[HN Gopher] After nine years of grinding, Replit found its marke...
___________________________________________________________________
After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep
it?
Author : toomanyrichies
Score : 153 points
Date : 2025-10-05 23:02 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| sincerely wrote:
| >Rather than becoming defensive, Masad and his team owned the
| problem. In fact, says Masad, within two days, they rolled out an
| automatic safety system that separates a user's "practice"
| database from their "real" one. The way Masad describes it, it's
| a little like having two versions of a website's filing cabinet
| -- the AI agent can experiment freely in a development database,
| but the production database, which is the real thing that users
| interact with, is completely walled off.
|
| I gotta wonder who the median techcrunch reader is if the
| writer/editor felt it necessary to explain the point of having a
| staging and prod environment, and with such a pointless analogy.
| We surely cannot understand what a database is unless we're told
| it's like a filing cabinet, right?
| jychang wrote:
| You don't write for your median reader, you write for the vast
| majority of your readers.
|
| That's a basic concept of writing. Journalism should be
| accessible, so even if you know what a database is and how to
| deploy it in different envs, you shouldn't write assuming that.
| If a large portion of your readers don't know what you're
| saying, you've failed as a writer. If your readership includes
| high school students, you write with that as the baseline.
|
| Richard Feynman certainly didn't write as if he assumed the
| reader knew particle physics. Be like Richard Feynman.
| kortilla wrote:
| Richard Feynman didn't use poor analogies.
| chirau wrote:
| 'Poor' is subjective. Some might even use it to describe
| your comment.
| mcherm wrote:
| Chuck Norris doesn't even NEED analogies. He explains the
| original problem so hard that you understand it without
| reference to a similar but more familiar situation.
|
| Chuck Norris would probably have mentioned "dev" and
| "production" and never needed to discuss furniture used for
| stacking open-faced envelopes for holding papers.
| reactordev wrote:
| Chuck Norris doesn't use AI, AI uses Chuck Norris.
| mejutoco wrote:
| If the median has half the users over it and half under it,
| wouldn't writing for most of your readers be very close to
| writing for the median? If we are aiming for 51% (most
| readers). Most readers is somewhere between 50% and under
| 100%.
|
| I appreciate the idea, but I think there are always
| assumptions. Like you did not explain what the median is
| because this is hn. I like the standars of the economist,
| always saying what an acronym is on first usage, and what a
| company is (Google, a search company). What they dont do is
| say: Google, like a box where you enter what you want to find
| and points you to other boxes. That would be condescending
| for its readers I believe. It is a matter of taste, and not
| objective, I guess.
| IanCal wrote:
| That would be writing for most users but _barely_. I think
| there's a fair reason they said "vast majority" instead.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I don't think "vast majority" has a rigid definition, but
| I'd put it closer to 95% than 51%.
|
| For example, in the senate passing with 51 votes is a
| "simple majority".
| mejutoco wrote:
| I am not sure the post said "vast majority" originally,
| to be fair. Is there a way to check?
| rkomorn wrote:
| This is all highly personal, so just banter'ing, but:
|
| I agree there's no clear definition but 95% is even
| beyond "overwhelming majority" to me (with overwhelming
| being greater than vast). I'd call that "near totality".
|
| Maybe, at least for US contexts, "vast" should line up
| with "filibuster-proof"? Eg 60-65%? 75% at most.
|
| Of course, then that doesn't tell me anything about what
| it should mean in other contexts.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| I think you're unaware of how vast vast is!
|
| Personally, I feel vast is used to refer to things that
| 'appear limitless' e.g. vast desert, or when describing
| easily bound things - like percentages - to be almost
| complete.
|
| Looking around it seems there is some debate on this, but
| it tends to end up suggesting the higher numbers:
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vast_majority - puts vast
| as 75-99%
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39222264 - puts vast
| as greater than 75% (I can't tell if the top comment is a
| joke or there really is some form of ANSI guidance on
| this).
|
| But to find a more compelling source I've taken a look at
| the UK's Office for National Statistic's use of the term.
| While they don't seem to have guidance in their service
| manual (https://service-manual.ons.gov.uk/) a quick term
| limited search of actual ONS publications show:
|
| * https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/bir
| thsde...
|
| - "The vast majority (99.1%) of married couples were of
| the opposite sex"
|
| - "In this bulletin, we cover families living in
| households, which covers the vast majority of families. "
| - this is high 90's by a quick google elsewhere.
|
| * https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/hou
| sing/...
|
| - "The vast majority of households across England and
| Wales reported that they had central heating in 2021
| (98.5%, 24.4 million)."
|
| * https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/bir
| thsde...
|
| - "The vast majority (93.0%) lived in care homes."
|
| This seems to put vast in the 90%+ category. There is
| certainly more analysis that can be done here though, as
| I have only sampled and haven't looked at the vast
| majority of publications.
|
| (this was fun, I don't mean to come over as pedantic)
| rkomorn wrote:
| I think your username checks out. :D
|
| Apparently I underestimated vastness.
| egl2020 wrote:
| Write for your median reader, and the bottom half will stop
| reading you. Problem solved.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I'm not sure if any of my coworkers has ever properly used a
| filing cabinet
| siffin wrote:
| Spreadsheet would have been the better analogy.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Which wouldn't be an analogy, because spreadsheet
| programs can be considered and often are a database.
| sooperserieous wrote:
| > Be like Richard Feynman
|
| Oh the things he did to filing cabinets, especially "secure"
| ones...
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Ironically, especially when you combine it with the em-dash, it
| really sounds like exactly the type of completely pointless and
| unilluminating analogy that LLMs love to generate. These
| analogies are essentially a bridge between two concepts, much
| like how a physical bridge connects two pieces of land
| separated by water, except in this case the 'water' is
| understanding and the bridge doesn't actually help you cross
| it.
| verandaguy wrote:
| Well done
| notarobot123 wrote:
| To be fair, this was an indirect quote from a founder trying to
| make programming accessible to "white-collar employees with no
| technical background".
|
| The bigger question here is why prod/staging wasn't an obvious
| design choice in the first place!
| petre wrote:
| Maybe it diverted too many resources from the original goal.
| They fixed the issue afterwards and made a fuss about it.
| unmole wrote:
| > median techcrunch reader
|
| Is probably a consumer tech enthusiast and not a software
| developer.
| layer8 wrote:
| They are merely quoting the analogy from Masad -- for whom it
| makes sense if they are targeting nontechnical users and not
| professional developers anymore.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| It's kind of a beautiful turn of phrase, in that the filing
| cabinet is entirely superfluous, you can use almost any noun.
| "it's a little like having two versions of a website's sub
| sandwich -- the AI agent can experiment freely with a
| development sandwich, but the production sandwich, which is the
| real thing that users interact with, is completely walled off".
|
| "When you click a button on our website, a request is sent
| across the internet to our servers, it's a little like if a
| sockeye salmon was sent across the internet to our servers."
| dvrj101 wrote:
| > Masad and his team owned the problem. he fired half of his
| team so it really wasn't an option for rest of them team.
| 0xsn3k wrote:
| personally, the evolution of replit makes me sad. i remember
| writing some of my very first ever programs in python using
| replit in middle school, as it wasn't blocked by the school
| network and it was the best way of running arbitrary code online
| back then. i used it to execute java code for AP computer science
| in high school, and i improved a ton at using the terminal as
| well. At some point, I stopped using the replit web editor and
| was coding by full-screening the built-in terminal and using vim.
| it was a formative experience and really helped me develop as a
| programmer even though all i had access to was a locked-down
| chromebook. but now, going back to the website and seeing the
| first thing it shows to you is how you can "build apps using AI",
| not even being able to even create an environment to run some
| python code without talking to an LLM, and the company focusing
| on ARR and becoming "AI-native" and creating value and all that
| jazz, and it feels like the magic of learning to code for the
| first time has been lost. luckily, kids these days are spoiled
| with webassembly and can run pretty much whatever they want in
| the browser, so i'm sure the next generation of young programmers
| will be alright
| brazukadev wrote:
| You should be grateful and happy for the people that helped you
| in your journey, they made it! You know, apps are not AI (yet),
| what you used for free was built by someone that deserves the
| success.
| reactordev wrote:
| But that's true of everything we use. Someone made that fork
| you use. That plate. The shoes you wear. Same for an app. You
| don't deserve anything. If you make something, and release it
| into the world, you have a responsibility. Not a reward. A
| reward may come. People may pay you for your services or your
| novelty but in no way shape or form are you deserving of it.
| Deserving of something is a 3rd person observation. You can
| not demand that you deserve anything.
| brazukadev wrote:
| > But that's true of everything we use. Someone made that
| fork you use
|
| I paid a fair price for my forks and plates and shoes, I
| don't need to be grateful for that. Using a platform for
| free and then complaining that now they focus on making
| money is not the same.
|
| > Deserving of something is a 3rd person observation. You
| can not demand that you deserve anything.
|
| I'm not OP nor Replit owner.
| majormajor wrote:
| >I paid a fair price for my forks and plates and shoes, I
| don't need to be grateful for that. Using a platform for
| free and then complaining that now they focus on making
| money is not the same.
|
| They were focused on making money back then too. Nobody's
| complaining that they were trying to make money!
|
| If someone is grateful that the old product existed at
| the time, because it helped them, it's completely
| understandable and valid that they'd be sad that _it no
| longer exists to help other people_. What there is now
| has a hundred almost-the-same alternatives[0]; it sounds
| like what they used to be was unique.
|
| [0] the article quotes a claim about "the first agent-
| based coding experience in the world" "last fall" but
| that seems to ignore not-as-successful earlier things
| like AutoGPT that had code agent projects by early 2024
| if not before, with initial "agent" behavior in 2023.
| csixty4 wrote:
| I agree so much with this. I used Replit extensively to
| prototype things in different languages and share my work with
| my teammates, who could then suggest tweaks to my ideas. We
| never came close to the limits of the free tier, but I paid for
| it anyway because I loved the product.
|
| The magic is definitely gone.
| gcr wrote:
| FWIW you can still start from template environments by going
| to "Developer Frameworks," picking an example language, and
| clicking "Remix."
|
| It's not as nice as before though. I miss when free accounts
| could have unlimited projects.
| freetonik wrote:
| I've used Replit for educational materials when teaching
| beginners Python and JavaScript. They had a nice product called
| Teams for Education. It was even announced that it'll become
| fully free (the original blog post with the announcement was
| deleted from their website) [0], but soon after that the company
| had pivoted to AI and later discontinued the Teams for Education
| completely [1].
|
| I also used Replit's embedded widgets for occasional lessons, but
| they kept changing the UI and behavior, making it difficult to
| write consistent reliable documentation for beginners.
|
| I think by now it's clear that the product is not meant for
| educators, like it was originally, so that's ok.
|
| [0]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240924020257/https://blog.repl...
|
| [1]: https://blog.replit.com/update-on-teams-for-education
| vesterde wrote:
| Oh you brought back fond memories of using the very first
| education product Replit had. It was so good. I was teaching
| GCSE CS and having a blast giving kids python with turtle to
| play with. I would just give them some multicoloured octagon
| and more complex shape, and they had to draw it with turtle.
|
| They enjoyed it, I enjoyed it, and the teacher UX was great.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Libre Office has a Logo implementation built in. You can have
| turtles whizzing around your documents and spreadsheets.
| jackblemming wrote:
| Sounds like these guys kind of flailed around for almost a decade
| and then jumped on the AI bandwagon. Nothing wrong with that, I'm
| just surprised someone decided to bankroll them for so long. Also
| not sure how successful they'll be long term, since they're
| presumably a wrapper around one of the big three in a highly
| competitive space.
| mcherm wrote:
| > I'm just surprised someone decided to bankroll them for so
| long.
|
| When you are PROFITABLE (but not as profitable as your
| investors would like) you can run FOREVER without anyone
| "bankrolling" you. It's a foreign concept in the AI world (and
| sometimes it feels like it's foreign to the tech startup world)
| but quite effective.
| maxbond wrote:
| Even if you are profitable your investors could pressure you
| to exit to some other company so that they can recoup their
| investment. But I doubt they were profitable. Going by the
| article they had about 100 employees and about $2M in revenue
| before they downsized. Assuming a median salary of $100k that
| would put their payroll alone at $10M. But the napkin math is
| kinda beside the point because they did keep raising money
| [1].
|
| [1] https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/113831-02
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Maybe $100k gets you one fresh grad in Bay Area but outside
| of OECD countries it may get you several middle engineers.
| I bet most startups outsource their development after the
| first few core developers.
| maxbond wrote:
| What do you think would be a better estimate for average
| salary if we assume heavy offshoring?
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Depends from country to country. I live in India so I can
| chip in on the situation I suppose and give my/(India's?)
| perspective on this.
|
| So firstly, it would depend if they are doing remote-
| job/offshoring directly to a dev or if they are
| contacting a consultancy instead.
|
| A consultancy can seriously bloat the amount of cost but
| usually non tech are the ones going to a consultancy but
| in a consultancy very few (like 5%-10%) goes to the
| actual workers and they are paid from a fresh dev very
| low amount of money and I would be going on the high end
| if I said that they paid something like 16k usd for a
| complete junior and 40k usd would actually put you at a
| seriously senior level
|
| Though even the 16k can make a very decent living in
| India.
|
| My brother works at a company (he freelances as well but
| parents want security so doesn't do it full time) and he
| earns around 16k usd from the company but 4x the amount
| of money through freelancing directly
|
| My cousin works at a company and he's working for 4 years
| now and he could be considered as maybe senior in just a
| few years and his salary is 30k USD
|
| my brother actually works at one such consultancy and he
| mentions that most of the companies are actually non-tech
| which go to consultancies so I am assuming that since
| replit is a tech company they are doing remote-job
|
| Now I know that my brother has been approached by
| companies to do full time but its just risky to work in a
| startup with the current hiring freeze and he manages to
| do both somehow I would consider that something like
| 40-60k (60k as an higher end for a great developer), as
| always things can even reach 70k sometimes but I am
| talking on a more average basis of sorts.
|
| Off topic but as someone genuinely interested in this
| craft, (well I am not sure about coding itself, I have
| coded but I like golang and sys-admin right now, I want
| to do so much in this software craft and sometimes I am
| overwhelmed but its so exciting but I genuinely like
| tinkering/using linux and making software like
| alternative frontends for some website which blocked me
| (doubtnut -> doubt.nanotimestamps.org for my own usecase,
| I code / use LLM's to solve problems I am facing right
| now or I am curious about and also recently built a
| custom liveiso for cachy)
|
| Gotta go hand copy some papers oof. Have a nice day!
| brabel wrote:
| You can get to 70k USD in India?? That's approaching
| European salaries for a Senior Dev. Lots of Indians seem
| to come to Europe for far lower salaries.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| well I was saying if you are working for 10 years sure.
|
| I can only speak for my brother's company in that sense
| that if he works there for many years, their chain of
| ranking would make him a partner in the company (sort of
| like how layer firms get) and then he would get a flat
| huge commission on every project he takes and there are
| some 10 lakhs inr or 12 grand usd as an example and so
| like it isn't hard to get some really juicy money later
| down the pipeline.
|
| Though like what I am saying 70k is for like genuinely
| the most top like 0.0001% or almost never unless for the
| extremely top official with shit ton of experience like
| 10-15-20 years
|
| On the other hand, its rather comparatively easy to take
| a remote job from US and do it from india to get the same
| 70k which I have seen a hella lot more people do/ is the
| more practical approach for many.
|
| I don't know but internally speaking 12 grand a year and
| even 60 grand seems small but its shit boat ton of money
| but still my mind compared it to the 120k salary guys of
| the beautiful united states and maybe that's why I
| overinflated some numbers.
|
| if you have any questions, feel free to ask, I can uh
| refer to you to my brother if you have any doubts since I
| am currently in high school.
| josefrichter wrote:
| I don't think they can keep it. What they have has already been
| replicated by the big guys, with just maybe a few months delay.
| It seems like they're usually going in the right direction, even
| ahead of others, but it's usually not any massive breakthrough,
| they're just being good at executing quickly the natural next
| steps.
| Perenti wrote:
| I've seen bots promoting Replit on Steam forums of indie games.
|
| If this is the way they are marketing their product, I don't see
| it as having a future. What I've seen in the Dwarf Fortress
| forums alone makes me want to avoid the company with a 10' pole.
| nurettin wrote:
| Let us not forget how replit tried to cancel Riju (an open
| source project from one of the early devs which does something
| similar)
|
| Edit: looks like they succeeded or the author moved on
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://radian.statuspage.io/
|
| It's still up, it only supports IPv6 so that may be why you
| can't get to it.
| JimmyAustin wrote:
| Hey, Replit employee here. I'm pretty sure this isn't us
| (definitely isn't our marketing team's MO AFAIK). Can you email
| me some examples at james @ replit dot com so I can look into
| this?
| Kiro wrote:
| I find exactly one post about Replit in the DF Steam forums and
| it's definitely not from a bot account. Players who have just
| discovered vibe coding love to tell devs "just" to use
| something like they've been enlightened.
| speff wrote:
| I found two, but it looks like the topic was deleted. Kagi
| had it partially cached as a search result[0]. The first
| thread in that list seems a bit more ...pushy than the second
| thread. Though I think you're still right - was probably just
| a new coder who was excited about what they found.
|
| [0]: https://files.catbox.moe/oepmri.png
| rsp1984 wrote:
| Let's not forget this gem here [1].
|
| Tells you everything you need to know about the company and its
| leadership.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195
| jeswin wrote:
| He threatened the ex-intern by saying they have "a lot of money
| to pay for top lawyers" (goodness!), the incident gathered a
| lot of attention, got caught, and was forced to say sorry.
|
| Replit is in the news because of the Vercel fiasco. And it's
| jarring because of how they've tried to take advantage of that
| situation.
| redwood wrote:
| Vercel fiasco?
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| The CEO thought it a good idea to take a beaming selfie
| with Netenyahu and then post it to X
| redwood wrote:
| Got it. I was going to say it sounds like less than a
| fiasco but I see this is in context of someone
| criticizing the Replit CEO for a specific action so now I
| get it. Apologies for being dense. It's a reminder that
| people leading companies are just people. And if we have
| a purity test on everyone we better be prepared to have a
| purity test on ourselves. And not just in our own eyes
| but in the eyes of everyone else. And that's where it
| quickly falls apart.
| hu3 wrote:
| Sad to see https://riju.codes offline. Cant resolve DNS.
|
| Last push to main was 2 months ago so there's hope:
| https://github.com/radian-software/riju
| jlundberg wrote:
| Seeing it as offline could be related to this:
|
| "Please note that Riju is only available on IPv6-enabled
| networks due to the higher financial cost of supporting
| legacy protocols."
| hmokiguess wrote:
| Definitely that, I read this on a mobile 5G connection and
| was able to access it just fine
| hu3 wrote:
| Can confirm. It's up for me on mobile too.
| pengfeituan wrote:
| They are working at a too competitive area. Techs changed, and
| everything should re-start from scratch. Nine years may mean
| nothing at all.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| What, college students with credits who haven't figured out
| docker yet?
| cloudking wrote:
| I took it for a spin spin to build a simple task manager. It
| worked for 45 minutes, built half the solution and then asked me
| for money. Compared to the other options in this space, it seems
| like an expensive solution.
| markdown wrote:
| What other options?
| _heimdall wrote:
| An entry level programming book? Building a basic task
| manager is a pretty straight forward task, it doesn't take
| much coding knowledge to do and is one that is often used as
| an example to teach programming.
| ctkhn wrote:
| If OpenAI and Anthropic's models are good enough at coding to
| make coding agents useful for non-technical employees Replit is
| targeting, why can't either of those companies use their AI to
| build a wrapper around their product as good or better than
| Replit? Has this guy never taken n -> infinity in a problem
| before?
| sillyfluke wrote:
| OpenAI taking an interest wouldn't be so bad for Replit. Since
| YC boasts that being incestuous is an upside of YC, ie selling
| your product to other YC companies, it is possible that OpenAI
| does the decent thing an outright buys Replit. It is rather
| likely that Altman and Masad have some sort of relationship
| going back to their YC days.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Replit has a lot of "value" that's actually dead weight
| that's going to fall by the wayside as AI gets better and
| humans move out of the loop. Cursor and the IDE agent
| companies have the same problem. They need to cannibalize
| their products to build for the fully autonomous engineering
| future, but I'm 95% certain that they won't, and the business
| that DO focus on full automation and moving the human out of
| the loop will eat their lunch.
| kubb wrote:
| The funding round is all that matters. Now he can pay himself
| 15 million per year plus a severance package and he's made it.
| ares623 wrote:
| Bingo. Us plebs are busy thinking about long term plans.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Is miss repl.it for what it used to be, just a quick way to play
| with a bit of code.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| We used to use it for coding interviews during COVID. It never
| struck me as anything special and I'm not convinced saddling it
| with AI improvements it's prospects. In fact it might make them
| worse given it's general applicability to learning which will
| surely be surpressed by the worries of an AI takeover.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Same, but that doesn't justify half a billion dollars in
| investment.
| system2 wrote:
| I don't understand the appeal of Replit. Claude and other agents
| do what they do for much cheaper and efficiently. Is it for
| newcomers who don't know anything about software development, nd
| Replit fills the gap with basic user instructions and structure?
| Why is it even a thing while real agents are there?
| gcr wrote:
| Replit's original value proposition was on-demand sandboxed
| environments.
|
| With Claude, it's like you're handing YOUR laptop's terminal to
| an intern. With Replit, you can mess things up without
| consequences, which is a great help for newbies.
| system2 wrote:
| WSL + local Git? Don't people use it to sandbox their
| applications and create necessary branches without losing
| their minds?
| fredfsh wrote:
| > But the technical achievement wasn't translating into revenue
| growth, and by last year, with the company at 130 employees and
| burning through cash, Masad said he had to make a painful
| decision. "I looked at our burn, and I looked at our progress on
| our revenue chart, and it just didn't make any sense. The
| business wasn't viable." Replit cut its headcount by 50%,
| bringing it down to around 60 to 70 people at its lowest point.
|
| > Plus, Replit has another unusual advantage for a startup: a
| $350 million war chest. Despite raising $100 million in 2023, the
| company "hadn't touched" those funds by the time it raised this
| latest round, Masad told me. The company is capital efficient by
| design, though Masad joked that as an entrepreneur who grew up
| watching his refugee father struggle, "one thing I need to learn
| is to be less frugal and start spending money."
| tczMUFlmoNk wrote:
| Wow, so, connecting these dots:
|
| - reducing headcount by 50% down to ~70 people = firing 70
| people
|
| - at a _generous_ estimate of total burdened cost of $1M
| /person/year, that's $70M/year
|
| - which accounts for a _full 5 years_ of that war chest
|
| - and, moreover, "at its lowest point" suggests that perhaps
| Replit has expanded headcount again since; the article mentions
| that it has done some acqui-hires.
|
| Levels.fyi shows Replit salaries in the $200k-300k range, so
| even at a 2x burden rate, I think that this is probably a
| significant overestimate of the costs.
|
| Firing 70 people when you have $100 million that you haven't
| touched, have raised money on top of that, and have many years
| of runway for the people you fired... comes together to paint a
| picture that is, imho, less than flattering.
| justonceokay wrote:
| Ehh. I don't love it and it isn't good optics, but if you
| can't find a way to utilize your employeees (such as having a
| hard time finding a maeket fit for an existing product) then
| it isn't your moral obligation to keep paying them. It isn't
| clear what employees were laid off ir for what reason either.
| shash wrote:
| The original sin was probably hiring those people for a
| not-yet-clear business in the first place...
| mcny wrote:
| Yes, the people who did those hirings should probably be
| let go as well. But eventually, it is the CEO and the
| board who are responsible and they seem to never pay a
| price for their poor action / inaction.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Yes, let's forbid startups! /s
| shash wrote:
| Yeah, the point here is nuanced, but let's do an
| argumentum ad absurdum instead /s
|
| Probably the _best_ advice I got from the entire startup
| community is, "don't scale without PMF". The saving grace
| here is that they didn't scale beyond 140 people, so the
| damage is limited. And they didn't double down on
| something that would have dropped the whole thing down.
|
| But as a founder, I'd consider it a failure of planning
| on my part if I had to lay off 50% of my workforce (a
| failure nobody is immune to, but a failure nonetheless).
| lacker wrote:
| It is not a sin to hire people when you aren't 100%
| confident your business is going to succeed. That's just
| how startups work.
|
| Some people are not in a position in their life to take
| any risk of losing their job, and that's perfectly
| understandable, but those people should not take a job at
| a startup.
| ed wrote:
| A sustainable business can pay more employees than a failed
| startup. And pivoting with 150 employees is nearly
| impossible; all those people were hired for a different
| business.
| forgingahead wrote:
| Hilariously naive comment - "if you have money you should
| spend it on salaries". This is not a charity, it's a
| transaction, the salary is paid in exchange for revenue
| generating activities or supporting activities in a viable
| business. If the business is only doing 2.7mill in ARR, then
| it's entirely valid for the whole lot to get laid off.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not about being a charity, the entire point of
| startups is to trade capital for time to market. If the CEO
| doesn't know what to do with 130 people they don't know
| what to do with 70.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Its a business, not a charity. Just because they have money
| doesnt mean they should spend on people who arent contributing
| to the bottom line.
| SadTrombone wrote:
| What information do you have that they weren't contributing
| to the bottom line?
| cj wrote:
| The CEO saying "the business isn't viable" says a lot.
| abuani wrote:
| That sounds a lot like the CEO is throwing 50% of the
| company under the bus for his own failures to you know,
| make the business viable.
| victorbojica wrote:
| And would it be better that the whole 100% go under the
| bus for his own failures?
| Retric wrote:
| It's better for startup investors if it goes big or fails
| sooner. That's the entire purpose of investing 100's of
| millions into these companies.
|
| If the CEO has no idea how to do that they should shut
| down the company or stand aside and find a better CEO,
| not try and milk as much money from they can by keeping
| the company shambling along as long as possible.
| abuani wrote:
| Did I suggest that? I'm pointing out the blaring
| hypocrisy of a company sitting on $350M in cash that
| opted to double the size of their company without having
| a clear strategy to become profitable. Then after laying
| off half the company, the CEO publicly states it's
| because the laid off workers don't have the skills they
| need for "the new era". I would really like to see in
| these scenarios the CEO accept a tiny bit of
| responsibility for their failures to set strategy and
| over hire, instead of publicly shaming 70 people they
| chose to hire in the first place. That's a failure in
| leadership, not in employees.
| gruez wrote:
| >the CEO publicly states it's because the laid off
| workers don't have the skills they need for "the new
| era".
|
| Where did he say this?
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| If they thought they would make more money on net with the
| employees than without them, they wouldn't have laid them
| off?
| renewiltord wrote:
| 130 employees making <$3m in revenue seven years in means
| you have to do something else. The information we all have
| now is that the bottom line is not very much so whatever
| they were contributing to the bottom line can't be that
| much.
|
| You have to go find a different business when this happens.
| almostgotcaught wrote:
| What information do you have that they were contributing to
| the bottom line?
| kaashif wrote:
| $2.8m revenue with 130 employees is about $21,000 per
| employee.
|
| The numbers here don't look good.
| davikr wrote:
| personally, I hate the AI pivot. could barely find a way to make
| a project without the vibecoding option, recently
| bitwize wrote:
| Pivoting to AI made Repl.it worse but Warp.dev better.
| sporkxrocket wrote:
| Amjad is one of the only leaders in tech (along with Paul Graham)
| speaking out against Israel's apartheid and genocide. He also
| happens to be Palestinian. I will happily give him my money and
| invest in ethical platforms. Replit's a really good option for AI
| coding anyway!
| saltyoldman wrote:
| "Replit found its market"
|
| HN: It sucks now
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| maybe HN isn't the market then :p
| jjangkke wrote:
| probably not for many founders sharing their product on HN
|
| neither is reddit
| dilyevsky wrote:
| At the risk of stating the obvious, is it really that
| surprising people who frequent "hacker" forum don't
| appreciate a product pivot pitched specifically to non-
| coders?
| Cyclone_ wrote:
| I've used it for creating a template for an app. It usually
| creates a pretty accurate app with at least a basic UI and some
| interactions. The biggest issue is that once you've created the
| template, it's pretty tough to add some more complicated features
| using the AI.
| markdown wrote:
| This has been my experience also.
|
| You gotta give it detailed instructions for _everything_ at the
| start. You can 't just build as you go, because every time it
| adds something it breaks something else.
| joshdavham wrote:
| I've never used replit but I'm curious what types of choices
| the app makes when building. Like how does it decide on the
| architecture, backend language, frontend framework, etc? Even
| if the non-technical user is unaware of the tech choices
| being made, the AI still has to make such decisions. How does
| it decide?
| taejavu wrote:
| It just starts and makes it up as it goes.
| _heimdall wrote:
| One token at a time.
|
| If it has detailed context of exactly what the entire app
| will need to do before writing any code, the first tokens
| will be more likely to build an architecture that works
| well in a language and framework that is suited for it.
|
| If the initial context is thin on details, it will still
| pick an architecture, language, and framework _but_ it may
| not be the best fit for the end goal. After those choices
| are made that just becomes more context, and it likely
| would never consider whether the language is now wrong and
| the entire codebase should be started fresh with a new
| language or framework.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > because every time it adds something it breaks something
| else.
|
| standard ai workflow
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Easily prevented with good test coverage IME. Not sure how
| that works in Replit though.
| nextworddev wrote:
| I tried their pro version then cancelled after realizing it's
| worse than Claude Code
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Too much money for a business that really won't find a way to
| justify the investment. Could have been a terrific lifestyle
| business and become extremely successful.
| submeta wrote:
| There is no future for Replit considering how Anthropic, OpenAI
| and Google are moving into dev tools. And then there's Cursor and
| the likes.
|
| As an online IDE they would have had a chance. But when they
| pivoted into AI, they decided to enter a highly crowded place
| with very strong players.
|
| Recently OpenAI and now Anthropic are developing mobile clients
| as well:
|
| https://www.testingcatalog.com/anthropic-prepares-claude-cod...
| chrismustcode wrote:
| They were failing as an online IDE for several years then
| growth shot up after the AI pivot.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Cursor is in the same lifeboat being circled by sharks as
| Replit. What value does teaching noobs how to code or showing
| changes in an IDE have when the AI is smarter than humans and
| human in the loop just slows things down and makes them worse?
| vasco wrote:
| This guy is exactly like the get quick rich scheme guys.
|
| I believe he initially had a vision for the product but now the
| whole schpiel is quotes like "a kid made $180k on an app in 4
| weeks" like he was on and on about in podcasts.
|
| Ok if its so easy, why don't you use your own website to do a
| bunch of $180k / m apps? How many companies can have employees
| produce 12 different apps per year and a combined revenue of
| $2.1m per employee? Also everyone can do it so you can pay them
| minimum wage you don't need developers.
|
| But of course nobody is going to make any successful apps other
| than the people in the marketing materials.
| psnehanshu wrote:
| When I hear Replit, I remember how the CEO tried to kill an
| intern's pet project.
|
| https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| I am surprised the CEO does not understand the dynamic of his
| business. An open source project replicating your product is
| always a boost to the business. There is no case where that's
| not the case. The OSS is essentially the minatenance free free
| tier of the paid product.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I went to a YC event where the founder of a multi-billion
| dollar open source SaaS said pretty much the opposite and
| tried to drill home how strategic the choice needs to be for
| the company to survive.
| Aeolun wrote:
| This must be Gitlab?
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Nah, their moat is making the software as fiddly and ops
| heavy as possible. I really like gitlab but having set it
| up myself several times now, it's kinda a mess and
| they're not incentivized to make it decent.
| aidos wrote:
| To play devil's advocate - where do you draw the line? They say
| they're not going to push further into competing, but what if
| they did? I don't know enough about either platform to really
| comment on how much of a big it is / how much they crossover. I
| do feel that it shows somewhat bad judgement on behalf of the
| intern to build something in exactly the same space as a former
| employer. One of the great things about software is that you
| can always move into another domain with your skills.
|
| Obviously, I love the likes of Tailscale for embracing and
| supporting this behaviour - but that's super exceptional
| (because they're a strong team).
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Well the line is law: infringing copyrights and patents. And
| the US law is very specific about ideas not being
| copyrightable, so clones are usually safe.
| aidos wrote:
| Yeah that's fair - and to be clear, I'm not really
| defending the CEO in this case. As a founder, I was just
| imagining a scenario where one of our team did something
| similar and how I might react to it. My thoughts (and
| point) drifted a bit.
|
| Serves more as a reminder to the youngsters out there that
| potential future hirers will use things like this to inform
| hiring decisions. Legal or not, your history follows you
| around (I'm old enough to be lucky to not have the stupid
| stuff I did early in my career available online). Be free,
| go build stuff for fun but keep clear of your employers
| space.
| stefvw93 wrote:
| > [...] unlike many AI-powered coding companies, Replit is gross
| margin positive.
|
| Well, that's highly unusual. I recon it is because replit covers
| the whole production pipeline, from specification to
| implementation to deployment?
| JDazzle wrote:
| It's strange that their buzzwords are "to democratize
| programming"... isn't that already done very well with all the
| online free tools, documentation, tutorials, learning paths, etc?
|
| Both AI and traditional programming paths share the same initial
| huge obstacle which is full access to a computer and the
| internet?
|
| I'm not sure how AI is democratizing programming
| Mario970 wrote:
| You need to read between the lines: in boardroom speak, to
| "democratize" something usually means to dilute its rarity,
| usually to eliminate some party's bargaining power.
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