I got rejected from YC (4x)…. now my side hustle is worth $1.16B

this is the first AI agent thing that has like been a mind-blowing moment for me where I am not a programmer I am not a coder but I can now create software well that's insane there are apps built on repet agent that otherwise would take probably $100,000 of developer time and you can build it like in you know $25 pay to repin it's pretty wild how fast these companies are scaling I don't think in the history of Silicon Valley we've seen anything like that even in the like Web 2.0 Arrow so what is like a

fast ramp for an AI company what's impressive that kind of broke the frame of what how long things would take so I I would say reaching 10 million in 3 to 4 months ARR oh my God that's wild can I ask a blunt crude question how can I use your software to become a billionaire I would say building [Music] okay so uh how do we want to start this so omj you um you're awesome so you have you're today in a position that I think a lot of people want to be in you have you're

doing the Silicon Valley dream you had this idea you go through YC you've now raised hundreds of millions of dollars you're valued at a you know billion dollar valuation so that's today but then the cool thing about your story is that that didn't seem likely you know 10 years ago is a very likely success story and yeah you went through YC but you were rejected a bunch of times like yeah you're in Silicon Valley now but you started off coding in an internet cafe in Jordan that's what's interesting to me and we asked you beforehand

we're like hey what killer stories could you come on the podcast and tell and you go you wrote this so I'm going to read it word for word and then I want you to tell us the story you go rejected four times and Rick Rolling into YC raising tons of money and meeting amazing billionaire so let's do the first part rejected four times and Rick Rolling into YC can you tell the story yeah so I left my uh job at at Facebook in uh 20 2016 and you know repet has been a side project for

a while and it's been it's been growing I've been working on it like nights and weekends it grew to to a point where the like server cost was meaningful and I was like okay you know I have to I guess I have to start a company around it and so I went to my manager at Facebook and I was like look I have the side project can we make it like somehow a project at at Facebook Facebook and we looked into that I sent Zuck an email at the time and he he ignored me like

okay I guess I guess I have to start I guess I have to start a company and so yeah I quit I quit my job um applied to YC the first time we did the whole thing we did the the form and the video and and all of that and we didn't even get a get a call or anything like that it was it was just like we got the rejection uh letter and so I was like okay you know I have to this uh Facebook stock some savings I sold the Facebook Stock I put

like half of it in Bitcoin and then half of it into into the company or like just just for us to kind of live and how much money was that was like 70k or or something like that what was the original uh product for of repet so it was basically an editor and a console you could type code there and you can run it you can switch a language and that's it by the way Sam have you ever used I was using it today before this it's magical and also your tweets describing what it is

like for example your doctor saying you know he wants me to track my sleep so I just uploaded the PDF that he wanted me to fill up fill out into repet and it made an application so I can upload it much easier yeah it's like pretty magical Sean are you able to use it it's definitely out of my league still both me and Sam have joked around because we both uh have maybe five or six times fall started of like I'm going to learn to code this summer it's like a New Year's resolution thing where

you just keep saying you're going to do it you you do 20% of it 30% of it and you give up uh you know we buy the the Udi course Learn Python the Hard Way then you start doing it and nothing really ever stuck and one of the biggest problems was that nobody really talks about this you think learning to code is like learning Spanish it's like learning a language you're like okay so how do I need to say the thing but before you can even do that it's like oh I'm supposed to download this

program so I need to download an editor and then I need to download all these packages to be able to use St and then you need to and it's like just setting up the environment is so goddamn confusing to a beginner that you don't even get to do the the part where you actually write the code and be able to and then it's like oh how do I run the code I got to host it somewhere now I got to learn how to do hosting and ser like what is that and so there's all these

things around it that were confusing repet solved all of that which was amazing and I actually did your like 100 days of learning to code like it's actually made it really easy you know if I didn't have kids I would just be doing a lot more because it's you you solved that problem for me and I know I'm asking you about the YC rejection I want to come back to that but to give Sam maybe a little more of context I think correct me if I'm wrong maybe I'm making this up I think the reason

you wanted to have this kind of like online editor online environment where it's all hosted there was because when you were younger you were living in Jordan and I guess you used to go try to learn to code out of an Internet or go try to code out of an Internet cafe but that means every time you go you have to set everything up for the first time because it's not your it's not your home base not your home computer where you set it up once and it's there is that true is that why you

have you felt the problem like x what a normal person would feel yeah basically like every time I wanted to do a little homework I have to like spend an hour setting up the environment at the time the web was moving so fast until we had Google Docs and we had Gmail we had this you know client side JavaScript application sort of Revolution uh and I'm like okay you know why can't I type code into the browser and run it and I started looking around and turns out like nobody solved this problem there were some

experiments and it it was kind of crazy to me because uh it was almost like you know finding a $100 bill in uh New York Grand Central Station right like it's like oh I found an idea that nobody's paying attention to and is that true cuz cuz it's kind of crazy you know the world is Big a lot there's a lot of programmer that seems like an obvious thing I mean I'm a total Outsider so my question is like was there some technical challenge to that cuz that seems like I I I guess it's easy

to say things that are successful are obvious ideas looking back but like yeah prob two things right there's the technical challenge of being able to make this all work in a browser right that that was that was not obvious but then this seems like the second thing was I keep going back to the internet cafe thing because it's sort of like the hardship made the problem like unavoidable to you whereas anybody else who learns to code if you're just doing it at home in America and your your you might do that setting up once maybe

have a a little bit of the problem but you're not running into it face first every every day as if you were if you were working out of internet cafe yeah absolutely right I mean you know Paul Graham talks about it all the time it's like you know the best startups are you know solving your your own problem and I felt that problem really deeply and I started working on it I discovered why it's hard well it's it's hard to run different languages in the browser you can run JavaScript but you can run python for

example so we started writing interpreters uh writing compilers to to to run on on JavaScript and then in you know it took us a couple years had like few languages running it was like pretty rough prototype but people started using it my friends and people at school and I'm like okay this idea has lags and so let me work on it more and then 201 uh had a breakthrough and the Breakthrough was we were the first to compile python Ruby a bunch of languages to JavaScript and run them straight in the into the browser and

that went super viral like so we open sourced it we put it up uh and like on Hacker News and that was my first experience of like going viral on the internet which is I I was like oh my God this is this is like an amazing rush and I still feel that Rush can you put that in context for a non non-engineer is the thing you guys did is it on a scale of like one to Satoshi Nakamoto solving the like double spin problem like how hard of an invention was that that was like

the nerdiest analogy you ever could have came up with that's what I'm here for so like was it was it genius or was it just that nobody had taken as much time as it would take to do that like where was that breakthrough how do how would you describe that breakthrough uh it it's definitely not on the order of like the double double spend problem where it's like a fundamental in invention it was like you know pushing like a a huge Rock bolt like uper uper Mountain it took so much grit and and and just

Obsession to be able to hack the browser in order to run things that the browser wasn't uh uh supposed to run wasn't designed to run and so I would say it is solving hundreds of problems as opposed to solving like you know one one invention uh which double yeah so you you're working on it as a side project for a number of years that's a long time by the way Sean can you imagine like having a side project that's a hobby that takes three hours a night with little I mean two doing that for two

years is kind of a long time no dude the only two things I've ever done that with is this podcast and my kids and there's really no way out of the kids thing so you know and the podcast was a hit right away the podcast yeah gave me results right away so it actually doesn't count you were doing this without the kind of like Financial Rewards or fame Rewards or any other major rewards during that time how many years did you do the side project thing and what kept it going you know 2009 was the

original idea 2011 was the Breakthrough and you know went viral on on on Hacker News and and the internet and I I think that was the first time I felt like a little bit of of Fame a little bit of uh return on investment uh like I remember Brendan Ike the inventor of JavaScript and was the CTO ad mosella like tweeting about it I was like wow this is amazing like you know you know kid and Jordan like made this like fundamental breakthrough and like you know browser Tech and like I'm getting this recognition that's

pretty cool and also some articles I wrote about it it was people talked about it in conferences and so all that was evidence for my 01 visa to come to the states basically my entire adults life I'm working in this uh which is crazy right like was I am uh 36 wow I think uh and uh you know well you've been working on this since you're uh 20 21 I think uh yeah 21 yeah that's that's a while that's your whole life your whole adult life and you know it continued to like you know incrementally

improve my life so it wasn't it wasn't this you know working in a in a room for 11 years and and nothing happen so I get this visa to the United States uh and I go work at COD Academy and they use the open source work that that that we did right and a bunch of companies in the US there was like this boom and like uh if you remember that Udacity chera whatever and a lot of them used the open- source version of repet to create interactive courses right um and and suddenly like the

the world open up open up to me I'm getting job offers uh all over the place and I and have choices where to go and and so we decided to go to New York all right so a lot of people watch and listen to the show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business and really a lot of people who are listening they have a full-time job and they want to start something on the side a side hustle now a lot of

people message Sean and I and they say all right I want to start something on the side is this a good idea is that a good idea and again what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas well my friends you're in luck so my old company the hustle they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it the side hustle idea database it's a list of 100 pretty good ideas frankly I went to them they're awesome and it gives you how to start them how to grow them

things like that gives you a little bit of inspiration so check it out it's called the side hustle idea database it's in the description below you'll see the link click it check it out let me know in the comments what you think nval has this great quote where he says uh people always asking him about like you know how to build a great Network or networking what are your tips for networking and he he's like my only tip for networking is do something great and watch your network will appear overnight people will immediately come to

you because you've done something great right you didn't go try to get a coffee with Brendan Ike you build something really cool that the creator of JavaScript and Mozilla browser was like hey that's awesome I want to reach out and get to know you and I think that's actually how you back to the YC thing I think that's how you ended up getting into YC later was Paul Graham actually just thought what you were doing was cool but like let's go to the YC part so you you quit the Facebook job half the money in

Bitcoin half the money in your startup appli to YC rejected that was the first rejection what were the other rejections um yeah VCS kind of wouldn't wouldn't talk to us or you know we we'd get meetings with VCS some of them are like yawning and and I think one of them slept um and it it was just like not interesting to them dude I had that happen one time as well like a guy a guy literally fell it was like he he he was literally 80 and it was Friday at 4: and it was warm

in the office and he like fell asleep mid mid pitch like it was it was warm yeah it was like a cold day and it was warm inside so I was like yeah I mean like I like you deserve this but dude what what what did they not see in you because like it's so easy to be to look back in the past but like you seem like you got the it Factor this seems like such an obvious idea you worked on it for two years smart people are talking about it like what were you

what were you missing what was the case against it well I I I think you know Silicon Valley is like probably the most meritocratic place in the world but it is also status driven at least then it was very status driven like if you look at the white you know people who got into YC like with Stanford drop Hots and and things like that and I think since then YC has has has improved and you know gets international people and all of that but but you know my background wasn't wasn't really interesting to to them

you know I didn't have any fancy colleges or or any of that also uh being married uh couple was was somehow like something that that they thought it was a disadvantage you you you didn't match the patterns you didn't match the Stanford pattern you didn't match the uh co-founder relationship pattern you didn't match the uh the trend of of what categories have big exits you weren't on Trend at that time right yeah and so continue to apply to YC every season of YC we'll we'll send in the the application and you know our thesis developed

more and we felt like um we had started making some money some people started paying for our service we had an API at the time that people paid for a lot of Educators and and people learning the code started to to pay pay for repet what was the revenue when you got in like maybe 10 Grandad a month M it it was enough to sustain us at that at that point it was like the ramen profitability um but before YC that the person who who actually uh the first one to toet on us was Roy

bahad from Bloomberg beta so I knew him from my Cod Academy days and and it was such a the meeting with him was so refreshing like he he was like just a straight shooter he he would tell me like he here's where I think you know the idea or the category is is hard you know here is where I think the valuation should be and it was like the first meeting he just gave me everything he was thinking about he didn't obscure anything and I was I was feeling really good about it and so yeah

he gave us 500 uh uh, on a on a 6 million uh valuation so that was the first check uh we got nice and and then how did the how did you eventually get into YC so uh basically um you know we're grinding and and and and the product was getting better every every week and I started writing articles about what we're solving so because we're solving pretty hard problems and so this articles kept going in Hacker News um and Hacker News was really excited about what we're doing and pulgram reads Hacker News a lot

probably still to this day and one day like December 2017 I wake up there's a DM uh on on my phone and it is Sam Alman and he's like hey I run YC and we're interested in what you're doing I'm like dude I know who you are you have to tell me run YC and he's like okay let's let's meet you know come to this address and it wasn't the YC address I was like a little confused and so I I go there and it was the openai office in the in the mission uh and

so I I meet him there and and you know we're talking a little bit and then he's like he turns his computer around he's like this is uh this is Paul's email uh he emailed Sam and told him this this company is very important you should reach out to them and he's like okay talk to to PG I'm going to give you his email talk to him and then uh maybe you can maybe we can work on something to get you into YC so I started this email relationship with with Paul which was really fascinating

I mean he he he's a great writer right and so we talked about uh we talked about repad we talked about the the the problems of setting up an environment the problems of hosting an application and turns out after he sold uh via web he started working on on something like repet he started working on like an editor you write some lisp of course cuz he like likes this this very obscure program languages and but by the way Paul Graham is the founder of YC at the time he was starting to to retire and and

Sam was was running YC and uh and so you know we had this email relationship where he wrote me as is essentially on on on the problem we're solving by the way were you were you intimidated you know Paul Graham writing essays to you privately uh are you like is that high stakes replies there for you yes like I I would spend hours uh kind of crafting the the emails and uh and trying to like be as good of a writer as as I can um but you know one thing about me is like I

was never like nervous about meeting like famous and established people and I think that helped me uh over time because like you know I can be myself and I like can talk to them at the same level as supposed to like being a fanboy or or yeah why why was that what what were you just oblivious to it or you just had a different mindset about it what was the reason yeah I I I felt like my life was was taking on this trajectory that was not to be too superstitious but like it was this

Force um and I felt like like everything's going to be great and you know it's going to be hard but you know I'm meeting all these people uh things are opening up to us and um and so when when I go and and and meet people my mindset is like uh I want to impress them and I want to be able to you know get money from them or like I have a goal and I think having a goal when you're when you're meeting someone actually puts you in a very different mindset than than again

like fanboying and and um and just being very excited about the meeting dude have you guys seen that uh do you guys know the director guy Richie he's uh that like British director he's got this great story he was on some podcast I Joe Rogan and he was like you know I just want to be the director of of my own life and I want to live my life like a movie and what you're describing is sort of like that where you're like I just I am destined for greatness and like we are taking on

this amazing uh problem and like we are going to do wonderful things and it will be hard but we will Triumph and I think that's a that's actually great that's a great story to tell yourself and I think it's very motivating and it it it it makes life more exciting I think that's really cool yeah so I I actually uh wrote a a blog post the title is do what makes the best story uh and and the idea is like when you're faced with decisions where there's no obvious answer like the a fork in the

road where the pros and cons are sort of the same theistic I use in my life is like what is a more interesting story and obviously like Elon talks about this like the most uh the most entertaining outcome is is most likely uh yeah I wasn't thinking about it in terms of entertaining but in terms of like what makes the story interesting if if my life was a movie what would what would be exciting about about that story for example when when I was in college I was like coding all the time and I wasn't

really going to class and so uh so I was failing a lot not because I was failing the exam because you know they would bar me from the exam because I wasn't showing up and and I decided to to hack the university to change my grades and we're not talking like metaphorically like a life you actually hacked into the servers and changed your grade is that what happened yeah I I went into into the basement I spent like two weeks I did the what's his name the famous inventor Michelangelo or something like that I did

his sleep polyphasic sleep where work 4 hours and then you sleep 15 minutes and it was it was sort of like I was writing on the wall I was like it was like a full-on Insanity were you angry why did you decide to act them I know so many smart people who work so much harder to cheat or get around the thing than just doing the thing and and there's like a 50% of the time they end up being like losers and then 50% of the time they are in fact like the greatest they're on

this podcast yeah well I I think it is like some ADHD right like you can't sit you can't sit in class but if you're interested in something you're going to like hack and like work on it a ton right and I almost got away with it but the servers at the uh at the University crashed uh and it crashed on my record so the one of the administrators there gave me a call and he he said um look there's like this there's some an anomaly in your in the in the record uh of your exam

in in school and it's crashing our databases do you know anything about it and I was like what's the anomaly and he's like you know there there's a field in the database that says you're barred from the exam and your grade should be uh should be 35 that's that's the default grade of of failing the exam and instead my grades were like you know 75 90 whatever um that's the that's what I entered into there and I didn't understand that there was another field by the way that you know that that's not good good design

for for a database um and so so since then I I you know I had um there was a fork in the road I I could lie and I think I could get get away with it and you know and and just say like that's a bug on your side and but I was like what's the most interesting story um is they they catch me and it becomes a story that people talk about and and I was like okay I'm just G to I'm just going to like come clean and just tell them what I

did uh so you're like better better than getting the grade would be getting the reputation yes exactly so you tell them and then what happened they kick you out no so um you know I I'm kind of a convincing person so I um I go the next day and it's like all the Deans there and they're discussing my case they're like trying to find out what what I did and and they're all computer science Deans so I went in there and I changed the subject to technical aspects of the hack and I drew on the

Whiteboard and show them what I did and and all of that and they were very impressed it's like a Goodwill Hunting moment yeah and like my interpretation back then is like I'm I'm a loser I'm failing all everything right I don't show up to class and and it is it is kind of like Goodwill Hunting and then um you know they say okay you have to go talk to the president because I think he he's going to make the final call so I I go uh to the president and uh and he's a very intellectual

person and we talk and I you know I tell him like look you know I I have this talent and I feel like it was undiscovered and I feel like I was treated unfairly and and I I Ed the the you know I used the university as my sandbox like I didn't like you know I came clean I didn't uh you know mean to to do anything anything bad and and and and he gave me the Spider-Man line he's like with great power comes great responsibility and it it actually affected me and I was like

okay you know you know I think uh you know I you know I I I need to do something in order to to to to kind of pay back and I I told them I'm going to work uh this summer for free to to make sure I secure your your databases and so they they let me off the hook and they're like awesome yeah what a great story dude that is an amazing story Sam by the way would you ever want to compete with AMJ at anything no this is like this mentality this is uh

it's scary like yeah I would not want to you're like excuse me Dean have you heard of the word prodigy uh yeah you're like you're like I my talents haven't been used well at this University I accept your apology you're fall dude it's like why are you failing me yes yes that's so good okay so I love the principal do what makes the best story I love the hack story that's that's amazing where we how did we get here we were talking about um YC YC okay sorry let's get to the story YC because that's

where we started okay so Sam's like yeah you should do YC actually the batch starts tomorrow why don't you fill an application it's just a just a you know process uh you have to do and we can do a later interview tomorrow and I'm like [ __ ] I'm going to fill the application again like you made me do do it like four times like I don't want to do it again and so you know I I kind of do a Bare Bones application about about ret and then there's the video I'm like yeah man

I don't want to I don't want to do the video so so I I pasted a a YouTube link and and we go the next day hi and I by the way for people who don't know the YC application is like one page it's like six or seven questions but then they say upload a video two or three minutes you talking about your startup so that's the video part and then the interview is 10 minutes where they just rapid fire so you have like 10 minutes and it's like this make or break thing it's less

than a lunch you know like there less than a job interview it's more intense so you're waiting around for that yeah I mean my view was they recruited us to YC like why are you making us do do do the stuff right and and so yeah I was going to ask that like they're ask they're acting like you know Paul Graham's like you know maybe I could pull some strings it's like I know a guy yeah like you're the guy so I don't understand what they're uh what what they're bullshitting I don't get it well

I I think they they wanted to to just like go through the process it's like the process applies to everyone and I I respect that so uh you know the uh they call us to to the interview um and and I walk in and and there was uh Jared and Adora and and and all these amazing voicey partners and there was Michael he was the CEO at the time and I shake their hand and I shake Michael's hand and and I felt like his grip was was a little too hard I was like okay that's

fine and then I I go sit down on the chair and and the moment I sit down Michael looks at me why did you recall us oh my God and and I'm like you know we we applied several times and and I thought it'd be fun to do and and you know I thought this this interview was just uh was just you know formality and and and he's like that's it's not how you get into YC and he was he was very very angry Well turns out when we're sitting outside they were getting red inside

right say say imagine their mindset looking at the application and and and getting the the the rroll song and uh and then they give us a very tough interview in that moment did you it's like and that's when I realized I [ __ ] up like did you realize like yes how I'm coming across like what was your mindset there like they must be thinking I was nervous I was very nervous and I was regretful uh immediately because you probably it's like oh here's this entitled just another just another tech entitled guy when they don't

know you're like immigrant from Jordan who's like scraped his way here right they don't reality and how you were coming across weren't connected in that moment no they weren't at all and uh and so uh and so I you know we go outside and and I tell ha okay this is done let's let's call an Uber and get back to work like we don't have we don't need to get into YC so I call an Uber and uh just before I arrive I receive a call and and I I take the call and it's like

hey it's Adora uh you got in come back uh the the kickoff is about to start and I was like what are you sure she's like yeah come back sign sign the paperwork and get started so I was stunned the whole day like it was you know we start we go to the dinner and I'm like you know you know phased out and and all but but like it was really exciting and you know people who who who's never been to the YC office and and Mountain View it's all orange like bright orange and and

the lights and everything it feels like a cult-like environment and like is it like I think I've seen the inside isn't it like a like a they they have like a steeple or is in like one of the rooms it like is a a triangle like a church almost yeah yeah exactly and sound gets up and tells us what what the experience is going to be it's like this is the hardest time you're going to work you know you better tell your friends and family that you're going to go away for three months you can't

help them move or or all of that you just got to be focused on on work so ha and I like took it very seriously okay I was like okay this these three months are are are very important for for the success of the company and we transformed the product in these three months it went from a simple sort of editor output to a place where you can host applications and built real things and all in three months and we're working you know 12 hour 13 hour day days and um and and it was it

was only uh three of us at the time um our first employee actually was um was sort of a runaway kid he grew up in California uh little down down south and uh and he didn't want to go to school and so he leaves his uh his home he goes to hack reactor and uh and he becomes he becomes a programmer and he was 18 he was looking for a job I knew the guys that hacker actor they used ret and I'm like send me your best programmer and he's like look this kid is a

little awkward but he's the best and so he comes in he Nails our interview music to my ears yeah and basically I like him CU you know it it mirrors kind of my life story a little bit where's this guy now but we got him we got him some liquidity after six years of working uh I felt that's the right thing to do and because he was kind of burnt out and didn't want to continue so I I called my I called my brother in Jordan I'm like look you got to you got to come

out here when YC you need to and he's a program I taught him programming when he was a kid and I was like you got to you got to come come help us and he's still with us today and I called my friend from Cod Academy Moody he's still with us today as well I'm like you got you got to help us like uh like you know you could do it remotely and so we assembled like a team of five people essentially and so we we go really hard and we were like one of the

hottest uh companies in YC at the time and uh can you give some sense of the scale of it now like you know um I invested in it pro a year ago or two years ago something like that I don't know when um but the numbers were off you had user growth first your graph looked like a hockey stick because you zoom out and you you you it ignores all of the little like years where nothing was really going on but you have this crazy growth but the crazy thing about it is that your growth

was developers so it's like you know one developer user is worth I don't know 10 20 times just like a normal internet user but you have this crazy hockey stick growth of developers can you talk about can you just say a couple of like permission to brag can you say a couple of brag worthy stats that would impress us yeah so so repet was very easy to get started with and so people would start uh start in using it in college or or high school and continue using it for many years and so it was

sticky for especially Junior developers when they're starting out um and uh and it was it was spreading on its own like Word of Mouth uh you know there was a viral component to it people can share URL and then suddenly you're in the same environment as them right like and then we have this like multiplier coding experience and so people were collaborating and um and also uh covid was really great for us because we were I think the only collaborative editor experience on the web at the time and so a lot of people were remote

and and needed something to work with with each other and so uh repet was adopted at the time and so the growth uh was was off the chart and the servers were going down and the marginal user any web app is sort of like zero zero cost but for us it was uh you know we we Tred to optimize it a lot but it was still on the order of like $1 to5 like a month and you know the growth was off the charts but I I you know I have to admit it was hard

to monetize at the time because uh developers are actually not used to pay for things now they kind of are paying for things because of AI but at the time they they weren't uh they weren't paying and then um you know as as we added limits and things like that they felt like they they can like move on and set up their own developer environment and so it to took a lot of you know creative thinking to figure out how to charge for people and ultimately AI was the thing that that people are paying for

and the reason is like the productivity benefit of AI is like uh is like obvious um and people was like okay this saves me time and makes me a better developer and so people are paying for it right now well can you give any indication on how many users or how many um how much revenue the business does you know signups we we have like more than 30 million I think 35 million uh users right now in terms of active users it kind of fluctuates but you know three uh you know two to three million

a month probably 100,000 uh apps hosted hosted on repad um because you can build an app and and and deploy it all in in one environment um in terms of Revenue I can't share right now but like uh especially this year it's been like exponential growth Sam check this out this agent thing I got to show you this so you you haven't used this right Sam no all right so so watch this so yesterday I was like I'm I'm gonna mess around I was doing research for this but I was like I just got like

sucked into repet and I started doing that stopped doing research so I go and I I go repl and it's changed cuz now when you before when you would go it would be like here's a coding screen with a blinking cursor and it's like write some code and I'd be like oh cool I don't really write code so I don't know how to use this product exactly maybe I could learn the code maybe I could uh you know pay somebody to to build something on here but whatever I was stuck so now you open up

rep replit and it just it's like chat GPT it just goes so what would you like me to create and so I go on there watch this so I go I'll give you the exact prompt I said build me an app that will text me every morning asking how I ate yesterday let me answer via text messages and then track the results on a monthly calendar grid if texting doesn't work you could also use WhatsApp or something else okay so basically on the right here is just like the chat and it just goes absolutely let

me propose what we'll build and then it just kind of like explains to me like a project manager it goes I'm going to help you create a food tracking app through SMS messaging with a calendar visualizations we'll start with the SMS later we can add WhatsApp as an alternative it's like okay okay prioritizing things that's interesting and then it goes the Apple send daily messages blah blah blah and then it goes how would you like me to proceed and it's like there was like you know add more features change the instructions or like go ahead

and build the Prototype so I clicked build the initial prototype and then literally I don't know if you can see this but like it starts like Auto scrolling as it's writing code like this is all just a code it's generating so like you know like I'm not doing anything I'm literally sitting back with popcorn while this is happening so it's like here's your calendar grid and it's like uh hey I need I'm going to use twilio for the SMS it decides I'll use twio for the SMS can you go to twilio and give me your

account and your phone number so that it will we like we use toio for sending sms so I go to too I give it my SMS and then it's like it's made it literally made the thing exactly how I want so this works now yeah I actually got stuck on the twilio step because twilio has to verify my phone number so it like it hasn't verified it yet but I can go into I in I see it tries to send me the message and it's just as awaiting toio verification to like be able to use

this um so I'm like a little bit stuck there which is like a common thing with agents I feel it's like almost absolutely incredible and then kind of frustrating at some point where you have to like you know fight through some walls well I think I'm just tweeted I think he said I want people to be able to build an app faster than they can just Google the answer to a question and that's exactly what happened here well that's insane so this screenshot uh is the agent looking at the result is trying to verify they

so this this is not do running app if you click run you can H that running says top took a screenshot and then it shows it to me it's like hey is this how you want it and I was like oh cuz before it had it where it was like not the right month on top I go oh put the month on top like don't say monthly food tracking right December and then it also said like hey would you like any other style improvements I can make it broader I can change the color scheme and

I'm like dude this is literally better than an employee right like first it's instantaneous uh second I could you know I don't have to pay pay somebody to sit in desk to sit around waiting for me to do something I had a w idea on a whim go to rep and did the thing with the agent this was a like there's been a few like mindblowing moments for me in my like Tech Career you know like I graduated 2010 so I'll start at that point where it's like the first time I took an Uber I

was like holy [ __ ] that was amazing I pushed a button a car showed up the guy got in I didn't even have to pay for like it just paid through my phone that was magic and I could see it I could see him on an app getting closer and closer to the restaurant that was like one of them you know chat GPT for sure was another where I could just you know tell it to make something and would write something it would write it for me this is another one of them this is

the first AI agent thing that has like been a mind-blowing moment for me where um I am not a programmer I not a coder but I can now create software this is like amazing can I ask a blunt crude question how can I use your software to become a billionaire because like I see this and I'm like you you you know like the the the ridiculous analogy that I use is I'm like uh I feel like an artist sometimes where like I feel like I have the ability to conceptualize certain things but I can't paint

it's like I can't [ __ ] paint what I want to paint that's in my head like because I literally don't have that skill set sometimes and so like I'll be working on stuff and like dude I want this to do this but I got to go talk to this developer and I don't want to have this conversation and that's just like a pain in the ass and so like you basically are making it so I can finally express myself easily I like how you're on the first date you're like how can I get you

to take the clothes off what you're like how do I use your thing to get really rich yeah I mean that's basically like like and you had on the document you're like uh here's just here's the opportunities just use repet to do X Y and Z and I want to go through that because this is like amazing this is actually you know there's like there's like a viral clip on YouTube or Twitter like a bunch of places where it's like the the headline which we probably have used which is like billion dooll oneperson companies or

something like this you're the closest person to this probably uh to that question to answer that question yeah so there are apps uh built on repa agent that otherwise would take probably $100,000 of of developer uh time and and you can build it like in you know $25 paid to paid to repet I will say that there there's limitations right it it is not it is not perfect this is like the worst it's it's it's going to be it it sometimes gets stuck with problems you can you need to have some skill and prompting to

co-ax it to like uh figure it out and it sort of like teaches you over time because it tells you what it's doing as it's editing the code and so over time you're learning how to use you're actually learning how code Works you're learning how maybe you're not learning how to exactly type code but you're learning the different components in where things could go wrong you're learning about database we have like a database you can go in and look at the tables and look what's happening and so you know the vision for this is that

that's all you need that's all you need to build an entire uh startup and you know every day we're inching towards that you know and I I talked about like pushing the boulder up up the hill and I think that's one of my one of my talents is like okay what are the problems that you can make progress on every day and every week such that you know in a year time you have this exponential progress and the product is is so much better the other thing is we're writing this wave of the foundation model

is getting better so every time they get better we plug in a New Foundation model and the product is is suddenly better so you're writing this you know two exponential curves which is like the engineering we're doing but also the underlying models and infrastructure is is is getting better so I I think in a in a year's time it's going to be really mind-blowing in a couple years time I think we're going to see stories uh like someone getting super rich uh making an app and repet that that sort of goes spiral and so we're

adding stripe integration right now you can you can already use kind of stripe on on repet but we're adding integration that makes it super easy to start monetizing your app so so Sam said how do I get rich and you're like disclaimer it's not fully there yet but now you still have to answer the question I mean the question is like what kind of applications it's like what are the ideas what kind of applications you can build I would say AI applications are are growing really fast like the revenue in some of those AI applications

it's kind of crazy can you can you tell the story of Magic School I thought this was really interesting yeah so magic school is like an AI application for educators it's it's basically like helping them use Foundation models and llms to do their work to do assignments for for kids to have an interactive like AI experience and so it's like a full Suite of AI for educators the guy who created it is a was a teacher right the guy who created was a teacher he took some time during Co to to learn how to code

and he started using repet and him and and I think another person uh built the initial uh thing totally un repet and because you can go from an idea all the way to deployment and and it immediately started growing like um you know people these AI apps like when when the adoption starts happening it goes Super viral you don't need a ton of Market kidding and the revenue ramp was was one of the craziest ones I've seen especially for Education yeah it was like a known thing it was like hardest thing you could do sell

in into schools into teachers they're overworked they're underpaid that they don't have the time to like figure out your new tool but this thing is great so if you if you go to it it's basically like because teacher spends a lot of their time not in the classroom it's after after school is done they have to grade papers they have to create the lesson plan for the next day they have to create the quizzes or the multiple choice tests and they have to like so have to constantly do these and there was these platforms like

teacher pay teachers where I could just if I don't want to make it myself cuz I'm tired after the school day I might be able to go buy one for nine bucks from another teacher who teaches fifth grade science in some other state and I would take that and I would I would buy it that way what magic school did was it was like cool generate a you just say like I want to I teach you know fifth grade biology I want to do a pop quiz about you know how this how mitosis works and

then it'll basically create either a lesson plan or a quiz or you know um a a student like interactive like you know workbook that they need to create or whatever and so it lets a teacher not have to spend you know four hours a night creating the materials that they need just to teach class because AI can do it for them and this thing looks I I don't know these guys I don't know anything about them but it says you know over four million educators are using this which four million Educators and their students which

I don't I don't know if they're counting well if you go on similar web they have millions of monthly uniques so that's like a they raised like 20 million bucks too off so I mean that's like a pretty huge signal so they they launched in uh like I want to say July 2023 so they are like a little over over a year and do you know these like SAS metrics are like how long to get to whatever like uh 100 million or whatever the AI apps and I would say magic SCH is on that trajectory

is like just like that you know the curve is like you know all the way straight up this is kind of weird but maybe this is like a feature of yours that you helped this company become potentially one of the faster growing companies of all the time and you only earn $20 a month from that yeah so so so repet had you know always a problem of of value capture partly that's why like VC struggled with it for a long time so that there's some Logic for why why it is hard to monetize these things

and like capture some of the value uh I will say you know I invested in magic school so there's some of that um and uh with AI I think we're going to be able to you know uh you know capture at least a little bit more of that value if people are monetizing these apps on repet Via the agent uh there's a way I think where we can uh potentially take a a cut out of that especially if we make it like super simple to start monetizing an app and also like if once we reach

scale you know it is like Chad like you don't need a lot of skill to do that and it's going to get easier and easier once we reach scale and you have you know millions of people paying for this and it's not just like 20 bucks you're going to pay incremental uh after you finish your credits so we give you CR monthly credits and then afterwards if you want to continue you can like buy more credits are there other companies like magic school like cool companies like that you've seen that maybe we haven't heard of

that are using AI yes so um you know I'm very excited about agents right now and uh you I I think I I predicted uh earlier this year on a on a podcast that you know this this is going to be the year where like agents are born and next year is like where agents are are going to scale um so there's uh this company called 11x and 11x creates AI sdrs uh and so basically you don't need to hire sdrs like there are some companies that feel like they you know they can they can

boost trp their sales without Sr you can have like one AE and then a account executive is like running these like tens of AI sdrs um and and the revenue ramp on 11x was also crazy it it it's pretty wild how fast these companies are scaling I don't think in the history of silic and value we've seen anything like that even in the like Web 2.0 era so what is like a fast ramp for AI for maybe not 11x specifically but just for an AI company what's like what's imp what's impressive that kind of broke

the frame of what how long things would take but you've seen it now yeah so I I would say reaching 10 million in 3 to four months R oh my God that's wild yeah we I invested in uh Jasper which was like one of the early kind of chat GPT rapper type of companies where there was like Hey like marketing you know you need to write a blog post you need to write a a description for a product or whatever and so you could use it for writing any kind of marketing copy and they're graph

was I'd never seen it was like in 10 months or 11 months they scaled like 50 million in annual recurring Revenue it was like I've never seen anything even remotely close to that it was it brought up a question like is this sustainable is this like what is happening here like this is I just doesn't compute but it definitely broke my frame of what is possible because I'd been working you know in Silicon Valley since you know 2011 11 12 and uh that just that wasn't a thing you you would never see a graph like

that what if some companies that got into that like 10ish or uh 10ish million or similar trajectory in 3mon type of businesses yeah so this is I I wanted to kind of give a dis you know sort of a disclaimer about this which is the big question in the investor Community right now is like the the Moes question uh and that that started around the time that g Chad GPT kind of came out and there was these GPT rappers uh sort of this condescending way of looking at a lot of these companies it's like ah

if you can create gpg rapper you know in in in a month then you know a lot of other people will create gpg rappers in a month and you're going to be competing on price and the margins uh go down and yes the AR is great but you're but anthropic is capturing or or or openi is capturing most of the are not you you're kind of a you're kind of like a middleman and you're going to have like a hard time having having margins and and I think it's it's totally a valid question um now

I think you know mod develop over time uh through uh strategy and Technical Excellence so I mean some of these companies can go down pretty fast and they're examples of that uh right now um but uh but I think if you you know you can have you can start building technical like with repet again this like idea of like pushing a bull up up a hell you know we have this runtime environment we have like this infrastructure we have the deployment we have databases we have all these Integrations I mean it's the only one in

the world that is like an end to-end environment to to make software and like to catch up with that it's going to take years right but technical Advantage is also not a long-term moat and so again it's a big question I don't think it's answered yet you know there there's strategic things you could do if you reach scale if the switching costs are high you know that that may be like a way to to to have sustainable modes but but it is definitely a big question you know what's crazy Sean like for the long I

I hate using the dword democratize I think that's like such an overused like Silicon Val do it don't do it but this is actually one of those F few examples where like for the longest time uh building a website or a web app like you just literally couldn't and so now you are making the technology that everyone can do it and so what I think is like guys like Shawn and me or People Like Us who have an audience it's like why don't we just why aren't we like constantly launching like companies using this technology

because like our ability to get users cuz we just get on the microphone and talk about it that's like actually a competitive Advantage whereas being technical is no longer it's still an advantage but it's not uh as much as before it's like getting customers now is actually the only hard part which is still hard but it's way easier if you're popular yeah so so you know the Playbook uh I would use is like I would go into some inefficient uh Market industry so a deal from from Magic School went into this hugely inefficient um you

know industry which is uh which is uh you know schools and education uh and by way by the way another product is synthesis tutor which is which is also going going viral right now and and and and they they they they have also this Revenue ramp that's kind of crazy both Sean and I invested in in that company think all did yeah yeah and for a while they they had like this this thing where like you know they had they had Educators on the payroll and and whatever they replaced all of that with AI now

like you know the kids sit in front of the the iPad and they're talking to the AI and like learning really fast and it's much better than the previous product right so B basically like find an industry where you're familiar with and just like build the DD rapper to like automate some of the work there and like you you could do it like a hundred times and one of them will take off yeah it's the era of the idea guy now it's our turn it's our turn to shine right cuz now the limits and the

the kind of the value creation is do you understand a problem well enough to know how to take this really powerful magic wand and point it at that problem and be able to make that more efficient and then of course do all of the other hard things go get customers make it sustainable build a good team you know like do all the the normal entrepreneurship stuff but it seems like more than ever having a great idea is the kind of like key unlock to to doing these things because building has become easier and I'll give

you kind of my my personal Epiphany that I had while I was doing this so I invested in rep mostly when I just thought you seemed really smart and I saw a growth curve of developers using it and I thought oh cool like I've experienced this problem before like a One-Stop place where I can come in write the code host it all all the all the stuff you talked about like don't have to download Java don't have to do any of that [ __ ] that that appealed to me at the time I think actually

in the same way that synthesis like took Ai and actually almost like really like 10x the value prop of the business um I think you guys doing the same so here's my my Quick Pitch which is now that I think of repet as um like basically what Shopify was for creating you know like online stores I think repet is that for creating software so to me you guys are dude eyes just brightened when you Shopify for software so like I'll give you my example I recently celebrated a milestone that was both I was proud of

it and really embarrassed also so um a few years ago I started a e-commerce brand and we just crossed 50 million in Revenue like kind of like cumulative lifetime Revenue half of it was like you know this year but but 50 million total and I was like wow like 50 million that's great like that's I had never created a business I had done 50 million in Revenue so that was like a personal Pride point and at the same time uh I was telling it to to to a friend of mine who's not an entrepreneur he's

like yeah man I would love to learn how to you know like make websites and like make products manufacturing and I was like oh I don't know how to do any of that like I was I was like this this brand that is on 50 million in revenue for me I don't I just stacked Alibaba times Shopify I've never manufactured a product in my life still don't know how to and I've never made a website that's like you know actually used by customers still don't know how to but I was able to I was able

to skip all the work and get to the brand part like do the thing where we created a product that people liked and you know it's a successful company now and I thought wow rep's going to do that for the software space and I was like it used to be that the job was software engineer and now it's going to be software creator it's like I can be a creator of software without being a programmer myself that little shift is a big shift because the way I think about it I don't know how many developers

there are I think GitHub has like 100 million or 200 million accounts so I'll just use that like there's 200 million let's say developers you know software engineers in the world um well now there's going to be 200 two billion people that can create software cuz if you got the internet you got your phone you can create software now you can just tell the agent make me an app that does this make a tool that does this and so you 10x the number of people that can create software in the same way that Shopify and

Alibaba 10x or more the number of people who could create products and go sell them like hard Goods uh that's how I see what you're doing yeah so so you know even at the start of repet uh uh you know there's our initial seed deck and the deck kind of has this IL musk style like you know master plan plan and it was like we we build a you know we build a platform we grow it and then AI is going to make the thing a lot more accessible because our mission was uh make programming

accessible then we updated our mission was uh create a billion programmers and then so the moment that you know you know even gpt3 came out I was like this is this is the thing and I wrote This Thread on Twitter about how AI agents will just change how programmers work this is the deck so 2015 this is I don't even know if open AI was a research lab at that time maybe uh definitely you know there was no chat GPT but this is your master plan deck so we're going to grow by building tools for

teachers and students we're going to build a simple Network and AI assisted interface that blurs the distinction between learning and building evolve into a platform where people can learn build explore and host applications like talking about AI back in 2015 in your in your actual pitch deck dude it's also clear how uh code academy was highly influential to you because I remember years ago Sean said everyone tries to learn how to code I used code academy and it was a pretty cool interface and it's very similar to what you're describing you know I at some

point I kind of lost hope in in courses um because like you know we have 100 days of code we're telling users that to use our application you need you need to invest 100 days that's kind of crazy like there there isn't any like successful company in the world where you need 100 days to learn it and and so that's when I kind of changed my mindset and I said okay it needs to be chat GPT like it needs to be just a prompt um and we started building that uh earlier this year and and

now that's all we're focused on we want to create new programmers you know existing developers great they have a lot of tools but we want to we want to go after the citizen developer right everyone is a developer and I think that's you know that's what what you're talking about you go from like 100 million developers in the world well I think it it overstates the number it's probably more 30 million and then you 10x that and so what what does the world look like when anyone with an idea could could make something and one

of my favorite books is uh the sovereign individual the thing I really was excited about is this idea of ideas become wealth and so no longer have the bottleneck of making something that's where we're headed and this is what you're talking about Sean is is like the uh the it's it's the time for idea guy and like maybe that's you know tongue and cheek and like maybe the way to to talk about it in more precise terms is that people who confined these gaps in in markets people who have expertise in certain areas that they

can tell that there's in efficiency and they can like create an AI application that can immediately plug that like I saw this video on Twitter the other day it was of a snake that got its head chopped off and it like floated around and bit the T bit like the tail of its own body and then like the body like reacted your employees are they thinking that this they're sort of doing that to themselves where they're like like when you make jokes or like when you're when you like talk like you know like you don't

need to hire all these programmers to do all this stuff are they like sitting there with their hands in their pocket like uh like does that mean us you know I I always wanted the company to be super lean and so um for a long time we're like 10 people but but like now we're like 70 people that's still nothing yeah so so I I I'd rather not hire a lot more people because I think that again the efficiency uh for programmers so look citizen developers are going to go from zero to like say 10x

but also existing software engineer are going to go from 10x to 100x right and so and so they're going to be become more and more productive the moment we uh we automate all of software engineering I think that's sort of like the moment of AI so I think it's like a little far away and the reason I say this is because once you automate software then the agents can rebuild themselves and you go into this into this Loop of you know increase intelligence every version builds its next version builds its next version and so this

is what they call intelligence explosion that would lead to the singularity right so it's like a pretty crazy time when we automate all of software engineering and so I I think I think it's coming I don't know if it's 10 years or 15 years but I think that's the time where the world really radically changes have you met um anybody in kind of the tech industry that blew you away either person personally or maybe read about them maybe met a friend of a friend told you a story cuz I saw a picture of you with

Jensen uh you know you've met Paul Graham I know that you're like connected in the AI circles you met Sam Sam Alman in addition to building the tech I love the characters and I love the stories is why every you know Elon snippet of how he runs his companies goes viral and [ __ ] like that what are your favorite kind of inspiring stories or crazy stories that you you've either experienced directly or or red yeah you one of the Curious story when we're um raising from a16z Mark invites me to to breakfast at like

10:00 a.m. at his house and so so I go there and I expect like I'm going to talk about the business and so we we spend like two or three hours talking about politics and the world and like all sorts of things that are interesting to to him and I felt like this guy is like is like more than just a technologist he's like a philosopher and so right now he's he's going out and he's talking about this stuff like his Joe Rogan interview went super viral and he's been always have like these interesting ideas

about about the world and the interesting thing about a16z is his partner Ben is is sort of like the executor sort of the executive right he wrote the hard thing about hard things where like he teaches you like about what it means to run a company it's painful it's hard and what it means to hire executiv what it means to scale a company and so so you have this this Duo of like the doer and the like the philosopher uh and I think uh I think that's really amazing and and I think they're they're they

have really big plans uh and anded I would just hate the philosopher be like are you gonna do anything what are what are you talking about politics for right now it's got to be the worst to be the doer in the doer philosopher relationship right you know I I think uh I think Sam is is uh it was interesting to to kind of meet him talk to him because he's very effective like he like the first time I met I met him or like maybe not the first time but like he was on his computer

as as I'm talking and so I'm talking I was like yeah we're fundraising I went uh to talk to you know a6z I'm like really big fan of of Mark and he was typing in his computer okay I introduce you to Mark um and and and then you know when you send Sam emails it's like pretty quickly replies with with like a you know a couple words like a couple sentences so I saw how effective and fast you can be and that that really I'm I'm not like that you know I'm trying to be more

like that but I'm someone who really values the the quietness like to think about ideas and to think about strategy and things like that so I'm not always in top of communication it actually makes me like a little you know it's overwhelming um but but uh but I think I think seeing these people at least you know inspired me to be a little more like that you uh you tweeted out the story that I loved about um you said the most G gster story in Silicon Valley is Steve Jobs buying Pixar for 5 million investing

50 million and operating at a loss for a decade so much so that he had to cut personal checks to make payroll and somehow turning it around to A7 billion doll exit why why did you like that story you know uh I there are people who are overrated in Sil Valley and I think there are people who are underrated like I think people think about Steve Jobs in terms of like yeah the flashy things the iPhone iPod you know coming in stage and and doing that the thing I like about the Steve Jobs story is

when he was lost in the desert for 10 years so he left uh he was fired from Apple and then he created two companies that were failing the whole time like next Computing NeXT computers and Pixar were L literally failing like they didn't do anything you they weren't selling he was just like investing more and more of his money uh like I think he was goingon to go broke if but he kept going for 10 years like how do you do that uh and you know I'm a person who like we talked about in my

story where I want to be able to go the distance I think Going the Distance is is is an advantage for for entrepreneurs and Pixar became this hugely valuable company uh and it goes from making no Revenue to to making billions of dollars and going public over over a couple years um and next next next computers saved apple apple was having a a problem with OS like Intel you know they had the chip before I don't know they made it internally or something like that and then everyone was moving to Intel and intel was the

best Computing chip and they wanted their computers to be fast and so they need a new operating system and they tried to buy they went to the market they triy to acquire company they couldn't find a great operating system and next Computing had the had had a great operating system and that became Mac OS so they they bought I didn't know that I thought next was just a failure I didn't I didn't even realize it actually contri I thought they just bought Steve back Aqua hire but it wasn't an aqua it wasn't just aquire no

I mean Objective C for example you know next Computing was really obsessed with this idea of object orani programming and they innovated a lot on what that means and you know it is based on Unix but it has a lot of interesting features on top of that so app they it saved Apple because Apple was otherwise not going to be competitive without the new Chips right well dude I know we kept you half an hour over I apologize for that uh but this was amazing this was one of my favorite episodes in a long time

and I'm not just saying that you can go check all the other episodes I don't say that at the end so uh this was awesome thanks so much for coming on uh where should people Twitter is the best place to follow you yeah Twitter uh Amad on Twitter um and and the repet handle on Twitter as well just just RL dude thank you very much you're the best of course uh of course my my pleasure [Music]