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