Tue, Dec 5, 2023Company Spotlight: Techjays
Company Overview Techjays, a software development services company based in India and the US, specializes in helping startups and product companies evolve from idea to MVP. As a 100-person firm, Techjays primarily serves small to medium businesses offering IT services and consulting expertise. In the fast-paced world of technology, Techjays faced the challenge of rapidly prototyping and onboarding solutions for their clients. The traditional approach, which involved time-intensive Docker and Kubernetes setups, often delayed the sales process and hampered the efficiency of their development cycle, thereby affecting deal closures and client satisfaction.
Fri, Dec 1, 2023Advent of Code on Replit
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: Advent of Code! Advent of Code is a month-long programming challenge with a new daily puzzle you can solve in any programming language. For many, Advent of Code is an excuse to learn a new programming language or practice a familiar one. No matter what programming language you choose to tackle the puzzles in, Replit is the easiest way to run your code. Here’s your guide to using Replit for AoC. Why choose Replit for Advent of Code Replit requires no installation or setup to get started with any language. Just select the language template and start coding directly in your browser. It supports most languages, from Python to Haskell, and even esoteric ones like LOLCODE. Execute your code using the Run button, or the built-in Shell. When you’re finished writing your code, check the output of your program quickly in the Console. If you get stuck, you can use the Multiplayer feature to share your code with a friend and ask for help.
Wed, Nov 29, 2023Replit + Weights & Biases: Building a RAG Bot
Guest post by Weights & Biases Weights & Biases (W&B) provides AI developers with powerful tools to build better models faster and is used by almost every top LLM research lab today. To help support internal and external users, W&B built WandBot – a question-answering bot built on the robust llama-index library and the intelligence of OpenAI's GPT-4. By referencing documentation, wandb source code, and code examples, WandBot helps users onboard to W&B faster, and experienced users solve more advanced issues.
Tue, Nov 21, 2023Company Spotlight: Boosty Labs
Boosty Labs' 50+ developers adopts Replit Core to increase collaboration and productivity with AI Boosty Labs, a leading Ukrainian development studio with over 50 developers, has embraced Replit Core, increasing collaboration and productivity with AI. Vitalli Yatskiv, CTO of Boosty Labs, chose Replit for its fast environment setup and collaborative features: "Setting up a development environment on Replit is impressively quick, as Replit eliminates the tedium of dependency installation."
Mon, Nov 20, 2023Transitioning to Replit Core
Last week, we launched Replit Core - a singular membership plan that represents the end-to-end software builder experience. We heard a lot of excitement and questions, so we wanted to clarify Replit’s new membership model and what that means for Replit moving forward. We value our existing community that grew Replit to be the world's largest community of software builders, where anyone can create and learn how to go from idea to software. Along with last week's announcement, we wanted to honor your commitment to us by letting you keep your current monthly price. You will be upgraded to Replit Core for the remainder of your current subscription term. At this time, if you are on auto-renew, the next renewal will be at your current Hacker rate. In addition, members with a monthly Pro plan who would like to upgrade to Replit Core with our promotional pricing can now do so by visiting replit.com/pricing and selecting ‘Switch to yearly payment ($120)’. This will automatically cancel their current plan and switch them to the annual plan at the promotional rate. We’re on a mission to empower the next billion software creators and we’re excited about bringing the best of Replit under a unified membership plan. We firmly believe that $20 per month / $220 per year represents the best value in software development, and we aim to continue building on that value with your feedback in mind. For more information, check out the breakdown. Over the next few months, we will explore enhancements to the Replit workspace, AI, and Deployments improvements. We will pursue partnerships with other platforms to bring Replit members even more value. One of these perks is available today where Replit Core members enjoy a complimentary 4-month subscription to Perplexity Pro. Thanks for being a part of our builder journey as we continue to support yours.
Mon, Nov 20, 2023Builder Profile: Michael Jelly
Michael Jelly is a founder and software developer focusing on productivity apps. His journey as a builder began after a brief stint in corporate consultancy. Mike seized the opportunity during the pandemic to delve into coding, starting with JavaScript and Free Code Camp. “While learning to code, it was super frustrating to set up environments. I'd actually set up a Python environment on two different computers and every time found it super painful and later found out, oh, I had the wrong version.” As a founder, Michael has a knack for identifying bottlenecks in his and others’ productivity and independently developing tools to improve them. MagicFlow emerged from this fascination with personal productivity. Michael initially developed an app to analyze Facebook data, which, while not a commercial success, sparked his interest in data-driven insights. This led to the creation of MagicFlow, a time-tracking app designed to enhance productivity by minimizing context switching and maximizing deep work. “I think if you can accelerate the productivity of the world's most productive people, then you get better science, you get faster-growing startups, you get faster turnover of good ideas to become better.”
Fri, Nov 17, 2023Builder Profile: Steve Moraco
Steve Moraco is a professional photographer by trade. A few months ago, he built an app based on an iOS shortcut using drag-and-drop tools on his phone. As someone who only took a few programming classes over 10 years ago, he knew he needed help turning his next idea into an actual product people could use. As he puts it: "I don't think I would ever be able to complete a project like this without Replit. I started not knowing anything about web development or even git for that matter." Steve first started by using AI to build working apps in Replit and published his process as a free YouTube tutorial. Then, he learned about Replit’s native AI tools. Using Replit AI to generate code and Replit Deployments for hosting, Steve quickly built and launched DATA into a successful startup business. DATA is a digital assistant that you can text or email to delegate tasks. It uses a combination of large language models, text files for memory, and Apple Shortcuts. Recently, Steve also built a web interface hosted on Replit Deployments to let users interact with AI through text and voice commands. DATA allows anyone to use AI right on their phones the same way they interact with people: by just texting, calling, or emailing.
Thu, Nov 16, 2023Builder Profile: Marwan Elwaraki and Salwa Al-Alami
Meet Marwan and Salwa, the London-based couple behind Sweet Dreams, an app designed for diabetic patients and their families to manage health collaboratively. Marwan, an iOS developer, and Salwa, a product manager, encountered a challenge when Marwan's younger brother was diagnosed with diabetes. Because his brother lived in Qatar with the rest of his family, it was difficult for Marwan to stay updated on his brother’s blood sugar level. First-party apps available at the time did not meet Marwan's requirements for keeping an eye on his brother's health data effectively. This gap led them to create an application that would give both the patient and their family a larger insight into the health data, ensuring that critical alerts related to blood sugar levels were not missed. Marwan first heard about Replit through Twitter, and started to explore the platform. He also encouraged Salwa to use Replit to learn to code. Marwan quickly built an MVP of Sweet Dreams, beginning with a simple Telegram integration. After confirming his idea, he moved on to building a full iOS app. By using Replit’s import tool to install libraries quickly, he’s able to focus on the app's functionality, such as real-time blood sugar monitoring and custom notifications, vital features that could mean the difference between stability and an emergency for a patient with diabetes.
Wed, Nov 15, 2023Showcasing Startups on Replit
The fastest way to start, ship, and share The Replit platform isn't just a sandbox; it's a launchpad. There’s a lot to learn from startups building on Replit and how they leverage the platform to monetize and grow. Whether it’s a solo developer bootstrapping their startup on Bounties, or a startup launching their application on Replit Deployments, Replit is the best place to go from idea to software, fast. Here are a few companies building and shipping on Replit today. Pitches.ai For many startup founders, raising capital is a painful but essential part of their startup journey. Starting a pitch deck from a blank slate adds another daunting, time-consuming task to a long list of responsibilities. That’s why Keane Angle built Pitches.ai, a pitch deck editor that uses GPT-4 and hours of knowledge from 200+ pitch decks that raised $3B+ to help founders generate compelling pitches for investors and customers.
Wed, Nov 15, 2023Builder Profile: Andrew Davison
Andrew Davison is an entrepreneur and automation expert who uses Replit and AI to build tools that streamline his and his clients’ work. Andrew is a new coder with an abundance of ideas. He works with clients through his consulting agency, Luhhu, tends to a community of automation entrepreneurs, and is learning to code. He’s been able to turn his numerous ideas into products with the help of AI and Replit. “My journey into building was to ask ChatGPT how to build and launch an app and it suggested Replit, Python, Flask, and SQLite... and that's how my preferred tech stack was born!“ For someone so focused on optimization and automation, Replit has been an ideal tool for Andrew. For him, Replit has “removed the need for multiple tools to get started…everything is there and it's been super intuitive to use. I've been able to build small programs to automate some aspects of my business admin, as well as publishing full-blown apps from scratch.” One of Andrew’s earliest projects on Replit was Export My Base, a tool that connects to Airtable to export all the tables from a base in one go - a feature Airtable doesn’t currently offer, despite its utility for most users. With Export My Base, Andrew wanted a simple, but useful tool to get started. Andrew’s seemingly simple tool had a real audience, and with Replit he was able to take Export My Base “from idea, to build, to launch and now to sold, all within 2 months.” “I headed over to ChatGPT and started with ‘I'd like to build an app in Replit that connects to the Airtable API and downloads all tables from an Airtable’ and went from there. About 40 hours later…I had a working app which I was later able to sell.”
Tue, Nov 14, 2023Builder Profile: Priyaa Kalyanaraman and Purvanshi Mehta
Priyaa and Purvanshi are the co-founders of Lica, a content creation platform that lets anyone create videos with a single click. Priyaa is a former product manager at Microsoft, Snapchat, and Waymo who recently decided to become a full-time startup founder. At the Craft Ventures AI Hackathon in early 2023, Priyaa had a clear vision. She wanted to build a tool to make content creation and consumption fun and effortless, but couldn’t find anyone to join her team. She took this challenge in stride and participated as a solo hacker, with Replit and AI as her engineering team. In 48 hours, Priyaa created DocuTok, an app that makes boring documents fun, and won the $10,000 grand prize. Her development approach was methodical: writing specs, breaking the app down into executable units, and using Replit AI to write the code. Her project drew significant attention and laid the foundation for what would become Lica. However, Priyaa wasn’t convinced that DocuTok was the exact idea she wanted to build a business around. Before going all in on a startup, she wanted to explore more of her ideas to make it easy for anyone to express themselves. She used the momentum from the hackathon to build more, going from idea to software repeatedly, deploying many apps on Replit, and getting direct feedback from users.
Tue, Nov 14, 2023Announcing Replit Core - The Essential Membership for Builders
At Replit, we are on a mission to empower the next billion software creators. As we reflected on our mission and heard feedback from our community, we grew confident in our pursuit to create an end-to-end experience that represents the best developer tool membership in the market to go from idea to software, fast. Today, we’re excited to announce Replit Core, a singular plan that we aim to continue investing in for years to come. With Replit Core, you get: Access to advanced Replit AI features Save time and code faster with Replit's industry-leading AI coding assistant, currently powered by GPT-4. Debug code, get intelligent autocomplete suggestions, and convert natural language to code with one click.
Mon, Nov 6, 2023Prioritizing Employee Liquidity at Replit
Early in my career, a mentor shared the following. "For the next two years, you should join the highest profile startup you can, ignore everything else in your life, and work your ass off. After two years, quit, then go do it again. Do that as many times as you can so you get stock in as many startups as possible. Hopefully one of your lottery tickets hits so you can stop grinding and eventually live the life you want". I stayed at my first company for 11 years, during which I came to question the conventional wisdom. Indexing makes sense as an investment strategy, but I'm not sure it is the best approach if you want to solve a worthwhile problem, understand something deeply, or build something of quality that lasts. For this, a better approach is to focus and compound knowledge over a long period of time. Perhaps it was confirmation bias, but as I looked around at the companies I admired, I saw a pattern. As Steve Jobs reportedly said, “if you look closely, most overnight successes take a very long time”. There is an obvious counter to this. Most startups fail. Does long term knowledge compounding meaningfully change the odds to the point where it makes up for the risk concentration? For every celebrated long term success story, there are 1,000 obscure failures. How do you build a team that takes the long term approach to knowledge compounding, without encouraging reckless risk concentration? Replit just completed our first ever tender offer, through which current and former employees could get liquidity for their vested shares. Several Replit Employees told me in private this allowed them to pay off debt, buy a house, or look after their loved ones in a way that made a significant difference in their lives. Unlike my mentor’s advice, they were no longer worried about stacking up lottery tickets in the hope they could one day live the life they wanted. It allowed them to take a long term approach, without signing up for the delayed living plan. As long as I am here, and market conditions allow, we will fight to get employees liquidity on a regular basis. This is a high conviction bet that long term knowledge compounds wins. We are building the team with this in mind. If this resonates with you, come work here.
Fri, Nov 3, 2023Builder Profile: Jake Weber
Jake Weber is a multidisciplinary designer, engineer, and writer who has always been drawn to invention as a kind of balance between art and real-world impact. It’s no surprise then that Jake built Printernet, a project that bridges our online lives with tactile experience by “packaging up your bookmarked articles to be read by you, in your hands, in a carefully bound print edition.” Jake’s journey with Replit began in 2021 when he saw a Paul Graham post referencing Replit. Immediately, he was hooked by how easy it was to get up and running quickly. Shortly after, on a long drive back to Austin, Jake reflected on how much reading he was doing online and how the experience of reading off a screen paled compared to picking up and diving into a physical book. What he needed to build was a physical RSS feed. That’s when the idea of Printernet was born. Inspired by an interview with Michael Seibel about launching fast with an MVP, Jake started building Printernet in earnest. Jake first hosted Printernet on Squarespace and started printing the issues himself. Eventually, Product Hunt caught wind of the project, indicating that Jake wasn’t the only one who wanted a physical RSS feed. Today, Jake is building the next version of Printernet on Replit. Jake started integrating Replit into Printernet to build automations to cut down on the time it took to manually compile and format each issue. “I was literally copying and pasting text from websites, one at a time. This process was extremely tedious and probably took 2 to 3 days to fulfill a single order. Once I began developing automations with Replit the time it took to fulfill an order went down dramatically. Now, with my Replit code, the moment an order is placed my Python Repl begins working for me.”
Fri, Oct 27, 2023Showcasing Startups on Replit
The fastest way to start, ship, and share The Replit platform isn't just a sandbox; it's a launchpad. There’s a lot to learn from startups building on Replit and how they leverage the platform to monetize and grow. Whether it’s a solo developer bootstrapping their startup on Bounties, or a startup launching their application on Replit Deployments, Replit is the best place to go from idea to software, fast. Here are a few companies building and shipping on Replit today. Sweet Dreams When Marwan’s younger brother was diagnosed with diabetes, his family was faced with a lot of new lifestyle changes and practices to ensure his brother’s well-being. One of the most important daily tasks is tracking his blood sugar level. If you or a loved one has diabetes, you know blood sugar level is one of the most important numbers to be tracking consistently throughout the day.