logo
episode-header-image
Dec 2024
38m 17s

Bolt’s Eric Simons on Enabling Everyone ...

Conviction
About this episode

In this episode of No Priors, Sarah talks with Eric Simons, co-founder and CEO of StackBlitz. The company has experienced explosive growth since the launch 2 months ago of Bolt.new, an AI application that lets users prompt, run, edit, and deploy full-stack applications directly in the browser. Eric talks about the years-long journey that led to overnight success, why so many non-technical users are forming a community around Bolt, and the democratization of coding.


Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com

Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @EricSimons40


Show Notes:

0:00 Introduction

0:36 Bolt.new

2:04 How Bolt stands out from other coding assistants

3:28 Building beyond ChatGPT wrappers

6:13 Driving growth through community

9:42 Evals

13:29 Eric’s favorite use cases and startups leveraging Bolt

17:10 Why engineers are embracing no- code tools

24:32 The years long journey of StackBlitz

31:50 Balancing an Ironman, a newborn, and a product launch

35:18 Predictions for developers and code generation tools

Up next
Jul 3
Chai-2: The AI Model Accelerating Drug Discovery with Chai Discovery Co-Founders Jack Dent and Joshua Meier
AI has already fueled breakthroughs in biotechnology—but now, further advances in AI are poised to fuel pharmaceutical discoveries as well. Sarah Guo sits down with Joshua Meier and Jack Dent, co-founders of Chai Discovery, whose newly launched Chai-2 designs bespoke antibodies t ... Show More
49m 27s
Jun 26
Meet AlphaEvolve: The Autonomous Agent That Discovers Algorithms Better Than Humans With Google DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli and Matej Balog
Much of the scientific process involves searching. But rather than continue to rely on the luck of discovery, Google DeepMind has engineered a more efficient AI agent that mines complex spaces to facilitate scientific breakthroughs. Sarah Guo speaks with Pushmeet Kohli, VP of Sci ... Show More
42m 8s
Jun 17
The Operating System for Self Driving Cars (and Tanks, and Trucks...) With Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig of Applied Intuition
When will fully autonomous vehicles see widespread adoption? According to Applied Intuition, that future is closer than you may think. Applied Intuition’s CEO, Qasar Younis, and CTO, Peter Ludwig, talk with Elad Gil about how now is the best time to both work on self-driving vehi ... Show More
45m 21s
Recommended Episodes
Mar 2025
Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder & CEO of StackBlitz)
Eric Simons is the founder and CEO of StackBlitz, the company behind Bolt—the #1 web-based AI coding agent and one of the fastest-growing products in history. After nearly shutting down, StackBlitz launched Bolt on Twitter and exploded from zero to $40 million ARR and 1 million m ... Show More
1h 28m
May 28
This AI Tool Can Build Any SaaS App in Minutes
Episode 60: Can you really build an $8 billion SaaS startup by yourself using AI agents? Nathan Lands (https://x.com/NathanLands) sits down with Matan Grinberg (https://x.com/matansf), a physicist, AI founder, and creator of Factory AI—one of Silicon Valley’s best-kept secrets. M ... Show More
40m 47s
May 4
Inside Devin: The world’s first autonomous AI engineer that's set to write 50% of its company’s code by end of year | Scott Wu (CEO and co-founder of Cognition)
Scott Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition, the company behind Devin—the world’s first autonomous AI software engineer. Unlike other AI coding tools, Devin works like an autonomous engineer that you can interact with through Slack, Linear, and GitHub, just like with a remote ... Show More
1h 32m
Jul 2024
Justin Sheehy on Being a Responsible Developer in the Age of AI Hype
At the recent InfoQ Dev Summit Boston, Justin Sheehy of Akamai delivered an insightful opening keynote on being a responsible developer in the age of artificial intelligence hype. The talk was aimed at software practitioners who might be feeling overwhelmed by the rapid developme ... Show More
45m 33s
Nov 2024
Behind the product: Replit | Amjad Masad (co-founder and CEO)
Amjad Masad is the co-founder and CEO of Replit, a browser-based coding environment that allows anyone to write and deploy code. Replit has 34 million users globally and is one of the fastest-growing developer communities in the world. Prior to Replit, Amjad worked at Facebook, w ... Show More
1h 4m
Dec 2024
Why great AI products are all about the data | Shaun Clowes (CPO Confluent, ex-Salesforce, Atlassian)
Shaun Clowes is the chief product officer at Confluent and former CPO at Salesforce’s MuleSoft and at Metromile. He was also the first head of growth at Atlassian, where he led product for Jira Agile and built the first-ever B2B growth team. In our conversation, we discuss:• Why ... Show More
1h 21m
Aug 2024
How to consistently go viral: Nikita Bier’s playbook for winning at consumer apps (co-founder of TBH, Gas, advisor, investor)
Nikita Bier is one of the most in-demand consumer, social, and growth experts in the world. He’s the co-founder of TBH (sold to Meta for more than $30 million) and Gas (sold to Discord for millions more) and has helped more consumer apps that have hit #1 in the app stores than an ... Show More
1h 38m
Jun 25
Building Cluely: The Viral AI Startup that raised $15M in 10 Weeks
What if virality wasn’t a tactic — but the entire product?In this episode, a16z General Partners Erik Torenberg and Bryan Kim sit down with Roy Lee, cofounder and CEO of Cluely, one of the most talked-about consumer AI startups of 2025. Cluely didn’t raise a mega round or drop a ... Show More
38m 24s
Sep 2024
Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside)
Tal Raviv is a product manager at Riverside, where he joined as its first PM. Over his 12-year career as an individual contributor, Tal has been an early PM at Patreon, AppsFlyer, and Wix, working in consumer growth, developer API platforms, and pricing. He started his career by ... Show More
1h 31m
Dec 2024
Testing 4 New Ai Coding Tools: Bolt vs V0 vs Replit vs Websim.AI
Episode 35: How effective are the latest AI tools for coding and app development? Matt Wolfe (https://x.com/mreflow) and Nathan Lands (https://x.com/NathanLands) take us through a head-to-head evaluation of Bolt, v0, Replit, and Websim.AI, analyzing their design, usability, and o ... Show More
34m 34s