What happens when an internal hack turns into a $400 million AI rocket ship? In this episode, Matt Turck sits down with Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code at Anthropic, to unpack the wild story behind the fastest-growing AI coding tool on the planet.

Boris reveals how Claude Code started as a personal productivity tool, only to become Anthropic’s secret weapon — now used by nearly every engineer at the company and rapidly spreading across the industry. You’ll hear how Claude Code’s “agentic” approach lets AI not just suggest code, but actually plan, edit, debug, and even manage entire projects—sometimes with a whole fleet of subagents working in parallel.

We go deep on why Claude Code runs in the terminal (and why that’s a feature, not a bug), how its Claude.md memory files let teams build a living, shareable knowledge base, and why safety and human-in-the-loop controls are baked into every action. Boris shares real stories of onboarding times dropping from weeks to days, and how even non-coders are hacking Cloud Code for everything from note-taking to business metrics.

Anthropic

Website - https://www.anthropic.com

X/Twitter - https://x.com/AnthropicAI

Boris Cherny

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bcherny

X/Twitter - https://x.com/bcherny

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

X/Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

LISTEN ON:

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7yLATDSaFvgJG80ACcRJtq

Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mad-podcast-with-matt-turck/id1686238724

00:00 – Intro

01:15 – Did You Expect Claude Code’s Success?

04:22 – How Claude Code Works and Origins

08:05 – Command Line vs IDE: Why Start Claude Code in the Terminal?

11:31 – The Evolution of Programming: From Punch Cards to Agents

13:20 – Product Follows Model: Simple Interfaces and Fast Evolution

15:17 – Who Is Claude Code For? (Engineers, Designers, PMs & More)

17:46 – What Can Claude Code Actually Do? (Actions & Capabilities)

21:14 – Agentic Actions, Subagents, and Workflows

25:30 – Claude Code’s Awareness, Memory, and Knowledge Sharing

33:28 – Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Customization

35:30 – Safety, Human Oversight, and Enterprise Considerations

38:10 – UX/UI: Making Claude Code Useful and Enjoyable

40:44 – Pricing for Power Users and Subscription Models

43:36 – Real-World Use Cases: Debugging, Testing, and More

46:44 – How Does Claude Code Transform Onboarding?

49:36 – The Future of Coding: Agents, Teams, and Collaboration

54:11 – The AI Coding Wars: Competition & Ecosystem

57:27 – The Future of Coding as a Profession

58:41 – What’s Next for Claude Code