GLM

Treat GLM as a precise, neurotic specialist and learn it by shipping. Anish Acharya of a16z describes GLM, an open-weight model with no vision, as "like this neurotic PhD you put in the corner": precise and well suited to product work. He builds intuition for it the way he does for every model, by making something with it.

He contrasts it with Qwen, which he finds creative and strong on long-horizon tasks (Qwen ran 4 to 5 hours to produce a 5-minute documentary, with MiniMax for video and 11 for audio). His method is to pick a low-stakes project as a chassis, keep adding to it with each new model, and treat the model as a tool rather than a goal. Quote: "I just make something with every model, and that's how I build my intuition."

Lenny's Podcast▶ 27:30