Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder and 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 monthly active users in about five months.What you’ll learn:1. How Bolt reached nearly $40M ARR and 3 million registered users in just five months with a team of only 15 to 20 people2. How Bolt leverages WebContainer technology—a browser-based operating system developed over seven years—to create a dramatically faster, more reliable AI coding experience than competitors3. Why Anthropic’s 3.5 Sonnet model was the critical breakthrough that made AI-generated code production-ready and unlocked the entire text-to-app market4. Why PMs may be better positioned than engineers in the AI era5. How AI will dramatically reshape company org charts6. Eric’s wild founder story (including squatting at AOL’s HQ) and how scrappiness fueled his innovation—Brought to you by:• Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments• Fundrise Flagship Fund—Invest in $1.1 billion of real estate• OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons—Where to find Eric Simons:• X: https://x.com/ericsimons40• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-simons-a464a664/• Email: [e-mail]—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Eric Simons and StackBlitz(04:46) Unprecedented growth and user adoption(10:40) Demo: Building a Spotify clone with Bolt(15:28) Expanding to native mobile apps with Expo(19:09) The journey and technology behind WebContainer(25:03) Lessons learned and future outlook(29:15) Post-launch analysis(34:15) Growing fast with a small team(41:00) Prioritization at Bolt(45:51) Tooling and PRD's(48:42) Integration and use cases of Bolt(52:24) Limitations of Bolt(54:24) The role of PMs and developers in the AI era(59:56) Skills for the future(01:14:18) Upcoming features of Bolt(01:20:17) How to get the most out of Bolt(01:23:00) Eric’s journey and final thoughts—Referenced:• Bolt: https://bolt.new/• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/• Wix: https://www.wix.com/• Squarespace: https://www.squarespace.com/• Dylan Field on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/• Evan Wallace’s website: https://madebyevan.com/• WebGL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL• WebAssembly: https://webassembly.org/• CloudNine: https://cloudnine.com/• Canva: https://www.canva.com/• StackBlitz: https://stackblitz.com/• Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, more | Dalton Caldwell (Y Combinator, Managing Director): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-1000-yc-startups• Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/• Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/• Dario Amodei on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dario-amodei-3934934/• Linear: https://linear.app/• Notion: https://www.notion.com/• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/• Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/• Photoshop: https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• Greenfield projects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project• Gartner: https://www.gartner.com/• OpenAI researcher on why soft skills are the future of work | Karina Nguyen (Research at OpenAI, ex-Anthropic): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-soft-skills-are-the-future-of-work-karina-nguyen• Albert Pai on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertpai/• Bolt’s post on X about “Bolt Builders”: https://x.com/boltdotnew/status/1887546089294995943• Sonnet: https://www.anthropic.com/claude/sonnet• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/• Breaking the Rules: The Young Entrepreneur Who Squatted at AOL: https://www.inc.com/john-mcdermott/eric-simons-interview-young-entrepreneur-squatted-at-aol.html• Imagine K12: http://www.imaginek12.com/• Geoff Ralston on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffralston/• AOL: https://www.aol.com/• Bolt on X: https://x.com/boltdotnew—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [e-mail].—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe