AMA w/ CEO of Bolt - from $0 to $20M and how we almost didn't make it
Live Feb 28th, 9am PT - drop your questions!
Hi everyone,
CEO of Bolt here! Super excited to open up about our journey and offer any learnings and stories I can to help other makers on their journey. Within a span of 2 months we've grown to $20M in revenue and were recently featured in NYT as paving the way for vibe coding.
Every decision can turn into a pivotal one for a start up, but you have to keep iterating and trust your gut. Feel free to AMA about bolt's journey, vibe coding, what we have in store, and how other makers can learn from bolt's past (and rapidly evolving future).
Replies
Hi @ericsimons40
Great to connect here :) Have really enjoyed using Bolt.
What specific direction are you planning to take Bolt this year and beyond?
for context each of the main code generators (vibe gang) has distinct specialities, just asking what Bolt is working towards this year.
You gents have made creator life easier for millions of people worldwide. Props to you and the team.
bolt.new
@warrio4 amazing! That's so awesome to hear:)
Our general plan for this year is to really pave out the story around integrations & workflows for Bolt. In the same way that Slack is such a powerful tool because of it's ease of use and vast integrations, we think the same will be true for Bolt, and there's a near infinite amount of work to be done there ha!
Bolt is amazing. If nothing changed, it would still be a huge achievement. But with $100M raised and going up against Lovable, Replit and the AI IDEs, you must have a really cool vision for where all of this goes that's unique to Bolt. Can you share that vision and what this category might look like in 1, 3, or 5 years? Everyone has so much cash and is so good at making product- it's going to be great for the customer, but how do you plan to differentiate Bolt and what's the plan with all the cash? :-)
bolt.new
@steveb great question! I think our vision here seems to be distinct from others that our aim is to to build a "power drill" - a professional tool that most homes have & anyone can use, but equally powerful for professionals themselves. Most AI products right now either target developers directly (cursor, replit, etc) or completely non-technical users (lovable, etc), this is ok of course but the problem we see with being on opposite ends of the spectrum is that you inherently limit the user's power over the tool and exclude vast segments from using it. I think this is the main reason Bolt continues to be the #1 tool by DAUs, ARR, etc, so this is where we intend to keep focusing product vision wise.
As for spending the cash... Lambos of course! :P But in reality, hiring. Supporting the customer base we have even today requires dozens more people, across product, engineering, GTM, success, etc (and we continue to grow rapidly!). To provide the level of experience and support we think is required for excellence, bringing on great team members is critical. PS we are hiring: stackblitz.com/careers
Product Hunt
Hi @ericsimons40 ! How do you see all these code generators differentiating their value prop's over time? Or is it kinda a winner take all market, where one (Bolt!?) is so good, that everyone adopts it?
Hi~Eric dying to know how you nailed the first 10k users cold-start! Heard the Reddit magic - was it community building or strategic AMAs? Which social channels drove real traction (TikTok code memes vs Twitter targeted ads)? And did natural SEO play a role? Like optimizing for "vibe coding crash course" type keywords?
bolt.new
@nora_lam short answer: we put out a tweet. That was it (seriously!)
Longer answer: building a community of builders & developers the past seven years, who were following what we'd announce and release. And we released a lot of things over the past 7y! So when the time came to announce Bolt, we already had a trusted brand, community love and willingness to try our products.
Tldr- while you try and build your products/startups, always be building a community. You need that distribution channel when the prime time comes, and its something that cannot be bought!
Triforce Todos
Hi Eric,
Great! Growing from 0 to $20M is no small feat. I am excited to hear about the toughest challenges along the way.
And what was the biggest turning point that kept Bolt on track during the tough times?
@abod_rehman Yes! Very glad you made it. But i'll definitely take the story on how you almost didn't...
bolt.new
@abod_rehman @steveb great questions!
Hard to pinpoint exactly one specific turning point honestly. In the first 2 months, there were probably a dozen or so moments that were "oh sh**, oh SH** everything is melting" sort of situations. Like, would've killed the product/company sort of things: not enough GPUs to stay online, servers getting hammered and going down at 3am, critical bugs in the product, etc etc.
It felt like the movie 300, where our 20 person team was surrounded by tens of thousands- and our team did the impossible. I'm so proud of them.
Long story short... we'd been working on StackBlitz (company behind bolt) for 7 years at that point, and despite making insanely cool technology w/ much developer love, could not figure out how to make money in a venture scale way. So at the end of the year, we were going to begin spinning down the company if we couldn't figure out a way to make our technology commercially viable. We had one last bullet in the chamber though, which was Bolt... and we are still mindblown by what happened next. (And fortunately, we did NOT shut down the company! :)
Product Hunt
There's a really special moment for a consumer when they touch a piece of tech and it feels like magic. Bolt definitely felt like that. When building and releasing Bolt, did you and the team feel like you just made something magical? How did the product iteration change to get it to the first release point to where the user's experience just hit.
8base
Aside from delivering a great product, how did you bootstrap the adoption needed to grow this quickly?
What were the beginning stages like when you first started working on bolt?
Product Hunt
@ericsimons40 Vibe coding seems to be really taking off right now and Bolt is right at the center of that. What are your main tips for non-technical folks looking to jump in and start vibe coding for the first time?
What tools have been essential in helping you scale Bolt at this pace?
Curious – how do y'all plan to establish a moat in your market? What is going to be the way in which you differentiate?
"how we almost didn't make it" - why? Want to hear that side of the story.