Hi everyone,
Episode 2 of The New Build podcast is live — and this one’s a bit different. Instead of a Bubble builder story, I sat down with one of the most experienced product leaders in tech to talk about what it actually takes to build products that compete with Microsoft and Google.
About our guest
Fuzzy Khosrowshahi is the CTO of Notion, the co-creator of Google Sheets, and former head of product engineering at Slack during the pandemic. He’s spent decades building productivity tools used by hundreds of millions of people. He’s also Bubble’s very first individual investor — so this conversation was especially meaningful to me.
What we talked about
A few things stood out to me from this conversation:
Fuzzy made a compelling case for why suite products tend to win over time. Microsoft did it with Office, Google did it with Workspace, and Notion is doing it now with mail and calendar. Once users adopt multiple tools in a bundle, they’re much harder to pull away — even if a competitor builds something better. Though he thinks AI and things like MCP servers might disrupt this pattern.
He was surprisingly candid about Slack. He still thinks it’s one of the best products he’s used, but he doesn’t think it reached its full potential after being acquired by Salesforce. His take: Smaller companies can simply move faster, and that matters more than most people realize.
On vibe coding, he’s skeptical of the hype but not dismissive. His view is that AI will get better at fixing bugs and loops, but it won’t necessarily produce the right implementation without strong prompts. You’ll still need people who understand what good looks like.
And his advice for builders is simple: Ship fast, validate fast. He wishes he’d had tools like Bubble when he was starting out — the ability to prototype and get something in front of users quickly is what matters most.
Where to listen
The episode is live now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts:
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Watch on YouTube
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Watch on Spotify
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Listen on Apple Podcasts
What’s next
New episodes every two weeks. Let us know what you think in the comments — and if you have guests you’d like us to feature, drop suggestions below or submit here.
Emmanuel