Amjad Masad: How I Founded Replit; Zuck's Famous Saying; Will TikTok be banned? | E987

1. 0:00 – 0:51

   Intro

   1. AMAmjad Masad0:00

      Amjad said something very interesting. He said one here sticked, you know, whether you're saying something meaningful is that, like, reasonable people can disagree with it, and the opposite of it is also reasonable. So, like, move fast and, and break things could be, like, move slow and don't break anything, and that could be, like, a value at IBM, right? (laughs)

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:19

      (instrumental music) Amjad, I am so excited for this. As I said, I've heard so many good things from Mazio for years. So thank you so much for joining me.

   3. AMAmjad Masad0:27

      Thank you. I'm a big fan of the show and excited to be here.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings0:30

      That is very, very kind. Now, uh, normally we start with like, "Oh, the founding moment of the company," but you have a pretty awesome background. There's not like, "Oh, I grew up in Silicon Valley, and surprisingly, I founded a startup."

   5. AMAmjad Masad0:41

      (laughs)

   6. HSHarry Stebbings0:41

      Um, and s- (laughs) such a surprise. Um, but y- you actually grew up in Jordan. And so-

   7. AMAmjad Masad0:45

      Mm-hmm.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings0:45

      ... I wanted to ask, what were you like growing up as a child in Jordan, and, and how were those early years?

2. 0:51 – 7:57

   Who is Amjad Masad?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:51

      (laughs)

   2. AMAmjad Masad0:52

      I, I was a big troublemaker. I was, um... I looked very different. So I'm like a redhead. Um, my family's actually sort of, um, split right in the middle, where m- some of my uncles are, you know, extremely dark complexions, and, like, a couple of, uh, parts of the family, like, we're extremely, like, bright redhead. I'm actually, like, fairly, um, you know, on the, on the sort of not too intense sort of redhead, but we have, like, really intense sort of, uh, gingers in the family. But I, I look fairly different, and there isn't a lot of gingers in Jordan. Um, and at the same time, I had a bit of a temper. Uh, I had a bit of, um, you know, a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, sort of rebellious angle to me. And w- we grew up in a, you know... My father was, like, at this... Uh, he worked in government, and he didn't make a lot of money. He was an engineer, very kind of low-level engineer in government. But, um, he really put a lot of money behind our education. And so we went to school in a good part of town. And so coming from a bit of a, let's say, a challenging part of town, where you sort of had to fight and you had to, uh, grind and hustle to, to kind of, uh, to just play and, and be just a kid. And then when we go to school, we're, like, a little bit odd ones out, and again, like I said, my appearance was a little different. And so I always got in trouble, like nonstop. Like, since, since I was, uh, six years old, I would, uh, get in trouble for running away from school or, or sort of inciting my whole class to do something strange or, or weird or, like... Um, and so I was just seen as a, as a sort of a troublemaker, uh, my entire childhood.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings2:45

      Can I ask a weird one?

   4. AMAmjad Masad2:47

      Yeah.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings2:47

      Did you always know that you'd be successful? I think it's, it's sometimes an innate feeling, sometimes it's not. Did you know that you'd b- be successful?

   6. AMAmjad Masad2:55

      Yeah, because there was a lot of sort of early successes. So that situation we were in, my brother, my older brother and I, we found an arbitrage opportunity. The toys in the not-so-great part of town were actually much cheaper than the rich part of town where we went to school. And so we started selling toys at, like, very, like, preteen, young age. My mother would come pick us up in this, like, this beat-up old car, and we would put the... stash the toys in the trunk. And so we would sell them. We would kind of tell people what we have during school because we don't, we didn't, we couldn't carry the toys, and then we'd tell them, "Meet us outside after school," and then we would go to the trunk. My mom didn't know what we were doing. So we would sell these toys. And we also sold toys that weren't necessarily, like, most savory. So we sold, like, BB guns, and-

   7. HSHarry Stebbings3:53

      (laughs)

   8. AMAmjad Masad3:54

      ... (laughs) we sold all sorts of, like, you know, non, uh, you know... So, so, you know, we, we, we did a lot of stuff like that early on to, to make money. And, um, and, you know, later on, when I was a teenager, I also started, uh, my first software business. And so it, it just felt like I sort of had it in me, I sort of, I had the hunger. I, I, I knew I was, um, you know, I was bright. I did well in school even without trying. A- and, and so I, yeah, I, I sort of knew that I want to do something great. I also was attracted to greatness. Like, I really loved watching movies and reading books about, like, great entrepreneurs, great athletes, great sort of hi- history figures and leaders. And, and so I always wanted to do something great.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings4:43

      It's funny. Uh, whenever I, you know, meet with founders, because obviously you invest for a living, I always say like, "Tell me, one, how you first made money." And I think that's a really important question because you'd say, "Oh, I sold BB guns to kids at arbitrage prices," and it says-

   10. AMAmjad Masad4:56

       (laughs)

   11. HSHarry Stebbings4:57

       ... a lot. Do you look for those early signs of exceptionalism when you hire people? And do you agree that when you see that, you're like, "Ah, this person's different?"

   12. AMAmjad Masad5:05

       Yeah, I mean, that's basically the biggest sign, is like the early sign of exceptionalism. I think it, it's, it's fairly hard for people who has taken a normal straight path to life to do something exceptional later in life. I think there's always signs of exceptional things. Sometimes you'd have to dig for it, but I think it's always there, whether it's hustling and selling and starting businesses, uh, incredible athletic ability and, and exceptional drive to achieve ath- athletic, uh, things is also, uh, a sign. And so it can, it can be very diverse, but it's always there, I think.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings5:49

       Sadly, I wasn't the athlete. I have to be honest. I could have lied and played that one out. But, uh-

   14. AMAmjad Masad5:53

       (laughs)

   15. HSHarry Stebbings5:53

       ... better to be honest early. (laughs) I think my 100-meter record was about 48 seconds, which meant-

   16. AMAmjad Masad5:59

       (laughs)

   17. HSHarry Stebbings5:59

       ... they lapped me on 100 meters.

   18. AMAmjad Masad6:01

       (laughs)

   19. HSHarry Stebbings6:01

       Um, but, uh, I, I believe strongly that we're all a function of our histories, which means we're all running from something. Uh, what do you think you're running from, Amjad?

   20. AMAmjad Masad6:09

       ... um, mediocrity. I just hate the, like, the, the idea of being normal is just, uh, or normie, as we call it in internet culture, is just, like, very scary to me, and undifferentiated is, is, is something that I really don't like to be.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings6:29

       I'm just gonna let go straight into the advice section of this show, fuck it, fuck the schedule. Um, so I don't like dating today because it's like the time that you spend on a date, it could be used so much better elsewhere, and I don't wanna be that mediocre person, like, going on a date when you could just be fucking crushing it. Like-

   22. AMAmjad Masad6:45

       That's right.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings6:47

       How did you get over that? 'Cause you have kids and a wonderful wife.

   24. AMAmjad Masad6:50

       Yeah.

   25. HSHarry Stebbings6:51

       Like, how did you get over that, like, fear, and what would you advise me?

   26. AMAmjad Masad6:56

       I, I, I think taking massive risk is, is (laughs) is the key. It's like, if, if you really, if you're really worried about mediocrity, then the best way to sort of run as far as possible from it is to do something so weird and so different that it's almost unthinkable. And so I guess in a dating scenario, I think, um, you would sort of, um, maybe you would, uh, you know, not attract all your, all the, s- sort of like a vast majority of people would be actually, you know, turned off by this. But I think the people who would actually like you and would want to, uh, be with you for a long time and would actually match your sort of personality, you would attract them. And I'm, I'm actually a big fan of, of sort of being authentic and, you know, a- attracting allies, and potentially rebelling people you don't like anyways, repelling them.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings7:49

       Well, I think you manage to do that with your personal brand. Don't worry. I'm joking. (laughs)

   28. AMAmjad Masad7:55

       (laughs)

   29. HSHarry Stebbings7:55

       Uh, yeah, y- you managed in that kind of like the big risk-taker.

3. 7:57 – 11:53

   Great Startups are Conspiracies to Change the World

   1. HSHarry Stebbings7:57

      You said something, uh, before on Twitter that I thought was fascinating. You said, "Great startups or examples of conspiracies to change the world." And I thought, "God, that sounds great. What does he mean by that?"

   2. AMAmjad Masad8:09

      (laughs)

   3. HSHarry Stebbings8:09

      So what do you mean by that?

   4. AMAmjad Masad8:11

      You know, um, I think, uh, if you read a bit of history, you find that most of history's actually built and changed, uh, by like a small number of people. I, I think we're actually living through a moment of history right now, especially given the AI revolution in, in tech. And, you know, you could argue that OpenAI is, uh, the center of it, and it's really a small group of people. You know, there are like 300 people now, uh, and they were like much smaller before. Uh, they had a conspiracy, (laughs) and their conspiracy was that if you get, uh, a lot of talented people together, that's what the original thing, and, and, and you work in really interesting AI research, you're gonna find something. And then they found something, and, you know, most of the world wasn't paying attention to it, which is if you scale language models, uh, and if you scale, keep scaling them up and up and put more computing data in them, you're gonna find that it becomes more and more intelligent to the point that it's actually reaching some kind of general intelligence. Uh, obviously not AGI as t- as it's defined, but there's some generality in GPT-based models. So that was a conspiracy theory, you know, and that was like a basically, um, you know, th- that was like a small group of people with a secret planning for, for a long time, and so they were like conspiring as, uh, as it were, um, and now they're at a point where they're changing the world. They obviously started this new arms race between different, between the, some of the, two of the biggest companies of the world. They birthed a new sort of startup ecosystem. Um, it's changing software as, as we speak. I'm sure we'll get, get into it later. But, uh, it, it's just top of mind example, but you see it in history all the time, like just one or two, one person starts it. Like, obviously, like religion is, is a big part of it, like, you know, Jesus or Mohammed. You read their stories, and they're typically small groups of people that fit in a room, and they have some sort of secret or so- some, some sort of message. And they work really hard over many years, perhaps decades, and then eventually they succeed and they change the world.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings10:20

      Interesting.

   6. AMAmjad Masad10:20

      So I think startups tend to follow the same logic as, as these examples.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings10:26

      Do you think you're creating a religion with Replit? And how do you self-identify with those that wanna create a religion versus those that just wanna be in a hot company?

   8. AMAmjad Masad10:35

      I think it's s- sort of in retrospect, so you can sort of analyze these companies and say, I think it'd be, like in the middle of it, to be s- super intentional about creating a religion just comes off as cringe. I, I think maybe, uh, I'll let historians sort of decide that. But I, I think the main tenets is, um, you sort of have somewhat of a, you know, calls it a secret, but some- somewhat of an insights, uh, into how the world works or how the world should work or where the world is headed, and sort of you work to advance that. Our, one of our biggest insights at Replit is that software is a superpower, and this superpower is actually s- sort of stuck in this ivory tower of like Silicon Valley elite, and we're trying to free this superpower and, uh, get more and more people, um, to experience it and make use of it. And we think that, you know, um, it's, it's almost like, it's almost like the, at the time of the, like, the printing press, right? It was the people who could read and write were the priesthood, right? And, uh, and, and then at some point, everyone in the world started doing it, and that changed our world. And we think software kind of follows the same trajectory. So that's sort of our main insight.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings11:48

      I, I, I totally get you, and your main insight allows, uh, everyone to do stuff

4. 11:53 – 13:54

   Planners vs Doers

   1. HSHarry Stebbings11:53

      with software. And you tweeted before, "The best job description is doing stuff." I find that we live in this generation of planners. They love meetings. They love taking notes. They love planning. Let's brainstorm. Fuck. Why don't you just do something for once? Um, I, I'm just venting now.

   2. AMAmjad Masad12:09

      (laughs)

   3. HSHarry Stebbings12:09

      Um, but, so you said, "The best job description is do stuff." What did you mean by that? Just unpack that for me.

   4. AMAmjad Masad12:15

      You know, I, I said that, um, outside of design and engineering, 'cause in design and engineering, you actually can be somewhat specific about what people do. You can hire a machine learning engineer and, you know, they're gonna be training neural networks, or you can hire, um, you know, uh, a, uh, s- sort of drive train engineer at a, at a car company and they, they'll be working on that, so... But out- outside of that, I, I, I think, and even in engineering in some cases, p- people just need t- need to be entrepreneurial and need to get stuff done, right? So, at Replit we actually have, maybe we're not known for that, but we have a very talented sort of business, legal, PM, um, biz ops teams. We're still a small team, but they're actually all very entrepreneurial and they all just get stuff done. And so like, we get a lot done because they're behind the scenes instead of being the connective tissue of the company. They don't let any ball drop. You sort of like see them figure out anything and jumping into anything and learn it. And, um, and as a CEO, you know, I do that and try to exemplify that as well. And so-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings13:25

      How, how do you get these traditional orthologic teams to do shit? Like, it, how do you create goals, structures, mechanisms to encourage proactivity?

   6. AMAmjad Masad13:33

      Honestly, that's not the way to, to do it. The, the way to do it is more of a selection thing, like what we talked about, hiring exceptional people. You wanna hire exceptionally entrepreneurial people. Like, there's no amount of processes you can put in to make someone who doesn't wanna work hard to work hard (laughs) . You know, it's just, uh,

5. 13:54 – 17:07

   Why Gen-Z Doesn’t Work Hard

   1. AMAmjad Masad13:54

      just like-

   2. HSHarry Stebbings13:54

      Do you think, do you think, do you think we're in a generation of people that don't wanna work hard, that want kombucha, that want the yoga retreats, and that actually, the savage mentality that I think probably me and you both (laughs) have, for better or worse, is relatively lost on the majority?

   3. AMAmjad Masad14:10

      Yes. And, and, it is, it is unfortunate, and I think it is the results of some decadence in the, in the culture. Uh, I think the, there's a feeling that, um, life is, is about, uh, sort of pleasure and, and sort of hedonistic pursuits. Uh, whereas I think, sort of cultures of past, even, you know, 20- 20th century America, uh, was very, very different and the values of, of hard work and exceptionalism w- were there. And so, so I, I think it is a problem, and I think the way to find that problem, partly to inspire people, inspire younger generations that actually the value of making something is, is very important. And I think partly we need some kind of spiritual reform of sorts, because, like, I, I think just, like, people need to understand that, like, pleasure is such a, like a fleeting thing, and, and that, like, that's not the thing that makes life meaningful. It j- there's just, like, so much of it, consumption and just like, just being passive. Uh, and I, I'm not kind of saying that I'm gonna (laughs) , you know, create that revolution, but I, I do think that a big part of, like, diagnosing what's, like, wrong with the world today is, is gonna be about just like, a lot of people are just like, super passive, and not interested in doing anything interesting.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings15:36

      I totally agree with you. In terms of hiring for those that aren't, like avoiding those that aren't, I heard you have a non-values page from, uh, one of your trustee investors. What is a non-values page, Amjad, and how does that guide your thinking on who you hire?

   5. AMAmjad Masad15:52

      Th- Yeah, that's just one set of, uh, one, one page, um, a- among like a set of things that we do to, to filter out people without... And, like, filtering out people is the hardest thing you could do, um, in an interview process. And, uh, you know, I'm m- I'm a big b- believer in free markets, and so there are companies out there for every type of person to, to work at. Um, but th- the type of person that we want Replit to work at is a very specific type of person. So we do a lot of work to, you know, filter people who wouldn't be a fit out at the top of the process, and so we, we send people a lot of material, including, like, why not to work at Replit. We have a, like, entire blog post about that. You know, work here, here is hard, there's a lot of uncertainty, we haven't succeeded yet, all these things. We send them the non-values page. And e- even, you know, at the, at the end of the process, you know, we're typically selling people, but we're also, like, anti-selling them at the same time and just saying, like, you know, like, "You shouldn't join if, if y- if that's a problem," or this other thing. Even our values page, we try to be somewhat provocative in the phrasing. For example, we-

   6. HSHarry Stebbings16:57

      How, how are you provocative in phrasing? 'Cause I find everyone's like, "We look for a team player who's good at communication and shared interests and alignment," and you're like, "Fuck off."

6. 17:07 – 17:57

   Zuck’s Famous Saying

   1. HSHarry Stebbings17:07

      (laughs)

   2. AMAmjad Masad17:07

      Yeah. I mean, Zuck said, um, said something very, uh, very interesting, uh, about like, move fast and break things. I think a journalist was asking him about it. And he said, like, one heuristic to know whether you're saying something meaningful is that, like, reasonable people can disagree with it, and the opposite of it is also reasonable. So like, move fast and, and break things could be like, move slow and don't break anything, and that could be like, a value at IBM, right? (laughs) Uh, you know, or steady or slow, you know, you can phrase it like a little more charitably. And so i- if something where the opposite of it doesn't make sense, or nobody would actually, it's n- it's not a value anyone would hold, then you're actually s- not saying anything. Uh, you, it cancels e- each other out. And so to be, uh provocative, um, you need to s- say something that people will disagree with and the opposite of

7. 17:57 – 20:26

   Why Replit Seeks Pain

   1. AMAmjad Masad17:57

      is also somewhat reasonable. One of our values, for example, is like, seek pain. And so the idea behind seek pain is that there's a lot of painful things in, in building a startup. Talking to customers is actually extremely painful. When y- your product is not working or there's like, some fundamental, you know, lack of product market fit or some issue you're dealing with-... you know, founders and entrepreneurs typically don't wanna face that. And facing that is painful. At, at Replit, we've, you know, had some things in the past, uh, that we weren't willing to face, for example, and that created a lot of problems down the line. And so, I think most problems at, at companies are just delusions from not wanting to face pain. So to create a company that is, like, more in touch with reality, you have to create a company-

   2. HSHarry Stebbings18:43

      What do you- what do- what do you tell yourself when you have a painful problem in front of you, that you don't wanna face? It's natural human intuition. Pain, whoa, you pull away. What do you tell yourself now then to engage with that pain and look to be proactive about it?

   3. AMAmjad Masad18:57

      It, it's just like a constant struggle. You just, like, make yourself... There's, like, a personal answer. Perhaps there's a team's answer. But, like, a personal answer is that I've tried to teach myself, um, really deeply that, uh, you know, the cliche "no pain, no gain" is absolutely true, right? Like, um, every, every good thing in life is, like, comes from, uh, from pain. And, you know, you work out, that's pain, uh, in order to, like, live healthier and better and, like, perhaps have a good body. You know, e- even things like a- that your cold shower, they feel amazing afterwards, but you have to go through a bit of pain. A lot of the things that actually feel good in life in a really fundamental way have a period of pain that precede them. And so, there's a Pavlovian sort of aspect of, of this, so you, you wanna condition yourself to really understand that, um, pain often precedes good things. You know, that's one way to go about it. And I think I, I just tell my team that the longer you delay, like, a painful sort of conclusion or decision, the more, uh, the more painful it becomes. You're just building a mountain of pain that you... (laughs) you're gonna at- at some point have to subject yourself to.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings20:15

      I find as a leader, most of the pain actually comes from teams, right? The people within your companies.

   5. AMAmjad Masad20:21

      Yeah.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings20:22

      Um, when you think about the pain that teams drive, have there been any core

8. 20:26 – 23:10

   Employees Who Don’t Scale with Their Role

   1. HSHarry Stebbings20:26

      elements that really drive home for you? I think one of the biggest for me would be people who do not scale with roles and it becomes very clear that they are not up to scratch for the new, like, size of company or new role.

   2. AMAmjad Masad20:39

      That, that is extremely painful because you... Especially people who- who's been with you since the start, um, you know, you kinda wanna have some loyalty towards them, um, and obviously they have loyalty towards you.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings20:55

      But do you? Like, uh, like, push on that one. Do you Yeah, yeah. ... they're not up to scr-

   4. AMAmjad Masad20:58

      But I mean that's-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings20:59

      ... they're not up to scratch? Does this happen?

   6. AMAmjad Masad21:00

      No. No. I'm saying that's the natural instinct, right? But it's actually, like, it's, it's... I think it comes from this tribal way of living that is in our DNA. But in a sort of, like, free market enterprise, it becomes somewhat deleterious and kind of really harms you, um, because what you wanna do is you wanna sort of maximize the likelihood of success, maximize your hold of value, all these, all these things, um, and so you wanna... You're having empathy for the individual, you're not happ- having empathy for the collective, uh, for the rest of the company, for the company itself, for the customers, and for the, um, in- investors. And so, um, uh, I, you know, you- you- you would need to reframe that in the mi- in the mind as a... in your mind as that, "Yes, I'm- I'm- I'm sort of, like, making this bad decision in order to signal some loyalty to this individual who's not working out, but I'm actually, like, harming, uh, a lot more people." So from sort of a utilitarian perspective, it's actually, like, a bad, uh, trade-off. And so, yeah, you, you wanna, you wanna... you, you have to do the right thing by the company ultimately, which is, you know, either layer them, replace them or, or do something else like that.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings22:14

      I- I heard from one of your investors you were very creative in the way that you dealt with an employee that didn't scale. How did you deal with them in this situation?

   8. AMAmjad Masad22:24

      (inhales) Well, I- I- I, uh, typically try to, uh, find places for them in, in the company that they would be, uh... that would be, uh, still happy. Um, you obviously also wanna, wanna make sure that they save face and, like, the, the- the change doesn't look like an obvious demotion. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, uh, there are ways to find the intersection of where they would be happy and productive and where the org really needs to be. And, and so I, uh, I don't claim to have, like, a magical solution here. It's, like, one of the toughest problems to do as you're scaling a startup. I think you can also be too hasty instead of, uh, letting that person go, replacing them, and instead, there are some ways to, like, find a place for them in the organization that would be

9. 23:10 – 26:37

   Amjad’s Biggest Hiring Mistake

   1. AMAmjad Masad23:10

      happy for, for a longer period of time.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings23:12

      Amjad, what are the biggest mistakes you've made in hiring? Like, mine is consistently... I think when you're young, it's easy to fall for logos, and you look at people's CVs and go, "Yes, they've worked at Salesforce. They've worked at X." Tick. I've done that a lot. When you think about your biggest hiring mistakes, what have they been?

   3. AMAmjad Masad23:28

      It's actually the opposite. I sort of, like, give so much credence to the, to the misfit that, um... And we've had such a good luck with the misfit. Like, the early days of Replit, I was the only, like, computer science grad, like, uh, like up until, like, you know, 10, 10, 12 people maybe. All the hackers at the company were, like, dropouts and English majors and poets and, like, all sorts of misfits that got into programming (laughs) sort of semi-randomly. Um, so, uh, so-

   4. HSHarry Stebbings23:59

      And that was a mistake?

   5. AMAmjad Masad24:01

      No, no, no. I'm- I'm- I'm not saying that's a mistake. I- I'm saying that my bias to the misfit sometimes isn't s- it becomes pathological. I find misfits that I know are creative and good, but they have some personality flaw.... and I try to make it work at the expense of other people on the team, right? And it ends up, you know, wreaking some, some havoc sometimes. Maybe I stick with misfits too long and, like, really try to make them work 'cause I, I... Like, one of my, I would say, like, special abilities is to be able to manage misfits. But actually, like, it's not an ability that everyone can do, and they can have a negative effect on the company, even if they're creative. The, you know, the usual sort of engineering manager adage, I'd rather have, like, a normal engineer who is a team player than, like a sort of hostile toxic engineer that's like a 10X engineer, right?

   6. HSHarry Stebbings24:59

      The misfit scale, it's a great culture to have early. You know, you have 75 people now. When you're 400 people, 500 people, does the misfit culture actually scale with process, with HR, with compliance, with approvals, with company-wide culture? Can you scale and still have misfits?

   7. AMAmjad Masad25:17

      Yeah, um, yeah, I mean, I gue- I guess I'm dealing with that right now, so I can get back to you (laughs) in a few years. I, I would love to think you can. Like, you know, I think there, there's, like a, there's a way of, of, of, of doing that. But, you know, the history of companies show. Like, you know, Wozniak, you know, was sort of, like, marginalized as, as Apple grew and, like, he's, like, a total misfit. Still is. Uh, but he stayed there for a long while. He was working on the Apple II even, even when the Mac was the, was the thing. Like, um... And he continued to contribute and, and, and things like that. So, uh, the- there are probably some ways of, of making it work. However, I will submit that, um, you can't build a company made entirely of misfits that, that scale.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings26:10

      Yeah. No, I, I, I totally agree with you there. Uh, speaking of scaling, I wanna talk about s- kind of scaling through time because the world seems to be accelerating a little bit faster than ever, honestly, Amjad. (laughs) And, and I think, you know, I'd like to just focus on a little bit of context first, uh, specifically related to, like, software development. How did making software get progressively easier over the last century, and by how much? Just set the scene in terms

10. 26:37 – 31:20

    The History of Software Development

    1. HSHarry Stebbings26:37

       of developments and by how much.

    2. AMAmjad Masad26:39

       Yeah, so you go back to the, um, early days of, of computing, and the way to program a computer was to directly interact with machine code. You know, that's, uh, that's literally zeros and ones, right? And then, you know, we, we had some ways of programming computers that were a little easier, like punch cards. You're still sort of typing in machine code, but, you know, it's a f- it was a little easier. And then you had the biggest jump we had, which w- uh... at the time, which was, like, probably a 10 to 100x improvement, which was assembly code.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings27:11

       Mm-hmm.

    4. AMAmjad Masad27:11

       So now, we think of assembly as, like, the lowest level of code, right? But at the time, it was, like, it was like their JavaScript of the time, right, like, 'cause they... You were able to create structure in your code. You're able to reason about it. You're able to share libraries between people. It just created the software in- industry as we know it, starting with the assembly and the assembler. But the assembly's... You're still dealing with the physical hardware. You know, you're do- you're thinking about registers. You're thinking about your CPU instructions, and you're s- you're sort of very close to the metal. And then you had, you had the first, uh, innings of programming languages, and C was the m- the, the first time you had... And a- again, now we think of C as low level, but at the time it was, like, the highest level thing. The sort of haughty, uh, uh, assembly programmers would look down on C programmers like people look down now on, like, Python programmers, for example. But C, uh, was another 10x jump because C now you had the concept of subruti- subroutines and loops and, and code you can really reason about in the same way, like, a human kind of thinks. Um, whereas the assembly is, like, more, like, related to the machine, and so you go... You're increasingly going away from, uh, from sort of, you know, working on the machine, reasoning in the machine towards something that more resembles a human narrative, uh, and the way humans sort of think about abstract objects in the world. So C, I would say, and, and related languages, A, B, C, whatever, were another 10x, uh, improvement in productivity. And then, uh, the, the next big, big improvement was the scripting languages. So C was mostly... Like, it was, like, a typed language. You had to think about the types of the values and the objects you have in the system, but then you go from C to, like, something like a Ruby, Python, JavaScript. That era that started in the late '90s, um, was that actually, like, we want languages that are very flexible. You don't have to think about types. You don't have to design the entire program from, from scratch. You can just, like, start typing and sort of... Like, it's almost like jazz or improv. Like, you're just, like, you're, you're, like, you're, you're thinking as you're typing and as you're coding. And, you know, arguably, that was another 10x improvement. I th- I think some people would probably, uh, will probably argue with that a little bit. But then, you know, we, we had a ba- bit of a stagnant period for maybe 10, 15 years. The next 10x improvement wasn't a language. So up until now, we had all these 10x improvements that I think is, like, you know, multiple orders of magnitude, like, let's say, 1,000X improvement of productivity since then. The next one was not language. I think we sort of tapped out on, like, how, how much languages could actually make you more productive. I guess that's TBD, but we haven't had a big language improvement since then. Um, I would say the next era was open source, and open source packages and sharing of packages. So pre-GitHub era, pre-open source, every programmer in the world had to write the same functions all the time. Like, we're all writing the same sorting functions and the same sort of stuff.... and now, we had this way of sharing code, not just within companies, but just globally, right? And I would say that's, that was another 10X, perhaps more, maybe 100X improvement on productivity. And, and so you, you had a, you know, college student like, uh, like Zuck, you know, b- build, uh, a site that reaches, uh, reached a billion, billions of people because he used, like, PHP and MySQL and bunch of libraries that, that were all written for him. He didn't have to write all that stuff. And, and, uh, actually, since then, I think, I think it's kind of like we haven't had a big jump in productivity. My prediction is we are at the start of a new sort of S-curve in, in, in, in productivity growth.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings31:04

       Why, where do you think we're at the new start now? I love Mark Ham's recent statement that there's no such thing as a bad idea, only the bad time. And it's, like, timing is everything, I've learned in investing.

    6. AMAmjad Masad31:14

       Right.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings31:14

       Like, why is now the time? 'Cause everyone always says, "Now is the time." Why is now the time?

    8. AMAmjad Masad31:18

       Well, I, I... Like, we don't have to

11. 31:20 – 37:53

    40%-80% of Code is Written by AI Today

    1. AMAmjad Masad31:20

       speculate, right? Like, we actually can look at the results. Andrej Karpathy, uh, was the head of, uh, AI at Tesla, built the self-driving team there. He now, I think, back at OpenAI. A few months ago, he tweeted that AI is writing 80% of his code today. 80% of his code is written by machine. That is unprecedented. On Replit, we see that 30 or 50... to 50% of code for Ghostwriter, our AI, Ghostwriter users, is written by the AI. The Ghostwriter users report that tasks sometimes are cut in half, in terms of, like, how much time they needed. There was a study actually done on Copilot users, GitHub's Copilot, uh, that showed that programmers are 55% more productive. So okay, this is not a 10X, right? But it is a start of something. We're really at the early innings of this technology, this technology being large language models and transformer-based models. And so, it's only been, uh, you know, three years-

    2. HSHarry Stebbings32:26

       Where, where d-... Where d-... Why... Where do you think that is in 10 years? I saw a similar statement, which was GitHub CEO said that 40% of their code stay for the whole company, was, was, uh, AI generated. Where is that in 10 years? And like, is there an increasing speed of development? Do you see what I mean? Like, is the cadence of development increasing with time?

    3. AMAmjad Masad32:44

       So, uh, there are two ways in which large language models are gonna change software. So one is the AI-assisted developments. Uh, GitHub Copilot is kind of leading in this space. I think we're, like, a fast follower. Perhaps we're gonna exceed them in, in the future. But we are... Uh, Replit Ghostwriter is, is another sort of AI-assisted development. Actually, by the time the episode comes out, we would've come out with Ghostwriter Chat, which is... Imagine ChatGPT that, um, embedded in your code, knows everything about your code, can answer questions about your code, really starts to feel like another pair programmer human that's sitting there and helping you. So, that's one track of, uh, ways that it's gonna help us become better software developers. But there's another way which large language models can help us make better software and make more software. They are, in themselves, software. So, every large language model is a function, essentially. Like, you give it input, it takes output. And that function is programmable in English, what we call prompting. And you can make it do whatever you want it to, to do, right? So, you know, uh, crawling a website and scraping a website and getting use- useful information out of that is somewhat of a... You know, we have a lot of libraries and ways of doing it, but it's still a difficult task. You have to write a parser. It's at least a many hours task, sometimes, like, many, uh, weeks. GPT-3 can extract any type, you know, information, even in a structured fashion, from any website. That's how Bing search r- is written. That's how Neeva, Perplexity, uh, all the new search startups are, are done, right? And now, so instead of spending weeks writing a parser, uh, you can just plug in a large language model that's trained to parse, or that's prompted to parse. And you just saved hours of programming. So not only is it helping us program, it's actually replacing pieces of software. And it's gonna become a core piece of software in the, like, function call graph of software, right?

    4. HSHarry Stebbings34:50

       I, I... You said it will allow programmers to operate at a, a higher level than mere code. This is kind of my question. When we reduce so much of the workload of programmers with the kind of a- automation may respect, they... What do they do then? Like, what does a higher level mean?

    5. AMAmjad Masad35:07

       So the higher level means is that, uh, you focus on the customer, right? I mean, it's kind of crazy to think, but most of programming today is really still trying to appease the machine. You're dealing with the issues with the libraries. You're writing library code. You're writing meta code in order to, to manage your, your workflow. Uh, you're, you know, fixing your environment, which is something we, we totally kind of fix at Replit. But, um, the actual time spent on business logic is probably, like, maybe 15, 20% of your day-to-day coding, which is absurd. So you take that 15, 20%, and that becomes the 100%, right? Uh, maybe 95%. Um-

    6. HSHarry Stebbings35:58

       Does it slim down your engineering team significantly?

    7. AMAmjad Masad36:00

       Yes.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings36:01

       If you-

    9. AMAmjad Masad36:02

       Yes. Yes. But that doesn't mean software engineers go out of, uh, work. It, it just means that s- smaller software engineering, uh, companies w- will actually be able to have a lot more impact. But, but I think, I think you would need way less engineers. Like, you asked me about the 10-year prediction. Like, I, I, I think, like, one person would be worth 100, uh, 100 engineers. One, one good engineer in 10 years would be as productive as 100 engineers today.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings36:27

        ... why, why can the automation layer not solve business logic layer? Like, if it solves, as you said, a lot of the kind of traditional infrastructure layer work, why can it not abstract itself one higher and go business logic?

    11. AMAmjad Masad36:39

        Well, I think that's an AGI-complete problem, and what a- what AGI-complete is basically you would need an AGI in order to do that. And so your prediction might be that AGI will be here in 10 years. Sam Altman in OpenAI thinks that, right? But then, you know, after that, the, the world changes, right, in, in a fundamental way, so it's called the singularity point because you can't really predict what happens after that. But, um, ultimately, like, if, if there's no AGI, and I think it's still a low chance that we're gonna get AGI in 10 years, but then busin- business logic is fundamentally creative activity and fundamentally novel activity, that it would be hard to f- for a machine to, to en- entirely do that because it would go out and have to understand customer, uh, needs and perspectives and have to have, like, some way of having good judgment about the world. And it is, like, all these fuzzy things that we don't know how to program today.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings37:36

        Can I ask, I'm an economist, uh, which is always dangerous. Never trust a VC who's an armchair economist. Terrible trait. Um, but like, you know, when you look at simple demand and supply theory, when you actually allow the world to create code, and when you create this access within a developer time,

12. 37:53 – 40:45

    Will AI drive down the wages of developers?

    1. HSHarry Stebbings37:53

       you have an excess of supply.

    2. AMAmjad Masad37:55

       Yeah.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings37:55

       Uh, will we see the price in the real wages of developers go down as a result?

    4. AMAmjad Masad38:00

       You know, it, it... probably. Like, the... I think there are developers today that are commanding insane, uh, amount of salaries while actually working very little. And, like, it goes to what we talked about, uh, like the value of hard work and all of that. The idea that you can, like, go coast at big tech and still be, like, a millionaire, I think it's absurd, and I think that will go away. I think that's, uh, just a- that's just the effect of an inefficient market, right? And perhaps a zero interest rate market. But, but I, I, I think that was an unnatural thing that happened. And, and so in that regard, yes, maybe the average, you know, developer salary would go down. But I think the, the most creative, um, you know, most hardworking developers will actually be able to earn a lot more.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings38:51

       Because you value their creativity? Like, why is that? Unpack that logic for me.

    6. AMAmjad Masad38:55

       Because their leverage will be, will be huge. You know, John Carmack, um, is one of the best software engineers in the world. He, he made Doom, he worked on VR, and now he's working on AI. He's still limited by how fast he types, right? Which is a c- like, a crazy thought, right? Like, if he's not... bec- because ultimately, you have to type the code out, right? If the AI is actually better at typing the code out, and he's actually manipulating, uh, things at a higher level of abstraction, and he's talking to not just one or two, maybe 10, 100 AIs doing work for him, he's gonna have an insanely higher leverage on the world. And so I think the best, most creative people will have a lot of the menial work automated for them. They wouldn't have to type a unit test anymore. The AI would do that, for example. And so a lot of their time is spent just doing more things. And, um, you know, thi- think about Elon, right? Elon is, like, starting companies left and right, and that's probably not the end of it. Like, he'll probably start more companies in the future, right? You know, part of the reason is because he's sort of, like, operating at a much higher level because he's built a set of very competent people around him. Uh, and, like, they follow him from one company to another, whet- whether it's, like, on the finance and legal side, or it's on the s- sort of, like, engineering side. A lot of that could be AI and could be automatable. So, like, w- w- we can see more Elon Musk-type people that are, uh, you know, software engineers because, you know, b- b- because once you abstract that kind of low-level work, you can do more and more things. You can start more things and do more things.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings40:42

       When you look ahead, I see the

13. 40:45 – 43:03

    Why Income Inequality is Going to Get Much Worse

    1. HSHarry Stebbings40:45

       green shoots, I see the creativity, I see the enablement. What, what does concern you?

    2. AMAmjad Masad40:50

       Yeah. So wealth and equality will grow insanely, a lot. And-

    3. HSHarry Stebbings40:56

       How, how so?

    4. AMAmjad Masad40:58

       Be- because, like, people look at Instagram or WhatsApp as these outlier companies that was, were able to achieve massive valuations with, like, very little, with very little people. And I, I, I don't think it's gonna be an outlier in the future. I think we're gonna see a lot of people, a lot of companies, five, 10 people, that is gonna have massive impact, probably be valued in the billions of dollars. And I think it's gonna create a new crop of millionaires and billionaires, um, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Uh, and these people are gonna have more and more power in the world. Um, and I think that will create more envy. I think humans will just continue to get richer, but I think wealth inequality is concerning, not because it means that, you know, some people are getting sort of the short end of it. Sometimes that happens, but I don't think it happens in technology. I think what happens is it just creates more envy because people think... they look at, uh, you know, rich people, and they think, "Oh, you must have robbed someone to, to, to, to get there." Um, that's how politicians kind of all frame it as well, right? When you hear Elizabeth Warren and these kind of people, uh, talk about rich people, um, they talk about it as if you're r- as if they're like thieves, right?

    5. HSHarry Stebbings42:08

       Do you think you can continue to see such wealth and equality? T- there is only so long before the mass populace will put up with seeing-

    6. AMAmjad Masad42:14

       Exactly.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings42:15

       ... someone with 250 billion. I think there is a case for the kind of storming of the gates.

    8. AMAmjad Masad42:20

       Yeah. I, I, I think that'll... like, I think rich people will get more and more hated, and I think it's gonna create more division that way. I think politicians will-... will sort of jump on that and will try to sort of gain from that. And, um, maybe it will lead to violence. Obviously, I hope not. But, uh, you know, maybe what you're saying, like, you know, storm the gate, like, could actually literally quite happen, like people on the streets and, and all of that. So I think wealth inequality is something to, to worry about, that's for sure.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings42:49

       Do you not worry also about knowledge inequality? And what I mean by this is, we talk about all of this. We can talk about ChatGPT as an infrastructure layer and the applications you can build on top and all of this, uh, uh, which actually is very base level knowledge, bluntly, in this space, as you know. But it's

14. 43:03 – 44:20

    ChatGPT Will Shrink the Knowledge Gap

    1. HSHarry Stebbings43:03

       99.9% higher than anyone else in society.

    2. AMAmjad Masad43:06

       Well, I actually think that, uh, ChatGPT probably added multiple IQ points to a lot of people. So I thi- I, I actually think that, uh, AI is equalizer in terms of intelligence. And so, um, you know, you have people who don't have access to, uh, the same education and, and now you can have an AI tutor that is like everywhere and that works the same for everyone. And so I actually think that, um, the knowledge gap will shrink and the education gap will thr- will shrink, and even the intelligence gap will shrink. Uh, so all those are good things. But nonetheless, I think the, the outcomes will be radically different, and that's j- just because like, it's, it's a free system and free systems tend to follow power law nature. Like, even in nature, any time you see like a sort of free unrestricted system, you see like incredible, uh, inequalities. And, um, and so, uh, you basically have this problem where like, you know, the winner takes all, right? And as you know as a venture capitalist, like the power law is almost like a law of nature.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings44:17

       You mentioned kind of the, the demonization of these

15. 44:20 – 45:29

    Why Zuck is Switching his Focus from Metaverse to AI

    1. HSHarry Stebbings44:20

       very powerful and successful figures. I'm intrigued, you, you Tweeted the other day about Zuck, uh, and Zuck's priorities shifting from the Metaverse to AI and the TikTok threat. What would you do if you were Zuck, and how do you think about this re-shifting of priorities?

    2. AMAmjad Masad44:35

       I, I think that's absolutely the right thing to do for, for Zuck. I think the Metaverse bet is not like fundamentally misguided. Um, I think i- it's pretty clear to me that at some point, we're gonna have photorealistic technology, whatever it is, whether it's AR, VR, or, or what have you. Like, you and I... It'd be great if you and I were actually sitting in the same room or seemingly sitting in the same room, right? That's like obviously true. Uh, but, but the, like the, uh, uh, I think they, you know, sort of underestimated, um, maybe how much time it's gonna take and they probably overestimated how much free cash in the world there's going to be to, to continue to invest. On the other hand, AI o- absolutely clearly has traction, and absolutely clearly has sort of happened. And so, it, it would make total rational sense to kind of shift some resources to kind of invest more in

16. 45:29 – 51:14

    Should the US ban TikTok?

    1. AMAmjad Masad45:29

       AI.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings45:30

       Uh, speaking of kind of investing more in AI, I think one concern that the US has is, is China and China's ability. I thought it was actually quite hilarious, bluntly, when you saw the shooting down of the Chinese balloon, and that causing such controversy. And then you look at the App Store and see their three top placed consumer apps, and I'm like, "Well, they're sucking data from 320 million phones, but you're right, we should shoot down a balloon, um-"

    3. AMAmjad Masad45:54

       (laughs)

    4. HSHarry Stebbings45:54

       "... and be worried about it." Um, uh, my question to you is, uh, how do you feel from a security standpoint about Chinese domination in US consumer apps?

    5. AMAmjad Masad46:03

       Look, I, I mean, I, I moved to the US because I, I like, uh, sort of Western values of, of freedom and, and democracy and individualism. And, uh, I think the Chinese Communist Party i- i- embodies none of that. Uh, like, it's pretty obvious they say, uh, they don't like individualism. And so, they're clearly at odds with our, with our values. Um, but, but, you know, part of our values is free, free market and free competition. And so, shutting them down just because we don't agree with them is also bad and corrosive to future investors and future sort of countries, uh, and oth- players all over the world that want to invest in the US. Right? So, like we, we need evidence that, uh, they're actually doing something bad. But if we don't have that evidence, I would, I would think it's an... it's government overreach to go and, and try to ban them.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings46:59

       Well, the evidence they're doing something bad is, is actually just rooted in their company infor- like structuring, which is all Chinese companies have the right and what are required to share data with Chinese government upon request. That's like rooted in their culture-

    7. AMAmjad Masad47:13

       Yeah. Do, do we have actual evidence that, uh, data on US citizens is actually like making its way to the like, um, CCP?

    8. HSHarry Stebbings47:22

       That, that, that doesn't matter. They have the right to request it. If they have the right to request it, should we not have the right to ban it to prevent that right?

    9. AMAmjad Masad47:30

       (sighs) Yeah, I-

    10. HSHarry Stebbings47:30

        'Cause otherwise we are at the will of wherever they say, "Yes, I want it," you're fucked.

    11. AMAmjad Masad47:35

        Yeah. (laughs) I mean, I'm a little conflicted on that, because, uh, the Twitter files just showed that there's incredible, uh, US government sort of, uh, collusion with, uh, US social media companies as well. And so-

    12. HSHarry Stebbings47:49

        But at le- but at least the value alignment is there. Like you-

    13. AMAmjad Masad47:52

        Yeah.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings47:52

        ... believe in individualism, you believe in meritocracy hopefully. We, we d-

    15. AMAmjad Masad47:58

        Yeah.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings47:58

        Do you see what I mean?

    17. AMAmjad Masad47:59

        (inhales) Uh, you know, I, I, I see what you mean, certainly. Um, but, but, uh, like don't you think that, um, we need to at least w- give some weight to the idea that, um, we want our markets open to, um, to people, to foreigners to sort of compete in?

    18. HSHarry Stebbings48:17

        100%.

    19. AMAmjad Masad48:18

        Yeah.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings48:18

        But not if it goes back to a central governing body that fundamentally has disparate values to what makes us human.

    21. AMAmjad Masad48:27

        Yeah. I mean, I, I, I, I would agree with that, but th- there's like a lot of-... you know, there's a lot of room. Like, if you were to make that law, like, how would you actually make it law? Like, what, what kind of value you would ban T- you would ban TikTok and you would ban Chinese apps. Right. You, because, you, you just single out China? Like, so, what, what kind of value, what kind of- what about Singapore? So, Singapore is, uh, is very much, um, like, you know, top-down and, um, and, and somewhat authoritarian, but it actually, they're a good ally of the US. People like to live there as well. Like, do you ban Singapore, Singaporean apps?

    22. HSHarry Stebbings49:04

        Oh, I, I don't know the extent towards which Singapore have, like, views towards communism and, um-

    23. AMAmjad Masad49:10

        No, no, they're not communists, obviously. But they're, like, on the authoritarian scale, they're like way more authoritarian, right? So, it's like defining those values clearly to make it into law, I think it's gonna be tricky.

    24. HSHarry Stebbings49:21

        I agree with you. There's like a scale of like, "Well, how far is wrong? Just a little bit wrong, like, or very wrong, like, what, what..." So, I, I get you there.

    25. AMAmjad Masad49:29

        (laughs) Yeah.

    26. HSHarry Stebbings49:29

        But, but I don't... Like, do you think TikTok will be banned?

    27. AMAmjad Masad49:34

        Um, I, I think there's gonna be increasing pressure on them to move more of their operations to the US. Obviously, they use Oracle data centers now. Maybe there's gonna be more pressure to spring up more firewalls there. I think maybe there's more pressure for, um, like more US-based, um, like companies, maybe investors in the US have to own more of the company than, than ByteDance. Um, I, I think things like that will happen just with the increased pressure, and I think TikTok will have to become more transparent, 'cause right now they're, they're like not very, uh, transparent. They use like every growth hack. It's like a very slimy app in that way. Um, but I think they'll, they'll just have to react to the sort of public pressure on them, and I think they might be able to do a good job and sort of stave it, stave it off and give the, the US government and US people some assurances that they're, they're not, you know, uh, collecting data and sharing it with the CCP. Um, a- and, and I think may- maybe that would work out. Banning them outright, I don't see that happening unless there's like a full Republican government and like, you know, will of, you know, uh, political will.

    28. HSHarry Stebbings50:53

        Yeah. No, I, I totally get you. I think you'd also have a million, uh, teenagers at least to... and outcry. Also, actually, to be fair, it powers a, a lot of people's, like, primary earnings now. Like, it is such a driver for both small business and individual creators-

    29. AMAmjad Masad51:06

        Yeah.

    30. HSHarry Stebbings51:06

        ... that for the US economy, I think there'd be a massive outcry in that way. I wanna move into my favorite, which is a quick fire round, my friend. So, I say a short statement, you give

17. 51:14 – 58:08

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. HSHarry Stebbings51:14

       me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

    2. AMAmjad Masad51:16

       Yeah, let's do it.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings51:17

       It's... What are you most optimistic for when you look forward? We've spoken about concerns. What are you most optimistic for?

    4. AMAmjad Masad51:23

       Uh, e- e- e- equality of access. So, you know, uh, the, the ability for anyone in the world to participate in the software economy is just gonna be huge.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings51:32

       How did having children change how you think and operate?

    6. AMAmjad Masad51:37

       Um, you become a lot more future-oriented. You actually bec- worry a lo- a lot more about the world.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings51:43

       Do startups still do best when in SF?

    8. AMAmjad Masad51:47

       Yes.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings51:48

       Why?

    10. AMAmjad Masad51:50

        Um, there's something in the air. I don't know what it is, but like there's just like this, like, optimism, this like feeling. I, I don't know what it is, but it is, it is intangible. Some kind of community is important. Uh, I think New York has, has a lot more of it today. I think you can find it somewhere else, but community is important.

    11. HSHarry Stebbings52:09

        What's the one word that will be on your tombstone?

    12. AMAmjad Masad52:12

        Man, um...

    13. HSHarry Stebbings52:14

        So, like, mine is "persistent." Like, whatever it is, I just don't fucking give up, ever. Ran an ultra marathon, broke my ankle. Fuck (laughs) . That fucking hurt.

    14. AMAmjad Masad52:27

        (laughs) Like, the, the thing that comes to mind is, is win. And I don't mean that, that I'm like consus- consistently winning, but I consistently, consistently try to win. And, and I think it's a, it's a good value I have to, like, try to win. Um, to win. Win as, as like a sort of a command.

    15. HSHarry Stebbings52:47

        If you could be CEO of one other company for a day, what would it be and why that company?

    16. AMAmjad Masad52:53

        I, I would want to, like, uh, like, uh, say a company that's like so different, just to like experience something so radically different. So, like, I don't know, like a, like a friggin' insurance company or something like that, just to like be able to, to know like what happens in, in parts of industry that I, that I, I know nothing about.

    17. HSHarry Stebbings53:15

        (laughs)

    18. AMAmjad Masad53:16

        Um, uh, yeah. Like, something super boring, like an insurance company.

    19. HSHarry Stebbings53:20

        Amjad, CEO of Pest Control Limited (laughs) .

    20. AMAmjad Masad53:24

        (laughs)

    21. HSHarry Stebbings53:24

        We can make it happen, my friend. Uh, what do you believe that many disagree with?

    22. AMAmjad Masad53:28

        I probably said a lot of things on this podcast that many will disagree with. Uh-

    23. HSHarry Stebbings53:33

        (laughs) .

    24. AMAmjad Masad53:33

        ... maybe the spiritual malaise. But, but that's, that's, that's like more in the ether today. I think Bitcoin is the future reserve currency of the world.

    25. HSHarry Stebbings53:45

        (laughs) Okay. Unpack that. Like...

    26. AMAmjad Masad53:48

        Um, well, I s- I think like if, if you, if you play out the game theory of like how, um, currencies have played, played out, reserve currencies have played out, uh, in the world, I, I think like the most neutral... Like, obviously, like, like now a lot of people know that the problem with fiat currencies and just the problem with like creating money out of thin air, there's gonna be some kind of return to a commodity pegged money, I think. Like, you could return to gold but, uh, like, you know, gold has all these problems with it, like not being able to move it easily. And so, I thi- I think the rational long-term, um, thing that will happen, and it might not happen in our lives, but ultimately humanity will discover that there's only one-... uh, currency with all, w- or commodity, with all the values we'd want for money, uh, to, to create on top of it a lot of different national currencies, and that's gonna be Bitcoin.

    27. HSHarry Stebbings54:46

        Amjad, if you could tell your 24-year-old self one thing, coming to the US with nothing but credit card debt, didn't sell enough of those BB guns, my friend-

    28. AMAmjad Masad54:55

        (laughs)

    29. HSHarry Stebbings54:56

        ... uh (laughs) , uh, what would, what would it be that you would tell yourself?

    30. AMAmjad Masad55:00

        Not to sacrifice health, and maybe friendship a lot. Like I think I was so driven that I... Like I'm paying down a lot of sort of health debts and maybe reconnecting with friends now and, and things like that. I'm s- I'm like, like, you know, knock on wood, totally healthy, but like there are some, yeah, some are just, you know, getting, getting fit and getting, uh, getting back into like a good, uh, life habits. And, and all that has been, uh, has been a lot work. And, and, um, and so I've also neglected some, some relationships, and you know, I, I don't know. It's, it's almost, it's almost like... Is, you know the tweet recently by Mr. Wonderful? What's his n- name? Um-

Episode duration: 58:08