VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We should be cannibalizing the existing state of our product every 6 to 12 months, making it look silly compared to what we have now.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

With the rise of AI, engineers are now able to produce more technology, which means the ROI of building technology has actually gone up, leading to the need for more hires.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

The best thing to do is to get your hands dirty with all of these products; you could be a force multiplier to your organization in ways they never anticipated.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We realized that generative AI was going to be like the next internet, so we decided to build the next great apps, like Google and Amazon.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We provided our product entirely for free across all IDEs, which allowed us to optimize workloads significantly and attract a large user base.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We built Windsurf because we recognized that AI was going to write over 90% of the software, changing the role of developers to primarily reviewing code.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

The acceptance rate for our product tripled after we built a custom UI for Windsurf, demonstrating the importance of user experience in technology.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We believe agency is the most undervalued skill in the AI era, as it empowers individuals to build and innovate rather than just follow predefined paths.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We only hire for a role if we're underwater for that function, ensuring that every hire is necessary and contributes to our goals.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

Every hire is like a little bit of water, and we only go back and hire someone when we're back to being dehydrated.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We invested heavily in enterprise sales early on, hiring a VP of sales over a year ago, which has led to a go-to-market team of over 80 people.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

I didn't know how to scale the revenue from a couple million to hundreds of millions, so I couldn't hire someone to do it.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

In mid-2023, we started selling Windsurf and quickly realized there was a significant enterprise demand for our product.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

Selling to Fortune 500 companies is challenging and cannot be done solely through credit card transactions.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We've invested heavily in understanding large codebases, which is crucial for making significant changes quickly.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

Working with large companies like Dell, we learned that understanding their massive codebases is essential for effective modifications.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We focus on supporting IDEs like JetBrains because they are highly extensible, unlike VS Code, which is less flexible.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We operate in secure environments and have FedRAMP compliance, allowing us to work with large government entities.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

Our non-technical staff built custom tools instead of purchasing SaaS products, saving over $500,000 in software costs.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

I believe 90% of code will be AI-generated, but the demand for engineering jobs will actually increase.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

Engineers do much more than just write code; they review, test, debug, and design, which means we still need a significant number of engineers.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

The opportunity cost of not investing in technology has increased, leading companies to hire more engineers despite AI's capabilities.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We should be cannibalizing our existing product every 6 to 12 months to ensure we stay ahead in the market.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

Get your hands dirty with these tools; there's a lot of alpha for those who can leverage them effectively.

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

Windsurf can modify existing codebases, allowing product managers to make changes directly without needing extensive coding knowledge.

Building a magical AI code editor used by over 1m developers in 4 months: Inside Windsurf

Takeaways