The General Podcast

Merrill Lutsky is the co-founder and CEO of Graphite, a modern code review platform built for the AI era that was just acquired by Cursor. Zach Lloyd is the founder and CEO of Warp, the terminal with agents built in.

Zach and Merrill go way back—they worked together on Zach’s previous company. Now they’re each building core infrastructure for modern engineering teams, and running into many of the same challenges from different sides of development.

They talk about what’s actually changing inside engineering orgs right now: why code review is becoming the real bottleneck as agents generate more code, why ‘vibe coding’ doesn’t work on production code, and why humans still have to stay accountable for agent-written code.

They’re also candid about the business side of developer tools - why power users break flat pricing, why ‘cheap AI’ creates a winner’s curse, and what it really takes to market to famously skeptical developers (controversial billboards and a launch video on a horse). 

In this episode, you’ll learn:
Zach and Merrill’s shared history and how it shaped their perspectives
Why AI has shifted the engineering bottleneck from writing code to understanding it
Why “vibe coding” works for demos but fails in real production environments
What human accountability actually means in an agent-driven codebase
Why code review is emerging as the new leverage point for engineering productivity
How power users quietly destroy flat-pricing models in developer tools
The “winner’s curse” of underpricing AI-native products
Marketing to developers without losing credibility
Where to find our guests:
Graphite.com
Warp.dev

Bing Gordon joined Electronic Arts in its earliest days as Chief Creative Officer and helped build it into the gaming powerhouse it is today. He was one of the first believers that interactive media could be a true art form, and over his career he shaped iconic games like The Sims, Madden, and Farmville. Few people have thought harder about what makes a story truly work.

Stephen Piron is the founder of Pickford, a new kind of studio where the audience drives the plot in real time. His big idea is that if you scream at the TV, the TV should scream back. Before Pickford, Stephen built the world’s first deepfake (the Joe Rogan one) while working on his previous startup, Dessa, which was eventually acquired by Square.

Right off the bat, you’ll hear them dive into one of the most famous ad campaigns in tech history—EA’s “Can a Computer Make You Cry?” Bing shares the story behind that ad, and Stephen admits he has it framed on his office wall. From there, they get into the multiple reinventions of Hollywood, how you build character bibles and narrative arcs in the age of AI, why hits are always flukes until they’re not. 

It’s a conversation about what it really takes to build an interactive platform that changes the way stories get made. You’ll learn:
The origin story of the iconic “Can a computer make you cry?” ad and why it mattered more than any product marketing
Why Electronic Arts once believed it would become “the new Hollywood” and what that taught Bing about storytelling
Why most AI storytelling efforts fail by trying to make old stories cheaper instead of inventing new formats
Why character bibles and narrative guardrails matter more than prompts
How Pickford is borrowing from centuries-old storytelling structures and updating them for real-time interaction
Why hits still matter more than platforms (and why every platform eventually needs one)
How AI might actually create more work for storytellers, not less
How Pickford worked with SAG to design a new, AI-era compensation model for voice actors
Referenced in this episode:
The “Can a Computer Make You Cry?” ad campaign
United Artists and Mary Pickford 
Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman
The Sims and SimCity
EA Sports, Madden
World of Warcraft
Wattpad 
Steve Jobs and the “reality distortion field”
The Startup of You by Reid Hoffman 
SAG (Screen Actors Guild)
Where to find Bing Gordon: 
X (Twitter): @bingfish
Where to find Stephen Piron: 
Pickford: pickford.ai
Where to find The General Partnership:
Website: thegp.com
X (Twitter): @thegp
Substack: https://thegeneralpartnership.substack.com/

Chris Best is the co-founder and CEO of Substack, the platform powering the rise of independent writers, podcasters, and thinkers. At Substack, Chris has reimagined what sustainable media looks like, putting creators at the center.
Andrew Mayne is the host of the OpenAI podcast and was previously the company’s first prompt engineer and science communicator, where he helped shape how people interact with and understand large language models in the earliest days of GPT-3. 3. He’s also a mystery-thriller novelist and the founder of Interdimensional, a company helping organizations deploy AI.

Together, they unpack how technology rewires culture, creativity, and even capitalism—from the birth of ChatGPT to the flood of “AI slop,” from the evolution of media business models to what makes human expression irreplaceable.
It’s a conversation that circles around the economics of culture and the future of originality as creating art becomes more and more accessible. 
In this conversation, you’ll learn:
The inside story of ChatGPT’s creation 
Why frictionless product experiences matter more than technical breakthroughs
How Substack’s “do everything but the hard part” philosophy for building products empowers creators 
What happens when business models consume products, and how to resist that gravity 
How AI is accelerating Substack’s core bet: that authenticity will always outperform algorithms 
Why AI-generated content won’t replace human stories 
Why “all economics are downstream of culture”
Why Substack made subscribers portable and what that decision meant for trust
Why writers should see AI as an amplifier instead of a threat
The case for optimism: why artists, technologists, and media builders should embrace our emerging cultural renaissance.
Referenced in this episode:
Brandon Sanderson’s record-breaking Kickstarter
The Industrial Revolution
India’s License Raj
Avatar 2
Reboot, the TV show
Mechanic’s Institute
Mesopotamia and the invention of the plow
Where to find Andrew Mayne:
Website: andrewmayne.com
X (Twitter): @AndrewMayne
Interdimensional: interdimensional.ai
Where to find Chris Best:
Substack: cb.substack.com
X (Twitter): @cjgbest
Where to find The General Partnership:
Website: thegp.com
X (Twitter): @thegp
Substack: thegeneralpartnership.substack.com

Claire Hughes Johnson (former COO at Stripe) and Gretchen Howard (former COO at Robinhood) join The General Podcast for a rare, candid conversation about what it really means to operate at the highest levels inside two of the most ambitious fintech companies of the past decade. 

Both left safe jobs to take bets that looked “crazy” from the outside. Both joined hyper-growth startups without the COO title, built trust with founders in real time, and ended up shaping the companies from the inside out. In this episode, they dig into what the COO role actually is, how to avoid “organ rejection” when you’re the outsider, and why the people function is the most underrated lever for scaling. 

You’ll hear Claire and Gretchen swap notes on why the hardest problems are often unglamorous—compliance, self-clearing, comp plans—and why the real work is about earning trust, building velocity, and protecting the integrity of the company as it grows. 

In this conversation, you’ll learn: 
Why Claire and Gretchen said yes to Stripe and Robinhood when everyone around them said no
Their takes on founder chemistry and how to know if you can actually work with someone
How to walk into a COO role without blowing up the culture
What founders get wrong when hiring their first COO
How Stripe and Robinhood scaled the ‘unsexy’ parts of business
How to build systems without adding bureaucracy
How to use the people function as a strategic weapon
Being okay with not being liked as your leadership evolves 
Claire’s “full stack leader” framework
What great operators actually obsess over

Where to find Gretchen: 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gretchenehoward

Where to find Claire: 
X: https://x.com/chughesjohnson
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-hughes-johnson-7058
Book: Scaling People

Where to find TheGP: 
X: @thegp
Newsletter: https://thegeneralpartnership.substack.com/

Dan Shipper is the co-founder and CEO of Every, a media company built around writing, software, and AI. With a tiny team, they put out a daily newsletter, build products, and run a consulting arm, all while staying weird and experimental. Dan’s one of the most thoughtful writers on how AI is reshaping creativity, business, and what it means to build.
Alex Konrad is the founder of Upstarts, a newsletter about the next breakout companies before they break out. He spent over a decade at Forbes, where he wrote 15+ cover stories, co-created the Cloud 100 list, and led Midas List coverage of the top VCs in the world.
Together, they discuss and debate building sustainable media businesses today, using AI to amplify creativity, and why legacy playbooks no longer apply.
In this conversation, you’ll learn:
1. Why being weird is often a competitive advantage
2. How thinking like a product person (and not just a writer) shapes everything they publish
3. The surprisingly tactical ways they protect time for original thinking
4. Why Upstarts and Every both resisted the pressure to “build the platform” too soon
5. How Every runs multiple AI products and a daily newsletter with only 15 people
6. Why they both believe your business model is a creative decision
7. Their thinking around independent journalism as a “tech-enabled service,” not content
8. How AI tools like Claude, Cora, and ChatGPT actually fit into their creative process
9. How to avoid burnout when your business is also your identity
10. How to stay joyful and experimental when everyone else is optimizing
Where to find Dan:
Newsletter: every.to
X: @danshipper
Where to find Alex:
Newsletter: https://www.upstartsmedia.com
X: @alexrkonrad
Where to find TheGP:
Newsletter:  https://thegeneralpartnership.substack.com/
X: @thegp
Referenced in this episode:
MrBeast: https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast
The Pragmatic Engineer: https://www.pragmaticengineer.com
Stratechery by Ben Thompson: https://stratechery.com/
Lenny’s Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/
Tom Brady quote: “Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on winners.”
Acquired Podcast: https://www.acquired.fm/
Claude: https://claude.ai
ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com 
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The writer Maggie Nelson
Spiral by Every: https://spiral.computer
Cora by Every: https://cora.computer
Think Week (Bill Gates’s famous retreat)
Documentary: WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn