Best of the Pod: Vercel's Guillermo Rauch on AI and the Future of Coding

Read Dan Shipper's essay on the allocation economy: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/the-knowledge-economy-is-over-welcome-to-the-allocation-economy Guillermo Rauch is one of the most prolific coders of this generation. But he doesn’t think of himself as a coder anymore. Coding, he says, is a specific skill that AI is becoming great at. Instead, he thinks the future of coding is more holistic, full-stack engineers who can ideate, design, and execute all together. Guillermo is the founder and CEO of Vercel, the creator of NextJS, and SocketIO. We spent an hour talking about the future of software development in an AI world—and the meta-skills that are essential for the coders of today to master—in order to use tomorrow’s tools to their fullest extent. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Sponsors: LTX Studio is helping storytellers go from concept to delivery in one seamless platform. Whether you're storyboarding your next film, prototyping ad concepts, or creating pixel-ready assets, LTX Studio allows you to fully realize your imaginations. Check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/2d5nx3ut Attio is the AI-native CRM built for the next era of companies. With Attio, setup takes minutes. Connect your email and calendar, and it instantly builds a CRM that mirrors your business. Go to https://www.⁠⁠⁠⁠attio.com/every to get 15% off on your first year. Want even more? Read Dan Shipper's essay on developing taste with AI: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/what-i-do-when-i-can-t-sleep Try Cora to manage your email with AI: https://cora.computer Try Spiral to repurpose content with AI: https://spiral.computer Try Sparkle to organize your files with AI: https://makeitsparkle.co Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Timestamps 00:00:00 - Episode start 00:01:33 - Introduction 00:03:18 - How to spot trends early 00:07:34 - Why you should be your own customer 00:14:55 - How to create an ecosystem of talent and ambition 00:17:29 - Why Guillermo doesn't identify as a coder 00:20:50 - AI is gearing us toward an allocation economy 00:28:34 - How Vercel's copilot compares with other coding agents 00:40:35 - Guillermo's advice on having better taste 00:42:46 - The future of AI agents is specialized 00:47:50 - How AI startups can compete with big tech Links to resources mentioned in the episode: Guillermo Rauch: @rauchg Vercel: https://vercel.com/ Last week’s episode with Nabeel Hyatt: https://every.to/podcast/the-venture-capitalist-who-only-makes-two-bets-a-year Dan’s essay about the allocation economy: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/the-knowledge-economy-is-over-welcome-to-the-allocation-economy