06:27) How Anthropic’s focus on coding and B2B drove their success
(1:12:10) Balancing growth with AI safety as a core mission
(1:18:09) Advice for thriving in an AI-first future
(1:22:53) Anthropic’s culture and the “notebook channels” on Slack
(1:35:12) Failure corner: Shutting down his startup after raising money
(1:38:25) The traumatic brain injury that changed everything
(1:46:49) Lightning round
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References: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-growth-run
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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com
Clips
Showing 10 of 12Transcript preview
First 90 secondsLenny Rachitsky· Host0:00
A lot of companies claim to be the fastest-growing companies of all time. Anthropic actually is. You guys were at a billion ARR at the start of 2025. The last number I've seen is 19 billion ARR. That's one to $19 billion in 14 months.
Amol Avasare· Guest0:14
Historically, we were very much the smallest, least well-funded player in this space. We didn't have the free cash flow or the distribution of a Meta or Google. We didn't have the first-mover advantage of an OpenAI. It's a complete miracle that we've gotten [chuckles] to the stage that we have.
Lenny Rachitsky· Host0:29
Give us just a glimpse of what it's like to be leading growth inside of Anthropic.
Amol Avasare· Guest0:33
It's the hardest job I've had in my life. To come into Anthropic, you need to understand that 50, 60, 70% of how you operated in the past, just throw it out the door.
Lenny Rachitsky· Host0:41
One of the cleverest growth moves y'all made was this idea of importing memory from ChatGPT.
Amol Avasare· Guest0:47
Activation is a really big challenge in AI. We are starting to look at how do we automate growth. Our growth platform team is driving this effort called CASH, which is Claude Accelerates Sustainable Hypergrowth. How can we use Claude to automate growth experimentation? And it's delivering results.
Lenny Rachitsky· Host1:05
You're basically living in the future.
Amol Avasare· Guest1:06
We always talk about the exponential. The product value that we will deliver in two years' time is probably, like, 1000x what it is today. The funniest thing is I've noticed internally linear charts are just not cool. Everything is log linear. Just show me a log linear scale.
Lenny Rachitsky· Host1:21
Today my guest is Amol Avasarala. Amol is head of growth at Anthropic, which is on the most unprecedented growth