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

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

🎙️ OpenAI’s VP on GPT-5, the 10-day sprint that launched ChatGPT, why “maximally accelerated” beats perfection, and how a Google Form determined the $20/month price that everyone copied

Lenny Rachitsky

Aug 09, 2025

∙ Paid

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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:

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”)
How they ran a willingness-to-pay Van Westendorp survey in their Discord to decide on the $20/month price point that everyone copied
The “Is it maximally accelerated?” philosophy that drives OpenAI’s insane shipping velocity
Why ChatGPT’s retention curve “smiles”—users leave, then come back months later using it more
The accidental decisions that changed history, including not having a waitlist
The impact ChatGPT will have on SEO and product growth
The counterintuitive reason why shipping unpolished AI features beats waiting for perfection
Why ChatGPT intentionally shipped with that “ugly” model-chooser dropdown
How TikTok comments became a primary user research channel early on

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

• DALL-E: https://openai.com/index/dall-e-3/

• John Rawls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls