Nick Turley: How a hackathon shipped ChatGPT to 700M users

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

August 9, 2025

Duration

1h 35m

Channel

Lenny's Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

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 *Referenced:*

• GPT-5 and the new era of work: https://openai.com/index/gpt-5-new-era-of-work/
• Instacart: https://www.instacart.com/
• OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai
• Sam Altman on X: https://x.com/sama
• Figma: https://www.figma.com/
• Van Westendorp’s Price Sensitivity Meter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Westendorp%27s_Price_Sensitivity_Meter
• Rahul Vohra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulvohra/
• Superhuman’s secret to success: Ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every new user, obsessing over every detail, and positioning around a single attribute: speed | Rahul Vohra (CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/superhumans-secret-to-success-rahul-vohra
• Dropbox: http://dropbox.com/
• Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/
• Notion: https://www.notion.com/
• Instant Pot: https://instantpot.com/
• MS-DOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
• Expanding on what we missed with sycophancy: https://openai.com/index/expanding-on-sycophancy/
• What we’re optimizing ChatGPT for: https://openai.com/index/how-we're-optimizing-chatgpt/
• Charlie Munger’s quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11903426-show-me-the-incentive-and-i-ll-show-you-the-outcome
• Anthropic’s CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next
• Beyond vibe checks: A PM’s complete guide to evals: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/beyond-vibe-checks-a-pms-complete

...References continued at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com._ Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Lenny Rachitsky

  host

• Nick Turley

  guest

• Christina Cacioppo

  guest

• Narrator

  other

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Lenny Rachitsky and Nick Turley, Nick Turley: How a hackathon shipped ChatGPT to 700M users explores inside ChatGPT: Shipping Fast, Learning Faster, Redefining Personal AI Assistants OpenAI’s Nick Turley shares the origin, growth, and future vision of ChatGPT, from a scrappy 10‑day hackathon launch to 700M weekly users and billions in revenue.

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