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

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