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:
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Where to find Amjad Masad:
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Where to find Todd Jackson:
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Where to find First Round Capital:
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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