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After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

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Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#21

Post by siffin »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #14
jychang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wr…

I'm not sure if any of my coworkers has ever properly used a filing cabinet

Spreadsheet would have been the better analogy.

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#22

Post by maxbond »

mcherm wrote: post #19
jackblemming wrote: post #11

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.

> 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.

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

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#26

Post by jeswin »

rsp1984 wrote: post #23

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

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.

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#27

Post by nkrisc »

mejutoco wrote: post #12
jychang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wr…

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 w…

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”.

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#28

Post by unmole »

sincerely wrote: post #2

>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 th…

> median techcrunch reader

Is probably a consumer tech enthusiast and not a software developer.

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#29

Post by mejutoco »

nkrisc wrote: post #27
mejutoco wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

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”.

I am not sure the post said "vast majority" originally, to be fair. Is there a way to check?

Re: After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

#30

Post by rkomorn »

nkrisc wrote: post #27
mejutoco wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

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”.

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.

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