Had a great time chatting with @rauchg on @HDinHDpod, we talked about how his childhood and upbringing led to now scaling @vercel to power the next generation of AI-native applications. ABOUT US: We’re proudly sponsored by @brexHQ—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count. I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. For more information, please go to: https://t.co/rE1SSJdA6l (00:00) Trailer (02:07) Introduction, Brazil–Argentina, investor link-up (03:34) Buenos Aires upbringing, “experimental” high school (07:08) Dad’s tech prompts, Linux CD, first hacks (11:40) Games, forums, packet-sniffing and reverse-engineering (15:24) Burning music CDs, first pesos earned (19:40) Freelance web gigs, earning U.S. dollars at 11 (24:10) Elite high-school grind → decision to drop out (29:52) Swiss startup offer, Lausanne move, visa gauntlet (36:05) Silicon-Valley coworking, Instagram/Twilio neighbors, first exit to WordPress (41:45) MoodTools vs jQuery (47:57) Post-exit angel investing, early bets on Scale AI & Bitcoin (54:40) Founding Vercel, birth of Next.js, “self-driving” cloud (1:01:15) Angel portfolio lessons & product-market focus (1:07:50) AI surge: v0, agents, “token factories” vision (1:13:56) Product mantra: Iterate-to-Greatness and tiny ship cycles (1:18:10) Self-driving-car analogy for autonomous code (1:24:30) Brand-permission, scope control, and feature flags (1:29:35) AI as skill democratizer; enterprise adoption stories (1:34:22) Bottlenecks: context windows, error loops, auto-repair (1:39:48) Winning dev love: CEO must code, patient-zero testing (1:44:55) Luck vs skill: family, immigration breaks, big bets (1:51:30) Containing blast-radius of mistakes; experimentation culture (1:55:40) Engineer-founder mindset, constant up-skilling (2:00:20) Closing