Amjad Masad on vibe coding, AI agents, and the end of boilerplate

We have CEOs that finally feel unleashed like they have rapid and they have an idea. They don't have to go beg someone

idea. They don't have to go beg someone to do it. They can like just vibe code and bring into a meeting and look what I built. We want to get to a point where

built. We want to get to a point where you don't have to code at all. You

should be in a creative space. A lot of coding is minutia. A lot of coding is accidental complexity. And turns out

accidental complexity. And turns out there's actually research. Doctors who

play video games have much better reaction times. So if you want to do a

reaction times. So if you want to do a surgery, always ask them if they're a gamer.

>> Oh, not a gamer. Sorry. But where

where's the gamer here? Get the gamer.

>> AI is reshaping how we work, learn, and create. And nowhere is that change more

create. And nowhere is that change more tangible than in coding. That's where

today's guest comes in. If you've heard of Vibe Coding, you've heard of Amjad Msad, founder and CEO of Replet, the platform that lets anyone build software right from their browser.

>> Amjad grew up in Jordan, where he taught himself to code before studying computer science and moving to the United States.

He became a founding engineer at Code Academy and later led JavaScript infrastructure at Facebook. What you

might not know is that he's also an empathetic people focused voice in the AI space talking about issues and philosophy that others won't. I've used

Replet myself and it's clear to me this isn't what's next, it's what's happening right now. Replet makes building

right now. Replet makes building software as natural as writing an email.

Shifting the power of creation to anyone with an idea. So yes, this is an interview about coding and the fastest growing programming language in the world, English. But even more broadly,

world, English. But even more broadly, it's about how AI is already forcing us to rethink how work and society function, told through the lens of one field that's transforming before our

eyes.

>> And we're thrilled to welcome to the show, Amjad Msad.

>> Amjad, I'm so glad this worked out.

We've known each other for a number of years. And part of the thing I love

years. And part of the thing I love about doing podcast is people that I learn from. And there's been a whole

learn from. And there's been a whole stack of things out of our conversations, you know, mostly at the Grove, but other places as well. So,

welcome to Possible. It's so glad to have you here.

>> Thank you for having me. I'm really

excited. I've been listening to the show recently. So, happy to be here.

recently. So, happy to be here.

>> I'd like to start with a question about kind of you, right? Like, you know, Replet's about making things. And so you might even phrase this question of how are you made, >> you know, tell me about your early

experience playing video games and how video games >> kind of did your trajectory >> into where and then we'll get into more depth and replicate, >> right? Yeah. So video games have been a

>> right? Yeah. So video games have been a huge part of my life. I started playing video games I think on the like Atari maybe even before getting my first PC.

>> I wonder how many people still know what Atari is.

>> Yeah, maybe we have to actually describe what an Atari is. But here's a bit from history. Steve Jobs worked at Atari. I

history. Steve Jobs worked at Atari. I

was like the Silicon Valley premier company for computers. And so uh I was I just like was captivated by by video games. And when I first got a computer,

games. And when I first got a computer, my first idea was like, can you actually make a video game on this thing? Well,

turned out it was initially very very hard. But uh I remember going to every

hard. But uh I remember going to every year back in Aman, Jordan, where I grew up. Uh there's a computer show that my

up. Uh there's a computer show that my father would would take us to. And it's

like really big place where they have all sorts of new computers, new devices, CDROMs, whatever. And I bought a I

CDROMs, whatever. And I bought a I bought a a CDROM in a collection of of CDs. And I went home and I didn't know

CDs. And I went home and I didn't know what's in them. One of them was like a fax program, whatever. I just bought a CDs. I just wanted to try one. One of

CDs. I just wanted to try one. One of

them was like a visual programming experience that allowed you to build kind of game-like experiences. So, one

of the early games that I built was for my younger brother, uh, five years younger than me to teach him math. I

think I was maybe eight and he was three or something like that. And there'd be two boxes. It would be an equation. He'd

two boxes. It would be an equation. He'd

have to like enter the right the right number like, you know, five plus blank equals six. And it's like one. If he

equals six. And it's like one. If he

gets it right, he gets an applause. He

gets the wrong, he gets a boo. And it

works out so well. He now works at Replet. So,

Replet. So, so I taught him math early on.

>> It's very early recruiting.

>> Early recruiting. Yes, early recruiting.

Worked out. The moment you give a user a program you made, it's like horrific because they'll put in things that you don't expect. Like instead of one, it'll

don't expect. Like instead of one, it'll put an E. And I was like, "Re, >> no edge cases, little bro."

>> Exactly. But then just the high of not only making something, but seeing other people getting value out of it just hooked me. And then video games just

hooked me. And then video games just been through my journey since then. Uh I

got really into Counterstrike and I used to go to these land gaming cafes and we would play Counter-Strike against each other. But all these cafes were kind of

other. But all these cafes were kind of run by, you know, pen and paper. So you

would go there, you you'd pay for an hour or two. They'll write your name and what time you came in and they'll watch you which computer you're in and like they'll tap you on the shoulder when there's like when your time's up. And I

was like, that's so silly. Like there's

computers all over the place. I'm gonna

go write a program for it. And I was maybe 13 at the time. Took me two years, but I built this like client server application to manage the entire thing with security and everything. And you

could like have user accounts and I have gift cards and I started selling it and I got really for the time I felt I got really rich. I got all my classmates. I

really rich. I got all my classmates. I

took them to McDonald's when it first opened in Jordan. Uh, and so yeah, gaming has been like a recurring theme to kind of pull me more and and now Replet has a really fun gaming experience that you can you can build games with it.

>> So, you know, starting with your younger brother, how much is like a gaming background part of kind of the recruiting target, the uh cultural organization target, the the how do you

talk to people in Replet? In addition,

of course, the dynamic of how the product operates itself, but how much does the gaming background inform that whole stack of the company? Yeah, it it was it was never explicit, but I think for whatever reason like the way we

design the product, the kind of people we attract, the kind of art we put together around the product, even the product itself kind of attracts those gamer mindsets.

>> Uh, and actually, you know, I've always intuited that people who played games early on had a, you know, their clock speed was higher. They could like think faster. They could react faster. And

faster. They could react faster. And

turns out there's actually research around it. Like doctors who play video

around it. Like doctors who play video games have much better reaction times.

So if you want to go to a surgeon, you want to do a surgery, I always ask them if they're a gamer.

>> Oh, not a gamer. Sorry. Where where's

the gamer here?

>> Get the gamer. Um and then uh when we were designing uh Replet agent, which was is our like five coding tool codes on your behalf. I was playing this uh video game called Hades and a lot of my

colleagues were got got them into it as well. And so in Hades, it is like a

well. And so in Hades, it is like a roglike game where every game you start starts with a different run and it's actually a randomly generated game essentially. And so it was a very

essentially. And so it was a very important mindset when designing AI experiences because AI is stochastic.

And so even the language that we use inside the company like a like an agent run is sort of like a like a game run and so on so forth. So it's a big part of the culture.

>> So you've already described kind of your very first intensity code experiences.

It's the your younger brother. It's the

manage the whole gaming land.

>> How would you take the current kind of coding enablement like what if your younger self had that coding enablement?

How would your younger self have done this differently?

>> Yeah. You know the interesting thing about programming and and you know those you know this very well actually I think my generation is the last generation where the tools were really a joy to use

and then it become it became very industrialized. So when we were

industrialized. So when we were programming like I started on um like my real programming experience when I built that business was in Fidual Basic.

>> Oh yeah.

>> In Fidual Basic was a very creative interface. At some point I think in the

interface. At some point I think in the mid 2000s like everything became you know this like Linux terminal even building a JavaScript app. You have to download all sorts of software and like

uh hook them together. And so at least I kind of grew up in a generation where coding was like a little more creative.

And then because it became such a highpaying job, it kind of I think changed because of that. And so as we're building the product, we got a lot of criticism early on even before AI that rapid abstracts too much away from the

environment. And we're like we abstract

environment. And we're like we abstract it but it is there like you can peer under the hood and I think that's what's important. Um but if you make

important. Um but if you make programming so complex at the top people lose interest >> and that's why you know in CS classes uh in universities but in schools as well

you can turn off a lot of people because they think it's a it's this laborious IT task of like you know pip install and all of that stuff. Instead what you want to do is make things. So for kids

nowadays growing up, for parents encouraging their kids to code, just go and replet and like make things and I promise you your kids will learn programming by osmosis. Like they can just like see they're going to get

curious at some point. They run into a bug. They're going to go Google around

bug. They're going to go Google around and ask JGBT. And that's how I think the organic learning process happens.

>> And say a little bit about how the gaming dynamic enhances that. what's the

way that the the things you've learned from being a gamer to make that creative experience >> you know kind of come alive.

>> So there's no game in the world >> that starts with a manual.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. So if your program is starting with a manual you've you've already sort of lost.

>> So the first thing you want to get to um dopamine really quickly.

>> Yeah. So with Raplet getting you the first preview, getting you the first thing that you can see that immediately just like hooks you like, "Oh, I I immediately made something. I put on a

prompt. I I I made something." And then

prompt. I I I made something." And then you want to create a safe environment where it is easy to go back, right? In

video games, if you think about save and load, it's a very important part of exploring a game. You don't want to be in a position where you just like die and that's it and you have to, you know,

restart all over. So replet we spend a lot of time working on checkpoint and restore. So every action you make in the

restore. So every action you make in the IDE uh and if I can get a little more technical every action in the IDE is actually stored in a sort of ledger. So

you make an action to the file system to the database to the runtime all of that is stored in a ledger and then anytime you feel like you got into a weird spot you can always go back or the agent did

something you don't like you can always go back to the previous one. M so that's another uh principle and then uh there's the aspect of like sharing and having other people use your thing. So

publishing should be really easy inviting other people. So we designed the multiplayer experience to be sort of like gaming as well. And really I think the mindset go goes a long way instead

of thinking of the onboarding mindset is just thinking about it of how it's a unfolding experience of more complexity.

the first experience. It's like sort of fractal.

>> Yeah. Mobile level one, level two, level three g aiming dynamics.

>> That's right.

>> What's some of the places where you've been most surprised by what this unleash of early creativity has enabled?

>> Some of the medical things were really interesting. I I because it's so outside

interesting. I I because it's so outside of the purview. I wouldn't have imagined it even. But you know the there's a

it even. But you know the there's a there's a woman that had like a very um rare eye disease and required to do uh certain exercises and she she built an

app that helps her do these exercises with her eyes every day.

>> There's a woman in Korea and her kid has also like a very rare disease and she built an app to like manage that disease on on a day-to-day basis. So medical is one that's really fascinating. I think

there's more to do there. And then

something also so outside of my purview is like go to market and like uh sales people you know there's a role in these organizations that I I recently learned about is revops is uh those people that

are managing a lot of the data flow within go to market teams and building the tools and helping sales people do their jobs and those people uh tend to use a lot of SAS software a lot of other

data sources but they don't have anything to connect all these things together to create applications and make their sales people more more successful.

So that's go to market. Uh and then um finally I think one thing that's been really really surprising is CEOs and maybe that gets some engineers to hate

us a little bit but CEOs that feel disempowered because they've delegated a lot of things. They they don't have as much input on the on the process. So,

you know, uh we have CEOs that finally feel unleashed like they have Replet and they have an idea. They don't have to go beg someone to do it. They can like just vibe code and bring into a meeting and look what I built and uh why can't you

do that in two weeks if I can do it in in two days. So, that's another interesting one.

>> I mean, you're talking so much about building and you also talking about sort of for kids bringing them the whimsy and the creativity and the fun. And as Reed knows, I hadn't programmed since uh

freshman year CS uh so a long time ago.

My co-orker Parth sent me a Replet login a few months ago and he's like just play around. And literally within 20 minutes,

around. And literally within 20 minutes, I had built an app and like because I was so excited and because I could do it right away, like it's just so easy to get onboarded. There's no barriers

get onboarded. There's no barriers whether you're a CEO or a 5-year-old or someone who's a little rusty, you can get right in there. And I think replet is sort of so closely associated with

what might be the Silicon Valley word of the year, which is vibe coding. And so

you've said that you don't love that word. We all use that word. How would

word. We all use that word. How would

you define vibe coding? And is there are there other words that you would prefer to use when talking about sort of the full suite of what Replet does?

>> Yeah. Well, I I've learned through my times in the valley is not to fight the hype boards.

>> Sure. Sure.

>> Uh like I remember when cloud was controversial. A lot of people hated a

controversial. A lot of people hated a cloud but just stuck around right so so although I have feelings about it I we we kind of embrace it in many ways. So

what vibe coding is like it was coined by Andre Karpathy and he was the head of AI at at Tesla at some point and he talked about how uh when he's

programming he especially when he's prototyping he got to a point where he's no longer looking at the code where he's typing in the prompts a bunch of code comes out and he hits tab or accept and he just keeps going and try to make as

much progress as possible before it stalls out. He calls it this is no

stalls out. He calls it this is no longer coding because I'm going by the vibes like whether if the vibes feel right if the app is running then it is working and so that that's how vibe

coding uh come around. Now I I think that the reason that you know for us might not be really fitting is because you know a lot you can do coding but a lot of times you're not coding at all

and I think v coding might scare some people away because the word coding is still in it. We want to get to a point where you don't have to code at all. You

should be in a creative space, right? A

lot of coding is minutia. A lot of coding is accidental complexity. You

know, the fact that I know that null is an object in JavaScript doesn't add anything to my life, right? But I had to learn all that stuff. But I think there's going to be a generation of programmers that don't have to learn

that stuff. I think that's fine. And and

that stuff. I think that's fine. And and

that's the history of programming. Like

when Grace Hopper, uh, the inventor of the compiler in the 1950s invented the compiler, she was actually inventing a form of vibe coding. She said, "I want millions of people to experience programming because it's such a

wonderful thing and changes people's lives, changes businesses, and I want them to program in English." And she said that way before Karpathi said that >> and then the machine code people were like pitchforks.

>> Program in English. No, that's you know, you can't do that. How can you understand, you know, how much data you're putting into each register, whatever, right? But the history of

whatever, right? But the history of humanity has been let's abstract away the details so we can focus on the more creative things. Now, there's always

creative things. Now, there's always specialists. There's still people kind

specialists. There's still people kind of looking at machine code and there's people doing C and there's people doing JavaScript and I think there are people that are going to be entirely programming in natural language.

That's a great segue to one of the questions I've been thinking about is like what is the new literacy is the highlight because obviously you know previously literacy was reading and writing and part of how we get to a

massive elevation of humanity is through as broadbased literacy amongst the billions of people as we possibly can because what enables everything else enables learning enables uh cultural

evolution enables patterns of thought.

Now with the the no code code, you know, kind of like the the vibing as opposed to vibe coding or the you know, whichever that's a new form of literacy.

Mhm.

>> So say a little bit about how you think about this new form of literacy and then also add in a little bit is like one of the things I think is I think actually in fact everyone's going to be having a

coding co-pilot whatever code lab coding because just like that co is like that's now part of just the way that you would also write like an email or anything else as ways of doing it. So so so give

a little bit of this kind of literacy and future of how everyone's going to be navigating thinking and information spaces. Well, the first thing I will say

spaces. Well, the first thing I will say is that uh uh soft skills I think are more important than ever. So for a while in the uh in the US at least we're all

stemm STEM is still really important but I think you know you have a lot of engineers going to work right now and they don't really are not very good at communication at like talking about ideas. They're good at writing the code

ideas. They're good at writing the code translating some of those ideas into code. But I think now the way we see our

code. But I think now the way we see our product being used by product managers.

For example, product managers are some of the best vibe coders because they're really good at taking problems and breaking them down into their constituent parts uh and communicating

them very well to the machine and then like the machine can can build them. So

whatever we do if it's like a question about education in our education system, it needs to get better at much much better at like being able to take problems and breaking them down. There

was a hype word like I think 10 15 years ago called computational thinking >> and like people were building startups around teaching people computational thinking and I think that's still important because underlying all of this

is still computational. So when you're describing an idea to an LLM to build it, you need to be able to talk about databases, you need to be able to talk about persistence, you need to be able to talk about lists and and things like

that. So if I'm designing a computer

that. So if I'm designing a computer course for young people, I would focus more on the abstract concept of computation as opposed to again null is not an object type of type of thing.

Part of that to elaborate >> is not only is the baseline computation about what the three of us learned even if it goes all the way back to freshman year CS which it tends to be a very

deterministic algorithmic data structures, memory management, other kinds of things. But also I think what's going to happen is we're going to bring in a set of other computational concepts. I think it'll be probabilistic

concepts. I think it'll be probabilistic concepts because actually most of like where LLMs and everything else is very interesting. It's probabilistic. I think

interesting. It's probabilistic. I think

it'll be maybe even quantum but a bunch of other things where compute is not just like 1 plus 1 equals 2. There's a

richer sense of comput. Have you seen any of that yet with replet or is that still kind of in the glimmerings of what's coming?

>> We see the problems of not understanding it.

>> Yeah. we see the problems of user not understanding that it's a probabilistic system, it's a stocastic system, they expect results to be reproducible and all of that stuff. So 100% like I think the future is understanding these

concepts really well. And by the way once you understand them, you can predict how these tools might work and you can go from one tool to another still have the same mental model understanding of it. In the same way that you know when I was growing up I

really understood how computers work and that allowed me to build you know all these businesses and programs whatever understanding how LM work is going to be very very important. Now the problem is

most people's experience is chatbt that is trained to sound like a friend you're not getting raw access into the LM in order to like figure out how to program

it. And so we just introduced a set of

it. And so we just introduced a set of AI integration. So now if you ask for

AI integration. So now if you ask for upload like make me uh an app that takes a prompt, generates an image model, audio model, puts them together or something like that. It's so simple. You

don't have to do anything. Just put in that prompt. It will tell you we're

that prompt. It will tell you we're going to use OpenAI for this. We're

going to use Gemini for this. We'll take

care of the billing. We'll build you on behalf of them. But I feel like there needs to also be a uh sort of UI. I

don't think we've invented the UI for how to mix and match these LLMs and how to program them. So, as much as I am a big believer in natural language based programming, I think at some point as

agents get better and they're like working most of the time in the background, we need to invent the new interfaces for how to program these machines. Well, also I mean you said

machines. Well, also I mean you said that most people when they think of AI, they think of chatb. And so when I'm talking about my friends who are not technical or not at, you know, not in Silicon Valley, like that's their only

thought about what AI is. And so they can't even open their minds to anything else because that's the one experience they have. And I think one of the things

they have. And I think one of the things we're excited about is that with Replet and tools like it, we're going to open up the possibility to build to so many people. And so sort of a two-part

people. And so sort of a two-part question. One is what is the ways that

question. One is what is the ways that we can have more people experience AI in this positive agentic like super agency way and then like what happens when we open up these opportunities for more

people to build.

>> Yeah. So uh Alen Kh has this essay that's that's Alen K one of the computer pioneers has this essay called the computer revolution hasn't happened yet

>> and in it he makes the case that literacy changed the world. We had

democratic revolution, scientific revolution. You couldn't imagine any of

revolution. You couldn't imagine any of those without literacy. Now,

computational literacy uh or people being able to use a computer to its best ability, which is being able to program a computer will change the world in fundamental ways. I think you need an

fundamental ways. I think you need an entire generation of people to grow up using these tools. Maybe I'm showing my bias because I have a history and kind of working in education. I was founding engineer at code academy. We taught

millions of people how to code. Uh and I like to help governments. Now we did a deal with the government of Saudi Arabia where they want to put vibe coding as part of their curriculum like an entire generation of people actually experientially

you know learning how you use these tools will change the world in ways we haven't predicted just yet. One of my first public replet experience with angles was reproduce LinkedIn. Yes.

>> LinkedIn. I saw that. Yeah.

>> Yes. Um and it it was partially because it was kind of, you know, it was a bit of a mimemetic hack and everything else.

Part of what I think both the AI revolution does and also what >> Replet does is expand the zone of your imagination. Yes. About what's doable.

imagination. Yes. About what's doable.

walk us through kind of like like what's a really I mean and obviously like it's not a I'm not looking for a manual cuz just like your gaming point it's like a manual >> but like what kind of imagination >> right

>> should people bring with them >> to start learning replet and bringing an idea to reality.

>> Such a good point because we still suffer although you don't need an onboarding or manual we still suffer from the blank page problem. So we see a lot of we talk to a lot of users that

sign up to replet and then sit there for a little bit and then leave and we're like what happened and it's like I just didn't know what to type in there of course in retrospect you know us in

living intact it's like are you prompt what do you mean but of course you know it's a it's a skill now before I go back to how we solve it I think after people go through this hump it's it's an

amazing experience because you become possessed you walk around your day and you're looking for software problems to solve. You're like, "Wow, I have this

solve. You're like, "Wow, I have this new hammer and like and now everything kind of looks like a nail." And once once that clicks, it's pretty amazing.

So now we're doing a lot of work at the top of the funnel, like figuring out what kind of educational experiences we give people. What what do we tell them

give people. What what do we tell them about it? But the the first thing I

about it? But the the first thing I would say is don't complicate it. like

>> you know have a very simple idea an app that you would have liked existed like maybe every one of us has an idea for an app that you can't find it in the app store right like I want something to do

this or that for my kids having kids is a great way because >> I was just thinking that there's so many things you're like ah just organize my camp schedule >> right exactly or I want this you know educational thing I want to be able to

do this fun thing with my kids and then talk to it like you would talk to a person just say well I have an idea and like you just like don't worry about the grammarss all that you'll get better at

prompting but initially just really get in and with any kind of idea if you want some sample ideas I would just say like basic things like just say I want to build a collaborative whiteboard and

then just imagine if you've done improv improv is like a good good way to do it just like word association I want a collaborative whiteboard and then like look around the room and you'll see a

plant that allows me to like create a garden or something like So really just be generative and you'll get an experience and you'll get a feeling of it.

>> Do you know sort of who is the typical Replet user and like what kinds of things are they building already? Is it

oh 80% of people are building whatever SAS software.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think most of it is AI software which is why we built this recent thing. It used to be that you

recent thing. It used to be that you have to go figure out how to get an API key from OpenAI or others. But people

have AI ideas like they see AI and like a lot of people will be like, "Oh, I wish chat GBT did this one thing, right?" Uh, and then and then they want

right?" Uh, and then and then they want to build AI experiences like chat bots like ReadAI is a great example.

Obviously, Read AI is very advanced uh in that it has video and all of that.

But you can build like you know I'm joti like go like tell raplet to like go look at your personal blog or paste in your notes and just say I want to create a chat experience that sounds like me

based on these notes and so AI is a is a really big one another one is like people want to build businesses >> and this is you know as I started thinking about our business more there's

two aspects of our business I would say maybe three there is the uh consumer aspect which is you know building family stuff and building personal things and then there's the enterprise which is

like automating things that work line of business applications you know rapid prototyping product development inside businesses larger businesses and then entrepreneurs and the way I started thinking about entrepreneurs is that

everyone has domain knowledge in their head that is not monetized just yet similar to how you know Airbnb found that everyone has space in their room

that's not monetized there are people all over the world that have niche specific problems that they've run into that no one else has solved. I was

talking to an entrepreneur on rap the other day. His wife is a yoga teacher in

other day. His wife is a yoga teacher in rural England and she does these popup yoga events and most of the communication is happening over

WhatsApp. Payment is really hard to do.

WhatsApp. Payment is really hard to do.

They use PayPal, all these different things. And so he wanted to build a

things. And so he wanted to build a platform for her but other people like her. So she doesn't have a yoga studio

her. So she doesn't have a yoga studio that you can go to every day, but she does these events at backyards and things like that. So he's built a platform and he has users and he has

other instructors and and so the the every niche in our life, there are people that are experts in that previously were not entrepreneurs because they didn't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to go pay

developers to do it. Now they can do it.

I love that example because obviously there's entrepreneurs that you're serving that are building, you know, million-dollar billion-dollar businesses that serve hundreds of thousands of customers, millions of customers, but I think the like

soloreneur, the woman who has a yoga studio, like I think of my mom who's a piano teacher and she's always trying to figure out how do I get my schedule straight, how do I get payment, how do I

figure this out? And so there's so many like she's an entrepreneur, the person who runs a yoga studio, the person who has like a bakery outside their house, like those are the people who would never be able to afford fancy coders, a

fancy website, but Replet can empower them to do so much more. So I love that >> and there's something about it that makes me really excited about the world to come. As much as I love Silicon

to come. As much as I love Silicon Valley, we tend to flatten the world. We

just like build one size fit all. And

that that means like you know you know SAS software tends to have all these buttons and configuration just to fit every use case. But instead we're going to explode that and decentralize it around the world. And every community

might have a special business that does one specific niche thing. And that

diversity I think is exciting. And as

part of um that diversity and being fun, um we'd like to play for you a short clip of one of the ways people have used Replet to build something important to them.

>> Okay, so great.

>> What if you turn boba into a game? I

prompted a basic app and sketched out some boba. I made three different

some boba. I made three different drinks, taro, milk tea, and matcha. I

added logic so the pearls fall from the sky. If you miss three bobas, you lose.

sky. If you miss three bobas, you lose.

But the game was way too easy, so let's make it difficult and add some bombs and a scoreboard. I noticed the game was a

a scoreboard. I noticed the game was a bit glitchy and I wanted to try it on mobile. So, I'm at my favorite cafe. I

mobile. So, I'm at my favorite cafe. I

added more colors, different fonts, and harder levels.

>> It's the best thing. People can code on their phones right now, which is amazing. Exactly.

amazing. Exactly.

>> Done yet. What other features should I add?

>> That's That's fantastic. That's I mean, >> and we didn't just select it because she added it to her bio. I guess

>> we first started working on the on the phone, people said we're just like crazy. Like, because back then there was

crazy. Like, because back then there was no AI. Um, and we we had to build a lot

no AI. Um, and we we had to build a lot of things to make coding on the phone like a little bit easier. But I but I always imagined because back in school I remember that I had a Symbient phone. I

was like, I wish I could program it under my desk, you know, and so it's really cool to see people doing that now. So one of the things that as you

now. So one of the things that as you dig into AI it becomes you know one the earlier question which is how do you broaden your imagination but also now

like what's what's what's a good way of optimizing like for example you know obviously you can do things that have huge token counts and that's kind of like doesn't build a good business you know etc. might be fun as a one-off

thing, but that kind of thing. What is,

as it were in the game dynamics, the next level of compute thinking, right?

Because it's like, okay, how does this work within the operational envelope of like AI enabling it, being able to figure out what kind of interface elements, >> right?

>> What's some of the the things you've seen there in terms of, you know, kind of context optimization, managing the AI token outputs, you know, helping people with that kind of compute thinking?

Yeah, I mean there are two aspects of this. One is uh strategy. You want to be

this. One is uh strategy. You want to be able to do things that the big labs are not going to do or eat your your lunch and like actually be able to build a

good good business. Um and and then the other thing what can LLM do right now and what scaffolding do they need around them? Right? The scaffolding part is

them? Right? The scaffolding part is really important because this is where you can build the value on top of the LMS. So the way I think about uh our business right now, we were in the business of training models. Now we're

we use all the different commercial models. And I see our business is to

models. And I see our business is to build the the millu the environment around LMS. If you think about LMS as like a as a person, you want to live the h you want to create the habitat for

them, right? So we built the best

them, right? So we built the best habitat I think for programming, right?

So when we first did this pivot from like the human being of the programmer to the AI being the programmer, I took the same teams at the company and I told them now you're no longer built for humans, you're building for the AI. So

the editor team built editing tools for the AI. The cloud infrastructure teams

the AI. The cloud infrastructure teams that built deployment tools for humans, they now build it for the AI. So I would look at any different vertical and I would think this way it you know if you

want to build like a financial agent just think about what kind of environment you can build for that agent. Now I see a lot of people for

agent. Now I see a lot of people for example like trying to put LMS into into Excel sheets whatever which I think works okay but can you build an Excel interface for the AI right like in a way

it's textual it can use it in you know based on that you want to hit the right distribution of the of the LMS you can pick any vertical and if you want to build like a really great business just

think about building your user your first user is the LLM think about building that habitat for LM to live in to create like amazing experiences amazing things with product, the unlock

of creativity, the unlocks of what does that mean for more personalization, things that work for individuals, businesses, you know, creative thinking is great. So, let's talk a little bit

is great. So, let's talk a little bit about also kind of some of the business attributes and like one of them is >> you know, you just mentioned that the that you know, part of what you've done is opposed to homegrowning your own

models, you're now using a fleet of models, >> but that obviously makes you somewhat dependent on them, makes you more copyable, etc. You know, business attributes. So one of the things that

attributes. So one of the things that the people who listen to our podcast lot of entrepreneurs, you're navigating a business challenge >> that they need to learn from. So how do you think about that? What are the things that you're doing to build unique

and enduring business? What are the kinds of considerations that go into that?

>> First thing I would say is user obsession. There's a massive platform

obsession. There's a massive platform called LMS, right?

>> That platform is useful on its own.

People can use it directly. But for you to build a very valuable business on top of what kind of value you're creating, one is if you're really obsessive over certain types of users, OpenAI can't

build for every type of user in the world. So, pick a user that you know

world. So, pick a user that you know very well. Hopefully, it's you. You've

very well. Hopefully, it's you. You've

had that experience. You're you're a salesperson. You were going to build the

salesperson. You were going to build the best LM for sales people, right? That

goes into UI, UX, all of that. Now,

second, and this this might comment I'll go a little deeper on the comment about the environment around it. So you know I said that people in uh using replet should feel like they're in safe

environment.

>> Uh it it should feel like anything is reversible. Now that turns out to be a

reversible. Now that turns out to be a huge technical challenge.

>> Now you could easily kind of hack around it or say you know we'll just you know restart the app or do whatever. But what

we did is we built a transactional file system >> that allows undo. Like we have proprietary file system that we spend two years building that every action is

like an immutable part of a ledger that anything can be rolled back and rolled forward that ends up being like a time travel system. And now we're finding

travel system. And now we're finding more use cases for it. For for example, one way to make um models better, more performant is by doing sampling because

models are stocastic. Every time you run the model, you might get better result uh you might get worse result. uh and if there's a way to verify whether the result is good or bad, you can sample

from the model. So what we do is because the system is immutable has this characteristics of being very cheap to fork. So you can take a file system, you

fork. So you can take a file system, you can fork it 100 times, run the same prompt with different parameters on on these different uh forks and then pick

the best one, do it repeatedly. Uh

obviously that that costs quite a bit of money, but for the advanced users, they're willing to pay it. they they

will get the the extra money. So do hard technical things on top of the models in the environment where the models are sitting right you want to build technical advantage it doesn't have to

be in the model itself because that costs billions of dollars there are you know huge industries around it you don't want to be training models at least not yet when you're building initially building a business but you can do a lot

of other hard technical challenges on top of it to make the models work a lot better that's the second thing third is reaching scale >> once you reach scale you actually have

negotiating uh negotiation advantages like you can negotiate really large discounts with providers similar to cloud >> mh >> and you can pit them against each other

and so on and so forth. So and venture capital is an amazing system to give you that initial money that that allows you to get to scale quickly and then the

business you know and then you can enter more of an optimization phase of the business. So you have this great

business. So you have this great metaphor uh which is cathedrals built from bizaars and so you want to describe the tension between open source and

closed product design and the bizaar is this messy collaborative maybe fun bright and that's where open source lives and then you have the cathedral and that is the top down that's that's

sort of Apple where they live and you said that you want to build cathedrals from bizaars >> tell us more about what that means to you >> yeah so I think that comes from Eric Raymond or some of the original like

Linux hackers cathedrals versus bazaars and there was a huge discussion early on in the in the world of software and so I I gave a twist on it is cathedrals made

of bizaars now in the uh early 2010s when uh this idea of no code kind of emerged there are a lot of different approaches you know there are amazing businesses built there obviously uh you

know Zapier air table notion you can all think of them as no code builders now our approach which for a while didn't work until AI kind of really made it work. The amazing

work. The amazing uh hyperco competitive diverse landscape of open source of people building all these open source

packages and components. What's

happening there? It's it's the like bizarre. It's messy, but it's it's very

bizarre. It's messy, but it's it's very innovative, very can you build a facade on top of all of this that makes it feel as good as a user experience as say a

notion? wasn't obvious that you can do

notion? wasn't obvious that you can do that, but the kind of abstractions you have to build on top of that and you can still hook into the latest and greatest like when a new package comes on open

source, Replet has it on day one because because we built all this abstraction like to be able to go get the packages and install them and run them on the

system and so we're riding a huge wave.

We're writing multiple waves. LM's

getting better. We're also writing open source getting better. new programming

language comes out, we can run it on day one. And that required a lot of

one. And that required a lot of investments up front. And there are a lot of competitors that are not doing this. And it might be short-term easier

this. And it might be short-term easier uh for them to do, but I know how the landscape programming works. Things will

shift. Like the other day, we saw a new uh JSON format called tune that is more efficient. It's I think token optimized

efficient. It's I think token optimized uh format >> that is more efficient for LLMs. And so again like programming will continue to improve and we want to to be the

platform where you can program anything with LMS. >> Let's think a little bit also about kind of how the future work is going to evolve. You know most people's

evolve. You know most people's experience right now is with chat bots.

So like they put in something they get out something they put in something get out something. So they're kind of

out something. So they're kind of directing the work in some ways but it's kind of iteratively from what they're doing. So how do you imagine this trend

doing. So how do you imagine this trend replet others in this kind of everyone working with you know kind of that power of code because it's got to you need a

combination of that individual creativity imagination you know broaden imagination drive but also standardization for work processes it's one of the reasons why the classic industrializations I fill out this form

and then I hand for you and you know D is way doing it so I'm certain that you've been thinking about what this means for the future of of corporate work what are some of the obser observations you might share.

>> Yeah, when I first came to the corporate world, one thing that I found extremely depressing is uh how atomized and siloed

people are.

>> So, you know, over time, uh you know, with capitalism sort of emerging, you have the original, I think Adam Smith, like how do you make a pencil, right?

Like someone make an eraser. And so,

people become sort of cogs in the machine. And I don't think that is

machine. And I don't think that is conducive to the human spirit. Like I

think humans are fundamentally creative.

I think anytime we assume the shape of a machine, I think people are actually not happy in their lives. I'm not a Marxist, but I've read some Markx and Markx the

theory of alienation and the theory the I think Markx was right on a lot of the critique of capitalism. Maybe not the solutions.

>> Um >> definitely not the solutions. Yes.

the one of his critiques is alienation is that you don't uh you don't see the fruits of your work. You you you build one part of one part of one part of part

of a large supply chain of of things, right? And that doesn't make people

right? And that doesn't make people proud of like like I said when I was a kid when I built this entire thing and my my brother used it. That's amazing.

That's I think what a what being human is about. And so I think now we're at an

is about. And so I think now we're at an opport there's an opportunity in the workplace to a lot of that standardization stuff to be taken care by agents >> absolutely

>> by work process automation and all that stuff and what's left for people yes we'll have broad swim lanes like I'm

generally in design but I can code I can write a you know PRD using chat GPT or whatever I can even have a marketing idea and I can like use all the tools and like Hey, I built like this this

marketing package and that to me is a lot more exciting.

>> So we we have for example one of our uh customers large enterprise one person had an idea it's a it's a you know real estate uh marketplace where they connect

uh real estate buyers with real estate agents had an idea on how to optimize that algorithm and couldn't get engineering resources. Now, previously

engineering resources. Now, previously it was just that the idea is dead.

Although he's in the business, he understands it. He talks to real estate

understands it. He talks to real estate agents all the time. Instead, he went to replet. He built a new routing algorithm

replet. He built a new routing algorithm that drove tens of millions of dollars if not hundred million dollars to the business. And that person got promoted

business. And that person got promoted again and again and again and and now he's sitting he's sitting with the board members guiding their AI strategy.

Entrepreneurship I think in my opinion is not just about building businesses.

You can be an activist entrepreneur. You

can be a humanitarian entrepreneur. You

can be an entrepreneur inside a large business. And I promise you, your life

business. And I promise you, your life will will be a lot more interesting, exciting. You'll meet a lot more

exciting. You'll meet a lot more exciting people. You'll have a better

exciting people. You'll have a better reputation. You'll have a halo around

reputation. You'll have a halo around you. So my hope for the future of

you. So my hope for the future of corporate work, but humanity in general, is that as the boring things, the automated things actually taken care of by machines, we're left to be more

entrepreneurial and more creative.

obviously totally hope that's the case.

It goes back to my very first book, The Startup of You. So, it's like it's it's a definite strong because it's like it's not that we all have to start businesses, but that kind of creativity, entrepreneurship, the engagement with it, the exact passion that you had with

your brother. Um, one micro thing that I

your brother. Um, one micro thing that I think is an important thing for people to focus on because it's part of the general lack of context awareness >> that current agents have.

>> Yeah. What do you see as the kind of the longest unsupervised work that agents can currently do?

>> I I think it's more possible than our tools allow it to be.

>> So I think state of the arts LMS uh especially Gemini has done a great job at a million context million token context.

>> Uh but others have 200,000 or or somewhere there. You know the easy thing

somewhere there. You know the easy thing is like to fit every all history inside the context but that's not that's not feasible. There are few components if

feasible. There are few components if you put them together then you can run agents a lot longer. Uh one component is verification. The work needs to be

verification. The work needs to be verified. It's a form of supervision. If

verified. It's a form of supervision. If

the agent is going on a path and doesn't have feedback from the environment from the work from the human for someone then it will very likely stray off the ba path and do something really like if you

make one mistake it'll just compound over time. So, Replet agent 3 came out

over time. So, Replet agent 3 came out in September. We now boot up a browser

in September. We now boot up a browser for the agent, have the agent use it to test the application for you. Uh, and we have another agent that's adversarial that's like reviewing the code and

giving you feedback. And because of that, we went from agent one ran for 2 minutes unsupervised.

After that, it didn't work very well.

Agent two is 20 minutes. Agent three,

you know, 200 minutes. We're seeing 200 minute runs that are actually really really useful. Um there's there's still

really useful. Um there's there's still mistakes and all of that. Now we've

introduced an autonomy selector inside replet. So depending on your risk

replet. So depending on your risk appetite, you can go all the way high autonomy and some people run it for 10 hours. Now I don't recommend it to

hours. Now I don't recommend it to everyone. Now if you have a lot of

everyone. Now if you have a lot of disposable income, you should definitely do it.

>> But you know we have medium autonomy and it can run for, you know, 100 minutes, high autonomy, it can run for 200, 300 minutes. So I I think it's possible in

minutes. So I I think it's possible in terms of the context. So the

verification is very important. So you

pass from one agent to to another and so uh you know one agent does a unit of work another agent gets a prompt and says test the app. You don't have to give it the entire thing. So it's a

multi- aent system and then after the testing is done pass back but you don't pass it back using the all the existing context you kind of summarize and give the next. It's almost like passing the

the next. It's almost like passing the baton to the next one. Again, ideally,

we put everything in the agent, but I'm not sure we're going to be there anytime soon.

>> So, I think this sort of relates back to what we were saying, how the difference between programmers and non-programmers is collapsing because if everyone has a replet agent, you don't need to be a programmer. And I think so many people

programmer. And I think so many people are talking about, and you said yourself, you worked at code academy the last 15, 20 years, we were telling everyone like parents, teach your kids

to program, learning to code is the future. you recently said you don't

future. you recently said you don't think uh people should learn how to code and so I'm all for the democratization of this for people who are not coders now to be able to use replet to do

amazing things >> yet at least right now I feel like the people who are most adept at using AI for anything are actually the people who have learned how to code so I would say

to you do you think we're at a moment in time or will that continue to be true >> you're a parent will you want your kid to learn how to code in the traditional sense or that's going to a skill that's

not important soon.

>> Look, similar to uh what Grace Hopper said, you know, 75 years ago, she said specialists will exist, but we want this technology to be. So, my advice would

apply to 99% of people >> like you know, I don't think you most people who want to make things with software and computers don't need to learn how to code. It's going to be a huge cost on them. It's going to take a

lot of time. But instead, just jump into making things. And if it's your cup of

making things. And if it's your cup of tea, if you're looking at the Asian traces and you're seeing the code and you're like, "Okay, I'd like to learn what it's doing," then go learn it. I

think it will take you further for sure uh this time along. But if you believe in AI as I do and we're going to continue to make progress on AI agents and all the labs billions of dollars

perhaps trillions of dollars are going towards optimizing code specifically then we're going to get to a point where it again specialists exist. We need them

if we're sending people to the moon I don't want them to be on a vibe coded you computer but for the vast majority of applications I think vibe coders will be able to make them. Now to the question about my kids. I've struggled

with this a little bit. I've never

wanted to admit that there's a temperament to coding, but there is.

There is a certain temperament to coding. Do my kids have that

coding. Do my kids have that temperament? I'm not entirely sure.

temperament? I'm not entirely sure.

>> What do you think is the temperament that uh that a coder needs?

>> Basic thing like the ability to sit in front of the computer for 12 hours.

>> Sure.

>> I think coding is actually bad on your health. And if you're okay with that,

health. And if you're okay with that, like you really I mean I don't know any programmer that didn't go through periods of life where they're like really spending a lot of time in that in

front of the computer with diet co or whatever and like just like coding all the time and like learning every aspect of it. Do you enjoy that? A lot of

of it. Do you enjoy that? A lot of people don't and that's fine. Like again

diversity like that people come with all sorts of temperaments and some people want visual things, >> want to interact with visual things.

Some people want to work with other people all the time, but if you're someone who's comfortable like I was and I am I am like totally like my wife is not the same. Like I have an insane

ability to be alone like I can be alone for a year.

>> Uh but but other people can and you know that's that's fine. We should be okay with people of different temperaments.

>> That is actually really illustrative to me because I love math. I love logic. I

loved AP computer science in high school, but I'm an extrovert. I couldn't

I can't do that. I can't sit with code for 12 hours. Okay. So, people like me are okay in the future.

>> Uh they'll find other soft skills are important.

>> Exactly. Soft skills are important.

Well, so I feel like we're in this time where some of us see Replet and CI and we're like, "Oh my god, it is so empowering. We're helping small business

empowering. We're helping small business owners. We're helping young people." But

owners. We're helping young people." But

when you actually look at the numbers, it's like more Americans are nervous about AI or scared about AI than are excited about it. And so if you're talking to someone like that, like what

do you say to them? Like what's your sort of go-to line to be like, "No, this is why we have excitement coming forward and in the future, even though we understand that they're risks."

>> I think there's like a various distribution of intent. Some people just want to get famous by writing like sci-fi sounding like you know just to be concrete about it like I don't think

anything that rad for example uh big AI maybe he doesn't describe himself as a doomer I would say AI doomer wrote

a lot about how AI could end the world and kill literally everyone like I can't like you know every every time you try to read some of those like there's insane loops in logic and really it

doesn't compute for for me like how that actually ends up happening and I think it's like a fundamental misunderstanding of the world. Anyone who's tried to build a business understand there are bottlenecks that are not just intelligence in the regulatory

bottlenecks. There are so all sorts of

bottlenecks. There are so all sorts of things. So without getting too deep into

things. So without getting too deep into that I think some of it we just have to counter intellectually and and like we you know the AI optimists have to be out there like arguing with these people. I

don't have time to do that. I did that for a little bit, but it's important and and I know they're out there in DC kind of scaring politicians and and all of that. And I think that's really bad

that. And I think that's really bad because like, you know, we can get to a point where, you know, AI is regulated in a way that allow us that doesn't allow the US to be competitive. And so

there's aspect of it that I think we really need to to to to battle. Uh there

are aspects of it that I think is on the creative art film front. Sure. Like, you

know, everyone thinks about Skynet and Terminator and things like that, but who's who's producing like really optimistic visions about sci-fi and

human? I I love reading mid-century

human? I I love reading mid-century sci-fi because it's a lot more optimistic. Something happened in our

optimistic. Something happened in our culture and we don't have really good sci-fi anymore. Um, so that's another

sci-fi anymore. Um, so that's another part. Now, third part, now this is the

part. Now, third part, now this is the more pragmatic. I'm worried about my

more pragmatic. I'm worried about my job. I'm worried about my I'm worried

job. I'm worried about my I'm worried about my >> kids everyday concerns that people have that aren't sort of fantastical that maybe are sort of based in reality.

>> I worry about it for my kids a lot. Like

the idea of it's really hard to go out in the world and make friends and have people like you. It's really easy to have an AI like you.

>> I mean and and humans tend to take the you know shortest the easiest path and like I worry about this AI friend thing becoming a really problem. My eternal

optimist is always like well look you know we had a period uh of history where you know eating junk food was was acceptable and like but I think there's

like u societal antibodies I think healthy societies have antibodies around you know smoking you know smoking is like you know when I grew up in Jordan

everyone smoked I smoked I came to the US none of my friends smoked and I just felt like an outcast and I stopped smoking I think society is like you know >> it's like truly one of the greatest

public health battles of our time and to your point a lot of it was we solved it with culture.

>> Yes. Culture. Culture. I I think religion used to play a role uh as well and I don't know whether it will in the future or not but like government is

such a blunt instrument. You can't you can't do everything. So I think it's it's leadership it is uh culture. It is

incumbent on all of us to just say like no chat GPT is not your friend. Like

it's friendly and you can use it for therapy. You can use it for all sorts of

therapy. You can use it for all sorts of things and that those are fraud as well.

>> But like if if someone is saying to you it's like I'm spending all my time talking to Chi, hey man, that's not really healthy, you know. So I think I think a lot of it is about culture and society.

>> Well, I do think that like there's like two points there that I think are very important. One is the friends point

important. One is the friends point completely agree. Um part of the reason

completely agree. Um part of the reason why like with you know inflections pie you know you kind of engage you're my best friend it's like no no no I'm your companion I'm here to help you >> have you talked to your friend Aljad

recently >> you know what what's like with him or are you you catch up and I think that that that helping especially for young people where they might be encountering difficulties and so I think it's like

>> uh tying you back into community tying you back into connecting with other human beings because by the way part of actual real friendship is not just saying oh Judge you're so Oh, I'm John.

I just I I I was waiting to for for all year to talk to you. It's like, no, >> it's it's the that that thing of like where I might show up thinking, "Oh, I've had a bad day. I want to talk to Amjad about it." And then I hear about your day. I'm like, "Oh, we're talking

your day. I'm like, "Oh, we're talking about John's day."

>> Right. Right.

>> That is actually part of how you evolve, part of how you elevate, part of how you learn compassion, wisdom, empathy, and it's really important. And that's part of the reason I also share with you.

It's not impossible to make AI friends, but it's not what's happening right now.

It's not anything that is that is that is illusory that way is actually in fact destructive. That's why it's causing

destructive. That's why it's causing psychosis and things like that like um you know there's uh high-profile cases uh where uh uh people have psychotic

breaks because they have like delusions of grander and things like that and chat GPT is like reinforcing that and that's like really bad and I think it's incumbent on the uh labs as well to like

start to program push back into these machines as well right >> yeah there was this funny thing that a friend of mine showed me which is by only listening to you know AI agents you end up in a desert by yourself drinking

a glass of milk thinking the whole world's out to get you, >> you know? So, it's like that's that's the wrong long path. Now, back to the jobs thing. People ideally love to say,

jobs thing. People ideally love to say, "I'd like to have an elevation of my life, but I'd like to have no strain."

And unfortunately, those aren't the times we're in.

>> Yeah.

>> We're in the similar times to the industrial revolution. Now, there's a

industrial revolution. Now, there's a cognitive industrial revolution. And so,

many many jobs will change, right? Like

if you said my my job is I'm a form filler for digital marketing like yeah that's not really going to be you better start thinking about other things now AI can help you with that you help like

okay well what can I learn what can AI help me do etc. What we have to embrace is that kind of that entrepreneurial mindset. People say, "Well, but I don't

mindset. People say, "Well, but I don't want to. I just want to keep doing what

want to. I just want to keep doing what I'm doing." It's like, "Well, so did the

I'm doing." It's like, "Well, so did the horse groomer back when there were lots of horses and that was all the transport." That's not the way it works,

transport." That's not the way it works, right? And by the way, if you try to

right? And by the way, if you try to lock that in, >> you're essentially going to be stealing your children's future because the other society will move ahead and then yours

will now have put them in a very disadvantaged position. So the important

disadvantaged position. So the important thing like almost like that Adam Smith specialization thing you were talking about. The important thing is say look I

about. The important thing is say look I understand they're going to be painful for me but I'm going to own this this change because I'm helping my children my community's children the future

generations. And by the way

generations. And by the way >> like own it as an adventure >> right yes like sometimes you don't choose to go on the adventure but sometimes you just find yourself on it and own it as the adventure. And how do

you shape it and make that happen? And

so in this vein, one of the things that you know companies are starting to look for is what is AI native talent? What

kind of pointers, heruristics, thoughts, lenses might you offer to people to say >> here's how you can think about becoming AI native talent? Here's what companies should look for in hiring AI native

talent because you know you live in AI nativity. Mhm.

nativity. Mhm.

>> On the previous point briefly like um I I I I save versions that you said very articulately uh advice to people on the YouTube comments that I unfortunately

sometimes read. Uh hey be nice. Um

sometimes read. Uh hey be nice. Um

people ah it's easy for you to say you're rich, right? Um and I I think that Silicon Valley has a responsibility

to do something. I don't know if it is some kind of like nonprofit where we have like you know retraining and upskilling or maybe it's a government thing. I'm not entirely sure but I think

thing. I'm not entirely sure but I think there's a responsibility to do that because it is it is hard for people like people who've done like marketing form filling for like you know 30 years. It

is hard to break out of that but I think there are potential to create like AI education programs. Now on the on the question of how to become uh AI native

you know we were at a CEO event earlier and even the CEOs are struggling with it themselves and really amazing CEOs built you know hundred billion dollar plus companies and they're like I take a week

every few months to kind of learn AI but I'm constantly behind and what I said if you if you're a programmer have technical ability go really deep go read the papers go build a fundamental

understanding of how LLMs work.

>> Um, maybe even build an LLM yourself.

Uh, like Karpathy has like this really nice GitHub repo that you can go explore and try to train your own LLM. Now, this

this conditional in the fact that you have some technical background. If you

don't, um, I would say using tools like Replet to build LLM experiences. So kind

of think about ideas for how LMS could like improve your job and go try your hand uh at building them. That's one.

Two, just like train your algorithms and feeds to give you AI news.

>> Uh one of the first things that I've I did when I just like committed our company to AI is like I went and followed all these like different AI people. My YouTube is all AI content.

people. My YouTube is all AI content.

There's a wealth of information out there and so many of us consume content passively. You can be consuming

passively. You can be consuming information and learning and this is and by the way Tik Tok can be certainly destructive. I see it as a as a skill to

destructive. I see it as a as a skill to actually like train my Tik Tok algorithm. So like they try to bait me

algorithm. So like they try to bait me with like you know different content and it just scroll really fast. And I

pitched this to Elon and I think he responded to me at once. So I said like there should you should be able to prompt your feed. I want only AI content today to be able to consume, but like

this passive consumption that we all do, you can fill it with useful information.

>> And so this next question, Reed, I do want you to weigh in on it. Um, but you and Replet uh recently passed 100 million ARR. Congratulations. Uh, huge

million ARR. Congratulations. Uh, huge

milestone and you guys have been building for a long time, but right now in the valley, there's so many companies that are getting to both enormous valuations, but also enormous revenue

very quickly. So my question for you is

very quickly. So my question for you is what do you think about this time where it seems like everyone has to get to insane revenue numbers immediately? Is

this good? Is that true? And like what what is sort of the new kind of era we're in sort of building in an AI era?

>> So one of the reasons there are a few reasons that happened that that made it so that these revenue ramps are really high. One obvious one is the ROI is

high. One obvious one is the ROI is really clear when when we make an application for someone and then we put a payw wall like they really like the application. they want it, they'll they

application. they want it, they'll they they're much more likely to pay. But

also just like credit card penetration across the world has like reached uh certain heights. Internet stability and

certain heights. Internet stability and connectivity. There's all these

connectivity. There's all these confluence of factors that got us to a point where you can grow revenue fast.

That being said, like AI revenue can go up as easy as it goes down. You know,

we've seen businesses I think Jasper is now like an enterprise business, but at some point they had like a really amazing consumer business that they lost all of it to Chad GPT, right? Like so if you're not an AI business, if you're a

SAS business and and your investors like oh why don't you have AI revenue? Well,

I mean the other thing is like you know easy come easy go, you know? So and we spent like eight nine years building all this infrastructure to get to a point where where the company took off. But

we're also still very paranoid. Like

Google just released another VIP coding thing today and they're a close partner of ours and obviously they're going to do it. But so many companies are

do it. But so many companies are interested in in the VIP coding space right now and it and so it's very very competitive and so if you can build a

business um that is lasting that is grows slower and compounds over time I I think there's still a lot of value in it. Now the question is like are there a

it. Now the question is like are there a lot of investors that want to pour a lot of capital into that? Well, maybe you don't need a lot of capital uh anymore.

And so, yes, a lot of the capital is going to AI, but like you can build SAS businesses today that are cash flowing that can grow over time.

>> What do you think your moat is? Is it

your brand? Is it your existing consumers? Like, how do you make sure

consumers? Like, how do you make sure that you're not, you know, subject to that?

>> I I think there are less moes these days than than than before. I mean, one of my favorite books is uh Seven Powers uh by Hamilton Hemler, and it just talks about there's seven modes really,

>> you know. network facts, economies of scale, you know, um so on. Um I I think that we have a technology lead in that

like we built all this technology for so many years. We built a hyperco

many years. We built a hyperco competitive amazing team that will continue to produce these technology uh advancements. Uh we launch a new

advancements. Uh we launch a new breakthrough version of agent every few months. Elon said this a long time ago.

months. Elon said this a long time ago.

the only mode is continued innovation, rapid progress. And I think that's true

rapid progress. And I think that's true in in AI today. I think at some point when you reach certain scales, there are certain decisions that you can make that really create structural modes.

>> We're not there yet, but I think you know I would say the big labs achieved economies of scale obviously, right? And

that's that's a mode for them now. It's

very competitive between like the five of them.

>> Um but I think it is a game that will play over time. So I just as CEO just constantly thinking about what are the degrees of freedom that we have in order to position our business in a way to create lasting advantage.

>> Your earlier question was like almost like the classic blit scaling question, right? And part of the reason why now

right? And part of the reason why now trying to remember how many years ago I wrote Blitzcaling, but it was kind of the lessons from Silicon Valley and China about how the technology companies of the future are built. If anything,

it's 5x 10x true as one I did. It's like

it's the trend of where it's going to going to. Now that doesn't mean that

going to. Now that doesn't mean that everyone has to go to you know amazing revenue 10x employee growth in like 6 months 12 months etc. The thing in blit scaling which you know Chris and I wrote

about was it depends a lot on what the nature of the market is what the nature of competition is etc. And if you're going up against blitzcalers it's very hard to succeed without also blit

scaling because the blit scaling will set the market. It may blow up, but we'll set the market. If it blows up, it'll probably blow you up with the market >> like the scooter market or Yeah.

>> Exactly. And it doesn't matter that you were kind of, you know, minding your operating margins and, you know, just it just gets swamped. And so, so you have to look at what's happening in the market. You have to look at what

market. You have to look at what happening with competition. There are

definitely opportunities where you can build more like, you know, like one of the ones from the Greylock portfolio is Roblox where like for many years it's kind of like Yeah. Yeah. out in the wilderness and then boom, all of a

sudden it's the amazing new thing and you can build towards that and that kind of phase can come. So you have to kind of make an evaluation of where you're at. Now if you're going kind of where

at. Now if you're going kind of where the zeitgeist is where everyone currently recognizes it, it better be moving pretty fast because everybody is recognizing it. And so so that's a

recognizing it. And so so that's a little bit of kind of the the the reason like with like with monis AI we can say hey we can actually take like some time to think about exactly and and build

iteratively to what the AI pieces are are for doing for the drug discovery because most of people don't realize what are the things you need to do and so you can take more time to build that you don't have to go you know like it's

basically do extreme uncertainty risks trying to capture a market. So there's a nuanced answer there, but but there's a number of markets where that speed and that speed to revenue scale, by the way, the speed to revenue scale is not just

revenue for you, not just what comes in as capital, it also comes into what happens with hiring employees and a bunch of other things. And there's a whole set of compounding things that get to that. So it's you you have to make a

to that. So it's you you have to make a kind of strategic decision. By the way, you may have to change your strategic decision as you're going. One thing on that is that what's interesting is once you hit an inflection point, inflection

point, then other people pay attention and now it's split scaling because they notice a revenue and they want to go after it.

>> Well, they see you being successful and all of a sudden that becomes the hot industry and so you have to change your stance.

>> And that's the other thing >> and that's what happened with us, right?

Like you know like you know replet agent was kind of the first by coding thing that anyone could use and suddenly every everyone poured into it. And this is one of the things that people don't understand about the blit scaling side,

which is >> it's not that you start blit scaling from day one and it's not that you blit scale forever.

>> By the way, if you don't end blit scaling at some point, I think that the seven powers I you know, >> great book, great call out >> um maintain I also think that the

configurations of how business models come together will still actually get to different kinds of modes. Now

>> we have speculation of what those modes are. Are the moes only scale? Now

are. Are the moes only scale? Now

>> are the modes brand? are the moes network effects, >> you know, are the MOE data now like and it'll be in different combinations of different things in terms of >> you have to be okay with the uncertainty of it in

>> and you're going to be iterating through it and you should be thinking about what those modes are and you can't go well we you know because Silicon Valley went for maybe even two decades and I was one of the architects of this you know gaga

over network effects as the mode and by the way network effects still very valuable >> but they're changing and the shape and how they establish and what happens and so forth. Then that's that's that that

so forth. Then that's that's that that reinvention like people tend to think oh the most central thing is you reinvent your product or service and by the way of course it's really important >> by the way it's also reinvent your go to market right

>> oh and by the way it's also reinvent your business model oh and by the way it's also reinvent what the modes are behind this and it's all of these kind of different things like Google search

doesn't have network effects from its search engine it has scale effects but it's adwords is where the network effect and then what it does is it buys distribution from Apple and other people

through that is the way that it kind and so how do these things kind of come together >> and actually sort of per our conversation in the car one of the things I've really appreciated is that your willingness to speak out about

things that matter in our society whether it's Gaza human rights etc and it can be difficult for people to speak out especially when they're CEOs of companies you're fighting for talent why do you think it's important for people

in the space specifically in technology to speak out about human rights and things like that.

>> I I don't do it because of this. I do it because of principles and because, you know, we also have a family history and I I understand what people uh in in Gaza are going through right now and I really

care about that. But I also think that um you know the the corporate world the market has has changed in that when you stand for something I think there's actually there there's an effect where

maybe you you might be certain people don't want to work with you or don't want to invest in you but there are other people that might be attracted to that right so I think the you know

people are no longer sort of attracted to these you know bland corporate brands and the faces behind these companies I mean thanks to LinkedIn and things

like that are becoming more important than the brands themselves and as humans we care about things and if you're if you just have no opinions and you're just no one has no opinions right and so

uh I think a lot of people come to work at replet because they know I care about these things and people want to invest in replet because they know we stand for certain things and and I think Silicon

Valley is no longer the underdog as well like Silicon Valley is now the mainream people look to us for leadership, but they also when we do certain things that are not conducive to society, they're

going to they're going to come and try to burn us at the stake. And so it's important for for us to kind of take that uh the role that we're playing seriously.

>> Yeah, I completely agree. And I think actually >> part of how you think of think of humanity first and that's part of the principles, >> you know, uh alleviate suffering, uh

economic enablement. Part of what I love

economic enablement. Part of what I love about replet is economic enablement across the entire world. Then society,

what's the organization on which we live together and then industry by the way industry is super important. I've, you

know, it's been my entire life.

>> But thinking about those even when you're a industry leader, >> you should not abandon the fact that you're also a humanist and you're also a member of society.

>> That's right. Absolutely. On that basis of frame, what are some of the really important things we should do as leaders in Silicon Valley and the tech industry

to make sure that technology is spreading compassion to one of the problems with some of the social networks is it's you know rage and engagement, click baiting and so but yet

that is not who we aspire to become as individuals in society. So

>> what do we do to grow empathy to grow compassion? what what what are some of

compassion? what what what are some of the ideas that you might have kicked around on this?

>> Well, one thing I try to do on our business is uh align our business model with something that allows us to be good in the world. Uh and so, you know,

Replet benefits when people's lives improves through, you know, the software that that they're building or they're create or the business they're creating or how they're improving their business.

And so I've always been really inspired by businesses that create like a game theoretic win-winwin situation, right?

Like when you think about platforms like you know Shopify is an amazing business where the company's winning, the entrepreneurs are winning and consumers are winning. Not every business is like

are winning. Not every business is like that. There's a lot of businesses where

that. There's a lot of businesses where consumers are losing or someone's getting exploited. But by the way, the

getting exploited. But by the way, the best businesses are the win-winwin businesses, right? Um so I think one of

businesses, right? Um so I think one of the you know speaking of modes and things like that one of the early strategic decisions that you can make is what is the business model

>> uh and try to try to actually kind of write down it's usually you know different constituents uh usually the company the users maybe the uh the

developers whatever kind of business that you have what situations or what business models allow you to create that that joint winning. So, now we're moving to our rapid fire. That doesn't mean you

have to answer rapid fire. There's this

questions we we ask all of our guests.

Um, is there a movie, song, or book that uh fills you with optimism for the future?

>> You know, a book that I think is is is amazing that it pulls together everything that I love. I really love learning about theory of consciousness, theory of mind, the philosophy of that.

I like computers and math and physics and all that. I like the human aspect of human stories. Um, I am a strange loop

human stories. Um, I am a strange loop by Douglas uh Hoffsadder is is an amazing book. It's partly about his a

amazing book. It's partly about his a book about his wife dying and their kids and and h how >> his personal story in that. It's also a book about him struggling with the

concept of soul and kind of trying to understand it in like more secular way and like mathematical way. It it goes through vignettes about like Girdle's incompleteness the theorem or what that

says about um about how consciousness is potentially like a loop and it's it's it's an amazing book that tells you that

like really everything is interconnected and we can't be technical or innovators without actually caring about all the other things that happens in our world.

>> What is a question that you wish people would ask you more often?

>> I mean this question is really fascinating. I mean, I I don't get to

fascinating. I mean, I I don't get to talk a lot about, you know, literary or philosophical uh in inspiration. So,

that that's a great one.

>> Yeah. Well, the strange loop is awesome.

So, where do you see progress or momentum outside of your industry, you know, tech, you know, kind of AI um vibe coding applications that inspires you?

You know, I this is very fresh on my mind, but I I took a uh demo, a tour of a of a plane, and I was so surprised

that they got to full automation. This

is a TBM 960, a turborop plane.

>> Um, and it everything's automated, including landing.

>> And there's not one neural network in it. M

it. M >> and so it it's surprising because like you know in Silicon Valley we think that we sort of tapped out on classical deterministic systems in terms of what

you can do in terms of automation but actually there are industries that are just slogging along. They don't just don't want to use neural networks is like too probabilistic to so that was really fascinating and it's like there's

there's a lot more to go even in the classical systems and the traditional technology that we have. So always our final question. Uh can you leave us with

final question. Uh can you leave us with a final thought on what you think is possible if everything goes humanity's way in the next 15 years and what's the first step to get there?

>> The thing I think a lot about and this is driven by my my history my family is that anyone who has ideas should potentially be wealthy. Anyone who has

ideas and can follow through and has the grits and has the moral upstanding and ha and can do the right things should be able I I think I think that's the true

promise of capitalism and I think you know it's very easy to imagine the world where it's like certain corporates that are controlling everything and the business models are not aligned with

humanity in such a way that it's like it's all based on spying on us and selling us the worst things that we desire. But instead in a world where uh

desire. But instead in a world where uh where the tools create the decentralized power ability to generate wealth for everyone in the world, the entire world

is sort of interconnected. I think

people waking up in the morning and feeling like tap dancing to work like Jeff Bezos.

>> Like most 99% of people don't tap dance to work, right? Like so including me like I love my job a lot but I hate email. Like why hasn't anyone solved

email. Like why hasn't anyone solved that, right? like the technology is

that, right? like the technology is there but like we you know the tools have not are not there just yet. So uh

rewarding work work that is more human allows us to to relate with one another more creatively and uh and less siloing and less politics at work but also the

ability for anyone generate ideas and build businesses. That's something I'd

build businesses. That's something I'd be really excited.

>> Amen.

>> Yeah. I'm a great pleasure. We could

have gone on for hours. Thanks for being here.

>> Thank you for having me. Possible is

produced by Pallet Media. It's hosted by Arya Finger and me, Reed Hoffman. Our

showrunner is Shan Young. Possible is

produced by Tanasi Doss, Katie Sanders, Spencer Stramore, Emozu, Trent Barbosa, and Todda Nemo.

>> Special thanks to Syria Yalamani, Seda Sabva, Ian Alice, Greg Biato, Parth Patil, and Ben Relis. And a big thanks to Ben Kaznoka and the Village Global

team, Philip Smith and Action House, Lorenzo Davis and Will Whitley at Static, and Caitlyn Norod and the team at Replet.