00:38:28 · Amjad Masad, Aditya Agarwal, Haya Odeh
[00:38:28] S0: That's fantastic, what do you think? [00:38:32] S2: You say, and you Beat that, okay. Shit. [00:38:39] S1: I met Amjad at work. At the beginning it was like a lot of conflicts, but at work, because I'm a designer, he's an engineer. But then later on when he asked me for the logo, I like the guy, so I did the logo for him for free. But then fast forward, I mean, for real, long time for free. But the point is I kept enjoying doing work with Amjad, games, designing with him, and like problem solving. And part of my journey of finding Replit, because I wanted to find a job, I couldn't find a job. I mean, I immigrated to The United States without having an opportunity that lasted for so many years. So I had to find a side project, and that happened to be Replit, and Amjad helped me in building Replit, and that my side project became the company. Like I didn't know that I was creating a product. So we always worked together, and then when it was time to create the company together, we were ready. It was a hard decision, but we were already been working and designing. And to his experience in Codecademy as an entrepreneur, I never understood what they're doing. He spends nights, weekends, like, what are you guys are doing? Drugs. It was stuff like, why are you sleeping at work? And I only understood when we created Replit together. I feel that it brought our relationship closer. And I like to do things with my family. I like to be with them at every single minute. I feel like life is too short. So anyway, that's getting
00:38:39 · Haya Odeh, Aditya Agarwal
[00:38:39] S1: I met Amjad at work. At the beginning it was like a lot of conflicts, but at work, because I'm a designer, he's an engineer. But then later on when he asked me for the logo, I like the guy, so I did the logo for him for free. But then fast forward, I mean, for real, long time for free. But the point is I kept enjoying doing work with Amjad, games, designing with him, and like problem solving. And part of my journey of finding Replit, because I wanted to find a job, I couldn't find a job. I mean, I immigrated to The United States without having an opportunity that lasted for so many years. So I had to find a side project, and that happened to be Replit, and Amjad helped me in building Replit, and that my side project became the company. Like I didn't know that I was creating a product. So we always worked together, and then when it was time to create the company together, we were ready. It was a hard decision, but we were already been working and designing. And to his experience in Codecademy as an entrepreneur, I never understood what they're doing. He spends nights, weekends, like, what are you guys are doing? Drugs. It was stuff like, why are you sleeping at work? And I only understood when we created Replit together. I feel that it brought our relationship closer. And I like to do things with my family. I like to be with them at every single minute. I feel like life is too short. So anyway, that's getting [00:40:25] S2: I mean, I actually think you have covered a lot of what
00:40:25 · Aditya Agarwal, Amjad Masad, Ruchi Sanghvi
[00:40:25] S2: I mean, I actually think you have covered a lot of what [00:40:28] S0: I gave in my longer answer. My son, our son, Shams, recently, six years old, came up to me. He's like, you should hire more students. I was like, Who are you? [00:40:41] S2: He wants to work at Replit? He wants to work at Replit. [00:40:45] S0: You should hire more students. And he wears the Replit logo everywhere he He it. And my younger brother also works at Replit, he's a engineer. But look, Haya talked about all the good things. The challenging thing is other people, like other people's experiences of you, right? Like, I think that, are they gonna be comfortable giving her feedback about me or giving me feedback about her? How do you create this comfort level? How do you not make it awkward, like in meetings and things like that? And that's the thing to make sure that it's something to work on. The other thing is you want to make sure that the company is meritocratic. So anyone can get fired, right? And at some point I did fire my brother, I brought him back, but he's working really hard now, so he's good. Yeah, I [00:41:41] S3: mean Seek the pain. Yes. [00:41:43] S2: But [00:41:45] S0: the problem with family, there's a lot of good things about family business, but part of the problem is like, a lot of us come from countries where nepotism is like a big problem. You need to be aware of that. Like you shouldn't approach this with a nepotistic mindset. It should actually be meritocratic. Everyone should be putting their best.
00:41:45 · Amjad Masad, Aditya Agarwal, Haya Odeh
[00:41:45] S0: the problem with family, there's a lot of good things about family business, but part of the problem is like, a lot of us come from countries where nepotism is like a big problem. You need to be aware of that. Like you shouldn't approach this with a nepotistic mindset. It should actually be meritocratic. Everyone should be putting their best. [00:42:04] S2: It's a great answer. I I don't have much more to add based on what Haya said. But I often tell people is that my work is really important to me. And I think that it would be very hard to explain the insanity of being an entrepreneur to somebody who wasn't actually living it. It's actually very hard to kind of be like, hey, I'm crazy, I want you to understand me, right? So the fact that I have a life and kind of a work partner who deeply understands that insanity, I think is actually just a really good thing. [00:42:34] S1: Yeah, I just wanna add something from my experience in building Replit, to watch out for power hungry people that can get like in, make you feel skeptical of what you're doing or questioning what you're doing. So it's finding like other people who are doing similar work like you and seeking advice like, hey, I'm noticing this, this, that. Am I crazy or am I not crazy? So advice there, this is something that we experienced, that we seek advice, and it was super valuable.
00:42:34 · Haya Odeh, Ruchi Sanghvi
[00:42:34] S1: Yeah, I just wanna add something from my experience in building Replit, to watch out for power hungry people that can get like in, make you feel skeptical of what you're doing or questioning what you're doing. So it's finding like other people who are doing similar work like you and seeking advice like, hey, I'm noticing this, this, that. Am I crazy or am I not crazy? So advice there, this is something that we experienced, that we seek advice, and it was super valuable. [00:43:08] S3: So one of the things that I'm paranoid about is that I cannot keep up with the pace of information. So I'm curious, what is your information regimen? How do you keep up with the pace of everything that's changing, especially with AI, and also run a company at the same time?
00:43:08 · Ruchi Sanghvi, Amjad Masad
[00:43:08] S3: So one of the things that I'm paranoid about is that I cannot keep up with the pace of information. So I'm curious, what is your information regimen? How do you keep up with the pace of everything that's changing, especially with AI, and also run a company at the same time? [00:43:23] S0: It's hard. Look, I think that you need to have certain predictions or a working model about the world such that things should not be massively surprising. If they are surprising, you need to update your priors. So you need to have a model of a world such that if you're off of Twitter for a day or two or a week or two, it's not a big deal because you sort of understand where things are headed. And I constantly am trying to figure out where things are headed. I'll make predictions. I'll often make predictions publicly. And I think it's just like a skill to hone. So if you understand and try to understand the models and how they work and try to read some research papers when they come out. Again, it's a kind of buzzword, but if you have more first principles understanding of things, you don't have to be on top of That's actually the