Repl.it would probably have died if Amjad hadn't told a story bigger than the company itself, using public storytelling to sustain fundraising and recruiting before the company was commercially successful.

1:05because of your go-direct efforts. I mean you're one of the best CEOs on X. You're you're also now get get getting bigger on Instagram and other platforms. What is the business impact uh been of your efforts going direct? And and does every CEO need to become an influencer now? Or how have you sort of conceived of this? >> Yeah, I I think Repl would have probably died if uh

1:26uh if I wasn't telling a story that is larger than the company itself. Like the company wasn't successful commercially, but we've been very successful at like fundraising, recruiting, uh and I I think if if you build a company that's successful right out of the gate commercially, like you might not need to do all of that. But if you're trying to meme a dream into reality, I think you have to play that

1:54game. And so um so yeah, I I think I think otherwise we would have would have not existed because we had to we had to do that for so many years before I mean, turns out everything I said was true, but at the time it was it was uh it wasn't real. It was a dream. Yeah. >> And I mean, you at one point decided to go go big on

2:21this. You weren't always big on Twitter. I mean, you you started and a lot of people here a lot of people, you know, who are CEOs maybe it doesn't come supernaturally to them and they have to make a decision of like, how do I get good you know, am I going to do this? And if so, how do I get good at it? What was your journey to say, "Hey, I'm

2:35really going to invest in this and I'm going to get good at this?" >> Well, I I think the journey starts like outside of Twitter even is like, how do you um how do you get good at communicating? How do you get good at public speaking? Um and so, I always wanted to be able to to be um be a influencer for lack of better words uh and

2:59I remember I was in I was in New York and uh when I first came to the States and I had a terrible stage fright. Like, I'd be sitting here and then my heart rate would be like 150. I'd be sweating. Uh and I thought like like, how do I deal with this? How do you get better at this? And I went and took improv classes in New York and then took a storytelling

3:20class and I'm like a big fan of exposure therapy. Anything you're afraid of, just go and do more of it until you're desensitized and like the best way to get desensitized is to just make a fool of yourself every day doing improv. Um and I ended up do doing shows and got got pretty good at it. Uh and um and and then I think the benefit that I had is Repl.it didn't like blow