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
Oct 4
The Impact of AI, from Business Models to Cybersecurity, with Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora
Between the future of search, the biggest threats in cybersecurity, and the jobs and platforms of tomorrow, Nikesh Arora sees one common thread connecting and transforming them all—AI. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil sit down with Nikesh Arora, CEO of cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Network ... Show More
58m 21s
Sep 25
Reinventing K-12 Education Using AI with Alpha School Principal Joe Liemandt
What if kids could master their academics in just two hours a day and spend the rest of their time developing real-world skills they’re passionate about? Joe Liemandt, founder of the software company Trilogy, is doing just that. Sarah Guo and Elad Gil are joined by Joe Liemandt, ... Show More
1h 1m
Sep 18
AI Agents Talking to AI Agents: Reinventing Commerce with Decagon CEO Jesse Zhang
The traditional call center may soon be a thing of the past. Jessie Zhang is building AI agents designed to replace monotonous human labor and transform how consumers interact with brands. Elad Gil sits down with Jesse Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Decagon, an AI agent company at ... Show More
31m 22s
Recommended Episodes
Sep 9
I Typed This… and AI Built the App
Want to build your own apps with AI? Get the prompts here: https://clickhubspot.com/gfb Episode 75: What if you could turn your app idea into a fully functional web application—without writing a single line of code—in under 60 seconds? Nathan Lands (https://x.com/NathanLands) wel ... Show More
40m 57s
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 2025
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 2025
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
Aug 17
Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour (Reforge)
Brian Balfour is the founder of Reforge, the former VP of Growth at HubSpot, and a student (and teacher) of product growth. Brian has studied every major platform shift—from Facebook to Apple to Google—and he’s spotted a pattern that’s about to repeat with ChatGPT.In this convers ... Show More
1h 29m
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
Jul 14
Unlock Hypergrowth: How Vibe Coding Can Fast-Track Your Startup Success w/ Bolt CEO Eric Simons
Can you really build and launch a startup without writing code, or even knowing how to?As AI tools promise lightning-fast product development, many founders still fall into old traps: over-validating, under-executing, or waiting too long for a technical cofounder.In this episode, ... Show More
58m 44s
Jul 6
Solo founder, $80M exit, 6 months: The Base44 bootstrapped startup success story | Maor Shlomo
Maor Shlomo is the founder of Base44, an AI-powered app builder that he bootstrapped to an over $80 million acquisition by Wix in just six months. As a solo founder (with severe ADHD), he hit $1 million ARR just three weeks after launch and grew the product to more than 400,000 u ... Show More
1h 31m
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