Replit CEO says solopreneurs can build billion-dollar AI startups

Name: AI CEO: How to build a $1B Company in 2 days | Amjad Masad @replit
Uploaded: 2025-08-29T17:00:10+00:00
Duration: 37 min 59 s
Channel: Silicon Valley Girl
Description: Summary and key takeaways on Replit CEO says solopreneurs can build billion-dollar AI startups, covering Amjad, the founder and CEO of Replit, an AI-powered

Silicon Valley Girl

Aug 29, 2025

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37 min video

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Amjad, the founder and CEO of Replit, an AI-powered coding platform, envisions a future where entrepreneurship is more accessible, leading to a surge in individuals building successful businesses. He believes that within a few years, solopreneurs will be able to build billion-dollar companies.

The Vision: Empowering Entrepreneurs

Amjad's mission with Replit extends beyond making software accessible; it's about democratizing entrepreneurship. He argues that while large companies will always need software engineers, individuals with business ideas are often hindered by a lack of technical skills. Replit aims to remove this bottleneck, allowing anyone to turn their ideas into functional applications.

He cites an example of a CFO at a VC firm who, despite having deep domain expertise and business ideas, struggled to find the right tools. Using Replit, this individual built a dream app in three months, sold it, secured contracts, and is now on track to generate $5 million in revenue, having quit his job to become an entrepreneur. This demonstrates how Replit can empower domain experts to build and monetize their solutions without needing to hire a software engineer.

Replit's Growth and Metrics

Replit has experienced significant growth, with an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of $160 million. The company has approximately 50,000 active users and about 350,000 paid online applications built on its platform, growing at a rate of 25% month-over-month. While Replit doesn't currently track how many of these apps generate revenue, they are working on integrating with Stripe to enable monetization and better track this metric.

The Reality of Building with AI: It's Still Work

Despite the promise of AI, building with platforms like Replit still requires effort. The interviewer, attempting to build a YouTube video analysis tool, encountered challenges and spent six hours on the project. Amjad acknowledges this, explaining that users act as "software development managers" for a "powerful but easily distractible intern" (the AI).

The Importance of Prompt Engineering

Amjad emphasizes that prompt engineering is crucial. While AI removes the need for understanding syntax and underlying details, precise communication with the AI is paramount. He suggests spending more time crafting detailed prompts, similar to how one would communicate with a human developer. An app that might have taken a senior engineer weeks to build before AI can now be completed in a couple of days with effective prompting.

Learning and Resourcefulness

To excel at prompting, Amjad recommends utilizing resources like Replit's YouTube channel, which offers content on prompting and underlying systems. He stresses the importance of being "relentlessly resourceful," a quality highlighted by Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator. This involves actively seeking solutions, practicing, and adapting one's prompting style.

The Genesis of Replit: From Side Project to Business

Amjad's journey with Replit began with a clear technical problem: programming is hard, and it needed to be easier. However, starting a company was a more difficult decision, given his experience with the pain and hard work involved in startups. Replit started as a side project and grew organically, eventually attracting over 100,000 monthly users. The decision to turn it into a business was driven by a desire to create meaning and serve customers, despite the comfort of his previous job at Facebook.

The Future of Entrepreneurship and AI

Amjad believes that as building products becomes easier with AI, the new bottlenecks for entrepreneurs will be:

Coming up with ideas: While AI can assist, novel, creative ideas still largely originate from humans.
Marketing: Effectively communicating value propositions and reaching the market will be crucial.
Domain knowledge: Entrepreneurs with deep, tacit knowledge in specific areas will have a competitive advantage, as this knowledge is not readily available to LLMs.
Grit: The ability to persevere and not quit, even after initial challenges, is a significant differentiator.

AI's Role: Competent Agents, Human Drivers

Amjad is skeptical of the AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) vision, believing that while AI can create "extremely competent agents," humans will always be needed as drivers. He argues that large language models are trained on past data and struggle to generate truly novel, creative ideas that respond to current world changes. He uses the example of Bitcoin, which, while building on existing ideas, introduced a novel solution to the "double-spend problem" through the blockchain.

The Evolving Role of Software Engineers

Amjad believes that engineering jobs will continue to exist, particularly in domain-specific areas where tacit knowledge is critical. Examples include platform engineers at Google dealing with billions of users or engineers at NASA building fault-tolerant systems. For product builders, however, he advises focusing on building the product first and learning coding along the way if necessary.

Replit's Differentiators

Replit aims to differentiate itself by:

Continuous innovation: Launching new features ahead of competitors, such as an upcoming solution for quality assurance and testing, which is a routine and uncreative task currently left to users.
Robust infrastructure: Built on 10 years of infrastructure innovation, including a custom file system and Linux kernel patches, Replit provides a comprehensive environment with built-in databases, object storage, and authentication. This allows users to manage complex applications that other platforms struggle with.

Overcoming Challenges and Doubters

Amjad shared a difficult period for Replit when they had to conduct layoffs, cutting 30-40% of their team. This was due to being in an "awkward place" where the platform wasn't advanced enough for senior engineers nor easy enough for new users. Despite the challenging atmosphere, the core team working on the agent feature persevered, working long hours, which ultimately led to their significant growth.

He also recounted a meeting with Peter Thiel, who was skeptical of AI before ChatGPT's public release, dismissing Amjad's claims as "hype." This experience, while initially demotivating, became a powerful motivator. Amjad believes that having doubters and proving them wrong is a great feeling and a common theme among successful entrepreneurs.

The Future of Work and Education

Amjad discusses the changing landscape of work, particularly for his children. He believes that the future will favor "polymaths" – individuals with a broad range of knowledge and skills, similar to figures like Leonardo da Vinci. He advocates for an education system that moves away from treating humans like machines, as was common during the Industrial Revolution, and instead fosters entrepreneurship and adaptability.

He advises teaching children to be resourceful and to embrace the uncertainty of the future. He believes that gender roles in career choices are largely cultural and that his advice applies equally to both boys and girls.

The Solopreneur Billion-Dollar Company

Amjad believes a solopreneur building a billion-dollar company (with a $50 million ARR) is achievable in the "next few years." He emphasizes that this success will not solely depend on software but also on the entrepreneur's deep domain knowledge and grit.

Amjad's Favorite AI Apps and Personal Projects

Beyond Replit, Amjad uses:

Perplexity: For deep research and quickly getting answers without clicking through multiple links.
ChatGPT/Claude: For brainstorming and general inquiries.

He also builds small, personal tools with Replit, such as a JavaScript-free ChatGPT interface for his Kindle Scribe, demonstrating how the platform enables rapid development for specific needs.

Marketing Advice

Amjad offers key marketing advice for entrepreneurs:

Launch, launch, launch: Continuously launch, iterate on messaging, and try different approaches. He himself launched Replit multiple times with varying messaging until it gained traction.
Leverage domain knowledge: Focus on what you know deeply that few others do.
Grit: Don't quit. Most people give up, so persistence is a significant differentiator.

Takeaways

Replit’s AI‑powered platform aims to democratize entrepreneurship by letting domain experts create and monetize apps without hiring software engineers.
The company reports $160 million ARR, about 50,000 active users and a 25 % month‑over‑month growth rate, with over 350,000 paid applications built on its infrastructure.
Amjad stresses that effective prompt engineering is the new critical skill, turning weeks of senior‑engineer work into days of development when done well.
He predicts that future bottlenecks for founders will shift to idea generation, marketing, deep domain knowledge, and grit, while AI handles much of the coding work.
Despite AI advances, Amjad believes engineering roles will persist in domain‑specific, high‑complexity areas and that solopreneurs with strong expertise can achieve billion‑dollar companies within a few years.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Amjad claim solopreneurs could build billion-dollar companies in the next few years?

Amjad says solopreneurs can reach billion-dollar valuations because AI eliminates the need for dedicated software engineers, letting experts focus on their domain knowledge and execution. He points to a CFO who built and sold an app in three months, now on track for $5 million revenue, as proof.

What is the role of prompt engineering according to the Replit CEO?

Amjad describes prompt engineering as the new critical skill because the AI behaves like a powerful but easily distracted intern; clear, detailed prompts guide it to produce correct code quickly. Mastering prompts can reduce a project that once took weeks into a few days of work.

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Helpful resources related to this video

If you want to practice or explore the concepts discussed in the video, these commonly used tools may help.

Kindle Scribe Digital Notebook And Reader Recommended

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Books On Prompt Engineering For Ai

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Full Transcript YouTube

How far ahead you think is time when a
solarpreneur is going to build a billion
dollar company
>> in the next few years? Yeah.
>> This is Amjad, founder and CEO of
Revlet, an AI powered coding platform
that turns your ideas into apps.
>> Our mission is not just to make software
more accessible, but really make
entrepreneurship more accessible cuz
creating a business is really one of the
best feelings in the world.
>> But let's be real. Can anyone just sit
down with AI and build a billion dollar
company? Amjad says it comes down to
three simple steps. They turned Replet
into a $3 billion business. I tried
those steps myself and uh what happened
wasn't what I expected.
Hello everyone and welcome to Silicon
Valley girl. We have an amazing guest
today. We have Jad the founder of
Replet. I talked about Replet a few
times on this channel because I've
personally been using it. Um and uh I'm
just fascinated by your journey. I
wanted to start with this question where
you said uh you're going to empower a
billion software engineers or
programmers in the next couple years but
at the same time I saw you say that in a
couple years companies wouldn't need
software engineers. Can you explain
that?
>> Yeah, I I I'm mostly talking about
entrepreneurs like us. Um I think that
bigger companies will always need
software engineers but people who have
an idea and everyone has an idea like
you know one experiment to do is go on
the street and stop people like do you
have a business idea everyone has an
idea but uh for the most part the thing
that's stopping them is that they don't
have the technical skills or they don't
have someone you know as a programmer
growing up all my friends were like oh
hey can can you program this idea for me
well now you could do it. And so we're
getting to a point where you can run a
business and it's difficult. It's still
that technology needs to mature, but we
have a lot of stories where people have
built their dream apps and they've had
these ideas for like 20 years.
>> We're talking about um CFO at a VC firm.
He's a domain expert. like he knows how
to manage a VC fund and he never found
the right tools for him and he had all
these ideas on how to build them but you
know it's almost it's always hard to
find engineering resources so he he used
Replet and 3 months he built his dream
app and he went out and sold it and got
a lot of contracts and I think he made
um he's on his track to make 5 million
quit his job now he's an entrepreneur
and he told us every time he he's saying
well at some point I need to onboard a
software engineer and maybe he does but
you know it's been he got to 5 million
in revenue and still he he didn't have
to
>> I'm sure you know Meta and Openi and us
we're always going to need software
engineers but there could be a lot more
entrepreneurship in the world a lot more
businesses if that bottleneck that is
making software goes way.
[Music]
>> Do you have like a screen here where you
track your most important metric and
what's the most important metric?
>> So, every every team has a screen,
infrastructure metrics, there's like
product metrics. It's really depending
on the on the team and almost every team
has a has a has a screen. Um,
>> so what's one universal metric
everyone's looking at?
>> Um, I mean, ARR Okay.
>> Like everyone's responsibility.
>> Can you share your recent era or
>> Yeah. Um 160
>> 160.
>> Yeah.
>> That's amazing. You've been they've been
growing like crazy. Like your graph is
dream white combinator hockey stick.
>> But especially if you plot it from like
10 years.
>> Oh yeah. Right.
>> And it does that.
>> That's And also like it's so encouraging
for entrepreneurs who don't see progress
right away.
>> That's right. That's right. How many
people are
>> right now? Let's see. Is there about
50,000?
>> 50,000 people
>> right here. Yeah.
>> Do you know how many apps built on
rapullet are actually active and
running?
>> Yeah. Uh about
350,000 like paid online apps. That's
growing fast. That's growing 25% month
over month.
>> Do you know how many of them actually
generate revenue?
>> We don't. I think those are more
anecdotal the stories that we hear.
Pretty soon we're gonna be uh helping
you integrate with Stripe and monetize.
So we'll be able to to track that.
>> I think I already added my Stripe to
>> So yeah, the agent knows how to do it.
>> Uh but we're going to make it even more
effortless like one click. Our mission
is not just to make software more
accessible, but really make
entrepreneurship more accessible because
that's really the thing I think that
changes lives the most. You can make a
piece of software, it's fun, but making
creating a business is really one of the
best feelings in the world.
>> Let's take a quick break. If Amjad's
story with Replet fired you up and
you're tired of just watching people
talk about AI instead of building
something real, this is your chance.
HubSpot just dropped something called
the 102 ship vibe code prompts. It's a
pick of 10 proven frameworks to help you
turn a business idea into a working lead
genen web app. No coding experience
required. You'll get tools like viral
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multiplatform deployment assistant, and
my favorite, the replet build prompter,
which acts like your own AI product
manager. These prompts will help you
define your perfect customer, build your
prototype in replet, generate viral
hooks, names, and launch content. It
will also help you benchmark your idea,
and plan how to turn it into scalable
growth machine. No more waiting months
or spending 20K a month on a DAV team.
This is what building with AI actually
looks like in 2025. If you're ready to
launch, download the 10 zero to ship VIP
code prompts for free. Link in the
description. Big thanks to HubSpot for
sponsoring this video. So, actually, I'm
trying to build something with Replet
right now. And the thing is, it's
something that I'm encountering. So,
yes, it's building like a beautiful
layout, but then sometimes but see
service unavailable. That's that's the
recent bug I got. So, it feels like
It's
>> oh interesting.
>> Yeah.
>> On the deployment. So you can go to logs
here and understand why the service is
unavailable. So you can see there's an
error.
>> You can copy that error and give it to
the agent and tell it um when I deploy I
get this error.
>> Okay.
>> But basically what I'm realizing uh is
that it's still a little work, right?
>> It's it's work. If you have this data,
how long does it take to build something
that's actually working? Like what I'm
trying to build here is a tool that's
going to analyze my videos and let
anyone analyze their videos on YouTube
and determine videos that have potential
if you change their title and thumbnail.
You know how it works? Sometimes you
repackage a video and it just starts
getting all the new views. And I'm
trying to build something that's going
to help me do that.
>> But I've already spent like six hours
and it's it's a process.
>> Yeah, it is a process. you're still
acting kind of like a software
developer. You're acting like a software
development manager.
>> And so you have this um powerful but
easily distractable intern and you need
to manage him very well. So for example,
you type this prompt there's like only
one sentence. I would have like spent
maybe like another minute or two on it
and just say when I deploy the site I'm
getting this error but you know but I'm
not getting it in the preview and so
communicating in a more precise way is
is very important. So prompt engineering
and prompting is not that different than
programming.
we just take away the syntax from it,
right? Like you don't have to understand
the syntax and a lot of the underlying
details, but you still have to be very
precise and actually it helps when
communicating with developers as well to
be able to talk that way. So, you know,
an app like that will probably take a
couple days, whereas previously even,
you know, senior engineer would have
taken them like a couple weeks, you
know, before AI
>> $10,000, $15,000.
>> Yeah, something like that. It will cost
you something like that. But I would I
would spend two, three days on it. I
think you'll be able to get it.
>> How can I learn to be better at
prompting?
>> We have a YouTube channel. Uh we have a
great developer relations uh person who
creates a lot of content. His name is
Matt. Um and so we try to train people
on on prompting and and the underlying
systems. So Replet has a DNA and sort of
education. So we when we were talking
about a billion developers, um these
billion developers need to learn. It's
not going to come for free. So there's a
learning curve associated with it. And
you need to be resourceful. So you need
to go to YouTube, search like how to how
to prompt. You need to spend a lot of
time and practice by building changing
your style. Some people go to open AAI
for example and like pick 03 or right
now it's GP5 with thinking and give it
the idea and and tell it hey I want you
to structure it into a really great
>> it for me something like that.
>> Yeah. So I think uh you know Paul Graham
uh the founder of Y Combinator you know
the best accelerator in the world um
wrote this uh essay about being
resourceful and he talks about the
qualities of founders and one quality is
relentlessly resourceful. So they they
they're able to find resources to
unblock themselves and be able to um you
know not hit a wall because I think a
lot of what entrepreneurship is is
finding all these walls and really
driving through them.
>> And the way to do that is so think of
think of it as like a video game. In a
video game, especially open world video
games, you're often running into these
problems where you don't know how to get
to the next level. A lot is creative
thinking kind of moving around and
finding the clues or and I think
entrepreneurship and you know building
software sort of similar to that.
>> Can you tell me what changed when you
decided to start your company? What was
this thought that was like I need to
build this?
>> So there's starting the project versus
starting the company. Starting the
project was so obvious to me programming
is hard. We need to make programming
easier. That's like a very technical
sort of view on things. Starting the
business was less obvious because I had
worked at startups. I knew how painful
they are. Like so I worked at code
academy for example when I first came to
the states. It was based on the open
source version of of replet but I saw
how difficult it was and it was really
painful a lot of hard work. So replet
was still a side project and started
growing and we really I didn't want to
start it into a business because and I
actually tried to sell it to to Facebook
where I was working back then. I wanted
to stay there. I was very comfortable
and happy there.
>> It's a scary feeling to leave your job
and and go heads down.
>> But it was kind of derisked because we
had a platform that people really loved.
We had 100,000 users plus a month. So
after a lot of deliberation
>> and and really trying to think what
matters to you, what what what creates
meaning in your life and uh you know
serving our customers and really
achieving our mission, helping people
create businesses and all of that felt
very very important. So I think it's
about meaning partly
>> and it feels like with this tool there
are two problems in entrepreneurship
used to be three like coming up with
idea building product and marketing. Now
you're left with coming up with ideas
and marketing right
>> what do you think is going to happen
when everyone's building an app?
>> Yeah. So when everyone's building an app
when that is it's still a skill right
it's still like like we talked about
still a skill that you can you can
develop and I think grit is very
important. So resourcefulness,
grit, like not quitting, like not
quitting after six hours, like spending
another day or two on it at least. I
think domain knowledge is very
important. So if you're you have
excellent domain knowledge in on YouTube
and so you need to imbue you need to
give that domain knowledge into the
agent. You need to prompt in a certain
way so that you're downloading your
domain knowledge and that is your
competitive advantage. But at the same
time, what OpenAI models are training on
on what I know and then they're so much
better at defining what a good YouTube
video is.
>> I think you still have tacet knowledge
that is not necessarily expressed in all
your videos and all the content out
there.
um that CFO at the VC firm has a lot of
knowledge and skills he built up over
the years that he can make into an app
that you can't find on blogs and you
can't find online. And so I think every
one of us as we go through life, we
build up a lot of experiences that LLMs
do not get to experience because they're
not embodied. But do you think there
will ever be time when AI sees the
problem, comes up with a solution, codes
the app, doesn't need a human?
>> You know, I I I might be a bit different
in the Silicon Valley context in that I
am uh quite skeptical about the AGI
vision. I think we can build extremely
competent agents, but you would always
need the human as a driver. uh because I
think that the way large language models
work is they train on the entire corpus
of um texts on the internet, text and
books, all of that stuff that is text of
the past of what has happened, right?
What people have put in. But can it come
up with novel ideas, creative ideas,
ideas based on what's changing in the
world right now? Because they're not
always learning. They're not
continuously learning. They're within
this closed box that is their training
corpus, right? It's almost like a
library in a very way. It is a it is a
li a library has a lot of ideas and it
can remix and mix and match ideas. But a
net new idea is something that I think
still humans have have a special place.
>> I love your answer. But so the fear
inside me wants to push back by saying
that you know all the ideas already
exist in the world like when we're
talking about new movies or new books
they take a pre-existing idea but like
changing characters changing
circumstances
>> there's always a novel idea so think
about Bitcoin Bitcoin are you like in
crypto or Bitcoin a little bit.
>> Yeah. So, Bitcoin it was based on a
history of 20 years people trying to
build digital uh cash. Uh and in the
references it's referencing hash proof
of work was existing uh proof of work.
The idea that uh you know the machine is
solving these cryptographic problems in
order to secure the the Bitcoin network
was actually originally invented to
fight spam. So there was the spam
problem of the emails. We don't have
spam filters or AI. And so when I'm
sending you an email, I solve a
cryptographic problem that is expensive
to show you that I'm not a spam uh
agent. Right. So Satoshi Nakamoto took
all these ideas and you're right
existing ideas and put them in a in a
new package, but he added a a novel idea
which is how to solve the double spend
problem. And this is the blockchain,
right? So I think it's easy to think
about there's no nothing new under the
sun. I think that's the expression. But
I think if you look carefully, if you
look at what Einstein did, right? Like
uh with his theories, um there's always
one novel insight, one really strong
novel insight. It's almost like this
divine intervention is that there's
something spiritual about having a
really novel idea. And I'm sure you've
experienced it in the past. uh that I
think is is fundamentally human. I don't
know where it comes from.
>> Yeah. And also this feeling that you're
the one to bring it to the world. I feel
like AI likes that. Okay. Let's see.
Let's see what's going on here. Uh
should I go to overview and try again?
No.
>> So I hit redeploy. It's asking you to
redeploy. So it'll take a second to
deploy. I'd be curious. So fixed session
decentralization problem. Okay. while
it's deploying. Um, you said a gap
between a Republic user and a senior
Google engineer will disappear in two
years. Should people still learn how to
code or what's going to happen to the
engineering job?
>> I think the engineering job will
continue to exist especially in um very
domain specific areas is basically what
we're talking about. There are a lot of
things that are not very well
represented in the data. If you're a
platform engineer at Google dealing with
a billion users, there are knowledge and
things that you understand and have
learned on the job that LLMs do not know
because no one's written them anywhere.
It's this task of knowledge.
>> And so I think those engineers will
continue to exist. If you're an engineer
at NASA and you're building fault uh
tolerant systems, if you're building
provable systems,
uh like I don't want my Tesla autopilot
to be vibe coded, right? Like there are
a lot of life and death systems that we
want engineers that are very low-level
and very almost mathematical about it to
to exist. So there's a lot of situations
in which engineers will continue to
exist. But if you're a product builder,
I would say just go ahead and build the
product. Like don't wait like if you
need to learn coding along the way,
learn it. But but your mission is to
build the thing. So I would start by
building and and like we said, being
resourceful along the way goes a long
way.
>> So what should engineers who are
building apps like this do now?
>> Um let's see. Where is it?
>> There we go.
>> Oh, there we go. Okay. Sign in. Okay.
like
>> we had a new issue
>> and it's like
>> Google authentication not but that's
that's how software engineers work
>> okay this is this iteration
>> got it so you think
>> solve a problem
>> and then and then get a new problem but
>> do you think it will ever get get to to
the stage where I don't have to do this
>> yes
>> because it could actually run
>> everything and test everything
>> yes so we uh
>> is that we're working on
>> could you talk about it
>> or or not yet
>> uh usually Not yet. But uh let me give
you some some hints. Okay. Um
>> every vibe coding platform today
automates generation of code and all of
that stuff which is great but leaves a
job for you that is actually very
routine and uncreative and annoying
which is quality assurance and testing.
>> Exactly. QA.
>> So we're solving that.
>> Okay. All right. You're launching
something right? Is there a lot of
pressure on the team? How are they
handling?
>> Yeah. So, we have an offsite next week
where we're going to be going to uh LA
uh on the beach and u at least that's
like a sort of a relaxing environment
and we're going to be going really deep
and working really hard and then the
week after that we're going to be coming
here. It's called sprint week and we do
it before every launch and people
typically work 14-hour days non-stop.
>> You too?
>> Yeah.
>> Your wife too?
>> Yes. Yes.
>> Who takes who takes? Okay. There's a
question coming from all the
entrepreneurs have kids like how do you
balance this? So we, you know, there's
people talk about work life balance. We
we talk about work life harmony or work
life integration. And so, for example,
like we'll have uh the nanny bring the
kids to the office. We'll have
>> so they can vibe code.
>> They can v code. I sometimes sit down
with my kid and like do a little bit of
coding, but so we can see them, right?
Like so.
>> And next week for the trip, uh, everyone
here could bring their families as well.
So, you know, Replet not being super
young a startup, we're not that young.
There's a lot of people with families.
So, we try to like create that
integration.
>> Do you think it works
>> honestly or do you feel like you're
missing out on your kids?
>> I don't feel like I'm missing out. Like,
honestly, I don't feel like I'm missing
out. So, you know, just having a bit of
freedom in your schedule.
>> So, I spend like mornings with them.
Like I wake up at 7, 8, and I get to the
office by 10:00, right? But I, you know,
stay late here. We have dinners uh here,
but you know, I have these two hours in
the morning at least. Sometimes I'm
there for dinner as well. And on the
weekend, I'll work a little bit like
Sunday afternoon. Uh I'm always on my
phone working obviously and responding
and phone calls and things like that,
but I feel like I'm present.
>> What about your wife? Similar schedule,
>> I think. Yeah. No, she's she has a less
intense of a schedule. I think CEO
schedule's like a little more um
intense. And I think I think this is
this is you probably can relate to that.
I think being a mom there's like a more
sense of guilt that I don't really
>> all the time because they're back from
school right now,
>> right?
>> Yeah. But I also would love to do this.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So I I I don't know how what
to speak to that but I feel like
>> all things considered we feel fairly
involved in their lives.
>> That's good. Talk to me about your
mindset. Like you're coming up with all
these new things, but at the same time
we have lovable cursor. We have all of
these tools. We're going to let you do
the same thing. How do you see yourself
being different and how do you survive
mentally as an entrepreneur?
>> So, we're going to be the first to do
what I just talked about and it's
launching in September.
>> Yep.
>> And last year we're the first agent on
the market and so we're always three,
six, I think this feature that we're
building is probably going to be year
ahead of anyone else. And that's because
it's built on 10 years of innovation,
infrastructure innovation. like every
app that you're building, every
workspace is backed by um a cloud
virtual machine built on a file system
that we innovated. We even patched the
Linux kernel to to to make things work
for Replet. And so all that
infrastructure allows us to always be
ahead. We'll come up with an idea.
Sometimes it takes two three months to
build. If you want to build the idea
from scratch, it'll take you two three
years to build. And so I think Replet
will actually start to diverge pretty
soon. All these applications kind of
look the same because they all generate
a website. But um when you talk to
developers that are using Replet often
moved from the other uh platforms uh
they're saying that yeah I mean these
tools got me a like a pretty website
pretty quickly but you know a month in
I'm just blocked. I can't it can't
manage my database. I want a place to do
uh to store my files. Replet ships with
a database has an object storage
component has authentication component
like I know you're trying to set up
Google authentication but you can also
ask the agent implement replet
authentication has a built-in
authentication system. We built up this
massive amount of infrastructure and
within the next 6 months to 12 months I
think it'll be really obvious how Replet
differentiates.
>> Have you seen any big mistakes that
people make when building something with
Replet? cuz I know a lot of
entrepreneurs are looking and they're
probably like okay I'll build an app but
what's next like any tips for marketing
or any lessons that you've seen along
the way first of all what we talked
about with prompting
overcommunicate overcommunicate be
resourceful replet environment gives you
a lot of tools like the logs and things
like that try to overcommunicate with
the agent I think that's the first tip
that I would give even if you don't have
you don't want to learn prompt
engineering just just be
overcommunicative And then on uh on
marketing uh I think that's the next big
bottleneck for entrepreneurs right let's
say building a product becomes easier
and easier and easier how do you go get
it to market and communicate your value
proposition all of that
>> exactly and like why would someone buy
something like this if they can just go
to replet and v code the same thing
right
>> yeah uh
>> it's like an easy
>> there's definitely marketing is a is a
big part of the answer but also like I
said domain knowledge that you have like
just think about the things that you
know
deep in your heart of hearts that not
many people in the world know and the
other thing is like I said grit like
just just you know not quitting after 6
hours is is very differentiating
actually most people just quit and so
just keep going and not quit like I've
been building this business for 10 years
before that back in Jordan I had this
idea when I was 22 and I started working
on it. Actually, there was an open
source project called Replet back in
2010
and I just didn't quit. I knew this was
kind of big. I I I still know it's going
to be a trillion dollar company at some
point in the future. Right now, we're
like a $3 billion company, which is
still huge.
>> It's amazing. Yeah. Congratulations.
>> Thank you. But it's just not not
quitting. I think a big part of it, I
mean, you know, people talk about it all
the time. Just show up every day.
>> Yeah.
>> Just showing up is a is a big
differentiator. Most people don't you
know it's things are hard and life is
full of easy things like you know you
can spend four hours on TikTok be
endlessly entertained right
>> um so that's one on marketing there are
a few few things I could say here one is
launch launch launch just keep launching
go launch
>> iterate or
>> even the same product
>> uh like m make another uh
>> another tweak
>> another tweak show it in a different
way. Iterate on your messaging. Do
another video. Uh try to reach out to
influencers to partner with them.
>> Podcast.
I launched it three or four different
times with different messaging and
different things.
>> Interesting. So the first three times
didn't work.
>> Uh first few times it didn't work. Uh I
think when we got on Hacker News the
first time, uh it was when I said uh you
can try all these different languages
and I listed the languages. Try Python,
Ruby. That was before AI. Uh, and that
was a hit because of the because of the
title change. And so again, it's grit,
relentless resourcefulness, and just
iteration, iteration, iteration.
>> Okay. What are your top three favorite
AI apps?
>> Of course,
>> yeah, we'll leave that aside.
>> Uh, Plexity, you know, I just like going
to Google and spending five minutes
clicking on links. I can just get it
really fast with Plexity. I like to do
deep research with the perplexity. So
that's something I can't live without
without uh chat. Um I go to perplexity
when it's like more research. I want
something from the web. Chatip when I'm
like brainstorming and and Claude and
the other ones too. Um and let's see
>> give me something specific like I know
for a specific problem if you use
anything maybe build your own AI agents
>> like naming uh like naming products.
>> Yeah. Nameless or what do you use?
>> No I I I'm using chat.
>> Oh are you using I like to prompt right.
I like to prompt it and I like to kind
of start different.
>> This is how you you kind of build
differently because you like prompting.
Uh so you just use chat GP for basically
anything because you can prompt it.
>> No, I I sometimes build rapid apps as
well for certain things.
>> Oh, what did you what did you build for
yourself?
>> Well, recently uh do you know Kindle
Scribe?
>> So you know Amazon's new notebook thing.
It has a web browser and sometimes I
don't want to use my phone. My phone's
somewhere else. I'm on my Kindle
reading. I want to look something up.
>> I try to open chat. It actually doesn't
render because the e in browser kind of
is like a very old school browser. So I
built a chatgbt that doesn't have any
JavaScript.
>> Uh that's very
>> and it took like an hour with replet to
to build. So I'm often spinning up these
small tools. Anytime I find that's the
thing about replet it becomes addictive
once you know that you can make certain
pieces of software you'll immediately
see a problem. It's like oh that shaped
like a problem I could solve.
>> Yeah. You mentioned hard moments. Talk
to me about the hardest moment building
this.
>> Oh man. Um, I mean there's a bit of
recency bias to this, but last year we
did a we did a layoff and replet
culture, you know, you'll get it from
from working walking around is is very
positive. Uh, people really like each
other here. Uh, you know, you ask a lot
of people why you're here. Some will
tell you the technology, the mission. A
lot of people will tell you the people.
They really enjoy working with the with
the people. And so it was very
heartbreaking to have to cut the team
because the business wasn't doing well
before we launched Replet agents. We
were in this very awkward place, you
know, that's a marketing observation
where we weren't good enough for the
senior engineer and we weren't good
enough for people like you. It wasn't
easy enough. We're in the middle. So you
learn how to code, use Rep, but then you
graduate off of it. Uh and so that that
we had to add more platform features
like all the databases and things we
added but also we had to make it easier
so we can have access to a larger group
of people uh such as yourself. But at
the time we we had 130 employees were
burning money like crazy and we had to
lay off the team and we had just
actually come to this office and this
office is huge
because I was so optimistic about our
future. I knew that AI is going to be
really big. I knew we're building the
right thing, but we came here, we were
burning all this money, and then we just
had to do the layoff, and we we we cut
the team. And I think we we cut 30 40%
of the team.
>> But then a lot of people started leaving
because well, the office is like empty.
It was like really dark place.
>> Was that when you were making like 2
million a year revenue? 2024. Last year.
>> Last year. Um and you you walk around
here, it's very gloomy. No, no one's
really happy. I used to come here. I was
like, I can't wait to go home.
>> Wow.
>> And I think anyone most people in in our
place at the time would just call it
quits and try to sell a company and do
something like that. But instead, the
people that are working on Asian, we
motivated them. We told them this is we
think this is the thing that's going to
work. And we told them, look, if this
doesn't work,
there's no future and we have to make
this work. And so the core team that was
working on an agent, everyone stayed and
worked 12 14 hour days. And um
>> and you got to 144 million.
>> Yes. In less than a year.
>> I heard this story that uh Peter Teal
passed on investing, but then you sent
him your graph. Did they ever reply?
>> He didn't reply.
>> Never. Peter Teal invested in our series
B round in 2021. But then I went to
pitch him in 2022 or 23 just before Chad
GPT. I was trying to tell him, hey, uh,
AI is very important. It's going to
change the nature of coding and
programming. And he said, you know,
Peter is very skeptical of buzzwords and
he's known to be a contrarian. So he
doesn't like anything that's popular.
And so he was like, when you're saying
AI, it's meaningless. It's almost like
saying computers. uh you know don't come
here with these buzzwords and he
basically said I was just engaging in
hype uh you know we had raised at a big
valuation I'm trying to justify that
valuation and the entire meeting I'm
trying to tell him hey just like look at
the demo and he wouldn't look at the
demo and then I remember four months
later uh I saw him on TV talking about
chat and saying oh it's actually a
fundamental innovation I was like I
tried to tell you
>> told you
>> um and um you know to his credit, he
changed his opinion and they in uh
Fanders Fund invested a big amount in
Cognition, which is another agent uh
coding company. Uh but I did send him an
email saying after they in invested in
Cognition and told told him, well, you
know, I have a lot of respect for you
and that conversation was was actually
very hard to take in because I I felt
like I was doing something wrong. Uh,
but I hope you can see that I at that
moment I saw the future where things
were headed.
>> And I'm glad you pushed further and
built whatever you built. Right. Because
it's so demotivating to hear things like
that from people who are super respected
and super smart.
>> Exactly. It's it's both demotivating but
can be motivating. It's about how you
frame it. Right. I've become one where
I'm actually more motivated to prove
people doubters wrong.
haters, doubters,
>> transform that energy into into changing
the world.
>> It's like there's nothing better than
having a lot of doubters and people
naysayers and actually proving them
wrong. It It's a great feeling and I
recommend it to everyone. I re I wish
for all the entrepreneurs
I wish that you're going to have a lot
of doubters because then when you
succeed that's when that's when the
feeling comes in. Yes. I mean if you if
you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs and
you say what is meaningful about your
life what and they say the money is cool
you know money does change your life and
and it allows you more time to and more
resources to build and do more things
but the things that a lot of
entrepreneur kind of come back to is who
they were what they were before they
created this thing they keep remembering
it was like the struggle everyone
doubted me but I persisted did and I
succeeded and that's the best feeling in
the world.
>> Exactly. Let's talk about the future.
You have two small kids and yesterday I
unlocked another AI fear for me because
I stumbled upon an article that said
that recent graduates just graduated
from college, they're struggling to find
their first jobs because there are 15%
less jobs, uh, entry- level jobs, but
30% more applications.
>> Yeah.
>> I'm like, oh my goodness. So, I'm
worrying about myself and I also have to
worry about my kids. What do you think
about your kids' future? What are you
teaching them? Look, I I think there's
deep question about where we're headed
as society. What is Silicon Valley's um
responsibility? What is the
responsibility of the government? And I
think we can have hours discussion on
that. I don't think anyone has a good um
grasp on these problems. But locally,
when I'm thinking about my kids and what
we're going to do in the future, I think
about this idea of being more of a
polymath, right? Like if you think about
you know even before the industrial
revolution the people that are most
memorable uh like Leonardo da Vinci for
example did a lot of things was an
engineer was an artist was all sorts of
things right and the the kind of elite
education used to be about understanding
a lot of things about spending a lot of
time learning about every everything and
I think this is where the education
needs to be headed where the industrial
revolution created a world where humans
are treated like machines. If you think
about corporations or factories,
factories are one big machine and every
individual person kind of doing the
assembly of one thing is a part and I
think it was very dehumanizing and I
think we're going to go back to a to a
moment of time uh where there's a lot
more opportunities for entrepreneurship.
Even when you join a company, you're
you're going to be judged by how much of
a real business impact you're going to
have as opposed to how task oriented you
are.
>> But what what would you say to for
example girls, right? I have two girls
and uh the way a lot of girls are
brought up are like find a job that's
sustainable, find something long-term,
find something that's safe. And you're
saying that everyone is basically needs
to become a generalist and also an
entrepreneur to generate ideas. What
would you say to those women watching?
How do you change your mindset?
>> Well, my wife is a is as is my
co-founder. I think we both uh Haya and
I share background of being
misunderstood and being um uh you know
uh growing up in in a in a culture that
we didn't feel like really fit our way
of of thinking and we were different uh
and so maybe that shaped how how we are
and our attraction to entrepreneurship
and to trying to change how people do
certain things or change the world. I I
think there's a lot that, you know,
culture imbuss on on sort of uh uh
gender roles, but I don't think girls
are fundamentally like sort of
predisposed to to a certain type type of
job. And so I think a lot of it is about
upbringing and what we tell our kids and
how we how we educate them. And so I I
think my advice will apply to to both
genders. I think that teaching them to
be resourceful, you know, actually like
not hiding from them the fact that the
future is very uncertain. We're in a mon
moment of time that's very different.
It's very different from when I grew up
from my when your grandparents grew up
or their grandparents grew up. There was
a lot more certainty about the world
right now. The world is very uncertain
and the way you're going to have to
learn and the way you're going to have
to adapt to this world is going to be
very different. It's going to be very
difficult, but we're here for you and
we're going to try to figure it out
together. How far ahead you think is
time when a solopreneur is going to
build a billion dollar company?
>> Is it a billion dollar in revenue or is
a billion dollar valuation?
>> That's a valuation.
>> Valuation. So, so let's say
>> so 100 million in revenue 10x.
>> Yeah, I'll say 20x. So maybe a 50
million in revenue.
>> Um I don't think it's that far like like
if someone like John Cheney was able to
build a 2 million 2 three million
revenue.
>> It's very niche B2B high tech. I feel
like a 50 million company is a BTOC
company
>> which requires data.
>> Why not? Like he he has these enterprise
seats. He go, you know, who goes into
his companies, you know, he he has a
platform with a lot of content that he's
selling.
>> I I could see it be a $50 million AR
business
>> in the next couple years.
>> In the next few years. Yeah. I don't see
why not. But again, it's not just about
the software. It's about the domain
knowledge that he has.
>> Yeah. I love it. Thank you so much. My
pleasure. It was amazing.
>> Thank you for coming.