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Lightcone · 3 min · Nov 7, 2026

Replit's original deck proposed learning from coding sessions

Amjad Masad · Co-founder & CEO, Replit

Replit's 2015–16 deck proposed training a model on millions of coding sessions to make predictions.

In this episode

Full analysis
  1. 22:32Replit is replacing some $10 million software projects for $250,0006 min
  2. 1:53Replit automated the copy-paste loop between ChatGPT and codePro pick 4 min
  3. 14:44Replit’s infrastructure gave its agent a head start4 min
  4. 32:50Masad expects agent use to move work into the cloud3 min
  5. 40:13Masad uses exponential compute trends to predict what comes next4 min
  6. 6:18Replit's original deck proposed learning from coding sessions3 min
  7. 20:03Early users paid $1,000 instead of $100,000 for an app3 min
  8. 30:21Replit advances its strategy through customer-led increments3 min
“if you build a platform where there's like millions of people coding, you can like train a machine learning model that predicts.”
Amjad Masadat 6:31 · Lightcone
6:31

Takeaways

  1. The deck proposed a predictive model trained on coding activity.
  2. Masad says this was before the Transformer paper.
  3. He had been thinking about accessible programming since 2008.

About this segment

Replit's 2015–16 deck proposed training a model on millions of coding sessions to make predictions. Amjad Masad links the idea to a goal he had carried since wanting to code on his phone in 2008.

Amjad Masad

Amjad Masad is co-founder and CEO of Replit.

Co-founded and leads Replit, a browser-based coding platform letting anyone write and deploy code.

  • PG

    Paul Graham, Host

From “How To Build The Future: Paul Graham & Amjad Masad”, Nov 7, 2026. Watch the full episode

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 6:30

    you were one of the early people predicting AI, right? And like, were you predicting, you were essentially predicting Vibe Coding in something like 2015 or 17 or something. Yeah, 2015, 16, in our original deck, we talk about how if you build a platform where there's like millions of people coding, you can like train a machine learning model that predicts. I mean, that's crazy ahead of its time. Yeah.

  2. 6:53

    Right? This was before the Transformers paper. That was before Transformers. I'm starting to think that's not the visionary. That's just your nuts. If you're that early. Well, I think I've been fairly good at like predicting where the features was ahead of it. Well, you know, even when I was a kid, like I remember when I used my first Nokia phone, I was like, oh my God. people are just going to be this is like the new computer and it was like literally like a flip phone essentially and some of that experience kind of also um came to replet which is replet was the first programming platform that had a mobile app and everyone laughed at us uh the idea that programming on mobile programming on your phone but i had an rfc for it yes not an rfc in RFS.

  3. 7:44

    Well, you actually, you told me you would like fix bugs using the like Hacker News, like Lisprop on your phone. That's right. Yeah. Not voluntarily. It was just the only way we get internet access. But yes. This podcast is about building the future. I think that people underestimate their ability to potentially predict where the future is headed and build towards it. You just have to sit down and think.

  4. 8:13

    I don't think many people sit down and think. No, this is what experts think. Experts think, all I do is I just sit down and think and I have the ideas, right? And everybody else tries sitting down and thinking and they don't have the ideas. What's the secret? It's because you've been doing this idea for like 20 years. When did you first start thinking about making something like Replit where you could sort of program online?

  5. 8:35

    Well, it's like when I was like, I had my Symbian smartphone and I was in class and I was like, you know, I wish I could program. So how long ago was this? This was like 20, 2008. Okay. So almost 20 years ago. So this is why when you just sit down and think, you come up with the future, right? Because your whole brain has been thinking about this for 20 years. Right. Right? Obsessively. Yes. You've been trying to, you were trying to build Replit before it was called Replit for like, you know, years and years and years, right?

  6. 9:08

    This has always been the big thing. Right. So of course you thought of stuff before everybody else. So you knew back to that famous demo, right? In the summer of 2024.