Mon, Apr 1, 2024Builder Profile: Pietro Schirano
Pietro Schirano is the co-founder of EverArt. By pursuing his ideas on Replit, he’s been able to nurture a curiosity in AI into a startup with multiple apps and functions, run on Replit. After starting his career in civil engineering, Pietro wanted to explore more creative endeavors. This journey would lead him to hold design lead roles across household names like OpenTable, Meta, Uber, and Brex, and eventually, to launch his own startup. An avid social learner, Pietro picked up skills across marketing, business, and engineering in each of his jobs. One topic that particularly grabbed his attention was AI. After ChatGPT launched, Pietro says, “I had an epiphany that the world was never going to be the same.” Immediately, he started to test emerging AI tools, eventually sharing a prototype with his team at Brex that landed him a role as their AI team lead. “Replit was the easiest A to B to get people experimenting with whatever product I wanted to test.”
Mon, Apr 1, 2024Builder Profile: Mason Kim
As a Global DevOps Engineer at Zinus, Mason (Junkuk) Kim’s role is to build software to enable the marketing, business, and customer service teams to deliver their customers the highest quality support experience. Often, the required turnaround time for these projects is extremely short, and Mason will need to have a solution ready within days or even hours. Even more, the teams he is supporting are based in numerous countries around the globe. The speed at which Mason’s team can build and deploy a working web service on Replit is the primary reason he chose the platform. Zinus uses Shopify to host its e-commerce site, which they extend using an external front-end development platform. However, Mason’s team was recently tasked with switching off of their old front-end development platform and finding a new one. Their old platform caused excessively long response times to service requests from Zinus, which harmed their business. Mason had to redevelop the older web pages on the new platform in just a few weeks to ensure a smoother support process. “At that moment, no other platform but Replit came to mind, and I had limited time to complete the development. In our situation, Replit was the best choice.”
Thu, Jan 11, 2024Company Spotlight: Qdrant Vector Database
With the rise of new generative AI development methods like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), it can be difficult to demonstrate technical setup to developers and highlight the potential front-end products that can be created by these developer tools. To speed up developer onboarding, Qdrant has developed several Replit templates. They simplify the initial steps for new developers, such as setting up the development environment and installing packages, making the onboarding process smoother and faster. What is Qdrant? Qdrant is a high-performance vector database used at companies like AlphaSense, Disney, Flipkart, HRS, HP, Bayer, Dailymotion, Deloitte, Microsoft, Mozilla, and others. Qdrant exposes both HTTP and gRPC APIs so that you can integrate it with any programming language. They also have official Python, JS/TS, Rust, and Go SDKs, and various integrations with the most popular LLM frameworks, such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, and Deepset Haystack. Qdrant also has a custom extension of the HNSW algorithm, enabling both rapid and precise Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search, which is essential for real-time applications.
Fri, Dec 22, 2023Builder Profile: Ismail Pelaseyed
Ismail Pelaseyed is the CTO and co-founder of Superagent, an open-source framework that enables developers to build, manage, and deploy AI Assistants. Ismail is an experienced developer who is dedicated to building open source software. After many years of running a successful consulting firm with his business partner, Alan Zabihi, they wanted to go back to building projects for themselves, focusing primarily on open source AI and agent frameworks. Eight years ago, Ismail and Alan built KeyCrunch (now Hyperdrive), which automatically writes marketing copy for users. They continued to expand the function of KeyCrunch into a tool that generates ad materials with the help of AI agents. Their goal was to get mainstream developers without expertise in ML to integrate AI into their applications. The company was eventually acquired by Jetshop, but Ismail and Alan continued to focus on agents and accessible AI dev frameworks in their next project: Superagent.
Thu, Dec 21, 2023Company Spotlight: CrewAI
AI agents are here to stay Large Language Models (LLMs) are everywhere, doing various jobs, from chatting to parsing documents. Soon after LLMs took the world by storm, developers started creating more focused, goal-oriented LLM apps modeled after human reasoning and problem-solving, which became known as AI agents. Here’s how one company is leveraging LangChain and Replit to solve complex tasks. AI agents with CrewAI CrewAI is a library specifically designed to build and orchestrate groups of AI agents. It's made to be straightforward and modular, so integrating it into your projects is a breeze. Think of CrewAI like a set of building blocks - each piece is unique, but they're all designed to fit together smoothly. Built on top of LangChain, it's inherently compatible with many existing tools, including local open-source models through platforms like Ollama. The AI agents can run natively on the cloud with Replit, making it even easier to get started with CrewAI. Check out the CrewAI templates on Replit to see the agents in action. Or, use them as a starting point for your own projects so you don't have to start from scratch. Here’s how it works.
Wed, Dec 13, 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 get from idea to software, fast. Here are a few companies building and shipping on Replit today. Lumiwealth The last thing financial traders want to do is spend hours learning how to set up a development environment just to deploy a trading algorithm. Why can’t writing code for a new algorithm be as easy as writing in a Google Doc? These were the questions Robert Grzesik had when starting his company Lumiwealth. With Replit, he could onboard hundreds of students into the real work of developing trading algorithms rather than lose much of his community in the complexity of setting up a development environment.
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.
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, 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.
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.”