Anthropic's Surprise Hit: How Claude Code Became an AI Coding Powerhouse

The MAD Podcast with Matt Turck

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

(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