Join us as we train our neural nets on the theme of the century: AI. Sonya Huang, Pat Grady and more Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to ask critical questions and develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies—and their implications for technology, business and society.
The content of this podcast does not constitute investment advice, an offer to provide investment advisory services, or an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund.
All content for Training Data is the property of Sequoia Capital and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Join us as we train our neural nets on the theme of the century: AI. Sonya Huang, Pat Grady and more Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to ask critical questions and develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies—and their implications for technology, business and society.
The content of this podcast does not constitute investment advice, an offer to provide investment advisory services, or an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund.
Block CTO Dhanji Prasanna: Building the AI-First Enterprise with Goose, their Open Source Agent
Training Data
59 minutes
1 month ago
Block CTO Dhanji Prasanna: Building the AI-First Enterprise with Goose, their Open Source Agent
As CTO of Block, Dhanji Prasanna has overseen a dramatic enterprise AI transformation, with engineers saving 8-10 hours a week through AI automation. Block’s open-source agent goose connects to existing enterprise tools through MCP, enabling everyone from engineers to sales teams to build custom applications without coding. Dhanji shares how Block reorganized from business unit silos to functional teams to accelerate AI adoption, why they chose to open-source their most valuable AI tool and why he believes swarms of smaller AI models will outperform monolithic LLMs.
Hosted by: Sonya Huang and Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital
Mentioned in the episode:
goose: Block’s open-source, general-purpose AI agent used across the company to orchestrate workflows via tools and APIs.
Model Context Protocol (MCP): Open protocol (spearheaded by Anthropic) for connecting AI agents to tools; goose was an early adopter and helped shape.
bitchat: Decentralized chat app written by Jack Dorsey
Swarm intelligence: Research direction Dhanji highlights for AI’s future where many agents (geese) collaborate to build complex software beyond a single-agent copilot.
Travelling Salesman Problem: Classic optimization problem cited by Dhanji in the context of a non-technical user of goose solving a practical optimization task.
Amara’s Law: The idea, originated by futurist Roy Amara in 1978, that we overestimate tech impact short term and underestimate long term.
00:00 Introduction
01:48 AI: Friend or Foe?
03:13 Block's Journey with AI and Technology
04:47 Block's Diverse Product Range
07:04 Driving AI at Block
14:28 The Evolution of Goose
27:45 Integrating Goose with Existing Systems
28:23 Goose's Learning and Recipe Feature
29:41 Tool Use and LLM Providers
31:40 Impact of AI on Developer Productivity
34:37 Block's Commitment to Open Source
39:09 Future of AI and Swarm Intelligence
43:05 Remote Work at Block
45:15 Vibe Coding and AI in Development
48:43 Making Goose More Accessible
51:28 Generative AI in Customer-Facing Products
54:09 Design and Engineering at Block
55:38 Predictions for the Future of AI
Training Data
Join us as we train our neural nets on the theme of the century: AI. Sonya Huang, Pat Grady and more Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to ask critical questions and develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies—and their implications for technology, business and society.
The content of this podcast does not constitute investment advice, an offer to provide investment advisory services, or an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund.
