StackBlitz CEO Eric Simons shares final participation and creation metrics from the Bolt Hackathon, an AI development competition with a $1M prize pool.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Simons: AI reduces a month of engineering time to five minutes
“What would take a month of engineering time Can take literally five minutes.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Simons: AI will augment workers rather than replace them
“Most people think AI is going to replace them, but in, in reality, it's just gonna augment them and supercharge them.”
Opinion
Simons: Software engineers lag behind entrepreneurs in adopting AI tools
“I think a lot of software engineers have been kind of late to the game on trying to adopt AI tools. And also the way that they're kind of approaching is very different than someone who is you know, kind of entrepreneurial in nature.”
Insight
Simons: Build LLM features incrementally with minimal initial prompts rather than bulk
“Especially, especially when you're dealing with stuff that's going to be like more complicated functionality. Like for design changes, I'll often just, I'll just kind of like, I'll be like looking at the designers creating a list in, in one shop message. I'm l…”
Insight
Simons: Conversational voice AI eliminates the friction of diet tracking apps
“This is a good example of just an app that a lot of people need and I think it would be really hard to do on your own. Like, I've done this, so if you try and, you know, track your dieting, whatever have you, I think the inclusion of AI, whether we can just ta…”
Disclosure
Simons: StackBlitz was preparing to shut down in 2024 before Bolt
“Last year, in twenty-twenty-four, we were getting ready to shut the company down. When you're dealing with that sort of situation where it's like, are we gonna shut down the company, or what are the other outcomes? We're gonna go and turn over every stone, and…”