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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?

#71

Post by gerdesj »

vesterde wrote: post #68
freetonik wrote: post #6

I've used Replit for educational materials when teaching beginners Python and JavaScript. They had a nice product called Teams for Education. It was even announced that it'll become fully free (the original blog post with the announcement was deleted from their website) [0], but soon after that the company had pivoted to AI and later discontinued the Teams for Education completely [1]. I also used Replit's embedded w…

Oh you brought back fond memories of using the very first education product Replit had. It was so good. I was teaching GCSE CS and having a blast giving kids python with turtle to play with. I would just give them some multicoloured octagon and more complex shape, and they had to draw it with turtle. They enjoyed it, I enjoyed it, and the teacher UX was great.

Libre Office has a Logo implementation built in. You can have turtles whizzing around your documents and spreadsheets.

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

#72

Post by tczMUFlmoNk »

fredfsh wrote: post #56

> But the technical achievement wasn’t translating into revenue growth, and by last year, with the company at 130 employees and burning through cash, Masad said he had to make a painful decision. “I looked at our burn, and I looked at our progress on our revenue chart, and it just didn’t make any sense. The business wasn’t viable.” Replit cut its headcount by 50%, bringing it down to around 60 to 70 people at its low…

Wow, so, connecting these dots:

- reducing headcount by 50% down to ~70 people = firing 70 people

- at a generous estimate of total burdened cost of $1M/person/year, that's $70M/year

- which accounts for a full 5 years of that war chest

- and, moreover, "at its lowest point" suggests that perhaps Replit has expanded headcount again since; the article mentions that it has done some acqui-hires.

Levels.fyi shows Replit salaries in the $200k–300k range, so even at a 2× burden rate, I think that this is probably a significant overestimate of the costs.

Firing 70 people when you have $100 million that you haven't touched, have raised money on top of that, and have many years of runway for the people you fired… comes together to paint a picture that is, imho, less than flattering.

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

#74

Post by sporkxrocket »

Amjad is one of the only leaders in tech (along with Paul Graham) speaking out against Israel's apartheid and genocide. He also happens to be Palestinian. I will happily give him my money and invest in ethical platforms. Replit's a really good option for AI coding anyway!

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

#75

Post by HDThoreaun »

fredfsh wrote: post #56

> But the technical achievement wasn’t translating into revenue growth, and by last year, with the company at 130 employees and burning through cash, Masad said he had to make a painful decision. “I looked at our burn, and I looked at our progress on our revenue chart, and it just didn’t make any sense. The business wasn’t viable.” Replit cut its headcount by 50%, bringing it down to around 60 to 70 people at its low…

Its a business, not a charity. Just because they have money doesnt mean they should spend on people who arent contributing to the bottom line.

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

#76

Post by justonceokay »

tczMUFlmoNk wrote: post #72
fredfsh wrote: post #56

> But the technical achievement wasn’t translating into revenue growth, and by last year, with the company at 130 employees and burning through cash, Masad said he had to make a painful decision. “I looked at our burn, and I looked at our progress on our revenue chart, and it just didn’t make any sense. The business wasn’t viable.” Replit cut its headcount by 50%, bringing it down to around 60 to 70 people at its low…

Wow, so, connecting these dots: - reducing headcount by 50% down to ~70 people = firing 70 people - at a generous estimate of total burdened cost of $1M/person/year, that's $70M/year - which accounts for a full 5 years of that war chest - and, moreover, "at its lowest point" suggests that perhaps Replit has expanded headcount again since; the article mentions that it has done some acqui-hires. Levels.fyi shows Replit…

Ehh. I don’t love it and it isn’t good optics, but if you can’t find a way to utilize your employeees (such as having a hard time finding a maeket fit for an existing product) then it isn’t your moral obligation to keep paying them. It isn’t clear what employees were laid off ir for what reason either.

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

#79

Post by Cyclone_ »

I've used it for creating a template for an app. It usually creates a pretty accurate app with at least a basic UI and some interactions. The biggest issue is that once you've created the template, it's pretty tough to add some more complicated features using the AI.
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