Your Next Product Is a Process: Harper Reed Live with Tim O’Reilly
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Why the future of software depends on creativity, serendipity, and building weird stuff
Technologist Harper Reed’s been having a wild time with AI codegen. Ruminating on Harper’s talk at the inaugural AI Codecon, Tim O’Reilly called him a “mad genius who made everyone’s head explode.” Of course, Harper’s done the traditional software thing too: He cofounded Threadless and ran engineering for the Obama 2012 campaign, to name a couple of his accomplishments. But now, with 2389 Research, he and his partner, Dylan Richard are running a startup that’s more art studio than product-oriented firm. In this episode, Harper joins Tim for a conversation about the ramifications of a future in which software may have become a medium of expression rather than just a product.
As the furor prompted by AI-based workflows shows, it won’t all be fun and games. Harper has identified “conviction collapse” as one immediate symptom of the rapid pace of change: It’s what happens when the product pipeline moves so fast that you “just don’t have the time to enjoy and define and defend your conviction around your product.” But as he and Dylan have been trying to prove with 2389 Research, experimentation, creativity, and even fun might actually be the way through. Harper will get into how he’s set up his workflows—and the company itself—to embrace serendipity and a spirit of play in a way that feels a bit like the early days of the web.
Save your spot to find out what a “product” may look like in this new world (and why it could just be a “process”), how AI skills might evolve, getting to long-term thinking that prioritizes humans over capital, and what happens when you add an AI sandwich shop owner or an alien to your code review.
Recommended prep or follow-up:
- Read “Conviction Collapse” and the End of Software as We Know It (O’Reilly Radar article)
- Watch My LLM Codegen Workflow at the Moment (Event Video)
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Wednesday, June 10, 2026, at 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET
- Interactive discussion and Q&A (60 minutes)
Your Hosts and Guests
Tim O'Reilly
Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc. His original business plan was simply "interesting work for interesting people," and that's worked out pretty well. He publishes books, runs online conferences, invests in early-stage startups, urges companies to create more value than they capture, and tries to change the world by spreading and amplifying the knowledge of innovators. He’s perhaps best known for his role in shaping big ideas like open source software, unconferences (Foo Camp), Web 2.0, and government as a platform. His 2017 book WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us explored the role of human agency in shaping the future in the face of the coming AI wave. These days, he’s focused on mechanism design for the human-AI economy. Mechanism design is sometimes described as “reverse game theory”, whereby you start with the outcome you want and then figure out what rules of the game will produce that outcome. He explores these ideas at the non-profit AI Disclosures Project, which he co-founded with Ilan Strauss. He writes frequently on Substack at the O’Reilly Radar, the AI Disclosures Project’s Asimov’s Addendum, and his own Conversations with AI.
Harper Reed
Harper Reed is a technologist who predicts the future for a living. He spends most of his life building big things, hacking things, and talking about doing both of those things. As CTO of the Obama 2012 campaign, Harper was the first to bring the tech mentality to a political level. He believes the talent of a great bunch of humans can transform an organization like nothing else and uses that belief to strengthen, deploy, and inspire every team he works with. Harper also believes his incredible luck has led him to achieve wonderful things like pioneering crowdsourcing at Threadless.com, founding Modest Inc, and guiding the software team at PayPal. He is the CEO of the venture backed AI company, 2389.ai. You can find Harper hacking on personal projects and enjoying life in Chicago with his partner, Hiromi and their beautiful and bizarre poodle, Lulu.