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Forbes Topline

How This Founder Went From Living In AOL's Offices To Running A Profitable AI Startup

Forbes Topline

Forbes

Business News, News, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.86 Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2026

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this Forbes Talks episode, StackBlitz CEO Eric Simons, an alum of the Next Billion Dollar Startup list, joins Forbes' Katharine Schwab. He discusses the pivotal board-level ultimatum that spurred the creation of Bolt.new and catalyzed a new wave of software development. Simons also delves into his bold strategy of effectively halting human hiring to prioritize AI agents, his ambitious target of achieving $10 million in gross margin per employee, and the implications of a future where an individual can utilize a digital team to accomplish the output of fifty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:37.6

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1:03.0

Hi, I am Catherine Schwab. I'm an assistant managing editor here at Forbes covering technology,

1:08.5

and I am stoked to be here today with Eric Simons. He is the

1:12.9

CEO and co-founder of StackBlitz, which is most known for its AI code generator bolts. You can

1:21.4

use it to type in a prompt and it will create any app or website that you want. Eric, thanks for

1:27.4

joining me. Yeah,, thanks for joining me.

1:28.4

Yeah, thank you for having me.

1:29.5

I'm stoked to be here.

1:30.9

Let's start by hearing a little bit more about what Bolt is and how people use it.

1:35.9

Yeah, totally.

1:36.8

Yeah, so a Bolt is very simply.

1:38.9

It is a website that allows you to type in a prompt in just normal English,

1:44.7

and it'll actually build like full stack web applications entirely in your browser.

1:49.0

So this category is kind of like called text app or vibe coding.

1:52.2

And we are really the first vibe coding tool to hit the market back in October of 2024.

1:58.5

And today it's like Bolt has exploded in usage. We've got I think, you know, over

...

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