Replit founder Amjad Masad isn’t afraid of Silicon Valley

https://sfstandard.com/2026/01/07/called-terrorist-sympathizer-now-ai-company-valued-3b/

by newusertoday • 7 months ago

297 335 7 months ago

artninja1988• 7 months ago

A reminder that antizionism is not antisemitism

Public opinion on Amjad shifted quite a bit in 2021 when he threatened to sue a former intern for his open-source project.

https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/

bitbasher• 6 months ago

This was the first thing I remembered about Amjad. I have never thought highly of him since.

siltcakes7• 6 months ago

My opinion on him shifted because along with Paul Graham, they're the only tech leaders who have stood up for Palestinians. I don't agree with Graham on everything either, but I've gained a lot of respect for him speaking out against Zionism. They're rich, but it still is difficult to go against the entire venture capital industry to do the right thing.

primitivesuave5• 6 months ago

Completely agree with you on this. It will be an unfortunate exercise for future historians to look back on this time, crunch through the enormous amount of data with their quantum computers, and end up realizing just how many people were willing to condone the slaughter of innocent civilians.

laweijfmvo• 6 months ago

Definitely was the end of Replit for me. I have that open source project (Riju) bookmarked though and use it from time to time.

chinathrow• 7 months ago

Stopped reading after "shooting range".

frumplestlatz• 7 months ago

“Should I wear a keffiyeh to the shooting range?”

I'll give the writer this -- they conveyed a lot of information in just one short first sentence. I read a bit farther, but it didn't tell me anything I couldn't already guess from that sentence.

tomhow• 6 months ago

Please don't comment like this. It's not a substantive contribution to the discussion to tell us that you stopped reading the article, and it's generally fulmination or curmudgeonliness or a shallow dismissal or something else that's against the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

eltondegeneres• 7 months ago

Masad, 38, has felt obliged to speak out about Gaza ever since, calling out those in tech who, in his view, have supported Israel’s “genocide” of the Palestinian people.

This sentence would be better without the scare quotes. Something like "calling out those in tech who support what he views as a genocide."

kiliantics• 7 months ago

The phrasing in the article shows very strong bias towards Israel in general

nailer• 7 months ago

[flagged]

cholantesh5• 7 months ago

As it happens, genocide scholars disagree with you, and in any case, Gaza's population has not increased.

metabagel• 6 months ago

I agree with you that it’s a genocide, but that is not universally accepted, so I think the scare quotes are OK. This article isn’t seeking to litigate the genocide in Gaza.

Scare quotes don’t mean that it’s not true.

user723432754• 7 months ago

“Masad insists he speaks up even when it hurts his business. In that regard, ‘I’m probably the only contrarian in Silicon Valley.’”

jerlam2• 7 months ago

The only contrarian, just like everyone else.

siltcakes7• 6 months ago

He and Paul Graham, truly are the only people speaking out against Zionism though. The rest of the VC industry is either staunchly pro-Israel or silent on the matter.

gameboy45• 7 months ago

interesting hearing his justification for working w Saudi but not Israel: He says he would never work with Israel now. “I think it’s an illegitimate and criminal government,” he told me during our gun safety training. “I mean, [Benjamin] Netanyahu is a war criminal.”

When I pointed out that Saudi Arabia has its own abysmal human rights record, Masad drew a contrast.

“I just think about how Replit is going to be used. Like, Israel is actively committing genocide and ethnic cleansing, and if you sell to the government there, it’s possible that they’re going to use it for that,” he said, pointing to the country’s use of Microsoft cloud services to track Palestinians’ phone calls. (After an investigation by The Guardian, Microsoft said it disabled the services that made the tracking possible in September."

hiyer2• 6 months ago

Seems like a silly excuse. If his concern is that Israel could use Replit for military purposes, then SA is perfectly capable of doing the same. And SA has - directly or indirectly - killed more people in Yemen than Israel has in Gaza.

yeasku• 6 months ago

More than 70000 including 20000 children? Wow thats a lot.

ebbi5• 6 months ago

I mean, if he was really consistent, he'd also not be operating a business in America, given America is responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent civilians (more than Israel and SA combined) in recent history.

DSingularity2• 6 months ago

Am I in some weird alternative universe where Israel did not just engage in a genocidal campaign against a population of Palestinians that are descendants of refugees from their prior genocidal campaign? Israel just finished killing probably over a hundred thousand civilians. The displaced the majority of Gaza. They destroyed the vast majority of its hospitals and universities and public infrastructure. They killed foreign aid workers even after those foreign aid workers cleared their routes with Israelis. Israeli soldiers raped Palestinians on camera. Then those solders were celebrated on public Israeli television and by the Israeli government. Attempts to prosecute those solders resulted in punishment for the prosecutors.

Is Saudi Arabia a human rights violator? Yeah and so is a bunch of western governments. But no modern government comes close to the abuses of the Israeli government and Israeli military. This is the view of the free people of this world.

imp0cat• 6 months ago

Pecunia non olet.

pbhjpbhj• 6 months ago

[money doesn't stink]

It truly does though. Any significant pile of it stinks of exploitation and death.

davedx3• 6 months ago

If your primary cause is Palestine then it's pretty internally consistent?

aerodog• 7 months ago

"was called" - who was behind that?

appled232• 7 months ago

that quotes attributed to "investors," according to Masad. but some of the most heinous stuff people said to him is public: https://x.com/rabois/status/1943804360863232513 "your friends should have not raped murdered and killed kids."

jerlam2• 7 months ago

It's Twitter - that's how a lot of people (or bots) say hi.

qart• 6 months ago

Weasel words, basically. All too common in journalism. It's also common on Wikipedia but Wikipedia acknowledges it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

didibus• 7 months ago

Reading through this piece and all I can think of is how he's just the other side of the same coin. Simply a different color of the same elitism that our world is moving into as money concentrates and starts to meddle more and more with our political spheres while accountability slowly errodes to zero.

cholantesh5• 7 months ago

I found the piece rambling and incoherent, but I don't really see how this follows. This is an individual Jordanian founder who made a political statement. That's not really the same thing as the deep integration between the Israeli state, Zionist organizations, and big tech.

Sammi• 6 months ago

The only difference being that he wants to replace those with himself and his.

SpicyLemonZest• 6 months ago

As the article mentions, Saudi Arabia is aiming to build its own deep integration with big tech, which Masad is enthusiastically participating in despite the Saudi government's own human rights issues. (He argues, quite conveniently if true, that the Replit tools he sells to the Saudi government won't be used for any of the bad stuff.)

simulator5g• 6 months ago

The coin is wealthy people. They're different sides of that coin. Hence why the commenter above is sensing some malice from both sides.

ArneBab• 6 months ago

Last I checked the Koch Brothers weren’t Israeli. Do read up on them. Oversimplified narratives are bullshit.

UltraSane3• 6 months ago

What does "Zionist" mean to you? I honestly don't understand what it means when Israel has existed as a Jewish state for 76 years and seems likely to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.

throw3108224• 6 months ago

is how he's just the other side of the same coin.

Yes. And one side of the coin supports and justifies colonialism, apartheid and even genocide; the other side fights against it.

hersko7• 6 months ago

Is it apartheid that a jewish person cannot buy land in Palestinian controlled areas?

dcreater2• 6 months ago

Replit seems to be another company that doesn't justify it's valuation in this bubble

riku_iki• 6 months ago

My bet is they sold lots if data for llm training

ramoz• 6 months ago

I think they are just hitting the consumer market hard. I have friends who have never coded & are using Replit. That said, not a single one of them has launched.

SwtCyber3• 6 months ago

Replit has been around for years, has real users, and now reportedly real revenue

dcreater2• 6 months ago

That doesn't necessitate a fair valuation.

renewiltord2• 6 months ago

All these things are so amusing. Amjad Masad dislikes Israel and is fine with Saudi Arabia. Palmer Luckey will spend his life doing rainman calculations on the angle of the car in Minneapolis. One is a “terrorist”, other is a “fascist”.

But you can tell it’s all motivated reasoning. Standing with your tribe. It’s not much of a matter of honour. It’s just flashing your banners.

In the end, they are wealthy, but they are just people. And they have all these things and why do I really care what Ja Rule has to say about the new cyclone.

nebula8804• 6 months ago

Excellent reference at the end, thanks for making me feel old. :)

intalentive• 6 months ago

I respect him for standing up for his people. It’s honorable, in my opinion. It would be dishonorable (and easy) to be a mercenary, profit-seeking individual with loyalty to no one but himself.

renewiltord2• 6 months ago

Everyone stands up for their people. Tribalism is the most primitive form of society. Standing for principle is harder because sometimes you have to speak against your tribe.

Yes, it would be dishonorable to be mercenary, but being a tribalist is merely the default position. We’re all so at some scale.

anonzzzies2• 6 months ago

Of all the tools I try and review, replit remains to be simply the worst in my opinion. I struggle to do anything useful with it except trivial hello world type of stuff. The bubble is real.

wombat-man• 6 months ago

replit worked really well as a way to play with code ideas. Going from 0 to running code on their site is very handy. I can try something out in python without much setup, as someone who rarely uses the language.

I tried their AI coding feature a few months back, and it was quite bad, but it was interesting to watch it iterate.

anonzzzies2• 6 months ago

I am comparing it to the state of the art of AI envs and as for the setup; github could also do that for quite a long time now (but it got a lot easier and cheaper); for the past, I would say year, it was easy to experiment with whatever on github too, and recently on chatgpt and claude. All of them now have containers that start which can run anything.

So they caught up with Replit there, but AI wise replit didn't catch up with them. Sure it is interesting to watch it iterate, but that is also interesting for all the others as they do that too, just better.

I cannot see why one would use replit over the rest at this point but obviously that can change if it does get significantly better.

mannanj2• 6 months ago

So I got excited and used Replit because I heard about it in a Diary of a Ceo podcast. Spent days working on my project, it was working in their unique tech stack and when I did local git commits it locked some files and conflicted with their replit agent also doing git operations and got stuck in a loop where the fix was to do a git reset --hard and reset the state.

Unfortunately their tooling locks me out from doing that and I wouldn't get help from their team after asking twice and getting moved to several different support members of their team. They just ghosted me and so I left and took my business elsewhere. Doesn't seem like it was made for advanced users.

Unfortunate.

jrochkind1• 6 months ago

The idea of "advanced users" of vibe coding is interesting.

danpalmer• 6 months ago

Unsurprising, the Diary of a CEO guy is a snake oil salesman. Awful interviewer, but very good at self promotion.

mannanj2• 6 months ago

Snake oil salesman is a rather deceptive and false accusation isn't it? He's launched, invested in and maintains success in multi-million and billion dollar companies. Snake oil sales don't get you that far.

thedelanyo• 6 months ago

"one being so good that anyone can become a software engineer".

Of course, smartphones' cameras are so good and accessible, but not anyone who became a professional photographer?

And of course, isn't software engineering far beyond than simply writing code in any form - whether in English or in symbols?

WalterBright2• 6 months ago

Programming is mostly a craft. Engineering would be more like designing algorithms.

immibis• 6 months ago

That's research. Engineering would be programming, but well. Taking into account future maintenance concerns and so on. Seems like the software world doesn't do a lot of it.

conception• 6 months ago

Yes but smartphones decimated photography jobs, especially on the low end.

mschuster912• 6 months ago

Pareto principle in action - smartphones are good enough for 80% of use cases. And so is AI for a lot of junior-level work.

The problem is, when there are no trainee and junior positions (and, increasingly, intermediate) being filled any more... there is no way for people to rise to senior levels. And that is going to screw up many industries hard.

thesmtsolver2• 6 months ago

Just like word processing software and LLMs meant anyone can become a journalist. /s

SwtCyber3• 6 months ago

Smartphone cameras didn't turn everyone into a professional photographer, but they did radically expand who can take usable photos, experiment, and occasionally produce something valuable without years of training

kogasa240p• 6 months ago

Palestinian man is ok working with the Saudis At least it isn't the UAE but... really? Still happy for him though.

indigodaddy• 6 months ago

exe.dev is already miles better already than what replit is attempting to do with it's AI things

jjsullivan5196• 6 months ago

This guy isn't a mold-breaking radical, he's just a garden variety sociopath https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/

leoh• 6 months ago

Yup.

throwaway290• 6 months ago

This was making rounds on hn but I think no one bothered to connect the dots. most people cheering for that guy probably outraged over the same guy that time.

Bluescreenbuddy• 6 months ago

Replay will implode once the AI mania cools off

redwood• 6 months ago

I'm not a fan of a guy who builds a brand around politics. It will come around.

lostlogin4• 6 months ago

Like it has to other business guys who have built a brand around politics?

zeroonetwothree• 6 months ago

I think it has negatively affected Elon yes.

camillomiller• 6 months ago

A very good, albeit involuntary, reminder that in Silicon Valley your good or bad opinions and beliefs don’t matter as long as you’re a good vessel to multiply investment and add value to a billionaire’s already obscene wealth.

throw3108224• 6 months ago

The article clearly states that he lost business and risked bankruptcy.

paglaghoda4• 6 months ago

replit is actually quite popular among teenagers and basically third world youngsters trying to spin off a service or a "product" of their own.

- i mean yes u cannot make money out of teenagers but damn replit's Vibe coding tool is fucking good. Better than Lovable or Bolt any day.

just to give u a perspective from a 20year old kid from a 3rd world county

truetraveller• 6 months ago

which country are you from?

user_7832• 6 months ago

Going by the username, I'm guessing India or perhaps Bangadesh

mbesto2• 6 months ago

I think this is exactly it. Replit is a cheap and easy way to get an MVP off the ground ASAP. However, their audience is inherently hackathon attendees, not real businesses. Whether these can turn into real businesses (en masse to justify low churn and consistent SaaS ARR) or not is the real question.

jokethrowaway2• 6 months ago

Why don't you just use Claude?

I don't get all these vibe coding tools when Claude is better than any of them

CharlieDigital5• 6 months ago

A friend used Replit to prove out a startup (it worked) and what worked for him is that Replit has a whole platform integrated with their coding assistant that include hosting and backend runtimes. So his cycle time of vibe-deploy-test was very short and very simple for someone non-technical.

No need to think about how/where to deploy, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), etc. Just vibe and deploy.

(He did end up moving off the platform once he had enough validation)

paglaghoda4• 6 months ago

claude is just too expensive and u need to atleast a bit technical expertise in it.

replit has made it like, even a 11 year old can make something out of thin air and acutally publish it to get a link to share

infecto• 6 months ago

Third world country could be region blocked.

Not sure why this is controversial. I know it’s an issue with Cursor as they have to limit availability of models based on region. OpenAI specifically blocks India and Pakistan for example, among a long list of other countries.

jacooper• 6 months ago

Because i can do it on the phone.

epiccoleman• 6 months ago

thanks for sharing, that's an interesting perspective actually. It's easy for us "pro devs" to kind of ignore platforms like Replit as "training wheels." I look at it and think "why would I use that, I have all my own stuff set up the way I like it locally".

But us older guys (i'm not that old, 34, but still) can easily forget how valuable and exciting it is to have tools that make the publication / deploy easy. It's cool to hear what the younger, less experienced crowd gravitates towards in the modern dev tool landscape. Thanks for sharing!

echelon3• 6 months ago

How long do those customers stay customers?

Are their customers making money?

Will they be able to build retention?

I've got this question of every platform like this - Lovable, etc.

Cursor and IDE tools and models cater to a smaller audience, but they're sticky, repeat customers, big spenders.

jimmySixDOF• 6 months ago

If your optimizing for simple, powerful, and on mobile then Replit is hard to beat.

wtcactus2• 6 months ago

What an interesting tile. Is the value of his AI company expected to overcome the 'terrorist sympathizer' allegation? Is this how it works always or just when the person is inside the present Overton Window?

Let's try Elon Musk then: "He was called a 'fascist'. Now, his tech company is valued $1.5T"

This is the way, right?

blks• 6 months ago

“Terrorist sympathiser” doesn’t mean much these days. People call Ms. Rachel a “terrorist sympathiser” and “antisemite of the year” for not wanting kids to die or become amputees

wtcactus2• 6 months ago

“Terrorist sympathiser” doesn’t mean much these days.

I guess it means almost as little as "fascist" then.

jeanlou• 6 months ago

It's funny how when talking about Israël's wrongdoings, everything is just "allegedly". Facts already confirms genocide, but hey, they don't want to land in hot water.

jwblackwell• 6 months ago

I absolutely love the idea of Replit and I think it's an awesome platform and idea.

I do wonder how sustainable it is as a business though. I expect Replit is sending the majority of that money to the big AI labs through API costs

As soon as anything becomes serious you're going to try and take it off Replit and use something like Claude Code and AWS etc

internet_points2• 6 months ago

well, it's not a high bar – these days anyone who says "I support Palestine Action" or "she was murdered by ICE" is called a terrorist sympathizer

flumpcakes8• 6 months ago

these days anyone who says "I support Palestine Action"

They have a video of people from this group attacking police with sledgehammers. It is strange how much of this 'direction action' is harming Ukraine support and not Israel. If people wanted to support Palestine they can do it without attacking their own countries' military - which is not operating in Israel at all.

"she was murdered by ICE"

They have a video of her being shot, pretty much needlessly. I'd say that should be manslaughter at a minimum.

Y_Y2• 6 months ago

Congratulations, you've reached the level of "terrorist well-wisher"

philipwhiuk• 6 months ago

It is strange how much of this 'direction action' is harming Ukraine support

How is direct action on Palestine impacting Ukraine support? (We are also not intervening in Ukraine)

femiagbabiaka6• 6 months ago

The UK military is and has been operating in Gaza, the UK government is just lying about it. Public flight tracking data makes it obvious.

gghhzzgghhzz2• 6 months ago

"They have a video of people from this group attacking police with sledgehammers"

Do you have the name or names of the person accused of 'attacking police with sledgehammers'?

I've heard a lot about this, but it's difficult to get to actual sources about exactly what is alleged.

Even if this did happen as you say. attachking police with sledgehammers is assault, potentially even attempted murder. There's plenty of laws for that.

It's not terrorism.

151552• 6 months ago

They have a video of her being shot

Why was her vehicle in gear, engine running?

internet_points2• 6 months ago

I find it horrifying (though not surprising) how many people can assume that just because you express some level of support for a group, you are complicit in all actions taken by that group.

In the extreme, that sort of view makes it impossible to have criminal lawyers. (And not far below that extreme, we have people using all their power to go after independent judges and lawyers with every extrajudicial tool at their disposal, legal system be damned.)

The nuance between speech and action was one of the many casualties of social media. I wonder if, back in the 90's, people would get arrested for holding "FREE KEVIN MITNICK" posters, if we'd had two decades of social media before it.

reliabilityguy• 6 months ago

these days anyone who says "I support Palestine Action"

You mean the group that sneaked in and damaged a bunch of UK Military’s planes on a military base? Was this the action that put them into the terrorist category?

_vqpz2• 6 months ago

"Damaged a bunch of UK Military's planes" == spray painted two planes

avianlyric• 6 months ago

Not quite in the same league as IS, Al-Qaeda etc etc. Used to be a organisation had to murder and terrorise an entire population, or fly planes into city centres.

Apparently our standards have dropped so low that spray painting a couple of planes and embarrassing the UK military now puts you on par with those other organisations.

amiga3866• 6 months ago

Yes. They're a bunch of violent criminals. But that's not the point.

There are lots of violent criminals who harm businesses and injure, or even kill people. They should be prosecuted and imprisoned. It's not illegal to say "I support <name of criminal or criminal gang>", even if people strongly disagree with you.

However, by showing they could break into an RAF base and spraypaint the planes - that says to me that the RAF are completely shit at their job, how can they protect their base from Russians if they can't even keep out local criminals - embarrassed the Government, and the government retaliated by making it illegal to say you support them.

Say it out loud? Criminal. Wear a t-shirt? Criminal. Hold a placard? Criminal.

Might as well just hold up blank sheets of paper and wait for the police to arrest you because they know what you want to write on them, like they do in Russia.

To me, that's a free speech issue. What an affront to free speech it is. Saying you support criminal scumbags should not be a crime. You should be able to say you support a bunch of violent yahoos, to whoever will listen to you, and I should be able to laugh at you and call you a simpleton for your idiot beliefs.

giraffe_lady• 6 months ago

Damaging military equipment is the farthest thing from terrorism. That's literally the one thing that can never be terrorism.

davedx3• 6 months ago

If your standard for designating someone a terrorist is "they did something quite naughty" - go at it.

uhhhd3• 6 months ago

"Palestine Action" is terrorism.

Cyph0n9• 6 months ago

Spray painting a bunch of airplanes is terrorism. Got it.

Oh, and don’t come crying when the same authoritarian laws put in place for Palestine Action are used to label your cause as terrorism to quash dissent.

lingrush43• 6 months ago

Why are you surprised that people who sympathize with terrorists are called terrorists sympathizers?

Roughly 75% of Palestinians support terrorism (the number changes with every survey but it's consistently over 50%).

The lady in Minneapolis was using her car as a weapon to impede law enforcement operations. That's not really terrorism; insurrection would be a more accurate description. But she certainly wasn't a good person deserving of any sympathy.

margalabargala• 6 months ago

The lady in Minneapolis was using her car as a weapon to impede law enforcement operations.

A hysterical take like this isn't really credible. "Obstruction", sure, but calling a stopped vehicle a "weapon" because it's slightly in the way defies the English language to the point where you damage your own credibility.

It would be equivalent to call this comment a "weapon" I'm using to impede you announcing your opinion unopposed.

She's absolutely deserving of sympathy; she was killed unjustly. We don't have a law on the books allowing capital punishment for parking a vehicle somewhere law enforcement finds it inconvenient. Just because you happen not to agree with her actions at the time, illegal or no, doesn't imply "and therefore she deserved death". I suggest you consider the consequences to your own self of people applying your own logic to you, and how long you would last if this was the general state of affairs.

veeti2• 6 months ago

I'll do you one better: Palestine Action is bankrolled by notorious pro-Russia tankie Fergie Chambers, who supports Vladimir Putin's genocidal campaign in Ukraine. So please add genocide sympathizer to your list.

[1] https://lamag.com/news/cox-family-heir-james-fergie-chambers...

thinkindie• 6 months ago

I don't understand why the word genocide is quoted, as if it was an odd opinion of the person they are writing the profile about.

sd92• 6 months ago

The title is a non-sequitur.

“Terrorist sympathizer” and “successful businessperson” (or “rich person”) are completely orthogonal. Building a successful business does not necessarily change your terrorist sympathisation status. You can be a rich terrorist sympathiser.

terespuwash2• 6 months ago

Your comment fails to mention that the accusations of sympathy for terrorism are lies.

sd92• 6 months ago

I am not equipped to give an opinion on that either way. I’m just saying that building a successful business is independent of the accuracy of your ideology.

tim3332• 6 months ago

It was kind of the focus of the article though - how his pro Palestinian politics interacted with being a SV founder.

It also fitted with some @paulg twitter stuff. He wrote a fair bit about both Gaza and Replit.

paganel• 6 months ago

It also fitted with some @paulg twitter stuff.

TIL. Big fair-play to him, and I'm very sincere about it, he must of have left a lot of potential money on the table from possible investors as a result of his view on the genocide in Gaza. Again, fair play to him, we need a lot more people like him in our (pretty sad) industry from this point of view.

tdeck• 6 months ago

Just look at Tal Broda for one example.

sillyfluke• 6 months ago

As far as I can tell, nowhere does the article argue that being "terrorist symphathizer" and being a successful business person are mutually exculsive, so you seem to be arguing against a point no one made.

What is obvious is that people should be outraged if a successful businessperson is actually a "terrorist sympathizer", because most people, whatever their ideology, would simply consider it to be an outrageous and ridiculous state of affairs if a successful businessperson was allowed to function unimpeded in western society and its business world if they themselves considered the businessperson to be an unapologetic "terrorist sympathizer".

The title is clearly an enagement ploy by the editor because it forces the reader to decide whether they themselves believe the founder is actually a terrorist sympathizer or not. If they don't think so, then it's outrageous that he's been libelled in a such a manner. If they think he is a terrorist sympathizer then it would be outrageous to them that he is allowed to operate unimpeded in western society and its economic realm.

That's why this comment sounds disingenously pedantic and your follow-up comment's detached tone doesn't feel sincere frankly. The article does list specific reasons why he was called a "terrorist sympathizer" and forces the reader to decide whether they themselves would consider the founder a "terrorist sympathizer" given the context in order to come to a conclusion about him in general.

SwtCyber3• 6 months ago

So success buys you ideological latitude

overfeed3• 6 months ago

Billionaires wouldn't run their mouths, if that wasn't the case.

ramon1564• 6 months ago

Do you know how many politicians switch sides once they have lost their power? (well, not many have been in that situation, but still!)

As a powerful figure, you become a literal puppet in front of the public. Your opinions don't matter

adolph• 6 months ago

Effect weakly linked to Affect

mikestorrent3• 6 months ago

What's the minimum threshold for that, I wonder?

overfeed3• 6 months ago

Having "Fuck You" money[1] means you don't have to listen to anyone (but you still can be shunned, as described in the article). You'll substantially greater wealth that FU money to make people listen to what you have to say and be "uncancellable", like owning a media outlet, hiring a PR firm, or buying a pet politician or seat in government. Amjad seems to have crossed from the former to the latter by economic power: not only can a deal with him now could potentially generate lots of wealth, but it may not be a good thing to be on his shit-list later when he is the bigger fish.

1. A subjective amount that depends entirely on the lifestyle, burn rate and life expectancy.

pamcake3• 6 months ago

Are we still doing these kinds of lionizing puff pieces after SBF, Holmes, Musk and all the others? By now, I consider being featured in one a negative signal.

nephihaha5• 6 months ago

You've got to admit Holmes is an interesting character though.

pamcake3• 6 months ago

I really don't.

toss12• 6 months ago

Seriously? She was a fake in every sense of the word, copying everything down to Steve Jobs' mannerisms, photo-ops, and black turtleneck sweater.

The only interesting bit is how so many investors were unable to see through the obvious act and also failed to do the due diligence which is the One Job of VC firms (i.e., if I'm an investor, I'm trusting the VC to do real due diligence, otherwise why wouldn't I just invest directly in the companies).

ugh1232• 6 months ago

Nah I find her typical of the silicon valley variant who chases VC money without any sense of business or product development experience.

gulfofamerica• 6 months ago

Model Y and Falcon 9 are fakes?

pamcake3• 6 months ago

Writing this from your fully self-driving car on Mars?

terespuwash2• 6 months ago

It's fascinating to read how Hacker News helped make Replit successful. I hope everyone will try this tool! I wonder if Masad still scrolls here nowadays.

nerdsniper• 6 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=amasad

Yep. Seems like he posts a bit more thoughtfully with deliberation ever since the "suing my intern over a weekend project" debacle.

Having other close friends from Jordan, it's not surprising that he's outspoken on the topic of Israeli occupation - it's very difficult to spend a significant amount of time in the affected regions and not come away with a very strong opinion.

nikanj• 6 months ago

Who in this current political climate hasn't been called a 'terrorist sympathizer'? Feels like 80% of the population qualify

kburman• 6 months ago

You can be a controversial figure politically and still build a generation defining product. The market rewards utility, not ideological purity.

The headline frames this as a paradox, as if these two things are incompatible. But they aren't mutually exclusive, he can be both.

hopelite• 6 months ago

Considering circumstances all over the West, pretty soon everyone will be “terrorist sympathizers” or a sympathizer of whatever the next enemy boogeyman du jour is of the abusive ruling class. And it’s not your favorite political sport team that is good and never does that, while the other team always does it and is evil. It’s being done in the US and it is being done in the EU as well as in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; not even to mention Israel, but that can’t be considered the West.

kelvinjps103• 6 months ago

I remember learning to code with replit, the people from the course recommended replit because there was no setup to do

bdcravens• 6 months ago

Some criticize that approach, suggesting that you're not learning important skills, but I applaud that approach. Anyone who's ever been in a workshop at a conference, where you have limited time to learn a topic, knows how much time is wasted doing initial setup.

miningape• 6 months ago

yes this is such a good point, the OG replit could've been the perfect conferencing / classroom tool

Running an IDE in a browser like that is not something I'd ever want to work with long time or experimenting on my "own" computer - maybe it's just me being weird but running the code on the metal I'm holding is much more satisfying.

I'm not sure what features / tools replit had in this regard, but I could easily see it dominating CS education and conferences as the go-to IDE. (then making the real money by monetising the students in the future, i.e. other tools you can sell - even something like replit as a cloud provider), by having features like

  - templates you could share (i.e. one per lesson)
  - live sessions (where the professor could log into many students replit instance and demonstrate)
  - videos built into the editor / streaming / conferencing
  - "homework had-in" features, automated test sharing, etc.

kelvinjps103• 6 months ago

I remember that was like workshop, something like learn to code in 20 minutes, and after learning the concepts and realizing you can control all those devices that power the world, just with code was magical.

I think that it had a big potential for that.

jamesbelchamber• 6 months ago

I used to teach with it - at classroom-scale it was really good. Unfortunately they shut all that down a little while back, and there wasn't really a good replacement. Which was a shame.

Seems to have worked out for them, mind!

kelvinjps103• 6 months ago

Such a shame, it was really good for that

ramon1564• 6 months ago

I know this isn't very on the topic, but these articles make me cringe physically.

“You should compete,” I suggested.
He smirked. “I always compete.”

Feels like a vocal jerk-off. Just tell me the details, idc how tuff the interview was.

ActionHank4• 6 months ago

These pieces are usually just advertising with more words. They want to frame Replit and their hero founder as being rebels who don't follow the rules or fear goliath.

This is fantasy fiction for VCs, founders, AI bros, and anyone else who isn't actually looking for information.

simonw6• 6 months ago

Are you accusing the SF Standard of running a paid promotion without disclosing it as such?

CjHuber• 6 months ago

I don't know what it is but I don't think that it's an ad. Otherwise I guess they wouldn't have that snarky pro-israel undertone towards him.

simonw6• 6 months ago

This is a style of writing called "narrative journalism" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_journalism

I find it pretty distracting too.

uhhhd3• 6 months ago

GPT wrapper.

Alex_L_Wood• 6 months ago

Well, he still is a terrorist symphatizer, just rich now.

kaicianflone3• 6 months ago

Replit with vercel starter templates and supabase is amazing. I even have it do all my migrations and RLS policies. Also playwright automated testing in github action CI/CD.

I have it originated from a master prompt project I have architected with shadcn suggestions and how I like my app router setup.

I'm hooking this up to comet to be fully agentic with Linear tasks and human-in-the-loop approvals with up to 5 UI versions per feature. And ts contract request/responses for my nextJS api endpoints.

I also host a "LangChain" similar like tool in Azure C# minimal API in a shared replit secret. It's so nice to be able to re-use secrets for Radar, etc across all my apps.

foobarian• 6 months ago

In the immortal words of Peter Stormare in the VW ad, "what does this do??"

mikestorrent3• 6 months ago

Well, at some point in time, his workflow produces a landing page where you can express interest in funding his projects

kaicianflone3• 6 months ago

The bane of intelligence is contempt instead of curiosity

AlexandrB• 6 months ago

It's ridiculous to frame an opinion that's extremely common and popular as some kind of expression of rebellion against "the man". What a puff-piece.

_bohm• 6 months ago

Two people got black bagged by the federal government less than a year ago for expressing this opinion

braebo• 6 months ago

And the FBI has a wrongthink list for this opinion filed under anti semitism / domestic terrorism now.

lingrush43• 6 months ago

What kind of dumbass title is this? 99.99% of the world is not afraid of silicon valley.

coffeemug2• 6 months ago

Know Amjad from years ago. We're on the opposite sides of ideological barricades, but he's no terrorist sympathizer. Just a man who loves his people. He seemed extremely pragmatic too-- if he ran Gaza it'd be an economic paradise by now.

bko• 6 months ago

He doesn't seem pragmatic because everything I read about him or any time I hear from him it's about this geopolitical issue. Doesn't he have a company to run? What's the point of making this front and center part of your personality. His thoughts on the war in Gaza is literally the only thing I know about him. That and him firing an intern about a weekend project. It's all just exhausting.

How is that pragmatic? If you want to do good things, build a business and donate money or whatever. Getting into Twitter wars with internet strangers and spending on PR to tell everyone what you think about geopolitics strikes me as anything but pragmatic.

coffeemug2• 6 months ago

Eh people get consumed by these things. It's very hard to resist when you have a platform and your own people are at war. Very very difficult to get past abstractions and just work to help in minute particulars.

Plus social media is a uniquely deranging technology. Persona on twitter is rarely who the person is in real life.

ugh1232• 6 months ago

It sounds like you're mainly responding and reacting to what people (and media) choose to write about him (a narrative revolving around his political beliefs), rather than how he (mostly) goes about his day to day.

a456463• 6 months ago

Nothing like paying someone to shill for you.

Replit founder Amjad Masad isn’t afraid of Silicon Valley

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