S2E22: "You're Not Buying Software, You're Hiring a $1K Employee" (Amjad Masad, Replit)

Amjad Masad, CEO of Replit, just raised $250M at a $3B valuation and hit $150M ARR. But his most controversial take? The Silicon Valley model of scaling point solutions to IPO is dead. In this episode, Amjad reveals how Agent 3 works under the hood (spoiler: it's actually multiple agents arguing with each other), why their pricing model confuses consumers who think they're buying software when they're actually hiring a $1,000/year employee, and how Replit's own HR person built their org chart software in 3 days because vendors wanted tens of thousands for something that didn't fit. We dive deep into the future Amjad sees: fewer billionaires, way more millionaires building hyper-specific micro-SaaS for niches only they understand. He shares real stories of a VC CFO building software for other VC CFOs, freelancers doing Upwork arbitrage with Agent 3, and why Salesforce closing Slack's API is the exact wrong move. Plus, Amjad gets brutally honest about VCs leaking his numbers twice, why the management fee structure attracts short-term thinkers, and how Replit does seasonal intensity (12/12/7 during launches, sustainable hours the rest of the year) instead of the 996 grind. This is the playbook for surviving and thriving as traditional SaaS dies and the agent era begins.