Strategy question
Anthropic has three levers in cybersecurity over the next 12-18 months: first-party workflows in Claude Security / Claude Code, model capability investments with research, and partnerships with existing security vendors. How would you choose where to play, sequence the bets, and decide what Anthropic should build itself versus enable through partners?
- Anthropic
- Strategy
- Hard
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What this question tests
Ability to set a multi bet strategy across product, research, and partnership levers with a clear sequencing logic.
How to approach it
- Assess Anthropic's actual advantage in each lever: model capability is a core strength given frontier research, first party workflows leverage existing developer trust in Claude Code, partnerships extend reach into markets with entrenched incumbents.
- Decide where to build versus enable using a defensibility test: build where the capability is uniquely tied to the model, enable through partners where workflow or domain depth already exists elsewhere, like SOC tooling.
- Sequence the bets by dependency: model capability investment underpins both first party workflows and what partners can build on, so it likely leads.
- Pick a first party workflow bet, for example Claude Code security review features, that can ship on today's model capability without waiting for research breakthroughs.
- Define partnership criteria, such as partnering where a vendor already has deep customer workflow integration that would take years to replicate.
- State the review checkpoint, for example a six month mark, where evidence would shift investment between the three levers.
What a strong answer includes
- Applies a clear build versus enable test tied to defensibility, not an arbitrary split.
- Names a concrete first party bet, like Claude Code security workflows, grounded in what is plausible today.
- Explains the dependency between model research and the other two levers explicitly.
- Sets a review checkpoint with named evidence that would rebalance the bets.
Common mistakes
- Trying to pursue all three levers equally instead of sequencing by dependency and advantage.
- Ignoring that partners could become competitors if Anthropic enables capabilities that are easy to replicate.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you decide if a partner is becoming a competitive threat rather than a channel?
- What evidence in month three would make you pull back from the partnership lever?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop