Vercel's Guillermo Rauch on bold visions for the future delivered incrementally

Dan Levine welcomes Guillermo Rauch, founder and CEO of Vercel, to discuss how companies are built through messy, exhilarating decisions. Vercel has grown to nearly 700 employees ("Verselians") over nine years, building frameworks and infrastructure for web products ranging from websites to AI agents.

The company powers major operations like Chick-fil-A's backend logistics for 4,000 US stores, while also supporting the next generation of AI startups. At their recent company-wide offsite in Monterey, someone even live-coded a face-matching app using Vercel's V0 AI agent to help everyone learn names.

"We know that every time that we have a big idea about where the future's going to be we need to be mindful of how do we meet people where they are today and incrementally bring them to the promised land."

Timestamp: [0:00-1:52]

Guillermo grew up in the province of Buenos Aires, in the outskirts of the famous city. His father, a software enthusiast who foresaw the coming wave of technology, got the family their first computer when Guillermo was seven years old in 1997. This was the Windows 95 era - long before internet infrastructure reached Argentina.

Software came on CDs and floppy disks, and successfully loading new programs was a genuine achievement. The family played classic games like Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Hearts that shipped with the operating system. But what stuck with young Guillermo was the pure joy of getting new software to run successfully.

"I don't have a lot of memories from then but I do remember the joy of getting new software onto the computer... getting either the small floppy disc, large floppy discs and then like being successful at loading something."

This early experience with the challenge and satisfaction of software deployment would later inspire Vercel's obsession with making deployment easy - because making something run successfully was truly "orders of magnitude harder back then."

Timestamp: [1:52-3:30]

Guillermo's father planted the seed early, always saying it would be "cool to use software" but "even cooler to build software." However, getting developer tools running on Windows was incredibly challenging. The breakthrough came when 11-12 year old Guillermo successfully switched to Linux, opening up access to better development environments.

He experimented with early Windows development tools like DJGPP (a C and C++ compiler implementation) and educational coding games like Logo turtle simulations. But the real turning point was discovering web development - the ability to throw files into a folder, boot up a web server, and instantly have something live that could be shared with anyone in the world through a hyperlink.

"The big breakthrough for me was the web... the ability to just throw a couple files into a folder, you boot up your web server, it's live and it gets us close to that idea of a hyperlink that I can share with anybody in the world - that was when I really got hooked."

This early fascination with web deployment and the power of URLs to share creations globally would become central to Vercel's mission. Guillermo also ran his high school's first forum, learning to modify existing open source software and build communities around technology.

Timestamp: [3:30-4:58]

At 16 years old in 2006, Guillermo began contributing to an open source JavaScript UI library called MooTools, which became globally popular (though always second to jQuery). This project became his gateway to the world, creating an incredible international network for a teenager in Argentina.

Companies like Facebook used MooTools as inspiration for their JavaScript foundations. Through the project, Guillermo started freelancing for clients around the world - most not knowing he was just 16 years old. He was active in freelance communities, working with clients in the Netherlands, US, and beyond.

"Most people didn't [know I was 16], even my clients. I was really active in a couple freelance communities and I would do jobs all over the internet."

The MooTools connection led to his first major break: a Swiss startup needed a MooTools expert. When they asked the project leaders for recommendations, most had moved on to Silicon Valley jobs. But they mentioned "this one young lad" who might be worth taking a risk on.

"They were like 'Well we all have jobs now like we're moving to Silicon Valley.' But this one young lad if you're willing to take a risk on someone that's 17 years old by now... and they did."

The company took the chance, and Guillermo dropped out of high school to begin his journey as a professional software engineer, moving to Switzerland.

Timestamp: [4:58-6:44]

Between 2010-2012, Guillermo began frequently visiting the Bay Area, eventually meeting his future co-founders at LearnBoost. During this period, still not old enough to drink in the US, he was quietly becoming a major force in the emerging Node.js ecosystem.

Guillermo wrote two of the most important libraries for Node.js: Mongoose (the MongoDB driver that would power companies like Stripe) and Socket.io (enabling real-time web applications through WebSockets). This was remarkable for someone so young to be at the forefront of such a transformative technology.

His motivation came from his early experiences with web development. He got excited about JavaScript's power on the client side to make pages come alive, but recognized you also need robust server-side capabilities. Programming communities often become maximalist - "all client" or "all server" - but Guillermo saw this as a false dichotomy.

"JavaScript could do all those awesome things in the client side which makes pages come alive but you also need the server side... it's not one or the other... it's like a false dichotomy ultimately."

He even wrote a book about "universal applications" that could run both on server and client. When he discovered Node.js (at version 0.1), he went all in on this stack that could deliver fast initial page loads and rich client-side interactivity.

Timestamp: [6:44-8:51]

Node.js was incredibly early when Guillermo adopted it - basically a small runtime built on Google's V8 engine that was really fast, but missing essential components. This presented both a challenge and an opportunity.

Guillermo created Mongoose (the MongoDB ORM) to fill a critical gap, giving developers access to databases for their applications. But he also realized Node.js made previously difficult things possible - particularly real-time web applications, which were "notoriously hard to build."

His breakthrough insight was that he could give developers a chat application in just seven lines of code, massively abstracting away the pain and infrastructure they would otherwise have to build themselves.

"What I realized is that there was an opportunity to give developers a chat application in like seven lines of code and massively abstract away a lot of pain and infrastructure that they would have to build for themselves."

This philosophy of simplifying complex infrastructure became core to his approach. He wasn't just filling missing gaps in the market - he was bringing something entirely new that empowered developers to create things in remarkably simple ways.

Timestamp: [8:51-9:54]

LearnBoost was Guillermo's edtech startup, but he was simultaneously building impressive open-source software that caught the attention of Automattic, the makers of WordPress. WordPress was transitioning from their server-side-only PHP origins and realized they needed to incorporate more client-side richness and interactivity into their products.

The acquisition made strategic sense - Guillermo's expertise in JavaScript and real-time web technologies aligned perfectly with WordPress's evolution. However, working at Automattic taught Guillermo a crucial lesson about innovation.

"When I was there what I realized is that in order to innovate you need really awesome deployment infrastructure. If you have an idea you should be able to just convert it into URL as soon as possible."

This insight about the relationship between deployment speed and innovation velocity would become foundational to Vercel's mission. The faster you can go from idea to live URL, the faster you can iterate, learn, and innovate.

Timestamp: [9:54-10:36]

• Great ideas must meet people where they are today and bring them incrementally to the "promised land"
• The joy of successfully deploying software was a formative experience that shaped Vercel's mission
• Open source contributions can create global networks and opportunities, even for teenagers
• False dichotomies in programming (client vs server) limit innovation - the best solutions bridge both worlds
• Speed of deployment directly correlates with innovation velocity - faster idea-to-URL means faster iteration
• Early adoption of emerging technologies can position you at the forefront of major shifts
• Abstracting complex infrastructure into simple developer experiences creates massive value
• Sometimes the biggest opportunities come from filling gaps in nascent ecosystems

Timestamp: [0:00-10:36]

People:

• Guillermo Rauch - Founder and CEO of Vercel
• Dan Levine - Host, Partner at Accel

Companies/Products:

• Vercel - Framework and infrastructure platform for web development
• Chick-fil-A - Major Vercel customer using their backend for 4,000 stores
• MooTools - JavaScript UI library Guillermo contributed to at age 16
• jQuery - The most popular JavaScript library that MooTools competed with
• Facebook - Used MooTools as inspiration for JavaScript foundations
• LearnBoost - Guillermo's edtech startup
• Automattic - WordPress makers who acquired LearnBoost
• WordPress - Popular content management system
• MongoDB - Database that Mongoose connects to
• Stripe - Major company that uses MongoDB/Mongoose

Technologies:

• Node.js - JavaScript runtime for server-side development
• Mongoose - MongoDB driver/ORM created by Guillermo
• Socket.io - Real-time web application library created by Guillermo
• V0 - Vercel's AI agent
• V8 - Google's JavaScript engine
• DJGPP - Early C/C++ compiler for Windows
• Linux - Operating system Guillermo switched to at age 11-12

Concepts:

• Universal Applications - Apps that run on both server and client
• Real-time Web Applications - Apps with live, interactive features
• WebSockets - Technology enabling real-time communication

Timestamp: [0:00-10:36]

Working at Automattic after the LearnBoost acquisition, Guillermo observed how WordPress had become extraordinarily good at hosting and scaling WordPress.com - a platform serving millions of websites. However, this success created a pattern he would see repeated across many companies: organizations become excellent at hosting what made them successful, but struggle with incremental platform additions.

The challenge was particularly acute when trying to move from PHP to JavaScript technologies. If you needed to deviate from WordPress's core strengths, development became extremely difficult. This observation planted the seeds for what would become Vercel's mission.

"You become very good at hosting the thing that made you successful and popular but the incremental additions to your platform become really hard especially in this world of maybe things will move more from like PHP to JavaScript."

This insight wasn't fully crystallized at the time, but it shaped his understanding that innovation requires excellent deployment infrastructure. The faster you can convert an idea into a live URL, the faster you can iterate and innovate.

Timestamp: [10:07-11:26]

When Guillermo decided to leave Automattic and start his own company (originally called Zeit), he knew he wanted to build on open source foundations like WordPress had done. He had exciting ideas around real-time applications and making web experiences incredibly fast. But when he sat down to actually create the company's website, everything changed.

The process of simply deploying a state-of-the-art website was "terrifyingly difficult" - taking weeks of work. While anyone could create a website with Squarespace in three clicks, building something with continuous deployment, CI/CD, production-level performance optimizations, and the ability to serve as a platform for future innovations was extremely challenging.

"Just creating the website and bring it online deploying it was terrifyingly difficult... weeks of work to bring the state-of-the-art online."

React and Kubernetes were the cutting-edge technologies everyone knew about - Google and Facebook had open sourced these "gems" - but actually bringing them into production was literally weeks of work, even for someone who had been at the forefront of web development for years.

This personal pain point revealed a massive asymmetry: if deployment was this difficult for him, and if companies like WordPress would have massively benefited from better deployment infrastructure, there was clearly a huge opportunity.

Timestamp: [11:26-12:53]

Before writing a single line of code for Next.js, Guillermo outlined seven principles defining what the ideal state-of-the-art web experience should be. One key principle was that pressing enter to loading the first piece of a website must happen instantaneously. Another was that data should be alive and real-time.

His strategy was to spread this vision "conference by conference," starting with a presentation in Brazil. He had a choice: continue giving the world a to-do list of what needed to be done, or create the technology that automates all these principles.

"I could keep spreading the word of all these things that you need to do it's like giving the world a to-do list or I could create the technology that automates them all."

This represents a common founder moment - recognizing that you know what should happen, seeing that nobody's doing it, and deciding "I'm going to have to go do it myself." The seven principles became the foundation for Next.js, designed to make React dramatically easier to use while automatically implementing web best practices.

Timestamp: [13:22-14:53]

When Next.js launched, the reception was mixed - as Guillermo expected. He recommends entrepreneurs develop "thick skin" and, following Y Combinator's advice, read every negative comment on Hacker News to absorb all feedback.

The positive reaction was strong: developers were amazed that React went from requiring extensive boilerplate to simply creating a folder and running a command. However, many people weren't yet aware of problems they would eventually encounter.

"There was a huge positive reaction to oh my god like you're making react went from being all this boilerplate to now it's you create a folder and you run a command like that's insane."

This challenge led to developing "progressive disclosure of complexity" - a design philosophy for both the framework and infrastructure platform. The goal was to meet people where they are and gradually introduce sophistication as their needs evolved.

Sometimes there were periods where they hadn't yet figured out how to bring that progression to market effectively. But when they got it right, it was extremely rewarding because people were happy at every stage of their journey, and Guillermo didn't have to see competitors with incomplete visions succeed.

Timestamp: [15:11-16:44]

One of Guillermo's most vivid early company-building memories involves learning about internet security the hard way. At Vercel's scale of operation, they face constant attacks from botnets and malicious scans. People can literally make a living examining every aspect of their network looking for vulnerabilities.

"In the early days we had to learn the hard way that you're going to be constantly under attack of botnets and scans and people at this at the scale that we're operating in people can make a living out of just examining every single aspect of our network to try to find any point of breakage."

This harsh reality drove Vercel's heavy investment in security infrastructure. Now they protect 750 million deployments, and every security improvement they make immediately impacts millions of customers.

The lesson is finding the right balance: maintain optimism about how things will play out (you can't get everything perfect from day one), while recognizing that opening infrastructure services to the internet creates a "wild environment" requiring robust security measures.

Timestamp: [16:49-18:01]

When Next.js launched in late 2016, Zeit (now Vercel) was pursuing two somewhat independent directions: Next.js for simplified React development and Docker hosting for simplified deployment. Initially, these attracted two distinct, overly excited user groups.

The magic happened when these offerings aligned through building - Vercel became "customer zero" of their own framework. By using Next.js to build their own products, they discovered the most optimal ways to ship and deploy Next.js applications.

"I had two independent overly excited groups of people the ones that wanted simplified deployment and the ones that wanted simplified React and simplified web application building but really the magic happened once these things were aligned."

This alignment was somewhat accidental - it emerged from solving their own pain points, which then became part of their productization strategy. The desire to make their own development process better naturally served their mission of making the web platform the best it could be.

This evolution from solving internal problems to creating market solutions demonstrates how authentic product-market fit often emerges from genuine personal frustration rather than market research.

Timestamp: [18:10-19:20]

Dan observes that Guillermo has a rare ability to predict the future of JavaScript and web technology, consistently living "five years in the future." This creates an interesting challenge: knowing how the world will evolve while needing to operate in the present reality.

The skill involves taking what you know about where technology is heading and finding ways to "contort" current circumstances to move toward that future vision. It's about being part of the transformation rather than just predicting it.

"You live in this world always five years in the future which is an extremely rare characteristic... and then there's this process of take what you know how the world will be and find a way to kind of really contort it to where it's going to go and actually be part of it."

This forward-looking perspective allows Guillermo to build infrastructure and frameworks that will be needed before most people realize they need them. It's a delicate balance between visionary thinking and practical execution in current market conditions.

Timestamp: [19:20-19:54]

• Successful companies often become trapped by their own success, excelling at their core product but struggling with platform evolution
• Personal pain points in deployment can reveal massive market opportunities
• Sometimes the choice is between giving the world a to-do list or building the technology that automates the solution
• Progressive disclosure of complexity helps users adopt sophisticated tools by meeting them where they are
• Thick skin and absorbing all feedback, including negative comments, is essential for entrepreneurs
• Operating infrastructure at scale means facing constant security threats from professional attackers
• Product-market fit often emerges from solving your own problems rather than external market research
• Visionary thinking requires balancing future predictions with present-day execution challenges

Timestamp: [10:07-19:54]

Companies/Products:

• Zeit - Original name of Vercel
• Squarespace - Website builder mentioned as example of simple deployment
• Kubernetes - Container orchestration platform that was state-of-the-art but difficult to implement
• React - Facebook's JavaScript library that Next.js is built on top of
• Next.js - Web framework created by Guillermo, launched late 2016
• Docker - Containerization technology used in early hosting solution
• Y Combinator - Startup accelerator that advises reading negative feedback
• Hacker News (HN) - Popular tech community and news site

Technologies/Concepts:

• CI/CD - Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment practices
• Progressive Disclosure of Complexity - Design philosophy of gradually introducing sophistication
• Boilerplate - Repetitive code that frameworks aim to eliminate
• Botnets - Networks of compromised computers used for attacks

Locations:

• Brazil - Where Guillermo first presented the seven principles and Next.js concept

Timestamp: [10:07-19:54]

Guillermo acknowledges Dan's observation about living "five years in the future" and admits this created a significant early challenge. He was fixated on building a highly dynamic web that brought data and personalization instantaneously to users - having reverse-engineered how Amazon, Google, and Facebook were built.

However, the market at the time was focused on static websites. This created what Dan calls "the wound" - a fundamental tension between Guillermo's vision of what the web should become and where developers actually were.

"I was so fixated on the web at its best coming from the principles I had outlined was highly dynamic... it brought data and personalization instantaneously to the user and I knew because I reverse engineered how the greatest things on the internet were built... Amazon Google Facebook what these all have in common it was so obvious that this is what was going to happen."

The key insight was recognizing the need to bridge this gap incrementally rather than compromising the foundational vision. This experience taught Vercel to always consider how to meet people where they are today while bringing them step-by-step to the promised land.

Timestamp: [19:54-21:09]

One of Vercel's core principles emerged from this early tension: make things easy without compromising the foundational vision. Because Guillermo built on solid principles, the solutions could be both simple for beginners and capable of scaling to the largest applications on the internet.

This philosophy addresses a common startup question: can something work for someone experimenting with a side hustle while also scaling to enterprise companies betting their entire business on the technology?

"We didn't compromise so of course our job was to make things easy but because I was banking on that foundation of principles it was easy and it could scale to the largest things on the internet."

The validation came when they received an email from the VP of Engineering at Zillow announcing they were rewriting everything on top of Next.js. Zillow was moving from PHP to JavaScript - a similar journey to Guillermo's own experience - because their core value proposition (the interactive map showing houses in real-time) required dynamic web capabilities.

"When you heard hey you're working on this thing for yourself you just open sourced it but we're going to bet the future of our company on this that's when I realized like wow there's something here."

Timestamp: [21:09-22:23]

Guillermo runs his personal website (rauch.com) on Vercel, embodying the principle that technology should provide an "aha moment" that feels personal to new users. When Next.js launched, the obvious first use case was creating your own website to "kick the tires" - something CTOs, VPs of engineering, and builders worldwide naturally wanted to do.

This personal connection creates the magic: users start with something small and personal, but the same technology must scale to massive applications. Otherwise, you're only addressing a small fraction of the market.

"It was so awesome that so many CTOs and VPs of engineering and just builders all over the world also felt that need... who doesn't like to try out a new technology and build something small with it? But the magic was you also have to be able to with the same technology be able to scale to really big things."

The company was originally called Zeit because Guillermo loves the word "zeitgeist" - the spirit of the time. Their job is to capture what's around the corner that people will need very soon and be ready to provide that aha moment.

Looking forward, Guillermo believes the new "Hello World" might be creating an AI agent - perhaps instead of just having rauch.com, he'll have his own "rauch GPT" that automates tasks or represents a version of himself.

Timestamp: [22:23-24:12]

Vercel has facilitated 750 million deployments to date. Each deployment that happens on Vercel would otherwise require significant manual effort and infrastructure setup. The scale is so vast that Guillermo asks people to visualize all the data centers they haven't had to build because everything is virtualized in the cloud.

When browsing the internet, you're likely touching Vercel behind the scenes - whether it's DoorDash or countless other websites. The goal is for users to notice because sites are faster and more dynamic than alternatives, but the infrastructure remains invisible.

"Just imagine visualizing all of the data centers that we have not built because it's all virtualized in the cloud to make space for that amount of volume... anytime you go to a website whether it's again your favorite... Door Dash also hosted on Vercel so if you're exploring the internet you're touching Vercel behind the scenes."

Vercel powers numerous e-commerce businesses, and Black Friday represents a crucial test of their infrastructure's reliability. The fact that massive commerce volumes flowed through Vercel during Black Friday with no interruptions demonstrates the platform's resilience at scale.

Timestamp: [24:12-25:44]

Vercel has become known for handling massive, unpredictable traffic spikes. In today's social media world, companies might have a general idea when they'll "hit it big," but viral moments - like an Elon Musk retweet - can create instant traffic explosions.

Nintendo recently dropped 200,000 Switch 2 units in Europe, with Nintendo crediting Vercel for the flawless scaling. Three companies had Super Bowl ads, experiencing traffic jumps from thousands to hundreds of thousands of requests per second - scaling that would normally require entire teams doing load tests and manual preparation.

"Nintendo did a drop of 200,000 Switch 2 in Europe and they were telling us like it's because of Vercel that these things are going without a hitch... going from like thousands of requests per second to like hundreds of thousands a scaling effort that done manually would have taken entire teams of people."

Vercel makes these dramatic scaling challenges "almost mundane." Whether you have no traffic, no users, or all the users, the same platform handles everything seamlessly. This represents the infrastructure team's "magic" - the pride of enabling companies to succeed regardless of traffic volume.

Timestamp: [25:44-26:58]

Guillermo actively uses Vercel daily and regularly provides feedback to his team about the product experience. Dan emphasizes how important this practice is, suggesting that almost every founder should regularly onboard to their own product to maintain that user perspective.

This dogfooding approach ensures that Vercel's leadership stays connected to the actual user experience rather than just metrics and reports. It's a practical way to maintain empathy for customers and identify friction points that might not be apparent from data alone.

"You're dog fooding it every day and I hear from your team that they get feedback from you on the regular about the product using Vercel. I think that's super important. I almost think every founder should like onboard to their product."

This hands-on approach to product usage reflects Vercel's commitment to understanding their users' real experiences and continuously improving based on authentic feedback from someone who uses the platform extensively.

Timestamp: [26:58-27:05]

• Visionaries must bridge the gap between future potential and current market reality through incremental delivery
• Great technology should work for hobbyists experimenting and enterprises betting their business - without compromise
• Personal use cases often provide the best "aha moments" for new users trying technology
• Successful platforms handle unpredictable viral traffic spikes, making dramatic scaling "mundane"
• Founders should regularly use their own products to maintain empathy and identify friction points
• The future "Hello World" may evolve from simple websites to AI agents as technology advances
• Infrastructure success is measured by invisibility - users notice speed and reliability, not the underlying complexity

Timestamp: [19:54-27:05]

Companies/Products:

• Amazon - Example of dynamic web application that Guillermo reverse-engineered
• Google - Example of dynamic web application that Guillermo reverse-engineered
• Facebook - Example of dynamic web application that Guillermo reverse-engineered
• Zillow - Real estate company that rewrote everything on Next.js, moving from PHP to JavaScript
• DoorDash - Food delivery service hosted on Vercel
• Nintendo - Gaming company that used Vercel for Switch 2 drop in Europe
• Super Bowl - Three companies with Super Bowl ads experienced traffic spikes handled by Vercel
• Zeit - Original company name before becoming Vercel

Technologies/Concepts:

• Static websites - What the market focused on when Guillermo wanted dynamic web
• rauch.com - Guillermo's personal website hosted on Vercel
• Zeitgeist - German word meaning "spirit of the time" that inspired the original company name
• Hello World - Traditional first programming example, potentially evolving to AI agents
• AI agents - Future direction Guillermo sees for web development
• Load tests - Manual scaling preparation that Vercel automates
• Dogfooding - Practice of using your own product regularly

People:

• VP of Engineering at Zillow - Person who emailed about rewriting everything on Next.js
• Elon Musk - Referenced for unpredictable viral traffic spikes through retweets

Timestamp: [19:54-27:05]

Guillermo uses V0 extensively for rapid prototyping, describing it as "ChatGPT but for creating applications" - full-stack applications built from English prompts. This has amplified his ability to experiment by an order of magnitude, allowing him to build things better and faster than manual coding.

Rather than lazily writing down ideas, he challenges himself to ship something tangible. V0 handles all the Next.js APIs and documentation details he might forget, enabling him to quickly create e-commerce websites, subscription services, or experiment with new onboarding flows to communicate high-fidelity ideas to his team.

"V0 as the name implies allows you to go from your first version of your product with just a few English prompts... this has for me amplified the amount of stuff that I can try by an order of magnitude because I can just go to V0 and all of the things that I know how to do it can just do better and faster."

His philosophy is "demos over memos" - he frequently walks up to people saying "look at this thing we built" rather than just describing ideas. This hands-on approach helps him identify friction points and communicate concepts more effectively than written explanations.

Timestamp: [27:05-28:31]

Dan highlights Guillermo's exceptional ability to provide detailed, useful feedback. He regularly messages people on X (Twitter), and recipients often contact Dan feeling "special" about receiving direct feedback from Guillermo. This represents a distinction between people who simply say "something's wrong" versus those who provide thoughtful, helpful bug reports.

Guillermo's feedback covers two main categories: technical issues (missing frames, glitchy animations, slow motion problems) and user experience concerns (will people actually understand this?). He often challenges his team with provocative questions about clarity and first-time user comprehension.

"There's a big thing in software between people who say there's something wrong and don't that are not trying to be helpful they're not interactive and then people who provide like a good bug report or a good like thoughtful thing and are trying to be helpful."

He records videos, creates GIFs, and points out specific technical issues because he's accumulated best practices over years that are easy to miss. His goal is eventually to "automate himself" through AI agents, but for now, he manually provides this detailed feedback to maintain quality standards.

This connects to his vision of a future "hello world" being an AI agent - potentially a "Guillermo GPT" that could automate many of these feedback tasks he currently performs manually.

Timestamp: [28:31-30:02]

Vercel organizes priorities into three foundational buckets. Dan notes how difficult it is for startups to do even one thing well, making Vercel's multi-product success remarkable across Next.js, Vercel infrastructure, Svelte (through their team), V0, Turborepo, and the AI SDK.

Bucket 1: Foundations - Developer experience and the fastest deployments in the world for projects at any scale. This includes amazing uptime and availability, celebrating customers who serve hundreds of millions of people without the infrastructure breaking a sweat.

Bucket 2: AI - The world is being completely overhauled by AI, requiring innovations that make sense in Vercel's context of front-end, design, and bringing ideas alive with Next.js and React. This led to V0 and the AI SDK.

Bucket 3: Security - Addressing concerns about bots, content scraping, AI protection, traffic visibility, and serving agents operating on behalf of people.

"Nothing matters more than the foundations if there's a crack on the foundation you can keep adding things it's going to exacerbate the problem."

Each expansion requires extreme buy-in from first principles about things they're excited about, that their community wants, and where they can make meaningful contributions.

Timestamp: [30:02-34:33]

The AI SDK emerged from Vercel's dogfooding philosophy - when building V0, they created foundations that could benefit the entire world. Just as they open-sourced Next.js, they open-sourced the foundations of V0 so anyone can create their own agents and website builders.

The AI SDK is "the Next.js of AI" - a framework that connects to models without locking users into specific providers. It supports OpenAI, Anthropic, and open models, giving developers flexibility for the future.

"The key unlock is that in order to ship with AI you don't have to be a machine learning PhD that has used Python their entire life... there's a huge amount of upside for application developers that know React or Next really well to incorporate AI into their products."

This democratizes AI development, allowing React and Next.js developers to incorporate AI using familiar tools rather than requiring machine learning expertise. It represents building from "first AI principles" while leveraging existing web development skills.

The SDK makes sense within Vercel's context, serving their audience and teams while maintaining high quality standards.

Timestamp: [33:08-34:20]

Guillermo shares several meaningful customer examples that validate Vercel's mission. Stripe, which he originally used as a comparison ("like Stripe for deployment"), now hosts Stripe.dev on Vercel - their developer infrastructure online. This full-circle moment feels extremely rewarding.

Other notable customers include Notion (which massively grew while hosting workloads on Vercel) and OpenAI.com (now one of the largest sources on the internet). The Svelte team's work at Vercel has been transformative, with Svelte now powering Logitech and improving both developer happiness and business conversion rates.

"When I would pitch Vercel I would say like it's like Stripe for deployment I want to make it really easy for developers just like they did for financial infrastructure for developers to build and ship to the web and so knowing that we host now Stripe.dev... is extremely rewarding."

V0's evolution from early-stage entrepreneur tool to enterprise adoption represents another significant milestone. Originally conceived for entrepreneurs going from "zero to one," V0 recently gained its biggest Fortune 10 customer ever. Seeing AI-powered product creation succeed in highly regulated enterprise environments validates the technology's broad applicability beyond terminally online freelancers and early-stage entrepreneurs.

Timestamp: [35:10-36:52]

Guillermo's closing advice centers on iteration velocity as the most important factor in today's world. He believes we're in an incredibly exciting AI moment where "almost every idea and every product is up for grabs" - everything is being transformed into new form factors.

His philosophy is that every piece of software today is "ripe for disruption" and entrepreneurs should aggressively pursue these opportunities. He encourages founders not to take anything for granted and to actively chase big ideas.

"Iteration velocity matters more than anything else in this world... it feels so exciting to be in AI today like almost like every idea and every product is up for grabs everything is being transformed into a new form factor."

Vercel aims to provide the foundations that enable people to chase these transformative ideas. His parting advice emphasizes the unprecedented opportunity available: with AI reshaping everything, founders should boldly pursue disruption across all software categories.

The conversation concludes with Dan's playful reference to Guillermo's mustache as an important element of building a great brand, which Guillermo acknowledges with humor before delivering his serious advice about seizing the current moment of technological transformation.

Timestamp: [36:52-37:53]

• AI tools like V0 can amplify individual productivity by orders of magnitude, enabling rapid idea-to-prototype cycles
• "Demos over memos" - showing working examples communicates ideas more effectively than written descriptions
• Quality feedback requires both technical precision and user experience intuition
• Successful multi-product strategies need strong foundations before expanding into new areas
• AI democratization means React/Next.js developers can build AI applications without machine learning expertise
• Customer success stories create powerful validation when companies you originally aspired to emulate become clients
• In the AI era, every software category is "ripe for disruption" - iteration velocity matters more than perfection
• The future belongs to founders who aggressively pursue transformation opportunities rather than taking existing solutions for granted

Timestamp: [27:05-37:53]

Products/Technologies:

• V0 - Vercel's AI-powered application builder that creates full-stack apps from English prompts
• ChatGPT - AI comparison point for describing V0's functionality
• Next.js - React framework that V0 uses and optimizes for
• AI SDK - Vercel's open-source AI framework, described as "the Next.js of AI"
• Svelte - Frontend framework whose team works at Vercel
• Turborepo - Vercel's open-source monorepo tool
• X (Twitter) - Platform where Guillermo provides feedback to users
• React - JavaScript library that Vercel's tools are built around

Companies:

• Stripe - Financial infrastructure company that now hosts Stripe.dev on Vercel
• Notion - Productivity company that hosts workloads on Vercel
• OpenAI - AI company whose OpenAI.com is hosted on Vercel
• Logitech - Hardware company now powered by Svelte
• Fortune 10 company - Unnamed large enterprise customer using V0
• OpenAI - AI model provider supported by AI SDK
• Anthropic - AI model provider supported by AI SDK

Concepts:

• Demos over memos - Guillermo's principle of showing rather than describing
• Dogfooding - Practice of using your own products extensively
• First AI principles - Building AI applications from fundamental concepts rather than copying existing patterns
• Machine learning PhD - Traditional requirement that AI SDK aims to eliminate
• Iteration velocity - Speed of development cycles and product improvement

Timestamp: [27:05-37:53]