Host: Being canceled is a choice. You can choose to get canceled and retreat from the public eye, but I think if you're still out there, at some point honestly the haters kind of give up. So some people ask, "Hey, how should I think about X versus other platforms?" You have to understand the meta, because the way to go viral is to dress up your arguments, your worldview in the current conversation. Twitter's influence is amazing, but it tends to be elite kind of inside group influence. I think Instagram, Facebook, still, YouTube is where you get to the early majority. Does every CEO need to become an influencer now? Look, I think there are so many paths to success. I don't think there's one. Replit would have probably died if I wasn't telling a story that is larger than the company itself. Dario is an example where he's not playing the social media game. The product sort of speaks for itself. So I think it comes down to the... Amjad, thank you for joining us.

Host: So Replit is a 10-year-old company. Uh for the last 2 years it's gone absolutely vertical, but there was a period of time well before that where the company was in the zeitgeist, um partially because of your go-direct efforts. I mean you're one of the best CEOs on X. You're also now getting bigger on Instagram and other platforms. What is the business impact uh been of your efforts going direct? And does every CEO need to become an influencer now? Or how have you sort of conceived of this?

Amjad Masad: Yeah, I think Replit would have probably died if I wasn't telling a story that is larger than the company itself. Like the company wasn't successful commercially, but we've been very successful at fundraising, recruiting, and I think if you build a company that's successful right out of the gate commercially, like you might not need to do all of that. But if you're trying to meme a dream into reality, I think you have to play that game. And so yeah, I think otherwise we would have not existed because we had to do that for so many years before. I mean, turns out everything I said was true, but at the time it wasn't real. It was a dream. Yeah.

Host: And I mean, you at one point decided to go big on this. You weren't always big on Twitter. I mean, you started and a lot of people here, a lot of people, you know, who are CEOs maybe it doesn't come supernaturally to them and they have to make a decision of like, how do I get good, you know, am I going to do this? And if so, how do I get good at it? What was your journey to say, "Hey, I'm really going to invest in this and I'm going to get good at this?"

Amjad Masad: Well, I think the journey starts like outside of Twitter even is like, how do you get good at communicating? How do you get good at public speaking? Um and so, I always wanted to be able to be an influencer for lack of better words. I remember I was in New York when I first came to the States and I had a terrible stage fright. Like, I'd be sitting here and then my heart rate would be like 150. I'd be sweating. Uh and I thought like, how do I deal with this? How do you get better at this? And I went and took improv classes in New York and then took a storytelling class and I'm like a big fan of exposure therapy. Anything you're afraid of, just go and do more of it until you're desensitized and like the best way to get desensitized is to just make a fool of yourself every day doing improv. Um and I ended up doing shows and got pretty good at it. Uh and then I think the benefit that I had is Replit didn't like blow up right out of the gate. It was this like very my personal profile had this very linear growth to it. And so I could make mistakes with very little attention on me. So I made a lot of PR mistakes. I think still if you go to Hacker News sort of by the top 10 like we had a PR crisis in Hacker News where I had an issue with some ex-intern at Replit where I just totally botched that communication on that. But still that wasn't largely I was still like within the Hacker News community which they still hate me which is fine. They'll hate you anyways.

Host: [laughter] That's like the rite of passage. Hacker News loves you then they hate you then you become successful.

Amjad Masad: And then so you kind of make mistakes and they're not at the public stage just yet. And so the stakes gets higher as I'm able it's sort of a progressive overload in powerlifting. You're sort of like carrying more weight. You know it never gets easier but you're able to do more and more over time. And so you know I feel for the founders that are just now kind of like their company's blowing up and they're in the public eye and you can see founders of big you know now trillion dollar companies they're really messing up on a massive stage. But...

Host: Getting the reps in has been super helpful. And so is that your advice people want to get you just exposure therapy just you know like one tweet a day or something what's the best way to get started to get really good at this?

Amjad Masad: Yeah so I think a few things. One is the concept of building in public wasn't coined when I started doing that but the idea is that look as a CEO you're going to do a good amount of writing and communicating to your employees to your investors. You can just do it publicly right? I mean I've always been this believer that there aren't really a lot of secrets that you need to keep inside a company. And so a lot of your otherwise writing that would be in private, you can put it public. And that way you carry people in the journey with you. And you're getting the reps in. So whenever there's a piece of communication or story I want to tell and there's a choice between public and private, I might bias towards public. I often write something publicly and then paste it on Slack. I just say, you know, this is what I wrote. And so that's been helpful. The other thing is authenticity. I think like being really being yourself is kind of like a big radical thing that, you know, maybe started happening with Elon maybe 10 years ago, but CEOs were supposed to be this, you know, very polished thing. They had to kind of be filtered through this prism of PR and journalists are kind of the way to get to the public. But you see kind of Elon being the first kind of building a public platform. And I think Zuck to some extent as well. Just seeing Zuck at some point when journalists kind of turned on him, he started going direct. And you start following their stories and it's like Zuck changed his the entire narrative around him by just being himself and actually talking directly to people. And I think the story of Trump is also very illustrative. Like I think, you know, Trump was successful despite the negative bias in the press and it was mostly Twitter initially. Like people forget that, but Trump had like amazing bangers on What was it? My favorite one? I've never seen a thin person drink Diet Coke.

Host: [laughter]

Amjad Masad: Which is true. Or Kanye. Kanye could Kanye's banger is like, I hate waking up in the plane and I see a bottle of water in front of me. Now now I got to take care of this shit.

Host: [laughter] I don't have a manager. I can't be managed.

Amjad Masad: Right. I can't be managed. Like, you know, you see these people come up and people start associating with them and obviously they're they're very authentic. And like, okay, there's there's this shift in people's minds where they crave authenticity.

Host: Hunter Biden.

Amjad Masad: Yeah. Yeah. He's still there.

Host: but if you're a good poster and you can get away with it.

Amjad Masad: He can post his way to presidency for sure. Yeah.

Host: The um You is it funny you mention the intern thing because I remember that but I also remember forgetting it too. And a lot of people say, oh, what if I say the wrong thing? What if I get my company into trouble and in some sort of, you know, controversy or scandal? You know, is it just that attention spans are so short that it's just like the next situation? What what do you say about that?

Amjad Masad: Well, well, you need to I I think it's deadly. Like PR can be PR crisis can be deadly uh if you retreat afterwards. Like if you're not in the news and I think the thing about I think Trump, Elon, et cetera is that there is the next thing. And by the way, the next thing could be worse. But [laughter] just but just the fact that you're still in there, you're still in the game, people will be like, oh, we like oh, this this this guy's unkillable, uncancelable. And so it it Being canceled is a choice. Uh so you can you can choose to get canceled and retreat from the public eye, but I think if you're still out there, then at some point honestly the haters kind of give up. They're like, all right, I guess I can't we can't do anything to this guy. Let's go to the next guy.

Host: Yeah. There's this great book, So You Think You've Been Shamed (So You've Been Publicly Shamed), and it chronicles the stories of a number of people who've gotten canceled over the past like 15 years and that's basically the the takeaway is that the the people who are truly canceled are the ones who shut up. They're the ones who retreat. But the ones who just keep going and you know, it's it's forgettable. I mean, there's so many people, you know, Brian Johnson is shortly like revived their image or just presented a whole new image. People just forget the thing that they were, you know, almost canceled.

Amjad Masad: I I will say the mental aspect of it is pretty difficult.

Host: I was going to ask that next.

Amjad Masad: Yeah, because like I think that um you know, this story has been told a trillion times about like in the ancestral village, uh if if you become an outcast, that's pretty deadly. Like you can literally die. You can't find food. And so our limbic system when you get you get this massive reaction online, you're kind of in this fight or flight and it could you know, it could really affect you. Like you can't sleep. You uh some people can't eat and it's it could get be it could be really damaging. But I think again, exposure therapy helps a lot. Like the first one is really hard, the second one is like, ah, it'll blow over. Um but but also acting on principles. Like I think acting on principles is important. Like I you know, no matter what people think of what's happening at Anthropic, it's absolutely true, I think in my mind, that they believe everything they're doing. They believe in safety. They believe in their mission. And I think that gives them incredible strength to keep going in um and obviously like often times principles and um self-interest coincide and you can and that's that's a good thing, but you can ascribe what they're doing to some kind of cynical marketing ploy, but it the strength that they have is is based on their principles and that that really keeps them going.

Host: Yeah. Yeah. The I mean earlier on you were alluding to the stakes are are really high with these What advice might you have for an Anthropic or or OpenAI in terms of like the some of the communication challenges or opportunities?

Amjad Masad: It's It's obviously way above my grade. I've never, you know, battled with a, you know, United States government. Uh not [laughter] yet. Uh one day. Goals. Um but um Look, I think I I honestly think it's a kind of a win-win for them. Like it's really if you if you game out what's going to happen with Anthropic, Fable (Claude) comes back, it's going to be huge flood towards Fable. It's kind of like, you know, this this thing was banned by the government. Actually, Steve Jobs um once did this ad uh they they had a they had a Mac I don't know, the big towers of Mac Pro, I think it's called, where they had a tremendous computer power that was a subject to export control. So, they had this this ad where it's like military tanks going and like surrounding the Mac and the Mac in the middle and it's like showing that this thing is so powerful, the US government doesn't want, you know, doesn't doesn't want you to have it, so you should go buy it. Uh and so it's like a tremendous marketing opportunity for that. It's already kind of their their reputation is pretty big. Uh but but even if but even if they can't get Fable back on the market, you know, they still win the PR game of like we're a company that's kind of principled and doing the right thing and all of that. So, I I think just uh um my advice would be not to stress out too much and not to uh honestly just sit back and let it play out.

Host: You You're describing that the mental game is to A lot of things we'll hear from CEOs is, "Oh, I don't want to have to tweet and then I'm in meetings. Now I have to think about the responses and I have to respond back and now I'm in sort of a conflict."

Amjad Masad: respond back. That's the thing. You don't have to respond back at all. I mean, that's that's another thing you have to learn is to is to like not feed the trolls. It's you know, that that that reply is like, "Oh, I got to get back." It's like what's that I think New Yorker comic? It was like, "Oh, babe, come to bed." He's like, "No, someone's wrong on the internet." Uh and it's like it's very tempting, but actually it's kind of the baller thing to do is like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, the plebs can't fight in my comments." I don't need to worry about it. So, uh so I think it's a trap to think that anything you put out you need to immediately defend. Obviously, if something is getting um a lot of airplay and people are misunderstanding you, I think you should you should correct it. Uh and again, you should do it in the principled way. You should do it because, "Hey, this is what I actually believe. Uh here's what you got wrong, but don't be overly defensive about it. Like don't appear that, "Oh, this is this is something that you're getting emotional about." Because again, anytime publicly if you anytime you show weakness publicly, it actually feeds the trolls and feeds the haters because they feel like they can get to you.

Host: Yeah. What what advice do you give for when companies are being dragged by by by someone on Twitter or or in the in the press or when to respond versus when when when not to engage?

Amjad Masad: Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's like a art thing and and I think I it comes down to um like business impact. Like will it actually have business on a impact on my business? Um you know, for example, like uh last year in July we had this story with um the you know, founder of SaaStr, Jason Lemkin where uh Jason had just vibe coding, had never vibe coded or coded anything before, and uh as he's working with Replit Agent, Replit Agent sort of misunderstood him or something like that, and then deleted the database. At the time we didn't have production development separation, and so the production database now like we actually separate them by default. Like the the Replit Agent can't even write to production database. It can only read. Um and uh and we we have backups. We have snapshots. You can go back, you know, to a certain day or time or whatever. So, the the mistake that the Replit Agent did was one click away from being fixed. But from his perspective, he didn't know that, and Replit Agent started freaking out. Models at the time like used to get like really anxious, especially Claude. Um and he he tweeted the screenshot where Replit Agent was like going kind of nuts. Uh and you know, it started gaining traction, gaining traction, gaining traction. And I in my mind I knew like we already fixed this issue, but but like the story has become so massive, and you know, obviously it's going to have business impact, and it's going to be in the press. And so I could I could go out and fight and just say, "Well, we did nothing wrong. We have backups, you know." It could be I could say it's a user error or whatever. But I think the right thing to do was to own own up to it, the fact that we didn't have development production separation is a bad thing. And 2 days later we rolled out that fixed. And so my my response got a lot of positive interaction and and got a lot of airplay because I started with, "Hey, we messed up. And this is what what we could have done better." But sometimes you can give attention to things that you don't want to give attention to, especially once your profile grows.

Host: Especially if you apologize.

Amjad Masad: Yeah, especially if they apologize. So, I I would say just kind of focus on the business impact.

Host: That's awesome. Yeah.

Amjad Masad: Yeah.

Host: The you you mentioned earlier that you sort of developed a a desire for this. For CEOs who are, you know, so locked in, they're just not that interested in in doing this. Would you recommend that they cultivate the desire to do it, or would you recommend that someone else on the team can do it? Does it have to be the CEO, or how would you think about this?

Amjad Masad: Look, I think there's so many paths to success. I don't think there's one. Um like yeah, there are a lot of companies where this it's not the CEO that's out there, like um uh Groq with a Q, and uh like Sunny's the person on Twitter, but the CEO is kind of not not on there. Um and they they've done a great job, and obviously they kind of uh the company's great, their IP is great, but they also they memed it to kind of into success, cuz I think part of the story that's not being told there is that they actually had a lot of trouble fundraising in Silicon Valley. They had to kind of go to Saudi, and and all of that. And so, that that's an example um where the CEO is not out there. You know, but you look at Dario as an example where he's not playing the social media game, and kind of the product sort of play uh speaks for itself, and he's writing these big essays. So, I think it comes down to the predisposition of the CEO. Like, do you actually enjoy it? Do you think you can be good at it? Um I think forcing people to do it where they they can come out and be totally cringe, and like be actually negative on the brand. Obviously, they can learn over time and do it, but uh but it it really depends on the situation.

Host: Have you gotten any leverage or way to lower the activation energy in in terms of or any help doing it? And is it possible for others too or is it just all you just whenever you think something?

Amjad Masad: Well, I think I have the benefit of this long period of incubation. Um I think that if your company is already high-profile, you don't want to kind of practice in public and so maybe getting some some coaching earlier on.

Host: Just so some people ask, "Hey, how should I think about X versus other platforms? You know, maybe their customers aren't on X, etc." How do you think about that?

Amjad Masad: Well, I think X is very good for the set of Silicon Valley, for tech, for kind of the in-group messaging, for maybe one hop outside of Silicon Valley, which is kind of the early adopter, if you're targeting early adopters. Uh you know, so I would also cluster Hacker News within that as well. Um but it it actually once you want to go to late adopters or like early majority, if you think about this uh kind of bell curve of adoption, uh Twitter becomes actually not very impactful there. It can still be be very important where um like you know, just this morning uh journalists reach out to me to ask to talk to me about a tweet that I made about some some of the stuff that's happening with Anthropic. Uh and so like Twitter can still be a place where it is it is the start of stories. And that's another thing, you know, back to the conversation of why this is important is the landscape shifted so much that journalists report on Twitter. So, it's kind of starts on Twitter. So, Twitter's influence is amazing, but it tends to be elite kind of inside group influence. I think Instagram, Facebook still, you know, YouTube is where you get to the early majority. And I think I was late to to YouTube. Uh to sorry, to Instagram. Like um you know, I just started focusing on it in like maybe February or something like that. And we're getting insane amount of views and the followership kind of...

Host: You started to build this clips machine of yours, your interviews. The podcast is interesting because it's a medium that could be turned into every other format.

Amjad Masad: Right. Right. So I feel like I I should have maybe done Instagram like a year or two ago. So I was like a little late on that. I thought it was going to be harder. Well, it turns out it can just like you know, do these clipping and just grow grow not just your account, it can grow a lot of different accounts that way. Um And but but I would I would start with Twitter because the again, that's where the news starts to happen. This is where you can have outsized influence.

Host: And are you are you bullish on the platform? Do you think that in the next, you know, three to five years that will stay the same?

Amjad Masad: I I think it is actually kind of risky because the algorithm changes so much and you know, you might do something that angers the power that powers [snorts] that be and you know, very you know, without anyone knowing, things might change for you in terms of your reach on X. And so I think there's like less transparency than Twitter 1.0. So it is it is a little it is a little risky, but I think the platform has so much staying power. Yeah. Like it's really hard to replace. Like you can you can change the name, you can destroy the brand and you and the platform will still be very valuable. Like it is it is it is it is one of those things that I think there's no way you can avoid it.

Host: Who who are some CEOs or leaders um that inspire you in terms of how they go direct to that you've learned from looking at what what they do.

Amjad Masad: Obviously, we were all you know, in the school of biology. Balaji and Lulu, we had this group in the pandemic. What was it called?

Host: The going direct thing. Yeah, the going direct.

Amjad Masad: Yeah, and so we kind of talked about strategies and and kind of critiqued some of our approaches or other people's approaches. So that was that was very very useful. I think uh Balaji was kind of earlier to this stuff. I think where I might disagree with Balaji is that I I don't think you should be antagonistic to reporters. There's no reason to. Like you you can actually be friends with them and they can be positive towards you. You can you can help them out. They're just humans at the end of the day and they respond to incentives. Um and I think we've done pretty well in maintaining our relationships with um and obviously Shervin Naz recently joined us and that up-leveled our game um with uh with reporters and and more of that type of media. Um So uh So so I think uh but studying that is is very important. I think there's enough content out there uh to get started with. Um but let's see who else.

Host: Palmer, Alex Karp, Elon.

Amjad Masad: I I obviously I I mean I mentioned Elon. Um you know, I think he I think Sacks is doing such a great job.

Host: What what about what he's doing you you know?

Amjad Masad: I think it is much less tweet length things, but he's able to put out very well-reasoned arguments that play into the zeitgeist in a very smart way and advance their point of view. Like the the essay he put out over the weekend, you got 20 30 million views. Like you very few essays kind of get get that much attention, but it it comes at a time where everyone is thinking about token costs, everyone is thinking about and this is important thing about going direct. You can go direct and get zero views. Like it's really easy to like not not pay attention to you. You have to understand the meta. And I think that's the thing that's more time consuming than posting. Posting is not time consuming. The thing that's time consuming is understanding what is the larger debate because the way to go viral is to couch or dress up your argument, your worldview in the current conversation.

Host: Yeah.

Amjad Masad: Um and I thought that what Satya did with his essays is very much at the heart of like what the discussion is today and then he advanced the point of view of of Microsoft.

Host: Yeah. And it's a good place to to wrap. Please give it up for Ram Jacob (Amjad Masad). Thank you. Thanks a lot. See you soon. [music]