I got rejected from YC (4x)…. now my side hustle is worth $1.16B

0:00 This is the first AI agent thing that has like been a mind blowing moment for me where I am not a programmer, I am not a coder. But I can now create software. Well that's insane. There are apps built on Rapid Agents that otherwise would take probably$100,000 of developer time.

0:19 And you can build it like in You know, twenty five dollars pay to reply. It's pretty wild how fast these companies are scaling. I don't think in the history of Silicon Valley we've seen anything like that, even in the like web two point oh era. So what is like a fast ramp for an AI company? What's impressive that kinda broke the frame of what how long things would take? So I I would say reaching ten million in three or four months. There are.

0:42 Oh my god. Can I ask a blunt? Crude question. How can I use your software to become a billionaire? I would say building the world a no way. be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like my day song. On the road less travel, never looking back. Okay, so uh how do we want to start this? So, Amjad, you um

1:06 You're awesome. So you have your today in a position that I think a lot of people want to be in. You have you're doing the Silicon Valley dream. You had this idea You go through Y C You've now raised hundreds of millions of dollars. You're valued at a you know billion dollar valuation. So that's today. But then

1:24 The cool thing about your story is it uh That didn't seem likely. You know, ten years ago. And Yeah, you went through Y C, but you were rejected a bunch of times.

1:35 Like yeah, you're in Silicon Valley now, but you started off coding in an internet cafe in Jordan. That's what's interesting to me. And I we asked you beforehand, we're like, Hey what Killer stories, could you come on the podcast and tell? And you go, You wrote this. So I'm gonna read it word for word and then I want you to tell us the story. You go Rejected four times and rick rolling into Y C.

1:52 Raising tons of money and meeting amazing billionaires. Let's do the first part. Rejected four times and rick rolling into We C. Can you tell the story? Yeah, so uh I left my uh job at I've Facebook and uh twenty twenty sixteen.

2:07 And uh you know Replet has been a side project for a while. And it's been it's been growing. I've been working on it like nights and weekends. it grew to to a point where the like server cost was meaningful and it was like okay, you know, I have to I guess I have to start a company around it. And so I went to my manager at Facebook and was like, look, I have the side project. Can we make it like somehow a project at uh at Facebook?

2:31 And we looked into that. I sent Zuck an email the time and he he ignored me. Like, okay, I get I guess I have to start I guess I have to start a company. And so yeah, I quit I quit my job, um, applied to Y C the first time. We did the whole thing, we did the the form and the video and and all of that. And we didn't even get a get a call or anything like that. It was it was just like we got the rejection.

2:56 uh letter. And so I was like, Okay, you know, I have this uh Facebook stock. Some savings. I sold the Facebook stock. I put like half of it in Bitcoin.

3:07 And then half of it into into the company or like just just for us to kind of live and how much money was that? It's like Seventy K or or something like that. What was the original uh product? for of Replet. So it was basically an editor and a console.

3:24 You could type Code there and you can run it. You can switch a language and that's it. By the way Sam, have you ever used Replet? I was using it today before this. It's magical. And also your tweets describing what it is, like for example your doctor saying

3:41 You know, he wants me to track my sleep, so I just uploaded the PDF that he wanted me to fill up. fill out into Replit and it made an application so I can go upload it much easier. Yeah, it's like pretty magical. Sean, are you able to use it? It's definitely out of my league still. Both me and Sam have joked around because we both uh Have f maybe five or six times fall started of like I'm gonna learn to code this summer.

4:01 It's like a New Year's resolution thing where you just keep saying you're gonna do it and you You do twenty percent of it, thirty percent of it, and you give up. Uh, you know, we buy the the Udemy course, learn Python the hard way. Then you start doing it. And n nothing really ever stuck and one of the biggest problems was that Nobody really talks about this. Do you think learning to code is like learning Spanish? It's like learning a language. You're like, Okay

4:21 So how do I need to say the thing? But before you can even do that, it's like Oh, I'm supposed to download this program. So I need to download an editor. And then I need to download all these packages to be able to stop. And then you need to and it's like just setting up the environment is so Goddamn confusing to a beginner. That You don't even get to do the the part where you actually write the code and and be able to run and then it's like, Oh, how do I run the code? I gotta host it somewhere. Now I gotta learn how to do hosting and serve like what is that?

4:46 And so there's all these things around it that were confusing. Replit solved all of that, which was amazing. And I actually did your like hundred days of learning to code, like It's actually made it really easy. You know, if I didn't have kids, I would just be doing a lot more because it's you you solved that problem for me. And I know I'm asking you about the Y C rejection. I wanna come back to that, but To give Sam maybe a little more of the context.

5:06 I think correct me if I'm wrong, maybe I'm making this up. I think the reason you wanted to have this kind of like online editor, online environment where it's all host there was because When you were younger, you were living in Jordan and it I guess you used to Go try to learn the code out of internet or go try to code out of internet cafe, but that means every time you go, you have to set everything up for the first time because not your

5:26 It's not your home base, not your home computer where you set it up once and it's there. Is that true? Is that why you have you felt the problem like ten X what a normal p person would feel? Yeah, b basically like every time I wanted to do a little homework, I have to like Spend an hour setting up the environment. Uh yeah, at the time the web was moving so fast until we had Google Docs and we had Gmail, we had this You know, client side JavaScript application sort of revolution.

5:52 Uh and I'm like, okay, you know, why can't I type code into the browser and run it? And I started looking around. And turns out like Nobody solved. This problem.

6:04 There were some experiments. And it it was kinda craz it was almost like, you know, finding a hundred dollar bill. in uh New York Grand Central Station, right? Like it's like oh I found an idea that nobody's paying attention to. And is that true?'Cause'cause it's kind of crazy. The world's big, a lot there's a lot of programmer. That seems like an obvious thing. I mean, I I'm a total outsider, so my question is like

6:28 Was there some technical challenge to that?'Cause that seems like I I I I guess it's easy to say uh things that are successful are obvious ideas looking back, but like Yeah. Well, two things, right? There's the technical challenge of being able to make this all work in a browser, right? That that was that was not obvious. But then there's seems like the second thing was I keep going back to the internet cafe thing because It's sort of like the hardship.

6:49 Made the problem s like Unavoidable to you. Whereas anybody else who learns to code, if you're just doing it at home in America and your in your computer, you might do that setting up once, maybe you have a a little bit of the problem. But you're not running into it face first every day. As if you were if you were

7:06 Working out of Internet Cafe. Yeah, absolutely right. I mean uh you know Polygram talks about it all the time. It's like, you know the best startups are, you know, solving your o your own problem. And I felt that problem really deeply. And I started working on it. I discovered why it's hard.

7:22 Well, it's it's hard to run different languages in the browser. You can run JavaScript, but you can run Python, for example. So we started writing interpreters, uh, writing compilers to to to run on on JavaScript. And then in uh you know t it took us a couple of years, had like few languages running, it was like pretty rough prototype, but people started using it. my friends and people at school, and I'm like, okay, this idea has lags, and so let me work on it more. And then twenty uh eleven uh had a breakthrough.

7:51 And The breakthrough was we were the first Two compile Python, Ruby, a bunch of languages to JavaScript. And run them straight into the browser.

8:02 And that went super viral. Like so we open sourced it, we put it up uh and like on hacker news. And that was my first experience of like going viral in the internet, which is I I was like oh my God, this is This is like an amazing rush. And I still feel that rush. Can you put that in context for a non non engineer? Where d is the thing you guys did is it

8:23 On a scale of like one Two Satoshi Nakamoto solving the like double spend problem. Like how hard of an invention was that was like the nerdiest analogy you ever could have came up with. That's what I'm here for. So like was it was it genius or was it just that nobody had taken an as much time as it would take to do that? Like what where was that breakthrough? What how do we how would you describe that breakthrough? Uh it it's definitely not on the order of like the double double spend problem where it's like a fundamental In invention.

8:52 It was like You know, pushing like a a huge rock. bul like up a uh up a mountain. It took so much grit and And just obsession. To

9:07 be able to hack the browser In order to run things that the browser wasn't br uh uh supposed to run. Wasn't designed to run. And so I would say it is solving

9:21 Hundreds of problems as solving like You know, one one invention. Uh double spec. Yeah. So you you're working on it as a side project for a number of years. That that's a long time, by the way, Sean. Can you imagine like having a side project that's a hobby That takes three hours a night with little I mean, two y doing that for two years is kind of a long time, no? Dude, the only two things I've ever done that with is this podcast and my kids.

9:44 And there's really no way out of the kids thing. So, you know it's the podcast was a hit right away. It gave me results right away, so it actually doesn't count. You were doing this without the kind of like financial rewards or fame rewards or any other major rewards during that time. How many years did you do this side project thing and what kept it going? You know, two thousand nine was the original idea. Twenty eleven. I was the breakthrough and you know went viral on on on Hacker News and and then and that. And I I think that was the

10:13 first time I felt like a little bit of of fame, a little bit of uh return on investment. Uh like I remember Brendan Ike the inventor of JavaScript and was the CTO Admisella. Like tweeting about it. I was like, wow, this is amazing. Like, you know, Kid and Jordan Like made this like fundamental breakthrough and like

10:34 you know, browser tack and like I'm getting this recognition. That's pretty cool. And also Some articles. wrote about it. It was people talked about it in conferences. So all that was evidence for my O one visa to come to the States.

10:48 Basically my entire adult life I'm working on this. Uh, which is crazy, right? Like I am uh thirty Six? Wow. I think. Uh and uh you know I I just I mean you've been working on this since you're uh twenty twenty one, I think. Yeah. Twenty one.

11:07 Yeah, that's a that's a wild. That's your whole life. Your whole adult life. It and you know, it it continued to like you know, incrementally improved my life. So it wasn't It wasn't this, you know, working in a in a room for eleven years and and nothing happened. So I get this visa to the United States. uh and they go work at Code Academy

11:26 And they use the open source work that that that we did, right? And a bunch of companies in the US, there was like a disboom and like MOOCs. Uh, if you remember that, Udacity, Cressera, whatever. And a lot of them used the open source version of Replit to create interactive courses. Um And and suddenly like the the world opened up opened up to me. I'm getting job offers uh all over the place and I and have choices where to go and And so we decided to go to New York.

11:55 Naval has this great quote where he says, uh People always ask him about like, you know, how to build a great network or networking. What are your tips for networking? And he's like, My only tip for networking is Do something great. And watch. Your network will appear overnight.

12:07 People will immediately come to you because you've done something great, right? You didn't go try to get a coffee with Brendan Ike. You build something really cool that the creator of JavaScript and Mozilla's browser was like, Hey, that's awesome. I wanna reach out and get to know you. And I think that's actually how you Back to the Y C thing. I think that's how you ended up getting into Y C later was Paul Graham actually just thought what you were doing was cool. But like

12:27 Let's go to the Y C part. So you You quit that Facebook job. Half the money in Bitcoin, half the money in your startup. Apply to Y C rejected. That was the first rejection. What were the other rejections?

12:39 Um yeah, V V C is kind of wouldn't uh wouldn't talk to us. Or d you know, we we'd get meetings with VCs, some of them are like yawning and and I think if one of them slept Um, and it it was just like not interesting to them. Dude, I had that happen one time as well. Like a guy a guy literally felt it was like He uh he he was literally eighty and it was Friday at four and it was warm in the office and he like fell asleep mid mid pitch. Like it was warm. Yeah, it was like a cold day and it was warm inside, so I was like

13:09 Yeah, I mean like what's like you deserve this. But dude, what what what did they not see in you? Because like It's so easy to be to look back in the past, but like You seem like you got the it factor. This seems like such an obvious idea. You worked on it for two years. Smart people are talking about it. Like, what were you what were you missing? What was the case against it? Well, I I I think You Silicon Valley is like probably the most meritocratic place in the world.

13:35 But it is also status driven. At least then it was very status driven. Like if you look at the white you know people who got into Y C like with Stanford Drop Hots and and things like that. And I think since then Y C has has has improved and you know gets international people and all of that. But But but you know, my background wasn't wasn't really interesting to to them. You know, I didn't have any fancy colleges or or any of that. Also, uh being married a couple was was somehow like something that that they thought it was a disadvantage. You y you you didn't match the patterns. You didn't match the Stanford pattern You didn't match the uh co founder relationship pattern, you didn't match the uh the trend uh of of what categories had big exits. You weren't on trend at that time. Right.

14:19 Yeah. And so continue to apply to Y C every season of Y C we'll we'll send in the the application and you know, our thesis evolved more and we felt like Um we had started making some money. Some people started paying for our service. We had an API at the time that people paid for a lot of educators and and people learning the code started to to pay pay for Replit. What was the revenue when you got in?

14:44 Like maybe ten grad a month. It was enough to sustain us at that at that point. It was like the ramen profitability. Um but before Y C the the person who who actually uh the first one to to bat on us uh was Roy Bahat from Bloomberg Beta. So I knew him from my Code Academy days. And

15:04 And it was such a the meeting with him was so refreshing. Like he he was like just a straight shooter. he he would tell me like He here's where I think Yeah, the idea or the category

15:17 Is is hard. You know, here is where I think the evaluation should be and it was like the first meeting he just gave me Everything he was thinking about. He didn't obscure anything and I was I was feeling really good about it. And so yeah, he gave us five hundred uh

15:31 uh thousand dollars on a on a six million uh valuation. So that was the first check uh we got Life. Yeah, for example. And then how did the how did you eventually get into Y C? So uh basically um you know we we're grinding and and and and the product was getting better every every week. And I started writing articles about what we're solving. So because we're solving pretty hard problems.

15:55 And so this article's kept going on hacker news. Um, and Hacker is really excited about what we're doing. And Paul Graham Breeds Hacker knows a lot. Probably still to this day. And one day like

16:07 December twenty seventeen, I wake up, there's a DM Uh on on my phone and it is Sam Altman. And he's like, Hey, I run YC and we're interested in what you're doing. I'm like, dude, I know who you are. You don't have to tell me you run YC. And he's like, Okay, let's let's meet, you know, come to this address. And it wasn't the Y C address, I was like a little confused. And so I I go there. And it was the open AI office in the in the mission.

16:35 Uh, and so I I meet him there and and you know, we're talking a little bit and then he's like he turns his computer around and he's like, This is uh this is Paul's email. uh he emailed Sam and told him this this company is very important. You should reach out to them. And he's like okay Talk to to PG. I'm gonna give you his email. Talk to him. And then uh maybe you can maybe we can work on something to get you into Y C.

16:59 So I started this email relationship with with Paul. Which was really fascinating. I mean he he he's a great writer, right? And so we talked about Uh we talked about Route Float. We talked about the the the the problems of setting up an environment, the problems of hosting an application. It turns out

17:16 After he sold uh via web. He started working on on something like Replet. He started working on like an editor, you write some Lisp, of course, because he likes this this very obscure programming languages. And but by the way, Paul Graham is the founder of Y C at the time. He was starting to to retire and and Sam was was running Y C. And uh and so, you know, we had this email relationship where he he wrote me essays essentially on on on the problem we're solving.

17:42 By the way, were you were you intimidated? Uh you know, Paul Graham writing essays to you privately. Uh are you like Is that high stakes replies there for you? Yes. Like I I would spend hours uh kind of crafting the the emails and Uh and try trying to like be a as good of a writer as uh as I can. Um

18:01 But you know, uh one thing uh about me is like I was never Like nervous about meeting like famous and established people. And I think that helped me uh over time because like You know, I can be myself and I like can talk to them at the same level as opposed to like being a fanboy or Why wh why was that?

18:21 Were you just oblivious to it or you just had a different mindset about it? Wha wh what was the reason? Yeah, I I I felt like my life was Was Taking on this trajectory. That was not to be too superstitious, but like it was this force.

18:38 Um and I felt like everything's gonna be great and you know, we're it's gonna be hard. But you know, I'm meeting all these people Uh things are opening up to us. And um and so when I when I go and and and meet people, my mindset is like Uh I want impress them.

18:55 And I wanna be able to, you know, get money from them or like I have a goal. And I think having a goal when you're when you're meeting someone actually puts you in a very different mindset than than again like fanboying and and um and just being very excited about the meeting. Dude, have you guys seen that uh do you guys know the director, Guy Richie? He's uh the like British director. He's got this great story. He was on some podcast with Joe Rogan and he was like You know, I just wanna be the director of

19:22 of my own life. And I want to live my life like a movie. And what you're describing is sort of like that, where you're like, I just I'm destined for greatness and like we are taking on this uh amazing uh problem and like we are going to do wonderful things and it will be hard, but we will triumph. And I think that's a that's actually great. That's a great story to tell yourself. And I think it's very motivating.

19:44 And it it it it makes life more exciting. I think that's really cool. Yeah, so I I actually wrote a uh a blog post. The title is Do What Makes the Best Story. Uh and and the idea is like when you're faced with decisions Where there's no obvious answer like the f a fork in the road where the pros and cons are sort of the same.

20:06 The heuristic I use in my life is like what is a more interesting story. And obviously like Elon talks about this, like the the most uh The most entertaining outcome is m is most likely. Uh Yeah, I wasn't thinking about it in terms of entertaining about in terms of like what makes the story interesting. If if my life was a movie

20:25 What would what would be exciting about about that story? Yeah, for example. When when I was in college, I was like coding all the time and I wasn't really going to class and so Yeah, so I was failing a lot, not because I was failing the exam, because

20:46 You know, they they would bar me from the exam because I wasn't showing up. And and I decided to to hack the university to change my grades. We're not talking like metaphorically, like a life that you actually hacked into the servers and changed your grade. Is that what happened? Yeah, I w I went into into the basement, I spent like two weeks, I did the

21:07 W what's his name? The famous inventor Michelangelo or something like that. I did his sleep. Polyphasic sleep. Where every you work for hours. And then you sleep fifteen minutes. And it it was it was sort of like I was writing on the wall, I was like it was like a full on

21:22 Insanity. Were you angry? I know so many smart people who work so much harder to cheat or get around the thing than just doing the thing and If there's like Uh fifty percent of the time they end up being like losers. And then fifty percent of the time they are in fact like the greatest. They're on this podcast. Yeah. Well, I I think it is like some ADHD, right? Like you can sit you can sit in class, but if you're interested in something, you're gonna like hack and like work on it a ton, right?

21:53 And I almost got away with it. But the servers at the uh uh at the university crashed. Uh, and it crashed on my record. So the one of the administrators there Give me a call.

22:09 And he he said um Look, th there's like this There's some an anomaly in your in the in the record uh of your exam and in school, and it's crashing our databases. Do you know anything about it? And it was like what's the anomaly? And he's like

22:25 You know, there there's a field. In the database. That says you're barred from the exam. And your grade should be uh should be third or five. That's that's the default grade of of failing the the exam.

22:39 And instead my grades were like, you know, seventy five, ninety, whatever. Um That's the that's what I entered uh into there. And I didn't understand that there was another field. By the way, that you know, that that's not good. good design for for a database. Um

22:56 And so since then I I I I you know, I had um there was a fork in the road. I c I could lie And I think I could get get away with it and uh you know, and and just say that that's a bug on your side and But I was like what's the most interesting story? Um is they they catch me and it becomes a story that people talk about. And I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna like come clean and j just uh tell them what I did.

23:22 Uh you're like better better than getting the grade would be getting the reputation. Yes. Exactly. So you tell them and then what happened? They kick you out? No, so um you know, I I

23:35 I'm kind of a convincing person, so I um I go the next day and It's like all the deans there and they're discussing my case and they're like trying to f find out what what I did and And they're all computer science deans. So I went in there and I changed the subject to technical aspects of the hack.

23:55 And I drew on the whiteboard and show them what I did and And all of that And they were very impressed. It's like a goodwill hunting moment. It yeah, and and like my reputation back then is like I'm a I'm a loser, I'm failing all everything, right? I don't show up to class.

24:09 Yeah, and and it is it is kind of like goodwill hunting. And then um You know, I I they say okay, you have to go talk to the president because I think he he's gonna make the final call. So I I go uh to to the president and uh and he's a very intellectual person and we talk and I You know, I tell him like look, you know, I I have this talent and I feel like it was undiscovered and I feel like I was treated unfairly

24:34 And And I I use the the you know, I use the university as my sandbox. Like I didn't like you know, I came clean. I didn't uh you know mean to to do anything anything bad and and And and he gave me the Spider Man line. He's like With great power comes great responsibility. And it it actually affected me and I was like, Okay, you know what, you know, I think uh

24:56 You know, I you know, I I I I need to do something. In order to to to to kind of pay back and I I told him I'm gonna work Uh this summer for free. to to make sure I secure your your databases.

25:09 And so they They let me off the hook and they're like okay, yeah. Yeah. What a great story, dude. That is an amazing story. Sam, by the way, would you ever want to compete with Amjon at anything? No. This is like this mentality. This is uh It's scary.

25:24 Like yeah, I would not want to. You're like excuse me, Dean Have you heard of the word prodigy? Yeah, you're like You're like I my talents haven't been used well at this university. I accept your apology, Dean. It's like why are you failing me? Yes. Yes. That's so good. Okay. So I love the principle, do what makes the best story. I love the hack story. That's that's amazing.

25:50 Where we how did we get here? We were talking about um Y C Y C okay, sorry. Let's get to the story Y C, yeah, because that's where we started. Okay. So Sam's like Yeah, you should do Y C Actually the batch starts tomorrow. Why don't you fill an application? It's just a it's just a you know process uh you have to do and we can do a late interview tomorrow.

26:10 And I'm like, fuck, I wanna fill the application again. Like you made me do it like four times. Like I don't wanna do it again. And so, you know, I I kind of do a bare bones application about about Rathlet. And then there's the video. I'm like, ya man. I don't know.

26:25 I don't want to do the video. So so I I I pasted uh uh a YouTube link. And and we go the next day, uh higher and I. By the way, for people who don't know, the YZ application is like one page. It's like six or seven questions, but then they say, upload a video, two or three minutes, you're talking about Your startup. So that's the video part.

26:42 And then the interview is Ten minutes. Where they're just rapid fire. So you have like ten minutes and it's like this make or break. thing. It's less than a lunch, you know, like it's less than a job interview. It More intense. So you're waiting around for that.

26:55 Yeah, I mean m my view was they recruited us to Y C. Like why are you making us do do do this stuff, right? And and so Yeah, I was gonna ask that. Like they're ask they're acting like You know, Paul Graham's like, you know, maybe I could pull some strings. It's like I know a guy. Yeah, like you're the guy. So I don't understand what their uh

27:15 W what they're bullshitting. Well I don't get it. Well, I I think they w they wanted to to just like go through the process. It's like the process applies to everyone. And I I respect that. So uh You know, they uh they they call us to to the interview.

27:31 Um and and I walk in and and there was uh Jared and Dora and and and all these amazing voice partners. And there's Michael. He was the CEO at the time. And I shake their hands and I shake Michael's hand and and I felt like his grip was was a little too hard. I was like, Okay, that's fine. And then I I go sit down on the chair and and the moment I sit down

27:54 Michael looks at me. Why did you recall us? Oh my God. And and like, you know, we we applied s several times and and I thought it'd be fun to do and and You know, I thought this this interview was just uh

28:09 With just, you know, formality and and and he's like That's not how you get into YC. And he was he was very, very angry. Well turns out when we're sitting outside They're getting recrawled inside. Right. So say imagine their mindset.

28:23 Looking at the application and and and and getting the the the recall song. And uh and then they give us a very tough interview. In that moment, did you it's like And that's when I realized I fucked up. Like d d did you realize like how I'm coming across Like w what was your mindset there? Like they must think actually I was nervous. I was very nervous and I was

28:46 Regretful. Uh immediately. Yeah. It's like oh here's this Entitled Just another just another Tech entitled guy. When they don't know you're like

28:55 Immigrant from Jordan who's like scraped his way here, right? They don't reality and how you were coming across weren't connected in that moment. No, they uh they weren't at all. And uh And so uh And so I you know, we go outside and and I tell Hi, Okay, this is done, let's let's call an Uber and get back to work. Like we don't have we don't need to get into Y C

29:16 It's like Holland Uber. And uh just before I arrive I I receive a call and And I I take the call and it's like hey it's Adora. Uh you got in come back. Uh the the the kick off is about to start. And I was like, What? Are you sure?

29:32 She's like, Yeah, come back, sign, sign the paperwork and get started. So I was stunned the whole day. Like it was You know, we start we go to the dinner and I'm like You know. Yeah, phased out and and and all, but but like it was really exciting. And you know, people who who who's never been to the Y C office and and Mountain View, it's all orange, like bright orange and and the lights and everything. It feels l in like a cult like environment.

29:56 Isn't it like uh I think I've seen the inside, doesn't it like a like a s don't they they have like a steeple or isn't like one of the rooms it like is a uh triangle, like a church almost? Yeah, yeah. Exactly. What

30:09 what the experience is gonna be. It's like this is the hardest time we're gonna work. you know, you better tell your friends and family that you're gonna go away for three months, you can't help them move or or all of that. You just gotta be focused on on work. So I and I like took it very seriously. Okay. I was like okay, this These three months. are are are very important for for the success of the company.

30:30 And we transformed the product in these three months. It went from a simple sort of editor output to a place where you can host applications and build real things. Yeah, and all in three months. And we're working, you know, twelve hour, thirteen hour days and Um And and it was it was only Uh three of us at a time. Um our first employee actually was um

30:52 Was sort of a runaway kid. Yeah. Little down down south. And uh And he didn't want to go to school, and so he leaves his uh his home, he goes to Hack Reactor.

31:05 And uh and he becomes he becomes a programmer. And he was eighteen, he was looking for a job. I knew the guys at Hacker Actor, they used Raplet, and I'm like, send me your best programmer. And he's like, Look, this kid is a little awkward. But he's the best. And so he comes there and he nails our interview. Music to my ears. Yeah. I a and basically I like him'cause you know, it it mirrors kind of my life story uh a little bit. Where's this guy now? But we got him we got'em some liquidity.

31:30 After six years of working Uh, I felt that's the right thing to do and because he was kinda burnt out and didn't want to continue. So I I called my I called my brother uh in Jordan, I'm like, look, you gotta you gotta come out here when Y C you need to and and he's a programmer. I taught him programming when he was a kid and I was like, you gotta you gotta come come help us, and he's still with us today.

31:51 And I call my friend from Code Academy, Moody. He's still with us today as well. I'm like he got you gotta help us, like uh Like, you know, you could do it remotely. And so we assembled like a team of f of five people, essentially. And so we we go really hard and we were like one of the hottest uh companies in Y C at the time. And uh Can you give some sense of the scale of it now? Like

32:13 You know, um I invested in it. Pro uh a year ago or so, two years ago, something like that. I don't know when Um but the numbers were off the i you had user growth. Uh first your graph looked like a hockey stick because You zoom out and you f you m you you it ign it ignores all of the little like

32:29 Years where nothing was really going on. But you have this crazy growth, but the crazy thing about it is that your growth was developers. So it's like you know, one developer user is worth, I don't know, ten, twenty times just like a normal internet user. But you had this crazy hockey stick growth of developers. Can you talk about can you just say a couple of Like permission to brag. Can you say a couple of bragworthy stats?

32:51 That would impress us. Yeah, so so Replet was very easy to get started with. And so people would start uh starting call using it in college or or high school and continue using it for many years. And so it was sticky for especially junior developers when they're starting out. Um and uh and it was it was spreading On its own, like word of mouth.

33:11 Uh You know, there's a viral component to it. People can share URL And then suddenly you're in the same environment as them, right? Like, and then we have this like multiplier coding experience. And so people were collaborating and um And also, uh Covid was really great for us because we were

33:29 I think the only collaborative editor experience uh on the web at the time. And so a lot of people were remote and and needed something to work with uh with each other and so uh r reptiled was adopted at the time and so the the the growth uh was was off the chart and the servers were going down and The marginal user on any web app is sort of like zero, zero cost.

33:50 But for us it was uh Yeah, we ch we try to optimize it a lot. But it was still on the order of like one to five dollars. Like a month. And you know the the growth w was off the charts.

34:00 But I I you know, I have to admit it was hard to monetize at the time. Because uh developers are actually not used to paying for for things. Now they kind of are paying for things because of AI. But at the time they they weren't uh Dor paying and then Um

34:17 You know, as as we added limits and things like that. that they felt like they they can like move on and set up their own developer environment. And so it took took a lot of You know. Creative.

34:29 thinking to figure out how to charge for people. And ultimately AI was the thing. That that people are. Uh uh are paying for and the reason is Like the productivity benefit of AI is like Uh it's like obvious.

34:42 Um and people is like okay, this saves me time and makes me about a developer. And so people are paying for it right now. Well, can you give any indication on how many users or how many um how much revenue the business has? You know, signups, we get we have like more than thirty million, I think thirty-five million uh users right now. in terms of active users, it kinda fluctuates, but you know, three uh you know, two to three million a m a month. probably hundred thousand uh apps hosted hosted on Replet. Um because you can build an app and and and deploy it all in in one environment.

35:17 Um It it in terms of revenue, I can't share right now, but like Uh, especially this year, it's been like exponential growth. Sam, check this out. This agent thing, I gotta show you this. So You you haven't used this, right, Sam?

35:31 All right. So watch that. So yesterday I was like, I'm I'm gonna mess around. I was doing research for this, but I was like, I I just got like sucked into Replit and I started doing that. Stop doing research. So I go and I I go to R And it's changed'cause now when you g before when you would go, it would be like Here's a

35:48 coding screen with a blinking cursor. And it's like, write some code. And I'd be like, Oh, cool. I don't really write code, so I don't know how to use this product exactly. Maybe I could learn to code. Maybe I could Uh you know, pay somebody to to build something on here.

36:02 But whatever. I was stuck. So now You open up Replit. And it just it's like Chat GPT. It just goes So what would you like me to create? And so I go on there, watch this. So I go I'll give you the exact prompt. I said, Build me an app.

36:16 That will text me every morning asking how I ate yesterday. Let me answer via text message and then track the results on a monthly calendar grid. If texting doesn't work, you could also use WhatsApp or something else. Okay, so basically like on the right here is just like the chat. And it just goes, Absolutely. Let me propose what we'll build. And then it just kinda like explains to me like a project manager. It goes

36:34 I'm gonna help you create a food tracking app through SMS messaging with a calendar visualizations. We'll start with the SMS. Later we can add WhatsApp as an alternative. It's like okay, okay, prioritizing things. That's interesting. And then it goes. The Apple Sun Daily Message, blah, blah, blah. And then it goes, How would you like me to proceed? And it's like There was like, you know, add more features.

36:52 Change the instructions or like go ahead and build the prototype. So I clicked. Build the initial prototype. And then literally I don't know if you can see this, but like It starts like auto scrolling as it's writing code. Like this is all just code it's generating. So like you know, like

37:06 I'm not doing anything. I'm literally sitting back with popcorn while this is happening. So it's like Here's your calendar grid. And it's like uh hey, I need I'm gonna use Twilio for the SMS. It decides I'll use Twilio for the SMS. Can you go to Twilio and give me your account and your phone number so that it'll meet like We use Tulio for sending SMS. So I go to Tulio, I give it my SMS.

37:26 And then It's like it's made. It literally made the thing. Exactly how I was now. Yeah, I actually got stuck on the Twilio step because Twilio had to verify my phone number so it like was It hasn't verified it yet, but I can go into I into L I see

37:41 It tries to send me the message and it's just as awaiting till the verification to like be able to use this. Um, so I'm like a little bit stuck there, which is like a common thing with agents, I feel. It's like Almost? Absolutely incredible. And then kind of frustrating at some point where you have to like, you know, fight through some walls.

37:57 Well I think I'm just tweeting I think he said uh I want people to be able to build an app faster than they can just Google the answer to a question. And that's exactly what happened. Well that's insane. So this screenshot uh is the agent looking at the result. It's trying to verify. This does not do running app. If you click run, you can't run app. Took a screenshot and then it shows it to me. It's like hey is this

38:18 How you want it? And I was like, Oh 'Cause before it had it where it was like not the right month on top. I go, Oh, put the month on top. Like don't say monthly food tracking, right? December. And then it also said, like, hey, would you like any other style improvements? I can make it b broader, I can change the color scheme. And I'm like, dude, this is literally better than an employee, right? Like first it's instantaneous. Uh second

38:39 I could Yeah, I don't have to pay to Pay somebody to sit in the desk. to sit around waiting for me to do something. I had a w uh idea on a whim. Go to Repli and did the thing it with the agent. I this was a

38:50 Like there's been a few like mind blowing moments for me in my like tech career. You know, like I graduated twenty ten, so I'll start at that point where it's like The first time I took an Uber. I was like holy shit, that was amazing. I pushed a button.

39:04 A car showed up. The guy got in. I didn't even have to pay for like it just paid through my phone. That was magic. And I could see it on I could see him on an app getting closer and closer to the restaurant. That was like one of them. You know, chat GPT for sure was another where I could just you know Tell it to make something and write something and write it for me. This is another one of them. This is the first

39:22 AI Agent thing that has like been a mind blowing moment for me where Um I am not a programmer. I am not a coder.

39:30 But I can now create software. This is like amazing. Can I ask a blunt crude question. How can I use your software to become a billionaire? Because like I see this and I'm like You know, like the the the ridiculous

39:45 analogy that I use is I'm like uh I feel like an artist sometimes where like I feel like I have the ability to conceptualize certain things, but I can't paint. It's like I can't fucking paint what I want to paint that's in my head. Like because I literally don't have that skill set sometimes. And so like I'll be working on stuff and like, dude, I want this to do this, but I gotta go talk to this developer and I don't want to have this conversation. And that's just like a pain in the ass. And so like you basically are making it so I can finally express myself easily. I like how You're on the first date, you're like, How can I get you To take the clothes off. You're like, how do I use your thing to get really rich? I mean that's basically like like

40:22 And you had on the document you're like uh here's just here's the opportunities. Just use Replit to do X, Y, and Z. I and I I wanna go through that. Because this is like amazing. This is actually you know, there's like there's like the viral clip on YouTube or Twitter, like a bunch of places where it's like the the headline Which we probably have used, which is like

40:39 Mm. billion dollar one person companies or something like this. You're the closest person to this, probably. Uh uh to that question. Yeah, so there are uh apps uh built on Rapid Agent. that otherwise would take probably hundred thousand dollars of of developer uh time.

40:59 And and you can build it like an You know, twenty five dollars paid to pay to reply it. I will say that there are there's limitations, right? It it is not it is not perfect. This is like the worst it's it's it's gonna be. It it sometimes gets stuck with problems. Uh you can you you need to have some skill in prompting to coax it to like uh figure it out. And it sort of like teaches you over time because it tells you what it's doing as it's editing the code. And so over time you're learning.

41:26 How to use it. You're actually learning how code works. You're learning how maybe you're not learning how to exactly type code, but you're learning the different components in where things could go wrong. You're learning about database. We have like database. You can go in and look at the tables and look uh w what's happening. And so, you know, the the vision for this Is that that's all you need. That's all you need to build an entire uh startup.

41:49 And you know, every day we're inching towards that. You know, I and I I talked about like pushing the boulder up up the hill. And I think that's one of my One of my talents. It's like okay, what are the problems

42:02 That you can make progress on. every day and every week such that You know, in a year time, you have this exponential progress and the product is is so much better. The other thing is We're riding this wave. of the foundation model is getting better.

42:16 So every time they get better, we plug in a f a new foundation model and the product is is suddenly better. So you you're writing this, you know, two exponential curves, which is like the engineering we're doing. but also the underlying models and infrastructure is is uh uh is getting better. So I I think in a in a year's time it's gonna be really mind blowing. In a couple years' time. I think we're gonna see stories.

42:37 uh like someone getting super rich uh making an app in Replit that that sort of goes viral and So we're adding stripe integration right now. You can you can already use kind of stripe on on Replet, but we're adding integration that makes it super easy to start monetizing. You're up.

42:57 So Sam said, How do I get Rich? And you're like Disclaimer, it's not fully there yet. But Now you still have to answer the question. I mean the question is like what kind of applications it's like what are the ideas What kind of applications you can build.

43:11 I would say AI applications are g are growing really fast. Like the revenue ramp. In some of those AI applications, it's kinda crazy. Can you can you tell the story of Magic School? I thought this was really interesting. Yeah. So Magic School is like an AI application.

43:27 for educators. It's it's basically like helping them use foundation models and LLMs to do their work to do assignments for for kids to Have an interactive like AI experience. And so it's like a full suite of AI for educators. The guy who created it is a t was a teacher, right?

43:46 The guy who created was a teacher, he took some time during COVID to to learn how to code and he started using Replet. And him and and I think uh an another person. uh built the initial uh thing uh totally on Raplood. And because you can go from idea all the way to deployment And uh and it immediately started growing.

44:08 Like um you know People these AI apps, like when when the adoption starts happening, it goes super viral. You don't need a um a ton of marketing. And the revenue ramp was was one of the craziest ones I've seen, especially for education. Yeah, it was like a known thing. It was like hardest thing you could do, sell in into schools, into teachers. They're overworked, they're underpaid. They don't have the time to like figure out your new tool. But this thing is great. So if you g if you go to it, it's basically like

44:33 Because a teacher spends a lot of their time not in the classroom. It's after c after school is done. They have to grade papers. They have to create the lesson plan for the next day. They have to create the quizzes or the multiple choice tests and they have to like so they have to constantly do these. And there was these platforms like Teacher Pay Teachers. Where I could just If I don't want to make it myself'cause I'm tired after the school day.

44:54 I might be able to go buy one for nine bucks. From another teacher who teaches fifth grade science in some other state. And I would take that and I would I would buy it that way. What Magic School did was it was like cool. Generate a qu you just say like I wanna I teach you know fifth grade biology I want to do a

45:09 Pop quiz about You know, how the s how mitosis works. And then it'll basically create either a lesson plan or a quiz or a you know um a a a A student like interactive like you know, workbook that they need to create or whatever.

45:23 And so it lets a teacher not have to spend, you know Four hours a night. creating the materials that they need just to teach class because AI can do it for them. And this thing looks I I don't know these guys, I don't know anything about'em, but it says You know, over four million educators are using this.

45:38 Which are four million educators and their students, which I don't I don't know if they're counting. Well, if you go on similar web, they have millions of monthly unique. So th that's like a I think they raise like twenty million bucks too off the I mean that's like a pretty huge signal. So they they launched in uh Like I wanna say July twenty twenty three. So they're like a little over over a year. And d do you know the these like SaaS metrics are like how long to get to

46:02 Whatever, like uh a hundred million or whatever. Uh the AI apps. And I would say magic school is on that trajectory. Is like just like that. You know, the the curve is like Yeah, all the way straight up.

46:15 This is kinda weird, but maybe this is like a feature of yours that You helped this company become potentially one of the faster growing companies of all time, and you only earned twenty dollars a month from that. Yeah, so so so Replet had uh you know always a problem of of value capture. Possibly that's why like VC struggles with it uh for a long time. So that there's some logic for why that why it is hard to monetize these things and like capture some of the value.

46:44 Uh I will say I you know, I invested in magic school, so there's some of that. Um and uh With AI, I think we're gonna be able to you know, uh you know, capture at least a little bit more of that value. If people are monetizing these apps on Rapplet v via the agent. Uh

47:02 There's a way I think where we can uh potentially take a c a cut out of that. Especially if we make it like super simple to start monetizing an app. Yeah, yeah. It is like Chad GT. Like you don't need a lot of skill to do that and it's gonna get easier and easier. Once we reach scale and you have, you know, millions of people paying for this. And it's not just like twenty bucks you're gonna pay incremental

47:24 uh after you finish your credits. So we give you cred monthly credits. And then afterwards, if you want to continue, you can like buy more credits. Are there other companies like Magic School like Cool companies like that you've seen that maybe we haven't heard of that are Using AI. Yes.

47:39 So um Y you know, I'm I'm very excited about agents right now. And uh You know, I I think I I predicted uh earlier this year on a on a podcast that you know, this this is gonna be the year where like agents are born and next year is like where agents are are gonna scale.

47:56 Um so there's uh this company called Eleven Acts. And eleven acts creates AI SDRs. Uh, and so basically you don't need to hire as the artists. Like there's some companies that Feel like They you know, they can they can boost out their sales.

48:13 without SDR, you can have like one AE and that AE uh account executive is like running Tens of AI SDRs. Um And and the revenue ramp on eleven X was also crazy.

48:27 It it it's pretty wild how fast these companies are scaling. I don't think in the history of Silicon Valley we've seen anything like that, even in the like web two point oh era. So w what is like a fast ramp for AI for an uh maybe not eleven X specifically, but just for an AI company. What's like What's impr what's impressive that kind of broke the frame of what how long things would take. But you've seen it now. Yeah. So I I would say reaching a ten million in three or four months.

48:53 There are. Oh my God. Yeah, we I invest in uh Jasper, which was like one of the early kind of chat GPT wrapper type of companies where there's like hey like Marketing, you know, you need to write a blog post, you need to write um a description for a product or whatever. And so you could use it for writing any kind of marketing copy.

49:14 And they're graph was I'd never seen it. It was like in ten months or eleven months. They scaled like fifty million and and recurring revenue. It was like I've never seen anything Even remotely close to that. It was it brought up a question, like is it sustainable

49:29 Is this like what what is happening here? Like this is I've just it doesn't compute. But It definitely broke my frame of what is possible because I'd been working, you know, in Silicon Valley since Yeah, two thousand eleven, eleven, twelve and uh That just did that wasn't a thing. You you would never see a graph like that.

49:45 What are some other companies that got into that like ten ish or uh ten ish million or similar trajectory in three months? type of businesses. Yeah. So th this is I I wanted to kind of give a disc you know, s sort of a disclaimer about this, which is The big question in the investor community right now is like the the Motes question.

50:03 Uh and that that started uh around the time that G Chat GPT kind of uh came out and there was these GPT rappers. uh sort of this condescending way of of looking at a lot of these companies. It's like ah if you can create GPT wrapper, you know, in in in a month, then then you know, a lot of other people will create GPT rappers in a month and you're gonna be competing on on price and the margins. uh go down and yes the Air R is great, but you're But Anthropic is capturing or or or open AI is capturing most of the ARR, not you. You're kind of a You're kind of like a middleman and you're gonna have like a hard time having having margins.

50:38 And and I think it's it's totally A valid question. Um now I think you know, modes develop over time. uh through uh strategy and technical excellence. So I mean some of these companies

50:52 can go down pretty fast and there are examples of that, uh right now. Um But uh but I think if you it it you know, you can have you can start building technical like with the Red Again, this like idea of like pushing a ball up up a hill.

51:06 You know, we have This a runtime environment. We have like this infrastructure, we have the deployments, we have databases, we have all these integrations. I mean i d it's the only one in the world that is like an end to end environment to to make software.

51:21 Like to catch up with that, it it's gonna take years, right? But but technical advantage is also not a long term. Moat. And so again, it's a big question. I don't think it's answered yet. You know, there there's strategic things you could do if you reach scale, if the switching costs are high, you know, that that may be like a way to to to have sustainable modes, but but it is definitely a big question. You know what's crazy, Sean? Like

51:45 For the long I I hate using the D word, democratise. I think that's like such an overused like silicon value. Don't do it. Don't do it. But this is actually one of those few zig few examples where like for the longest time Uh building a website or a web app, like you just literally couldn't. And so now you are making the technology that everyone can do it. And so what I think is like guys like Sean and me or people like us who have an audience. It's like

52:11 Why don't we just why aren't we like constantly launching like companies using this technology because like our ability to get users because we just s get on the microphone and talk about it, that's like Actually a competitive advantage. Whereas being technical is no longer It's still an advantage, but it's not uh as much as before. It's like getting customers now is actually the only hard part.

52:33 Which is still hard, but it's way easier if you're popular. Yeah, so so You know, the the playbook uh I would use is like I would go into some inefficient uh market or industry.

52:46 So uh a deal from from Magic School. went into this hugely inefficient um you know, industry which is uh which is uh your schools In education.

52:57 Uh and by the way, another product is synthesis tutor. Which is which is also going going viral right now and and and and they they they they have also this uh revenue ramp that's kinda crazy. Both Sean and I invested in in that company. I think all three invested. Yeah. Yeah, and and for a while th they they had like this this thing where like you know they had they had educators on the payroll and and whatever. They replaced all of that with AI.

53:22 Now like you know the kids s sit in front of the the iPad and they're talking to the AI and like learning really fast. And it's much better than the previous product. Right. So b basically like Find an industry where you're familiar with

53:37 And just like build the DPD wrapper to like automate some of the work there. And like you you could do it like a hundred times and one of them will take off. Yeah, it's the era of the idea guy now. It's our turn. It's our turn to shine, right? Because now the limits and the the kind of the the value creation is Do you understand a problem well enough? to know how to take this really powerful magic wand and point it at that problem and be able to make that more efficient. And then of course do all of the other hard things. Go get customers, make it sustainable, build a good team, you know, like do all the the normal entrepreneurship stuff. But

54:09 It seems like more than ever. Having a great idea. is the kind of like key unlock to doing these things because building has become easier. And I'll give you kind of my My personal epiphany that I had while I was doing this. So I invested in Replic.

54:23 Mostly when I just thought You seemed really smart. And I saw a growth curve of developers using it and I thought, Oh, cool, like I've experienced this problem before, like A one stop place where I can Come in, write the code, host it, all all the all the stuff you talked about. Like don't have to download Java, don't have to do any of that shit.

54:43 I think actually in the same way that synthesis like Took AI and actually almost like Really. Like 10X to the value prop of the business. Um

54:52 I think you guys are doing the same. So here's my my quick pitch, which is now that I think of Replit as um Like sh sh basically what Shopify was. For creating You know, like online stores.

55:05 I think Replit is that for creating software. So to me You guys are just brightened when you're Shopify for software. So like I'll give you my example. I recently celebrated a milestone that was both I was proud of it and really embarrassed also. So uh a few years ago I started a uh e commerce brand. And we just crossed fifty million in revenue, like kind of like cumulative lifetime revenue. Half of it was like, you know, this year, but

55:28 But fifty million total. And I was like, wow, like fifty million, that's great. Like that's I had never created a business that had done fifty million in revenue. So that was like a personal pride point. At the same time, uh I was telling it to s to to a friend of mine who's not an entrepreneur He's like, Yeah, man, I would love to learn how to, you know, like make websites and like make products with manufacturing. And I was like

55:47 Oh I don't know how to do any of that. Like I was I was like this This brand That is on fifty million in revenue. For me.

55:55 I don't I just stacked Alibaba times Shopify. I've never manufactured a product in my life, still don't know how to. And I've never made a website that's like, you know, actually used by customers, still don't know how to. But I was able to I was able to skip all the work.

56:10 And get to the brand part, like do the thing where we created a product that people liked and it you know, it's a successful company now. And I thought Wow, Replit's gonna do that for the software space. And I was like, it used to be that the job was Software engineer. And now it's gonna be software creator.

56:26 It's like I can be a creator of software without being a programmer myself. That little shift is a big shift because of the way I think about it, I don't know how many developers there are. I think GitHub has like a hundred million or two hundred million accounts. So I'll just use that. Like there's Two hundred million, let's say. developers, you know, software engineers in the world.

56:45 Um Well now there's gonna be two hundred two billion people. That can create software. Cause if you got the internet, you got your phone, you can create software now. You can just tell the agent. Make me an app that does this. Make a tool that does this. And so you 10x the number of people that can create software in the same way that Shopify and Alibaba.

57:03 Ten X or more the number of people who could create products and go sell them like hard goods. Uh, that's how I see what you're doing. Yeah. So so you know, even uh at the start of Replet, uh

57:15 uh you know, th there's our uh initial seed deck and the deck it kind of has this Elon Musk style, like you know, a master plan. And it was like we we build a you know, we build a platform, we grow it, and then AI is gonna make the thing a lot more accessible because our mission was uh make programming accessible, then we update our mission was

57:36 uh create a billion programmers. And then so the moment that, you know you know, even GPT three came out, I was like, this is this is a thing and I wrote this Thread on Twitter about how AI agents will just change how programmers work. This is the deck. Twenty fifteen. This is I don't even know if OpenAI was a research lab at that time, maybe.

57:57 Uh definitely, you know, there was no chat GPT, but this was your master plan deck, so We're gonna grow by building tools. for teachers and students, we're gonna build a simple network and AI assisted interface that blurs the distinction between learning and building. Evolve into a platform where people can learn, build, explore, and host applications. Like talking about AI back in twenty fifteen in your in your actual pitch deck. Dude, it's also clear how uh Code Academy was highly influential to you because I remember

58:22 Years ago, Sean said everyone tries to learn how to code, I used Code Academy and it was a pretty cool interface and it's very similar to what you're describing. Y you know, I at some point I kind of lost Hope. In in courses. Um because like

58:37 You know, we have a hundred days of code. We're telling users That to use our application. You need to you need to invest a hundred days. That's kinda crazy.

58:46 Like there there isn't any like successful company in the world where you need a hundred days To learn it. And And so that's when I kind of Change my mindset and I said, Okay.

58:57 It needs to be Chat GPT like it needs to be just a prompt. Um, and we started building that uh earlier this year. And and now that's all we're focused on. We want to create new programmers. You know, existing developers.

59:12 Great, they have a lot of tools. But we wanna we wanna go after the citizen developer. Right. Everyone is a developer. And I think that's you know, that's what what you're talking about.

59:21 You go from like a hundred million developers of the world. Well, I think it it overstates the number. It's probably more thirty million. And then you t ten X that. Is it wha what does the world look like? when anyone with an idea could could make something. And one of my favorite

59:36 Bucks. There's uh the sovereign individual. The thing I really was excited about Is this idea of ideas become wealth. And so you no longer have the bottleneck.

59:46 Of making something. That's where we're headed. And this is what you're talking about, Sean, is as like the Uh the it's it's the time for idea guy. And and like maybe that's you know

59:57 tongue in cheek and I like maybe the way to to talk about it. In more precise terms. Is that people Who

1:00:06 Can find these gaps in in markets. People who have Expertise in certain areas. That they can tell there there's inefficiency. And they can like create an AI application that can immediately plug that.

1:00:20 Like I saw this video on Twitter the other day. It was uh of a snake that got its head chopped off. And it like floated around and bit the t uh bit like the tail of its own body. And then like the body like reacted. Your employees are they thinking that this they're sort of doing that to themselves? Whether like when you make jokes or like when you're w w when you like talking about like you know like you don't need to hire all these programmers to do all this stuff. Are they like sitting there with their hands in their pocket like uh like does that be nice?

1:00:51 You know, I I always wanted the company to be super lean. And so um for a long time we're like ten people. But but like now we're like seventy people. That's still nothing. Yeah. So so I I I'd rather not hire a lot more people because I think that again, the efficiency

1:01:07 uh for programmers So look, citizen developers are gonna go from zero So like say ten X. But also existing software engineer are gonna go from ten X to a hundred X. Right.

1:01:19 And so and so they're gonna be become more and more productive. The moment we uh We automate all of software engineering. I think that's sort of like the moment. Of ADI.

1:01:31 So I think it's like a little far away. And the reason I say this is because once you automate software Then the agents can rebuild themselves. And you go into this. Into this loop.

1:01:43 of you know increased intelligence Every version builds us its next version, builds its next version. And so this is what they call intelligence explosion that would lead to the singularity, right? So it's like a pretty crazy time when we automate all of software engineering. That's right. I I think I think it's coming.

1:02:01 I don't know if it's ten years or fifteen years. But I think that's the time. where the world really f radically changes. Have you met Um anybody in

1:02:10 Kind of the tech industry that Bl blew you away. Either personally or maybe you read about them, maybe you met a friend of a friend told you a story,'cause I saw a picture of you with Jensen. Uh, you know, you've met Paul Graham. I know that you're like connected in the AI circles. You met Sam Sam Altman. In addition to building the tech, I love the characters and I love the stories. Is why every you know Elon snippet of how he runs his companies goes viral and shit like that. What are your favorite

1:02:34 kind of inspiring stories or crazy stories that you'd you've either Experience directly or or read. Yeah, yeah, one of the curious story when we're um raising from A sixteen Z. Mark invites me to to breakfast at like ten A. And so so I go there and I expect like I'm gonna talk about the business.

1:02:53 And so we we spend like two or three hours talking about politics. And the world and like all sorts of things that are interesting to to him. And I thought like this guy's like is like more than just a technologist, he's like a philosopher. And so right now he's he's

1:03:08 Going out and he's talking about the stuff, like his Joe Rogan interview went super viral. And he's been always have like these interesting ideas about about the world. And the interesting thing about A sixteen Z Is his partner Ben is is sort of like the executor. sort of the executive, right? He wrote the hard thing about hard things.

1:03:26 Where like he teaches you like about What it means to run a company. It's painful. It's hard. And what it means to hire executives, what it means to scale a company. And so so y you have this this duo of like

1:03:38 The doer and the like the philosopher. Uh and I think uh I think that's really amazing and and I think they're they're they have really big plans. Uh and and I would just hate the philosopher. I'd be like Are you gonna do anything? What are you talking about politics for right now? It's gotta be the worst to be the doer and the doer philosopher relationship. Uh you know, I I think uh I think Sam is is uh it was interesting uh to to kind of meet him, talk to him,'cause very he's very effective. Like he

1:04:09 Like the first time I met I met him Uh or like Maybe not the first time, but like He was on his computer as as I am talking. And so I'm talking, it was like yeah, we're fundraising, I want to uh

1:04:20 to talk to you know A six and Z, I'm like really big fan of of Mark. And he was typing at his computer. Okay, I introduce you to Mark. Um and And then you know, when when you send Sam emails it's like Pretty quickly.

1:04:35 replies with with like a you know a couple of words or like a couple of sentences. So I saw how effective and fast. You can be. And that that re I'm I'm not like that.

1:04:45 You know, I'm trying to be more like that. Vale. Yeah, I am someone who really values The the quietness. Like to think uh about ideas and to think about strategy.

1:04:56 And things like that. So I'm not always on top of communication. It actually makes me like a little Yeah, it it's overwhelming. Um But but uh but I think I think seeing these people, at least it you know, inspired me to be a little more like that. You uh you tweeted out the story that I loved about

1:05:13 Um You said the most gangster story in Silicon Valley is Steve Jobs buying Pixar for five million. Investing fifty million and operating at a loss for a decade. So much so that he had to cut personal checks to make payroll. And somehow turning it around to a seven billion dollar exit. Uh why why did you like that story?

1:05:31 You know, uh I I there are people who are are overrated in Silicon Valley and I think there are be people who are underrated. Like I think people think about Steve Jobs in terms of like, yeah, the flashy things, the iPhone, the iPod, you know, coming on stage and and doing that. The thing I like about the Steve Jobs story Is when he was lost in the desert for ten years. So he left.

1:05:53 Uh he was fired from Apple. And then He created two companies that were failing. The whole time. Like uh next computing, next computers.

1:06:02 And Pixar. We're literally failing. Like they didn't do anything, yeah, they they weren't selling. He was just like investing more and more of his money Uh like d I think he was gonna go broke if it but he kept going.

1:06:14 For ten years. Like how do you do that? Uh and and I you know, I'm a person who you like we talked about in my story where I wanna be able to go the distance. I think going the distance is a is a is an advantage. for for entrepreneurs.

1:06:28 And Pixar became this hugely valuable company. Uh and it goes from making no revenue to to making billions of dollars and going public. over over a couple of years. Um and next

1:06:40 Next next computers saved Apple. Apple was having a problem. with OS like intel Yeah, they had the chip before, I don't know, uh they made it internally or something like that. And then everyone was moving to Intel, and Intel was

1:06:56 the best computing chip and they wanted their computers to be fast. And so they needed a new offering system. And They try to buy did they they went to the market, they try to acquire companies, they kinda find a great operating system. And next computing had the had the had a great operating system.

1:07:13 And that became Mac OS. So they bought it I didn't know that. I thought NET was just a failure. I didn't I didn't even realize it actually contri I thought they just bought Steve back Aquire, but it wasn't an Aqu it wasn't just Acquire. No, I mean uh objective C, for example You know, next computing was really obsessed with this idea of object oriented programming and they innovated a lot on what that means. And

1:07:35 You know, it is based on Unix, but it has a lot of interesting features on on top of that. So Apple they it saved Apple'cause Apple w was otherwise not gonna be competitive without these uh new chips. Right. Yeah. Dude, I know we kept you. Half an hour over. I apologize for that. Uh

1:07:51 But this was amazing. This was one of my favorite episodes in a long time. And I'm not just saying that. You can go check out the other episodes. I don't say that at the end. So Uh, this was awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. Uh, where should people f Twitter is the best place to follow you? Yeah, Twitter. Uh uh Amos Hodd on on Twitter.

1:08:08 Um and and the the raplet handle on on Twitter as well, just just R E P L. Dude, thank you very much. You're the best. Of course. Uh of course my my pleasure. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my law in it like my day song On the roadless travel never looking back

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