This week on the StrictlyVC download, TechCrunch editor-in-chief Connie Loizos and StrictlyVc’s Alex Gove spoke to Amjad Masad, founder and CEO of Replit.
They discussed how, from hovering around $2.8 million ARR over the years of the replica to winning $150 million, and how controversial pivots from professional developers became possible. Masad explained why targeting non-technical users requires more computational power than actually serving experienced coders, and how he survived the disaster in the virus production database that his company temporarily threatened to derail everything.
They also fall into the challenge of “reward hacking” AI agents, why replicating multiple LLMs with each other, and building autonomous coding agents that can work for hours without human intervention. Furthermore, Masad shared his vision of creating 1 billion software developers and why he believes that solving difficult issues around safety and security will become a competitive moat for replicas.
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