Eric Simons is the Co-founder and CEO of StackBlitz, best known for its breakout product Bolt, letting anyone build full stack apps from text, in the browser.

Bolt launched in October of 2024, quickly growing from zero to $20 million in annualized revenue in two months. This would make it one of the fastest growing products of all-time, but Eric will be the first to tell you it wasn’t an overnight success - and the product didn’t even work the first time they tried building it.

We go behind the scenes of the seven year journey building the tech that eventually led to Bolt, how to avoid distractions, being capital efficient, and living on $1 per day squatting in AOL’s headquarters when he was 19

Eric also takes us inside the weeks after Bolt’s viral launch, figuring out a new business model on the fly, his strategy for fundraising and PR, why you should open source your code, Bolt’s playbook for building a community around the product that enabled their viral launch, and how AI is quickly software forever.

Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro

(2:24) Building full stack apps from text, in your browser

(4:19) Inventing Webcontainers to run an operating system in the browser

(11:48) Why Bolt failed the first time, almost shutting down the company four months before launching

(20:18) How Bolt went viral from one tweet

(28:33) Differences between ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor

(39:38) Why AI code gen changes the software world order

(42:01) What happened inside Bolt after going zero to $20m ARR in two months

(47:32) Why Eric didn’t share fundraises publicly, his unique PR strategy

(58:57) Why they never gave up for seven years

(1:01:07) Living in a frat house for $100/month

(1:04:07) How to be capital efficient

(1:09:00) Living on $1/day in AOL’s HQ when he was 19

(1:14:01) Inside Bolt’s Series B

(1:21:03) Bolt’s hiring and product roadmap

(1:32:58) Creating a new inference-based AI business model

(1:38:07) Bolt’s playbook for building a community of users

(1:44:05) Why you should open source your code

Referenced

Try Bolt: https://bolt.new/

Bolt on X: https://x.com/boltdotnew

Check out Webcontainers: https://webcontainers.io/

$0 to $4m ARR case study with Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/customers/stackblitz

Bolt’s open source code: https://www.bolt.diy/

Bolt / StackBlitz is hiring! https://stackblitz.com/careers

Eric’s favorite cafe, The Lighthouse SF: https://thelighthousessf.com/

Lady Gaga’s “one person” montage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRxsX_30tjs

Living inside AOL HQ at 19 years old: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/meet-the-tireless-entrepreneur-who-squatted-at-aol/

Bloomberg coverage of StackBlitz Series B: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-21/ai-speech-to-code-startup-stackblitz-is-in-talks-for-a-700-million-valuation?embedded-checkout=true

Joel Spolsky’s blog: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/

Follow Eric

Twitter: https://x.com/ericsimons40

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

Follow Turner

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/

Zero to $20m ARR in Two Months: Inside Bolt’s 7-Year Journey to Overnight Success | Eric Simons, Co-founder & CEO

The Peel with Turner Novak