Amjad Masad is the co-founder and CEO of Replit, an online platform designed for collaborative coding in multiple programming languages. Replit boasts over 30m users, has secured $200M in venture funding, and was recently valued at $1.2B. Before Replit, Amjad was a Software Engineer at Facebook, and a Founding Engineer at Codecademy.
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In today’s episode, we discuss:
- How AI is reshaping the software landscape
- Bridging the gap between ideas and software
- Why YC almost rejected Replit four times
- Replit’s fundraising difficulties, and how Paul Graham helped
- The secret lever Replit pulled to scale ahead of its competition
- Replit’s impressive distribution engine
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Referenced:
- 7 Powers: https://www.amazon.com/7-Powers-Foundations-Business-Strategy/dp/0998116319/
- Codecademy: https://www.codecademy.com/
- Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/
- I Am a Strange Loop: https://www.amazon.com/Am-Strange-Loop-Douglas-Hofstadter/dp/0465030793
- Mythical Man-Month: https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959
- On the Naturalness of Software: https://people.inf.ethz.ch/suz/publications/natural.pdf
- OpenAI: https://openai.com/
- Paul Graham: https://twitter.com/paulg
- Python: https://www.python.org/
- Read Write Own: https://www.amazon.com/Read-Write-Own-Building-Internet/dp/0593731387/
- Replit: https://replit.com/
- Roy Bahat: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roybahat/
- Sam Altman: https://twitter.com/sama
- The Innovator’s Dilemma: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Management-Innovation/dp/1633691780/
- The Little Schemer: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/0262560992/
- Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/
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Where to find Amjad Masad:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amjadmasad
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/amasad
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Where to find Todd Jackson:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddj0/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/tjack
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Where to find First Round Capital:
- Website: https://firstround.com/
- First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
- This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:31) Replit’s origin story
(08:24) Starting Facebook’s JavaScript infrastructure team
(10:36) Amjad’s unique path to entrepreneurship
(16:04) How Replit got its early users
(17:00) Replit’s fundraising difficulties
(17:54) Why YC almost rejected Replit four times
(20:23) Building Replit’s distribution engine
(22:08) Drivers of Replit’s growth
(27:41) What Silicon Valley gets wrong
(30:09) Replit’s monetization strategy
(32:29) Integrating AI into the platform
(36:18) The impact of AI on software engineering
(39:40) Defining the new “software creator” role
(41:43) How to keep up with developments in AI
(46:24) Replit’s goals for 2024
(48:11) Advice for founders: defy conventional wisdom
(51:12) Amjad’s 4 favorite books