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)

Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

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

—

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 people

2. 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 competitors

3. 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 market

4. Why PMs may be better positioned than engineers in the AI era

5. How AI will dramatically reshape company org charts

6. Eric’s wild founder story (including squatting at AOL’s HQ) and how scrappiness fueled his innovation

Some takeaways:

1. Bolt succeeded by doing what was thought impossible—running full dev environments in a browser.

2. Bolt operated on minimal resources and near-zero runway, mostly just staying alive long enough to keep trying new things. When Claude 3.5 Sonnet launched, it changed everything.

3. The nature of coding teams is shifting. PMs and designers can now produce high-fidelity prototypes—and even complete apps—on their own, requiring fewer engineering resources for frontend tasks.

4. Lessons from Bolt’s startup story:

   1. Deep technology investments can take years to find product-market fit.

   2. Keep burn rates extremely low to maximize runway for experimentation.

   3. Small teams with high context per person can outperform larger organizations.

   4. Daily all-hands meetings create zero fidelity loss in communication.

   5. Surviving long enough to catch market timing can transform a struggling startup.

5. AI’s organizational implications for companies:

   1. Projects that cost $30,000 can now be built for $300.

   2. Development timelines are reduced from months to days or hours.

   3. Product managers can directly implement their vision without engineers.

   4. Entrepreneurs can launch functional businesses without technical co-founders.

   5. Fewer frontend engineers are needed per product team.

   6. Design-to-code workflows will become seamless and instantaneous.

   7. Small, high-context teams can move dramatically faster than larger organizations.

Where to find Eric Simons:

• X: https://x.com/ericsimons40

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-simons-a464a664/

• Email: Eric@stackblitz.com

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 podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.