This interview features Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch in a "10 Minutes or Less" format, where he shares his leadership philosophy, Vercel's growth strategy, and his views on how to succeed in the technology industry. He emphasizes an unusual operating style built around avoiding too many one-on-one meetings, staying "terminally online," and maintaining direct contact with customers. The conversation also offers a glimpse into his confidence about Vercel's future and its eventual public-market path.

1. Guillermo Rauch's Distinctive Way of Communicating and Working

Guillermo Rauch says he prefers communication methods that are much more efficient than traditional meeting-heavy management. He still participates in company rituals like weekly business reviews, but he does not do many one-on-one meetings. His reasoning is simple: there are often better ways to distribute information to a larger group than to pass it one person at a time.

"I still do meetings. I still do traditional company things like weekly business reviews. But I don't do many one-on-ones. Even when I first started doing this, Jensen Huang also didn't do one-on-ones. I've always resisted one-on-one information sharing because there are more efficient ways to distribute information to larger groups."

Instead, he writes long posts, creates threads, shares customer feedback, and broadcasts information to teams in larger-group formats. He also spends part of each day doing what he personally finds productive: checking Twitter, using his own product, and handling customer support. The point is to stay close to what users are actually experiencing and let that shape product decisions.

2. How Growing Up in Argentina Shaped His Leadership

Rauch says that growing up in Argentina strongly shaped the way he approaches work and leadership. He describes a childhood where little was guaranteed and where even personal safety could not be taken for granted.

"I don't take anything for granted. I grew up in a place where we did not have much and nothing was guaranteed. Sadly, even personal safety could not be taken for granted. That changes the way you work, the way you compete, the way you try to earn everything."

Because of that background, he says he treats opportunities as things to be earned rather than assumed. He also feels deeper gratitude and joy when he encounters something better than what he knew while growing up. That experience seems to have shaped both his competitiveness and his resilience as a leader.

3. Why the CEO Still Does Customer Support

Rauch points out that many people are surprised he still does customer support himself. Some even react by asking why a CEO would spend time on work like that.

"Sadly, and I use that word intentionally, people compliment me for doing customer support myself. They literally say, 'Oh my God, you're the CEO, what are you doing?'"

He contrasts this with leaders who do not really know their own product, do not talk to customers, or decide that some customers matter less than others. While Vercel certainly has customers who bring in more revenue, he believes even free-tier developers provide information that matters if you want to build the best platform in the world.

"I always think about what the alternative is. What are other CEOs doing? They don't know their product, they don't talk to customers, or they think some customers matter less. Sure, some customers drive more revenue, but free-tier developers also provide the information I need to build the best platform in the world."

He says he communicates with many people every day, reads all emails and DMs, and uses the product heavily himself. That intense customer proximity is clearly one of the habits he sees as central to Vercel's ability to keep improving.

4. The Kind of Person Who Changes Vercel's Trajectory

When asked about a single person who materially changed Vercel's trajectory, Rauch highlights Tom Leonard, an extraordinary infrastructure engineer whose one-person company, built around a project called Lagon, was acquired by Vercel.

"There was one person I got really excited about. I was thinking about him earlier today while reviewing some data and performance benchmarks. We acquired a one-person company with a really interesting project called Lagon. This person is Tom Leonard, and he is an extraordinary infrastructure engineer."

Rauch says he consistently looks for people with high agency, high intelligence, and high integrity who push themselves hard. In his view, the best people do not wait for a PM to tell them what to do or for customers to complain before taking action. They actively seek out information and hunt for "alpha" in the world.

He adds that he does not want to go back to being just an individual contributor. In today's environment, he believes many people operate more like "mini CEOs." Vercel tries to reward exactly that kind of person: someone who works as if they are running their own company inside the company.

5. What He Looks for in Founders as an Angel Investor

Rauch is also a successful angel investor, and he says that when he evaluates founders he cares deeply about whether their idea is worth exploring as a serious hypothesis. More broadly, he says he wants to build a system where all of his ideas can eventually be executed, even if not by him personally.

"I build a theory in my head about what feels relevant. So of course I care a lot about whether the founder's idea is worth exploring. In some sense, investing lets me run hypotheses in the background. Ultimately, what I want is a system where all of my ideas can be executed."

He says many of his best investments were in ideas he personally would have liked to pursue but did not have time for. He gives Scale AI as an example: when Vercel was just starting, he was obsessed with a similar idea, but Vercel was his favorite idea, so he wanted someone else to go execute that adjacent vision. His investing style seems closely tied to finding founders who can extend or embody pieces of his broader worldview.

6. "Terminally Online" as a Competitive Edge

Asked whether a team needs to work eighty hours a week to stay competitive, Rauch responds that because the pace of innovation keeps accelerating and there is always more to learn, people need to be more online than ever. He sometimes calls this state being "terminally online."

"My intuition is that it's actually worse now. Given the pace of innovation, the speed of acceleration, all the new things you have to learn, and how current you have to stay, I think you have to be more online than ever. I sometimes call it being terminally online."

He is careful to say that balance still matters. Absorbing huge amounts of information is not enough on its own; you also need to turn that into focused, high-quality output. He does not prescribe a precise number of hours, but he says he is always working because he genuinely enjoys it. The deeper point is not just long hours. It is that leaders now need to keep learning, keep communicating, and stay immersed in the flow of information.

7. His Conviction That Vercel Should Go Public

Some Silicon Valley founders do not want their companies to go public, in the way Stripe has remained private for so long. Rauch says he does not understand that view at all, especially for a company he sees as a public good.

"I don't understand why you wouldn't want to take a company public, especially if it is a public good."

He says he sees Vercel as an extension of the web and the internet itself, and therefore regards the obligations of being a public company, such as regulation, audits, compliance, and reporting, as good and even interesting things.

"Ultimately, I see Vercel as an extension of the web and the internet. A lot of the structures we have as communities and countries - regulation, auditing, compliance, reporting - are good things. They are interesting things."

Of course, going public also means attracting skeptics and outright bears, but he says part of him wants that as well because he enjoys competition and challenge.

"You're going to have bears and people who are very negative about your company. No one would want that. But the competitive part of me, the part that wants to be challenged, also wants that."

He argues that if a CEO avoids going public simply because they fear harsh public criticism, they are missing the point. He sees hard customer feedback as fuel for improvement. Not every company is ready for public markets, he says, but Vercel wants to be.

Closing Thoughts

This interview offers more than a standard CEO playbook. It shows how Rauch thinks about communication, talent, competition, customer closeness, and the pace of change in technology. His idea of being "terminally online" captures a larger belief: in a world moving this fast, leaders and builders need to stay deeply connected to what users are experiencing and what the broader internet is learning in real time. His confidence, intensity, and clarity of vision make Vercel's future especially compelling to watch.