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Zero to ~$40M ARR: How Bolt's pivot changed AI product development forever | Eric Simons (CEO)

Lenny's Podcast
288K subscribers
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14K views 6 days ago Lenny's Podcast
Eric Simons is the founder and CEO of StackBlitz, the company behind Bolt—the #1 web-based AI coding agent and one of the fastest-growing products in history. After nearly shutting down, StackBlitz launched Bolt on Twitter and exploded from zero to $40 million ARR and 1 million monthly active users in about five months. What you’ll learn: 1. How Bolt reached nearly $40M ARR and 3 million registered users in just five months with a team of only 15 to 20 people 2. How Bolt leverages WebContainer technology—a browser-based operating system developed over seven years—to create a dramatically faster, more reliable AI coding experience than competitors 3. Why Anthropic’s 3.5 Sonnet model was the critical breakthrough that made AI-generated code production-ready and unlocked the entire text-to-app market 4. Why PMs may be better positioned than engineers in the AI era 5. How AI will dramatically reshape company org charts 6. Eric’s wild founder story  …...more
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Introduction to Eric Simons and StackBlitz

0:00

Unprecedented growth and user adoption

4:46

Demo: Building a Spotify clone with Bolt

10:40

Expanding to native mobile apps with Expo

15:28

The journey and technology behind WebContainer

19:09

Lessons learned and future outlook

25:03

Post-launch analysis

29:15

Growing fast with a small team

34:15

Prioritization at Bolt

41:00

Tooling and PRD's

45:51

Integration and use cases of Bolt

48:42

Limitations of Bolt

52:24

The role of PMs and developers in the AI era

54:24

Skills for the future

59:56

Upcoming features of Bolt

1:14:18

How to get the most out of Bolt

1:20:17

Eric’s journey and final thoughts

1:23:00
Zero to ~$40M ARR: How Bolt's pivot changed AI product development forever | Eric Simons (CEO)
298Likes
14,261Views
Mar 132025
Eric Simons is the founder and CEO of StackBlitz, the company behind Bolt—the #1 web-based AI coding agent and one of the fastest-growing products in history. After nearly shutting down, StackBlitz launched Bolt on Twitter and exploded from zero to $40 million ARR and 1 million monthly active users in about five months. What you’ll learn: 1. How Bolt reached nearly $40M ARR and 3 million registered users in just five months with a team of only 15 to 20 people 2. How Bolt leverages WebContainer technology—a browser-based operating system developed over seven years—to create a dramatically faster, more reliable AI coding experience than competitors 3. Why Anthropic’s 3.5 Sonnet model was the critical breakthrough that made AI-generated code production-ready and unlocked the entire text-to-app market 4. Why PMs may be better positioned than engineers in the AI era 5. How AI will dramatically reshape company org charts 6. Eric’s wild founder story (including squatting at AOL’s HQ) and how scrappiness fueled his innovation — Brought to you by: • Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments: https://www.geteppo.com/ • Fundrise Flagship Fund—Invest in $1.1 billion of real estate: https://www.fundrise.com/lenny • OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster: https://oneschema.co/lenny Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/in... Where to find Eric Simons: • X: https://x.com/ericsimons40 • LinkedIn:   / eric-simons-a464a664   • Email: Eric@stackblitz.com Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X:   / lennysan   • LinkedIn:   / lennyrachitsky   In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Introduction to Eric Simons and StackBlitz (04:46) Unprecedented growth and user adoption (10:40) Demo: Building a Spotify clone with Bolt (15:28) Expanding to native mobile apps with Expo (19:09) The journey and technology behind WebContainer (25:03) Lessons learned and future outlook (29:15) Post-launch analysis (34:15) Growing fast with a small team (41:00) Prioritization at Bolt (45:51) Tooling and PRD's (48:42) Integration and use cases of Bolt (52:24) Limitations of Bolt (54:24) The role of PMs and developers in the AI era (59:56) Skills for the future (01:14:18) Upcoming features of Bolt (01:20:17) How to get the most out of Bolt (01:23:00) Eric’s journey and final thoughts Referenced: • Bolt: https://bolt.new/ • Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/ • Wix: https://www.wix.com/ • Squarespace: https://www.squarespace.com/ • Dylan Field on LinkedIn:   / dylanfield   • Evan Wallace’s website: https://madebyevan.com/ • WebGL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL • WebAssembly: https://webassembly.org/ • CloudNine: https://cloudnine.com/ • Canva: https://www.canva.com/ • StackBlitz: https://stackblitz.com/ • Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, more | Dalton Caldwell (Y Combinator, Managing Director): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/le... • Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/ • Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/ • Dario Amodei on LinkedIn:   / dario-amodei-3934934   • Linear: https://linear.app/ • Notion: https://www.notion.com/ • Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ • Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/ • Photoshop: https://www.adobe.com/products/photos... • Figma: https://www.figma.com/ • Greenfield projects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfi... • Gartner: https://www.gartner.com/ • OpenAI researcher on why soft skills are the future of work | Karina Nguyen (Research at OpenAI, ex-Anthropic): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/wh... • Albert Pai on LinkedIn:   / albertpai   • Bolt’s post on X about “Bolt Builders”: https://x.com/boltdotnew/status/18875... • Sonnet: https://www.anthropic.com/claude/sonnet • ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/ • Breaking the Rules: The Young Entrepreneur Who Squatted at AOL: https://www.inc.com/john-mcdermott/er... • Imagine K12: http://www.imaginek12.com/ • Geoff Ralston on LinkedIn:   / geoffralston   • AOL: https://www.aol.com/ • Bolt on X: https://x.com/boltdotnew Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
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