Rork founders Levan Kvirkvelia and Daniel Dhawan live a life that seems like a plot for a film. Nevertheless it actually occurred.
They went from broke, life financial savings spent, and in debt $15,000 apiece on bank cards — Dhawan was even sleeping on a mattress at a good friend’s condo — to $100,000 of income in 5 days.
And that led to a $2.8 million seed spherical led by Andreessen Horowitz’s new Speedrun program, with different backers piling in like Hustle Fund’s Elizabeth Yin, ChapterOne, Founders Inc., Austen Allred, Expo’s Charlie Cheever, and Evan Bacon, Runway’s Siqi Chen, and extra.
All as a result of one particular person tweeted about their cellular app vibe coder product, and the tweet went viral. Rork lets folks with restricted technical backgrounds construct cellular apps with a easy textual content immediate.
On February 12, after months of labor and one pivot, Kvirkvelia and Dhawan launched Rork with a tweet.
“We have been full underdogs. We have been actually working out of cash actually quickly,” Dhawan advised TechCrunch.
That they had gotten a small verify from one angel investor, Matt Shumer, the co-founder CEO of OthersideAI, which makes AI writing device Hyperwrite.
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Their first tweet received handed round a bit, but it surely wasn’t till February 24, when folks have been tweeting a couple of competing product from an organization referred to as Bolt, that Shumer posted on X that he thought Rork was higher than Bolt.
“My jaw simply DROPPED,” Shumer wrote in his X submit. “Rork allows you to create complete iOS apps simply by describing them! Zero. Code. Required. This adjustments every part for app growth. Rork blows Bolt out of the water (and sure, I invested instantly after making an attempt it).”
Shumer additionally included a video of Rork. And the submit blew up, considered greater than 1 million occasions.
Utilization of Rork immediately skyrocketed, too, however the founders have been trapped. Every of them ran up $15,000 of debt on their bank cards to maintain the app working.
“We have been paying for AI out of our personal pockets, principally, as a result of we didn’t elevate a lot funding,” Dhawan mentioned. “We’re, like, nearly, out of cash. After which quarter-hour after this submit, Austen Allred invested $100,000.”
By the top of the day of Shumer’s tweet, Founder’s Inc. and Hustle Fund’s Yin have been already prepared to speculate, whereas heat intros to different buyers and angels have been flying. “So principally it was like, $350,000 that first day. And that was actually, actually loopy.”
Out of cash
Though this seems like an immediate success — and by some measure, it’s — it was extra like rescue from a near-death expertise for the founders.
This was their third bootstrapped startup every; they’d beforehand developed hit cellular apps starting once they have been teenagers. They’re now ages 25 (Kvirkvelia) and 27 (Dhawan).
However they’d run by a lot of the money earned by these different apps engaged on a Rork’s predecessor, a Cursor-like vibe coder geared towards nontechnical customers.
Dhawan had been in San Francisco since December to attend Founders Inc. and fundraise, working by Christmas and sleeping on a mattress at a YC founder good friend’s condo, whereas Kvirkvelia stayed house in Georgia to construct the brand new product. Fundraising wasn’t going nicely.
Then competitor Lovable launched and went immediately viral. However their product wasn’t able to compete with Lovable. “We had the prototype completed already, after which they launched,” Dhawan recollects. “We have been actually dissatisfied.”
So Kvirkvelia satisfied Dhawan that they need to change course. Slightly than constructing one other Lovable, which tackles AI internet coding, they need to return to their roots and construct a Lovable for cellular apps.
Nobody had carried out this earlier than — at the very least not nicely — as a result of as laborious as internet growth is, constructing native cellular apps is “like 10 occasions extra sophisticated,” Kvirkvelia advised TechCrunch..
So “we’re the Lovable for Expo. The Lovable for React,” Kvirkvelia mentioned, mentioning two standard cellular app growth frameworks.
Then rival startup Bolt launched a cellular vibe coding product, and the founders had deja vu, fearing they have been going to be crushed out of the market once more. So that they launched the identical day as Bolt, Dhawan mentioned.
After Shumer’s tweet went viral and angels started pouring in, considered one of their new angels launched the founders to Andrew Chen, the final associate working Andreessen Horowitz’s new Speedrun program. Speedrun is a16z’s 12-week mentorship program for early-stage startups. It consists of issues like $5 million price credit from the agency’s companions like AWS, Google Cloud, OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Stripe, Deel, and others. It sometimes invests as much as $1 million, as nicely.
Chen reached out, however Dhawan didn’t bounce instantly. He defined to Chen that he already had a pre-seed time period sheet in hand from one other agency. Chen, decided to not miss out, did his personal pace run at his agency and shortly delivered a competing supply. The Rork founders accepted, nabbed their seed cash, and can attend the cohort scheduled to start on July 28.
“Daniel and Levan are extremely technical polymaths who deeply perceive cellular growth and distribution, which has allowed them to construct a incredible platform shortly,” Chen advised TechCrunch over e mail. “They’re precisely the kind of founders we’re excited to again with a16z Speedrun.”
Even higher than the funding, paying customers are pouring in. Two months after Shumer’s viral tweet, this staff of two hit $550,000 ARR, Dhawan says.
And he’s off the ground and residing in his personal condo, now, too.
