Amjad Masood

Apps that cost $100K in dev time, built for $25 on Replit Agent

Amjad Masad says apps that would normally take roughly $100,000 of developer time can now be built on Replit Agent for about $25 in usage fees, and he calls the speed of AI-company scaling unlike anything in Silicon Valley history.

“There are apps built on Replit Agent that otherwise would take probably $100,000 of developer time, and you can build it like in, you know, $25 paid to Replit. It's pretty wild how fast these companies are scaling. I don't think in the history of Silicon Valley we've seen anything like that, even in the like Web 2.0 era.”

Fastest AI companies hit $10M ARR in 3-4 months

Asked what broke his frame for how fast a company can grow, Amjad Masad cites AI startups reaching $10 million ARR in just three or four months.

“So I would say reaching $10 million in 3 or 4 months ARR.”

Emailed Zuck to fund Replit, got ignored, then bet $70K on himself

Before founding Replit, Amjad asked Facebook to absorb it as a project and emailed Zuckerberg directly, who ignored him. He quit, sold his Facebook stock for about $70K, and split it between Bitcoin and living expenses to start the company.

“I sent Zuck an email at the time and he ignored me. Like, okay, I guess I have to start a company. And so yeah, I quit my job, applied to YC the first time. We did the whole thing. We did the form and the video and all of that. And we didn't even get a call or anything like that. It was just like we got the rejection letter.”

A kid in Jordan compiled Python to JavaScript, went viral on Hacker News

Working from an internet cafe in Jordan, Amjad spent years writing interpreters so multiple languages could run in the browser. In 2011 his team was first to compile Python, Ruby and others to JavaScript, open-sourced it, and it went viral on Hacker News.

“And then 2011 had a breakthrough. And the breakthrough was we were the first to compile Python, Ruby, a bunch of languages to JavaScript and run them straight into the browser., and that went super viral. Like, so we open sourced it, we put it up, uh, and like on Hacker News. And that was my first experience of like going viral on the internet”

Walk into every meeting with a goal, not as a fanboy

Amjad never got nervous meeting famous, established people because he always entered with a concrete goal (impress them, raise money). Having a goal puts you in a different mindset than fanboying, letting you talk to them as an equal.

“when I go and meet people, my mindset is like, I want to impress them and I want to be able to get money from them, or like, I have a goal. And I think having a goal when you're meeting someone actually puts you in a very different mindset than, again, like fanboying and just being very excited about the meeting.”

Steal thisBefore any high-stakes meeting, define the one outcome you want; it kills the fanboy nerves and lets you operate as a peer.

Do What Makes the Best Story

Amjad's life heuristic for fork-in-the-road decisions where the pros and cons are roughly equal: pick whichever option makes the more interesting story. He ties it to Elon's idea that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely.

“Yeah. So I actually wrote a blog post. The title is Do What Makes the Best Story. And the idea is like when you're faced with decisions where there's no obvious answer, like a fork in the road where the pros and cons are sort of the same. The heuristic I use in my life is like, what is a more interesting story? And obviously, like Elon talks about this, like the most entertaining outcome is most likely.”

Steal thisWhen two choices are a toss-up, pick the one that makes the better story.

Hacked his university to change his grades, then turned the bust into a job

Failing for not attending class, Amjad hacked the university servers to change his grades but got caught when his record crashed the database. He came clean, drew the hack on the whiteboard for the CS deans, and convinced the president to let him off in exchange for securing their databases for free.

“look, I have this talent and I feel like it was undiscovered and I feel like I was treated unfairly. And I used the university as my sandbox. I came clean. I didn't mean to do anything bad. And he gave me the Spider-Man line. He's like, with great power comes great responsibility. And it actually affected me. And I was like, okay, I think I need to do something in order to kind of pay back. And I told him, I'm going to work this summer for free to make sure I secure your databases.”

Rickrolling his way into Y Combinator after 4 rejections

Recruited into YC by Sam Altman after four rejections, Amjad lazily pasted a Rickroll YouTube link as his application video. While he waited outside, the partners were getting Rickrolled, and the CEO opened the interview by angrily telling him that's not how you get into YC.

“And he's like, that's not how you get into YC. And he was very, very angry. Well, it turns out when we're sitting outside, they were getting recalled inside. Right? So imagine their mindset looking at the application and, and, and getting the, the, the Rickroll song. And, uh, and then they give us a very tough interview.”

Replit: 35M signups, ~2-3M monthly actives, 100K apps hosted

Amjad shares Replit's scale: more than 35 million signups, 2-3 million monthly active users, and roughly 100,000 apps hosted, with revenue growing exponentially in 2024.

“You know, signups, we have like more than 30 million, I think 35 million users right now. In terms of active users, it kind of fluctuates, but 3, 2 to 3 million a month, probably 100,000 apps hosted on Replit because you can build an app and deploy it all in one environment.”

MagicSchool: a teacher learned to code in COVID, built a viral AI EdTech

MagicSchool's founder was a teacher who learned to code during COVID using Replit and built the initial AI-for-educators product entirely on the platform. Because Replit takes you from idea to deployment, it grew immediately, and Amjad calls it one of the craziest revenue ramps he has seen in education.

“The guy who created it was a teacher. He took some time during COVID to, to learn how to code, and he started using Replit. And him and, and I think another person, uh, built the initial, uh, thing totally on Replit. And because you can go from an idea all the way to deployment, and immediately started growing. Like, you know, people, these AI apps, like when the adoption starts happening, it goes super viral. You don't need a ton of marketing.”

Pick an inefficient industry, build a GPT wrapper, repeat 100 times

Amjad's playbook for getting rich with AI: find an industry you know well, build a GPT wrapper that automates some of the work there, and run the experiment 100 times because one of them will take off.

“So basically like find an industry where you're familiar with and just like build the GPT wrapper to like automate some of the work there. And like you could do it like 100 times and one of them will take off.”

Steal thisTake a niche you understand, build a GPT wrapper that automates its grunt work, and repeat until one hits.

Automating all software engineering = the moment of AGI, 10-15 years out

Amjad predicts citizen developers will go from zero to 10x and existing engineers from 10x to 100x. He argues fully automating software engineering is effectively AGI, because agents could then rebuild themselves into an intelligence explosion, and puts it 10-15 years away.

“The moment we automate all of software engineering, I think that's sort of like the moment of AGI. So I think it's like a little far away. And the reason I say this is because once you automate software, then the agents can rebuild themselves. And you go into this loop of increased intelligence. Every version builds its next version, builds its next version. And so this is what they call intelligence explosion that would lead to the singularity, right?”

Steve Jobs' wilderness decade: 10 years of failure before the turnaround

Amjad's favorite Steve Jobs story is the decade he was 'lost in the desert' after being fired from Apple, pouring his own money into the failing NeXT and Pixar. Pixar went from no revenue to billions, and NeXT's operating system became macOS and saved Apple.

“The thing I like about the Steve Jobs story is when he was lost in the desert for 10 years. So he left, he was fired from Apple, and then he created 2 companies that were failing. The whole time. Like NeXT Computing, NeXT Computers, and Pixar were literally failing. Like they didn't do anything. They weren't selling. He was just like investing more and more of his money. Like, I think he was going to go broke, but he kept going for 10 years.”