Vibe Coding and The Rise of AI Agents with Amjad Masad and Yohei Nakajima

Amjad Masad (@amasad), founder and CEO of Replit, and Yohei Nakajima (@yoheinakajima), Managing Partner at Untapped Capital, joined Village Global partner Ben Casnocha for a live masterclass with Village Global founders.Takeaways:

• AI agents are rapidly evolving, with coding and deep research agents showing the most traction today. But general-purpose assistants are still brittle — trip-planning and high-context tasks remain hard.
• Replit Agent shows how quickly full-stack applications can be built today, sometimes in under an hour — even by non-technical users. What matters most isn’t a CS degree, it’s traits like curiosity, grit, and systems thinking.
• Many AI startups are too quick to claim “moats” when most don’t really have one. True defensibility requires deep domain insight, unique data, and the right founder traits.
• The rise of vertical AI agents is compelling — specialists outperform general agents for now. A real AGI will change everything, and it’s so disruptive it’s not even worth planning around.
• The best investors still look for timeless traits: hard-charging, resourceful founders, attacking stagnant industries. AI changes a lot — but not what makes a great early-stage team.
• Tools like Replit are making vibe coding (yes, even for non-coders) a superpower. From executive dashboards to lightweight Crunchbase clones, agents are already creating real enterprise value.
• Don’t over-engineer AI use cases. Start with internal tools or things you’ve always wanted to build. The best projects often come from personal curiosity and side projects.

Resources mentioned:

• Replit – The coding platform behind Replit Agent, enabling fast full-stack app creation with AI
• VCpedia by Yohei Nakajima – A startup intelligence platform vibe-coded with Replit Agent
• Tweet: $150k → $400 NetSuite extension – Real-world example of arbitrage using Replit
• TED Talk on Grit by Angela Duckworth – Referenced by Amjad as a key trait for AI builders
• “Perfectionism” blog post by Amjad Masad – Why it holds builders back and how to overcome it
• Seven Powers by Hamilton Helmer – The strategy book Amjad calls the best resource on real moats
• NEO – A fully autonomous ML engineer
• Layers – An autonomous AI marketing agent that lives in your IDE
• Basis – A vertical AI agent for accounting firms
• NDEA – A new lab (founded by François Chollet & Mike Knoop) exploring AGI with program synthesis

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