No Figma. No Jira. No docs. How Gusto built a new product line with Claude Code | Eddie Kim (CTO)
How I AIShow Notes
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 — Brought to you by: Magic Patterns—Prototypes that look like your product Jira Product Discovery—Prioritize with insights, build with confidence — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Intro: five people, 10 weeks (02:38) The origins of Cofounder (08:32) Inside the 10-week build process (12:50) Building with no PMs (14:38) The “trash can” method (17:15) The stack architecture (19:10) Shipping to production from day one (22:03) How a designer became a top engineer (29:05) Demo: Cofounder over text and Slack (31:45) Demo: running a real payroll (36:26) Live coding with evals in Claude Code (39:39) Recap: prototype, small team, permission (43:17) Lightning round (48:44) Where to find Eddie and Cofounder — Tools referenced: • Gusto Cofounder (early access/waitlist): https://gusto.com/cofounder • Claude Code (Anthropic): https://claude.ai/code • Cloudflare Workers: https://workers.cloudflare.com/ • Vercel AI SDK: https://sdk.vercel.ai/ • DX (engineering analytics): https://getdx.com/ • Wispr Flow (voice-to-text): https://wisprflow.ai • OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai/ — Other references: • Gusto (the main product, “Gusto Classic”): https://gusto.com • Mindbody (referenced as customer data source): https://www.mindbodyonline.com/ — Where to find Eddie Kim: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edawerd/ — Where to find Claire Vo: ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ Website: https://clairevo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ X: https://x.com/clairevo — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
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