meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Inside ChatGPT: The fastest growing product in history | Nick Turley (Head of ChatGPT at OpenAI)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

51.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2025

⏱️ 96 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nick Turley is Head of ChatGPT, the fastest-growing product in history, with 700 million weekly active users (10% of the world’s population). He was part of the original hackathon team that shipped ChatGPT in just 10 days, helped it grow from zero to billions in revenue, and leads product for what may be the most consequential product of our time. We recorded this the day before GPT-5 launched.

We discuss:

1. The 10-day sprint from deciding to ship ChatGPT to Sam Altman’s tweet (and why it was originally called “Chat with GPT-3.5”)

2. How they ran a willingness-to-pay Van Westendorp survey in their Discord to decide on the $20/month price point that everyone copied

3. The “Is it maximally accelerated?” philosophy that drives OpenAI’s insane shipping velocity

4. Why ChatGPT’s retention curve “smiles”—users leave, then come back months later using it more

5. The accidental decisions that changed history, including not having a waitlist

6. The impact ChatGPT will have on SEO and product growth

7. The counterintuitive reason why shipping unpolished AI features beats waiting for perfection

8. Why ChatGPT intentionally shipped with that “ugly” model-chooser dropdown

9. How TikTok comments became a primary user research channel early on

Brought to you by:

Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows: https://www.orkes.io/

Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny

PostHog—How developers build successful products: https://posthog.com/lenny

Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley

My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/170411252/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation

Where to find Nick Turley

• X: https://x.com/nickaturley

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasturley/

• Website: https://nickturley.com/

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Nick Turley

(04:52) GPT-5 launch

(09:13) The vision for ChatGPT and AI assistants

(13:52) The early days of ChatGPT

(17:14) The success and impact of ChatGPT

(20:44) Product development and iteration

(23:11) Maximally accelerated: the OpenAI approach

(26:17) Retention and user engagement

(33:42) The future of chat interfaces

(36:31) The evolution of ChatGPT

(38:52) Subscription model and pricing strategies

(42:10) Enterprise adoption and challenges

(44:10) Balancing multiple product lines

(52:13) Emergent use cases and user feedback

(01:02:15) OpenAI’s unique product development approach

(01:05:07) The importance of team composition

(01:08:50) Balancing speed and quality in AI development

(01:14:23) The role of evals in product development

(01:16:13) The future of AI-driven content and GPTs

(01:21:51) Philosophy and product leadership

(01:23:47) Career journey and advice

(01:27:49) Lightning round and final thoughts

References: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.



To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

You were a product leader at Dropbox, then Instacart. Now you're the PM of the most consequential

0:04.8

product in history. I didn't know what I would do here because it was a research lab.

0:08.5

The first task was like, fix the blinds or something like that. When someone offers you a rocket ship,

0:12.3

don't ask which seat. We set out to build a super assistant. It was supposed to be a hackathon code base.

0:16.1

What was it called before? It's going to be chat with GPD 3.5 because I really didn't think it was going to be successful product.

0:23.2

And then Sam Altman's just like, hey, let me tweet about it.

0:19.0

This is a pattern with AI. You won't know what to polish until after you ship. My dream is that we ship daily. By the time people hear this, they're going to have their hands on GPT5. About 10% of the world population uses every week. With scale comes responsibility. It just feels a little bit more alive, a bit more human.

0:20.0

This model has taste.

0:54.8

Kevin Weill, your CPO, said to ask you about this principle of, is it maximally accelerated? I just really want to jump to the punchline. Why can't we do this now? I always felt like part of my role here to just set the pace and the resting heartbeat. Everyone's always wondering, is chat the future of all of the stuff? Chat was the simplest way to ship at the time. I'm baffled by how much it took off. I'm even more baffled by how many people have copied. Chat TPT is now driving more traffic to my newsletter than Twitter. That is the type of capability that has been incredibly retentive. I've been really excited about what we've been doing in search. You just a peek into where this goes long term. chat if it feels a little bit like MS DOS. We haven't built Windows yet, and it will be obvious once we do.

1:10.8

Today, Do you just peek into where this goes long term? ChatGPT feels a little bit like MSDOS. We haven't built Windows yet, and it will be obvious once we do.

1:14.7

Today, my guest is Nick Turley.

1:17.1

Nick is head of ChatGPT at OpenAI.

1:19.5

He joined the company three years ago, when it was still primarily a research lab.

1:23.4

He helped come up with the idea of ChatGPT and took it from zero to over 700 million weekly active

1:29.4

users, billions in revenue, and arguably the most successful and impactful consumer software

1:35.4

product in human history. Nick is incredible. He's been very much under the radar. This is the

1:41.2

first major podcast interview that he has ever done, and you are in for a

1:45.1

treat. We talk about all the things, including the just-launched GPT-5. A huge thank you to Kevin

1:51.5

Weill, Claire Vo, George O'Brien, Joanne Jing, and Peter Ding for suggesting topics for this

1:56.0

conversation. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite

1:59.6

podcasting app or YouTube. And if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of a bunch of incredible products, including lovable, replet, bold, n8, linear superhuman, Descript, whisperflow, gamma, perplexity, warp, granola, magic patterns, raycast, chapier, D, and Mobbin. Check it at Lenny's newsletter.com and click bundle.

2:19.8

With that, I bring you Nick Turley.

...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 20 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lenny Rachitsky, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Lenny Rachitsky and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.