0:00
This is the first AI agent thing that has I been a mind-blowing moment for me where I am not a programmer.
Search this video
0:05
I am not a coder, but I can now create software. Well, that's insane.
0:10
There are apps built on Replit agent that otherwise would take probably $100,000 of developer time.
0:17
And you can build it like in you know $25 paid to Replit.
0:23
It's pretty wild how fast these companies are scaling.
0:24
I don't think in the history of Silicon Valley we've seen anything like that even in the like web 2. 0 era.
0:29
So what is like a fast ramp for an AI company?
0:32
What's impressive that kind of broke the frame of what how long things would take?
0:35
So I I would say reaching 10 million in 3 to 4 months. ARR Oh my god.
0:46
Can I ask a blunt crude question?
0:46
How can I use your software to become a billionaire?
0:51
I would say building Okay, so uh how do we want to start this?
1:03
So Amjad, you um you're awesome.
1:06
So you have you're today in a position that I think a lot of people want to be in.
1:10
You have you're doing the Silicon Valley dream.
1:11
You had this idea, you go through YC, you've now raised hundreds of millions of dollars, you're valued at a you know billion dollar valuation. So that's today.
1:22
But then the cool thing about your story is it that didn't seem likely, you know, 10 years ago.
1:28
It is a very unlikely success story.
1:30
And yeah, you went through YC, but you were rejected a bunch of times.
1:35
Like yeah, you're in Silicon Valley now, but you started off coding in an internet cafe in Jordan.
1:37
That's what's interesting to me and uh we asked you beforehand.
1:41
We're like, "Hey, what killer stories could you come on the podcast and tell?"
1:43
And you go you wrote this.
1:45
So I'm going to read it word for word and then I want you to tell us the story.
1:47
You go, "Rejected four times and Rick Rolling into YC, raising tons of money and meeting amazing billionaires."
1:53
So let's do the first part.
1:53
"Rejected four times and Rick Rolling into YC." Can you tell the story?
1:59
Yeah, so uh I left my uh job at at Facebook in uh 202016.
2:07
And you know, Replit has been a side project for a while and it's been it's been growing.
2:12
I've been working on it like nights and weekends.
2:13
It grew to to a point where the like server cost was meaningful and I was like, "Okay, you know, I have to I guess I have to start a company around it."
2:22
And so I went to my manager at Facebook and I was like, "Look, I have this side project.
2:26
Can we make it like somehow a project at at Facebook?" And we looked into that.
2:29
I sent Zuck an email at the time and he he ignored me.
2:34
Like, "Okay, I get I guess I have to start I guess I have to start a company."
2:39
And so yeah, I quit I quit my job, um applied to YC the first time. We did the whole thing.
2:44
We did the the form and the video and and all of that.
2:47
And we didn't even get a get a call or anything like that.
2:52
It was it was just like we got the rejection uh letter.
2:55
And so I was like, "Okay, you know, I have to uh Facebook stock some savings.
3:02
I sold the Facebook stock.
3:02
I put like half of it in Bitcoin and then half of it into into the company or like just just for us to kind of live and How much money was that?
3:13
It was like 70k or or something like that.
3:15
What was the original uh product for of Replit?
3:20
So it was basically an editor and a console.
3:22
You could type code there and you can run it.
3:25
You can switch a language and that's it.
3:27
By the way, Sam, have you ever used Replit?
3:29
I was using it today before this. It's magical.
3:30
And also your tweets describing what it is like for example your doctor saying you know, he wants me to track my sleep.
3:39
So I just uploaded the PDF that he wanted me to fill up fill out into Replit and it made an application so I can upload it much easier.
3:44
Yeah, it's like pretty magical.
3:46
Sean, are you able to use it?
3:47
It's definitely out of my league still.
3:49
Both me and Sam have joked around because we both have maybe five or six times false started of like, "I'm going to learn to code this summer."
3:56
It's like a New Year's resolution thing where you just keep saying you're going to do it.
3:59
You you do 20% of it, and you give up.
4:04
Uh you know, we buy the the Udemy course, learn Python the hard way. Then you start doing it.
4:07
And then nothing really ever stuck.
4:09
And one of the biggest problems was that nobody really talks about this.
4:12
You think learning to code is like learning Spanish, like learning a language.
4:15
You're like, "Okay, so how do I need to say the thing?"
4:17
But before you can even do that, it's like, "Oh, I'm supposed to download this program.
4:22
So I need to download an editor.
4:23
And then I need to download all these packages to be able to use them."
4:27
And then you need to and it's like just setting up the environment is so goddamn confusing to a beginner that you don't even get to do the the part where you actually write the code and and be able to run and then it's like, "Oh, how do I run the code?
4:38
I got to host it somewhere.
4:39
Now I got to learn how to do hosting and server What is that?"
4:40
And so there's all these things around that that were confusing.
4:43
Replit solved all of that, which was amazing.
4:45
And I actually did your like 100 days of learning to code.
4:48
Like it's actually made it really easy.
4:49
You know, if I didn't have kids, I would just be doing a lot more because it's you you solved that problem for me.
4:54
And I know I'm asking you about the YC rejection.
4:56
I want to come back to that, but to give Sam maybe a little more of the context, I think correct me if I'm wrong, maybe I'm making this up.
5:03
I'm making this up. I think the reason you wanted to have this kind of like online editor, online environment where it's all hosted there was because when you were younger, you were living in Jordan and it I guess you used to go
5:15
try to learn to code out of an internet or go try to code out of an internet cafe, but that means every time you go, you have to set everything up for the first time because it's not your it's not your home base, not your home computer where you set it up once and it's there. Is that true? Is that why Is that true?
5:25
Is that why you have you felt the problem like 10x what a normal person would feel?
5:29
Yeah, basically like every time I wanted to do a little homework, I have to like spend an hour setting up the environment.
5:36
That yeah, at the time the web was moving so fast until we had Google Docs and we had Gmail.
5:43
We had this you know, client-side JavaScript application sort of revolution.
5:47
Uh and I'm like, "Okay, you know, why can't I type code into the browser and run it?"
5:52
And I started looking around and turns out like nobody solved this problem.
6:00
There were some experiments and it was kind of crazy to me because uh it was almost like you know, finding a $100 bill in uh New York Grand Central Station, right?
6:10
Like it's like, "Oh, I found an idea that nobody's paying attention to."
6:13
And is that true cuz cuz it's kind of crazy.
6:17
You know, the world is big.
6:18
A lot there's a lot of programmer.
6:20
That seems like an obvious thing.
6:20
I mean, I'm a total outsider.
6:21
So my question is like was there some technical challenge to that cuz that seems like I I I I guess it's easy to say things that are successful are obvious like it is looking back, but like Yeah.
6:31
Yeah, that seems like a very two things, right?
6:33
There's the technical challenge of being able to make this all work in a browser, right?
6:36
That that was that was not obvious.
6:37
But then this seems like the second thing was I keep going back to the internet cafe thing because it's sort of like the hardship made the problems like unavoidable to you. Right.
6:49
Whereas anybody else who learns to code, if you're just doing it at home in America in your in your computer, you might do that setting up once.
6:53
Maybe you have a a little bit of the problem, but you're not running into it face-first every day as if you were if you were working out of internet cafe. Yeah, absolutely right.
7:03
I mean, you know, Paul Graham talks about it all the time.
7:05
It's like, you know, the best startups are you know, solving your your own problem.
7:12
And I felt that problem really deeply and I started working on it.
7:14
I discovered why it's hard.
7:16
Well, it's it's hard to run different languages in the browser.
7:20
You can run JavaScript, but you can't run Python for example.
7:22
So we started writing interpreters, uh writing compilers to to to run on on JavaScript.
7:30
And then in uh you know, it took us a couple of years, had like few languages running.
7:34
It was like pretty rough prototype, but people started using it.
7:38
My friends and people at school and I'm like, "Okay, this idea has legs."
7:40
And so let me work on it more.
7:42
And then 20 uh 11 uh had a breakthrough.
7:47
And the breakthrough was we were the first to compile Python, Ruby, a bunch of languages to JavaScript and run them straight in the into the browser.
7:56
And that went super viral.
7:58
Like So we open-sourced it.
8:00
We put it up uh in like on Hacker News.
8:02
And that was my first experience of like going viral on the internet, which is I I was like, "Oh my god, this is this is like an amazing rush."
8:11
And I still feel that rush. Yeah.
8:14
Can you put that in context for a non non-engineer?
8:17
Is the thing you guys did is it on a scale of like one to Satoshi Nakamoto solving the like double spend problem?
8:24
Like how hard of an invention was that or like the nerdiest analogy you ever could have came up with.
8:29
That's what I'm here for.
8:30
So like was it was it genius or was it just that nobody had taken an as much time as it would take to do that?
8:35
Like where was that breakthrough?
8:37
How do you would how would you describe that breakthrough?
8:39
Uh it's definitely not on the order of like the double double spend problem where it's like a fundamental in invention.
8:47
It was like you know, pushing like a huge rock bolt like up a up a mountain.
8:56
It took so much grit and and just obsession to be able to hack the browser in order to run things that the browser wasn't uh uh supposed to run. Wasn't designed to run.
9:13
And so I would say it is solving hundreds of problems as opposed to solving like you know, one one invention uh which is Perfect. Perfect. Double spend. Yeah.
9:23
So you you're working on it as a side project for a number of years.
9:24
That's a long time by the way, Sean.
9:26
Can you imagine like having a side project that's a hobby that takes 3 hours a night with little I mean, two years two years for two years is kind of a long time, no?
9:36
Dude, the only two things I've ever done that with is this podcast and my kids.
9:39
And there's really no way out of the kids thing.
9:41
So you know, it's it's like that. right away.
9:43
The podcast yeah, gave me results right away.
9:45
So it actually doesn't count.
9:46
You were doing this without the kind of like financial rewards or fame rewards or any other major rewards during that time.
9:51
How many years did you do this side project thing and what kept it going?
9:55
You know, 2009 was the original idea.
9:58
2011 was the breakthrough and you know, went viral on on on Hacker News and and then and that.
10:07
And I think that was the first time I felt like a little bit of a fame, a little bit of return on investment.
10:13
Uh, like I remember Brendan Eich, the inventor of JavaScript and was the CTO at Mozilla, like tweeting about it.
10:21
I was like, wow, this is amazing.
10:24
Like, you know, you know, kid in Jordan like made this like fundamental breakthrough and like, you know, browser tech and like I'm getting this recognition. That's pretty cool.
10:34
And also some articles wrote about it.
10:37
It was people talked about it in conferences.
10:38
And so all that was evidence for my O-1 visa to come to the States.
10:43
Basically, my entire adult life I'm working in this.
10:47
Uh, which is crazy, right? Like I don't know. I am uh, 36. Wow. Uh, I think.
10:54
Uh, and uh, you know, I I I 20 Well, let's just say that you've been working on this since you're uh, 20 21 or I think. Yeah, 21.
11:02
Yeah, I mean that's a that's a while. That's your whole life. Your whole adult life.
11:05
It it and you know, it it continued to like, you know, incrementally improve my life.
11:09
So it wasn't wasn't this, you know, working in a in a room for 11 years and and nothing happened.
11:16
So I get this visa to the United States.
11:18
Uh, and I go work at Codecademy and they used the open source work that that that we did, right?
11:23
And a bunch of companies in the US there was like a this boom and like MOOCs.
11:30
Uh, if you remember that, Udacity, Coursera, whatever.
11:31
And a lot of them used the open source version of Replit to create interactive courses. Right.
11:39
Um, and and suddenly like the the world open up open up to me.
11:42
I'm getting job offers uh, all over the place and I and have choices where to go and and so we decided to go in to New York.
11:52
All right, so a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business.
11:58
And really a lot of people who are listening they have a full-time job and they want to start something on the side, a side hustle.
12:03
Now a lot of people message Shawn and I and they say, all right, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea?
12:10
And again, what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas.
12:13
Well, my friends, you're in luck.
12:16
So my old company, The Hustle, they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it the side hustle idea database.
12:24
It's a list of a hundred pretty good ideas, frankly. I went through them. They're awesome.
12:28
And it gives you how to start them, how to grow them, things like that.
12:32
Gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out.
12:35
It's called the side hustle idea database.
12:37
It's in the description below. You'll see the link. Click it, check it out.
12:41
Let me know the comments what you think.
12:44
Naval has this great quote where he says uh, people always ask him about like, you know, how to build a great network or networking.
12:48
What are your tips for networking?
12:50
And he's like, my only tip for networking is do something great and watch your network will appear overnight.
12:55
People will immediately come to you because you've done something great, right?
12:59
You didn't go try to get a coffee with Brendan Eich.
13:00
You built something really cool that the creator of JavaScript and Mozilla browser was like, hey, that's awesome.
13:05
I want to reach out and get to know you.
13:07
And I think that's actually how you back to the YC thing.
13:10
I think that's how you ended up getting into YC later was Paul Graham actually just thought what you were doing was cool.
13:14
But like, let's go to the YC part.
13:16
So you you quit the Facebook job, half the money in Bitcoin, half the money in your startup, apply to YC, rejected.
13:22
That was the first rejection.
13:24
What were the other rejections?
13:27
Um, uh, VCs kind of wouldn't uh, wouldn't talk to us.
13:30
Or you know, we we'd get meetings with VCs.
13:33
Some of them are like yawning and and I think at one of them slept.
13:37
Um, and it was just like not interesting to them.
13:40
Dude, I had that happen one time as well.
13:42
Like a guy a guy literally fell It was like he was literally 80 and it was Friday at 4:00 and it was warm in the office and he like fell asleep mid mid pitch.
13:50
Like it was Yeah, it was like a cold day and it was warm inside.
13:56
So I was like, yeah, I mean like what do you Yeah, I was like, you deserve this.
14:01
But dude, what what what did they not see in you?
14:05
Because like it's so easy to be to look back in the past, but like you seem like you got the it factor.
14:09
This seems like such an obvious idea.
14:11
You worked on it for two years.
14:12
Smart people are talking about it.
14:14
Like you what were you missing?
14:15
What was the case against it?
14:16
Well, I I I think, you know, Silicon Valley is like probably the most meritocratic place in the world.
14:22
But it is also status driven.
14:22
At least then it was very status driven.
14:28
Like if you look at the white, you know, people who got into YC like with Stanford dropouts and and things like that.
14:32
And I think since then YC has has has improved and you know, gets international people and all of that.
14:39
But but you know, my background wasn't wasn't really interesting to to them.
14:43
You know, I didn't have any fancy colleges or or any of that.
14:44
Also uh, being married uh, couple was was somehow like something that that they thought it was a disadvantage.
14:52
You you didn't match the patterns.
14:55
You didn't match the Stanford pattern.
14:56
You didn't match the co-founder relationship pattern.
14:59
You didn't match the uh, the trend of of what categories have big exits.
15:04
You weren't on trend at that time. Right. Yeah.
15:08
And so continued to apply to YC every season of YC we'll we'll send in the the application and you know, our thesis developed more and we felt like um, we had started making some money.
15:20
Some people started paying for our service.
15:22
We had an API at the time that people paid for.
15:24
A lot of educators and and people learning to code started to to pay pay for Replit.
15:29
What was the revenue when you got in?
15:33
Like maybe 10 grand a month. Mhm.
15:33
It was enough to sustain us at that at that point.
15:37
It was like the ramen profitability.
15:39
Um, but before YC that the person who who actually uh, the first one to to bet on us was Roy Bahat from Bloomberg Beta.
15:49
So I knew him from my Codecademy days and and it was such a the meeting with him was so refreshing.
15:54
Like he he was like just a straight shooter.
15:57
He he would tell me like, he here's where I think you know, the idea or the category is is hard.
16:06
You know, he here is where I think the valuation should be.
16:09
And it was like the first meeting he just gave me everything he was thinking about.
16:12
He didn't obscure anything and I was I was feeling really good about it.
16:16
And so yeah, he gave us 500 uh, thousand dollars on a on a 6 million valuation.
16:22
So that was the first check we got. Nice.
16:26
And uh, And then how did the how did you eventually get into YC?
16:30
So uh, basically um, you know, we're grinding and and and and the product was getting better every every week.
16:36
And I started writing articles about what we're solving.
16:41
So we're so we're solving pretty hard problems.
16:42
And so this articles kept going on Hacker News.
16:47
Um, and Hacker News was really excited about what we're doing.
16:48
And Paul Graham reads Hacker News a lot.
16:51
Probably still to this day.
16:54
And one day like December 2017 I wake up, there's a DM uh, on on my phone and it is Sam Altman.
17:04
And he's like, hey, I run YC.
17:04
And we're interested in what you're doing.
17:07
I'm like, dude, I know who you are.
17:08
You don't have to tell me you run YC.
17:10
And he's like, okay, let's let's meet.
17:13
You know, come to this address.
17:15
And it wasn't the YC address.
17:16
I was like a little confused and so I I go there.
17:17
And it was the OpenAI office in the in the mission.
17:24
Uh, and so I I meet him there and and you know, we're talking a little bit and then he's like he turns his computer around.
17:30
He's like, this is this Paul's email.
17:32
Uh, he emailed Sam and told him this this company is very important.
17:38
You should reach out to them.
17:40
And he's like, okay, talk to to PG.
17:40
I'm going to give you his email.
17:42
Talk to him and then maybe you can maybe we can work on something to get you into YC.
17:46
So I started this email relationship with with Paul.
17:50
Which was really fascinating.
17:53
I mean, he he's a great writer, right?
17:55
And so we talked about uh, we talked about Replit.
17:57
We talked about the the the problems of setting up an environment, the problems of hosting an application.
18:02
It turns out after he sold Viaweb, he started working on on something like Replit.
18:09
He started working on like an editor.
18:11
You write some Lisp, of course, cuz he like likes this this very obscure programming languages.
18:16
And but by the way, Paul Graham is the founder of YC.
18:18
At the time he was starting to to retire and and Sam was was running YC.
18:24
And uh, and so you know, we had this email relationship where he wrote me essays essentially on on on the problem we're solving.
18:30
By the way, were you were you intimidated?
18:32
I you know, Paul Graham writing essays to you privately, uh, are you like is that high stakes replies there for you? Yes.
18:40
Like I I would spend hours kind of crafting the the emails and uh, and trying to like be as good of a writer as as I can.
18:49
Um, but you know, one thing about me is like I was never like nervous about meeting like famous and established people.
18:57
And I think that helped me over time because like you know, I can be myself and I like can talk to them at the same level as opposed to like being a fanboy or or Why why was that?
19:08
What what were you just oblivious to it or you just had a different mindset about it?
19:11
What what was the reason?
19:15
Yeah, I I I felt like my life was was taking on this trajectory that was not to be too superstitious, but like it was this force.
19:25
Um, and and I felt like everything's going to be great.
19:29
And you know, it's going to be hard, but you know, I'm meeting all these people.
19:34
Uh, things are opening up to us.
19:34
And um, and so when when I go and and and meet people, my mindset is like uh, I want to impress them and I want to be able to, you know, get money from them or like I have a goal.
19:47
And I think having a goal when you're when you're meeting someone actually puts you in a very different mindset than than again like fan boy and and just being very excited about the meeting.
19:59
Dude, have you guys seen that you guys know the director Guy Ritchie?
20:00
He's that like British director.
20:03
He's got this great story.
20:04
He was on some podcast and he told Rogan and he was like, you know, I just want to be the director of of my own life.
20:11
And I want to live my life like a movie and what you're describing is sort of like that where you're like I just I am destined for greatness and like we are taking on this amazing problem and like we are going to do wonderful things and it will be hard but we will triumph and I think that's a that's actually great.
20:28
That's a great story to tell yourself and I think it's very motivating and it makes life more exciting.
20:34
I think that's really cool.
20:36
Yeah, so I actually wrote a blog post.
20:39
The title is do what makes the best story.
20:43
And and the idea is like when you're faced with decisions where there's no obvious answer like the a fork in the road where the pros and cons are sort of the same.
20:54
The heuristic I use in my life is like what is a more interesting story?
20:57
And obviously like Elon talks about this like the most the most entertaining outcome is is most likely.
21:06
Yeah, I wasn't thinking about it in terms of entertaining but in terms of like what makes a story interesting if if my life was a movie what would what would be exciting about about that story?
21:18
For example, when when I was in college I was like coding all the time and I wasn't really going to class and so so I I was failing a lot not because I was failing the exam because you know that they would bar me from the exam because I wasn't showing up.
21:34
And and I decided to to hack the university to change my grades.
21:38
And we're not talking like metaphorically like a life hack.
21:42
You actually hacked into the servers and changed your grade. Is that what happened?
21:46
Yeah, I I went into into the basement. I spent like two weeks.
21:50
I did the what's his name the famous inventor Michelangelo or something like that.
21:54
I did his sleep polyphasic sleep where you work four hours and then you sleep 15 minutes.
22:01
And it was it was sort of like I was writing on the wall.
22:03
I was like it was like a full on insanity. Were you angry?
22:08
Why did you decide to I know so many smart people who work so much harder to cheat or get around the thing than just doing the thing and and there's like a 50% of the time they end up being like losers and then 50% of the time they are in fact like the greatest. They're on this podcast. Yeah.
22:27
Well, I think it is like some ADHD, right?
22:30
Like you can't sit you can't sit in class but if you're interested in something you're going to like hack and like work on a ton, right?
22:35
And I almost got away with it.
22:41
But the servers at the at the university crashed.
22:46
And it crashed on my record.
22:46
So the one of the administrators there gave me a call.
22:53
And he he said look there's like this there's some anomaly in your in the record of your exam and in school and it's crashing our databases.
23:04
Do you know anything about it?
23:06
And I was like what's the anomaly?
23:08
And he's like you know there's a field in the database that says you're barred from the exam and your grade should be should be 35.
23:19
That's that's the default grade of of failing the the exam.
23:23
And instead my grades were like you know 75 90 whatever.
23:28
That's the that's what I entered into there.
23:30
And I didn't understand that there was another field.
23:33
By the way that you know that's not good good design for for a database.
23:40
And so since then I you know I had there was a fork in the road.
23:44
I could lie and I think I could get get away with it and you know and and just say that that's a bug on your side and but I was like what's the most interesting story?
23:53
Is they they catch me and it becomes a story that people talk about.
24:00
And and I was like okay I'm just going to I'm just going to like come clean and just tell them what I did.
24:06
So you're like better better than getting the grade would be getting the reputation. Yes. Exactly.
24:14
So you tell them and then what happened? They kick you out?
24:16
No, so you know I I'm kind of a convincing person so I um I go the next day and it's like all the deans there and they're discussing my case and they're like trying to find out what what I did and and they're all computer science deans.
24:33
So I went in there and I changed the subject to technical aspects of the hack.
24:39
And I drew on the whiteboard and showed them what I did and and all of that and they were very impressed.
24:44
It's like a Goodwill Hunting moment.
24:45
Yeah and like my reputation back then is like I'm a I'm a loser and failing everything, right?
24:52
I don't show up to class.
24:54
And and it is it is kind of like Goodwill Hunting.
24:55
And then um you know I they say okay you have to go talk to the president because I think he's going to make the final call.
25:04
So I I go to the president and and he's a very intellectual person and we talk and I you know I tell him like look you know I have this talent and I feel like it was undiscovered and I feel like I was treated unfairly and and I I used the the you know I used the university as my sandbox.
25:23
Like I didn't like you know I came clean.
25:25
I didn't you know mean to to do anything anything bad and and and and he gave me this Spider-Man line.
25:31
He's like with great power comes great responsibility.
25:35
And it actually affected me and I was like okay you know you know I think uh you know I you know I I need to do something in order to to to to kind of pay back and I told them I'm going to work this summer for free to to make sure I secure your your databases.
25:54
And so they they let me off the hook and they're like okay What a great story dude.
25:57
That is an amazing story.
25:59
Sam by the way would you ever want to compete with I don't at anything?
26:03
No, this is like this mentality. This is uh it's scary.
26:08
Like yeah, I would not want to.
26:10
You're like excuse me Dean have you heard of the word prodigy?
26:15
You're like Yeah, you're like you're like I have my talents haven't been used well at this university.
26:19
I accept your apology Dean. I accept your apology.
26:25
It's like why are you failing me? Yes. Yes. That's so good.
26:28
Okay, so I love the principle do what makes the best story. I love the hack story. That's that's amazing.
26:33
Where how did we get here?
26:33
We were talking about um YC. YC okay sorry.
26:38
Let's get to the story of YC because that's where we started. Okay.
26:42
So Sam is like yeah you should do YC.
26:44
Actually the batch starts tomorrow.
26:47
Why don't you fill an application?
26:47
It's just a it's just a you know process you have to do and we can do a later interview tomorrow.
26:54
And I'm like [ __ ] I want to fill the application again.
26:56
Like you made me do it like four times.
26:58
Like I don't want to do it again.
26:59
And so you know I I kind of do a bare bones application about about roughly.
27:04
And then there's the video.
27:07
I'm like yeah man I don't want to I don't want to do the video.
27:10
So so I I pasted a YouTube link and we go the next day Hian and I.
27:18
By the way for people who don't know the YC application is like one page.
27:19
It's like six or seven questions but then they say upload a video two or three minutes you talking about your startup.
27:26
So that's the video part.
27:26
And then the interview is 10 minutes where they're just rapid fire.
27:30
So you have like 10 minutes and it's like this make or break thing.
27:33
It's less than a lunch you know like it's less than a job interview. It's more intense.
27:37
So you're waiting around for that.
27:38
Yeah, I mean my view was they recruited us to YC.
27:41
Like why are you making us do do do this stuff, right?
27:45
And and so Yeah, I was going to ask that.
27:47
Like they're ask they're acting like you know Paul Graham's like you know maybe I could pull some strings. Like I know a guy.
27:51
Yeah, like you're the guy.
27:54
So I I don't understand what they're uh What what they're bullshitting? I don't get it.
28:02
Well, I I think they they wanted to to just like go through the process.
28:05
It's like the process applies to everyone and I I respect that.
28:11
So you know the they call us to to the interview.
28:13
And and I walk in and and there was Jared and Adora and and and all these amazing YC partners and there was Michael.
28:24
He was the CEO at the time.
28:27
And I shake their hands and I shake Michael's hand and and I felt like his grip was was a little too hard.
28:31
I was like okay that's fine.
28:34
And then I I go sit down on the chair and and the moment I sit down Michael looks at me. Why did you recall us? Oh my god.
28:42
And and I'm like you know we we applied several times and and I thought it'd be fun to do and and you know I thought this this interview was just was just you know formality and and and he's like that's not how you get into YC.
28:58
And he was he was very very angry.
29:01
Well, turns out when we're sitting outside they were getting recalled inside. Right?
29:05
So so imagine their mindset looking at the application and and getting the the the recall song.
29:14
And and then they give us a very tough interview.
29:16
In that moment did you it's like and that's when I realized I [ __ ] up.
29:20
Like did you did you realize like Yes. how I'm coming across?
29:22
Like what what was your mindset there?
29:24
Like they must be thinking I was nervous.
29:26
I was very nervous and I was regretful immediately.
29:32
Cuz you probably it's like oh here's this entitled I just another just another tech entitled guy when they don't know you're like immigrant from Jordan who's like scraped his way here, right?
29:42
They don't reality and how you were coming across weren't connected in that moment.
29:46
No, they they weren't at all.
29:48
And and so and so I you know, we go outside and and I tell back to work.
29:57
Like we don't have we don't need to get into YC. So I call an Uber.
30:02
And just before I arrive I receive a call and and I I take the call and it's like, "Hey, it's Adora. You got in. Come back.
30:10
The the the kickoff is about to start." And I'm like, "What? Are you sure?"
30:15
She's like, "Yeah, come back.
30:17
Sign sign the paperwork and get started."
30:19
So I was stunned the whole day.
30:20
Like it was you know, we start we go to the dinner and I'm like you know, you know, phased out and and and all but but like it was really exciting.
30:27
And you know, people who who who's never been to the YC office and in Mountain View, it's all orange like bright orange and and the lights and everything.
30:36
It feels like a cult-like environment.
30:38
Isn't it like I think I've seen the inside.
30:41
Doesn't it like a like a they have like a staple or is it like one of the rooms that like is a triangle like a church almost? Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
30:49
And Sam gets up and tells us what what the experience is going to be.
30:54
It's like, "This is the hardest time you're going to work.
30:56
You know, you better tell your friends and family that you're going to go away for 3 months.
31:01
You can't help them move or or all of that.
31:03
You just got to be focused on on work."
31:05
So Hay and I like took it very seriously.
31:07
Okay, I was like, "Okay, this these 3 months are are are very important for for the success of the company."
31:13
And we transformed the product in these 3 months.
31:16
It went from a simple sort of editor output to a place where you can host applications and build real things and all in 3 months.
31:23
They were working you know, 12-hour, 13-hour days and and and it was it was only three of us at the time.
31:32
Our first employee actually was um was sort of a runaway kid.
31:36
He grew up in California little down down south.
31:40
And and he didn't want to go to school.
31:43
And so he leaves his home. He goes to Hack Reactor.
31:48
And and he becomes he becomes a programmer. And he was 18.
31:51
He was looking for a job.
31:53
I knew the guys at Hack Reactor. They use Replit.
31:55
And I'm like, "Send me your best programmer."
31:59
And he's like, "Look, this kid is a little awkward, but he's the best."
32:00
And so he comes in and he nails our interview. Music to my ears.
32:04
Yeah, and basically I like him cuz you know, it mirrors kind of my life story a little bit. Where is this guy now?
32:10
We got him we got him some liquidity.
32:12
After 6 years of working I felt that's the right thing to do and because he was kind of burnt out and didn't want to continue.
32:21
So I I called my I called my brother in Jordan.
32:24
I'm like, "Look, you got to you got to come out here. We're in YC.
32:26
You need to and he's a programmer.
32:28
I taught him programming when he was a kid and I was like, "You got to you got to come come help us."
32:33
And he's still with us today.
32:35
And I called my friend from Codecademy, Moody.
32:37
He's still with us today as well.
32:39
I'm like, "You got you got to help us like like you know, you can do it remotely."
32:44
And so we assembled like a team of five people essentially.
32:46
And so we we go really hard and we were like one of the hottest companies in YC at the time.
32:53
And can you give some sense of the scale of it now like you know, I invested in it a year ago or so 2 years ago or something like that. I don't know when.
33:04
But the numbers were off you had user growth first your graph looked like a hockey stick because you zoom out and you you you you ignore all of the little like years where nothing was really going on.
33:14
But you have this crazy growth, but the crazy thing about it is that your growth was developers.
33:19
So it's like you know, one developer user is worth I don't know, 10, 20 times just like a normal internet user.
33:26
But you had this crazy hockey stick growth of developers.
33:28
Can you talk about can you just say a couple of like permission to brag?
33:31
Can you say a couple of brag-worthy stats that would impress us?
33:35
Yeah, so so Replit was very easy to get started with and so people would start start using it in college or high school and continue using it for many years.
33:46
And so it was sticky for especially junior developers when they're starting out.
33:49
And and it was it was spreading honestly on like word of mouth.
33:54
You know, there was a viral component to it.
33:57
People can share URL and then suddenly you're in the same environment as them, right?
34:03
Like and then we have this like multiplayer coding experience.
34:05
And so people were collaborating and and also COVID was really great for us because we were I think the only collaborative editor experience on the web at the time.
34:16
And so a lot of people were remote and and needed something to work with with each other.
34:21
And so Replit was adopted at the time and so the the growth was was off the chart and the servers were going down and the marginal user of any web app is sort of like zero zero cost.
34:32
But for us it was you know, we we tried to optimize it a lot, but it was still on the order of like 1 to 5 dollars like a month.
34:40
And you know, the the growth was off the charts.
34:44
But I I you know, I have to admit it was hard to monetize at the time.
34:49
Because developers are actually not used to pay for things.
34:51
Now they kind of are paying for things because of AI.
34:54
But at the time they they weren't they weren't paying and then um you know, as as we added limits and things like that that they felt like they they can like move on and set up their own developer environment.
35:07
It so took a lot of you know, creative thinking to figure out how to charge for people.
35:16
And ultimately AI was the thing that that people are paying for.
35:20
And the reason is like the productivity benefit of AI is like is like obvious.
35:25
And people is like, "Okay, this saves me time and makes me a better developer."
35:30
And so people are paying for it right now.
35:31
Well, can you give any indication on how many users or how many how much revenue the business does?
35:38
You know, sign-ups we get we have like more than 30 million.
35:39
I think 35 million users right now.
35:41
In terms of active users it kind of fluctuates, but you know, three you know, two to three million a month.
35:51
Probably 100,000 apps hosted hosted on Replit.
35:54
Because you can build an app and and and deploy it all in in one environment.
36:00
In terms of revenue I can't share right now, but like especially this year it's been like exponential growth. Sam, check this out. This agent thing. I got to show you this.
36:12
So you you haven't used this, right, Sam? No. so so watch this.
36:16
So yesterday I was like I'm I'm going to mess around.
36:19
I was doing research for this, but I was like I I just got like sucked into Replit and I started doing that. Stopped doing research.
36:25
So I go and I I go to Replit and it's changed cuz now when you before when you would go it would be like, "Here's a coding screen with a blinking cursor."
36:34
And it's like, "Write some code."
36:36
And I'd be like, "Oh, cool.
36:36
I don't really write code, so I don't know how to use this product exactly.
36:40
Maybe I could learn to code.
36:42
Maybe I could you know, pay somebody to to build something on here, but whatever. I was stuck.
36:45
So now you open up Replit Replit and it just it's like ChatGPT.
36:51
It just goes, "So what would you like me to create?" And so I go on there. Watch this.
36:55
So I go I'll give you the exact prompt.
36:57
I said, "Build me an app that will text me every morning asking how I ate yesterday.
37:02
Let me answer via text message and then track the results on a monthly calendar grid.
37:07
If texting doesn't work you could also use WhatsApp or something else."
37:08
Okay, so basically on the right here is just like the chat.
37:12
And it just goes, "Absolutely.
37:14
Let me propose what we'll build."
37:15
And then it just kind of like explains to me like a project manager.
37:18
It goes, "I'm going to help you create a food tracking app through SMS messaging with a calendar visualizations.
37:21
We'll start with the SMS.
37:23
Later we can add WhatsApp as an alternative."
37:25
It's like, "Okay, okay, prioritizing things. That's interesting."
37:28
And then it goes, "The app will send daily messages blah blah blah."
37:32
And then it goes, "How would you like me to proceed?"
37:33
And it's like there was like, you know, add more features, change the instructions or like go ahead and build the prototype.
37:38
So I clicked build the initial prototype.
37:40
And then literally I don't know if you can see this, but like it starts like auto scrolling as it's writing code.
37:47
Like this is all just a code it's generating.
37:48
So like you know, like I'm not doing anything.
37:50
I'm literally sitting back with popcorn while this is happening.
37:54
So it's like "Here's your calendar grid."
37:57
And it's like, "Hey, I need I'm going to use Twilio for the SMS." It decides.
38:01
I'll use Twilio for the SMS.
38:01
Can you go to Twilio and give me your account and your phone number so that it'll like we use Twilio for sending SMS. So I go to Twilio. I give it my SMS.
38:09
And then it's like it's made.
38:12
It literally made the thing exactly how I wanted it. now?
38:17
Yeah, I actually got stuck on the Twilio step because Twilio has to verify my phone number.
38:21
So it like was it hasn't verified it yet, but I can go into I into it I see it tries to send me the message and it's just says awaiting Twilio verification till I be able to use this.
38:30
So I'm like a little bit stuck there, which is like a common thing with agents I feel.
38:34
It's like almost absolutely incredible and then kind of frustrating at some point where you have to like you know, fight through some walls.
38:41
Well, I think I'm just reading I think he said I want people to be able to build an app faster than they can just Google the answer to a question.
38:48
And that's exactly what happened here. Well, that's insane.
38:49
So this screenshot is the agent looking at the result. It's trying to verify.
38:54
This is this is not the running app.
38:57
If you click run you can get the running app. the top.
39:00
Took a screenshot and then it shows it to me.
39:01
It's like, "Hey, is this how you want it?" And I was like, "Oh."
39:04
Cuz before it had it where it was like not the right month on top.
39:06
I go, "Oh, put the month on top.
39:08
Like don't say monthly food tracker. Write December."
39:11
And then it also said like, "Hey, would you like any other style improvements I can make it broader.
39:14
I can change the color scheme."
39:17
And I'm like, "Dude, this is literally better than an employee, right?"
39:19
Like first it's instantaneous.
39:20
Second, I could you know, I don't have to pay pay somebody to sit in the desk to sit around waiting for me to do something. I had a idea on a whim.
39:30
Go to Replit and did the thing it with the agent.
39:32
This was a like there's been a few like mind-blowing moments for me in my like tech career.
39:38
You know, like I graduated 2010.
39:40
So I'll start at that point where it's like the first time I took an Uber, I was like, "Holy [ __ ] that was amazing."
39:46
I pushed a button, a car showed up, the guy got in, I didn't even have to pay for like it just paid through my phone. That was magic.
39:52
And I could see it on I could see him on an app getting closer and closer to the restaurant.
39:56
That was like one of them.
39:58
You know, Chat GPT for sure was another where I could just, you know, tell it to make something and it would write something it would write it for me.
40:03
This is another one of them.
40:04
This is the first AI agent thing that has like been a mind-blowing moment for me where um I am not a programmer, I'm not a coder, but I can now create software. This is like amazing.
40:18
Can I ask a blunt crude question?
40:19
How can I use your software to become a billionaire?
40:22
Because like I see this and I'm like You you know, like the the the ridiculous analogy that I use is I'm like I feel like an artist sometimes where like I feel like I have the ability to conceptualize certain things, but I can't paint.
40:37
It's like I can't [ __ ] paint what I want to paint that's in my head like because I literally don't have that skill set sometimes.
40:42
And so like I'll be working on stuff and I'm like, "Dude, I want this to do this, but I got to go talk to this developer and I don't want to have this conversation and that's just like a pain in the ass."
40:50
And so like you basically are making it so I can finally express myself easily.
40:54
I like how you're on the first date you're like, "How can I get you to take the clothes off?"
41:02
You're like, "How do I use your thing to get really rich?" Yeah.
41:03
I mean that's basically like like and you had on the document you're like here's just here's the opportunities.
41:09
Just use Replit to do X Y and Z.
41:11
I and I want to go through that.
41:13
Because this is like amazing.
41:15
This is actually you know, there's like there's like a viral clip on YouTube or Twitter like a lot of places where it's like the the headline which we probably have used which is like billion-dollar one-person companies or something like this.
41:26
You're the closest person to this probably to that question. To answer that question.
41:33
Yeah, so there are apps built on Replit agent that otherwise would take probably $100,000 of of developer time.
41:43
And and you can build it like in you know, $25 paid to paid to Replit.
41:46
I will say that there there's limitations, right?
41:50
It it is not it is not perfect.
41:52
This is like the worst it's it's it's going to be.
41:54
It it sometimes gets stuck with problems.
41:56
You can you need to have some skill in prompting to coax it to like uh figure it out.
42:01
And it sort of like teaches you over time because it tells you what it's doing as it's editing the code.
42:07
And so over time you're learning how to use it.
42:09
You're actually learning how code works.
42:11
You're learning how Maybe you're not learning how to exactly type code, but you're learning the different components and where things could go wrong.
42:19
You're learning about database. We have like database.
42:22
You can go in and look at the tables and look at oh, what's happening.
42:26
And so you know, the the vision for this is that that's all you need.
42:28
That's all you need to build an entire startup.
42:30
And you know, every day we're inching towards that.
42:36
You know, I and I I talked about like pushing the boulder up up the hill.
42:40
And I think that's one of my one of my talents is like, "Okay, what are the problems that you can make progress on every day and every week such that, you know, in a year's time you have this exponential progress and the product is is so much better."
42:55
The other thing is we're riding this wave of the foundation models getting better.
43:00
So, every time they get better we plug in a new foundation model and the product is is suddenly better.
43:05
So, you're riding this you know, two exponential curves which is like the engineering we're doing, but also the underlying models and infrastructure is is is getting better.
43:15
So, I I think in a in a year's time it's going to be really mind-blowing.
43:17
In a couple years time, I think we're going to see stories like someone getting super rich making an app in Replit that that sort of goes viral and So, we're adding Stripe integration right now.
43:29
You can you can already use kind of Stripe on on Replit, but we're adding integration that makes it super easy to start monetizing your app.
43:37
So, so Sam said, "How do I get rich?"
43:39
And you're like, "Disclaimer, it's not fully there yet."
43:41
But now you still have to answer the question.
43:46
I mean the question is like what kind of applications?
43:48
It's like what are the ideas?
43:50
What kind of applications you can build?
43:52
I would say AI applications are are growing really fast.
43:54
Like the revenue ramp in some of those AI applications is kind of crazy.
43:58
Can you can you tell the story of Magic School?
44:02
I thought this was really interesting. Yeah.
44:04
So, Magic School is like an AI application for educators.
44:09
It's It's basically like helping them use foundation models and LLMs to do their work, to do assignments for for kids, to have an interactive like AI experience.
44:21
And so it's like a full suite of AI for educators.
44:23
The guy who created it is a was a teacher, right?
44:27
The guy who created was a teacher.
44:27
He took some time during COVID to to learn how to code and he started using Replit.
44:34
And him and and I think another person built the initial thing totally on Replit.
44:41
And because you can go from an idea all the way to deployment and and immediately started growing.
44:48
Like you know, people these AI apps like when when the adoption starts happening it goes super viral.
44:54
You don't need a ton of marketing and the revenue ramp was was one of the craziest ones I've seen especially for education.
45:00
Yeah, it was like a known thing.
45:02
It was like hardest thing you could do sell into schools, into teachers.
45:05
They're overworked, they're underpaid, that they don't have the time to like figure out your new tool. But this thing is great.
45:12
So, if you if you go to it, it's basically like because teachers spends a lot of their time not in the classroom.
45:16
It's after after school is done, they have to grade papers, they have to create the lesson plan for the next day, they have to create the quizzes or the multiple-choice tests and they have to like So, they have to constantly do this.
45:27
And there was these platforms like Teacher Pay Teachers where I could just if I don't want to make it myself cuz I'm tired after the school day, I might be able to go buy one for nine bucks from another teacher who teaches fifth grade science in some other state and I would take that and I would I would buy it that way.
45:42
What Magic School did was it was like, "Cool, generate a You just say like I want to I teach, you know, fifth grade biology.
45:48
I want to do a pop quiz about you know, how this how mitosis works."
45:53
And then it'll basically create either a lesson plan or a quiz or you know, a a student like interactive like, you know, workbook that they need to create or whatever.
46:03
And so it lets a teacher not have to spend, you know, four hours a night creating the materials that they need to to teach class cuz AI can do it for them.
46:11
And this thing looks I don't know these guys.
46:13
I don't know anything about them, but it says you know, over 4 million educators are using this.
46:19
Which 4 million educators and their students which I don't I don't know if they're counting the Well, if you go on SimilarWeb, they have millions of monthly uniques.
46:23
So, that's like Really impressive.
46:25
I think they raised like 20 million bucks too off of that.
46:28
Yeah, so I mean that's like a pretty huge signal.
46:30
So, they they launched in like I want to say July 2023.
46:33
So, they're like a little over over a year.
46:39
And do you know these like SaaS metrics are like how long to get to whatever like 100 million or whatever.
46:45
The AI apps and I would say Magic School is on that trajectory is like just like that.
46:50
You know, the the curve is like you know, all the way straight up.
46:55
This is kind of weird, but maybe this is like a feature of yours that you helped this company become potentially one of the faster-growing companies of all time and you only earned $20 a month from that.
47:09
Yeah, so so So, Replit had you know, always a problem of of value capture.
47:14
Honestly, that's why like VCs struggled with it for a long time.
47:16
So, that there's some logic for why why it is hard to monetize these things and like capture some of the value.
47:24
I will say I you know, I invested in Magic School.
47:26
So, there's some of that.
47:30
And uh with AI, I think we're going to be able to you know, you know, capture at least a little bit more of that value.
47:37
If people are monetizing these apps on Replit via the agent, there's a way I think where we can potentially take a cut out of that especially if we make it like super simple to start monetizing an app.
47:48
And also like if once we reach scale, you know, it is like ChatGPT.
47:53
Like you don't need a lot of skill to do that and it's going to get easier and easier.
47:57
Once we reach scale and you have you know, millions of people paying for this and it's not just like 20 bucks you're going to pay incremental uh after you finish your credits.
48:06
So, we give you monthly credits and then afterwards if you want to continue, you can like buy more credits.
48:11
Are there other companies like Magic School like cool companies like that you've seen that maybe we haven't heard of that are using AI? Yes.
48:20
So, um you know, I'm I'm very excited about agents right now.
48:24
And uh you know, I I think I I predicted earlier this year on a on a podcast that you know, this this is going to be the year where like agents are born and next year is like where agents are are going to scale.
48:37
Um so, there's this company called ElevenLabs.
48:39
And ElevenLabs creates AI SDRs.
48:44
Uh and so basically you don't need to hire SDRs.
48:47
Like there are some companies that feel like you know, they can they can bootstrap their sales without SDR.
48:54
You can have like one AE and that AE account executive is like running these like tens of AI SDRs.
49:00
Um and and the revenue ramp on ElevenLabs was also crazy.
49:07
It is pretty wild how fast these companies are scaling.
49:10
I don't think in the history of Silicon Valley we've seen anything like that even in the like web 2. 0 era.
49:15
So, what is like a fast ramp for AI Maybe not ElevenLabs specifically, but just for an AI company.
49:21
What's like what's what's impressive that kind of broke the frame of what how long things would take, but you've seen it now? Yeah.
49:27
So, I I would say reaching a 10 million in three to four months. ARR. Oh my god. That's wild.
49:38
Yeah, we I invested in Jasper, which was like one of the early kind of chat GPT wrapper type of companies where there was like, "Hey, like marketing, you know, you need to write a blog post.
49:48
You need to write a description for a product or whatever."
49:52
And so you could use it for writing any kind of marketing copy.
49:53
And their graph was I'd never seen anything It was like in 10 months or 11 months they scaled to like 50 million in annual recurring revenue.
50:02
It was It was like I've never seen anything even remotely close to that.
50:07
It was It brought up a question like, "Is this sustainable?
50:08
Is this like what what is happening here?"
50:11
Like this is I've just doesn't compute.
50:12
But it definitely broke my frame of what is possible because I'd been working, you know, in Silicon Valley since you know, 2011 11 12 and uh that just did That wasn't a thing.
50:22
You could You would never see a graph like that.
50:25
What are some other companies that have gotten to that like 10-ish or 10-ish million or similar trajectory in three month type of businesses? Yeah.
50:31
So this is I I wanted to kind of give a dis you know, sort of a disclaimer about this, which is the big question in the investor community right now is like the the moats question.
50:45
Uh and that that started around the time that you chat GPT kind of came out and there was these GPT wrappers uh sort of this condescending way of of looking at a lot of these companies.
50:54
It's like, "Ah, if you can create GPT wrapper, you know, in in in a month, then then you know, a lot of other people will create GPT wrappers in a month and you're going to be competing on price and the margins uh go down and yes, the ARR is great, but you're but Anthropic is capturing or or OpenAI is capturing most of the ARR, not you.
51:13
You're kind of a you're kind of like a middle man and you're going to have like a hard time having having margins."
51:18
And and I think it's it's totally a valid question.
51:22
Um you know, I think you know, moats develop over time through strategy and technical excellence.
51:30
So I mean, some of these companies can go down pretty fast and there are examples of that right now.
51:34
Um but but I think if you you know, you can have you can start building technical like with Replit, again, this like idea of like pushing a boulder up a hill.
51:45
You know, we have this a runtime environment, we have like this infrastructure, we have the deployments, we have databases, we have all these integrations.
51:56
I mean, it's the only one in the world that is like an end-to-end environment to to make software.
52:01
And like to catch up with that, it it's going to take years, right?
52:05
But technical advantage is also not a long-term moat.
52:10
And so so again, it's a big question.
52:10
I don't think it's answered yet.
52:12
You know, there there are strategic things you could do if you reach scale, if the switching costs are high, you know, that that may be like a way to to to have sustainable moats, but but it is definitely a big question.
52:24
You know what's crazy, Sean?
52:24
Like for the long I I hate using the D word, democratize.
52:28
I think that's like such an overused like Silicon Valley word. Don't do it.
52:32
But this is actually one of those few few examples where like for the longest time building a website or a web app, like you just literally couldn't.
52:41
And so now you are making the technology that everyone can do it.
52:45
And so what I think is like guys like Sean and me or people like us who have an audience, it's like why don't we just why aren't we like constantly launching like companies using this technology because like our ability to get users cuz we just get on the microphone and talk about it, that's like actually a competitive advantage whereas being technical is no longer it's still an advantage, but it's not as much as before.
53:10
It's like getting customers now is actually the only hard part which is still hard, but it's way easier if you're popular.
53:16
Yeah, so so you know, the the playbook I would use is like I would go into some inefficient market or industry.
53:25
So a deal from from magic school went into this hugely inefficient you know, industry which is which is uh you know, schools and education.
53:35
Uh and by the way, by the way, another product is Synthesis Tutor which is which is also going going viral right now and and and and they they they they have also this revenue ramp that's kind of crazy.
53:49
Both Sean and I invested in in that company. all three of us did. Yeah. Yeah.
53:54
Yeah, and for a while they they had like this this thing where like you know, they had they had educators on the payroll and and whatever.
54:00
They replaced all of that with AI.
54:02
Now like you you know, the kids sit in front of the the iPad and they're talking to the AI and like learning really fast and it's much better than the previous product. Right.
54:13
So so ba- basically like find an industry where you're familiar with and just like build a GPT wrapper to like automate some of the work there and like you you could do it like a hundred times and one of them will take off.
54:26
Yeah, it's the era of the idea guy now. It's our turn.
54:28
It's our turn to shine, right?
54:30
Cuz now the limits and the the kind of the the value creation is do you understand a problem well enough to know how to take this really powerful magic wand and point it at that problem and be able to make that more efficient and then of course do all of the other hard things.
54:44
Go get customers, make it sustainable, build a good team, you know, like do all the normal entrepreneurship stuff, but it seems like more than ever having a great idea is the kind of like key unlock to doing these things because building has become easier.
54:57
And I'll give you kind of my my personal epiphany that I had while I was doing this.
55:01
So I invested in Replit mostly when I just thought you seemed really smart and I saw a growth curve of developers using it and I thought, "Oh, cool.
55:09
Like I've experienced this problem before.
55:11
Like a one-stop place where I can come in, write the code, host it, all all the all the stuff you talked about.
55:19
Like don't have to download Java, don't have to do any of that [ __ ] That That appealed to me at the time.
55:22
I think actually in the same way that Synthesis like took AI and actually almost like really like 10x the value prop of the business.
55:32
Um I think you guys are doing the same as well.
55:34
So here's my my quick pitch, which is now that I think of Replit as um like basically what Shopify was for creating, you know, like online stores, I think Replit is that for creating software.
55:46
So to me you guys are Shopify for software.
55:50
just brightened when you said for software.
55:52
So like I'll give you my example.
55:53
I recently celebrated a milestone that was both I was proud of it and really embarrassed also.
55:57
So a few years ago I started a e-commerce brand and we just crossed 50 million in revenue like kind of like cumulative lifetime revenue.
56:06
Half of it was like, you know, this year, but but 50 million total.
56:09
And I was like, "Wow, like 50 million, that's great.
56:10
Like that's I had never created a business that had done 50 million in revenue, so that was like a personal pride point.
56:15
And at the same time I was telling it to to a friend of mine who's not an entrepreneur.
56:22
He's like, "Yeah, man, I would love to learn how to, you know, like make websites and like make products and manufacturing."
56:27
And I was like, "Oh, I don't know how to do any of that."
56:29
Like I was I was like, "This this brand that is in a 50 million in revenue for me, I don't I just stacked Alibaba times Shopify.
56:37
I've never manufactured a product in my life, still don't know how to.
56:43
And I've never made a website that's like, you know, actually used by customers, still don't know how to.
56:46
But I was able to I was able to skip all the work and get to the brand part, like do the thing where we created a product that people liked and you know, it's a successful company now.
56:55
And I thought, "Wow, Replit's going to do that for the software space."
56:59
And I was like, "It used to be that the job was software engineer and now it's going to be software creator."
57:06
It's like I can be a creator of software without being a programmer myself.
57:10
That little shift is a big shift because the way I think about it, I don't know how many developers there are.
57:15
I think GitHub has like a hundred million or two hundred million accounts, so I'll just use that.
57:19
Like there's two hundred million, let's say, developer you know, software engineers in the world.
57:26
Um well now there's going to be two hundred two billion people that can create software.
57:29
Cuz if you got the internet, you got your phone, you can create software now.
57:32
You can just tell the agent "Make me an app that does this.
57:35
Make a tool that does this."
57:35
And so you 10x the number of people that can create software in the same way that Shopify and Alibaba 10x or more the number of people who could create products and go sell them, like hard goods.
57:47
Um that's how I see what you're doing. Yeah.
57:51
So so you know, even at the start of Replit uh uh you know, there's our initial seed deck and the deck kind of has this Elon Musk style like you know, master plan.
58:04
And it was like we we build a you know, we build a platform, we grow it and then AI is going to make the thing a lot more accessible because our mission was uh make programming accessible, then we updated our mission, it was uh create a billion programmers.
58:17
And then so the moment that, you know, you know, even GPT-3 came out, I was like, "This is this is a thing."
58:25
And I wrote this thread on Twitter about how AI agents will just change how programmers work. Yeah. This is the deck.
58:31
So 2015, this is I don't even know if OpenAI was a research lab at that time, maybe.
58:38
Definitely, you know, there was no chat GPT, but this is your master plan deck, so we're going to grow by building tools for teachers and students.
58:44
We're going to build a simple network and AI-assisted interface that blurs the distinction between learning and building.
58:50
Evolve a new platform where people can learn, build, explore, and host applications.
58:52
Like talking about AI back in 2015 in your in your actual pitch deck.
58:57
Dude, it's also clear how Codecademy was highly influential to you because I remember years ago Sean said everyone tries to learn how to code.
59:05
I used Codecademy and it was a pretty cool interface and it's very similar to what you're describing.
59:10
You know, at some point I kind of lost hope in in courses.
59:16
Um because like, you know, we have 100 days of code.
59:19
We're telling users that to use our application, you need to you need to invest 100 days.
59:26
And that's kind of crazy.
59:26
Like there there isn't any like successful company in the world where you need 100 days to learn it.
59:33
And and so that's when I kind of changed my mindset and I said, "Okay, it needs to be chat GPT like.
59:39
It needs to be just a prompt."
59:43
Um and we started building that earlier this year.
59:45
And and now that's all we're focused on.
59:48
We want to create new programmers.
59:50
You know, existing developers, great.
59:53
They have a lot of tools.
59:54
But we want to we want to go after the citizen developer, right? Everyone is a developer.
59:58
And I think that's you know, that's what we're you're talking about.
1:00:02
You go from like 100 million developers in the world.
1:00:04
Well, I think it it overstates the number.
1:00:05
It's probably more 30 million. And then you 10x that.
1:00:10
And so what what does the world look like when anyone with an idea could could make something?
1:00:15
And one of my favorite books is The Sovereign Individual.
1:00:20
The thing I really was excited about is this idea of ideas become wealth.
1:00:25
And so you no longer have the bottleneck of making something.
1:00:27
That's where we're headed.
1:00:29
And this is what you're talking about, Shawn, is is like the the it's it's the time for idea guy.
1:00:33
And like maybe that's you know, tongue in cheek and like maybe the way to to talk about it in more precise terms is that people who can find these gaps in in markets.
1:00:49
People who have expertise in certain areas that they can tell there's inefficiency and they can like create a AI application that can immediately plug like I saw this video on Twitter the other day it was of a snake that got its head chopped off and it like floated around and bit the bit like the tail of its own body and then like the body like reacted.
1:01:12
Your employees are they thinking that this sort of doing that to themselves where they're like like when you make jokes or like when you when you like talk like you know like you don't need to hire all these programmers to do all this stuff.
1:01:25
Are they like sitting there with their heads in their pocket like like does that be nice?
1:01:31
You know, I I always wanted the company to be super lean.
1:01:36
And so for a long time we're like 10 people.
1:01:39
But but like now we're like 70 people. That's still nothing.
1:01:41
Yeah, so so I I I'd rather not hire a lot more people because I think that again the efficiency for programmers is So look, citizen developers are going to go from zero to like say 10x.
1:01:55
But also existing software engineer going to go from 10x to 100x. Right?
1:01:59
And so and so they're going to be become more and more productive.
1:02:04
The moment we we automate all of software engineering I think that's sort of like the moment of AGI.
1:02:10
So I think it's like a little far away.
1:02:14
And the reason I say this is because once you automate software then the agents can rebuild themselves and you go into this into this loop of you know, increased intelligence.
1:02:27
Every version builds its next version, builds its next version and so this is what they call intelligence explosion that would lead to the singularity, right?
1:02:34
So it's like a pretty crazy time when we automate all of software engineering.
1:02:37
And so I I I think I think it's coming.
1:02:40
I don't know if it's 10 years or 15 years.
1:02:44
But I think that's the time where the world really radically changes.
1:02:48
Have you met anybody in kind of the tech industry that blew you away either personally or maybe read about them maybe met a friend of a friend told you a story cuz I saw a picture of you with Jensen you know, you've met Paul Graham.
1:03:00
I know that you're like connected in the AI circles. You met Sam Altman.
1:03:06
In addition to building the tech, I love the characters and I love the stories is why every you know, Elon snippet of how he runs his companies goes viral and [ __ ] like that.
1:03:13
What are your favorite kind of inspiring stories or crazy stories that you've you've either experienced directly or or read?
1:03:21
You know, one of the craziest story when we're raising from A16Z Mark invites me to to breakfast at like 10:00 a. m. at his house.
1:03:30
And so so I go there and I expect like I'm going to talk about the business.
1:03:34
And so we we spend like two or three hours talking about politics and the world and like all sorts of things that are interesting to to him.
1:03:42
And I thought like this guy is like is like more than just a technologist. He's like a philosopher.
1:03:46
And so right now he's he's going out and he's talking about this stuff.
1:03:51
Like his Joe Rogan interview went super viral.
1:03:52
And he's been always have like these interesting ideas about about the world.
1:03:56
And the interesting thing about A16Z is his partner is is sort of like the executor sort of the executive, right?
1:04:03
He wrote The Hard Thing About Hard Things where like he teaches you like about what it means to run a company. It's painful. It's hard.
1:04:11
And what it means to hire executives or what it means to scale a company.
1:04:14
And so so you have this this duo of like the doer and the like the philosopher.
1:04:21
And I think I think that's really amazing and I think they're they're they have really big plans and and they're almost just getting started.
1:04:29
I just hate the philosopher.
1:04:29
Like are you going to do anything?
1:04:31
What are you what are you talking about politics for right now?
1:04:34
It's got to be the worst to be the doer and the doer philosopher relationship.
1:04:40
You know, I I think I think Sam is is was interesting to kind of meet him talk to him cuz he's very effective.
1:04:48
Like he like the first time I met I met him or like maybe not the first time but like he was on his computer as as I'm talking.
1:04:58
And so I'm talking it was like yeah, we're fundraising.
1:04:59
I want to talk to you know, A16Z.
1:05:01
I'm like really big fan of Mark and he was typing on his computer.
1:05:06
Okay, I'll introduce you to Mark.
1:05:08
And and and then you know, when when you send Sam emails it's like pretty quickly replies with like a you know, a couple words or like a couple sentences.
1:05:17
So I saw how effective and fast you can be and that that I'm not like that.
1:05:23
You know, I'm trying to be more like that but I'm someone who really values the quietness like to think about ideas and to think about strategy and things like that.
1:05:37
So I'm not always in top of communication.
1:05:39
It actually makes me like a little you know, it's overwhelming.
1:05:41
Um but but but I think I think seeing these people at least you know, it inspired me to be a little more like that.
1:05:51
You you tweeted out the story that I loved about you said the most gangster story in Silicon Valley is Steve Jobs buying Pixar for 5 million investing 50 million and operating at a loss for a decade so much so that he had to cut personal checks to make payroll and somehow turning it around to a 7 billion dollar exit.
1:06:10
Why why do you like that story?
1:06:10
You know, there are people who are overrated in Silicon Valley and I think there are people who are underrated.
1:06:17
Like I think people think about Steve Jobs in terms of like yeah, the flashy things iPhone, iPod, you know, coming on stage and and doing that.
1:06:26
The thing I like about the Steve Jobs story is when he was lost in the desert for 10 years.
1:06:32
So he left he was fired from Apple.
1:06:36
And then he created two companies that were failing the whole time.
1:06:40
Like NeXT Computing, NeXT computers and Pixar were literally failing.
1:06:43
Like they didn't do anything. They weren't selling.
1:06:47
He was just like investing more and more of his money.
1:06:52
Like I think he was going to go broke if but he kept going for 10 years. Like how do you do that?
1:06:58
And I you know, I'm a person who like we talked about in my story where I want to be able to go the distance.
1:07:02
I think going the distance is is an advantage for for entrepreneurs.
1:07:07
And Pixar became this hugely valuable company.
1:07:11
And it goes from making no revenue to making billions of dollars and going public over over a couple of years.
1:07:20
And NeXT NeXT NeXT computers saved Apple.
1:07:23
Apple was having a problem with OS.
1:07:26
Like Intel, you know, they had the chip before.
1:07:29
I don't know they made it internally or something like that.
1:07:34
And then everyone was moving to Intel.
1:07:35
Intel was the best computing chip and they wanted their computers to be fast.
1:07:41
And so they needed a new operating system.
1:07:43
And they tried to buy they went to the market.
1:07:46
They tried to acquire companies.
1:07:47
They couldn't find a great operating system.
1:07:50
And NeXT Computing had the had had a great operating system. And that became Mac OS.
1:07:55
So they they bought know that.
1:07:57
I thought NeXT was just a failure.
1:07:58
I didn't I didn't even realize it actually I thought they just bought Steve back Apple hire but it wasn't an acqui- it wasn't just an acquire.
1:08:03
No, I mean Objective-C for example, you know, NeXT Computing was really obsessed with this idea of object-oriented programming and they innovated a lot on what that means.
1:08:13
And you know, it is based on Unix but it has a lot of interesting features on top of that.
1:08:20
So Apple they it saved Apple cuz Apple was otherwise not going to be competitive without these new chips. Right.
1:08:26
Well, dude I know we kept you half an hour over. I apologize for that. But this was amazing.
1:08:31
This was one of my favorite episodes in a long time.
1:08:36
And I'm not just saying that.
1:08:36
You can go check all the other episodes.
1:08:37
I don't say that at the end. So this was awesome.
1:08:39
Thanks so much for coming on.
1:08:41
Where should people Twitter is the best place to follow you?
1:08:43
Yeah, Twitter Amjad on Twitter.
1:08:48
And and Replit handle on Twitter as well. Just just r e p l.
1:08:55
Dude, thank you very much. You're the best. Of course. Of course my pleasure.