a16z Podcast - “Anyone Can Code Now” - Netlify CEO Talks AI Agents

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

Netlify's CEO, Matt Biilmann, reveals a seismic shift nobody saw coming: 16,000 daily signups—five times last year's rate—and 96% aren't coming from AI coding tools. They're everyday people accidentally building React apps through ChatGPT, then discovering they need somewhere to deploy them. The addressable market for developer tools just exploded from 17 million JavaScript developers to 3 billion spreadsheet users, but only if your product speaks fluent AI—which is why Netlify's founder now submits pull requests he built entirely through prompting, never touching code himself, and why 25% of users immediately copy error messages to LLMs instead of debugging manually. The web isn't dying to agents; it's being reborn by them, with CEOs coding again and non-developers shipping production apps while the entire economics of software—from perpetual licenses to subscriptions to pure usage—gets rewritten in real-time. Resources:Follow Matt Biilmann on X: https://x.com/biilmannFollow Martin Casado on X: https://x.com/martin_casadoFollow Erik Torenberg on X: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Stay Updated:If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zListen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYXListen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenbergPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures. Stay Updated:Find a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the past before all of this AI, when people asked what to do to be a good developer, I said, like, just have a really high tolerance for frustration. That's about right. For me to understand Next or React or some weird CLI, there's nothing fundamental. So it really is just wasted knowledge. What defined at developer at its core used to be being able to write code and understand programming languages. And suddenly that part of being a developer is getting way less important. Software development will just be a skill.

Just like with writing, there's still professional writers, but like all of us also have to know how to write as part of our job. Three years ago, our addressable audience was essentially 17 million professional JavaScript developers. And suddenly, computers can write code an addressable audience for a tool like ours. That's everybody that can use spreadsheets today, which is more like 3 billion people. ago we were sitting at around 3,000 signups a day. Today we're sitting at around 16,000 a day. We're starting to see those kind of patterns where is this an agent accessing or is it a human? There's also just way more people having fun building crazy stuff. People building like really cool

webGL games and so on that they could like just never managed to build before and browsers will evolve really dramatically from this. That originally concept of a user agent on the web is getting real. You see people like have history with their chat tp t or cloud, and they really have a preference. And they don't want to go to like the banks, AI, and talk to that. They just want to interact in that way. The web as we know it is about to become unrecognizable. Not because of new protocol or framework, because of who's building it. For the first time in history, the barrier between I have an idea and I Shift Working Software is collapsing.

Netlafly just watched their daily signups jump from 3,000 to 16,000. The twist? Most of these new users aren't developers. They're marketers, designers, product managers, people who six months ago couldn't write a line of code. Matt Billman saw this coming. He coined the term agent experience. The idea that AI agents are now a core user of every product you build. But here's where it gets interesting. While others are building tools that say, we'll be your developer.

Matt's making a different bet. He believes we're not replacing developers, we're creating billions of new ones. This raises an uncomfortable question. If anyone can build software, what actually makes you a developer anymore? The answer might surprise you and has nothing to do with code. Today, Matt sits down with A16Z general partner, Martine Casato, to cover why CEOs are suddenly submitting pull requests again, why the dead web theory is backwards,

and what happens when your son's AI friend needs to open a bank account. Matt, thanks for joining. It's good to see you. So this is Matt Bellman. the CEO, founder of Netlify, also creative of the Jamstack. You know, very well known to be an architect of the web and someone that tracks the trends. And you were with us a couple months ago and we were discussing AX and what that means. And now, you know, like the space is moving so quickly. We're a few months on.

And so the point of this is going to be to talk about what we've learned in the last couple of months. But maybe before that, maybe you can describe what AX is. Yeah. And then we'll just kind of get into like kind of what we're learning. Yeah, I wrote, I wrote an article about, the first article about AX in back in January, which is like, feels like 10 years ago in AI time now, right? Like, as the term for agent experience. And sort of really thinking about the evolution from user experience is like the term

that like really could set a product apart from. other products, not just based on a checklist of features, but based on like the experience of like everything around it. And then our first decade at Nidlify of really centering around developer experience that's typically been a way to set platforms aside from other platforms, right, like by making like lower friction for developers to actually build on them and extend them and use them and so on towards this idea that we suddenly, all of us that built product have this new persona using the product that's an agent driven by AI and that also sort of actually have an experience of the product right like whatever that means right

like doesn't necessarily mean that there's like some soul behind it or something right but it obviously has some like it's like actually attempting to figure out how to do stuff with our product in an autonomous way right like so suddenly the documentation about our product the onboarding experience of our product is no longer just for like a person it's also for a person asking an agent to do stuff right like and that that was what I sort of described in this article on agent experience is something that suddenly for us at Netlify became like our product Northstar and that I've proposed at the time should be pretty important for anybody building products in the world today so listen you I mean you read

Netlify as we mentioned, which is one of the world's largest hosting sites. So have you seen more agents than humans showing up these websites? I feel like there's a lot of stuff going down. There's like there's that, but there's also like people are creating websites using agents. And so I just feel like there's just a lot to tease out here. I think especially in the DevTools space, like I'll say that like the term AX have had like outsized adoption in the developer tool space. And I think that's because for developer tools, there's this.

It's like a wild thing happening where if you take Netlify, right? Two years ago, our audience, like our addressable audience was essentially 17 million professional JavaScript developers. Right. Right. And then there's like some adjacent developers that might use it as well, right? But it's like a deeply technical product, like based on writing code and shipping it, right? So the main audience is 17 million people. Yeah.

And suddenly computers can write code. And that whole question of like, do you actually need to write code to build software? Starts becoming like, not really, right? Like, and you start having an addressable audience for a tool like ours. That's more like everybody that can use spreadsheets today, which is more like 3 billion people, right? Like in the distance between 17 million and 3 billion is really, really big, right? But if you want to reach that large audience, you have to reach them through the agents, they're using to write the code and to build the software, right?

So I think that has meant that in the developer tool space, this idea of agent's experience is like extra important right now and there's like extra attention of it. That doesn't mean that it's limited to like developer tools. And I think we'll see it more and more in all products, right? Like as agents try to intang with anything, but it does mean that specifically in our space, it's like become something that's like almost essential to it to actually like reaching your

potential as a company. So from the perspective of that Levi seems like there's there's two things going on. One of them is to what extent are agents making websites? Yeah. Right? Using like the bolts or the lovable, the replets or like whatever it is to like generate like the website, you know. And then there's a second one is for a website that's already generated.

Yeah. To what extent is an agent visiting it, right? And so how do you think about, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's those two parts to it constantly, right? Like, by the way, is AX both of those? Or is it? It's AX.

Like at Netlify, we talk about, like, at Netlify, we actually talk about three kinds of X relevant to us, right? Like, it's all AX, right? Like, but there's like Netlify's AX, right? Like, what is the agent experience of using Netlify? Sure. Right, right? That's like Netlify's like...

Like, you're like the website or whatever, yeah. Totally, right? Like, it's like our CLI can CloudCode figure out how to use our CLI. That's like part of Netlify's AX, right? Like, then there's our customers AX. The stuff that our customers built, how can we help them make that,

like make a really great agent experience? Assuming they're using agents. Yeah, yeah. But independently in that, right? Like if they're building like an e-commerce site, what do we need to help them with to make it easy, like now Stripe has a new, like payments option to buy directly through chat tpT.

I see. What does that mean for people building e-commerce sites and Netlify, right? Like what do they actually need to do different to make sure that chat tbc can also buy their products on behalf of users, right? Like there's that whole line of talk, like stuff like should we help people charge for crawling like Cloudflare does and do people even want that and so on, right? Like that's all in our mind like the customer X where like how do we help our customers do these things.

And then the third side of is it's kind of what we call industry AX. That's like all the protocols and like general standards we have to agree on as an industry to make all of these things simpler. Right. And that's kind of how we think about it internally. So we touch all three of those. And I would say we've done the most work on Netlify's own AX right now. And that again kind of comes back to just like how massive that changed in like

the developer world is right now. Right. But we are obviously also doing a lot of work on helping customers build MCP servers and figure out how to make their sites accessible for agents or, like, deciding if a visitor is an agent or a human and so on. Do you have any numbers that, like, are, you can highlight on, like, whatever, three years ago, you know, people were not using AI to build sites and now they are, like, like, do you have any?

Can you give any sense of like the extent that shift was happening? Where we see it, it's just that shift in like the mass of people that are suddenly coming in the front door. It's like that's just the first obvious one where like a year ago we were sitting at around 3,000 signups a day, which for a developer tool, it's like, that's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. Today we're sitting at around 16,000 a day. Wow.

Right. And do you have a sense of where they're coming from? Like that's the wildest thing is that it's everywhere, right? Like, because like at first we, we started having a whole bunch of these agents sort of directly integrating with first, Bolt. Dunnew being like the largest one, right? Like then a whole world of like same that new, builder I.O. Memix, Rocket. Like code made, windsurf, like just like all of these different ones. But all of them together is kind of like a 4% of the signups.

So the rest just happens organically, right? Like, and we actually, both that knew had like used our. claim flow, which is like become one really common technique for agent experience, this idea that you can like let an agent use your product before the human knows the product exists. And then when the human wants to get involved, they go and claim whatever the agent did and sort of open an account. And at first like bolt.mew, which is one of these like very consumer oriented code agents, right? Like was using that flow. and sending anybody that wanted to really do something with the website over to us.

And then a few months ago, we changed to a white label agreement with them where they are now like fully vertically integrating Netlify and they're like white labeling us and selling it directly to their customers to give like a really integrated vertical experience. And ironically, you cannot see that change in in our sign up. at all, even if that was like a largest partner, right? Like, because like the general growth of the space of people building web, like, are they using AI tools?

Are they using like a cursor or chat GPT? Or is it just like people who are like decided to make websites? I mean, I don't know for sure, right? Like, because I can't always see what they built it with, right? Like, but I think it would be a weird coincidence that like just a lot more people. I really like HTML now, right? And I think it's more likely that that, that you'll just see that. the amount of people building web apps and websites,

like exploding because like the barrier to entry for doing it is like massively disappearing. Like you have people today that accidentally create a web app in React, right? Like then like you're going to like chat tpity and you're like prompted the right thing. And suddenly it like spins up a canvas and you built all this stuff. And they download it and it's like, okay, now where do we put it? Right. And we're pretty much like the simplest place to put it. Right.

And then we have made our tooling really great for all of these sources, right? And we're seeing that. And we can see in the personas that come in that suddenly they go from being like developers. It's obviously still a ton of developers. There's also a lot of personas that like in our onboarding, like characterize themselves as like marketeers or designers. So I would expect if AI is driving this exactly that would happen, which is you go, like, NAMI has always been a very technical tool for developers.

Like, if you're like a JavaScript developer, you use like a hosting by yourself. So I would guess, like probably the clearest indication that AI is doing it is exactly this. Like the mix of like technical versus non-technical shifts. Totally. Totally. And it really shifts.

Do you have, I mean, are there any rough numbers to that or is it just? I don't like, is it still vibes? It's still vibes. It's still vibes, right? But it's, I can say the vibes are very wrong. It's noticeable. Even just talking to our customers, right?

Like, we can see this shift. We have all the things that we can see things like for like our core audience. We have this functionality called why did it fail? Where when a build, like when you open a poll request, we run a build and we push that to your site. When that fails, that's always sort of a point of like, okay, now I have to go and debug. and figure out like why what happened right like so we put a button in the ui that literally says why did it fail you click that button and we sent like the logs and the code like to an lLM and we give you a diagnosis that's awesome then first we put a button on saying copy this result to an lLM

right like because like if you want you're in that loop and you want the lm okay it failed go fix it, right? And immediately when we put that button in, we saw that like 25% of everyone that clicked, why did it fail, clicked copy to LLM. That's like a pretty big sign of like how much this is like shifting, right? And now we just launched this thing called agent runners where you can like spin up like autonomous runs with cloud code or codex and so on, right? Like so now how we have it like just fix it button. You know what you said remarkable to me. I will say. Here's a personal an anecdote, which is I developed with Cursor in the evenings for hobby projects.

I've been using Netlify for years. Yeah. Right? But I never remember all the commands. No, no. It was super remarkable to me. It's like, the LLMs actually know it. So I'll be in Cursor and I'll like, you know,

want to be like, oh, like, what are the Netlify commands to like, you know, whatever, deploy this, add this, whatever, and it actually knows it. And so I would say even for the case of professional developers, they're using LLMs to debug. Because I mean, it's just like there's just so many frameworks and so many tools to know. And you should, right? Like, I mean, that's one of my big thesis

that like the whole definition of a developer is really going to change, right? Like where what defined at developer at its core used to be being able to write code and understand programming languages and understand the syntax and like that layer sort of below the visible substrate of things, right? And suddenly that part of being a developer is getting way less important

and potentially going to what's zero importance, right? And then the other skill set of being a developer of clarity of thought, of understanding what users actually need you to build, of systems thinking and system design and so on. Those elements are suddenly becoming like the main quality, for like, I actually really strong developer. And that changes the persona, right? Like, there's a lot of personas that were, like, really, really great at, like,

the puzzle level layer of, like, low level code and so on. But that might not be that strong in, like, the more humanistic layer of, like, taste and what to build and so on, right? Like, and there's a lot of people that were sort of, like, cut off fundamentally from development that are very strong in those layers and that start entering the field. Interesting. I'm going to give a counterpoint to that. I don't know if this writer is not, but like try this on for size.

I started programming in the 90s. And to program, you sat down at a computer and you knew a programming language and you wrote the programming language and you had a program. Yeah. And so like you were just thinking about the logic of the program. Yeah. And then, you know, the 2000s, especially the late 2000s rolls around in the web. And then like to be a programmer, it's no longer about writing code.

It's like you have to know frameworks. And there's nothing fundamental about frameworks. Yeah. Like for me to understand Next or React or, you know, some weird CLA, there's nothing fundamental. No, no, no. So it really is just wasted knowledge. I'm like using space in my brain, you know, to remember some dumb design decision from like some random person, right? And so for me, it's actually a little bit different,

which is the nice thing about AI is like all the framework stuff it knows, so I don't have to waste my brain on it. And I can literally just think about the programming logic. Yep. Which I think is actually what matters because you're actually articulating what the program can do. So it's kind of a similar thing to what you're saying, but I think maybe I'm even abstracting it more.

Like I actually think, I think codes a very effective way to articulate tradeoffs and to articulate what you want something to do. Yeah. It actually is, right? Like English is ambiguous, like, you know. And so it's fine to write code. I would just say all the framework nonsense is the stuff that we shouldn't, like, we should like not worry about.

And then, of course, to your point, there are things where you don't have to describe so low level as code that you can do a high level. And there are so many aspects that like we've both like been like hardcore, like our brain has been changed by sitting with stuff like a coming on 64 and like learning memory addresses and just taking for granted. like every little comment matters. I remember pokes and pee.

I remember like all that way you like poke into like independent memory. Like loading like that level, right? So we also forget how much of a barrier it is like just when you start, right? Like that like that whole learning curve of like oh, I miss type one character and now nothing works. Right. Right. Right.

And and I think we underestimate like how big of a difference it made. when all of that is sort of no longer a barrier, right? Like where, hey, like, even if you leave out like a character here and there, like, the logic still holds, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's a great point. Right.

Like, so suddenly you just need to start practicing that ability to reason with, with logic and to understand, like, the system. And it's really fascinating, I think, to see some of these people, like, I see sort of two journeys, right? Like, I see people like us that are starting to learn how. to work with AI and coming from the world we come from. And I see these people that come from like the completely opposite apart and start learning to build software without that journey that we went through. And it's so interesting to see that interplay they have with the AI then, right?

Because that becomes the sort of constant iteration one that's just like, why does this do this? Yeah, it becomes basically an educational tool. Yeah, totally right. It's like the AI not only does, but also teaches you how to do it. Totally. Learn the fundamental way. No, I absolutely have seen the same thing. Yeah.

Can I move the conversation a little bit? Yeah. So we've kind of been working kind of out towards the user. We've talked about like, you know, Netlify itself, you know, using AI and then how is it good target for AI. Yeah. You know, as you go towards the user, we're actually seeing the browser itself seem to evolved, right? And there's like new browsers,

AI level browsers. Are you starting to see impact from that? Or is that still kind of on the come? It's a good question. I think it's still more on to come than like something that's like very real right now. You see it in like the access patterns, right? Like where you suddenly see like all of these sites being accessed by all kinds of different agents in in all kinds of different ways that are.

different than human access patterns, right? Like, and that comes from browsers and from tools like Cloud Code and so on, right? Like, one thing that Bondi has just came up with and everybody like us included are copying now is this idea of like for that documentation side, use content negotiation. So when Cloud Code asked for a page instead of sending the HTML, respond directly with the markdown, so it uses less tokens to like interpret it, right? like yeah oh i see i see i see i see that makes a lot of sense right so we're starting to see those kind of patterns where we actually start like in practice building like content negotiation where

like is this an agent accessing or is it a human accessing and maybe we should do different things right like and i think those are sort of early signs of what will happen when even the browser starts being like that and starts like having AI inside that sometimes it's like human viewing and sometimes it's the AI in the browser. So based on this, is your mental model that most AI is working with a human? Or is your mental model that these things become more divorced over time? Because the browser question, to me, assumes there's a human guy in the browser in tandem with an AI. Where like the purely agentic one, maybe there isn't a human so tightly in the loop.

Yeah. I think it's pretty obvious that in the beginning of this journey, it was all sort of very human in loop, right? Like, and there will, I think there will always be a large set of human in the loop interactions, right? Like, and especially the browser, I think, will generally be very, like, experience oriented, right, like, and I'm going somewhere and I'm experiencing something. So maybe you have this assistant that helps you with everything, but it's still, like, very

in the loop. But it's also very obvious that especially these building blocks around actually, like, strangely enough like the code agents in the CLI, like Cloud Code, Codex, Gemini, CLI, like those are sort of turning out to be really strong generalist agents, right? Like, because they live in that like CLI space where they can do anything you can do in a computer pretty easily, right? Like, and they can write code so they can even write their own tools to do new things and so on.

And they are kind of like really being able to do. longer and longer stretches of just like uninterrupted work where you give them some task and they just try to solve it right like so I think I had one of these CLI tools where I'm like I was just trying to be like okay I'm going to make it do a full game and what I'm going to do is I'm going to have a test that I'll test if the game works and then I'm going to have it just keep iterating on it until like it passes the test and it ran for a few hours and it cost me $10,000. That's the other constraining factor.

For those that are watching, be careful. I was like, oh, whoops. It's wild. Yeah. Yeah. But I think, I mean, just to a question, right? Like, I think we'll see both, right? Like, I do think that we are on this cost of seeing more and more, like, truly autonomous agents.

Hopefully, they're still always doing things because some human. as opposed to like actually having true agency and the robotic takeover. Hopefully it's still like long task, but some human was like, hey, go do this thing. Yeah, yeah. Do you think about like, I mean, you talked a bit about it in the content negotiation, but do you actually think about the economics and how they're shifting as a result of all of this stuff?

Because it does feel like spend is very different in the world of agents. It really is about tokens. It's less about like computer network and stores. Everybody is repricing, right? We've launched new pricing for the same reason, right? Like, I think everybody is starting to build credit models in some form, right? It seems to me, so I remember the shift from perpetual to like recurring. Like, I remember that, right?

It feels like we're going from like a recurring to like a usage based based on this. And is your experience the same? It's the same. I would say, I think all of us are also looking for ways to make it more outcome-based rather than pure usage-based, right? And trying to find way, because often the usage of the agents, that's like a weird thing with usage-based, right? Like, that often you have very little control over what, like,

is this question I asked the agent? Long water is short ones? Right? Like, it's going to use a lot of tokens. It's literally a hundred bucks and 20 bucks. I don't really know, right? Like, it's got to 10,000. Right?

And is this game worth 10,000 or like $10, right? Yeah, yeah. So I think a lot of us are also trying to figure out what like those elements of like value are. That sounds very tough to me. And it's really tough. So I think in reality, everybody's kind of like use based right now, right? But I think at the same time, it's not impossible that over time, even if it's tough, we start getting better at figuring out elements that feels more aligned to two values and then just pure token usage, which feels pretty like one out of your control and not super aligned in the sense. Like if I could do the same thing for you in like five tokens, you would probably prefer it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It would probably pay me more to do it really fast in five tokens than to do it really slow with like 10 million tokens, right? Are you using agents and operations now? Like, we are, we are using some internally, but not enough, I would say. But we are using some. Like, we are using some, like I think especially our developers. organization have built custom agents for all kinds of stuff like linear integration and management there and things like keeping up with what's happening in next year so we can keep

doing the right framework adapters and so on right we've built a lot of that kind of internal tooling yeah for me I'm just very interested in like like right now today not science fiction like where do agents apply right clearly they're a great productivity tool they can do longer running tests clearly like there's like basic stuff that they're pretty good at. Like, for example, if I'm like, I don't know, convert from this language to this language, like, there's good at these kind of like, you know, well-scoped, well-defined tasks. Yeah.

Seemed less good at like, you know, ongoing operations where you've got to be correct. And, you know, like these are kind of these complex spaces and so forth. And so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think in the end in a lot of those, like, I mean, obviously the kind of agent we're like the highest, highest, highest adopters up is the coding agent. is the coding agents ourselves as well, right? Like, where even like something like agent runners we built,

like we're now building a lot of the product with those agents, right? Like, and, and, have you thought that to actually increase feature velocity? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can, we can see like, yeah, like, when people get good at it, it starts really increasing the velocity with which you can build stuff. And also it increases the capacity of like a really strong engineer to both go do some really hard focused work. but just spin off a bunch of like the easy stuff along the way and get it done, right?

Like, but what I was saying there is that I still think we are more in the line of using that to build programs that does stuff when it's like automations. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because it becomes like weirdly unpredictable, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. To just, to automate it's like simpler to write the code. To actually automate it. To actually automated, right? I totally agree. But I think the fact that it's so much cheaper to write automations changes that you start building a lot of automations and potentially you start building a lot of apps and automations instead of like buying a lot of software. So this is a better from his side, but it just reminded me of something. So you know Max Bishman, the Airflow, you know, Super Set guy.

So like hardcore open source developer has a company called Preset. And he was telling me, he's like, you know, the most amazing thing. with these coding agents is I've only worked on open source right now I'm working on large open source this project's been around for a long time so all the agents know it we're doing kind of front end JavaScript stuff

which they're all really good at and so I feel like and then all of the engineers and the company are like pretty senior yeah so it's like she's like we all woke up and we were like superheroes it was like you know and so like

you've got these senior engineers that are using these coding models like junior engineers on an open source code base and, you know, the velocity is 10x, right? So that makes a lot of sense. But I also compare it to, I mean, I work with companies where they're doing pretty new stuff and it's not front end and it's kind of still experimental and maybe they've got more junior developers or whatever and I feel like the velocity hasn't increased at all. So I always assume like at least in the case of Netlify, like you are doing a lot of JavaScript,

a lot of front end, a lot of web, I mean, I would think that is probably pretty amenable to these models. And I mean, but I will say that people that get good at them start using them for things across this deck, right? And I see that, right? You can get them to where I go really well. More senior developers or more? More senior developers, right? Like, I think especially when the deeper you go in this deck, the more you need. the more you need to really be like kind of an architect, right,

like to get these kind of agents to do the right stuff, right? And then the higher up you go into stack, the more you can now be like, just jump in and do it without like, without any development background. Yeah. It's kind of a fun time, right? It's really fun time. Are you coding?

I'm like, so I kind of made it like around the same time I wrote the AX article. Yeah. Like a little before that, I kind of started making it my personal mission that like I want to learn how to be a really good developer again. I always say I'm a pretty strong developer, right? I built awesome. I know.

I built like the bag in the front and everything, right? Like for the first version, like everything. Like from the C++ to the CSS, right? Like everything. Yeah, yeah. But I sort of started saying like, I want to make it my mission to become an equally good developer without writing any code myself. Yeah.

And ideally without looking at code. Wow. That's still, like you still need to do that, right? But I kind of like started to making my mission. And in the beginning, it was very frustrating. And now I think it's really fun. Really? And now I do a lot of pull work because I probably annoy the team.

You're just submitting PRs? I'm doing like, but you haven't looked at the code? I mean, okay, when I do PRs to our actual code basis, I do go and look at the code because I've learned the hot way. Then otherwise the team does and they shouted me. So now I go and look at the code first and tell plot code to fix it before I open the pull request.

A lot of that has, like we launched this new agent runner product and a lot of that has like informed it because I wanted to make sure that you could actually do the whole like cycle of iteration before you open a pull request versus like the GitHub integrations where you ask like plot code to do something

and then you get a full request you never knew. Like they actually didn't do something useful. Right. But I do find that once you start changing that whole mentality to just work through the context engineering and the prompts and like the systems thinking and like guiding this model, it's pretty remarkable what you can get it to do. And there's definitely some cases where,

so it's funny, there's some cases where I've built something where realistically if I had the time to just sit time, with a code editor in a like uninterrupted stretch and write the code, I would have written it faster. Yeah. And probably better. But as a CEO, I definitely don't have that time. And in this case, I could still build it. Yeah.

But just by like spinning up these async run, checking on in between meetings, like where did it go? What did it do? Let me give it some feedback and do another iteration and so on. Right. So suddenly you can work in that way and it's a lot fun. I mean, it was just, you know, so I kind of work on these home projects and I was actually using like the cursor CLA and I was at dinner. I was curious. I was like checking this.

I've done the same. I've done the same. I'm literally like a VC at a dinner like talking about deals. I know. I'm checking out my coding agents are doing. I totally been like in the same situation. And it's funny. I've noticed like every founder CEO.

with a technical background I talk to now doing poor Christ again. It's awesome. It's just really funny. I literally think it's a framework issue. Like if coding was simpler

like it used to be like everyone would still be coding but you just have to learn too many different things. And so it's really remarkable. Do you ascribe to the that AI is going to kind of usher in the dead

what's called the dead web theory where it's like it's only going to be agents talking to web, sites and, you know, there's no longer a UI issue. I get it. Like, I get it, but like, I don't, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I see the opposite happening now, right? Like, in some, like, everything is happening at the same time, right?

Like, so I have a lot of slop generated that, like, other agents consume and you have, like, like, like, like, lots of LinkedIn that's just, like, chat tpity and so on, right? Like, probably people are asking chatty to summarize it from it and so, right? So, I think the cliche is, like, to. fancy I use AI to create something big and then to read it, you use AI to summarize it. But there's also just way more people having fun building crazy stuff. And there's a lot of that out there now. And there's people building like really cool like webGL games and so on that they could like just never managed to build before.

And like there's so much going on that I think that theory just under like there's so many of these theories. I think that just underestimates like humans and like being creative. I will say I personally have visited more new websites in the last six months and probably the five years prior just because there's so much more cool stuff. I'm like kind of reduced everything to like a handful of sites that I'd check every morning in the last five years. And now there's always something new.

And it's like... Yeah, yeah, I think it's totally true. I mean, I also see it as just a general moment of like people building way more stuff than they did before. Right. And I still see and way more people building, right? And that's again back to that. idea of like it becomes more accessible to be a developer we open up like for so long we've

taken for granted that like again if you're sort of really generous go beyond JavaScript and so on right like let's say what would you say it's like like 100 million professional developers in the world maybe even less i mean we we always estimate 60 roughly it's probably more than that but like some like if you're really generous you say like 100 million right out of like what 8 billion people or anything like that, right? Like, that's like a really, really small part of humankind.

Yeah. And every other human can only use software. Yeah. Those developer builds for them, right? And that's like such a constraint on that part, right? Like, and to me, when that constraint goes away, we're just going to have a lot, like, unimaginable amount of more software, right?

Like, yeah, maybe some of it will be bad, but they'll also be a lot more good stuff. The future is going to be weirder, wilder, and more wonderful than we could imagine. This is an aside, but it's an adjacency, which is I really love that 3JS is having a moment. Yeah, yeah, me too, me too. It's amazing.

So for those listening, 3JS is a JavaScript library for 3D, and it's always just been kind of this. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, why would you use the web for 3D? Yeah. You know, like, you didn't have like a, you know, and now there's just full-on, like, games being written, multiplayer games being written,

really high quality graphics. Like, did you see that one recently? It was like... Yeah. The small planet, the tiny planet. The male delivery was like... It was so amazing. And just like...

And that probably wasn't even using AI. But like it is a time now that I do think that... Precisely and it'll get encoded into like... The language models will train on it. They'll figure it out and you'll start seeing people just like being able to just like spin something like that up. That's why I decided. And you were there too because we're old.

But like, I mean, this does remind me of the early days of the web. Yeah, yeah. It really does. You just never know what to expect. There's this whole creative element. Yeah. It has nothing to do with business.

Nobody to be SaaS. It's like kind of random kind of, you know, and it's a cool time to be in the industry. It's really cool. And I think like for me it also reminds me just like in a much in small scale. And when I started Netlify and like. When was that? So I started working on it in like 2013, right? And then we launched out of private beta in March 2015.

And back then, a front-end developer was like, they were seen as like a pseudo-developer, right? Like it was like someone that took a Photoshop file, sliced it up, and then handed it to a real developer that would implement it into something working. Right. Like that was a front-end developer. And part of like the mission back then was like, hey, if we give them like the right tool chain, these front-end developers will go crazy and they'll just build the whole thing. Right? Like if we just separate all that backing stuff for them and like that was like the jamstack idea, right? I remember your early pitch.

I remember your early pitch where you were like best for static sites. Maybe you'll see a little bit of dynamic. Seriously. Like you can use it for static websites. And then like now, look at it now. Everything. Right. Everything.

Like everything is built using. Everything is built using on it. Right. And these fronted developers are obviously the mainstream developers, right? right. There's like no question now, right? And that's just like the same moment I think we are with this schism where like there's still this notion of like,

oh, these vibe coders, they'll still need like a real developer to come like. And we will give them the tools and we all just see like this massive. But I will, I will say like the hardcore developers also became full stack JavaScript developer. It wasn't like, you know, everybody just kind of shifted over that. And I think it'll be the same again, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I agree. Everybody has to like take that next leap, but it will be a much, much bigger pool. And it'll probably also be a different shift where like, today you're kind of like either a developer or not to some degree, right? Of course, that makes sense there's some VCs that develop software. Like in general, right? Like people that are like developers like hired with the title developer.

And that's what they do, right? And I think that's the other shift that like I think software development will just be a skill. Yeah, I agree. And there will still, like, just like with writing, there's still professional writers, but like all of us also have to know how to write as part of our jobs. Yeah, same thing with like, yeah. Design or. Yeah.

Like there'll be a level of it that you're just expected to be able to do in lots of different jobs. And then there'll still be some expert developers that are like only doing that. But it'll be the minority, I think. Bring us a bit into the future. So where do you think this? So, I mean, I mean, just actually try and maybe catch up the conversation. a little bit, which is, or summarize the conversation is, is last time we talked about this was a little bit speculative.

You've seen actually dramatic increase in users. Clearly, we're seeing, like, we've also seen, like, after that, so many companies start focusing on AIX, right? And as I said, especially the developer tool space, right, like, where I think everybody has just seen, okay, we have to go in this direction, right? Like, Bissamer had the updated version of, like, the developer tool loss, and the first one was AX, right? Like, it's, like, recent.

It's like an example. and there's so many, like, from super base to, like, neon, like, everybody is, like, super focused on, like, we've got to work with these agents so we don't really matter, right? Like, but then also in spaces like, like, the city of HubSpot, he's really, like, geared hotspot towards, like, we need to just be really great for these agents to work with, right? Like, and that's going to be the interface to much of our data and automations

and everything like that, right? Like, and you're starting to see, I think, now, with like chat t btis shopping like integration you'll start seeing everybody in the e-commerce space be like okay how do we really deal with this and so on right like so i think it's also become a really tangible industry really tangible changing the behavior and the CEO submitting PRs like change development changing like the type of views are going to the side like all of these things yeah like do you have like a bit of a more science fictiony kind of prognostication for where things go or do you think now it's can you can you clearly see the next few years from here

i think everybody like i don't think anybody can right now right like i think we're definitely in this like wild space where like what what's clear is that like that everything is changing so fast i i have perhaps like i believe in right like that the trends i believe in and things i think will definitely happen right like and as i said like i think i i do think we are going to this like world where software is much more of a thing that that's not built by like this small, relatively speaking, really small part of humanity for all the rest of humanity and where software is something much more malleable and that everybody can like sort of like do stuff on.

And I think that also means that like code as we know it today is going to be much more of a niche thing that's not really very involved in like the daily process of software, which will change the infrastructure around software. software building a lot, right? Like, because everything is so code centric right now, like things like GitHub and pull requests and so on, right? Like all of that I think is going to evolve to like a level of abstraction where it's much more about understanding like the outcome of what the agents do and the iteration with those

agents and like introspecting and so on. I think browsers will evolve really dramatically from this and we'll have much more like that originally concept of a user. agent on the web is getting real, right? Like, we're going to have like all of these different ways of consuming the web where some looks somewhat like the browser now and some really doesn't. A lot of things that's held us, like, that's made it really challenging to build like very visual, like UI-driven experience and so on are going to be solved.

Like, for example, all of the accessibility constraints, right? Like they're going to not really matter because like what would you prefer like trying to access my e-commerce through a screen reader or just through chat t-p-tin voice mode, right? Listen, I think about this all the time, which it feels like the consumption layer is changing, right? So, like, my son loves to chat with AI friends. Yeah. And when my son's 15, when my son becomes 18, to get a bank account, like, is he going to go to some shitty cess? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bank website, or is it going to come through this? Yeah. which also kind of begs the question is like, you know, like the web was never super conversational based. It was more UI based. And so does that shift? Is the consumption layer going to include AI going forward? Yeah, yeah. I think it's, I think the consumption layer is definitely going to include AI.

And a lot of things are going to happen inside like agents that people even have like a, like I think people will also. That's another reason. I think X is important versus like. Like, the company that think they will build, like, you'll go to their website and they will build an agent. But it's probably the consumption layer is going to become AI and then the AI consumes the traditional web. Precisely because I don't think you, like, I think you will, like, already now you see people like have history with their chat TPT or Claude. And they really have a preference, right? And they don't want to go to like the banks.

Yeah. And talk to that, right? Like they just want to interact in that way. So I think a lot of that will be really driven by like agents to interact with. And then I think at the same time, I think the application layer is going to be a whole new part of the web, right? Like where a lot of interaction and like seeing what's happening and like that whole concept of being able to build something and put it on a URL and everybody can use it and interact with it and can be like collaborative and so on. And I think that's still such a strong underpinning of the web that now that everybody can build more of it. like we also just at the same time,

like we're going to see less of like the traditional bank website, but we're going to see much more like interesting stuff. Yeah, yeah. I think it's so remarkable the affinity between users and their, to your point, like their AI's. And it's not just memory.

Like a lot of people's like, well, you have the chat history of memory. It's not that. Like did you see like the outcry and the move from GPT 4 to 5? Yeah. They're like,

ah, yeah, four was so much better. Then it turns out that just meant it was more friendly. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you just got used to this. And so I think it's pretty

clear that there's going to be a pretty serious attachment and they're going to want to actually filter the web through that. So, you know, something that occurs to me is that there's two kinds of approach here. So some of the tools that I use, it's like they kind of do the work for me, which

maybe as an old developer I don't quite like because I like to have the creativity. I like to be very involved. And one thing that I've actually really appreciated, I mean, philosophically about kind of what Netlify is doing. And I just love your thoughts about this. I get to use whatever tools I want. and like I get to be the developer.

And like how do you view this as it plays out? Like is this actually a philosophical distinction that's real or am I making that up? No, no. I think it's real. And I think there's two really different mindsets on it, right? Like there is that mindset of like building tools that claim to be like we are now your developer. And like you don't need developers anymore because like the AI is your developer.

It's like you're outsourced development. Right. And you outsourced it. Yeah. Our approach has really been like you on our. developer, right? Like, whether it's to our existing developer base, or whether it's to all of these new people that come in and start this journey, right? Like, it's really like, okay, if you want to go on this journey, you're now a developer and

you have to learn things and you have to understand, like, what happened, like how software is built, right? Like code is like a little part of it, right? Like, but if you want to, like, talk to a database, you have to like, you know just like some, some element of like what's happening in the world. And you have to know that to be able to collaborate with these AI agents and it's not like you're not going to get success if your expectation is that you just go prompt them, build me XYC app and they will do perfect, right? Like you're going to be successful if you're willing to learn how to develop software in a world where these agents are able to multiply your abilities, to write code, to do all kinds of stuff, but still have to,

take the direction from someone, right? And I think that's what sort of underpins our whole approach to this and our whole philosophy, this idea that we are like helping billions of people become developers and take part in this practice of building software and not that it's like everybody is just a consumer now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is an aside. Yeah.

But I wonder if you have the same experience that I do, which is I find that like, using AI as someone who's been developing for a long time as like an exercise and abdicating opinions because these these models do dazzling things but it's not always the dazzling thing that I would expect it to be right it's almost like I've got to like let go of expectations because I can articulate I want this and it'll do that but I would have done it quite differently and so you know A do you have the same experience of like you kind of have to let go and then B, do you think this is just something because we've been developing? And like that will just not be an issue as a new set of developers shows up.

I mean, maybe that's why all founder's CEOs is now programming with agents because it's like, we've already gone through that in a way. Like you started hiring these developers and you ask them like do this thing and they come back with a thing that's like pretty cool, but it's like, I would have done like, why didn't it that way? I love that. I love that. So you're almost like reclaiming power.

Yeah. You're kind of already going to use to that. right? So now I can just do it in a close loop with an agent that don't actually get angry at you and you're like, no, change it to my way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but there's definitely something to it, right? Like, that you have to work at that level of, like, it's not exact. Like, it's not exact, right? But you have to be really good at articulating what is it that matters, right? Like, and what is it you actually care about? And what is it that the agent can just make up? Because, like, that's, you. it's fine as long as it works, right? And it feels very different than like, it's a very different feel than the traditional sort of part of really like centering yourself, like figuring out exactly in your head, like, how should this software be put together and so on?

And you need to sort of like out of that step have like just a really clear idea of like what is the flow that really matters, what is the part of this software really care about, and then what is the part that, like, fill in the blanks? So one of the consistent things in this conversation we've had is the system should not be the developer for you, like the user, you know,

system should be the developers, but now that's not just the subset of professional developers. It can be anyone. Yeah. So maybe let's just end on this. For those that are listening to this, who are not professional developers that want to enter this.

Like, what would you recommend to them as far as, like, where places to start, like, how to get going, maybe things to read? Yeah, yeah. I mean, so ironically, I think it's harder for me to guide that journey than someone from that space, right? Like, but people I see going on that journey, right? Like, I see them start with, like, tools like bold or rebel it or whatever.

And then I see them jump very quickly from like tools. Did you say bolt? Bolt. Bolt. Not new, right? Yeah, yeah. We have like, for example, like we, we, we just had like a launch. It's great, by the way.

I love Bolt. I love it, right? And we just had this, this launch event where one of our challenges, like, silly challenge, right? Like, but we wanted an event and all of our team was building the product. So it was like, who's going to build the event site? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I told the team that this guy that's like a customer success manager, that's this background.

And like you go into LinkedIn, right? like no sort of technical background or anything. But he had been like super active in the Bolt community. And he's just become really good at prompting Bolt, right? Like, and he was tweeting at me with like a redesign of Netlify he made in Bold. And it was like really cool. Wow. So like let's just ask him to make the event page.

No. And he just prompted the event page entirely in bold. That's so cool. And the event is over now, but the page is probably still at Netlify.com slash deploy, right? And I think it's like a really like, I think it's like it was a very high performing event page for us. It's like one of the highest performing event pages we've had in last four years, right? And he has just like he has really learned a skill set, right? Like it's not I could not go, I'll admit I can't go prompt bold to make that event page.

Like, but he's really built that skill set and he's just built it by being like really curious and then looking at all the things he likes. Right. Like here's like a site. I think it's really cool. It has that pattern. I'm going to tilt bold, like look at this site and replicate this pattern

and then combine it with this other pattern, right? And I think a lot of the people that start now starts with that kind of sort of remixing, right? Like, and just like, how can I just like remix something? And then the people, like, then some of them starts just going deeper, right? Like they start using clot code and cursor and play around and they go directly to Netlify

and they start like learning how more of the software work and they interrogate the models constantly. They don't just take the outcome for granted, right? Like they keep interrogating, like, why did you do that? And like, how did you build that? And try to actually, like, use curiosity to understand. And those people are really learning fast. I do think this is a really important point to make that everybody should know is so,

you know, I work with many of these AI companies. Yeah. And they have, you know, whether it's in a creative domain or a code domain or a technical domain, they have users that don't come from those domains. main and they still have to work hard, right? So it's not like labor is being removed. Like it's still the best people work the hardest out. They work the hot.

The best people still spend the most amount of time, right? It's just like the product is different in this time. And so for those of you that are interested, I do think, you know, and to use these AI tools, just realize that, you know, like it's, it has managed magic in that it gives you a result, but it is not magic in that you still have to put in the time and the effort to learn it. but they're great learning tools to produce great outputs. It's funny because in the past before all of this AI,

when people ask what to do to be a good developer, I said like just have a really high tolerance for frustration. That's about right. Because like you're just constantly going to do things in the beginning that it doesn't work and it breaks and so on, right? And I think it's still not. I'm not sure if it's any different. Exactly.

That's my point, right? I think it's kind of the same, right? Like it's like that part of it. probably still the same. You're still going to be just like, okay, it didn't work, but I'm going to try again. I love it. And I'm going to try again. And like, I'm going to figure out how it works. And you've got to just have that kind of like tenacity of like just keep going. Amazing. On that note, I think this is a great place. Thank you so much for showing up. That was a lot of fun. That's really fun. Thank you.

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