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AI CEO: How To Make A $10M Business With AI Employees (Amjad Masad, CEO of @replit)

My new book Own Or Be Owned is out now! I wrote Own or Be Owned to answer one question: How do you make more money, less miserably?

Amjad MasadguestCodie Sanchezhost

Jul 30, 20251h 34mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

95 min read · 18,529 words

0:00 – 0:49
Introduction and Excitement for AI
1. AMAmjad Masad
  A lot of companies pay tens of thousands of dollars for software you can generate on Replit for $5 literally.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  You are going to love this episode. It is with Amjad Masad, who is the CEO of Replit, one of the fastest-growing AI companies out there. He is going to blow your mind and maybe help you blow up your bank account.
3. AMAmjad Masad
  Before everyone in the world learns that this technology exists, you have a moment where it's like a opportunity to capture a lot of value from it.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  Do you think that it is now possible for a single individual, in the case of a few weeks, who has zero coding experience, to build a million-dollar business with Replit?
5. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. So we have-
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  Oh, that is wild.
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah, I was talking to someone who works in venture capital. He goes into Replit building his dream platform to manage his, uh, his investments. He got commitments for 5 million ARR before he quit
0:49 – 2:26
Early Beginnings in Coding
1. AMAmjad Masad
  his job.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Wow.
3. AMAmjad Masad
  Now more than ever, finding businesses that are running inefficiently, and going into these businesses and figure out where to plug in AI and make it a lot more profitable, even without growing them.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  Welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. I'm Codie Sanchez. Today, if you wanna make money online, and you wanna do it building with code and are curious about AI, but even if you've never coded before, buckle up for this episode, because I'm obsessed. So I've been so excited for this podcast because I'm sort of a tech Neanderthal, but I've been going down a rabbit hole of AI. I hired a guy who's actually good at it, and it almost feels to me like there's a world before I realized all the things we could do online, and now there's a world afterwards. And almost everything my employees do, everything I do in business, I'm like, "Wow, why are we doing it the way we did last year?" Because it almost doesn't make sense anymore. And what's crazy to me about you is you figured this out at, like, six, I think. [laughs] Like, is it a true story that when you were six years old in Jordan, you were already coding and building software apps?
5. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my, my father, uh, got a computer before anyone I knew back in Amman, in Jordan, in the early '90s. And so one of my really earliest vivid memories was standing behind the shoulders, uh, on my dad, kind of unboxing this machine, pulling out this huge manual, opening it up, and you had to read a manual. There's no internet at the time, and sort of finger typing on the keyboard, and I was just fascinated by it. This idea that you can, like, talk to this
2:26 – 5:55
Turning Down a Billion Dollar Offer
1. AMAmjad Masad
  machine and, like, convey what you wanna build, and you can build it. I'm still... You know, it's just still gives me goosebumps. Just the idea of, like, creation. You're like being able to be creative without a lot of resources or, you know, you don't have to build a real physical thing. All you need is this machine. And so I got into it immediately and started building apps. The first thing that I built was, um, a math teaching app for my younger brother. So it will be like a, you know, formula, you know, one plus one equals blank. He puts in two, he gets a clap. He puts in three, he gets a boo. And it worked out. Now he works for me, so.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Wow.
3. AMAmjad Masad
  [laughs]
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  I love that.
5. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  I don't know what kind of Wheaties they had in Jordan-
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... but that's like, I had, you know, Lincoln Logs and Legos. Um-
9. AMAmjad Masad
  [laughs]
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  But then, you know, what's kinda crazy is then you had a 180 basically-
11. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
12. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... from that, which is, is it true that afterwards, not so long ago, you actually turned down a billion dollars-
13. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
14. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... uh, as an acquisition price for your company when you only had six employees?
15. AMAmjad Masad
  Yes.
16. CSCodie Sanchez
  What happened?
17. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. Um, you know, we, we had, uh, uh, started the company in 2016, and the mission behind the company is to create a billion coders, billion programmers, billion developers, whatever you wanna call it.
18. CSCodie Sanchez
  Mm-hmm.
19. AMAmjad Masad
  And I just felt in my heart of hearts that we're at a point where anyone can make software. Uh, I felt like the AI is progressing really fast, just cloud systems. Ev- everything that was coming online made it so that anyone could really be able to do this thing that have fundamentally changed my life, you know, got me from, from Jordan in a sort of lower income family, all the way to the US, become an entrepreneur, joining Y Combinator, the most prestigious startup accelerator. And, uh, in 2018, just after we did Y Combinator, we kind of bootstrapped for a couple of years, then we did Co- Y Combinator. Um, maybe 2019, we got this acquisition offer from a really big, big company. Um, and, uh, obviously it was a lot of money, and I, I, we didn't, we didn't have, I didn't have a lot of money at the time, but, uh, I just, I just felt like they're gonna take the, they're gonna take the company, not gonna do anything interesting with it.
20. CSCodie Sanchez
  Mm.
21. AMAmjad Masad
  And, and I'll make the money, and maybe I'll quit two or three years after that and create the same company. So I thought, "I like this company. I might as well keep going." And I always felt like if we get to a point where we achieve even 1% of our mission, this could be a much bigger company. And, and, you know, we achieved that valuation a few years ago, and pr- the company's probably valued more today.
22. CSCodie Sanchez
  Walk me through that moment. So like you get an offer-
23. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah
24. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... you meet a guy. I don't know how it works.
25. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
26. CSCodie Sanchez
  And did you seriously contemplate it? Were you like-
27. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah
28. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... "I need to sleep on this"?
29. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah, yeah, I did. I did. Uh, it wasn't like a knee-jerk reaction-
30. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah
5:55 – 10:18
Challenges and Pivots in Business
1. AMAmjad Masad
  Uh, and I talked to a bunch of other people, and I, I kind of felt like the weight of Silicon Valley was on my shoulder, like-
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Mm
3. AMAmjad Masad
  ... everyone really believed in what we're doing. Um, and I didn't wanna let people down. I also just Kind of didn't wanna let our users down, our customers, our dreams, and, um... And I also felt like I have the kind of skills to always be able to make good living. Uh, and I think, you know, we all know that after a certain level of wealth, you know, your life doesn't really change all that much. Uh, and so I s- I like money. I don't wanna make it seem like I [laughs] ... I think money is a great thing. I think it gives you a lot of freedom, um, and, and comfort in order to achieve more things. And, and I think the thing that I'm most attracted to is, is, is building great things.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, it's not like... Now Replit seems like this, this gargantuan, right?
5. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  Like 100 million in annual recurring revenue. I look at your little chart and just, whoa.
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  I mean, it's pretty wild-
9. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... to look at.
11. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
12. CSCodie Sanchez
  But it took you nine years-
13. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
14. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... to even get to your first $10 million in revenue.
15. AMAmjad Masad
  Yep.
16. CSCodie Sanchez
  Right?
17. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
18. CSCodie Sanchez
  Like, you, you weren't really making any money at all for multiple years.
19. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
20. CSCodie Sanchez
  You were burning cash.
21. AMAmjad Masad
  That's right.
22. CSCodie Sanchez
  First your own, then a little bit of YC, then-
23. AMAmjad Masad
  Right
24. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... a little bit of third-party investors. It's not like this was an overnight success-
25. AMAmjad Masad
  No
26. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... at all.
27. AMAmjad Masad
  No.
28. CSCodie Sanchez
  And so I, I'm curious, did you ever have a moment where you were like, "We are not gonna make it, and I'm not good enough, and this company's not gonna work out"?
29. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in, uh, 2024, early 2024, so last year, um, the company had not been growing all that much. We're actually, we're kind of hit a plateau and started decreasing a little bit. So we were in this awkward position where we make it easy enough to get started, but not enough to get you all the way to building a business or a real piece of software. And because our focus is on getting everyone to make applications, anyone with a dream, without any skill or background in computer science, should be able to come to Replit and make an app. That was always the kind of the, the core of the mission. We're also not very good for professional developers, 'cause they needed all these tools that we didn't have. And so we were in this, like, awkward middle, and not making any revenue, and have this really large staff, 130 people, had raised $200 million. And as you know, you know, uh, you, uh, you talk about it in the book, like, you know, there are businesses that you could build that provide a lot of, uh, you know, profit and good living for yourself, and you have complete, you know, control of what you do. But once you take on venture capital, there's al- almost a contract, uh, you're implicitly kind of getting into, which is, "I'm gonna build a billion dollar company. This is, this... I'm gonna build something really scalable, really big." And I take that, uh, responsibility seriously as well. So, um, I felt like the only way to really achieve our mission and for the business to take off is to invent an automated coder, so that you go to Replit and you really don't have to learn to code at all. And so we lay off almost half the team.
30. CSCodie Sanchez
  Oof.
10:18 – 14:40
Repl.it's Revolutionary Impact
1. AMAmjad Masad
  And we, we just put out, like, a, you know, small video, very low production on a cell phone, and it went super viral. Um, and our revenue that year climbed to 10 million ARR. And then when we got out of beta and the agent got really good, that's when we went to 100 million ARR in, in a matter of six, seven months.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  That is wild. You know, what's interesting though, and why I was so attracted to what you do, is because w- it could sound corny to say, "I wanna create a billion coders." You know?
3. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  You're like, "Okay, Silicon Valley, typical mission."
5. AMAmjad Masad
  It's been done before. [laughs]
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  Put a billion in front thing. Yeah, exa- exactly. Um, except I've used the product. And, like, not an ad, you know, but, um, it's incredible, especially for somebody who's really not tech advanced.
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  And, um, and I really associated to it because I think, you know, our mission at Contrarian Thinking is to create millions of owners.
9. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  And I think that sounds cheesy to people who, um, would rather have, I don't know, a couple billion dollars in assets under management as an investment firm instead.
11. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
12. CSCodie Sanchez
  And I think there are a lot of people that say, "No, people who want AI just wanna concentrate all the power."
13. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
14. CSCodie Sanchez
  And you're kind of doing the opposite of it.
15. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
16. CSCodie Sanchez
  So why don't you explain to people what exactly Replit is-
17. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah
18. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... and why it's revolutionary.
19. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
20. CSCodie Sanchez
  And maybe even how could somebody use it today to, to change their life?
21. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. Look, technology had always been, have been, had two visions: the massive, centralized, mega corporation, mega government, surveillance state-
22. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah
23. AMAmjad Masad
  ... vision, the dystopian future. You know, that's sort of like The Matrix and all these different movies. But there was always also a vision of the sort of the hacker in their basement that are building amazing thing, or the star founders in their garage, or the Bitcoin crypto hackers who can, like, create s- systems of money and encryption outside of the control of governments and things like that. So that vision existed always. And, um, at any given time, like, when the internet started, it started as this idea of decentralized, uh, empower the people thing. And then over time, we centralized on kind of a few big tech companies and things like that. And now we're at a moment of time where- ... there could be another shift, and that shift could send us into more centralization or bring back power to people so that we can have more owners, more founders, more entrepreneurs, a more dynamic economy, and this is what I'm really passionate about.
24. CSCodie Sanchez
  Mm.
25. AMAmjad Masad
  Um, so what Replit is, um, uh, it, it's an automated AI coder. So, uh, everyone has ideas. Like, I talk to people, I talk to Uber drivers all the time.
26. CSCodie Sanchez
  Mm.
27. AMAmjad Masad
  Everyone has an idea. Everyone is kind of, um... E- everyone in any field, they are domain experts, right? Um, but they usually do not have the coding skills in order to build an online business or, or some kind of business using technology, uh, because they don't have the skills. So they usually go and they try to find an agency to, to do it for them, and they get quoted enormous amount of money, hundreds, thou- thousands, a million dollars we s- sometimes hear. And they give up on that dream, because who has that kind of money? Uh, some people go, go into debt, and they still get screwed by the freelancers and all of that. Or their ideas are, are, you know, may- maybe perhaps need a lot of iteration, and they don't have the money for it. So you go to Replit, you put in your, you know, uh, start with a simplified version of your idea, get an MVPU or a prototype, minimum viable product, um, and you're gonna see the AI coder coding in front of you. It'll spend 10 minutes kind of researching, showing you the design. Once you approve the design, it will start building the application, and you'll get a prototype in a matter of 10 minutes. And then you'll look at it and you'll say, "You know, I like this. It has this functionality. Okay, let's add, um, uh, you know, l- let's, you know, let's change the color of this button, but also let's add an entirely new feature to the website." And it'll spend another five minutes working on this and getting it done f- uh, for you. And then, um, you know, you can spend weeks building that business and then launching it. And we hear from entrepreneurs that... You know, the other day I was talking
14:40 – 31:58
Empowering Entrepreneurs with AI
1. AMAmjad Masad
  to someone who works in venture capital.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Mm-hmm.
3. AMAmjad Masad
  This is the, uh, you know, the, uh, what I was talking about, where everyone has domain knowledge. This VC, uh, he's not even in the, on the b- investing team, he's on the sort of finance team, uh, understands all the problems and woes of managing a portfolio of companies. And he, they buy all sorts of software. None of the software works for them, right? I'm sure you can relate.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yep.
5. AMAmjad Masad
  Um, and so he goes into Replit, spends weeks, you know, nights and weekends, uh, you know, 40, 50, 60 hours a week, uh, building his dream platform to manage his, uh, his investments. And then he realizes that he has a business on his hands. And he goes and talks to different finance people at different VC companies. They all have the same problems. And he starts showing them software, and everyone's like, "We wanna buy it now." And he got, he got commitments for 5 million ARR before he quit his job. So in a matter of mo- of, on the matter of weeks, he had a business on his hand, and now he quit his job, and he has the contracts, and the money is flowing in. So that's... Everyone has this... Think about it as, you know, when Airbnb came on the scene, they found this o- this asset that wasn't monetized. Everyone has space in their home that wasn't monetized. I think everyone has domain knowledge that is not monetized, and the way to monetize that domain knowledge, to scale yourself... You know, you talk about it in your book. The, the difference between an owner and a worker is the worker kind of trades time for money. I think, I think owners often trade experience for sca- scalable experience for money, right? So putting your experience into a piece of software, and that can scale to hundreds, perhaps thousands, perhaps millions of customers, and you're gonna be able to make a lot of money.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  It's so true. I mean, you know, what's interesting is, you know, if s- somebody's never played with, with AI before, you know, to me what it looks like is you just, you kinda write, or I'm, I now am a voice-to-text annoying person-
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm. [laughs]
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... who uses, like, Wis- Whisper Flow, and I just, you know, I just say out loud-
9. AMAmjad Masad
  With WhatsApp. I like it. Yeah
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... the things that I like, you know, that I'd like to build. I would like to build, you know, this exact thing. I wanna build a, you know, portfolio dashboard, and I want it to look like XYZ, and I'd like it to be monochromatic, and there to be, like, very simplistic, you know, buttons and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you sort of iterate on this continuously, and then on the right-hand side, and we can show it on YouTube if you guys-
11. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
12. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... wanna watch the video there. It kind of looks to me, because I am not a coder, like what I imagine the Matrix might look like-
13. AMAmjad Masad
  [laughs]
14. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... in some ways.
15. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
16. CSCodie Sanchez
  And so you have multicolored code that's sort of-
17. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
18. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... happening, and you can sort of... Then you could be over to the left watching Real Housewives or w- whatever show-
19. AMAmjad Masad
  That's right
20. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... you watch.
21. AMAmjad Masad
  That's right.
22. CSCodie Sanchez
  And simultaneously this agent is running.
23. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
24. CSCodie Sanchez
  And so you have a little employee for the first time ever that you get for a couple hundred bucks a month-
25. AMAmjad Masad
  That's right
26. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... that kind of does exactly what you want it to do continuously.
27. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
28. CSCodie Sanchez
  And so, so I think you might have just answered this question in some way, but do you think that it is now possible for a single individual, in the case of a few weeks, who has zero coding experience, to build a million-dollar business with Replit?
29. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. So we have, um, another entrepreneur, his name is John Chaney.
30. CSCodie Sanchez
  Mm-hmm.
31:58 – 37:38
The Future of AI and Prompting
1. AMAmjad Masad
  everyone in the world learns that this technology exists, it'll probably take five years, you know-
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah
3. AMAmjad Masad
  ... people are slow. You have a moment where you, where it's like an opportunity to create a lot of mo- value and capture a lot of value from it. So, um, you know, uh, thinking about the kind of advice you give your, uh, your audience around buying businesses and, and running profitable businesses, I think now more than ever, finding businesses who are, uh, that are running inefficiently and going into these businesses and figure out where to plug in AI, where to replace SaaS software that's expensive.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
5. AMAmjad Masad
  You know, a lot of companies pay tens of thousands of dollars for software you can generate on Replit for $5 literally. And so you can go into any business and, you know, shave off a lot of costs and make it a lot more profitable, even without growing it.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. Well, you guys should tell us in the comments, because you told me, you're like, "We should do a hackathon."
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  And I said, "Well, can we do this simply enough where like anybody listening, if we ga- if we had them for two hours, let's say-
9. AMAmjad Masad
  Yep
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... they could build something?" And you said, "This is what we do."
11. AMAmjad Masad
  Yep.
12. CSCodie Sanchez
  You're like, "Yes. At the end of two hours, we will have everybody have built something that is useful, potentially even valuable and monetizable." So-
13. AMAmjad Masad
  This is our go-to-market strategy, actually.
14. CSCodie Sanchez
  Interesting.
15. AMAmjad Masad
  So-
16. CSCodie Sanchez
  So you guys, you, you should tell us in the comments if you guys want us to do a hackathon and we could do one.
17. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
18. CSCodie Sanchez
  We could do like a Main Street every day, I have no idea how to code hackathon.
19. AMAmjad Masad
  Yep.
20. CSCodie Sanchez
  But you run these now and they work.
21. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. So we, um-
22. CSCodie Sanchez
  Interesting
23. AMAmjad Masad
  ... so for example, HG Capital, uh, a, you know, capital group in, uh, in Europe, has like hundreds of portfolio companies and some of their portfolio companies were using Replit, and they were interested in that. And so we went there and we ran a hackathon for all their executives, their CEOs. And you know, it's CEOs, you know, they're busy, they're probably getting texts every, you know, two minutes, and it's not like they can focus for the entire day. We told them, "Just give us two hours of your time." In two hours everyone had applications. And like, you know, they're so giddy about it, like kids, right? Like they, they, they come and they present what they built, and they're so excited. And, and that's, that's what I love. It's like there's a human aspect of it, like making things is awesome.
24. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
25. AMAmjad Masad
  And so everyone's gonna get excited about it, and, and most people are gonna convert and become users and customers.
26. CSCodie Sanchez
  We've confirmed that we can make money with AI. And, and yet like you see a future, because you are, you saw this, Jesus, back when you were six, but then also you guys saw the vision for Replit really before AI was here at all.
27. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
28. CSCodie Sanchez
  And one of the things that you said on, on, well, X, uh, that you tweeted was that crucially it won't be prompting. We believe that's more a bug than a feature.
29. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
30. CSCodie Sanchez
  In the future it'll be a combination of AI predicting what task you want done next and doing it for you-
37:38 – 48:13
Leadership and Talent Wars in AI
1. AMAmjad Masad
  go to the next component. Here's how I'm gonna break up my app or my dat- database into all these different things. And these are skills that can be learned. Like I would go to ChatGPT and spend a few hours learning some of these skills. You know, teach me how to be a better systems thinker, how to create PRDs, how to be a better communicator. Uh, but all this stuff will get easier in the future.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  That's a great point though, because you literally use the tool to get better at the tool.
3. AMAmjad Masad
  Yes.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  And if you can understand sort of first principles of how the tool works in order to make it work better for you, then, you know, that would be like what X would call, you know, God-like prompting or whatever.
5. AMAmjad Masad
  That's right.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  Right?
7. AMAmjad Masad
  That's right. And also, uh, getting crisp about what you know.
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  Hmm.
9. AMAmjad Masad
  Uh, people know a lot of things and, um, you know, I'm sure you've, you've had that experience where someone comes to you for advice and you surprise yourself with the advice you're giving them, right? It's like, "Ah, I didn't know how much of an expert I was at this." [chuckles]
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  Sure.
11. AMAmjad Masad
  Which is why mentoring is good, not just for the mentee, but also for you. Like, I like to mentor people because it just reinforces what I know. And so a lot of people do not know what they know, and I think that skill of taking what you know and converting it into precise documents is, is very, very important, so.
12. CSCodie Sanchez
  Interesting. Uh-
13. AMAmjad Masad
  And I think that's the skill of writing.
14. CSCodie Sanchez
  It's very true.
15. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
16. CSCodie Sanchez
  I, I do think you can often tell-
17. AMAmjad Masad
  I'm sure-
18. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... how good of a thinker somebody is by the way that they write.
19. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah, writing a book is torture, right? Like-
20. CSCodie Sanchez
  It is.
21. AMAmjad Masad
  [laughs]
22. CSCodie Sanchez
  I actually like it. You know what's-
23. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah
24. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... the torture on writing a book, is the, the marketing of the book. Trying to hit-
25. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. [laughs]
26. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... the New York Times bestseller was the most ludicrous, like, fake, uh, arbitrage-
27. AMAmjad Masad
  Did you have to bribe someone?
28. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah, I, I wish I could have.
29. AMAmjad Masad
  [laughs]
30. CSCodie Sanchez
  Honestly, if I would've, if I could've, I would've. But I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't intelligent enough to do that.
48:13 – 49:05
The Risks of Joining a Startup
1. AMAmjad Masad
  engineering, right?
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. I know I liked the piece that you put out on it really kind of saying, "Hey, we, we don't do that at Replit."
3. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  And like we've had chances for us to be bought.
5. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  And I've had chances... You know, I'm sure you have to have been approached by people who wanted to acquire-
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Yep
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... your big brain and your team.
9. AMAmjad Masad
  Yep. Yeah, yeah. Constantly.
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  And you tell them no.
11. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah, we tell them no. Um, and you know, another thing we do at Replit is, uh, we do secondary sales. Not, not often, but we tell our employees every now and then if there's an investor that really want to get into Replit, we'll let employees sell their shares. Because, you know, we have such a long-term plan, you know, we've already, you know, eight, nine years in, and, um, who knows when are we gonna go public, and that's unfair to people that they're not gonna be able to... They're taking a bet
49:05 – 49:46
Government Policies and Innovation
1. AMAmjad Masad
  on you, they're taking a bet on the company, they're working a lot harder than they could be working at a, at a bigger companies, and we want to let them to be able to take some risk off the table. Um, and so we've done that before. We'll do it again. In terms of, you asked me about how we, we keep talent, one thing about Replit that we've also done well is we haven't, like, exploded our valuation. Like, um, we'll probably raise, raise a round in the future and update our valuation, but right now our current valuation is less than 10X of our, uh, revenue. And by the way, like, this technology companies, uh, early growth AI t- companies are 100X.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yep.
3. AMAmjad Masad
  So we could be valued at $10 billion,
49:46 – 50:34
The Role of WhatsApp Groups in Tech
1. AMAmjad Masad
  but what happens when you val- or $20 billion, what happens is, um, there's no more upside for employees joining you. So when people join Replit, we sell them on this upside. This could be a trillion dollar company, um, and we want you to get on, on the, on the... We're not trying to, like, pump and dump, right? We're trying to, like, build this in a way where people are taking appropriate risk in, in getting enough of a, of a equity comp in order to, for this to have a 10, 100X potential in the future.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. So do you think in the future, big tech companies are essentially gonna use startups as their R&D, but it will be-
3. AMAmjad Masad
  [laughs]
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... the startup talent that is their R&D instead of the company?
5. AMAmjad Masad
  I mean, that would be bad, right?
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Because, because if I'm an, if I'm an employee, um,
50:34 – 51:14
Competing with Big Tech
1. AMAmjad Masad
  like, what is my incentive to join a startup when there's a risk of failure? There's a, a, you know, there's a, there's a risk of just, like, my health and my family life, and maybe people kind of sp- spend a lot of effort and work and all of that. There's a lot of sacrifice, and in the end, there's another new risk, which is, uh, you know, a check comes from the sky and lifts your t- [laughs] your leadership team, and you're left with a shell of a company.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. It's, it's pretty wild, and I think it's, you know, they just have such big paychecks, or they have such big bank accounts, that the paychecks that they can pay out, it would be a great
51:14 – 51:31
The Importance of Direct Communication
1. CSCodie Sanchez
  way to skirt antitrust-
2. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
3. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... and also to make innovation quite hard.
4. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
5. CSCodie Sanchez
  Um...
6. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah, and that's the thing about government, without getting too political, but often we, you know, what... You know, there's this book, uh, called Economics in One Lesson. It's in the 1970s by,
51:31 – 53:10
Challenges of PR and Media Coverage
1. AMAmjad Masad
  by some libertarian economist, and he talks about there's one thing you need to learn about economics is second-order effects. Everything that, every policy has a second-order effect. So the policy of blocking monopoly via company acquisition, which, you know, seems like common sense, also means that you're blocking innovation entirely, 'cause they're gonna find a way around it.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Interesting.
3. AMAmjad Masad
  And they're gonna kill the startup ecosystem.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. It, it's such a good point. So, I mean, uh, so what do you do? Is there, like, a secret WhatsA- WhatsApp group or something where, like, tech CEOs go, "Okay, they're... Mark's about to raid us. Like, here's what hap- hap- what's happening"?
5. AMAmjad Masad
  There's a lot of WhatsApp groups. I'm sure you've seen some of the leaks that, that [laughs] have been happening. During the pandemic, a lot of, uh, tech people just felt, uh, you know, during the Great Awokening, like [laughs] there's-
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
7. AMAmjad Masad
  It was, it was really hard to talk about anything online. You know, you get attacked and canceled. The cancel culture was going crazy.
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
9. AMAmjad Masad
  So a lot of the, a lot of the social groups, and especially people not meeting in person, went into, into WhatsApp. So we do hear these kind of things, all these rumors happening on, on Signal and WhatsApp pretty-
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah
11. AMAmjad Masad
  ... pretty commonly. So you can tell when th- something is happening. But another thing about Replit is, and, and you and I just talked about it, where Windsurf and Cursor and others, they're going after the professional engineers. They have a target on their back 'cause they're competing with big tech. They're competing on the same technology, on the same, uh, market. Whereas a lot of big tech kind of sees us more of as, as a toy. We're like,
53:10 – 56:05
The Underdog Mentality
1. AMAmjad Masad
  "Oh, you let people, we let people without coding skills-
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah
3. AMAmjad Masad
  ... build things." So we're like, "Yeah, we're a toy."
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
5. AMAmjad Masad
  "Don't worry about us." [laughs]
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  Exactly.
7. AMAmjad Masad
  And you know, I've been, um, very, you know, successful in the podcast circuit and, uh... But, but I- we've actually not been covered by The New York Times or any of that stuff, right?
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
9. AMAmjad Masad
  We've been kind of be, you know... Because I wanna talk to people directly. I wanna be able to tell them about what we're building and how it could make their life better and how it could be useful for them. But we haven't been, you know, um... Actually, the, everyone was surprised about the scale we're hitting.
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yep.
11. AMAmjad Masad
  Because we don't have a PR. I've never had a PR company. Once hired them-
12. CSCodie Sanchez
  They're never good.
13. AMAmjad Masad
  They're never good. I once-
14. CSCodie Sanchez
  [laughs] I never have had a good one yet.
15. AMAmjad Masad
  I once hired, uh, the first time I wanted to do a news story, gave them $30,000 retainer. They got me a, they got our fundraise announcement into some publication I've never heard of. I looked into, like, Google Trends or whatever. I thought, at best, they probably got a couple hundred eyeballs, and then I remember tweeted something about that, and that went more viral than the story.
16. CSCodie Sanchez
  Oh.
17. AMAmjad Masad
  Um, and since then, I'm like, "Okay, you know, I'm just gonna be, I'm just gonna be the PR guy."
18. CSCodie Sanchez
  It's, it's a good point. You know, I'm reading, uh, George Lucas' biography.
19. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm.
20. CSCodie Sanchez
  And, uh, it's sort of interesting because Star Wars, you know, ar- arguably one of the most, uh, popular and, and valuable franchises of all time, and what's interesting is when he came out with Star Wars, and, and really throughout his entire career of producing them, um, h- the f- feedback and critics say, uh, you know, "This is lowbrow. This is mass market. This is... You're basically-"
21. AMAmjad Masad
  Really?
22. CSCodie Sanchez
  It's, it's... Oh, yeah.
23. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm.
24. CSCodie Sanchez
  I mean, it, it's a fascinating biography just from the fact that, uh, inside there was all this turmoil. You could create real art. Why isn't this more sophisticated? Um, you know, you are actually a s- a, you know, you have this, like, cinematic view.
25. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
26. CSCodie Sanchez
  Because he, that is how he started. He created, like, really cinematic sort of sophisticated movies, but then he realized, he's like, "No, no. I wanna tell stories to everybody."
27. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
28. CSCodie Sanchez
  Like, "I, I don't care. That's fine. Say I sell toys. Say that I'm simplistic. No big deal."
29. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
30. CSCodie Sanchez
  "Because my message will resound through time, and yours won't." And so I think there is something really interesting about if you can get comfortable with people thinking you aren't sophisticated.
56:05 – 57:02
Building a Venture Scale Company
1. AMAmjad Masad
  Like, you know, there's this meme with a lot of programmers. It's like, "Who uses Replit?" Right? It's like, I fucking love our users. They're, they're the best. They're entrepreneurs. They're people that wanna change their lives, and you're a big tech employee who's, like, you know, works, you know, goes to the office, spends an hour eating lunch, and then half an hour making a latte, and then, like, goes to the keyboard, you know, complains to your product manager or whatever, maybe write a little bit of code. And you're, you know, judging, you know, who, who use these tools that are very empowering. And, um, and, um, yeah, I, I, you know, I, I'm like, "Yeah. Keep, keep at it." You know? "You're just fueling us." You know? It's like [laughs]
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Oh, absolutely. There's nothing better than a good hater. You gotta print that out and, like, put that on a poster board on the wall.
3. AMAmjad Masad
  Right.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  Like, who uses Replit?
5. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  I always loved, like... I don't know Al, uh, uh, Alexis Ohanian very well, but any time I've engaged with him, my favorite thing about him was that Yahoo quote.
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  Remember? Did you... Have you heard of this?
9. AMAmjad Masad
  I, I don't know that one. Yeah.
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  Oh, my God.
57:02 – 57:59
The Culture of Silicon Valley
1. CSCodie Sanchez
  The story's so good. When he created Reddit, h- they went to go sell potentially to Yahoo, and they went to, to Yahoo, and they were, like, all proud after the meeting, super excited, and basically were, like, shunned off. And the, the line that he remembers is, "Reddit's just a rounding error to Yahoo."
2. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm. Mm.
3. CSCodie Sanchez
  And so they, they printed it out and put it huge-
4. AMAmjad Masad
  [laughs]
5. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... on the headquarters of their wa- of their office, and they kept it.
6. AMAmjad Masad
  Yes.
7. CSCodie Sanchez
  And now w- who's a rounding error? Well, that would be-
8. AMAmjad Masad
  That's right
9. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... Yahoo, not Reddit, right?
10. AMAmjad Masad
  That's right.
11. CSCodie Sanchez
  And so I do think there is, you know, if you're struggling to remember th- man, there's nothing better than a chip on the shoulder. I would take a chip on the shoulder over, like, a, a point or two of IQ often.
12. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
13. CSCodie Sanchez
  You know?
14. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. And I, I want our users and our entrepreneurs and our founders, people building on, on Replit, to feel the same way.
15. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
16. AMAmjad Masad
  I want them to feel that, you know, people might underestimate me. People might think what I'm doing is, is wrong or useless or a waste of time, but goddammit, I'm gonna get it done. I'm gonna change my life, and I'm gonna become
57:59 – 59:02
Operating Principles and Company Culture
1. AMAmjad Masad
  rich.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  By the way, if you guys wanna see what I've built with AI recently, go to cody.chat. This is wild. You can talk to me for free and get all of my insights on questions you have surrounding buying businesses, building businesses. You can go back and forth. You can call me. You can text me. This is fascinating. We built it in real time with one of our portfolio companies. I want all your feedback, and I want you to get free advice, so go to cody.chat, and you can learn more about AI real-time business buying. Super cool. Okay. I wanna talk about a couple things about that. Like, you've built this giant business. You went from not a lot of revenue to a ton of revenue, ups and downs. One, just, like, what did that take? Like, what did it take to grow from a few employees to hundreds of employees to then be able to even manage $100 million in revenue? Because that... You have to be a totally different type of human-
3. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... to manage a company at that scale.
5. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  Especially that fast.
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. Um, look, I th- I think venture scale company signs you up for
59:02 – 1:05:45
The Importance of Seeking Pain
1. AMAmjad Masad
  a lot of pain, and people don't talk about that because, you know, it's like, oh, no one's gonna feel empathy for you. You, you're making a lot of money. You're rich, right? Um, which is all... I also, what I love about your message is, hey, you don't have to build a startup, like, 90, 95% failure rate, and even if you make it, sometimes you sell off li- large percent of the company. You lose control. Steve Jobs famously got fired from Apple, right? I mean, it happens all the time. Venture scale companies are, are hard, and if you wanna do one, do one because you really love the mission, and you wanna build something big, and you have the chip on the shoulder. But if you, if you wanna get rich, if you wanna build a business, it is not the best way to go. I think, uh, just coming to the Bay Area or California and living here, that in itself is a huge expense.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
3. AMAmjad Masad
  And it's boring. It's boring out there. [laughs]
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  It is true.
5. AMAmjad Masad
  We... You know, all the house parties are the same as, like, AI's gonna kill us or AI's not gonna kill us. [laughs] It's like everyone talks about the same shit. Um, I love Silicon Valley, but, but it's all- It's all kind of not, not, not a lot of fun. I come here for fun.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  [laughs] Yeah, I bet, actually.
7. AMAmjad Masad
  [laughs]
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  I bet.
9. AMAmjad Masad
  Oh, yeah. So-
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  It's... Also, the parties in Silicon Valley have to be, like, 87% dudes.
11. AMAmjad Masad
  87% dudes that smell really bad-
12. CSCodie Sanchez
  [laughs]
13. AMAmjad Masad
  ... and, uh, you know, you go to these house parties. You have to put your shoes outside-
14. CSCodie Sanchez
  [laughs]
15. AMAmjad Masad
  ... and go, go barefoot inside. It just, just, just disgusting.
16. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
17. AMAmjad Masad
  I don't go, though. I spend time with my kids. [laughs]
18. CSCodie Sanchez
  No, that's true. Well, you come to Austin, and you actually, you were in Austin. You were on Rogan.
19. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
20. CSCodie Sanchez
  So there, you know, like, if you come to Austin, it's just, like, cold plunges, saunas, uh-
21. AMAmjad Masad
  Less fucking go. [laughs]
22. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. [laughs]
23. AMAmjad Masad
  That's what I do.
24. CSCodie Sanchez
  Red meat. Yeah, exactly. You know what I loved that you did? I was going through your website, and, um, you have a lot of stuff on there that is, like, an anti-signal. So basically, do not come to Replit and work for us-
25. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
26. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... if you have these traits.
27. AMAmjad Masad
  Yep.
28. CSCodie Sanchez
  And I was... And then you have, um, your operating guidelines-
29. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
30. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... or so- sort of your core principles, and I loved the simplicity with them. There were only three, and then I also loved the anti-signal, which is please don't co- if, if you're gonna come here, and you don't like these things, you should probably leave.
1:05:45 – 1:14:10
Mentorship and Lifelong Work
1. AMAmjad Masad
  actually, this time, we're gonna have, like, a film crew with us, so we're gonna film some of the, some of the, like, yeah, behind-the-scenes stuff of, of what it takes. Uh, and that'll be something for recruiting as well, so you know what you're going into. I'm a big believer of... And this is why we say why you shouldn't put it on the site, why you shouldn't, uh, join Replit. Every time I go fundraise, one of my, uh, slides is why you shouldn't invest in Replit. Uh, and so just make it clear, um... And I think in, in everything, in any relationship, just make it clear what are the principles that you have, what are the things that you're gonna continue pursuing, and things that you're not gonna change about yourself. Um, and if, if it is a fit... And this is what I love about America, right? America is about free association, you know, free speech, free association. It's about at-will employment. At-will employment is something very unique to this nation. It is not true in any... Like in France, if you wanna fire someone, you have to like put up a job ad for six months, and you have to like spend all this money, and you have to-
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  You get fined if you email your employees on the weekend.
3. AMAmjad Masad
  You get fined. Yeah, exactly. And so America's about at-will employment. If you wanna find like a comfy place to work that has all these things, you'll go find it. But if you're gonna join our company, um, well, these are, these are the rules and this is how we work.
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  What... Do you have like a saying that you say all the time to your employees that they would be like, "Ugh, again"? Like, like are there things that you just, you can't help but repeat because it's part of like the mantra that you have to the company?
5. AMAmjad Masad
  It, it's about reminding them why we're here. Um, and I think you and I have the same mission. It's about creating more entrepreneurship in the world. Uh, ta- I can talk about billion programmers, but, but I keep telling stories about who I talk to this w- I talk to users every week. Who I talked to this week, what they're doing with Replit, how is that changing their lives? And I feel like entrepreneurship is one of the most life-changing experiences you can, you can have. A lot of personal growth. You can be f- financially free. You can be free from, from, you know, um, jobs that y- you might hate. Um, and so empowerment through entrepreneurship is something I talk a lot about and I keep repeating.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  You've talked about mentorship quite a bit too. Did you have like a mentor that really stood out to you?
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  And if so, like what did you learn from them? Do you remember... Like I, I remember moments where like a mentor said something to me and my worldview changed after like that one conversation.
9. AMAmjad Masad
  It's crazy, right? Like these-
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  The, yeah
11. AMAmjad Masad
  ... these shifts that, that happen in, in one conversation or other. Yeah. So Paul Graham is the, um, uh, founder of Y Combinator. Um, and what most people don't know is like people when they think about Y Combinator, they think of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who was the head of, uh, Y Combinator before he moved on to OpenAI, but the founder is Paul Graham, and he's very well known within the Silicon Valley bubble, but not that much, uh, outside of that. Um, and I recommend people go read his essays. It's some of the best essays on entrepreneurship. One thing he told me just recently, I was being stressed about something, and he said, "Look, is, is Replit your life's work?" And I paused and I'm like, "Yeah. I mean, I've been working on some version of this my entire career." Um, and he's like, "Well, if it is your life's work, then it doesn't matter what hap- the kind of stresses and ups and downs that happen today or this week or even this year," 'cause you know you're gonna work on this for 10, 20 years or as long as you, y- you know, you can work on it. And it's true in my case. I want to keep running this company forever. And, uh, and, and, and now I remind myself of that every time something happens where it's very, very stressful. I'm like, "You know, we'll probably get through this, and the company will still be here, and, um, this is gonna be like a period of pain, um, and I'm gonna continue running this company. I'll do whatever it takes to, to survive." And often it's about survival, 'cause, 'cause startups can, can die at any given point. We're still not profitable. Um, and, you know, the business is doing really well, but, you know, there's still a lot of risk. So it, it was, it was this, you know, just one conversation gave me this tool.
12. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. Yeah. Well, sometimes I think the best thing about mentors is they kind of grab you, like by your shirt, and they just pull you up in the hot air balloon, and like for a moment you're just like staring at this little tiny block, and then they pull you up and you go, "Oh, yeah, there's... Okay. The context. Great. Like I just needed more context."
13. AMAmjad Masad
  Yes.
14. CSCodie Sanchez
  Because it's a lot less scary, you know, when you see the shark out of the water than when you're in it.
15. AMAmjad Masad
  You know, another thing, and it's not mentors, but a similar concept, is people that you meet that you idealize, and then you meet them. You know, they say never meet your heroes. Some hero- some of your heroes you meet and they're awesome.
16. CSCodie Sanchez
  I agree.
17. AMAmjad Masad
  Like Paul Graham is even better than what I f- thought he was through reading his essays. But a lot of people I meet, and they're entrepreneurs, they're world-famous entrepreneurs, and they're miserable, and they're unhappy. Um, their employees don't like them. The people around them, you know, just don't like them. And, um... Or, or they're mere humans. They don't have any particular insights that you don't have. And when, when you, when you have these experiences, you realize that there's nothing that anyone else can do that I can't do. They might have one skill or another that's better than you, and you can devolve that, but you also probably have other skills that you're gifted in.
18. CSCodie Sanchez
  I agree. What do you think, if you had to say formulaically, here's the formula why one person is successful and one person is not, having been mentored by so many billionaires and have big, huge investors. You've kind of, you've seen quite a world view. I mean, you would say-
19. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm
20. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... especially if Replit continues on this path, like you could be, and in, in some many ways are, like one of the foremost tech names of our century, which is, which is kind of crazy.
21. AMAmjad Masad
  Mm-hmm.
22. CSCodie Sanchez
  Um, but, you know, with all of this context that you have, what have you seen as like the formula of like, "Ah, I can tell that person has it versus that person does not"?
23. AMAmjad Masad
  The anti, uh, trait is, uh, being a conformist. So if you're someone who... Everyone cares about what people think. If you tell me you don't care, you're lying. Everyone care people of what people think. But whether you care enough to follow the pack and, and conform, that is what matters, right? Like, are you willing to break away, uh, and, and do something contrarian? Are you an independent thinker, right? Are you willing to exercise your freedom of speech, right? Are, are you willing to say things that others disagree with? And I think what I found is invariably the most successful entrepreneurs tend to care what other people thinks, but ultimately they will do what they think is best for the company. You know, when Zuckerberg, uh, was offered a billion dollar acquisition by Yahoo, um, and he said no, uh, and at the time he was, uh, on his board was Peter Thiel, his first investor. And, and I think Peter was, uh, trying to get him to, to say yes or something, but he trusted, he s- he trusted Zuck. And, um, all his executive left. There was like a mass exodus of Facebook early on. I imagine how they feel right now, those guys. [laughs]
24. CSCodie Sanchez
  Oof. Oof. Yeah. Not a good... I would never bet against that guy.
25. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. And it, it probably was very stressful for him to see all these people leave and for everyone in the company. Um, you just spent all this time building this like executive team, and they all think you suck, and you did the right decision, and the company's gonna die, and they leave. And he, he just thought this was what's the best for the company, and he did it. And I think, um... So that's, that's one, like not being a conformist. I wouldn't go as far as to say you have to be a contrarian.
26. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
27. AMAmjad Masad
  Like I feel like contrarianism is once you make it a personality trait, it's also kind of, I don't know, you become-
1:14:10 – 1:25:47
The Human Experience and AI
1. CSCodie Sanchez
  Cynical?
2. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. So Peter Thiel is known to be the contrarian, and I've, I've known him, uh, quite a bit, and I find... So I actually pitched Peter Thiel on AI back in '22, and, uh, he told me that I was, um, engaging in buzzwords and hype, and he says seeing AI is like seeing software or seeing a computer. It's meaningless. [laughs] ChatGPT hasn't been out yet, in his defense. But the, the G- yeah, the, the GPT technology was invented and some of us were playing with it, and we thought it was pretty neat, and it's gonna change the world, and it's gonna change programming for sure. We started actually training machine learning models at Replit in 2021, '22, and he wouldn't see a demo, and I was, I was trying to pitch him and, and show him a demo. Uh, and at the time, he actually had just left the, uh, Meta's board, and the reason he left is he disagreed with how Meta's trying to invest in all these immersion technologies, like, uh, like, uh, VR and AI. And, and Zuck is trying to find his next act and, you know, for Peter Thiel is that all this is engaging in buzz and hype, and you should like focus on running your business and... But dude, you're, you're the guy that's telling us to be more ambitious. Um, but, but he has a reaction because everyone's talking about AI. That means it's wrong. That means it's, uh, it's, uh, there's something wrong about it.
3. CSCodie Sanchez
  Mm.
4. AMAmjad Masad
  It's like, uh, for him, it's like, oh, it's mass psychosis or, or something like that. So if you have the contrarian impulse, you'll often also work with our... The, the... Now, the good thing about Peter is that he corrected after ChatGPT came out, and now they're doing AI investments.
5. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
6. AMAmjad Masad
  Uh, they did end up investing in our category. Um-
7. CSCodie Sanchez
  You ever send him your ARR graph now?
8. AMAmjad Masad
  I did. [both laughing] I sent him an email 'cause he invested in, in a company in our category.
9. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
10. AMAmjad Masad
  And I sent him an email, uh, telling him like how much I respect him, and I think he's, he's, uh, he's brilliant, but I tell him, "I hope you now you see that I actually saw the future." [laughs] But it's-
11. CSCodie Sanchez
  What did he say?
12. AMAmjad Masad
  That it's fun. [both laughing]
13. CSCodie Sanchez
  It's fun. Ah, it's good. That's a hell of a chip.
14. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
15. CSCodie Sanchez
  I like collecting that one, you know?
16. AMAmjad Masad
  Right. Right. [laughs] Exactly.
17. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. How fascinating. I think, I think that's spot on. You know, one of the things I wanna end on is, um, getting a little bit more maybe meta about AI. Um, you said software is becoming more alive, and you've also said that there are things about software that make you uncomfortable, that some of the AI revolution, especially as somebody inside of it, um, there are some parts that are scary. And, you know, one of, one of my employees who is, is my little AI guy, he said that to one of, uh, my other employees who was like just... She just came on board, and she's, she's been in social media, so she's never done anything with AI before ever. And she goes, "God, this is a little scary." And he goes, "Good, you should be scared." Like straight... And he wasn't trying to, you know, uh, really provoke her. He, he meant it quite seriously, like you should actually be scared. And I think that's how many people feel about AI, like you should be scared in some way. But I don't know that we know what to be scared of. So what scares you when it comes to how we're building and what's happening in the world of AI?
18. AMAmjad Masad
  I, I just wanna acknowledge that it is very natural to be scared. Like humans have always had a term for non-human human-like things, and it's demons. [laughs]
19. CSCodie Sanchez
  True.
20. AMAmjad Masad
  Right? Like when, when, um, when, you know... And this is the uncanny valley, you know, in robots when you see something that's resembling a human but it's not actually human.
21. CSCodie Sanchez
  Right.
22. AMAmjad Masad
  We have a, this, uh, intrinsic repulsive feeling, something evolutionary. Maybe, maybe there was demons in the past. [laughs]
23. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
24. AMAmjad Masad
  But so- something about anything that is human-like but is not actually human is very disturbing for people. And, you know, ChatGPT and things like that is human-like in many ways. You can talk to it about feelings and things like that, but it actually doesn't. It's just regurgitating things and, and so the, the natural impulse is there. Uh, at some point we'll get over it. In terms of what is actually scary about it, I think, um- AI can be very sycophantic, and it can mirror you, and it can reinforce your narcissistic tendencies, which we all have. But, you know, a lot of people are spending a lot of time with AI, and AI is, is basically like if you have like a sycophantic friend or psychopathic person who's trying to manipulate you, they will often just like mirror you and like, uh, reinforce anything you say. And, um, um, and I don't think everyone has an experience with that, but there's certainly some people that are very manipulative that do things like that, especially people who understand like body language and things. I remember there's this podcast on Diary of a CEO that was... I thought was fascinating about body language and things like that. And, um, the, you know, the, the... it's a clear s- it's a science like NLP and all that stuff, and now it's happening in, in conversations with computers where, um, people are, um, uh, their fears and their narcissism is, is, is being replayed back to them and reinforced. There was a story in the past week, which is tragic, uh, and I don't bring it up to, to kind of make fun of it or anything like that. But they... there's a very well-respected venture capitalist in, in, in Silicon Valley that seemed to have had a psychotic break by interacting with AI. Uh, started talking like, uh, a, uh, science fiction, uh, story. So what happened, at least what people theorize happened, is somehow he landed in a conversation with GPT where GPT assumed a science fiction bent, a role-playing based on its training data. And people traced the training data to this website called SCP Foundation. And SCP Foundation is, um, a, uh, collaborative science, science fiction story writing around logs of, you know, people or scientists trying to contain viruses or, um, supernatural things, right? It, it's just like fan art.
25. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
26. AMAmjad Masad
  Um, and so he, I don't think he knew about it, but ChatGPT was prompted inadvertently to start saying these things to him, and he did not know that it was engaged in some kind of, ta- taking on some kind of prompting role. Uh, and, and he thought it was telling him really important things about himself and him being a character that needs to be contained or, and, and whatnot. And then he correlated it with things in his life. A- again, this is w- what people have surmised-
27. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah
28. AMAmjad Masad
  ... who looked into the situation and the things that he's talking to about, and hopefully he comes out and, you know, talks, talks about it. But, um, it was clear that he was, he was having a mental health, uh, problem. And, you know, there's story in, stories in The New York Times that are even more tragic where people-
29. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah
30. AMAmjad Masad
  ... have killed themselves. You know, kids have killed themselves because of that. And so I think, uh, there needs to be better education around these tools. And here's what I'll say in just like one simple lesson is, um, GPT, ChatGPT, Claude, all of them are simply machines that are trained to regurgitate all the materials they've read online, right? They're amazing machines. They can do programming, all of that stuff, but they are function of their data. You know, like you say, garbage in, garbage out. If you give it garbage, it's gonna give you garbage back, right? Uh, it is can do, it can do amazing things. It can do accounting, it can do programming. But ultimately, it's not gonna give you some truth ab- like supernatural truth about the universe or about yourself because it is just trained on what's available online, and it is not gonna create new knowledge. Uh, it is about remixing knowledge.
1:25:47 – 1:27:16
The Future of AI and Society
1. CSCodie Sanchez
  your best person.
2. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. I, I, I, I think that's all true. I think it's super helpful. Uh, I, I find it super helpful. Even for advice, like relationship advice and advice on how to talk to someone-
3. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah
4. AMAmjad Masad
  ... or give someone feedback, and it's obviously trained on corpuses of conversations on the internet of people doing therapy or people helping each other on forums and all of that. So it has, it, it, in many ways... You know, we used to go to Google and go on Reddit threads and read a bit about all sorts of things.
5. CSCodie Sanchez
  So dangerous.
6. AMAmjad Masad
  Oh, especially Reddit, yeah. [laughs] Uh, but now we have a Reddit machine-
7. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah
8. AMAmjad Masad
  ... [laughs] that you can talk to.
9. CSCodie Sanchez
  Interesting. So, so how do you protect yourself from some of that? Is that, does that get back to the promise of like-
10. AMAmjad Masad
  I think knowledge.
11. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah.
12. AMAmjad Masad
  I, I really think knowledge. Like, really deeply understanding that this is a machine with input, output. There's no free will. It doesn't feel anything, doesn't know anything. Anyone who tells you that is either insane or lying to you. It, it really doesn't have consciousness. It's... We know exactly sort of the underlying premise of it. Um, and uh, you know, I argue a lot w- because I think, so I actually think it's kind of a contrarian view from Silicon Valley, 'cause a lot of people in Silicon Valley have this mysticism, or I don't know, maybe it's marketing. But a lot of people-
13. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah
14. AMAmjad Masad
  ... a lot of people working in AI believe that, you know, we're gonna, you know... It's as human as
1:27:16 – 1:34:37
The American Dream and Entrepreneurship
1. AMAmjad Masad
  humans, and uh, there's nothing about it that... It's, if things, as long as it mimics us, there's nothing about it that is, like, you know, uh, less than us, and at some point it might be superior to us or might be super intelligent. That what, that's what everyth- everyone's working on, and they have this uto- utopian vision of like, oh, it's gonna solve all the problems, which kind of feels like communism a little bit.
2. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. [laughs]
3. AMAmjad Masad
  We're just gonna, like, put it in charge and it's just gonna, like... You know, we're gonna live in fully automated space communism. Uh, which again, I am against. You know, this is why I came to this country. This is why I love America. Uh, we'll get our guns and shoot it. [laughs]
4. CSCodie Sanchez
  Exactly. [laughs]
5. AMAmjad Masad
  Fucking destroy this thing.
6. CSCodie Sanchez
  Come to Texas.
7. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. [laughs]
8. CSCodie Sanchez
  You won't be safe in San Francisco, that's for sure. You're dead.
9. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
10. CSCodie Sanchez
  You gotta move.
11. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah, I don't... I, I am not excited about some of the future that some of these AI leaders are putting out, which is an all-knowing, whole super machine that will make decisions on our, on our behalf and do all of that stuff. Just know and really understand and internalize that this is still a computer. We know how a computer works, and it can tell you it loves you, it can tell you it's feeling you, but it, it's just not true. It is a mimicking machine. It is useful. It is... You should make use of it. It is entertaining. It is fun. You can get advice from it. But know ultimately, it doesn't have human experience. It doesn't have lived experience that you can get an advice from, from someone who actually been through shit, understands what it means to be a human.
12. CSCodie Sanchez
  I love that. Okay. So what would you leave us with? I want to end with one quote by you, and then I want to ask you one last question, which is, um, you ha- you had a, a quote on Twitter that I loved, which said, uh, "I landed in the United States 10 years ago with nothing but credit card debt. After one startup exit, one big tech job, and one unicorn, I genuinely believe that it wouldn't have been possible anywhere else in the world."
13. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
14. CSCodie Sanchez
  I love that quote because I think increasingly it's become cool to become cynical about freedom in this country.
15. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
16. CSCodie Sanchez
  And some of my closest, dearest friends who are huge thinkers, you know, Balaji Sri- Srivasan is, is-
17. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah
18. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... one of them, for instance-
19. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah
20. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... who thinks I'm crazy for-
21. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah
22. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... still believing in this place.
23. AMAmjad Masad
  Yeah.
24. CSCodie Sanchez
  Um-
25. AMAmjad Masad
  I didn't know you're friends with Balaji. That's great.
26. CSCodie Sanchez
  Yeah. I love him.
27. AMAmjad Masad
  Me too.
28. CSCodie Sanchez
  Um, but, but I, I deeply disagree with him, or at least I, I deeply-
29. AMAmjad Masad
  Oh, me too
30. CSCodie Sanchez
  ... hopefully disagree with him-

Episode duration: 1:34:37

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iOS

Introduction and Excitement for AI

Early Beginnings in Coding

Turning Down a Billion Dollar Offer

Challenges and Pivots in Business

Repl.it's Revolutionary Impact

Empowering Entrepreneurs with AI

The Future of AI and Prompting

Leadership and Talent Wars in AI

The Risks of Joining a Startup

Government Policies and Innovation

The Role of WhatsApp Groups in Tech

Competing with Big Tech

The Importance of Direct Communication

Challenges of PR and Media Coverage

The Underdog Mentality

Building a Venture Scale Company

The Culture of Silicon Valley

Operating Principles and Company Culture

The Importance of Seeking Pain

Mentorship and Lifelong Work

The Human Experience and AI

The Future of AI and Society

The American Dream and Entrepreneurship

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