How Replit Agent made $1M on day one (then $250M in a year)

0:00 We went from 2.5 to$250 million in one year. Did you say two point five to what? To two hundred fifty. In one year. Did you get audited? The first time you came on this podcast, Replic's revenue was like three million dollars. I feel like I've heard that you guys are close to 500 million in annual revenue now. We're on our way to a billion this year, I'll just say that. He was deadlifting before it's cool. He likes sales before it's cool. You're you he's got range. My guy's got range. The idea of like losing some kind of My competitor. This is like the worst feeling in the world. I'll f call, I'll show up to their office, we'll do whatever we need, and we rarely lose deals. Are there any interesting trends that you're seeing in AI and on the Replic platform? I think for the first time Because the making software is cheaper. You can actually create a multi-million dollar business and not have to raise venture, not have to grow the team a whole lot. Do you think that we are like twelve or something like that away from like the world changing dramatically? I think we are in the singularity. I just Googled it, how many billionaires are under the age of forty. There's Only 70 to one. Really? Of all the people under 40, you are probably in the top 1000 riches ever. Just made his name. Look at that smile. I'm having mixed feelings, Sean.

1:13 I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like a day's off on the road, let's try to get the black. Dude, so the first time you came on this podcast, I'm pretty sure. Replit's revenue was like three million dollars, or five million dollars. Like something Like that.'Cause by the way, this was not ten years ago. This was like

1:34 Two years ago. Yep. You guys are close to Five hundred million in annual revenue now. Is that I mean blink twice if I'm if I'm in the right ballpark. We're on our way to a billion this year, I'll just say that. Oh, on your way to a billion. How could I have missed it? I d I'm unprofessional. I didn't I don't know the exact number. Say the exact jump of like I remember when when I invested it was something like two or three million bucks.

1:56 Yeah, and it stayed two or three million bucks for man for a few years. Uh as we were like navigating what to actually do, we went from two point five to two hundred and fifty million dollars in one year. Ah, that was between twenty four and twenty five. Two point five million. to two hundred fifty million.

2:14 In one year. Did you get audited? Uh we did. We actually passed a PWC audit uh a couple of months ago. That's crazy. And by the way, you know, we're Gross margin positive. Which is you know, something that is rare in the AI industry. But by a good amount, uh as well. And we're very we're very

2:36 precise in how we calculate uh All right. When you grow from almost nothing to a billion in revenue in twenty four months. Like logist there's like all these logistical questions I have.

2:50 Um like what type of relationship do you have to have with your bank? Like did you prepare your bank where you're like Bro, that's the question. How's your banking relationship? Dude, there's so many like logistical questions. Like, for example Uh are you like what are you doing with that cash? And how are you managing spending it and investing it as fast as you're making it? Things like that. Like there's so many logistical questions around literally it's sort of like when uh Pablo Escobar was a drug dealer, he was saying like

3:17 We can't get enough rubber bands for the money. Like we don't know where to like store the money. Like there's these like logistical questions that I'm curious about. You know the theory for For one of the potential creators of Bitcoin. Is that he invented Bitcoin. Because he was making so much money. He didn't know where to keep it.

3:36 There's this uh story uh called The Mastermind about Uh d this guy We I think grew up in uh Rhodesia and now Zimbabwe. And he was a hacker. He was a computer hacker. and he invented a lot of encrypted encrypted technology, very well known guy.

3:56 He ended up getting into Criminal online activities selling drugs online, one of the first to do that. He generated so much Cash. He actually had ships.

4:06 With bullions of gold. just in the international waters, just doing circles. Oh wow. And and so there's a lot of Polaroo, right? Polaro. Polaroo, yeah. Polaroo. And there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that he was he potentially writing Bitcoin because it was like, Oh, I don't know what what to do with this money. Um so we're not there yet. But uh How did Paul the Rue make the money? He was uh he created the first Like delivery online drug store.

4:36 Like do you remember Sean like in the early dot com where like you would get spammy emails where it's like buy Viagra online. Early days, as in yesterday. Yesterday. Early in your morning. I remember that. He uh like kind of pioneered that. Is that right? I mean he was one of the the biggest guys. Like thousands of domain names. He was sending millions of emails a day. He was basically one of the first Spammers like internet marketers. Yeah. And the monetization engine was selling drugs. And and now there are a lot of startups that are doing it. You know, quasi legally. Uh where they have a lot of

5:11 Doc. doctors that are sort of uh approving those prescriptions and things like that. But yeah, he did it fully illegally and was Uh wanted by by the FBI and drug control and uh and DA and all of that. for for many, many years.

5:29 And they caught him. Around the same year that Satoshi disappeared. Around the same time actually that Satoshi disappeared. Going from two million to f now close to a billion in run rate. It's gotta be a bit of a out of body experience for a founder. Walk us through like The interesting parts that are not like the game that's happening on the field, but maybe just

5:48 Of the founder experience. Like Yeah. Dude, we had to figure this out. Dude, we didn't know this. I remember waking up and realizing the chart had jumped 10X, whatever, you know. Give us some of that. Well First of all, I I have such high expectations of myself and my team. that at any given point, whatever progress we made, the question is

6:08 Why haven't we made more? Yeah, full crossing. You're like the Asian pet mom of the five. I am the Asian mom uh of of myself more than anyone else, which is I don't really recommend. It's kind of a miserable way to live. But y y you know, it's it's sort of like I was like, of course we're gonna make this much money, of course the company's gonna grow this much, as it was always the plan, I was always in the cars, that was always the vision. I'm also naturally paranoid.

6:34 And so I was fully expecting it to reverse in any given point. And so it was like how can we make sure this revenue sticky How can we go up market, go to the enterprise? Make sure our customers are getting a great Experience make sure that things that they create is not sloped, it is secure.

6:52 It is we're we're creating trust not just in us, but like in in the whole space, and that's This vibe coding things it's is possible, including doing podcasts like this is not only possible, it's viable to build businesses. Uh and so the first reaction is is adrenaline and like let's get to work. Like this is an opportunity. Like if we had

7:13 sold Or. Failed before we uh you know before the breakout point I would've been you know, probably depressed about it.

7:23 But not as bad as You now Have the wind in your back. And if you fail It is

7:31 Fully on you. You you kind of You've you've lost. Like it's almost like someone passing you the ball, and there's no one else. In front of the the basketball ring and you could dunk, you could do whatever you want. And then and then you somehow do a two shot and fail.

7:48 So that's the feeling, it's incredible pressure. From everyone from the market, from Even investors went from hey, you gotta do other layoff, you gotta cut burn to Go.

8:00 And do it. It's like it's a thrill. Um Success only lasted like You know

8:10 A week or two. And then became the sort of the reality of like how do you keep this motion going? Um and how do you how do you scale it? And the the first thing that starts to break is people when you have A supply and demand

8:25 Unbalance. company started knocking on our door, it's like, Hey, we want to buy this product. Like our our employees are using it. Like how do we get an enterprise deal? And we're like, Yeah, we have one person who does three other things, but also also doing sales. Yeah, they they were like trying to close deals as fast as they can. It was like, Okay, I've never done sales, like how do you actually Do sales. But but there's something about the universe where

8:49 These people land In your In your life. At crucial points, uh, not always, but but sometimes, and we had We had a VP of sales that

9:00 Came to us at the a at a moment when The company was was really in its darkest moment. We were about to do a lay off and And I'm sitting in this meeting room and I'm asking him, like, why do you want to join us? His name is Patrick Purvis. He He had previously uh was a VP of Sales at Zuma Info, exited

9:18 Took took a couple of years to sabbatical, independently wealthy guy. And I was like, look, the company kinda sucks. Like, why do you want to come here? And You're like from my last interview question. Why? And he's like look, I spent the past few years reflecting and want to do something meaningful and your mission of empowering people and democratizing software just seems one of the most important things to do. I was like, Okay, welcome to the team, but it's not it's not we don't ha want anyone for you to sell. All right, guys, here's the thing about side hustles.

9:52 Everyone wants one, but most people overthink about it and they never actually launch anything. But Because of AI, you can go from an idea to your first sale in only seven days. My old company, The Hustle, they just dropped an AI side hustle crash course. So basically what the hustle did was they looked at things that me and Sean and HubSpot CMO Kip Founder, they look at stuff that we said and they broke it all down into simple bite size steps. Which means you're gonna get a guide that gives you everything you need to launch a side hustle without any of the guesswork. So you can get it right now, you can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now back to the show.

10:35 How grim did things get? How low was the bank balance or how many m months did you have left? What was the darkest hour? Yeah, well as you call being the the agent parent, I was also kinda financially responsible. And so we never had like we never was like, Oh, we're weeks away from not making payroll. So when we did the layoff it was more like about extending the runway. But maybe maybe not runway, but like

10:56 You know, founder delusion takes people far. And I think you have it. More than anyone, right?'Cause you were like Ten years you've been working on this thing, right? It wasn't like ten months. You just kept going, soldiering forward. On our last podcast, I remember you said like I think if there's one thing I might be good at like you were just pretty humble about it, be like I think I I guess reflecting, like I can keep pushing the boulder up the hill.

11:19 Yes. For a long time. Like I just have high pain tolerance, I think. That seems like it's been helpful. So maybe it's not the bank balance, but like did the did the doubts or the delusion or the is this ever gonna happen? Yeah, I think the worst part about it is The the the belief that your team have in you, your vision, your leadership.

11:40 And when that goes away, you can see it in their eyes. And that is the most hurtful and depressing uh depressing feeling. And so after we did the layoff, the layoff Is a bubble bursting event. What did you scale down to? From where to where it's like. So we actually wasn't that big. It was like a

11:58 third. So we were like a hundred and twenty went to now to ninety or something like that. And but By the end we were sixty by the in like three months we were sixty. Yeah, and uh so we We lost fifty percent of our team, but most of it.

12:13 was voluntarily. And and the reason is because Suddenly, you know, I've been Uh for years getting in front of everyone and talking about this. Vision.

12:26 uh and and mission And suddenly you just Sounded like lies and sounded like I'm I don't know what I'm doing. And we had also At the same time moved our office from San San Francisco to Faster City. We got a huge office.

12:39 I like really knew that we're gonna We were gonna hand it off and scale, but I was off. off by a few months. So we had already ha gone to this office, and so the office was empty and cold. And

12:53 kinda dark. And so every day I go to work. And just like the mood is super dark. And I I know that at the moment I'm gonna get to to my my desk. Someone's gonna walk over again, they're they're gonna tell me they're quitting. And so every night I've like

13:08 the whatever sleep I got was like okay, who's gonna quit the next day? And it it just That was really draining and For me to

13:19 put on a face and tell everyone that things are gonna be okay was incredibly hard. However There were People. that we're working on Replit Agent. Replit Agent is uh is the breakthrough product that we created. It it actually created a breakthrough in the entire industry because this was remember, this was before Clot Code or anything came out. We showed the world that it was possible to build end to end coding agents.

13:44 And the people inside that team Had almost a secret. We're on the precipice of a of a breakthrough. We were all kind of dog fooding it and playing with it and having a lot of fun with it. So whenever I go to the office, everything's depressing except this one room. Call the war room.

13:59 And I walk into the war room and the mood is intensely different. Everyone is Yeah, super pumped. They know we have created something that's gonna be super valuable. So I had this This uh night and day almost schizophrenic feeling. Uh

14:14 Yeah, large parts of the company and the business totally Lost. Face in me and the company and then a small part. That work.

14:22 totally engrossed on in the possibilities of of AI and what we were inventing. Sam, can I just say Forget the numbers, man. What he just said was like the realest shit someone said on this podcast in a long time. The way you describe that feeling as the founder when you walk into the

14:41 To the office and your shit's like You don't have the hot thing right now. Right. And you've been telling everybody and you could see when they start to lose faith. I I've experienced what you just said. You just like described my childhood trauma as a founder. I didn't even realize I didn't even know until you said those words. I was like, I I have felt that. It's depressing then somebody emails you for like, Hey, can we meet tomorrow? You know you're you know they're about to quit and you're like It just got harder. And I don't have it in me to convince them to stay. Like why would they stay? Why would they stay? Exactly. That thing you just described.

15:15 Is so real. Yeah. And I just want to give you props because I don't think most people ever really talk about what that feels like. And now it's obviously it's great to talk about it now'cause like It didn't just end sadly. About the failures and uh everything that that goes wrong. But the other one is you mentioned investors is Just a broader industry. Um and

15:41 You know, I remember my calendar. You know, MTing and I'm no longer invited to the hot parties. Uh in in many ways when when I go to one it's like oh yeah, Replet. Oh, I remember that thing, you know? And what are you up to now? Yeah, yeah, you're still at it. And our partners will we're not including our logo anymore and That's dirty because it's like you didn't even have to you proactively changed your website. Why'd you do that? Why'd you scrub us?

16:14 Uh and and it if it felt like You know, A big a big part of uh my identity has been About Silicon Valley and it it's about

16:26 I've read everything I could get my hands on every biography. And read about all the different figures from the biggest to the most obscure And I I just felt like the the weight of Silicon Valley on my shoulders because I was backed by the best as well. Like Mark Andreessen, Paul Graham

16:46 Uh you know, David Sachs, you know, all these people are are on our cap captable and I was like Letting all of them down. So

16:55 So so if this was a movie, there's a turning point, right? The montage begins At some point you wake up and You look at the dashboard, something starts to change. You start getting emails. The the the the music picks up. And suddenly things start to move. What was the first move of that, like of that that second act before we hit the the training montage? We st we launched uh Replit internally.

17:16 And I've led four uh employees outside of the core engineering group working on it. And the first time everyone tried it, I I was especially paying attention to non engineers. Are they gonna be able because that was the mission, are we gonna enable them to to be actually successful at using this? And you know Jeff. Jeff is our head of uh partnered partnerships, Jeff Burke. Uh hi and I always take Jeff as like the

17:39 prototypical potential customer. 'Cause like he's a consulting background, he's super sharp. But he can't configure Python to save him li his life, right? So He tried it and I remember put him posting the feedback is like oh this is miserable. I failed, they couldn't like make the simple app.

17:56 The first day, the next day, third day. I think one day when he post it was like Oh, I was able to make this thing. Right. Okay. We got it. I think I think that the product is is ready right now. And it was around August.

18:09 In twenty twenty four. Uh and the team felt they weren't ready. I was like, We gotta launch this. I don't care if it is semi broken if you Get fifty percent of the time get amazing results. It's gonna wow the world. This is the for for the first time.

18:24 An agent can not call can write the code. Debug it. Create a database for you. And deployed to the cloud. It's never been done, even if it is in just like demo shape. And I I was

18:35 One of the habits T I Picked up. During this darkest hour. is playing video games. I hadn't played when I came to the US, I was like a pro gamer back in Jordan. When I came to the US I was like, okay

18:46 I'm gonna focus. I'm gonna be the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. I'm gonna work really hard. I'm gonna, you know, I wanna be. Uh I wanna make a lot of money and it I wanna be f successful. So I'm I just dropped all the hobbies that I had. But I bought a Steam Deck. Because I just wanted something to take my mind off all the depressing stuff.

19:05 They do this thing uh w uh In games it was called early preview, sort of like a beta. But but the intention is that you're getting s a SMI broken thing. But you're expected to kind of give us feedback. I was like, Okay, we're just gonna Release

19:19 An early preview of the product. And we're just gonna call it that. We're gonna say, Hey, don't don't subscribe to this thing because it might be buggy, but if you're already subscribed or you have Your You're okay with Getting buggy software.

19:33 Uh join in. So we In September twenty twenty four, I posted uh a video of me in the office shot on an iPhone. Saying hey, like AI coding is is amazing, generates a lot of code. But so far you've had to do all this other stuff. Today for the first time we're showing you that an AI agent can do the end to end thing. And

19:53 There were a few moments when this tweet started going viral. One of them was Andre Karpathy, who is um you know, head of AI at Tesla, early open AI. uh AI researcher Co tweeted and said, This is the

20:07 A feel the AGI moment. And so That demo Show it. The industry luminaries what AI could do.

20:17 People inside research firms like OpenAyeanthropic. Reach out to us and told us we did not know our models are capable. Of doing that. So that moment was like, Okay, we we have something here and then the revenue first day. made like a million dollars.

20:31 Oh. Second day. Two million dollars. Were you just like hitting hitting refresh constantly? Must be on a call. He's been in his office all day. What's he doing? Yeah, the whole time.

20:44 Uh, but at the same time were just hustling to make the product better. So basically in like two days you made more revenue. Yes. You like beat you beat your your your uh Yeah. Growth. In two days. That's gotta be a crazy feeling.

20:59 Y you know, I I've always heard from other entrepreneurs is that the feeling of product market fed. Is like stepping on a I don't know who said this, it's like stepping on a landmine. And I I knew that we didn't have it for a long time. That's why pivot, pivot, pivot pivot. And then that felt like Stepping on a on a line, man. I was like, Okay, we got it, now we go from there.

21:21 All right, let's take a quick break and I got a question for you. When a buyer asks AI for a solution like yours, does your business come up? Most companies have no idea. And by the time they found out, they've already lost the deal to another company that did. HubSpot has AEO, which helps you show up in the moments when the right buyers are looking for a company like yours before the first click, before they fill in the form. That is the moment. HubSpot AEO is built for. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Same, I don't know if you've ever met him when you came to my office. There was this young guy who used to work out of our office. Uh, Furcon had basically like adopted these kids. They were on they were on the east coast.

21:57 He they wanted to come to Silicon Valley, they didn't have money, he's like Here's some money. Yeah. They're like, is this an investment? He's like, No, this is money. You just have this in your account. And you come sleep on my couch and you work out of my office and like get get going. And so these two young guys, they were probably twenty years old, twenty one years old, they were working out of our office.

22:13 And they had like They were trying to do an early version of like rent. GPUs in the cloud. So they realize these this was before the AI boom though. So like It was for machine learning or like you want to do like a

22:25 Just like some research maybe, but this was before everything kicked off. But they had seen that like all the crypers had all these GPUs. That were unused. And so they have post it on a crypto mining suburb and the Thousands of people showed up right away, were ready, there were calls.

22:40 All the all the stuff. And then They were trying to get the demand side, but the demand wasn't there. And I was like, hey, this is a great idea. Like in theory, it's a great idea. Like why are you guys like pivoting? Like why are you guys worried about these other ideas? And he goes, When we did that first thing, it was like we stepped on a landmine.

22:55 And so now I kinda know that's what's possible. So like, yeah, all these little signals, I know they're not real signals. And I in this case twenty twenty one years old. And I'm supposed to like be mentoring him and I walk back to my desk being like I've never felt that. And I realized like I'd been doing startups for six, seven years. I had never felt Well, they were lucky enough to stumble into on the first day. And and you know, you don't even know what you're looking for had you never felt. It's like love. It's like

23:20 Am I in love? Maybe I'm in love. Maybe this is it. And then you feel it and you're like, Oh all that That other stuff wasn't that. This is the thing. And I feel like for entrepreneurs it's one of the hardest things. But I sort of it's almost bad to talk about that. Not talk about it, but I don't think you should expect that because I think that most great companies Have never had that.

23:38 If you look at the subset of companies, most don't work. Some work Okay. A handful work a little bit better, and then a very small percentage are amazing. And even amongst the amazing ones. What they're describing, what you guys are describing, they don't feel that. Like for example, we were talking about like Mars candy the other day. Like that's been around for a hundred and fifty years. And more likely than not, it was like

23:58 A grind, a grind. This year it was not a grind. It kinda did pretty good, but this year it was kind of a grind. You know what I mean? Like there was never like this moment where it's like, We just grew. To a billion in revenue from two million in thir you know, in twenty four months. I think you're right. A, it doesn't happen right away, even for you, even though it happened super fast. It's like ten years in. But there is a difference between push and pull. And I think the the the companies I've seen, which is a very small handful that actually have product market fit.

24:22 It starts to feel like pull. In fact, Emmet, the CEO of Twitch, I remember asking him You did just in TV, then you guys pivoted to Twitch, wasn't obvious right away, and he basically said Product market fit's the main thing that matters because basically you feel like you're pushing a boulder up a hill every day. And then at some point you kinda wake up and you realize It's like you didn't you reached your hands out, but the boulder had already moved.

24:43 And now you have to start running to catch up to it? And uh suddenly the whole game feels like a sprint catching up to the boulder going down the hill. It takes time, but there is a difference between like You are manually pushing the crank versus it starts to get pulled by the market. Just offered like a distinction between the different types of businesses.

25:00 There are, you know, Clay Christians R I P passed away recently. Harvard Business School Professor uh came up with this concept of disruption, right? Disruption became sort of a meme, but it's actually An economics theory almost.

25:14 About Technology and he talks about sustaining technology versus disruptive technology. You can be innovative on a sustained sustained curve. You can make things criminally better. But there are things that are disruptive. And those are like moment of time.

25:29 Businesses. or technologies. That Create this explosion of demand. Because for the first time it became possible.

25:39 Right. So if you if you're more scandy There was a lot of other candy. Maybe you're you're really good in your recipe, you're really good in your execution. Most businesses are trying to compete in a More or less zero sum market.

25:52 So they trying to capture uh market from existing demand. On existing competitors, right? Now there are uh uh market creation moments and I think for Raplet this was a market creation moment.

26:06 And most Internet, right? P Pal Facebook. You know, uh Google The the reason you have this explosive growth is like you just invented something new.

26:18 And and then everyone's rushing because this capability didn't exist before. And there's no other uh alternative. By the way. That's a really good point. D then do you think that the right move for someone building a company is good? Okay, so on one hand you could say, Well just have patience and like just keep going, keep going, keep going and with this you know, maybe the same thing. Um

26:38 Whereas the other hand Would it be like pivot just like the twenty year old kids until you find that that that rock rolling down the mountain. I mean it it depends what you're trying to build. Are you innovating something new? Are you creating something that wasn't really possible?

26:55 Or are you entering a business where you're like, Okay, I know the he you've done y the business plan, right? Yeah Here's here's what the market size is. Here's how how much we're gonna capture from it. Here's how we're gonna be better than competition. If that's the case, you're gonna slog And maybe every now and then you have some kind of innovation or some kind of breakthrough. that that gets you a bit of a jump over competitors.

27:18 But prepare yourself to be to be very good at execution, build an amazing team, build amazing processes, just be very good at the day to day execution to out compete your competitors. If you're a young guy trying to Make Something that

27:34 didn't exist before. Or You know, like like Sean and and s some of the guys in social media. They're trying to create a new, you know, clubhouse or uh, you know, some kind of thing that I I didn't know I would enjoy talking to people

27:50 you know, taking a walk on my earbuds. This is just like didn't didn't occur to me. So if you're inventing something like that, you will you know The the point is pivot, poot, pivot until it hits. Because if it's not hitting, you're not hitting on some human nature or element that you're finding, or you're like finding a secret in the universe almost.

28:11 You're a fun case study. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the reasons it's fun to talk to you is not only your business is interesting and you're interesting as a founder, but you're also a bit of a polymath. Like we were talking at the beginning of this about like The Paul LaRue, like Bitcoin. I feel like you know you have like a bunch of these like Little rabbit holes that you've gone down. I'm curious, like

28:31 What are those rabbit holes today? I've seen the original Replit deck and this was what, twenty fourteen? Twenty fifteen? Something like that? Yeah. It's like, bro, you called your shot. Babe Ruth style? So so read read this thing out. What was the master plan? So Growth by building tools. How about the fact that in your deck you have a slide called Master Plan? So growing the product by building tools for education is actually people learning how to code.

28:57 And then build a simple network and AI assisted interface that blurs the distinction between learning and building. That that's essentially what repleta is today, like you're learning how to make software. But you need to you don't need to sit down and learn how to code. You're just like vibe coding and it's just happening as you go and you're kind of picking up these skills. And then evolve the platform into a place where people come to learn, build, explore, and host applications.

29:22 So not only is it the development environment But the hosting of the applications And the hosting of the application I think I should have had another point because that unlocks the next step, which we're getting into now, which is monetization of those applications.

29:37 Uh scaling of those applications. Right now if you go to Replica, you build something, you can just say Monetize it. And it will like integrate Stripe for you and all of that. And pretty soon you should be able to say market it. And I'll like how big are the biggest

29:51 apps that are built on Replit. Like are we talking guys are making hundreds of thousands of dollars, set low seven figures? Like has anybody really broken out that are just they were made on Replit and they still run on Replit. Th this this one is a little uh controversial, but Medvi, the billion dollar Uh One person business covered by the New York Times.

30:12 Basically, uh they they were a company that sold what? GLP one, and the reason it's controversial is because people don't like their marketing practices. The entrepreneur, I think, already fixed a lot of these issues that people were reacting to. But um he runs a big part of Uh Rapplet a big part of uh his talk on on Raplet. And it it's been uh he says it's been

30:32 A crucial part of their growth because it's not only just the core application. But the automations he's paying up day to day. So for example, he's working with a vendor and every day he does something manual. Like a marketing vendor. It's like okay, I'm gonna build this website to you, you go and you speak to an agent, the agent will give you all the information you need.

30:48 Or the agent will give you the assets. So he'll he'll build interfaces. for all the different parts of the business, all the back office stuff of the business. And he's the fastest person that go from idea to front. Even when he was on Twitter going viral, he was like building a game and drop play.

31:04 And he built an experiment where he he said he sent me that experiment where you can scroll aside with your with your with your head. So you can read something without looking at your screen. So I've never seen someone after like spending some time chatting with him. Be so quick to create things. So boom, create that, create that, like automate this, automate that. That's one example. Um there's been

31:25 There's been a lot that, you know, I've spoken about over the years in the past that used to have to migrate off of Replub because the platform was not complete. But now the the platform app is actually complete and you can run uh full business uh on it. We have a lot of venture back companies Uh, such as uh Spellbook, I think it's a multi hundred million dollar company started on on Raplaid. Magic School, I think uh five hundred million dollar business started roplet.

31:51 In many others. More recently, the since Replica, there hasn't been enough time for them to really hit Massive scale, but there's a lot of multi million dollar businesses For example, uh recently I think they just did a did around, but there's a company that's building Influencer marketing for local

32:07 restaurants. Local shops. So they'll you know, you're a local restaurant, you want someone to cover your restaurant, you go to the platform, you hire an influencer, they actually physically walk to your restaurant, eat there, take a tick tock, whatever because Yeah, most people Especially Gen Z. They actually don't go to Google Maps anymore. If you ask the Gen Z oh let's let's find a restaurant, they're like go to TikTok on shit.

32:26 And so that that's already over a hundred uh thousand ARR like few few weeks in. What's that one called? Do you know the name? Uh Try Nearby. Dude, I I still go to Yelp and my young employees were like call me Gray Bush. They're like, You're so old, man. Like what are you doing? Do you look do you open the yellow pages and f call'em when you want to order food? I was like, uh why not Yelp? Uh someone move the sundial. It's it's surprising to me that the Google search uh queries keep going up. They just broke records. The revenue and search keeps going up, but But but yes, w people in my You know, people around me, they're they're not using Google as much.

33:05 Are there um like any cool trends that you're seeing? Like, you know, we have um Are uh we have like a subset of like young young like eighteen, nineteen year old kids who listen to M FM and they like want to hear business ideas. Yeah. Are there in any interesting trends that you're seeing? Yeah In AI and on the repli platform where you're like Man, there's all these like cool like

33:25 one or five or ten million dollar businesses that could be created. Yes. Silicon Valley have always approached problems with like Hyper scale in mind. And I think for the first time because the making software is cheaper, you can actually Create a multi million dollar business.

33:41 not have to raise venture not have to grow the team a whole lot So uh local style businesses is is is very interesting. Um there's a guy in England that I think he's well on his way. He's a hundred thousand already in run rate, he's well on his way to a million. He uh is building software for ice rink.

34:00 Management. So skating rings and and all that. I think that you go around your y in your life and there's A lot of things that are just not computerized that. Not there's no software running it. So that that would be my first

34:14 Approach. Uh, my first business was building software for Internet cafes and and line gaming. And so that's always been A great place to start. You remind me of uh in Paul Graham's one of his essays about how to get startup ideas, he says uh

34:30 The easiest way to get startup ideas is to s like to if you want to find the startup idea of the future. Simply live in the future and then build what doesn't exist? Yeah. Okay, what the hell does that mean? When Zuckerberg built Facebook, it's not because he was a normal guy. Thinking.

34:46 What would the next what would the future look like? It's like no, he was on computers all day. His social life was online. Right. The problem was he only had certain tools available. So to h t for him The idea of social like social networking online was c not just like possible, it was completely normal. It was his preferred medium to actually exist in and you could just like lean into that rather than thinking you're the oddball.

35:09 And I I think you know that that's sort of interesting'cause you know, you built Replit. Partly because you grew up going to these internet cafes in Jordan. And every time you'd come, you'd be on a different computer. So you kinda needed something that lived in the cloud. And so you you know, for you what was completely normal uh was odd to other people. So I think that's the the a trick with startup ideas, right? Is to sort of Lean into Maybe the things you do that are a little bit

35:32 more than normal or a little bit odd. And then just say like What would make my experience doing this odd thing a little bit better. You know, another another one I would say is being lazy. In programming there's this old saying that laziness is a is a is a virtue.

35:47 Uh and the idea is to to automate a lot of things. But now everyone is a programmer, essentially. So you know, part of the reason why I made Replet is because I don't wanna keep setting up the freaking IDE every time. And so You know, go about your life with this laziness attitude. What are the kind of things that are s so annoying that you have to keep doing over and over again? There's probably a million, maybe a billion people that feel the same way and perhaps you can make a piece of software

36:13 To automate that and more important than ever. lazy mindset of viewing things through the lens of automation is very important during uh with AI because AI is truly like Yeah, we have a magic automation machine.

36:29 So not only you'll optimize your life, you'll become uh you know, uh you'll become a lot more productive, but you might stumble on something that a lot of other people would want. This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least three million dollars a year in revenue. Because around this point, that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company. And you realize two things. One, you've done something great.

36:53 But you're still a long way from your final destination. And two, you look around and you realize I am all alone. I've outrun my peers. Which means you're now making ten million dollar decisions alone by yourself. And that is when mediocrity can creep in. My company Hampton, we solved this problem by giving a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs.

37:14 We're gonna hold you accountable. Call you out on your nonsense and help show you the way. Because the fact is is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there. And they're hard to find. And if you can find them

37:27 It's hard to have this explicit time, this explicit place where you sit down where the rules are clear that we are here to help each other and to be one another's board of directors. The biggest risk is not failing. You have a company and it's working. You're gonna be fine. But the biggest risk is waking up ten years from now and saying, Shit. I barely grew in business and in life. And for people like you who are ambitious, wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid.

37:52 We have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members and I know this stuff actually works, whether you work with Hampton or you get your own group on your own. But having a group like this, a group of people who you meet with in real life once a month It can change your life. It changed mine and I know it will change yours. So check it out. joinhampton.com Hey, can you

38:13 G give me give me your opinion on this. We were kinda joking, kinda not joking uh a while back with the guests and we were like it's sort of like We were asking ourselves, we're like Is are we like in uh December of two thousand and nineteen, where we're just like three months away from like Covid happening and like the and like America shutting down and we're just like Oh, yeah, I heard there's this virus in China, but whatever, no big deal. You know, are we sort of like that with AI where it's like, well, you know, like um Square maybe laid off a lot of people, but like that's probably not gonna happen anymore.

38:43 Uh like do you think that we are like months or uh twelve months or something like that away from like the world changing dramatically? I I think we are in the singularity. Like the you know, the original idea of a singularity, I think Werner Vinge, one of the early computer pioneers and uh and and sci fi authors. talked about the singularity, borrowed this concept from physics.

39:08 In physics it's like the um is the uh black hole. And you're i anything that happens after the block hole black hole is undefined. So we actually don't know what has it's like not knowable. So anything that is beyond

39:25 Formula for Because it's literally undefined. You know a lot of the early AI thinkers talked about this moment of singularity. Where is it incredibly hard. To predict.

39:36 What happens after because the pace of in innovation It's not only fast, it is It already is. Meaning meaning it is. Uh the second derivative is exponential.

39:49 And so I think this is the moment we're in where You know, in twenty two Um we got GPT uh For the time.

39:59 And you know, GPT two had come out in twenty nineteen, GPT three in twenty twenty. So every two years we're getting a model Uh and now Feels like every few weeks we're getting a model. In it in the there these fundamental Capability shi uh shifts that happen either in autonomy

40:19 or cyber security or computer use or what have you. In every one of those capability shifts. have a lot of downstream applications that yet to need to be discovered. We haven't actually productized it yet. So it's almost like you get a bundle of energy.

40:33 That's how I think of models. They're there. Their potential energy. Dad. Entrepreneurs need to go figure out How to

40:42 create make them into products, right? And this is why it's an explosive time for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. Is because we have this potential energy that needs to be harnessed. Now The reason why there's like a delay. Is because we have this capability overhang. The world will change but

40:58 It's really hard to know whether I I can't tell you in twelve months like All entry level jobs will be gone. Well, what if you had to make a bet? My bet would be that

41:08 I don't Think unemployment numbers will move a whole lot. Perhaps they'll Marginally increase. I think Dario, the CO of Anthropic, said we're gonna get to twenty percent unemployment or something like that. I don't know if

41:20 I'm misquoting him, but he said all the time. He's a Doomer, basically, though. He's on the far end. Yeah. Think we're uh because I w what I'm seeing from our customers There we have some customers that automate a lot of things in the laying off some people. We have other customers that automate a lot of things make more revenue.

41:36 I want to hire more people to automate more things and create more products. And so Net net, I think. There's gonna be a lot of new AI companies, a lot of companies that make use of AI and wanna hire more people. So net net I think the unemployment question I think will probably be

41:53 Be neutral. How do you think this sort of game of thrones? uh AI war plays out. Right. You know

42:02 the king of the north, you got Elon up there. He's he's the he's trying to come down. You got the it's open AI kingdom over here. Google You know, they were in denial, but now they're here, you know, they're they're they're making it happen. What do you think how do you think this plays out?

42:17 I I like I like business theory. Uh it's not always useful, but it often is is useful. Um Hamilton Hamler wrote wrote this book called The Seven Powers. And everyone took a valley talks about moats. Seven powers is the theory of moods. The mode of these LMs

42:36 Is the technology fundamentally commoditizable, right? Like It seems to be very easy to replace these models. Like, you know, a lot of Yeah, uh developers every day, professional developers are switching between these models. In some cases in if you're in cursor it's like one literally one click away to switch to the to the next model.

42:58 And I think a lot of the fighting has to do with this fact that It is hard to find a way. to Zoom heads.

43:09 too far ahead of the competition. You're always sort of neck and neck. competing with with others, so you might want to try to block them in s in different ways, whether it's in the in the court or with the government or regulations or or things like that. Whereas I think in the past You could if if If you're Microsoft and you achieve

43:32 This dominance on the PC, it's really hard to unseat you. Right. And uh and so there's uh there's this natural monopolies that used to Emerge. Yeah, and they're protected by by certain modes, such as network facts. Economies of scale. We haven't seen any of those modes sort of emerge.

43:51 From these foundation. model companies It's a my Hypothesis is that Maybe the one natural moat is capital.

44:00 You need Not just one time capital to enter the market. You need continuous capital. to train the current model, the next generation model, the next generation model. And then you need enough install based on revenue to cover your costs. But that is not enough

44:15 mode to keep the b other big players away. So you can imagine All the big companies w have a fighting chance and all the big governments can also participate in this. And maybe China as a As a place where you can't really distinguish between Country and company.

44:31 And maybe the country's gonna be Doing to to the Um foundation model market what they did to the E V market, well they'll subsidize the hell out of it in order to have a competing chance and maybe even destroy the market.

44:44 globally by subsidizing it. All of this to say is I think it is Good for entrepreneurs. Because if if we ended up with a monopoly or s just oligopoly and you're building on top of it. It is actually very hard to build a successful

44:59 Business. Uh because like you said, they'll they'll come for you. But if it ends up being Uh a technology that's kind of easier to replace. I mean there there is a place for a lot of entrepreneurs to participate. Sean, remember your you were telling that story about um the uh anthropic CEO and he was like, Yeah, things are booming.

45:17 But like in a weird way, I feel like I'm always like a few months or a few quarters away from running out of money because we're growing so fast we have to buy uh inventory. Uh GPT Us. Are you in a similar position where Even though you're making all this money, you're having to spend more and more and more and Is profitability in sight.

45:33 No to the first question. We're not burning uh nearly as much cash as as as foundation companies, model companies. And like, you know, sometime last year profitability was in sight. We had something like Yeah.

45:49 Thirty years of runway or something like that. Um Since then we decided to spend a lot more on um Especially sales and marketing. And my theory on this is or like my thesis is that

46:05 There there are a lot of businesses that will need help adopting this technology and adopting Radly. So we we and also there's this imbalance between supply and demand that I talked about. So I thought okay, we just need to scale the sales team. And so the sales team was like four reps or something like that by the end of last year. I think it's gonna be more than half the company by the end of this year. Uh which is very surprising for me to say'cause I was always like a sort of a tech. Yeah, how's that feel to be around a bunch of uh regional sales managers? I I

46:34 Love it. I am a sales bro I am a sales bro I think I'm weird as far as Attack nerds. Well why do you love it? This is actually really uh we're we laugh because it's funny, but this is actually quite interesting. He was deadlifting before it's cool. He likes sales before it's cool. You're you he's got range. My guy's got range. Well, why do you like it? Because I used to hate salespeople. Then I realized that salespeople like all these whining and dining, it actually works and they do create demand. Yeah.

47:05 Yeah, and they and I'm like oh okay, you serve a purpose. It's more of a Contact sports. Uh than consumer. Like consumer you Do something and then you do an A B test and maybe

47:20 Two weeks later you find out whether it worked or not and there's this huge delay. And there's so many things outside of your control. There's like hype in the market that affects you. Someone writes about you, you go viral and then you die down, or It's it's like there's a there's almost like the weather. You can't really control a lot of it. Sales is is much more, like I said, contact support. Like I can apply

47:43 Effort. And and And whether we get the win or not. is somewhat much more within our control, and so If I hear like some kind of deal is at risk.

47:54 It activates me so much because the idea of like losing to some kind of comeback competitor This is like the worst villain in the world. call whoever I need to call. I'll show up to their office. We'll do whatever we need. Uh and we rarely lose deals.

48:11 In the few times there was like a potential of losing a deal was just pulled out all the punches and the company's just 'Cause hi and I, you know, hi my co friend or my wife is also a hybrid competitor. She also lifts and does boxing and all that. Uh I I like built a culture that's incredibly competitive. And so we we get activated by this, and then when we win, it just feels good. It's very real. It's like very different than seeing a number go up later. Wait, so yeah. I I had heard about this. Your wife is your partner.

48:39 Or business partner. That's pretty That's pretty cool, I think. I mean it's cool when it's cool. How uh how's that? I think that Having

48:56 Raplet being so hard. As hard as it It is. And it was If we weren't in it together, I think it would have definitely driven a wage

49:06 uh wedge between us because Uh you're both entrepreneurs. You know how much of your life energy Start up stake. Like They literally take your vitality. You you age.

49:18 I had hair when we started the company. Yeah. Yeah, in life you have limited amount of energy and you direct it towards Um, your spouse, your kids, your work, you know, things like that. But then if something is like the sucking energy, the sucking everything, time and energy. Eventually it'll just stra strain your relationships. And I I

49:40 I you know, I for a long time, like a lot of my friends just didn't hear from me. Like I kind of disappeared in many ways, and still in many ways, you know, I I would love to spend more time kind of Checking in with friends and keeping uh c connections alive. But the fact that we're in it together I think made our relationship stronger because those dark talking about it. And having all the the the shares in the family. I mean, that is pretty cool. That's cool too. No, I mean I'm not being funny. That's cool. I think um Sean used to work with this guy, Michael Birch, and him and his wife started a company and they sold it for like, I don't know, six or eight hundred million dollars and it was So it was like their family like

50:16 You know, got two times. uh rewarded. But you have to be careful. Uh a few things. Uh you have to be careful not to like make these mission decisions on the weekend and show up and was like, hey Decision done. Uh. Have to be careful not to

50:31 bring, you know, you the tone you bring it home to to to the office. Don't make it awkward around other people. It's very easy to make it awkward around other people. You have to Work harder. to ensure that this is meritocracy because You know, I come uh from a world that is less meritocratic, that is more based on who you know and what you know and

50:55 And family business are very common in that world. The problem with them is that people join the business and they expect if they're not part of the family they're not really gonna The work is not gonna matter as much, right? And so You have to

51:08 Uh be very clear about performance and Set high expectations for yourselves and be communicative about it, uh and and and also always open to the potential that, you know, there are other people that are better at at at running the company than you are. You said you read a ton of biographies and uh especially with this kind of shift into sales mode and being like, Oh, I get to play full contact startup. This is amazing.

51:34 Who are the founders that either most resonate with you in their style or you you appre you respect something about them or a story that you you find yourself retelling a bunch or telling yourself, telling your team. That's been kind of inspirational for you. I think Ben Harwood's and like the hard things about hard things. Is a is a very good book and inspiration for

51:57 Especially like a more sales driven uh business. That's a good one. I I read it a while back and It has a lot of Really interesting stories about doing deals and losing deals and hiring salespeople.

52:11 And then, you know, after I watched Pirates of Silicon Valley started learning about Bill Gates, this is another Really good. Old school, very unknown. a biography hard drive. It's like in the nineties about Bill Gates. After reading about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and these guys, I just knew that I wanted to be part of that part of Silicon Valley. Just seems the most exciting thing possible. You can have the most

52:34 uh impact and That is a blessing because I look at a lot of my friends and They're now almost forty and they really haven't found the thing that they wanna get after. And I think it creates this crisis of meaning and And a lot of people

52:50 I I'm also a big fan of um Visualization. There was a period of time where There was a lot of like Pseudoscientific stuff of documentaries coming out. There was one called What the Bleep Do We Know.

53:05 It's like about quantum physics and visualization. Like if you put the vibration out, the the universe will reward you. I kind of believe that. Uh And I I can't really disprove it, but Um you know, I w I wanted to be on Rogan's show. I was like, you know, I've d uh done

53:27 I've done all these shows, uh, done Tucker's show, My First Million, all these shows. It was like I wanna be a Rogan. Ha ha ha. And I was a big dog. The big guy. I'm sick of the J Vs. No, yeah, I mean you guys are amazing, but how do you

53:41 How do you even get on Rogan? I started like Just sort of visualizing it. I was like, what would I talk about? What would I tell him? How would the interaction be? And things like that. A few weeks later. Uh I get a message from two people.

53:58 Mark Andreessen and and Lex Friedman, and they both asked me the same question. Hey, I have a friend. whose daughter is answering a Entrepreneurship competition and once her app Wants to make an app and Do do you know anyone who can help her or like can you help her?

54:16 It's like that's odd. And I remember v replying to Lex Freeman, then he he goes to me and then replied to Mark And It's really odd. I s I got the same message from Lex who's this person. It's like yeah, I you know, it's it's Joe Rogan, it's his uh daughter. And

54:32 I said, you know, uh I I'd like to help her, like I'll freaking build that up for her. Introduce me. So introduce me to Rogan, Rogan introduced me to his daughter. And I I say let's let's get on a Zoom. I get on a Zoom call and it's like four high school girls. And they're like they're very bright. They have a business idea.

54:50 to connect Gen Z local uh Gen Z to local businesses uh for jobs. And they're like, You know, I'm gonna teach you how to make applications and you're gonna make it. And so I open Raplet and like here's Rapplit. Here's what you do. You just you know type in your prompt and Let's check in next week. Next week we we check in and they already made like half the app. And by the way, Rapplit Asian was early on.

55:14 It was still running into some problems. So every now and then I'll jump in and like help them with s with one thing, but for them like ninety five percent of it, they built it themselves. And I'm I'm always of the belief of like just pro you cr provide value. And like just don't ask for anything in return. It wasn't like okay, I'm I'm I'm doing this to get on the show. I think that would be the bad mindset to To to have. I kept mentoring her And I I give her advice on how to win the competition. It's like look, no one

55:41 None of your peers will have an app. You're the only one that's gonna have an app. Everyone will have slideshows. Before you do the pitch, Go send the app to all the judges. And that way they'll know you're the only one that that that actually went above and beyond. And they actually they present it and they win the competition.

55:57 By the way, Joe, I think Might have thought I am some kind of contractor. Like he didn't know I didn't introduce myself and So I sent Joe a nice letter and I told him uh nice message and told him look I'm you know Very very bright daughter. Um so glad I I could be part of this.

56:13 I I would love just five minutes of your time to kind of introduce myself and my story. And so uh he's like okay. Um I'll uh Uh, you know, I'll call you tomorrow or whatever. Tomorrow comes, he didn't call me.

56:27 And then uh text them, I didn't get hear back. So I I gently t told his daughter I was like I would just like a Phone call with your dad. If it's like Okay, and then the phone rings and it's your again and it's like

56:41 About ninety seconds in We're talking about MMA. I'm like you're kind of a you're you're you're you. You're not like the same guy. But Uh on the on the call, I I just

56:57 It was like um I just told him about myself. A lot of pressure to do that quick, right? Yes. Yes. Uh you have to be calm. I I'm actually The calmest

57:08 Moments. And I I think I could learn just from gaming. I slow I slow down a lot under pressure. Like when pressure comes Yeah to s uh gaming, uh racing

57:22 Uh any time there's like incredible pressure and any mistake might kill you. In this case, not literally kill you, but like kill your chances. Actually I experienced time slow down. And I think you can train this in yourself. And I think a lot of race drivers talk about this. Weightlifting is a great place to practice this. Yeah. Because it's low stakes, but like

57:42 At the end of a s the set. Is when you're sh it's you're you're at the m most fatigue. Maybe you're shaking, maybe you don't know if you could do it. What most people do is they rush to finish. And they sacrificed form, and basically if you could practice poise.

57:56 In the last few Reps. You're doing that now every day in the gym. It's like y you can get a lot of reps and practice in the gym as a metaphor for life, but you can't get that you can't simulate that pressure. In other ways. You know, your body kinda thinks dying. Yes. When you're when you're under the under the weights and it's you're shaking and you don't know what to do. So it's your body can simulate pressure that way.

58:17 There's so many lessons from from powerlifting. Uh you can apply. Actually one day uh I was at at the gym in San Francisco and I saw Brian Cheske. Lifting weights. It's hugely jacked. And I remember he's a former bodybuilding. I I struck up a conversation with him about powerlifting and and startups. Uh that was that was a lot of fun. Actually I've had visualization and that feeling of

58:41 Oh I want this thing to happen. And then that happened like Way too many times. And It doesn't always happen in podcasts, but I think this is what's on my mind right now. Even even the interview I did with Tucker

58:54 Like I you know. I remember Being a big fan of Tucker during the lockdowns when like nothing made sense in the world. And like I had this anger in me. '

59:03 You know, I came to the United States for freedom. And like I feel like I can't see on m what's on my mind. I can't leave my house. I have to like put a muzzle in my mouth and I have to g take a shot. Like this is a scam. I started watching Fox News at this point. You got radicalized. But but uh but

59:23 One day I see Martin Krali. Or his uh Uh Podcast. And um

59:30 I had helped Morton uh raise around. I uh I learned finance from Martin. Dude, he used to stream on Sean's platform. Yeah. I used to watch him on Sean's thing all the time. Yeah, he was he's like one of the best teachers and he's super entertaining.

59:43 uh for finance stuff, right? Like he just like it's like he still does it on YouTube and they're real they're really good. Shout out to the Skrelly Pill channel. It's on YouTube. It's it takes his long live stream. Cuts it the the most interesting kind of twenty, thirty minutes. Shkrely Pill is just doing God's work out there. Yeah, and I I knew nothing about personal finance. I knew nothing about the financial markets. I didn't know how money worked even. And so I remember Uh just watching his channel and just getting educated.

1:00:10 And When he got out of jail, I was like, Oh, that's cool, allows out of jail. And I went and watched his stream and I s I see him coding and I see him opening Rufflet. And I sent him a tweet and I'm like Hey, I see you I saw you opening roughly and I'm like a big fan, be great to connect.

1:00:27 Like connect with him He tells me he's starting a startup. The doctor one. So he started a company as like a holding company and he Started the Doctor one, at the same time he started the Bloomberg Terminal one. He started three other things. Yeah. Is that an audio AI one, but the one that took off is the Bloomberg terminal, I think.

1:00:45 And they're now like multi million dollar. I'm always curious, right?'Cause uh when somebody literally comes out of jail and then you're like You you could I like to streams too, but then in terms of like investing, there's obviously a big qu you know You kinda got to do your diligence of like This guy went to jail for some sort of wire fraud type of deal.

1:01:02 Am I gonna be A part of that. Like I guess I'm just curious how you mentally think about it. Are you basically like It's retard bags, you d you don't overthink it, or do you go and you you kind of go get first uh first principle's answers for yourself, like what do you do? First of all, I'm I'm personally like very principled and very careful. The only

1:01:21 problems with the law I had was was uh racing cars. I'm like a big fan of second chances, and the thing I love about America. Is i there's some Forgiveness here, you can have a second and a third act. And like I I saw his side of the story.

1:01:38 And it just seemed like he did his time. And this is this is the system we live in, is that You do something, you get punished, you do your time, and then you you leave. And I think society should treat you With a with a blank sleep.

1:01:52 Already on a raplet, um We our first investor, Roy Bahat, uh from Bluebird Beta. Roy is another very interesting character. Boom beta is an amazing investment firm. They have great returns. I pitched those guys uh years ago. I th they said no, but investors says no, he will just tell you exactly he he might even tell this idea sucks. And like he's the He's the straightest shooter in Silicon Valley, I think.

1:02:19 That's all like it is. What's this thing about Roy is uh Bloom and Beta Uh is both the investment vehicle, but also just things he's fascinated in he'll he'll just go do. He starts uh he has a this conference about the future of work, but uh one thing they did at the time is they did a trip to a prison facility

1:02:38 And We we went there and uh it was Um It was us mentoring uh inmates about um entrepreneurship. And they w wanted to start businesses internally. Some people were starting businesses inside.

1:02:54 And we were uh supposed to mentor them. That experience was very touching. Yeah. one exercise and maybe you could say it's a B S woke exercise, but like They lined up.

1:03:06 Everyone um on a line and then the inmates on another line and someone was saying if you grew up in a household where there's Uh whereas uh Where there's like crime and drugs. Stay forward if you did not step back. And then light.

1:03:21 You know. Ninety five percent of the non inmates. Uh Stay uh step back. And then oh then maybe maybe five percent step back. So like the just like inversion. And then and the exercise was to show you how much

1:03:35 of the life of crime is sort of like somehow predetermined by I don't fully believe that. I believe in personal responsibility a lot. But maybe they're like people are born in just maybe s harder situations. You can believe in agency and personal responsibility as well as probability. Yes. Right and influence. Yes. Yes.

1:03:53 And so yeah, f for uh for all these reasons I've You know, I'm I'm I'm open to to talking and and potentially working with uh people who have Done things in the past, but then they paid their dues and and moved on. And so it just felt like This is someone who helped me.

1:04:08 learn valuable skills and I want to help them One of my favorite I love uh I married into an immigrant family. Sean, um it comes from a family of immigrants. What's it feel like, um from you know you're an immigrant to like be living the American dream Do you think that there's something about the Americans what what about the American experience do you think is different from other countries?

1:04:32 I think America's vision of itself, at least the kind of liberal American vision of itself was like about Tolerance and inclusivity. And there's there's a lot of truth to that. Like Ah, you know, I think it is very easy. To be

1:04:49 Anywhere else maybe in Europe, but perhaps the UK is a i is an exception, and and feel like an outsider. But in the US Especially in like uh, you know, New York, San Francisco, these places You just feel like anyone else. You just feel like you're you're accepted and you have as much of a chance.

1:05:10 to make it as as as someone uh someone who was who was born here Yeah. That's incredible. And I don't think that's fully appreciated, especially because America's so self critical when it comes to these things. But d there is a lot of tolerance for for difference in this uh in this uh country. And then uh there's just the spirit of innovation and

1:05:33 Um openness to ideas. Like ask anyone who grew up anywhere else, literally quite literally anyone else. And the experience of entrepreneurs there is to have an idea And The likelihood of your friend telling you you're retarded.

1:05:50 After you told them that idea is like ninety percent plus. And uh Yeah, that was always my experience. I always safeguarded ideas. Not because I don't want other people to to copy them, but more like to protect those'cause like they're fragile beings. America and San Francisco Silicon Valley especially A place where

1:06:08 You talk about these ideas and they grow and they the problem is like they grow too much and they become radical. Ship Island. country they've got always like weird things. So there's like an opposite problem of they snowball and they become Yeah, but that's a better that that's a better problem than uh, you know, I've got a a uh a lot of my American buddies, they say back back home I tell people about my ideas and like Shut up, dude. Let's just be plumbers. Like don't stand out. Don't stand out. Exactly. That's that's the usual thing.

1:06:35 When I moved to San Francisco,'cause it's not even just America as a whole, like San Francisco specifically is on the extreme edge. I remember I had just moved there, so I didn't have a place to work. So I just sat in a coffee shop. And in San Francisco, the coffee shop is like, you know, uh dating speed dating for investments, right? So the table next to me just kept turning over. Every thirty minutes with another founder pitching another stupid ass idea to another investor who was l hearing them out. And I just remember by the eighth hour. I've heard, you know.

1:07:03 Fifteen of these pitches. And I just remember thinking Wow, every one of those ideas sounded terrible. And yet It was totally normal and common and accepted to be cr a little bit crazy like all those people were just now. Yeah. What's normal here is crazy elsewhere.

1:07:20 And vice versa. So I went to a meetup that night. to go meet some people and there was a guy there was working at JP Morgan. And he he introduced himself in shame. He was like I work at JP Morgan, but but but but you know, but I'm I'm I'm leaving soon. I just need to you know that's uh that's a small the normal j in in other cities you have to apologize. If you're choosing the unconventional path of doing a startup. And in San Francisco, you had to add all this d disclaimer legalese. If you had a normal job. Why are you why aren't you living

1:07:54 For real, like the rest of us. Yeah, and it seems to get cynical about it and it's like, Oh man, this place sucks and then make fun of it and all that, but there's something truly unique about it. The other part is like rubbing shoulder with billions. Like when you're literally worth nothing. Um, you know Mark Andreessen is one who's like makes friends on on Twitter and he goes on podcasts where like there's two listeners. And it like

1:08:18 he'll he'll become friends with with people that he find intellectually interesting and and stimulating. Paul Graham's the same. Like d wherever he goes he's on vacation in Stockholm and he did like a Y C meet up there, like Uh and he's just meeting all these kids that want to start start companies and so People get energy here from less from, you know, showing off their wealth and more from uh be intellectually stimulated or

1:08:44 You know who's like the unsung hero of San Francisco? Meetup dot com. Yes. Oh my God. That they're like the they're the tug boats of the of the Silicon Valley scene. Like they they don't get enough credit. They uh they're the best. Yeah, the we w I met a lot of amazing people just going to meetups when I first came to Silicon Valley. Is it still going? Well I'm like too old to use it, so I don't use it uh but it is still going. It was sold. Um I think Uh, Kevin Ryan, who started uh Business Insider and Guild Group at MongoDB, I think he bought it.

1:09:15 But the the founder of Meetup dot com has this like crazy story. He like worked at McDonald's and now he's working at Amazon, but as like a driver. He's like an Amazon. Yeah, I talked to him. He he is a worker rights uh union guy. Uh, and the reason he started meetup was not to like get Rich San Francisco kids to meet up, but it like to actually organize. And so he's back to his his passion now. So he goes and he takes a job at Amazon and he likes to Give people tools to unionize.

1:09:43 And the most frustrating was why would they hire him? If it's like oh Does he still have all of his fingers? They should be like dude, you are way too rich to my career. Espionage shit going on. Like it sounds like conspiracy, but it's You also have to logically think it can't be zero. Does that happen to you, Amjad? Does like is there espionage?

1:10:20 He wouldn't know. Yeah. Is it here in the room with you right now? I think you have to be careful about it. I think you have to build the right systems and processes and and all of that. And even if it is not an adversarial company, it could be a adversarial state, especially if you have model weights or something that they can they can steal. And there's been a couple of stories where They they kind of

1:10:43 Um Yeah. uh agents. Trying to steal.

1:10:48 L M models. But why foreign agent? Like Like, I guess if you have a company that grew f from, you know, two to one billion and that fast, I would think that there'd be someone would be like, Hey Can you go get a job there? Hey, you work there, like I'll bribe you to tell me X Y probably uh uh you know, we're a target probably, but we

1:11:06 We we're not an easy target. We we had um someone from the FBI come give it give us a talk about Uh these things, some of these stories, how to protect ourselves and The broader point. is is is m more interesting now with AI

1:11:22 Both social engineering and cybersecurity risk has has gone up tremendously. Like you can have bots that Are very good at convincing you. uh of certain things. So fishing has gone A lot scarier. And also

1:11:36 You can do uh hacking and privileged escalation like The Versal hack is kinda crazy. Do you guys know I I didn't understand what happened. I saw a couple of tweets where they were like Kind of

1:11:48 Doing the thing where you you say, Hey, this happened, just be aware, you know, you have to come out and say it at some point. But what was it what happened? There there there's an employee at this company called contacts.ai and it's one of those provide contacts to your AI companies. That downloaded a Roblox cheat software. And that Roblox sheet software was infected with some kind of back door. And um

1:12:12 Then that company became Fully compromise. And someone at Verse installed contacts at AI through Google OAuth on their workspace And then they had an entry through contacts into Versailles.

1:12:28 And then inside Versailles, they've done a bunch of hacks to escalate privileges and get access to their to their databases. And this was all planned by someone? I mean, I don't know if it's planned end to end. I I assumed they infected context AI and they knew it was an attack factor for a lot of other Other companies. And what did the the the creator, what did they get? Uh they get data they they're trying to sell on the like the uh the internet um of of company. What would you get from Vercel? Like uh database data database, uh database passwords, uh source code.

1:13:01 And then you go to that person and you ransom it. I don't think they did ransom. They just post it as like, Hey, I'm selling it for like a million dollars. For for sale,'cause you know What did they do in this situation, right? I think the thing about Versailles, there are a few things I mean. Look, every company has has issues and um this is not a knock on on them, but there's one thing that was odd that they were storing The database secrets in clear text. They had a way recently to make them sensitive and encrypt them, but uh they weren't encrypted at rest. So once you got access to the database, you got access to every other customer database. I see.

1:13:35 Has your life changed now that you're uh now that you're A billionaire? Like are you afraid of your security? Yes, unfortunately. Uh and I uh I am I have protection. Um

1:13:47 I don't know, man. I st I don't feel like a billion. Um like maybe W what do you feel like? Yeah. What do you think about it? I definitely feel like a millionaire for sure. I I it took me a while to feel that, but like, you know, after like the lifestyle upgrade at all. I I guess because I didn't have the lifestyle upgrade of a billionaire. Like I don't have a house of a billionaire. Not a realized billionaire and um I don't like to upgrade my lifestyle too quickly. Was was there any upgrade that you did do that was pretty cool where you're like, Oh, money does have some utility. This actually brought me Joy, freedom and something some way. I I think most people should talk a little bit more about what spending actually moves the needle for you.

1:14:29 Because Most people have very low imagination with their own money. Yeah, that that's that that's You know, when I fur when I started when I sold some second we did some second secondary sale like a couple years ago. I think most of it comes down to Honestly

1:14:45 living a healthier lifestyle and saving time. So Uh a chef. It's pretty It was pretty awesome. Being able to eat exactly what you want.

1:14:55 And uh Eat healthy. Like Yeah, even when you go to DoorDash and you try to search for the healthiest food, it's still shit. It's a pain in the ass. Yeah. And so uh it it just makes you feel better. It just becomes effortless to maintain your weight. And maintain your discipline.

1:15:12 Getting getting a coach, you'll have to cycle through a few to find someone that you like, getting someone who shows up at your door. And so G you're creating that lifestyle. A lot of it is about hiring other people. But Y you can overdo it. And I uh at some point I think we over did it a little bit.

1:15:28 And you wanna be also careful with you you mentioned security, but there's a lot of people who wanna leech in different ways and scam you and And do all sorts of uh nasty things. So I think you can expose yourself. So like too many too many people Your house also start feeling like like the office.

1:15:46 A hotel. A hotel, the office, people working out of there. I'm like, Oh man, like I I want my kids to have like a normal life like we grew up. Did you uh you know what's crazy? I just Googled it how many billionaires are under the age of forty. There's only seventy one. Really? So Yeah. So of the I don't know how many

1:16:05 Seven billion um you know, people. Like you are in a smile. You are in the probably the top like It it is very interesting. Well you are in the one thousand probably the of of all the people under forty, you are probably in the top one thousand richest at the end of the year. I haven't really reflected on this all that much. I'm just like keep going. Yeah, build more.

1:16:30 Yeah, you're like I you're like I know how much I want and the answer is more. That is the that is the perfect wealth and money more it's in terms of Success. Impact. And enough

1:16:44 Reserve to actually Have and impact on the world and do Do the things that I want to do that I think are are are positive. By the way, getting a really kick ass car the moment you get any kind of money is the most important thing you could do.

1:16:58 What did you think? Uh I got an AMG E sixty three. I got mine. Love it. A MG is is is uh I think underrated because it it has the luxury, but also the class. I bought an e-bike with a burly I can find it and my kids spit in that. And that's what I ride around everywhere. Amazing. I think there is

1:17:20 You know, they now there's like a lot of um Hate. Uh Some of it is deserved for Silicon Valley. But part of it is because Like they think you think people like potentially hit us because

1:17:33 Because of our wealth. But it and like we should like dress down and not show our balls as as much. But I think it just becomes more inauthentic. Like when you when you look at the ballers on TikTok or Instagram and you look at the comments

1:17:50 People love them. Or like ball balling. But you look at the comments when like Some taxios saying some some dumb shit like everyone's gonna lose their job. It was like hating them. Um Yeah, and I think just like being a little more normal. And the normal thing to do is when you

1:18:07 Come about some money. Buy some cool shit. We love having you on, man. You um you you you have this perfect um balance of like being wise uh but also being audacious and fun to hang out with and yet you got the Zoda sensibility. Also he's a guy's not at all, man. No, you're you're you're a you're a you're a blessing. Uh and we're so happy. Um you know We sort of got to see you a little bit in the in the before phase and that's really exciting for us. Well, I love I love that they're um I'm coming here at different stages of my life and I Good to look uh back on that and and reflect. And you guys are doing amazing things. I think we share the same

1:18:47 mission of Uh empowering people. I think that Just it's incredibly exciting time that wealth is accessible to more people. We're just trying to get rich yeah. I hope a lot more people get rich. I hope a lot more people get their first million and come on here and talk about it. And they use uh we hope they use Replet along the way, dude. Thank you guys.

1:19:07 You're a blessing. We appreciate you. That's it. That's a pod. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like my days off. On the road, less travel, never look at it. Hey, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about a podcast that you could check out. It is called The Science of Scaling by Mark Roberts. He was the founding CRO of HubSpot, and he's a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School. The guy's smart, and he sits down every week with Different sales leaders from cool companies like Clavio and Vanta and OpenAI, and he's asking about their strategies, their tactics, and how they're growing their companies as you know, head of sales or chief revenue officer. If you're looking to scale a company up, if you're a CRO or a head of sales, just looking to level up in your career. I think a podcast like this could be great for you. Listen to the science of scaling wherever you get your podcast.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 10 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.