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Shownotes
Eddie Kim is the co-founder and CTO of the payroll and HR platform Gusto, which just crossed $1 billion in revenue and serves more than 500,000 small businesses. Recently he did something most CTOs don’t: he went back to writing code. With three other engineers and one designer, Eddie built Gusto Cofounder, a net-new AI product, from zero code to a tier-one launch in 10 weeks. He walks through how that team actually worked, why they threw out nearly every process, and how anyone can copy the approach.
What you’ll learn:
• The trash-can method: how to write, review, and delete a full PR as a product decision instead of a planning doc
• The two-tool agent stack behind Gusto Cofounder
• The exact “perma-Zoom” setup that replaced standups, retros, and Slack threads for 10 weeks
• How a designer with no engineering background hit the 94th percentile for shipping code
• The eval-first workflow Eddie uses to fix real customer bugs with Claude Code
• How a non-technical leader can prototype an idea to win buy-in, then carry it all the way to production-quality code
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Brought to you by:
Magic Patterns (magicpatterns.com/howiai)—Prototypes that look like your product
Jira Product Discovery (atlassian.com/howiai)—Prioritize with insights, build with confidence
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In this episode, we cover:
() Intro: five people, 10 weeks
() The origins of Cofounder
() Inside the 10-week build process
() Building with no PMs
() The “trash can” method
() The stack architecture
() Shipping to production from day one
() How a designer became a top engineer
() Demo: Cofounder over text and Slack
() Demo: running a real payroll
() Live coding with evals in Claude Code
() Recap: prototype, small team, permission
() Lightning round
() Where to find Eddie and Cofounder
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Tools referenced:
• Gusto Cofounder (early access/waitlist): gusto.com/cofounder
• Claude Code (Anthropic): claude.ai/code
• Cloudflare Workers: workers.cloudflare.com
• Vercel AI SDK: sdk.vercel.ai
• DX (engineering analytics): getdx.com
• Wispr Flow (voice-to-text): wisprflow.ai
• OpenClaw: openclaw.ai
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Other references:
• Gusto (the main product, “Gusto Classic”): gusto.com
• Mindbody (referenced as customer data source): mindbodyonline.com
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Where to find Eddie Kim:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/edawerd
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Where to find Claire Vo:
ChatPRD: chatprd.ai
Website: clairevo.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/clairevo
X: x.com/clairevo
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Production and marketing by penname.co. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co.
