AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (OpenAI’s product lead)

**Tara Seshan** (0:00)
If you think about the first era of AI products as Chat, the second era of these products working with agents, that third era that might come soon is, how do you work with a persistent co-worker who is able to get things done with you?

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:14)
There's this idea of the overhang of what AI is capable of and what we're actually doing with it.

**Tara Seshan** (0:19)
So hard to understand what is going to emerge in the future. You fail if you build for where the models are now, you fail if you build for where you think the models will be in a year. Both outcomes are equally wrong. Only way to build is two to three months.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:34)
What have you had to most adapt to and adjust in how you operate as a PM in this world?

**Tara Seshan** (0:38)
Being prolific and empirical is way more important than being academic or theoretical. Rather than writing out some long reasoning doc, instead it's like how do I get to something I can try out and test with users as fast as possible?

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:51)
It feels like not only are we able to be more ambitious, we almost need to be more ambitious, which is not natural for a lot of people.

**Tara Seshan** (0:58)
Elevating others' ambitions or reminding them of what's possible here is a huge part of the product management role.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:03)
I'm curious what's most surprised you about what it's actually like to work at OpenAI.

**Tara Seshan** (1:07)
I came into the company expecting that there was a treasure trove of OpenAI secret strategy. And actually, OpenAI is open.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:17)
Today my guest is Tara Seshan. Tara leads product for both Codex and ChatGPT Work at OpenAI.
I believe this is the fastest growing and arguably most important AI product for knowledge workers today. Tara works alongside Andrew Ambrosino, who was a recent podcast guest. He's her Eng manager. Prior to OpenAI, Tara spent six years at Stripe, where she joined as one of the first five product managers. And for many of those years, she was named one of the top three Stripes across the entire organization of Stripe. She also led product at Watershed, was a founder and a Thiel fellow. And most importantly of all, Tara was one of the three Lenny's Newsletter fellows, which is a program that I ran a few years ago to highlight some of the most amazing up-and-coming product leaders. I am so excited to see Tara in this new, incredibly important and impactful role. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennysproductpass.com for a free year of the hottest and most beautifully crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's Newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Tara Seshan.
Tara, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

**Tara Seshan** (2:25)
Thank you, Lenny. I'm so glad to be here. It's so nice to see you.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:28)
I'm even more glad. So you've been at OpenAI for just about a year now, which in most places would be a very short amount of time.
In AI time, that's like a lifetime.

**Tara Seshan** (2:39)
Yes.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:40)
I imagine when you joined OpenAI, you had a sense of what it was going to be like to work at a frontier lab. I'm curious what's most surprised you about what it's actually like to work at OpenAI and ideally both good and bad stuff.

**Tara Seshan** (2:53)
Many things about working at OpenAI felt familiar to me, because I had worked at other places that were high growth, high talent, high intensity, hyperscaling mode places before.
Some of the things like, oh, my colleagues are so awesome or the urgency is really high, felt very familiar. The part to me that actually felt the most surprising is that many companies I've worked for, in fact, all the companies I've worked for in the past have been founder-led and OpenAI is actually founders-led, which is that everyone inside the company, especially in their area, is in essence, kind of a founder to some extent. The level of top-down direction at OpenAI is extremely limited relative to places I've worked for prior. And so I think when I first got to the company that was both delightful and that I had come from a founding journey before, I was like, yes, I can continue to feel like the founder of this product area or this team. And the distance between me and the market is very, very thin. And sometimes at a larger company, you feel insulated from what users want or feel insulated from what the market demands. But actually at OpenAI, you do not at all. You are doing everything it takes to get product-market fit for your product akin to how a founder might. But the counter to this is that, or maybe the more surprising side of this is I came into the company expecting that there was a treasure trove of OpenAI secret strategy that I would be able to understand, akin to how at past companies you come in and you're like, oh yes, this is the payments Bible and this is how we think about payments and operations. And actually OpenAI is open.