Head of Growth (Anthropic):  “Claude is growing itself at this point.”

Imagine a company growing so fast that its employees have stopped looking at linear charts: now, the numbers only rise on a logarithmic scale, because “normal” progress no longer exists. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, has gone from $1 billion to $19 billion in annual revenue in just 14 months. In comparison, this leap makes Atlassian, Palantir, and Snowflake—all companies with over 15 years of experience—look like snails: in just a few months, Anthropic generates the revenue that these giants struggle to achieve in a full year. But the real surprise is not so much the speed of revenue growth as the way this growth is turning all the rules of the business upside down. One’s natural inclination would be to assume that a company like this has a bloated growth team that thrives on micro-optimizations and obsessive A/B testing. Instead, Amole Evasari—Head of Growth, formerly of Masterclass and Mercury—says that the real job is to survive “success disasters”: when everything grows too fast, the problem is no longer how to acquire users, but how to prevent the machine from exploding. He spends most of his time not planning, but putting out fires caused by success itself. And here comes the first jolt: 70% of the growth team’s work involves managing hypergrowth crises, jumping from one priority to the next, under an emotional pressure that no green chart can convey. Only 30% is left for the “daily bread” of the profession—acquisition, onboarding, and monetization. But what does it mean to drive growth at a company where AI itself is starting to make decisions? Amole explains that they launched an internal initiative called “CASH” (Claude Accelerates Sustainable Hypergrowth), where Claude is used to design, test, and implement growth experiments. At first, the results were modest, comparable to those of a junior PM. But the learning curve is so steep that, week after week, Claude becomes increasingly capable of suggesting and implementing micro-changes that generate real value—and, most importantly, it does so at a speed that no human team could match. This means that the future of growth is no longer just about “doing onboarding better” or “writing better copy,” but about orchestrating a human-machine collaboration in which AI proposes, experiments, evaluates, and—soon—will also be able to make autonomous decisions on a large scale. And this is where the golden rule of startups is turned on its head: for products where AI is at the core, growth is no longer about making small tweaks, but about placing huge bets that can multiply value a thousandfold in two years. Amole puts it bluntly: “If the value of your product comes primarily from AI, you have to make ‘big bets.’ Micro-optimizations are useful, but they don't shift the curve significantly, because true growth is exponential, not incremental.” Another crucial point concerns the quality of onboarding. From Mercury to Masterclass, and now at Anthropic, Amole has learned that adding “friction”—that is, additional, carefully calibrated questions and steps—can boost conversion and activation, because it helps users immediately understand whether the product is truly designed for them. It’s not about speeding everything up, but about guiding the user toward what really matters. And this focus on quality, rather than quantity, often proves to be the true driver of sustainable growth. But beware: Anthropic is not a war machine that grows at any cost. The AI safety mission is even enshrined in the company’s bylaws, thanks to the decision to become a PBC. Amole relates that, on several occasions, the company has slowed down or canceled launches for safety reasons, even when the commercial pressure was extremely high. Here, the principle is clear: it is better to leave money on the table than to betray user trust or compromise the mission. Paradoxically, this consistency becomes a competitive advantage: when the risk increases, those who demonstrate the ability to say no gain long-term credibility and trust. On a personal level, Amole's story is even more powerful. Before working at Anthropic, he had to deal with a painful business failure—his startup closed after three years, and he struggled to explain to investors why their money had been lost. More importantly, he experienced a devastating physical trauma: a brain injury that forced him to relearn how to walk and work for nine months, with the constant uncertainty of whether he would be able to return to a normal life. He learned, in part through meditation and unwavering discipline, that true freedom comes from constraints: when you are forced to slow down, to take breaks, to manage vulnerability, you develop a resilience that enables you to cope with even the frenetic pace of a place like Anthropic without losing your mind. His mantra, learned through pain: “True freedom is learning to be happy even when you don't get what you want.” This lesson applies to individuals as much as it does to companies: strength lies not in having no limits, but in knowing how to turn those limits into clear, focused choices. Today, Anthropic is growing at an unprecedented rate, but the real difference lies in its internal culture: radical transparency and personal notebook channels where everyone—including the founders—makes their doubts, priorities, and even disagreements public. No one feels like just another cog in the wheel; everyone is encouraged to discuss, exchange views, and challenge the leadership's decisions. And this energy, combined with a wealth of talent that Amole likens to Real Madrid, becomes the true driving force that no competitor can replicate. If you thought growth was just a matter of aggressive marketing or AI doing the dirty work, here’s the real game changer: exponential growth is built on an authentic mission, a culture that embraces the risk of making mistakes, and the ability to leave money on the table to avoid losing your way. The companies that will dominate the future won't be those that do everything at once, but those that know how to choose what not to do—and that are ready to reinvent themselves every week, discarding 70% of their old habits. The one sentence that sums it all up? “True freedom is learning to be happy even when you don't get what you want.” If this perspective has made you see growth in a different light, you can mark it on Lara Notes with I'm In: it's your way of saying that this idea is now part of you. And if tomorrow you tell others how much Anthropic has grown because of its limitations—rather than in spite of them—on Lara Notes, you can mark the conversation with Shared Offline: because ideas that truly make a difference deserve to be remembered. This story comes from Lenny’s Podcast. You have just saved over two hours compared to the original episode.