Replit CEO says solo app dev is here, all you need is a few hours and a great prompt

India Today

2 days ago

The CEO of Replit, Amjad Masad, says the era of one-person software creation has arrived, and all it takes is a good idea, a strong AI prompt, and a few hours of focused work. 'You can just have a prompt and have an app,' Masad said on the Big Technology Podcast. 'I'd say at least set an afternoon to give it some good effort and try to get your first app. And once you do that, you just get it.' Replit, which allows users to build applications using AI-assisted prompts and code-completion tools, has been growing rapidly. The company's annual recurring revenue jumped from $10 million at the end of 2024 to over $100 million by mid-2025, a tenfold rise in under six months.advertisementMasad calls this new approach 'vibe coding,' a term for creating software by writing natural language prompts that AI turns into functional code. While this dramatically lowers the barrier to entry, he stressed that it still takes work. 'People need to invest effort. It's not magic,' he said, adding that users still need to learn prompt engineering, iterate on ideas, and understand that AI models can behave unpredictably.He believes vibe coding is opening doors for people without technical backgrounds, from HR professionals and doctors to Uber drivers. 'Everyone in the world has ideas,' Masad said. 'People build so much domain knowledge about their field of work, but they never could make it into software because they didn't have the skill or capital.'
Masad sees this shift as a possible antidote to declining entrepreneurship, enabling solo founders to launch sustainable businesses. 'If you're trying to build a company that generates a great living, where even you get rich from it, I think we're almost there,' he said.But the conversation around AI and coding goes far beyond solo app development. The industry is locked in a debate over whether AI will eventually replace human coders altogether.Google says AI already writes 30 percent of its code. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has gone further, predicting that by the end of 2025, between 90 and 100 percent of all code will be AI-generated. In fact, earlier this year, Masad has also agreed with the possibility, and doesn't mince words about its implications. 'As AI agents get better, it would be a waste of time to learn how to code,' he said, referencing Amodei's forecast. However, he adds that the fundamentals still matter: 'Learn how to think, learn how to break down problems. Learn how to communicate clearly, as you would with humans, but also with machines.'Other tech leaders share the belief that AI will take a dominant role in coding, though not all are optimistic about the pace. Linux creator Linus Torvalds has called much of the AI buzz '90 percent marketing and 10 percent reality,' saying genuinely transformative tools are still years away. Infosys founder Narayana Murthy has also questioned the depth of the AI boom, warning against mistaking rebranded software for genuine breakthroughs.Masad, however, remains bullish: 'I'm agents-pilled. I am very bullish.'- Ends