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Replit.com (YC W18) raises $80M Series B
- arcastroe 5y agoMy go-to for random code snippets has always been glot.io, mostly for the clean and immediate UI experience (no sign-in, etc) If I'm going to use repl.it and jump through several pages to even get started, I might as well open an IDE instead.
- agumonkey 5y agoI miss the old repl.it..
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoThe repelling force of an account wall is oft underestimated.
- agumonkey 5y agoyeah and there are a slight paradox IMO: a repl is made to minimize time to answers.. a direct link.. not a multi step process
- DangitBobby 5y agoThe account is not the problem for me. It's being forced to create and name a new project for something that I intended to be a throwaway (like a python playground). Now I just open the same project over and over, deleting whatever the file contents were from the last time.
- isaacimagine 5y agoI miss the old repl.it, so I use https://riju.codes https://riju.codes.
- mhio 5y agoThanks for this, I hadn't heard of glot before.
- qwertyuiop_ 5y agoLooks cool. Thanks for mentioning it.
- anyfactor 5y agoThanks for the glot.io recommendation. I had the same problem with repl.it. I could either use nodejs or python on the terminal or keep waiting for repl.it to initialize them on the browser. Glot at first glace seems to be instantaneous.
- stoicjumbotron 5y agoThanks for the glot.io recommendeation.
- anm89 5y agoReplit was recently in the news when the CEO used expensive company lawyers to attack a an individual contributor on an open source project to force the project to close even though they had done nothing wrong just because it was impossible to pay the legal fees. Don't support them.
- 0des 5y agoLink?
- williamstein 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195
- 0des 5y agoWow, that was a wild ride. Thanks for helping clear that up.
- _vufv 5y agoNot saying replit wasn't wrong in this (CEO apologized), but from my point of view the story is not that clear-cut.
- leaded_syrinx 5y agoApologies don't undo a history of a mal-intent towards employees who helped build the company. Similar to how apologizing doesn't undo a bad first impression.
- aparsons 5y agoYes.. I thought that incident made him look very, uh, disgraceful. He likes to predend Repl.it is some marvel of technology when it is unironically a weekend project (which the intern he attacked did better). Bruised egos are dangerous.
- 5y ago
- VirusNewbie 5y agoIf Repl.it comes out with a way to sync an offline mode to their cloud offerings I will jump for joy, become a paying user, and maybe even apply to work there. But cloud only is kind of a show stopper for me.
- jcrites 5y agohttps://github.com/features/codespaces https://github.com/features/codespaces
- brunoqc 5y agoDoes replit work well on normal phone screen?
- devmunchies 5y agoThey’re switching from Monaco to codemirror if they haven’t already.
- airocker 5y agoIs not Jupiter already on codemirror?
- williamstein 5y agoYes, Jupyter notebook has used CodeMirror for nearly a decade. The official Jupyter notebook has never used Monaco, but the Google version (colab) uses Monaco in order to very nicely leverage LSP support (similar to VS Code). There is preliminary work under way right now to switch from CodeMirror 5 to CodeMirror 6 in the official Jupyter project, but that's going to be significant work (see https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/11638 https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/11638). It doesn't seem like there is much overlap between Replit and Jupyter notebooks right now, as far as I can tell...
- airocker 5y agoCAnnot Jupyter run well on mobile? The experience would have to be well designed but it could be super!
- williamstein 5y agoYes it can. One example is the Juno app in the Apple App Store, which provides a very mobile friendly interface to hosted Jupyter notebook services. The same developer also has a similar app that provides offline support. I’ve also put effort into making my implementation of Jupyter in Cocalc somewhat mobile friendly…
- komuher 5y agoIs this the same company that CEO bullied intern to drop his open source project and was exposed like 7 months ago?
- cloogshicer 5y agoWhat really bugged me about this was actually how he handled the backlash - he initially doubled down, saying he was doing the right thing. Only as the whole thing escalated more, he back-paddled. Made me feel like he only did it to avoid bad publicity and stuff like this will keep happening. Ever since, the way Replit represents itself (as the "revolutionary" new platform) is quite off-putting for me and I've stopped using/suggesting them.
- miki123211 5y agoThey're doing the exact same thing when accessibility is concerned. In my few interactions with them, they either claimed that they had it figured out (which is not true), or they promised that it will get fixed really soon. I've reached out to them about it a couple years ago, and little has been done to address the issue since then. Their accessibility is weird, all the modals, menus and so on are perfectly accessible, you can see that somebody put a lot of thought into them, but core components of their platform (like the terminal) don't have any accessibility at all, even though flipping one switch in the library they use would get them 90% of the way there. Considering they're deep in the education space, this is a really big issue. People might fail their classes because of this, and it might even possibly be illegal in some jurisdictions. If there's one sector where you really need to do accessibility right, it's education.
- ignoramous 5y ago> [Amjad Masad] initially doubled down, saying he was doing the right thing. Only as the whole thing escalated more, he back-paddled. Folks should be allowed to change their mind. How is that a bad thing? Given more input / data, it only makes sense a rational person changes their opinion / outlook. > Ever since, the way Replit represents itself (as the "revolutionary" new platform) is quite off-putting for me and I've stopped using/suggesting them. For better or worse, they're going after the next wave of developers. Not you and I: "Replit wants to build the future, and to build the future, you don't rebuild the old thing for the old customers. You build something new that starts out looking like a toy, and you build for the underserved, not just for moral reasons, but for strategic ones. It's disruptive innovation meets the compounding power of young users." ... "For example, it means not targeting experienced developers to start, even though they're the more valuable users today. If they've already written their first line of code elsewhere, they definitionally can't write their first line of code in Replit." https://archive.is/JC3Ux https://archive.is/JC3Ux
- fxtentacle 5y ago"Replit (YC W18) Is Hiring to Bring the Next Billion Software Creators Online" Yeah right, the main problem stopping people from writing python scripts is that the one-click installer isn't convenient enough ;) Or is it all those software developers who refuse to use a keyboard and insist on using a smart phone touchscreen? Their product is a code snippet repl console. And it's not even the best, first, fastest, or cheapest one. Their self-presentation to me seems so over the top that I feel like they will turn out to be a scam.
- quickthrower2 5y agoThese kinds of things are sometime useful if you need to quickly hack on a language you don't normally use. If you don't normally use that language then you are not used to the install, the package system, the environment variables and hacks you need to get it to work properly, the troubleshooting decision trees, etc. I agree if python is your main bread and butter language doing REPL locally (or debugging with VS Code) would be much nicer.
- hawthornio 5y agoI used to use replit for this, but I much prefer my vscode setup so I’ve switched to using docker (e.g., running `haskell`). But I agree that hacking in a new language is a good use case of repl.it
- tehlike 5y agoVscode runs in browser and we will see a new startup in this space doing better than replit, with less effort by outsourcing ide to Microsoft which does great ides. You can also checkout gitpod in the meantime.
- user3939382 5y agoWhat sticks in my head isn’t the specifics, but the emotions I felt reading some stories about the founder doing some shenanigans. Funny how that works. You end up on my scumbag-company list and I don’t necessarily remember why.
- poyu 5y agoReplit used to be good. I can open up a page and start writing code. But now it requires an account, and the UI feels less responsive than before.
- jonny_eh 5y ago> But now it requires an account Considering how costly it is to run the service, requiring a free account feels pretty fair.
- paulgb 5y agoEspecially since if you offer generic compute without any form of registration, you're basically inviting people to mine crypto with your AWS bills, which is something they've experienced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26682237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26682237
- williamstein 5y agoAt https://CoCalc.com https://CoCalc.com we offer generic compute without any form of registration required (see https://cocalc.com/auth/try https://cocalc.com/auth/try). And indeed, crypto mining is a periodic headache for us. I think Replit used to have a model that made it much easier for them to offer something without registration, because they supported client side Python, etc., via Emscripten. However, they eventually seem to have moved away from that.
- paulgb 5y agoI realize that this is a car-and-mouse game that you might not want to talk about in public, but are there techniques that you’ve found to work? Is just throttling the CPU for anon accounts sufficient to make it not worth the trouble?
- adgjlsfhk1 5y agorequiring credit cards doesn't even work. they just use stolen ones.
- hermitcrab 5y agoI used Replit to build a Python battlesnake for https://play.battlesnake.com/ https://play.battlesnake.com/. It was nice and easy to get started with. Unfortunately the latency/performance isn't reliable enough for my battlesnake - my snake moves between about 50 and 150 in the global league just depending on the Replit server performance.
- robbles 5y agoAre you using the default Battlesnake region? Depending on your location and where your replit ends up hosted, switching regions might reduce your latency a bit.
- hermitcrab 5y agoI believe Replit sets your region based on your IP (the UK for me). I'm not aware there is any way to change it.
- robbles 5y agoYep - I'm talking about Battlesnake regions though: https://docs.battlesnake.com/references/engine-regions https://docs.battlesnake.com/references/engine-regions
- hermitcrab 5y agoDidn't know about that. Is it new? Thanks!
- mlazos 5y agoI love it for just being able to run a quick snippet. I’m not sure if the one minute interaction I give to it can be monetized.
- b20000 5y agook, so another tool to find cheap coder talent and create more code monkeys so the cost of engineering can be brought down at large companies.
- dang 5y ago"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lionfish323 5y agoDoes anyone have any thoughts on the blog post [0] linked at the end of the announcement? Is this actually how venture capitalists evaluate these sorts of things? That post feels like it approaches "conspiracy theory" levels of leaps [1] about the evolution of the product and its potential impacts from a company whose product offering doesn't really seem to have changed or expanded much in the past few years, and which feels from an outsider's perspective like it's generally being left in the dust by more modern competitors like GH's Codespaces. [0] https://www.notboring.co/p/replit-remix-the-internet https://www.notboring.co/p/replit-remix-the-internet [1] e.g., the CEO making vague tweets about "web3" = "Replit will be a vortex for talent, creativity, and economic activity online. It might become the operating system for the 21st Century, the platform on top of which much of the internet is built, remixed and monetized."
- ak_111 5y agoThey do mention concrete numbers.. doubled users to 10m in one year. The valuation is still high for where the company is now. I personally think churn is going to be a huge issue for them and there is a huge uncertainty if they would be able to counter it, but I think it is unfair of you not to highlight that they do mention concrete numbers and show solid user tractions, which certainly counters your assertions that "nothing changed" in the last few years.
- d3nj4l 5y agoCan't believe I have to add "vortex" and "remix" to my marketing buzzword list. Jokes aside, that post is at least insightful about their future trajectory? It definitely gives off the vibe that they're going for a platform/creator economy kind of monetization. I'm with you in that I'm skeptical it'll pay off, especially because the direct comparison they use (Roblox) is very different: it's a game that kids play on, not an "operating system".
- gorgoiler 5y agoAs a high school CS teacher, replit was a godsend. Aside from letting us do an end run around the downtrodden IT department and their dreaded policies on new software, the screen sharing was a huge help for locked down classrooms where we had to remain distanced. The product really came into its own for collaboration. Google Docs but for code. Let’s look at some Haskell? No problem. Need a quick graph? X11-VNC stuff worked its magic to give us matplotlib in seconds. The turtle graphics for the younger pupils was so fast too. Scratch is great but Python is better, not the least reason being that syntax errors are impossible in Scratch. Debugging and manipulating text are huge parts of learning the craft as they become teenagers. Amazing technology plumbed together into a fantastic product. We didn’t pay a penny for it mind you — hopefully they have good sales connections to school districts with deeper pockets than ours. Even if their sole revenue comes from 100$ of teacher training a year, that’s $500M ARR (4M teachers in the US * 20% are teaching something akin to core CS * a global market that is 5x the size of the US.) They could grow to 300 employees and that’s still pretty good revenue, but I’m waving my hands a lot on these numbers. (Nit: I wish I could git pull and push to my account of 1000+ repls.)
- api 5y ago> letting us do an end run around the downtrodden IT department and their dreaded policies You just described a big reason SaaS is so popular.
- duped 5y agoAt the end of the day SaaS exploits organizations that prefer opex to capex. Even in SaaS you have to deal with downtrodden IT departments and their policies.
- google234123 5y ago"20% are teaching something akin to core CS" seems to be a huge over estimate (off by 100x?). Most high schools would just have 1 CS teacher at most, right?
- gorgoiler 5y ago
- outside1234 5y agoSo its Github Codespaces except you are trapped on their cloud?
- heavyset_go 5y agoYes, and if you use it to work on an open source project that Repl.it's founder thinks might compete with his company, then said founder will send you increasingly unhinged emails insulting you and threatening to sue[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195
- DantesKite 5y ago"Inspire creativity and generate value for creators through community." I find this one to be the most interesting. The creators of Replit seem well-aware that they're not going to replace the modern IDE and they don't intend to. It seems like they're pursuing a slightly different goal, one adjacent enough that a lot of people commenting seem to miss the point. I'll take a broad example: When I look at the cryptocurrency community, I find nearly everything about it contemptible, except the community-driven aspects of it. That's where it really shines. The way people collaborate and work with each other to build a DAO over the weekend is fascinating. It's an interesting phenomena that I don't think has been properly captured in tech, except in bits and pieces. For example, Terence Tao talks about leveraging the power of community to solve mathematical problems that needed a lot of disparate insights during the Polymath Project. Together a group of random mathematicians on the Internet were able to essentially turn one of the math problems into a competition: "to improve the bounds for small gaps between primes" where the gap initially began at around 70 million and eventually (through different mathematical breakthroughs from many different contributors) they were able to decrease the gap number down to 246. It's an amazing feat and Terence remarks that only certain problems are amenable to community work, if the incentives are high enough. So what does this have to do with Replit? There's a lot of problems out there that are difficult for any one individual to solve. And certain problems, especially in software, that would be best addressed by groups. I can imagine a place where you can meet with other programmers who share skills you find useful to be a very valuable space. It may not seem like a massive leap, but I find anything that reduces friction for software engineers tends to have a 10X effect on productivity. I wouldn't mind living in a world like that.
- d3nj4l 5y ago> I can imagine a place where you can meet with other programmers who share skills you find useful to be a very valuable space. That's GitHub. And it's already building a web IDE. Just hit . on any public GH repo.
- aydwi 5y ago> Just hit . on any public GH repo. I did not know that shortcut. It's outright amazing.
- headcanon 5y ago$80M seems like a lot for a developer tool with a team of 40. Why would they need so much? Besides general growth, the only thing I can see would be for cloud computation costs for AI training, but even that seems excessive. Perhaps they're going for a long runway?
- gkop 5y agoThere’s probably a component of loading up for a rainy day, while the market is good (capital is available, high valuations, less dilution).
- fhd2 5y agoDo VCs invest to give companies a "long runway"? Would be news to me, though it does seem plausible. But I'd expect a business strategy of: 1) Invest at a loss to become #1 2) ? 3) Profit.
- r0m4n0 5y agoThe founder of a successful startup I know used to tell his first funding story all the time. Over a game of tennis, he asked for $2mm, the VC agreed before the ball soared back over the net. He always would say, “I should have asked for $4mm!” I have a feeling that YC companies (and other well connected) get money thrown in their general direction now a days, all they have to do is ask
- ignoramous 5y ago> I have a feeling that YC companies (and other well connected) get money thrown in their general direction now a days, all they have to do is ask. If twitter is any indicator, it seems like the Replit co-founders are actively mentored / coached by pg. Amjad, the founder CEO, even called pg "his manager" at one point. This leads me to: As someone who went through YC and met PG while he was still actively running it, I can tell you that at least in our batch he was 100% spot on about who was going to do well. He had a tendency to spend his free time with the same individuals who ended up doing phenomenally well. It would be easy to be dismissive about this and say something about doubling down on his best investments, etc. But during our batch many of those companies had not yet become the clear cut winners that they are today, and instead only turned into them a year or so down the road. One of the best companies from our batch is Flexport, and PG had been super impressed by Ryan Petersen even before he was officially accepted into YC. It's pretty clear in hindsight that taking note of who PG was hanging out with was a very investable strategy. In fact, one of my batchmates had some money to put into other companies in our batch, and when he asked me for my opinion of who to invest in, that's exactly what I told him. I just did some quick math and would estimate that his ROI today is somewhere in the 1,000x range. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25381893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25381893
- hashimotonomora 5y agoWhat’s wrong with $ python3 ?
- coupdejarnac 5y agoJust a reminder that there is skulpt if you want a completely free Python 3-ish alternative that runs in the browser. I'm not sure it is suitable for a production environment, but it's great for teaching kids how to code. https://skulpt.org/ https://skulpt.org/
- wly_cdgr 5y agoI guess the bet is that thick clients are over. I hate to say it but seems like a good bet
- natded 5y agoWhat is their revenue model? I barely understand the use case.
- throwawaysea 5y agoI like the creative poster they made for this article, which showcases their investors in the style of music artists billed for a show.
- taylorhou 5y agoliterally LOL'ed at their blog picture/headliner page. they are borrowing from the festival world where the bigger the headliner (aka investor/check?), the higher and bigger they are displayed. wonder if there are parallels between VC's and DJ's and their desire to be the biggest and first.
- black_13 5y agoWhat do they have that is so great? Next product idea two slices of bread some peanut butter and glass of milk ... it will revolutionize lunch.