9:30AM **podcast**: This is a great perspective from non-technical founders on repl.it and their new AI features. [[My First Million - Amjad Masad]] But beyond that, it is a lesson in grit and determination - Amjad has been working on repl.it in various forms for 15 years! > Basically my entire adult life, I’m working on this, which is crazy… 2009 was the original idea, and I recognized that this idea had potential, so I continued to refine it. This is the first time I'd heard the term software *creators* which feels quite apt: > It used to be that the job was software engineer, and now it’s going to be software _creator._ It’s like I can be a creator of software without being a programmer myself. That little shift is a big shift... Replit is going to do for software creation what Shopify did for creating products. For the founders (this is after all, the My First Million podcast), it unlocks the need for a new set of skills in this world as Sam Parr says: > For guys like Shaan and me—or people like us who have an audience—the limiting factor used to be building a website or a web app, which you literally couldn’t do if you weren’t technical. But now, because of Replit and AI, the technology is there for everyone to do it. You don’t have to be super technical to launch new companies or products Above all, this is a story about high agency. There's a wonderful segment where they talk about Amjad's [post](https://amasad.me/story) which is based on Elon's [meme](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1656914397141278720?lang=en): > When you have a choice, and there’s no obvious answer, I ask myself, ‘What would make the most interesting story?’ If my life was a movie, what path would make it exciting? I wrote a post called ‘Do What Makes the Best Story,’ and that’s the guiding principle. ![[Pasted image 20250110094235.png]] --- **11:15AM podcast**: Wrote a new post based on the style that [Billy Oppenheimer](https://x.com/bpoppenheimer/status/1877397218363339187) uses. Days after being rejected by Y Combinator for the fourth time, Amjad Masad felt he had little chance of fitting the “traditional Silicon Valley mold.” He was an immigrant from Jordan, married, and without the Stanford credentials or splashy résumé many investors were seeking. He’d spent years hacking on a side project—an online programming environment—while working nights and weekends, with no promise of success or support. Yet, when he tried to pitch his vision to venture capitalists, many barely looked up from their phones; some even fell asleep. He could have quit there. Instead, he kept asking himself: **“What’s the more interesting story?”** After all, he’d poured so much love and obsession into building what eventually became Replit, a browser-based coding platform. It had started because he simply wanted to type code from an internet café in Jordan without losing an hour to setup. By the time he moved to the U.S., his knack for “pushing a huge rock up the mountain” led him to compile entire programming languages to run inside a web browser—something no one else had done. That doggedness finally paid off: Y Combinator relented. Amjad and his wife got a “late interview,” bungled the video by Rickrolling the YC partners, yet still got accepted. And once in, they sprinted for three months straight, evolving Replit from a scrappy code editor into a full-stack platform. When you watch someone like Amjad, you see a person who didn’t rely on conventional signals or status games. Instead, he leveraged his own driving force—his love for solving “obsessive problems,” no matter how frustrating. It’s the same spirit that led him to hack his university’s servers years ago: not to harm, but because he was so fixated on discovering “what’s possible.” ### **Takeaway 1: High Agency Means Crafting Your Own Path** In the face of rejections, Amjad kept applying to YC season after season. He **took responsibility** for his destiny, refusing to wait for a nod of approval to move forward. As he says, _“I felt like my life was on this trajectory… everything’s going to be great, even if it’s hard.”_ High-agency individuals keep building whether or not the world immediately validates them. ### **Takeaway 2: Return to the Source** Amjad’s “source” was simple: _“Why can’t I just open a browser, type code, and hit run?”_ This personal itch—stemming from a Jordanian internet café—fueled the **deep obsession** behind Replit. Instead of chasing trends or chasing prestige, he held tight to what he found urgent and real in his own life. ### **Takeaway 3: The Work Is Its Own Reward** Like an autotelic who just loves picking up the racket, Amjad never truly stopped tinkering. He worked on Replit for years—even when it was just an obscure side project with minimal payoff—because it fascinated him. By the time AI swept in, he was ready. _“I’ve been working on this my entire adult life,”_ he says. So, for those focusing on the outcome (funding, valuations, accolades), Replit’s founder is a reminder: **do it for the sake of doing it**—and let the rest unfold. --- **podcast**: dumping transcript here for now. Will share notes later. Super interesting though: [[Transcriptions/Dwarkesh - Tyler Cowen]]