The Exchanges

Q First your own, then a little bit of YC, then a little bit of third party investors. It's not like this was an overnight success at all, and so I, I'm curious, did you ever have a moment where you were like, we are not gonna make it, and I'm not good enough, and this company's not gonna work out?

A Yeah, yeah, I mean, in, uh, 20, 24, early 24, so last year, um, the company had not been growing all that much. We're actually, we're kind of hit a plateau and started decreasing a little bit, so we were in this awkward Position where we make it easy enough to get started, but not enough to get you all the way to building a business or a real piece of software. And because our focus is on getting everyone to make applications, anyone with a dream without any skill or background in computer science should be able to come to Replit and make an app that was always the kind of the core of the mission. We're also not very good for professional developers because they needed all these tools that we didn't have. And so we're in this like awkward middle and not making any revenue and have this Really large staff, 130 people, had raised two hundred million dollars, and as you know, you know, you, uh, you talk about it in the book, like, you know, there are businesses that you could build that provide a lot of, uh, you know, profits and good living for yourself, and you have complete, you know, control of what you do, but once you take on venture capital, there's almost a contract, uh, you're implicitly kind of getting into, which is, I'm gonna build a billion dollar company. This is this, I'm going to build something really scalable, really big. And I take that responsibility seriously …

AI assessment note: “Yeah, yeah, I mean, in, uh, 20, 24, early 24, so last year”

Q of Wheaties they had in Jordan, but that's like, I had, you know, Lincoln Logs and Legos. Um, but then, you know, what's kind of crazy is then you had a one 80 basically from that, which is, is it true that afterwards, Not so long ago, you actually turned down a billion dollars, uh, as an acquisition price for your company when you only had six employees. What happened?

A Yeah. Um, you know, we, we had, uh, uh, started the company in 2016, and the mission behind the company is to create a billion coders, billion programmers, billion developers, whatever you want to call it. And I just felt in my heart of hearts that, We're at a point where anyone can make software. I felt like the AI is progressing really fast, just the cloud systems, everything that was coming online made it so that anyone could really be able to do this thing that have fundamentally changed my life, you know, got me from, from Jordan in a sort of lower income family all the way to the US, become an entrepreneur, joining Y Combinator, the most prestigious startup accelerator. And, uh, in 2018, just after we did Y Combinator, we kind of bootstrapped for a couple of years, then we did Y Combinator. Um, maybe 2019, we got this acquisition offer from a really big, big company. Um, and, uh, obviously it was a lot of money, and I, I, we didn't, we didn't have, I didn't have a lot of money at the time, but I just, I just felt like they're gonna take the, they're gonna take the company, not gonna do anything interesting with it. And, and I'll make the money and maybe I'll quit two or three years after that and create the same company. So I thought, I like this company. I might as well keep going. And I always felt like if we get to a point where we achieve even one percent of our missi…

AI assessment note: “we got this acquisition offer from a really big, big company”

Q in revenue. If that's interesting to you, you can click the link and get on a consulting call with my team. So if you're like a young person who hasn't figured out how to make money yet, and you don't know what you want to do with your career, but you're curious about this AI thing, what would you tell them to do today? Where does a young person start?

A I would say, do the same thing that you've always done, you know, get a job, find an industry you like or you're interested in, and go into that, and what you're going to find is massive inefficiencies. People do things, it's still like, you know, there's still faxes around in many businesses. People use pen and paper for so many things. Old software still exists. You know, um, there's so many, like whatever field you go into, just have an eye for what people around you are doing, and, and what are the things that could be automated, Or what AI could be good at. And the way to learn what AI could be good at is to spend a lot of time with GPT, spend a lot of time messing around with video AI, messing around with Replit and Code AI. Just be plugged into the AI world, and you're going to build an intuition. Just jump into it, you're going to build an intuition. At the same time, find a real world problem. And the way to do that is to go literally into any domain or incident, And just open your eyes, and you're going to find a problem to solve. And then solve that problem and sell it to the people. I mean, um, there's this story, uh, I just want to show also that entrepreneurship is not always about taking massive risk, quitting your job, and, uh, and, you know, and going, going for broke. There's this guy, his name is Ahmad George. He works in a skincare company in, in DC, and he'…

AI assessment note: “get a job, find an industry you like or you're interested in, and go into that”

Q What do you have like a saying that you say all the time to your employees that they would be like, ah, again, like, like, are there things that you just, you can't help but repeat because it's part of like the mantra that you have to the company?

A It's about reminding them why we're here. Um, and I think you and I have the same mission. It's about creating more entrepreneurship in the world. Uh, I can talk about brilliant programmers, but, but I keep telling stories about, Who I talk to this, I talk to users every week, who I talk to this week, what they're doing with Replit. How is that changing their lives? And I feel like entrepreneurship is one of the most life-changing experiences. You can, you can have a lot of personal growth. You can be financially free. You can be free from, from, you know, um, jobs that you might hate. Um, and so empowerment through entrepreneurship is something I talk a lot about and I keep repeating.

AI assessment note: “empowerment through entrepreneurship is something I talk a lot about and I keep repeating”

Q Yeah. It's such a good point. So, I mean, so what do you do? Is there like a secret WhatsApp WhatsApp group or something where like tech CEOs go, okay, they're Mark's about to raid us. Like, here's what hap, hap, what's happening.

A There's a lot of WhatsApp groups. I'm sure you've seen some of the leaks that have been happening. During the pandemic, a lot of, uh, tech people just felt, uh, you know, during the great awokening like this. Yeah. It was, it was really hard to talk about anything online. You know, you get attacked and canceled. The cancel culture has gone crazy. So a lot of the, a lot of the social groups and especially people not meeting in person went into, into WhatsApp. So we do hear these kind of All these rumors happening on, on Signal and WhatsApp pretty, pretty commonly. So you can tell when something is happening. But another thing about Replit is, and you and I just talked about it, where Windsurf and Cursor and others, they're going after the professional engineers. They have a target on their back because they're competing with big tech. They're competing on the same technology on the same, uh, market. Whereas a lot of big tech kind of sees us more of as, as a toy where like, oh, you let people, let people without coding skills build things. And we're like, yeah, we're a toy. Don't worry about us. And you know, I've been, um, Very, you know, successful in the podcast circuit and, uh, but, but I, we've actually not been covered by the New York Times or any of that stuff, right? We've been kind of, you know, because I want to talk to people directly. I want to be able to tell them ab…

AI assessment note: “There's a lot of WhatsApp groups... we do hear these kind of All these rumors”

Q So, so how do you protect yourself from some of that? Is that, does that get back to the prompts of like.

A I think knowledge. Yeah. I really think knowledge. Like really deeply understanding that this is a machine with input, output. There's no free will. It doesn't feel anything. It doesn't know anything. Anyone who tells you that is either insane or lying to you. It, it really doesn't have consciousness. It's, we know exactly, so the underlying premise of it, um, and, uh, you know, I argue a lot, because I think, so I actually think it's kind of a contrarian view from Silicon Valley, because a lot of people in Silicon Valley have this mysticism, or I don't know, maybe it's marketing, but a lot of people, a lot of people working in AI believe that, you know, we're gonna, you know, it's as Human as humans. And, uh, there's nothing about it that it's, it thinks as long as it mimics us, there's nothing about it that is like, you know, uh, less than us. And at some point it might be superior to us or might be super intelligence that what, that's what everything, everyone's working on. And they have this utopian vision of like, oh, it's gonna solve all the problems, which kind of feels like communism a little bit. We're just gonna like put it in charge and just gonna like, You know, we're gonna live in fully automated space communism. Uh, which again, I am against, you know, this is why I came to this country, this is why I love America. Uh, we'll get our guns and shoot it. If I could d…

AI assessment note: “I really think knowledge. Like really deeply understanding that this is a machine”