Garrett Lord: How Handshake feeds every frontier AI lab now

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

August 24, 2025

Duration

1h 9m

Channel

Lenny's Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Garrett Lord is co-founder and CEO of Handshake, which started as a career network for college students and new grads but recently discovered something extraordinary: they were sitting on the world’s largest network of academic experts—exactly what frontier AI labs desperately needed. With 500,000 PhDs and 3 million advanced degree holders creating training data, in just eight months they’ve built a new business that hit $50 million in revenue in its first four months and is on track to blow past $100M in the first 12 months. *What you’ll learn:*

1. How Handshake found an opportunity to leverage their proprietary network of experts to launch a data-labeling business that’s on track to blow past $100 million ARR in 12 months
2. Why AI models need human experts (e.g. physics PhDs) to improve, and what this “data labeling” actually involves
3. Inside the actual work: what a biology PhD does for 8 hours that makes GPT-5 smarter
4. The playbook for building a startup inside a startup: separate teams, separate offices, separate everything
5. Why the shift from “generalist” to “expert” data labeling created a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity
6. Why AI won’t eliminate entry-level jobs—it’s creating “Iron Man suits” that make junior employees 10x more productive

*Brought to you by:* CodeRabbit—Cut code review time and bugs in half. Instantly: https://coderabbit.link/lenny Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows: https://www.orkes.io/ Claude.ai—The AI for problem solvers and enterprise: https://www.claude.ai/lenny *Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-handshake-garrett-lord *My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers):* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/171410958/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation *Where to find Garrett Lord:*

• X: https://x.com/garrettlord
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrettlord/
• Email: Garrett@joinhandshake.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 Garrett Lord (05:00) Understanding data labeling and its importance (13:08) The role of experts in AI model training (15:35) The future of AI and human collaboration (24:17) Why AI won’t eliminate entry-level jobs (27:58) The continuous improvement of AI models (33:05) The emergence of Handshake’s new business model (37:07) Incubating new ideas in established companies (40:42) Handshake's competitive advantage (45:43) Scaling up and meeting market demand (48:38) Overcoming challenges and adapting (53:08) The importance of separate teams and ownership (57:26) The future of job matching with AI (01:00:30) The biggest bottlenecks to advancing models further (01:02:37) Lightning round and final thoughts *Referenced:*

• GPQA: https://github.com/idavidrein/gpqa
• Handshake: https://joinhandshake.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
• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder and CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons
• Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/
• General Motors: https://www.gm.com/
• Google: https://about.google/
• Sahil Bhaiwala on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahil-bhaiwala-459b0354/
• Francisco “Paco” Guzman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guzmanhe/
• Avery Yip on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/averyyip/
• Game of Thrones on HBO: https://www.hbomax.com/shows/game-of-thrones/4f6b4985-2dc9-4ab6-ac79-d60f0860b0ac
• SNOO: https://www.happiestbaby.com/products/snoo-smart-bassinet
• Careers at Handshake: https://joinhandshake.com/careers/

*Recommended books:*

• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future: https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205

_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

• Garrett Lord

  guest

• Lenny Rachitsky

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Garrett Lord and Lenny Rachitsky, Garrett Lord: How Handshake feeds every frontier AI lab now explores handshake turns student network into explosive AI training data powerhouse Handshake CEO Garrett Lord explains how the company leveraged its massive network of students, graduates, and experts to build a hypergrowth AI data-labeling business on top of its decade-old core marketplace. As frontier labs shifted from broad internet pre‑training to post‑training with highly specialized human data, Handshake realized its 18M+ users—especially 500K PhDs and 3M master’s students—were an ideal expert supply. In under a year, the new Handshake AI unit scaled from zero to over $50M ARR, on track to surpass $100M and rival the $200M ARR of the original jobs platform. The conversation breaks down how post‑training works, why expert data is now the bottleneck, how Handshake structurally outcompetes legacy data-labeling firms, and how they successfully incubated a startup‑style business inside a mature company.

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