Operating Principles | Replit
Mission first Computers are the most powerful tools to exist in the history of humanity. Sadly most people are mere consumers of these machines. Only a relative few–the professional software developer–can use this superpower to its fullest extent. It’s creating an unbalanced world where there are programmers, and then there are those who are programmed. The situation is analogous to literacy before the printing press, where only the powerful had access to books and written communication. The invention of the printing press led to democratic, scientific, and industrial revolutions, but it took about a century from creation to revolution, which meant that an entire generation of people had to grow up with new skills, outlooks, and ways of learning and communicating. Replit exists to enable the next billion software creators. Our bet is that if more people can create software more people would want to do it. If more people code, more people will be able to independently create and generate wealth on the internet, regardless of their background. If we’re successful, anyone who's willing to learn and generate good ideas will be wealthy. Advancing our mission is not only a business imperative—it’s also a moral one. Anything that distracts us from our mission will be ruthlessly cut. Think radical When we first put coding in the browser, people said it was stupid, and that nobody wanted what we were building. When we made coding multiplayer, they said no one would want to work this way. When we said we said learning and building is one and the same, no one wanted to fund us; they said we’re not focused enough. Every step of the way, we’ve questioned norms, we’ve taken contrarian technology bets that paid off years in the future, and we’ve hired people no one wanted to hire who are now industry leaders. We’re going to keep doing it especially when people tell us it sounds crazy.