Vercel’s Jared Palmer breaks down AI dev tools, Turborepo, and the launch of V0.dev
Jared Palmer, founder of Turborepo (acquired by Vercel) and former VP of AI at Vercel, opens up about his journey from Goldman Sachs banker to developer toolmaker. This inside look comes from a new episode of Madrona’s Founded & Funded podcast.
Palmer took the solo route building Turborepo, a speed-focused build system for JavaScript apps, before Vercel scooped him up in 2021. He even ran a bidding war, considering Netlify too, before accepting Vercel’s offer. 
At Vercel, Palmer shifted from solo coding into a leadership role, managing major projects from Next.js to Vercel AI. He shares surprising culture notes on distributed dev work like “waiting until tomorrow” due to time zones and pushing radical transparency on Slack to keep everyone aligned.
The big reveal? The origins of V0.dev, Vercel’s AI-native dev platform that exploded in 2023. Born from Palmer’s experiments with AI SDKs and the idea of “text-to-UI” generation, V0 quickly grew into a full “text-to-app” environment. It uses GPT models tuned to output clean Next.js code with Tailwind CSS, making it a killer combo for developers.
Palmer outlines how V0 nailed rapid growth — hitting its first million ARR in 10 months, then doubling every 14 days after launching chat features.
On competition, Palmer isn’t phased. He says vertical integration is key: Vercel owns the stack from Next.js framework to AI SDK to deployment infrastructure. This “iPhone-like” control gives V0 a massive edge in a market expanding beyond 28 million developers to 700 million “code generators,” including non-developers.
Palmer’s spicy prediction? AI managers will replace human engineering managers sooner than anyone expects. He envisions AI orchestration supervising coding agents, boosting productivity and planning better than humans.
Jared Palmer stated:
“I think that you’re going to have AI managers far sooner than people think. And let me explain why. …
So when you’ve got multiple of these tasks that get launched in parallel, which one should you do first? …
It should actually be an amazing engineering manager in theory.”
Palmer also encourages learning to code now more than ever, saying high-agency people who "get things done" will only gain leverage, though their jobs will evolve alongside AI tools.
Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, or watch on YouTube.
