I made $250M in one year. Here's what it actually cost me
00:00:00We went from 2.5 to $250 millionin 1 year. Did you say 2.5 to what?>> To 250 in 1 year. Did you get audited?The first time you came on this podcast,[music] Replit's revenue was like $3million. I feel like I've heard that youguys are close to $500 [music]million in annual revenue now. We're onour way to a billion this year. I'lljust say that. He was deadlifting beforeit's cool. He likes sales before it'scool. You're you He's got range. Myguy's got range.>> The idea of like losing to some kind ofa competitor This is like the worstfeeling in the world. I'll call. I'llshow up to their office. We'll [music]do whatever we need, and we rarely losedeals.>> Are there any interesting trends thatyou're seeing in AI and on the Replitplatform?>> for the first time because the makingsoftware is cheaper, you can actuallycreate a multi-million [music] dollarbusiness, not have to raise venture, nothave to grow the team a whole lot.>> Do you think that we are like 12 monthsor something like that away from likethe world changing dramatically?>> I just googled it. How many billionairesare under the age of 40? There's only71. Really? Of all the people under 40,you are probably [music] in the top1,000 richest ever. You just made hisday. Look at that smile. I'm havingmixed feelings, Sean.
00:01:17Dude, so the first time you came on thispodcast, I'm pretty sureReplit's revenue was like$3 million. $5 million. It was likesomething like that. Cuz by the way,this was not 10 years ago. This was like2 years ago. Yep. You guys are close to$500 million in annual revenue now. Isthat I mean, blink twice if I'm if I'min the right ballpark. We're on our wayto a billion this year. I'll just saythat.>> Oh, on their way to a billion. How couldI have missed it? Off by $500 million.So, I do I'm unprofessional. I didn't Idon't know the exact number. Say theexact jump of like I remember when whenI invested it was something like two orthree million bucks. Yeah, and it stayedtwo or three million bucks for many fora few years.>> [clears throat]>> Uh as we were like navigating what toactually do, we went from 2.5 to 250million dollars in 1 year. Uh, that wasbetween 24 and 25. 2.5 million to 250millionin 1 year?Did you get audited? Uh, we did. Weactually passed a PWC audit a couplemonths ago.Uh, so>> That's crazy.>> And and by by the way, you know, we'regross margin positive, which is, youknow, something that is rare in theindustry but by a good amount uh aswell. And we're very we're veryprecise in how
00:02:32we calculate uh run rate.When you grow from almost nothing to abillion dollars in revenue in 24 months,what type of like logis- There's likeall these logistical questions I have.Um, like what type of relationship doyou have to have with your bank? Likedid you prepare your bank? Were you likeBro, that's your question?How's your banking relationship? Dude,there's so many like logisticalquestions. Like for example, uh are youlike what are you doing with that cash?And how are you managing spending it andinvesting it as fast as you're makingit? Things like that. Like there's somany logistical questions aroundliterally It's sort of like when uhPablo Escobar was a drug dealer, he wassaying like we can't get enough rubberbands for the money. Like we don't knowwhere to like store the [laughter]money. Like there's these likelogistical questions that I'm curiousabout.>> You know the theory for for one of thepotential creators of Bitcoin is that heinvented Bitcoin because he was makingso much money he didn't know where tokeep it. There's this uh story uh calledthe Mastermind aboutuh the this guy who I think grew up inuh Rhodesia and now it's in Zimbabwe andhe was a hacker. He was a computerhacker and he invented
00:03:48a lot of encrypt-encrypted technology. Very well-knownguy. He up getting into criminal onlineactivities, selling drugs online, one ofthe first to do that. And he generatedso much cash, he actually had ships withbillions of gold just in theinternational waters, just doingcircles. Oh, wow. And so there's a lot>> Paul Le Roux, right? Paul Le Roux, PaulLe Roux, yeah. Paul Le Roux, and there'sa lot of circumstantial evidence that hewas potentially writing Bitcoin becauseit was like, "I don't know what what todo with this money."Um so we're not there yet, but uh>> [laughter]>> How did Paul Le Roux make the money? Hewas he created the first like deliveryonline drug store. Like do you rememberSean, like in the early dot com wherelike you would get spammy emails whereit's like buy Viagra online? The earlydays as in yesterday? It still happens.Yesterday, early in the morningyesterday or today, yeah. [laughter]I remember that.He like kind of pioneered that, is thatright? I mean he was one of the thebiggest guys. Like he had like likethousands of domain names. He wassending millions of emails a day. He wasbasically one of the first spammers,like internet marketers, and themonetization engine was selling drugs.>> And now there are a lot of startups thatare doing it, you know, quasi
00:05:03legally,where they have a lot of doc doctorsthat are sort of approving thoseprescriptions and things like that. Butyeah, he did it fully illegally and waswanted by by the FBI and drug controland and DEA and all of that for formany, many years, and they caught himaround the same year that Satoshidisappeared, around the same timeactually that Satoshi disappeared. Goingfrom 2 million to now close to a billionin revenue,it's got to be a bit of an out-of-bodyexperience for a founder. Walk usthrough like the interesting parts thatare not like the game that's happeningon the field, but maybe just of thefounder experience. Like, "Dude,>> we had to figure this out. Dude, wedidn't know this. I remember waking upand realizing the chart had jumped 10xwhatever, you know. Give us some ofthat. We'll First of all, I I have suchhigh expectations of myself and my teamthat at any given point whateverprogress we made, the question iswhy haven't we made more?If we're going>> [laughter]>> You're like the Asian pet mom of theworld.>> of of myself more than anyone else,which is I don't really recommend. It'sa kind of a miserable way to live, but
00:06:18you know, it's it's sort of like I waslike, of course we're going to make thismuch money. Of course the company'sgoing to grow this much as it was alwaysthe plan. It was always in the cards. Itwas always the vision. I'm alsonaturally paranoid. And so I was fullyexpecting it to reverse at any givenpoint. And so it was like, how can wemake sure this revenue is sticky? Howcan we go up market, go to theenterprise, make sure our customers aregetting a great experience, make surethat things that they create is notslop, it is secure, it is we're we'recreating trust not just in us, but likein in the whole space and that's thisvibe coding things that's it's possibleincluding doing podcast like this. It'snot only possible, it's viable to buildbusinesses. Uh and so the first reactionis is adrenaline and like let's get towork. Like this is an opportunity. Likeif we had sold or failed before weuh you before the breakout point, Iwould have been you know, probablydepressed about it. But not as bad asyou now have the wind in your back andif you fail, it is fully on you. You youkind of you've you've lost. Like it'salmost like someone passing you the balland there's no one else
00:07:34in front of thethe basketball ring and you could dunk,you could do whatever you wantand then and then you somehow do a twoshot and fail. Right.>> [laughter]>> So, that's the feeling. It's incrediblepressurefrom everyone, from the market, fromeven investors went from hey, you got todo a the layoff, you got to cut burn togo invest, put money toyou know, it's likeit's like if that if thrillofsuccess only lasted like,you know, a week or two and then becamesort of the reality of like how do youkeep this motion goingand how do you how do you scale it? Andthe first thing that starts to break ispeople. When you have a supply anddemand imbalance, companies startknocking on our door is like hey, wewant to buy this product. Like our ouremployees are using it. Like how do weget an enterprise deal? And we're likeyeah, we have one person who does threeother things but also also doing salesthey they're like trying to close dealsas fast as they can. I was like okay,I've never done sales. Like how do youactually do sales? But but there'ssomething about the universe wherethese people land in yourin your life at crucial points.
00:08:49Notalways but but sometimes and we had wehad a VP of sales thatcame to us at the at the moment when thecompany was was really at its darkestmoment. We were about to do a layoff andand I'm sitting in this meeting room andI'm asking him like why do you want tojoin us? His name is Patrick Purvis. Hehe had previously was a VP of sales atZoomInfo, exited, took took a coupleyears sabbatical, independently wealthyguy and I was like look, the companykind of sucks. Like why do you want tocome here?And>> You're like for my last interviewquestion.>> [laughter]>> Why?UmAnd he's like look, I spent the past fewyears reflecting. I want to do somethingmeaningful and your mission ofempowering people and democratizingsoftware which seems one of the mostimportant things to do. Uh it's like,"Okay, welcome to the team, but it's notit's not we don't have one of anyone foryou to sell.">> [music]>> All right, guys. Here's the thing aboutside hustles. Everyone wants one, butmost people overthink about it and theynever actually launch anything. But,because of AI, you can go from idea toyour first sale in only 7 days. My oldcompany, The Hustle, they just droppedan AI side hustle crash course. So,basically,
00:10:05what The Hustle did was theylooked at things that me and Sean andHubSpot CMO Kip Bodnar, they look atstuff that we said and they broke it alldown into simple bite-size steps. Whichmeans you're going to get a guide thatgives you everything you need to launcha side hustle without any of theguesswork. So, you can get it right now.You can scan the QR code or click thelink in the description. Now, back tothe show.How grim did things get? How low was thebank balance or how many months did youhave left? What was the darkest hour?You know, what as you call being thatthe Asian parent, I was also kind offinancially responsible. And so, wenever had like we never was like, "Oh,we're weeks away from not makingpayroll." So, when we did a layoff, itwas more like about extending therunway. Well, maybe maybe not runway,but like, you know, founder delusion>> Yes.>> takes people far and I think you have itmore than anyone, right? Cuz you werelike,10 years you've been working on thisthing, right? It wasn't like 10 months.You just kept going, soldiering forward.On our last podcast, I remember you saidlike, "I think if there's one thing Imight be good at." Like you were justpretty humble about it, be like, "Ithink I guess reflecting like I can keeppushing the boulder up the hill."Yes. for a long time. Like I just havehigh pain tolerance, I think. That seemslike it's been helpful.
00:11:20So, maybe it'snot the bank balance, but like did thedid the doubts or the delusion or the isthis ever going to happen? Yeah, I thinkthe worst part about it isthe the belief that your team have inyou, your vision, your leadership. Andwhen that goes away, you can see it intheir eyes. And that is the most hurtfuland depressing depressing feeling. Andso, after we did the layoff, the layoffis a bubble-bursting event. What did youscale down to? From where to where?>> So, we actually wasn't that big. It waslike a third. So, we were like 120 wentto now to 90 or something like that. Andbut, by the end, we were 60. By the endin like 3 months, we were 60. And so, wewe lost 50% of our team, but most of itwas voluntarily. And And the reason isbecause suddenly, you know, I've beenfor years getting in front of everyoneand talking about this vision uh and andmission, and suddenly just sounded likelies and sounded like I'm I don't knowwhat I'm doing. And we had also at thesame time moved our office from SanFrancisco to Foster City. We got a hugeoffice. I like
00:12:35really knew that we weregoing to we were going to head ouroffice and scale, but I was off off by afew months. So, we had already gottenthis office. And so, the office wasempty and coldand kind of dark. And so, every day I goto work and just like the mood is superdark. And I I know that at the momentI'm going to get to to my my desk,someone's going to walk over and gothey're going to tell me they'requitting.And so, every night I've like thewhatever sleep I got was like, "Okay,who's going to quit the next day?" Andit it just kept happening. And that wasthat was really draining. And for me toput on a face and tell everyone thatthings are going to be okay wasincredibly hard. However,there were groups of people that wereworking on Replit Agent. Replit Agent isis a breakthrough product that wecreated. It actually created abreakthrough in the entire industrybecause this was Remember, this wasbefore Claude code or anything came out.We showed the world that it was possibleto build end-to-end coding agents.And people inside that team had almost asecret. We're on the precipice of a of abreakthrough. We were all kind ofdogfooding it and playing with it andhaving a lot of fun with it. So,whenever I go
00:13:50to the office,everything's depressing except this oneroom. We call it the war room. And Iwalk into the war room and the mood isintensely different. Everyone is yeah,super pumped. They know we have createdsomething that's going to be supervaluable. So, I had this this night andday almost schizophrenic feeling of youknow, large parts of the company of thebusiness had totally lost faith in meand the company and then a small partthat were totally engrossed on in thepossibilities of of AI and what we wereinventing. Sam, can I just sayforget the numbers, man. What he justsaid was like the realest [ __ ] someonesaid on this podcast in a long time. Theway you described that feeling as thefounder when you walk into the to theoffice and your shit's like you don'thave the hot thing right now. And you'vebeen telling everybody and you can seewhen they start to lose faith. I I'veexperienced what you just said. You justlike described my childhood trauma as afounder. I didn't even realize I didn'teven know till you said those words. Iwas like, I I have felt that. It'sdepressing when somebody emails you forlike, "Hey, can we meet tomorrow?" Youknow you you know they're about to quitand you're like, "It just got harder."And I don't have it in me to convincethem to stay. Like, why would they stay?>> Why would they stay?
00:15:06>> [laughter]>> Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That thing youjust described is so real. Yeah. And Ijust want to give you props cuz I don'tthink most people ever really talk aboutwhat that feels like. And now it'sobviously it's great to talk about itnow cuz like, you know, it didn't justend sadly. That's [laughter]just sad.>> is is reminiscing in a more positive wayabout the failures and the everythingthat that goes wrong. But, the other oneis you mentioned investors is just abroader industryum and uh you know, I remember mycalendar, you know, emptying and I'm nolonger invited to the hot parties.Uh in in many ways when I go to one,it's like, "Oh, yeah, Repl.it. Oh,remember that thing, you know?" And>> you up to now? You're like, "Yeah,you're still at it.">> [laughter]>> And our partners will were not includingour logo anymore anduh our vendors removed our logo on But,that's dirty cuz it's like, you don'teven have to You proactively changedyour website. Why'd you do that? Why'dyou scrub us?>> [laughter]>> Uh and and it if it felt like, you know,a big a big part of my identity has beenabout Silicon Valley and it's about
00:16:22I'veread everything I could get my hands on,every biography, and read about all thedifferent figures from the biggest tothe most obscure. And I I just felt likethe the weight of Silicon Valley on myshoulders because I was backed by thebest as well. Like,Marc Andreessen, Paul Graham, uh youknow, David Sacks, you know, all thesepeople are on our cap table andI was like letting all of them down. So,So, so if this was a movie, there's aturning point, right? The montagebegins. At some point, you wake up andyou look at the dashboard, somethingstarts to change. You start gettingemails. You hear the the the the musicpicks up and suddenly things start tomove. What was the first move of thatlike of that that second act before wehit the the training montage?We still We launched uh Repl.itinternally at Repl.it for employeesoutside of the core engineering groupworking on it. And the first timeeveryone tried it, I I was speciallypaying attention to non-engineers.Are they going to be able to becausethat was the mission. Are we going toenable them to to be actually successfulusing this?And you know Jeff, Jeff is our head ofpartner partnerships, Jeff Burke. Uh heand I always think Jeff as like theprototypical potential customer.Cuz
00:17:37like he's a consulting background,he's super sharp. But he can't configurePython to save him his life, right? Sohe tried it and I remember put himpushing the feedback is like, "Oh, thisis miserable. I failed. I couldn't likemake the simple app." The first day, thenext day, third day, then one day whenhe posted it was like, "Oh, I was ableto make this thing."We're like, "Okay, we got it. I think Ithink that the product is is ready rightnow."And it was around August in 2024and the team felt they weren't ready. Iwas like, "We got to launch this. Idon't care if it is semi-broken, if youget 50% of the time get amazing results,it's going to wow the world because it'sa for the first time an agent can notfully can write the code, debug it,create a database for you and deploy tothe cloud. It's never been done, even ifit is in just like demo shape. And I Iwasone of the habits that I picked upduring this darkest hour is playingvideo games. I hadn't played When I cameto the US, I was like a pro gamer backin Jordan. When I came to the US, I waslike, "Okay, I'm going to focus. I'mgoing to be the Silicon Valleyentrepreneur. I'm going to work reallyhard. I'm going to you know, I want tobeuh I want to make a lot of money and Iwant to be successful." So I'm I justdropped
00:18:52all the hobbies that I had.But I bought a Steam Deck because I justwanted something to take my mind off allthe depressing stuff. They do this thinguh within games it was called early preview,sort of like a beta, but but theintention is that you're getting asemi-broken thing, but you're expectedto kind of give us feedback. I was like,okay, we're just going to release uh anearly preview of the product and we'rejust going to call it that. We're goingto say, "Hey, don't don't subscribe tothis thing cuz it might be a buggyproduct. If you already subscribed oryou haveyou're you're okay with getting buggysoftware, join it." So, wein September 2024, I posteda video of me in the office shot oniPhone saying, "Hey, like AI coding isis amazing, generates a lot of code. Butso far, you had to do all this otherstuff. Today, for the first time, we'reshowing you that an AI agent can do theend-to-end thing."And there were few moments when thistweet started going viral. One of themwas Andre Karpathy, who isyou know, head of AI at Tesla, earlyOpenAI,AI researcher, co-tweeted it and said,"This is the I feel the AGI moment."And so, that demo
00:20:07showedthe industry luminaries what AI coulddo. Peop- People inside research firmslike OpenAI and Anthropic reached out tous and told us, "We did not know ourmodels are capable of doing that." Andso, that moment was like, okay, we wehave something here. And then, therevenue first daymade like a million dollars of ARR.Second day, 2 million dollars. Were youjust like hitting hitting refreshconstantly?>> Yeah, I'm I'm Tom must be on a call.He's been in his office all day.>> [laughter]>> What's he doing here?>> Justbut at the same time, we're justhustling to make the product better. So,basically in like 2 days, you made morerevenue. Yes. You like beat you beatyour your your uh your annual Yeah.>> growth.>> [laughter]>> In 2 days. That's going to be a crazyfeeling.You you know, I I've always heard fromother entrepreneurs is that the feelingof product market fit is like steppingon a I don't know who said this. It'slike stepping on a land mine.And I I knew that we didn't have it fora long time. That's why we pivot pivotpivot pivot. And then that felt likestepping on a on a landmine. I was like,"Okay, we got it. Now we go from there."That same phrase Same, I don't know ifyou ever met him when you came to myoffice. There was this young guy whoused to work out of our office. Furqanhad basically like adopted
00:21:23these kids.They were They were on the East Coast.They wanted to come to Silicon Valley.They didn't have money. He's like,"Here's some money." Yeah. They're like,"Is this an investment?" He's like, "No,this is money. You just have this inyour account and you can sleep on mycouch and you work out of my office andlike get get going." And so these twoyoung guys, they were probably 20 yearsold, 21 years old, they were working outof our office. And they had like theywere trying to do an early version oflike rent GPUs in the cloud. So theyrealized these This was before the AIboom though. So like it was for machinelearning or like you want to do like ajust like some research maybe, but thiswas before everything kicked off.But they had seen that like all thecrypto miners had all these GPUs thatwere unused. And so they had posted on acrypto mining subreddit and thousands ofpeople showed up right away and wereready. There were calls all all thestuff. And then they were trying to getthe demand side, but the demand wasn'tthere. And I was like, "Hey, this is agreat idea. Like in theory it's a greatidea. Like why are you guys likepivoting? Like why are you guys worriedabout these other ideas?" And he goes,"When we did that first thing, it waslike we stepped on a landmine. And sonow I kind of know that's what'spossible. So like yeah, all these littlesignals, I know they're not realsignals." And I This kid's 20 21 yearsold and I'm supposed to like bementoring him and I walked back to mydesk being like, "I've never felt that."And I realized like I'd been doingstartups for six seven
00:22:38years. I hadnever felt what they were lucky enoughto stumble into on the first day.And and you know, you don't even knowwhat you're looking for. Had you neverfelt It's like love. It's like, "Am I inlove? Maybe I'm in love. Maybe this isit." And then you feel it and you'relike, "Oh, all that That other stuffwasn't that. This is the thing." And Ifeel like for entrepreneurs it's one ofthe hardest things. But I sort of feelalmost bad to talk about that. Not talkabout it, but I don't think you shouldexpect that because I think that mostgreat companies have never had that. Ifyou look at the subset of companies,most don't work, some workokay, a handful work a little bitbetter, and then a very small percentageare amazing. And even amongst theamazing ones, what they're describing,what you guys are describing, they don'tfeel that. Like, for example, we weretalking about like Mars candy the otherday. Like, that's been around for 150years, and more likely than not, it waslike, a grind, a grind. This year wasnot a grind, it kind of did pretty good,but this year it was kind of a grind.You know what I mean? Like, there wasnever like this moment where it's like,we just grewto a billion in revenue from 2 millionin 3, you know, in 24 months.>> you're right. That A, it doesn't happenright away, even for you, even though ithappened super fast. It's like 10 yearsin. But there is a difference betweenpush and pull. And I think the the thecompanies I've seen, which is a verysmall handful that actually have productmarket fit, it starts to feel like pull.In fact, Emmett, the CEO
00:23:53of Twitch, Iremember asking him, "You did Justin.tv,then you guys pivoted to Twitch. Was itobvious right away?" And he basicallysaid, "Product market fit's the mainthing that matters." He goes,"Basically, you feel like you're pushinga boulder up a hill every day.And then at some point, you kind of wakeup and you realize it's like you didn'tyou reached your hands out, but theboulder had already moved, and now youhave to start running to catch up to it.And then suddenly, the whole game feelslike a sprint catching up to the bouldergoing down the hill. It takes time, butthere is a difference between like, youare manually pushing the crank versus itstarts to get pulled by the market."Just to offer like a distinction betweenthe different types of businesses.There are, you know, Clay Christensen's,RIP, passed away recently, HarvardBusiness School professor,uh, came up with this concept ofdisruption, right? Disruption becamesort of a meme, but it's actually aneconomics theory almost, abouttechnology. And he talks aboutsustaining technology versus disruptivetechnology. You can be innovative on asustained sustained curve. You can makethings incrementally better. But thereare things that are disruptive, andthose are like moments of timebusinesses or technologiesthat create this explosion of demandbecause for the first time it becamepossible, right? So if
00:25:08you if you'reMars candy, there was a lot of othercandy. Maybe you were you're really goodin your recipe, you're really good inyour execution. Most businesses aretrying to compete in a more or lesszero-sum market. So they trying tocaptureuh market from existing demands onexisting competitors, right? Now thereare uhuh market creation moments and I thinkfor Rapha, this was a market creationmoment. And most internet companies>> That's a great point.>> right? Well, whether it's PayPal,Facebook, you know, uh Google. The thereason you have this explosive growth islike you just invented something new andand then everyone's rushing cuz thiscapability didn't exist before. Andthere's no other uh alternative, by theway.That's a really good point. Do then doyou think that the right move forsomeone building a company is good Okay,so on one hand you could say, "Well,just have patience and like just keepgoing, keep going, keep going." And withthis you know, maybe the same thing. Umwhereas the other hand, would it be likepivot just like the 20-year-old kidsuntil you find that that that rockrolling down the mountain?I mean it depends what you're trying tobuild. Are you innovating something new?Are you creating something that wasn'treally possible? Are you are you
00:26:23entering a business where you're like,"Okay, I know the you've done you thebusiness plan, right? You Here's here'swhat the market size is. Here's how howmuch we're going to capture from it.Here's how we're going to be better thancompetition."If that's the case, you're going to slogand maybe every now and then you havesome kind of innovation or some kind ofbreakthrough that that gets you a bit ofa jump over competitors.But prepare yourself to beto be very good at execution. Build anamazing team, build amazing processes,just be very good at the day-to-dayexecution to outcompete yourcompetitors. If you're a young guytrying to make something that didn'texist before or you know, like likeShawn and and some of the guys in socialmedia, they're trying to create a new,you know, Clubhouse or uh you know, somekind of thing that I I didn't know Iwould enjoy talking to people,you know, taking a walk with my earbuds.This is just like did it didn't occur tome. But so if you're inventing somethinglike that, you will, you know,the point is pivot pivot pivot until ithits. Because if it's not hitting,you're not hitting on some human natureor element that you're finding or you'relike finding a secret in the universealmost.
00:27:39You're a fun case study. Yeah,yeah, yeah. One of the reasons it's funto talk to you is not only your businessis interesting and you're interesting asa founder, but you're also a bit of apolymath. Like we were talking at thebeginning of this about likethe Paul Le Roux, like Bitcoin, youknow, I feel like you know you have likea bunch of these like little rabbitholes that you've gone down. I'm curiouslike what are those rabbit holes todaycuz I've seen the original Replit deckand this was what? 2014? 2015? Somethinglike that?>> Like bro, you called your shot Babe Ruthstyle. So so read read this thing out.What was the master plan? So,growth by building tools [laughter]I love the fact that in your deck youhave a slide called master plan.>> [laughter]>> So growing the product by building toolsfor education essentially, peoplelearning how to code.And then build a simple network and AIassisted interface that blurs thedistinction between learning andbuilding. That that's essentially whatReplit is today. Like you're learninghow to make softwareand but you need to you don't need tosit down and learn how to code. You'rejust like vibe coding and it's justhappening as you go and you're kind ofpicking up these skills.And then evolve the platform into aplace where people come to learn, build,explore, and host applications. So, notonly is it the development environment,but the hosting
00:28:54of the applications. Andthe hosting of the application, I thinkI should have have another point becausethat unlocks the next step, which we'regetting into now, which is monetizationof those applications,uh scaling of those applications. Rightnow, if you go to Replit and you buildsomething, you can just say, "Monetizeit." And it'll like integrate Stripe foryou and all of that. And pretty soon,you should be able to say, "Market it."And it'll like How big are the biggestapps that are built on Replit? Like, arewe talking guys are making a hundreds ofthousands of dollars, set low sevenfigures? Like, has anybody really brokenout that are just they were made onReplit and they still run on Replit?This this this one is a little uhcontroversial, but Medvie, thebillion-dollaruh one-person business covered by theNew York Times.Basically, uh they were a company thatsold what? GLP-1. And the reason it'scontroversial is because>> people don't like their marketingpractices. The entrepreneur, I think,already fixed a lot of these issues thatpeople are reacting to. But, um he runsa big part of the Replit a big part ofhis stack on on Replit. And it it's beenuh he says it's beena crucial part of their growth becauseit's not only just the core application,but the automations he's been up day today. So, for example, he's working witha vendor and every day he does something
00:30:10manual, like a marketing vendor. He'slike, "Okay, I'm going to build thiswebsite to you. You go and you speak toan agent." And the agent will give youall the information you need. Or theagent will give you the assets. So,he'll he'll build interfacesfor all the different parts of thebusiness, all the back office stuff ofthe business. And he's the fastestperson to go from idea to prompt. Evenwhen he was on Twitter going viral, hewas like building a game on Replit. Andhe built an experiment where he he senthe sent me that experiment where you canscroll a site with your with your withyour head. So, you can read somethingwithout looking at your screen. So, I'venever seen someone after like spendingsome time chatting with him be so quickto create things. Boom, to create that,create that. Like, automate this,automate that. That's one example.There's been There's been a lot that,you know, I've spoken about over theyears. In the past, they used to have tomigrate off of Replit because theplatform was not complete.But now, the the platform app isactually complete and you can run a fullbusiness on it. We have a lot ofventure-backed companiesuh such as uh Spellbook. I think it's amulti-hundred-million-dollar companystarted on on Replit. Magic School, Ithink a 500-million-dollar businessstarted on Replit. And many others. Morerecently, the since Replit Nation, therehasn't been enough time for them toreally hit massive scale, but
00:31:25there's alot of multi-million-dollar businesses.For example,uh recently, I think they just did a dida round, but there's a company that'sbuilding influencer marketing for localrestaurants and local shops. So, they'llyou know, your local restaurant, youwant someone to cover your restaurant,you go to the platform, you hire aninfluencer. They actually physicallywalk to your restaurant, eat there, takea TikTok, whatever. Because now, mostpeople, especially Gen Z, they actuallydon't go to Google Maps anymore. If youask a Gen Z, "Oh, let's let's find arestaurant." They're like, "Go to TikTokand search."And so, that that's already over 100 uhthousand AR like few few weeks.>> What's that one called? Do you know thename? Uh Try Nearby.Dude, I I still go to Yelp and my youngemployees were like call me gray bush.They're like, "You're so old, man. Like,what are you doing?">> look through the yellow pages and callthem when you want to order [laughter]food? I was like, "Why not Yelp?"Can someone move the sundial for me?>> [laughter]>> It's It's surprising to me that theGoogle search uh queries keep going up.They just broke records. The revenue insearch keeps going up, butbut but yes, when people in my, youknow, people around me, they're notusing Google as much. Are there um likeany cool trends that you're seeing?Like, you know, we have um our we havelike a subset of like
00:32:40young young like18 19-year-old kids who listen to MFMand they like want to hear businessideas. Yeah. Are there in anyinteresting trends that you're seeing>> Yeah. in AI and on the Rebel platformwhere you're like, man, there's allthese like cool like one or five or 10million dollar businesses that could becreated.>> Yes. Silicon Valley have alwaysapproached problems with like hyperscale in mind.And I think for the first time becausethe making software is cheaper, you canactually create a multi-million dollarbusiness and not have to raise venture,not have to grow the team a whole lot.It so uh local style businesses is is isvery interesting.Um there is a guy in England that Ithink he's well on his way. He's 100,000already in run rate. He's well on hisway to a million.He uh is building software for ice rinkmanagement. So skating rinks and and allthat. I think that you go around your inyour life and there's a lot of thingsthat are just not computerized yet. NotThere's no software running it. So thatthat would be my first approach.Actually, that's what I did when II my first business was buildingsoftware for internet cafes and and LANgaming. And so that's always been agreat place to start. You remind me ofin Paul
00:33:55Graham's one of his essays abouthow to get startup ideas, he says uhthe easiest way to get startup ideas isto sit like to if you want to find thestartup idea of the future, simply livein the future and then build whatdoesn't exist. Yes.>> Like, okay, what the hell does thatmean? He he describes when Zuckerbergbuilt Facebook, it's not cuz he was anormal guy thinking, hmm, what whatwould the next what would the futurelook like? It's like, no, he was oncomputers all day. His social life wasonline. Right.>> The problem was he only had certaintools available. So to for him, the ideaof social like social networking onlinewas not just like possible, it wascompletely normal. It was his preferredmedium to actually exist in. And youcould just like lean into that ratherthan thinking you're the oddball. And Ithink, you know, that that's sort ofinteresting cuz, you know, you builtReplitpartly because you grew up going tothese internet cafes in Jordan. Andevery time you'd come, you'd be on adifferent computer. So, you kind ofneeded something that lived in thecloud. And so, you know, for you whatwas completely normal was odd to otherpeople. So, I think that's the a trickwith startup ideas, right? It's to sortof lean intomaybe the things you do that are alittle bit more than normal or a littlebit odd. And then just say like, "Whatwould make my experience doing this oddthing a little bit better?"You know, another another one I wouldsay
00:35:10is being lazy. In programming,there's this old saying that laziness isa is a is a virtue.And the idea is to to automate a lot ofthings. But now everyone is a programmeressentially. So, you know, part of thereason why I made Replit is because Idon't want to keep setting up thefreaking IDE every time. And so,you know, go by your life with thislaziness attitude. What are the kind ofthings that are so annoying that youhave to keep doing over and over again?There's probably a million, maybe abillion people that feel the same way.And perhaps you can make a piece ofsoftware to automate that. And moreimportant than ever, this like lazymindset of viewing things through thelens of automation is very importantduring with AI because AI is truly likeyou know, we have a magic automationmachine. So, not only you'll optimizeyour life, you'll become uhyou know,uh you'll become a lot more productive.But you might stumble on something thata lot of other people would want.Hey, can you give me give me youropinion on this? We were kind of joking,kind of not joking uh a while back withthe guests. And we were like, it's sortof like we were asking ourselves, we'relike, is are we like in December of 2019where we're just like 3 months away fromlike COVID happening and
00:36:25like the andlike America shutting down? And we'rejust like Oh yeah, I heard there's thisvirus in China, but whatever, no bigdeal. You know, are we sort of like thatwith AI where it's like, well, you know,likeSquare maybe laid off a lot of people,but like that's probably not going tohappen anymore.Like do you think that we are likemonths or 12 months or something likethat away from like the world changingdramatically? I I think we are in thesingularity. Like the you know, theoriginal idea of a singularity, I thinkWerner Vinge, one of the early computerpioneers and and and sci-fi authorstalked about the singularity, borrowedthis concept from physics. In physics,it's like theis theblack hole and you know, anything thathappens after the black hole black holeis undefined. So we actually don't knowwhat has is like not knowable.So anything that is beyond that point,you can't even have formulas for becauseit's literally undefined. You know, alot of the early AI thinkers talkedabout this moment of singularity whereis it is incredibly hard to predict whathappens after because the pace of eveninnovationis not only fast, it isaccelerating as fast as it is
00:37:40it already is meaning it isthe second derivative is exponential.And so I think this is the moment we'rein where, you know, in 22 you know, wegot GPT4 at the time and you know, GPT 2 hadcome out in 2019, GPT 3 in 2020. Soevery 2 years we were getting a modeland now feels like every few weeks we'regetting a model, sometimes every day.And and there are these fundamentalcapabilityshifts that happen either in autonomy orcybersecurity or computer use or whathave you. And every one of thosecapability shiftshave a lot of downstream applicationsthat yet to need to be discovered. Wehaven't actually productized it yet. So,it's almost like you get a bundle ofenergy. That's how I think of models.They're they're they're potential energythat entrepreneurs need to go figure outhow tocreate make them into products, right?And this is why it's an explosive timefor entrepreneurs and entrepreneurshipis because we have this potential energythat needs to be harnessed. Now, thereason why there's like a delay isbecause we have this capabilityoverhang. The world will change, butit's really hard to know whether
00:38:56I Ican't tell you in 12 months like allentry-level jobs will be gone. Well,what if you had to make a bet? My betwould be that I don't think unemploymentnumbers will move a whole lot. Perhapsthey'll marginally increase. I thinkDario, the CEO of Anthropic, said we'regoing to get to 20% unemployment orsomething like that. I don't know if I'mI'm misquoting him, but he said all onWell, he's a doomer basically, though.He's on the far end.>> Yeah, and like I don't think we'rebecause I get what I'm seeing from ourcustomers, there we have some customersthat automate a lot of things and uplaying off some people. We have othercustomers that automate a lot of things,make more revenue, and want to hire morepeople to automate more things, andcreate more products. And so, net net, Ithink there's going to be a lot of newAI companies, a lot of companies thatmake use of AI, and want to hire morepeople. So, net net, I think theunemployment question I think willprobably be be neutral.How do you think this sort of Game ofThronesuh AI war plays out, right? You've gotyou know, the king of the north, you gotElon up there. He's he's the he's tryingto come down. You got the OpenAI kingdomover here. Google, you know, they werein denial, but now they're here, youknow, they're they're they're making ithappen.>> [laughter]>> What
00:40:11What do you think How do you thinkthis plays out?I I like I like business theory. Uh it'snot always useful, but it often is isuseful. Hamilton Helmer wrote this bookcalled the seven powers. And everyoneSilicon Valley talks about moats. Sevenpowers is the theory of moats. The moatof these LLMs is the technologyfundamentallycommoditizable, right? Likeit seems to be very easy to replacethese models. Like you know, a lot ofdevelopers every day professionaldevelopers are switching between thesemodels. In some cases in if you're incursor it's like one literally one clickaway to switch to the to the next model.And I think a lot of the fightinghas to do with this fact thatit is hard to find a wayto zoom heads too far ahead of thecompetition. You're always sort of neckand neckcompeting with with others. So you mightwant to try toblock them in in different ways with usin the in the court or with thegovernment or regulations or or thingslike that. Whereas I think in the pastyou could if if if you're
00:41:26Microsoft andyou achieve this dominance in the PC,it's really hard to unseat you. Right?And and so there'sthere's this natural monopolies thatused to emergeand they're protected by by certainmoats such as network effects, economiesof scale. We haven't seen any of thosemoats sort of emerge from thesefoundation model companies. It's a myhypothesis is that maybe the one naturalmoat is capital.You need not just one time capital toenter the market, you need continuouscapital to train the current model, thenext generation model, the nextgeneration model. And then you needenoughinstalled base and revenue to cover yourcosts. But that is not enough moat tokeep the big other big players away. So,you can imagineall the big companies have a fightingchance and all the big governments canalso participate in this. And maybeChina as a as a place where you can'treally distinguish between country andcompany and maybe the country's going tobe doing to to theum foundation model market what they didto the EV market. Well, they'llsubsidize the hell out of it in order tohave a competing chance and maybe evendestroy the market globally
00:42:41bysubsidizing it. All of this to say thatI think it is good for entrepreneursbecause if we end up with a monopoly orjust oligopoly and you're building ontop of it, it is actually very hard tobuild a successful businessuh because like you said, they'llthey'll come for you. But, if it ends upbeinga a technology that's kind of easier toreplace, I mean, there there is a placefor a lot of entrepreneurs toparticipate. Sean, you remember you'reyou were telling that story about um theuh Anthropic CEO and he was like, "Yeah,things are booming, but like in a weirdway, I feel like I'm always like a fewmonths or a few quarters away fromrunning out of money because we'regrowing so fast, we have to buy uhinventory uh GPUs." Are you in a similarposition where even though you're makingall of this money, you're having tospend more and more and more and isprofitability in sight? No to the firstquestion. We're notburning uh nearly as much cash as as asfoundation company model companies.And like you know, sometime last yearprofitability was in sight. We hadsomething likeyou know,30 years of runway or something likethat. Um since then we decided to spenda lot more on um especially sales andmarketing.And my theory
00:43:56on this is or like mythesis is thatthere there are a lot of businesses thatwill need help adopting this technologyand adopting ground up broadly. And so,we we And also, there's this imbalancebetween supply and demand that I talkedabout. So, I thought, "Okay, we justneed to scale the sales team."And so, the sales team was like fourreps or something like that, but at thelast year, I think it's going to bemore than half the company by the end ofthis year.Uh which is very surprising for me tosay cuz I was always like a sort of atech>> Yeah, how's that feel to be around abunch of uh regional sales managers? I I[ __ ] love it.II>> [laughter]>> I didn't know cuz I think I'mI'm one of those sales bros. I am asales bro.>> I am a sales bro. I think I'm weird asfar as tech nerds. Well, why do you loveit? This is actually really we are welaugh cuz it's funny, but this isactually quite interesting.>> He was deadlifting before it's cool. Helikes sales before it's cool. You're YouHe's got range. My guy's got range.Well, why do you like it? Because I usedto hate sales people, then I realizedthat sales people like all these winingand dining, it actually works, and theydo create demand. Yeah. Yeah, and theyAnd I'm like, "Oh, okay. You serve apurpose.">> It's more of acontact sportuh than consumer. Like, a consumer,
00:45:11youdo something, and then you do an ABtest, and maybe 2 weeks later you findout whether it worked or not, andthere's this huge delay, and there's somany things outside of your control.There's like hype in the market thataffects you. Someone writes about you,you go viral, and then you die down, orit's it's like there's a There's almostlike a the weather. You can't reallycontrol a lot of it. Sales is is muchmore, like I said, contact sport. Like,I can applyeffort, and and and whether we get thewin or not is somewhat much more withinour control. And so,if I hear like some kind of deal is atrisk,it activates me so much cuz the idea oflike losing to some kind of comebackcompetitoris is like the worst feeling in theworld. And like, I'll call whoever Ineed to call. I'll show up to theiroffice, we'll do whatever we need, uhand we rarely lose deals. In the fewtimes there was like a potential oflosing a deal, we just pulled out allthe punches. And the company is just cuzHya and I, you know, Hya, my co-founderand my wife, is also hyper-competitive.She also lifts and does boxing and allof that.>> [laughter]>> Uh Hya and I like built a culture that'sincredibly competitive. And so we we getactivated by this. And then when we win,it just feels good. It's very real.
00:46:27It'slike very different than seeing a numbergo up like that.>> [laughter]>> You know? Wait, so you I I had heardabout this. Your wife is your partner orbusiness partner. That's pretty That'spretty cool, I think. I mean, it's coolwhen it's cool. When you guys do coolthings.Yeah, when you guys do>> [laughter]>> When it's strategic it's disastrous.Yeah. How How's that? I think thathaving Replit being so hard as hard asit is and it was,if we weren't in it together, I think itwould have definitely driven a wedge awedge between us becauseyou both entrepreneurs, you know howmuch of your life energy startups take.Like, they literally take your vitality.You You age.You know? I had hair when we started thecompany.>> [laughter]>> And soin life, you have limited amount ofenergy and you direct it towardsuh your spouse, your kids, your work,you know, things like that. But then ifsomething is like this sucking energythis sucking everything, time andenergy, eventually it'll just strainyour relationships. And I I I You know,I for a long time, like a lot of myfriends just didn't hear from me. Like,I kind of
00:47:42disappeared in many ways and still inmany ways, you know, I I would love tospend more time kind ofchecking in with friends and keeping uhconnections alive.But the fact that we're in it together,I think made our relationship strongerbecause those dark>> And having all the the the shares in thefamily, I mean, that is pretty cool.>> That's cool, too. No, I mean, I'm notbeing funny. That's cool. I think Seanused to work with this guy MichaelBirch, and him and his wife started acompany, and they sold it for like, Idon't six or eight hundred milliondollars, and it was So, it was liketheir family, like, you know, got twotimesrewarded. It's pretty cool.>> a few things. You have to be careful notto like make these mission decisions onthe weekend and show up and was like,"Hey, decision done."Uh>> [laughter]>> have to be careful not tobring, you know, the tone you bring athome to to to the office. Don't make itawkward around other people. It's veryeasy to make it awkward around otherpeople.You have to work harderto ensure that this is meritocracybecauseyou know, I come from a world that isless meritocratic, that is more based onwho you know and what you know, and andfamily business are very common in thatworld. The problem with them is thatpeople join the business, and theyexpect if they're not
00:48:58part of thefamily, they're not really going totheir work is not going to matter asmuch, right? And so,you have tobe very clear about performance, and sethigh expectations for yourselves, and becommunicative aboutand and and also always open to thepotential that, you know, there areother people that are better at at atrunning the company than you are. Yousaid you read a ton of biographies, anduh especially with this kind of shiftinto sales mode and being like, "Oh, Iget to play full contact startup. Thisis amazing." Who are the founders thateithermost resonate with you in their style,or you you you respect something aboutthem, or a story that you find yourselfretelling a bunch, or telling yourself,telling your team, that's been kind ofinspirational for you?I think Ben Horowitz and like The HardThings About Hard Things is it is itvery good book and inspiration forespecially like a more sales-drivenbusiness.That's a good one. I I read it a whileback and it has a lot ofreally interesting stories about doingdeals and losing deals and hiring salespeople. And then, you know, after Iwatched Pirates of Silicon Valley,started learning about Bill Gates. Thisis another really good
00:50:13old-school, veryunknown uh biography, Hard Drive. It'slike a '90s about Bill Gates.After reading about Bill Gates and SteveJobs and these guys, I just knew that Iwanted to be part of that, part ofSilicon Valley. It just seems the mostexciting thing possible and you can havethe most uh impact. And that is ablessing because I look at a lot of myfriends andthey're now almost 40 and they reallyhaven't found the thing that they wantto get after. And I think that itcreates this crisis of meaning in in alot of people.I'm also a big fan of um visualization.There was a period of time where therewas a lot of likepseudo-scientific stuff of documentariescoming out. There was one called Whatthe Bleep Do We Know?It's like about quantum physics andvisualizations. Like if you put thevibration out, the the universe willreward you.>> Yeah.I kind of believe that. Uhinin a weird way and I I can't reallydisprove it, butI tell you a few stories. Umyou know, I I wanted to be on Rogan'sshow. I was like, you know, I've I'vedoneI've done all these shows. UhI've done Talker's Show, My FirstMillion, all these shows. I was like, Iwant
00:51:28to be on Rogan.>> [laughter]>> And I was The big dog. The big guy. I'msick of the JVs.>> Yeah, yeah. I mean, you guys areamazing, but how do you How do you evenget on Rogan?I started like sort of visualizing it. Iwas like, what would I talk about? Whatwould I tell him? How would theinteraction be and things like that. Afew weeks later,uh I get a message from two people.Mark Andreessen and and Lex Fridman andthey both asked me the same question.Hey, I have a friendwhose daughter is entering aentrepreneurship competition and wantsher appwants to make an app and do do you knowanyone who can help her? Like can youhelp her?It's like that's odd and I rememberreplying to Lex Fridman and he he goesto me and then I replied to Mark.And it's really odd. I said I got thesame message from Lex. Who's thisperson? He's like, yeah,you know, it's it's Joe Rogan. It's hisdaughter.And I said, you know, I'd like to helpher. Like I'll freaking build the appfor her. Like heintroduced me. So he introduced me toRogan. Rogan introduced me to hisdaughter. And I I say, let's let's geton a Zoom. I get on a Zoom call and it'slike four high school girls and they'relike they're very
00:52:43bright. They have abusiness idea to connect Gen Z local GenZ to local businesses for jobs.And they're like, you know, I'm going toteach you how to make applications andyou're going to make it.And so I open a Replet. I'm like, here'syour Replet. Here's what you do. Youjust, you know, type in your prompt andlet's check in next week. Next week wewe check in and they already made likehalf the app. And by the way, Repletagent was early on.It was still running into some problems.So every now and then I'll jump in andlike help them with with one thing. Butfor the like 95% of it, they built itthemselves. And I'm always of the beliefof like justprovide value and like just don't askfor anything in return. It wasn't like,okay, I'm I'm doing this to get on theshow. I think that would be the badmindset toto to have.I kept mentoring her and I I give heradvice on how to win the competition.It's like, look, no one none of yourpeers will have an app. You're the onlyone that's going to have an app.Everyone will have slide shows. Beforeyou do the pitch, go send the app to allthe judges. And that way they'll knowyou're the only one that that thatactually went above and beyond. And theyactually they presented and they won thecompetition. And by the way, Joe I thinkmight have thought I am some kind ofcontractor. Like he didn't know I didn'tintroduce myself and
00:53:59So I sent Joe a nice letter and I toldhim a nice message and told him like I'myou know, very very bright daughter.So glad I I could be part of this.I I would love to just five minutes ofyour time to kind of introduce myselfand my story.And sohe's like, okay.I'll uhuh you know, I'll call you tomorrowwhatever. Tomorrow comes, he didn't callme. And then text him, I didn't get ahear back.So I I gently told his daughter, I waslike, I would just like a phone callwith your dad. And so she's like,okay. And then phone rings and it's Joeagain. And I's like,>> [laughter]>> about 90 seconds in, we're talking aboutMMA.>> [laughter]>> I'm like, you're kind of aYou're you're you're you. You're notIt's like the same guy.>> [laughter]>> And I'm not a big MMA guy.But on the on the call, I I just I waslikeI just told him about myself. It's a lotof pressure to do that quick, right?>> Yes. Yes.You have to be calm. I I'm actuallythe calmestmoment. And I I think I could learn thisfrom gaming.I slow I slow down a lot under pressure.Like when pressure comes,
00:55:14you have to gaming, racing,anytime there's like incredible pressureand any mistake might kill you.In this case, not literally kill you,but like kill your chances. Actually, Iexperience time slow down.And I think you can train this inyourself and I think a lot of racedrivers talk about this as well.>> way, weightlifting is a great place topractice this because it's low stakes,but like at the end of a the set is whenyou're shaking you you it's you'reyou're at the most fatigue. Maybe you'reshaking, maybe you don't know if youcould do it. What most people do is theyrush to finish and they sacrifice form.And basically, if you could practicepoisein the last few reps, you're doing thatnow every day in the gym. It's like youyou can get a lot of reps and practicein the gym as a metaphor for life. Butyou can't get that you can't simulatethat pressure in other ways. But youknow, your body kind of thinks you'redying>> Yes. when you're when you're under theunder the weights and it's you'reshaking and you don't know what to do.So your body can simulate pressure thatway. There's so many lessons from frompowerlifting uh you can apply. Actually,one day I was at at the gym in SanFrancisco and I saw Brian Chesky liftingweights. He's hugely jacked. And Iremember stri He's a former bodybuilder.>> Yeah, I I struck up a conversation withhim about powerlifting and and startups.
00:56:30Uhand that was that was a lot of fun.Actually, I've had visualization andthat feeling ofoh, I want this thing to happenand then that happened like way too manytimes.Andit doesn't always happen in podcasts,but I think this is what's on my mindright now. Even even the interview I didwith Tuckerlike I you know, I remember being a bigfan of Tucker during the lockdowns whenlike nothing made sense in the world andlike I had this anger in me cuz like youknow, I came to the United States forfreedom. And like I feel like I can'tsay on what's on my mind. I can't leavemy house. I have to like put a muzzle onmy mouth and I have to take a shot.>> [laughter]>> I like this is a scam. And I rememberhim likethe I started watching Fox News and thisguy>> [laughter]>> You got radicalized. But butbut one day I see Martin Shkreli on hispodcastandI had helped Martin raise a round.I I learned finance from Martin. Dude,he used to stream on Sean's platform.Yeah. I used to watch him on Sean'sthing all the time. He was He's like oneof the best teachers and he's superentertainingfor finance stuff, right? Like he justsays like He still does it on YouTubeand they're real They're really good.>> out to the Shkreli
00:57:45pill channel. It's onYouTube. It's It takes his long livestreams and just cuts it the the mostinteresting kind of 20 30 minutes.Shkreli pill is just doing God's workout there.>> [laughter]>> Yeah, and I knew nothing about personalfinance. I knew nothing about thefinancial markets. I didn't know howmoney worked even. And so I rememberjust watching his channel and justgetting educated. And when he got out ofjail, I was like, "Oh, that's cool. Oh,look, Shkreli's out of jail." And I wentand watched his stream and I I see himcoding and I see him opening Runlet.And I sent him a tweet and I'm like,"Hey, I see you I saw you open a Runletand I'm like a big fan. Be great toconnect." So I connected with him.He tells me he's starting a startup. Thedoctor one? So he started a company aslike a holding company and he startedthe doctor one at the same time hestarted the Bloomberg terminal one. Hestarted three other things.>> Yeah. He started audio AI one, but theone that took off is the Bloombergterminal, I think. And they're now likemulti-million dollar revenue.>> like this, I'm always curious, right?Cuz when somebody literally comes out ofjail and then you're like,you could I like the streams, too, butthen in terms of like investing, there'sobviously a big you know, you kind ofgot to do your diligence of likethis guy went to jail for some sort ofwire fraud type of deal. Am I going tobe a part of that like I guess
00:59:00I'm justcurious how you mentally think about it.Are you basically likeit's [ __ ] banking. You You don'toverthink it or do you go and you youkind of go get first first principlesanswers for yourself? Like what do youdo? First of all, I'm I'm personallylike very principled and very careful.The onlyproblems with the law I had was wasracing cars. I'm like a big fan ofsecond chances and the thing I loveabout America is there's someforgiveness here. You can have a secondand a third act. And like I I saw hisside of the storyand it just seemed like he did his timeand this is this is the system we livein is that you do something you getpunished, you do your time and then youyou leave and I think society shouldtreat youwith a with a blank slate. Early on atRepl it, umwe our first investor Roy Bahat fromBloomberg BetaRoy is another very interestingcharacter. He's like Bloomberg Beta isan amazing investment firm. They havegreat returns.>> those guys years ago. I They said no,but I pitched them.>> [laughter]>> They were all through my [ __ ] Yeah.Roy doesn't know. He will just tell youexactly He He might even tell you thisidea sucks and like he's theHe's the straightest shooter in SiliconValley, I think. He'll tell it like
01:00:15itis. What's this thing about Roy isBloomberg Betais both the investment vehicle, but alsojust things he's fascinated in he'llhe'll just go do. He starts He has athis conference about the future ofwork, but one thing they did at the timeis they did a trip to prison facilityand we we went there and it wasumit was us mentoringinmates aboutentrepreneurship and they wanted tostart businesses internally. Some peoplewere starting businesses inside and weweresupposed to mentor them. That experiencewas very touching.Yeah, one exercise and maybe you couldsay it's a BS woke exercise, but likethey lined up everyoneon a line and then the inmates onanother line and someone was saying, "Ifyou grew up in a household where there'swhere there'swhere there's like crime and drugs stayforward. If you did not, step back." Andthen like, you know, 95% of thenon-inmates uh stay uh, step back andthen uh, then maybe 5% step back. So,like they just like inversion and thenand the exercise was to show you howmuch
01:01:30of the life of crime is sort of likesomehow predetermined by by by I don'tfully believe that. I believe inpersonal responsibility a lot, but maybethey were like people are born in justmaybe harder situation.>> believe in agency and personalresponsibility as well as probability.Yes.>> Right? And influence. Yes. Yes. And so,you know, for for for all these reasonsI'veyou know, I'm I'm I'm open to to talkingand and potentially working with uh,people who have done things in the past,but then they paid their dues and andmoved on. And so, it just felt like thisis someone who helped me indirectlylearn valuable skills and I want to helpthem.One of my favorite I love uh, I marriedinto an immigrant family. Shawn um,comes from a family of immigrants.What's it feel like um,from you know, you're an immigrant tolike be living the American dream? Doyou think that there's something aboutthe Americans What What about theAmerican experience do you think isdifferent from other countries?I think America'svision of itself, at least the kind ofliberal America's vision of itself waslike about tolerance and inclusivity andthere's there's a lot of truth to that.Likeuh, you know, I think it is very easyto beanywhere else maybe in Europe
01:02:46perhapswith the UK is a uh, uh, uh, is anexception and and feel like an outsider.But in the US uh, especially in likeuh, you know, New York, San Francisco,these places, you just feel like anyoneelse. You just feel like you're you'reaccepted and you have as much of achanceto make it as as as someone uh, assomeone who is who was born here andthat's incredible and I don't thinkthat's fully appreciated especiallybecause America's so self-critical whenit comes to these things. but but thereis a lot of tolerance for for differencein this in this country. And thenthere's just this period of innovationandopenness to ideas. Like ask anyone whogrew up anywhere else, literally quiteliterally anyone else.And the experience of entrepreneursthere is to have an idea andthe likelihood of your friend tellingyou you're [ __ ] after you told themthat idea is like 90% plus. And[laughter]uh that was always my experience. Ialways safeguarded ideas, not because Ididn't want other people to to copythem, but more like to protect thoseideas cuz like they're fragile beings.America and San Francisco Silicon Valleyespecially
01:04:01a place where you talk aboutthese ideas and they grow. And they Theproblem is like they grow too much andthey become radical. Let's start a shipisland country.>> [laughter]>> They become always like weird things. Sothere's like an opposite problem of thissnowball and make it become>> that's a better that's a better problemthan you know, I've got aa lot of my immigrant buddies they sayback back home I tell people about myideas and they're like, "Shut up, dude.Let's just be plumbers. Like don't standout.">> Don't stand out. Exactly. That's that'sthe usual thing.When I moved to San Francisco, cuz it'snot even just America as a whole likeSan Francisco specifically is on theextreme edge. I remember I just movedthere, so I didn't have a place to work.So I just sat in a coffee shop. And inSan Francisco, the coffee shop is like,you know, dating is pre-dating forinvestments, right? So the table next tome just kept turning over every 30minutes with another founder pitchinganother stupid ass idea to anotherinvestor who was hearing them out. And Ijust remember by the eighth hour of her,you know, 15 of these pitchesand I just remember thinkingwow, every one of those ideas soundedterrible. And yet it was totally normaland common and accepted to be a littlebit crazy like all those people werejust now.>> Yeah. What's normal here is crazyelsewhere and vice versa. So I went to ameet
01:05:17up that night to go meet somepeople and there was a guy there who wasworking at JP Morgan. And he heintroduced himself in shame. He waslike, "I work at JP Morgan but but butbut but you know, but I'm I'm I'mleaving soon. I just need to you know,that's that's a small the normal in inother cities you have to apologize youhave to be uh you have to add all thiscontext if you're choosing theunconventional path of doing a startup.And in San Francisco you had to add allthisdisclaimer legalese Yeah. you had anormal job cuz it's like what the hellare you doing, man? Why are you doingthat stupid thing? Why are you whyaren't you living for real like the restof us?>> Yeah, and it's easy to get cynical aboutit and it's like oh man, this placesucks and then make fun of it and all ofthat but there's something truly uniqueabout it. The other part is like rubbingshoulder with with billionaires likewhen you're literally worth nothing.Um you know,Mark Andreessen is one who's like makesfriends on on Twitter and he goes onpodcasts where like there's twolisteners and he like he'll he'll becomefriends with with people that he findintellectually interesting and andstimulating. Paul Graham is the samelikewherever he go he's on vacation inStockholm and he did like a YC meet upthere likeuh and he's just meeting all these kidsthat want to start start companies andso people get energy here from
01:06:32less fromyou know, showing off their wealth andmore fromuh being intellectually stimulated. Youknow who's like the unsung hero of SanFrancisco? meetup.com>> Yes. Oh my god. That's they're like thethey're the tugboats of the of theSilicon Valley scene. Like they theydon't get enough credit. They uh they'rethe best. You know,I met a lot of amazing people who justgoing to meetups when I first came toSilicon Valley.Is it still going? Well, I'm like tooold to use it so I don't use it.Uh but it is still going. It was sold.Um I think uh Kevin Ryan who started uhBusiness Insider and Gil Group andMongoDB. I think he bought it but thethe founder of meetup.com has this likecrazy story. He like worked atMcDonald's and now he's working atAmazon but as like a driver.>> activist like Amazon. [clears throat]Yeah, I talked to him. He he is workerrights union guy.And the reason he started Meetup was notto like get rich San Francisco kids tomeet up but it like to actuallyorganize.And so I he's back to his his passionnow. So he goes and he takes a job atAmazon and he likes to give people toolsto unionize. And the most frustratingWhy would they hire him?>> [laughter]>> Dude, he'd be like a casino cardcounter.
01:07:47>> [laughter]>> How does he have that job? Get this guyout of here. Does he still have all ofhis fingers? [clears throat]>> [laughter]>> What are they doing?They should be like, "Dude, you are waytoo rich to work here.">> [laughter]>> Dude, isn't it crazy that there is likethis corporate espionage [ __ ] going on?Like it sounds like conspiracy but it'syou also have to logically think itcan't be zero. Does that happen to you,I'm Chad? Does like is there espionage?He He wouldn't know.>> [laughter]>> Yeah.Is it here in the room with you rightnow?I think you have to be careful about it.I think you have to build the rightsystems and processes and and all ofthat. And even if it is not anadversarial company, it could beadversarial state especially if you havemodel weights or something that they canthey can steal and spend a couplestories where they they kind ofuhyou know, caught foreign agents tryingto steal LM models.But why foreign agent? Like Like I guessif you have a company that grew from,you know, two to one billion in thatfast, I would think that there'd besomeone to be like, "Hey, can you go geta job there? Hey, you work there. LikeI'll bribe you to tell me X Y and Z.">> you know, we're a target probably but wewe were not an easy
01:09:02target. We we hadsomeone from the FBI come give it giveus a talk about uhthese things, some of these stories, howto protect ourselves. And the broaderpoint is is is more interesting now withAI. Both social engineering andcybersecurity risk has has gone uptremendously. Like you can have botsthat are very good at convincing youof certain things. So phishing hasgotten a lot scarier. And also you cando uh hacking and privilege escalation.Like the Vercel hack is kind of crazy.Do you guys know the entire chain ofevents?>> I I didn't understand what happened. Isaw a couple of tweets where they werelike kind of doing the thing where youyou say, "Hey, this happened. Just beaware." You know, you have to come outand say it at some point. But what wasit what happened? There there there's anemployee at this company calledContext.AI. And it's one of thoseprovide context to your AI companiesthat downloaded a Roblox cheat software.And that Roblox cheat software wasinfected with some kind of backdoor.And umthen that company became fullycompromised. And someone at Vercelinstalled Context.AI through GoogleOAuth on their workspace.
01:10:19And then they had an entry throughContext into Vercel. And then insideVercel they've done a bunch of hacks toescalate privileges and get access totheir to their databases. And this wasall planned by Yeah. I mean I don't knowif it's planned end-to-end. I I assumethey infected Context.AI and they knewit was an attack vector for a lot ofotherother companies.>> And what did the the the creator whatdid they get? Uh they get data. Theythey're trying to sell on like the theinternetof of companies.>> would you get from Vercel? Like databasedata?>> Databasedatabase passwordsand the code. And then you go to thatperson and you ransom it or>> think they did ransom. They just postedit and said, "Hey, I'm selling it forlike a million dollars.">> for Vercel cuz you know, what did theydo in this situation, right? I think thething about Vercel, there are few thingsI meanlook, every company has has issues andum this is not a knock on them, butthere's one thing that was odd that theywere storing the database secrets inclear text.They had a way [clears throat] recentlyto make them sensitive and encrypt them,but uh they weren't encrypted at rest.So, once you get access to the database,you got access to every other customerdatabase. I see. Has your life changednow that you're uh now that you're abillionaire? Like are
01:11:34you afraid of yoursecurity?Yes, unfortunately. Uh and I uh I am Ihave protection.Um I don't know, man. I just I don'tfeel like a billionaire. Um like maybeWhat do you feel like?>> I just feel like a guy. I don't wake upin the morning>> millionaire. Yeah, what do you Idefinitely feel like a millionaire forsure. Okay, all right. I It took me awhile to feel that, but like you know,after like the lifestyle upgraded all. II guess because I didn't have thelifestyle upgrade of a billionaire. LikeI don't have a house of a billionaire.Not a realized billionaire and um Idon't like to upgrade my lifestyle tooquickly. Was was there any upgrade thatyou did do that was pretty cool whereyou're like, "Oh, money does have someutility. This actually brought mejoy, freedom, and something some wayup." I think most people should talk alittle bit more about what spendingactually moves the needle for youbecause most people have a very lowimagination with their own money.>> Yeah, that that's that that's you know,when I when I start when I sold somesecond that we did some second secondarysale like a couple years ago. I thinkmost of it comes down tohonestly living a a healthier lifestyleand saving time. So,uh a chef is pretty is pretty awesome.Being able to eat exactly what you
01:12:49wantandeat healthy. Like you even when you goto DoorDash and you try to search forthe healthiest food, it's still [ __ ]It's a pain, yes, yeah. And soit it just makes you feel better. Itjust becomes effortless to maintain yourweight and maintain your discipline.Getting getting a coach, you'll have tocycle through a few to find someone thatyou like. Getting someone who shows upat your door. And soyou know, creating that lifestyle, a lotof it is about hiring other people.But you can overdo it. And I at somepoint I think we overdid it a littlebit. And you want to be also carefulwith you you mentioned security, butthere's a lot of people who want toleech in different ways and scam you andand do all sorts of nasty things. So Ithink you can expose yourself to liketoo many too many people. Your housealso starts feeling like like theoffice. A hotel. Hotel, the office,people working out of there. I'm like,man, like I I want my kids to have likea normal life like we grew up. Did youYou know what's crazy? I just Googledit. How many billionaires are under theage of 40? There's only 71. Really? Soyeah. So of the I don't know how manypeople 7 billion you know, people likeDid you just made his name look at thatsmile?
01:14:04>> [laughter]>> You are in the probably the top like I'mhaving mixed feelings, Sean. I I He's uhIt is very interesting.>> Well, you are in the 1,000 probably theof all the people under 40, you areprobably in the top 1,000 richest ever.>> Well, that shows you I haven't reallyreflected on this all that much.I'm just like keep going.Yeah, build more. Yeah, you're like Iyou're like I know how much I want andthe answer is more. That is the That isthe perfect That is the perfect answer.>> wealth and money more. It's in terms ofsuccess, impact, and enough reserve toactually have an impact on the world anddo do the things that I want to do thatI think are are are positive. By theway, getting a really kick-ass car themoment you get any kind of money is themost important thing you could do.What did you get?>> an AMG GT Black Series.Nice. I got an AMG E63 wagon when I gotmine.>> it. My AMG is is is I think underratedbecause it has the luxury but also theclass.I bought an e-bike with a Burley wagonbehind it [laughter] and my kids sit inthat. And that's what I ride aroundeverywhere. Amazing.I think there isyou know, now there's like a lot of umhate uh some
01:15:19of it is deserved forSilicon Valley.But part of it is because like theythink you think think people likepotentially hate us because because ofour wealth.But and like we should like dress downand not show our wealth as as much. ButI think it just becomes moreinauthentic. Like when you when you lookat the ballers on TikTok or Instagramand you look at the comments people lovethem. They're like Laura Ballerini.>> [laughter]>> But you look at the comments when likesome tech CEOs saying some some dumb[ __ ] like everyone's going to lose theirjob. Everyone's like hating them.Um yeah and I think just like being alittle more normal and the normal thingto do is when you come about some moneyyou just like buy some cool [ __ ] Welove having you on, man. You you you youhave this perfect um balance of likebeing wisebut also being audacious and fun to hangout with and yet you got the CEOsensibility.>> also. He's a formidable guy.>> [laughter]>> No, you're you're you're a you're ayou're a blessing and we're so happy.You know, we sort of got to see you alittle bit in the in the before phaseand that's really exciting for us. Ilove I love that there I'm I'm cominghere at different stages of my
01:16:35life andI get to look back on that and andreflect and you guys are doing amazingthings. I think we share the samemission of empowering people. I thinkthat just it's incredibly exciting timethat wealth is accessible to morepeople. We're just trying to get rich.Yeah, I hope I hope a lot more people[laughter] get rich. I hope a lot morepeople get their first million and comeon here and talk about it.And they use I we hope they use Replitalong the way, dude. Thank you guys.You're a blessing. We appreciate you.That's it. That's the pod.