The Exchanges

Q I thought it'd be great to start with just having you explain what is Replit? What's the vision? Where is this going? What job does it do for people?

A The idea behind Replit is that, uh, making software today is, is very difficult, and, uh, we want to make it easier. Uh, one of the reasons for the difficulty is that, um, it is very fragmented. So you would need to download, uh, what's called an IDE. It's basically a code editor. You need to download the runtime, basically Python or JavaScript. You need to figure out a package manager to configure your kind of open source packages. And once you've done all of that, you need to figure out how to deploy it, how to share it, how to, and so it's, it's a very hard process. And that's one of the ways, uh, where people get stuck And never learn how to code because it just feels like this cumbersome IT process. And so the vision, uh, for Repl.it has always been is like, okay, making software is fun is great. More people should do it. But, uh, so for more people to do it, it needs to be, um, easier to do. It needs to be in one place and it needs to be learnable. It's easy to learn. And so, so that's the product today. It is, I think, One of the more easier, um, IDEs slash environment slash deployment environment, uh, on, on the internet. And, uh, and I think we make it really easy for people to just jump in, even without prior experience of coding, especially now with the new AI products that we built.

AI assessment note: “And so the vision, uh, for Repl.it has always been is like”

Q These days, what have you, how are people actually using this, say, that are, say product managers or just like non-technical people within startups or bigger companies?

A On the SMB side of things, a lot of people are building kind of back office, uh, tools, right? So we have real estate agents That, you know, have a lot of data, have a lot of, um, things they, they want to manage in their business. So that they're building a lot of these, these tools that they otherwise would have to buy. But typically when you buy, it's, it's actually not exactly what you need. And that's kind of the problem with SAS. It's like, it's, it's like one size fits all. And so a lot of people are seeing it as sort of a SAS replacement for in-house tools and, and, and things like that. And then when you go to the like bigger companies, um, it's anywhere from, from prototyping to, to, to, to actually production apps, uh, to, to tools as well. So, um, we've seen, uh, product managers build, like I said, like a V one of an app and actually go out and test it with the users. Uh, and I can't name the company, but, uh, you know, I, it's a, you know, there's a public company that, that have used Replit to test a V one of a, of, of an app. Um, and obviously after, after that sort of works, they, they take it to the engineers and they're like, okay, we built this thing. We think it's a, we think it's a great thing. We test it with some users. Uh, let's go actually put it on the roadmap and, and built it and build it into the actual product. So you are sort of unblocking produc…

AI assessment note: “we've seen, uh, product managers build, like I said, like a V one”

Q be and get 100 dollars credit on your next campaign. Just go to linkedin.com slash pod Lenny to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash pod Lenny. Terms and conditions apply. Let's go down this thread. Actually, while this is happening, just like what, what allows for this to be possible technology wise? Like what is the kind of a stack, whatever you can share that enables this to exist that?

A Yeah, for sure. First of all, is, uh, it's the, uh, uh, all the abstractions that we built. So, uh, the way replet works is, um, you know, the, you know, very bottom layer, it's, um, our runtime. So This is the operating system. This is the package manager. This is the language runtimes. Uh, we built a system that, uh, is able to install packages in any language, including native packages. So the AI, anytime, um, it needs a, it needs a package. I can, I can go here and show one of those. By the way, the AI can take screenshots as well, so that it checks it works. So here, uh, you can see it's, it's, it's taking screenshots to make sure that the homepage is rendering. Here you can see, uh, you know, uh, oh, it wanted to drag and drop library. And so it installed, uh, installed that. And so it has access to all, all the packages across all languages, including Linux and, and all of that. And then the layer on top of that is the editor and the infrastructure that runs the editor, including what I described as the multiplier editor. And then we expose all of that infrastructure to the AI. And, um, there's like, almost like a new discipline, um, called, um, AI computer interfaces. So sort of like HCI is now ACI. And it turns out like LLMs need interfaces that are actually quite different than humans. Uh, they're trying to make them use human interfaces like Anthropix computer use, b…

AI assessment note: “the very bottom layer, it's, um, our runtime. So This is the operating system.”

Q What's kind of the limitation of what this can do today? Like, what can't you do? Say you're like, you have zero coding experience. What sorts of products can you not yet build with something like this that might be possible in the future? How far does this take you now?

A You know, you can build, uh, MVPs. I think you can also start to get some, some initial users. I think when it's, when you start iterating on the, the product Like large iterations, you might run into problems. For example, you know, it's not very good at data database migrations. And so we're trying to fix that. So, you know, a lot of when you're iterating on the product, a lot of the times you're actually, um, you know, changing the, um, the structure of the app and, um, that, that requires database migrations. And so now like it might change the database in a way that creates an error that's unrecoverable. Uh, and at that point it, you might, you might get stuck, especially if you don't know how to code. Uh, some people will figure it out by going to chat GPT and Claude and like asking questions and, and like, I, I actually, I'm really inspired about how persistent some of our users are, which is really amazing. But I think, yeah, that's like, you'll get an MVP past the MVP where it's like a product that's working and you need to change it, iterate on it. It's, it's, uh, it's still a struggle now, but I expect, uh, you know, over the next few months, we'll, we'll continue. It's like, if you think about it, it's like sort of, we're building, uh, you know, we're building as you were building. So we're building out the agent so that it can continue, uh, getting better, um, as o…

AI assessment note: “it's not very good at data database migrations. And so we're trying to fix that.”

Q true. We have no idea. We keep thinking it's just gonna keep going, but maybe, maybe it'll stop at some point. I could keep going and going. Uh, but I think we should also let people go play with these things and process all the things we've been talking about. Uh, is there anything else that you think might be helpful for folks to think about or learn or study?

A You know, I'll give advice to, to sort of, um, uh, founders or, or leaders at, at companies. Um, The way we work is, is going to change rapidly, and it's important to be sort of resilient to that, to that, to that change. One thing that I think is really difficult now is having roadmaps, especially if you're doing anything in AI, but really any, anything that AI could affect. You want to be able to react to it really quickly. And so, you know, when the, um, Anthropic dropped the computer use, Um, uh, sort of capability. You know, we slaughtered our roadmap because we don't really have an explicit roadmap. We, we like immediately jumped on it and started building things and we've launched some things around it. Uh, we're going to be doing more with it, but like there's going to be capabilities that, that are going to drop and you, you want to really, uh, in some cases, if it really affects your business, you want to be able to jump on it really, really quickly. So, so being agile, not being, uh, sort of Um, stuck with, with roadmaps, being able to kind of just, just say, oh, we're just gonna, we're just gonna switch priorities right away. Uh, is it gonna be, uh, super important not being, uh, you know, uh, like I said, with silos, um, at Replit, there's so many people that are on, on the scale of like, you know, designer to engineer, designer, product manager. Actually, uh, I me…

AI assessment note: “I'll give advice to, to sort of, um, uh, founders or, or leaders”

Q Okay. This can go in so many directions. I'm going to bring us back to the implications for people building products, say product managers, founders. How does this change that function, that skill set? Like what skills do you see will matter more, matter less, which functions are maybe in some danger and they should start thinking about a different career path?

A What, one interesting persona that we're seeing is the CEO, the CEO of, uh, Startup. The CEO of, you know, uh, you know, Andrew Wilkinson from, from Tiny is, is a big user. Um, and so, uh, these people are, are typically, you know, creatives, right? They built a company, uh, they hired people. A lot of them, like, can't code. A lot of them are, are designers or product managers or, or something else. And they, you can imagine a bottleneck. You can imagine a bunch of ideas in their head. Uh, and the ideas have to translate through them talking and then someone else listening to them and like assuming that someone else actually understands what they say and then that someone else going and trying to build what they want to, what they want built. And also assuming that person has, has time, right? Because a lot of times your engineers are kind of stuck building the current thing. They're not thinking about the future thing. And so, uh, what gets me excited is a lot of these CEOs are building the future concept, the next company, the next product they're going to build, the next You know, say a company they're going to build. And so, uh, it unlocks, uh, the creativity and again, sort of unblocks them from that. And look, it's, you know, it's a V one of the product, but it can push things forward. You can touch it. You can feel it. You can say, okay, this is, this really has legs an…

AI assessment note: “a lot of these CEOs are building the future concept, the next company”