Bret Taylor of Sierra on AI agents, outcome-based pricing, and the OpenAI board

Bret Taylor, co-founder of Sierra and Chair of the OpenAI board, joins John for a pint to discuss the rapid shift toward an agentic future. In this episode, Bret explains why outcome-based pricing is the future of software business models, and why he believes the atomic unit of AI productivity is a process, not a person. They cover why big companies struggle to adopt AI because they are “shipping their org charts.” Bret also discusses a new type of hyper-generalist, reflects on his experience with the OpenAI and Twitter boards, and explains why he believes we might see the end of the smartphone era.

Timestamps

(00:00:26) Coding

(00:16:23) Sierra

(00:27:14) Agentic UX

(00:38:47) Building support agents

(00:45:43) Co-developing with the models

(00:50:08) SaaSpocalypse

(01:00:50) Stripe Sessions

(01:01:33) Outcome-based pricing

(01:09:14) Is Sierra short AGI?

(01:13:50) AI productivity

(01:23:47) How to structure a tech business

(01:30:25) Board drama

(01:38:24) AI predictions