Replit CEO Amjad Masad on Culture Building and Competitive Advantage in the Age of AI

Growing up in Amman, Jordan, Amjad Masad didn’t have a computer. He learned to program on borrowed computers, or at internet cafes. Setting up and switching coding environments was a pain, so he dreamed of building a platform where anyone can learn, build, collaborate and share on the go. 

That dream, which he pursued as a side project while he worked at Yahoo, Codecademy and Facebook, is now a reality. Replit is home to over 20 million developers who have built more than 240 million projects, many of whom are earning money and making a living.

Key to Replit’s growth and growing reputation is its ability to build and ship — fast. Not surprisingly, it is one of the pioneers in building with AI, with tools like Ghostwriter and a partnership with Google for AI software development.  

Earlier this month, Amjad spoke with Reach founders about Replit’s journey and how startups can navigate today’s rapidly changing AI landscape. This is the first part of that conversation, which looks at how Replit built and maintained its engineering culture, and where competitive advantages exist in an AI-driven world. Part 2 (forthcoming) will explore what the future of education and programming may hold.

On Replit’s master plan and its progress to date.

Amjad: In our 2016 pitch deck, we had our master plan which were three bullet points: The first was to grow the population of young coders, with educators and through schools. The second is to build a collaborative environment assisted by AI. With our network of developers and that wealth of data, we could build tools that no one else could build. And the third was to get to a point where you not only learn on the platform, but can also deploy and build a business entirely.

Our vision from the start has been to be a place where you can write your first line of code. You can earn your first dollar and you can build your first startup. That’s happening now. We’re seeing people go from our free courses to earning money on our platform. We have a small microeconomy that’s growing quickly, where people can make money by doing coding “bounty” projects outsourced by others. We’re seeing people make as much as $10,000 a month doing that and earning a living.

We are passionate about people being able to program as a means of living, and not just for the sake of learning. We pay creators across the world; U.S. and India are the majority, but increasingly Nigeria, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and many other places that are really coming online.

We’re seeing startups as well. We have a new deployment platform with a full hosting solution. From the last Y Combinator batch we’ve seen several startups built entirely on Replit.