Rork creators Levan Kvirkvelia and Daniel Dhawan are living a life that sounds like a movie plot however it in fact happened.They went from broke, with depleted life cost savings and $15,000 in charge card financial obligation Dhawan was even sleeping on a mattress at a buddies house to creating $100,000 of profits within five days.And that led to a $2.8 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitzs brand-new Speedrun program, with other backers quickly piling in, like Hustle Funds Elizabeth Yin; ChapterOne; Founders Inc.; Austen Allred; Expos Charlie Cheever and Evan Bacon; Runways Siqi Chen; and more.All since a single person tweeted about their mobile app ambiance coder product, and the tweet went viral.
Rork lets individuals with restricted technical backgrounds build mobile apps with an easy text prompt.On February 12, after months of work and one pivot, Kvirkvelia and Dhawan launched Rork with a tweet.We were complete underdogs.
We were actually lacking money really quickly, Dhawan told A Technology NewsRoom.They had received a little check from one angel financier, Matt Shumer, the co-founder and CEO of OthersideAI, that makes the AI writing tool HyperWrite.Techcrunch eventBerkeley, CA|June 5BOOK NOWTheir very first tweet got passed around a bit, but it wasnt till February 24, when people were tweeting about a competing product from a company called Bolt that Shumer posted on X that he thought Rork was better than Bolt.My jaw simply DROPPED, Shumer composed in his X post.
Rork lets you produce entire iOS apps just by describing them! Absolutely no.
Code.
Required.
This changes whatever for app development.
Rork blows Bolt out of the water (and yes, I invested immediately after trying it).
Shumer consisted of a video of Rork, and the post exploded, acquiring more than 1 million views.Usage of Rork immediately escalated, too, but the founders were economically trapped.
Each had run up $15,000 of debt on their charge card to keep the app running.We were paying for AI out of our own pockets, generally, due to the fact that we didnt raise much financing, Dhawan stated.
Were, like, practically out of cash.
And after that 15 minutes after this post, Austen Allred invested $100,000.
By the end of the day of Shumers tweet, Founders Inc.
and Hustle Funds Yin were ready to invest, while warm introductions to other financiers and angels were flying.
Basically it was like $350,000 that first day.
Which was really, actually crazy.Although this sounds like an instantaneous success and by some steps, it is it was more like rescue from a near-death experience for the founders.This was the third bootstrapped startup for each; they had previously developed hit mobile apps beginning in their teens.
They are now ages 25 (Kvirkvelia) and 27 (Dhawan).
But they had gone through much of the cash made by those other apps working on Rorks predecessor, a Cursor-like vibe coder tailored toward nontechnical users.Dhawan had remained in San Francisco considering that December to attend Founders Inc.
and fundraise, overcoming Christmas andsleeping on a bed mattress at a YC creator good friends apartment, while Kvirkvelia stayed home in Georgia to build the new product.
Fundraising wasnt going well.Then competitor Lovable launched and went quickly viral.
However Rorks item wasnt all set to compete with Lovable.
We had the model finished currently, and after that they launched, Dhawan remembers.
We were actually disappointed.So Kvirkvelia convinced Dhawan that they should alter course.
Instead of developing another Lovable, which takes on AI web coding, they should go back to their roots and build a Lovable for mobile apps.No one had actually done this in the past a minimum of not well due to the fact that as difficult as web development is, developing native mobile apps resembles 10 times more complicated, Kvirkvelia told A Technology NewsRoom.We are the Lovable for Expo.
The Lovable for React, Kvirkvelia stated, referencing two popular mobile app development frameworks.Then competing startup Bolt introduced a mobile ambiance coding item, and the founders had dj vu, fearing they would be beaten out of the market again.
They introduced the very same day as Bolt, Dhawan said.After Shumers tweet went viral and angels began putting in, one of their new angels introduced the founders to Andrew Chen, the basic partner running Andreessen Horowitzs brand-new Speedrun program.
Speedrun is a16zs 12-week mentorship program for early-stage startups.
It consists of things like $5 million worth of credits from the companies partners like AWS, Google Cloud, OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Stripe, Deel, and others.
It generally invests as much as $1 million as well.Chen connected, but Dhawan didnt dive right away.
He described to Chen that he already had a pre-seed term sheet in hand from another company.
Chen, figured out not to miss out, did his own speed run at his company and rapidly delivered a completing offer.
The Rork creators accepted, caught their seed cash, and will participate in the accomplice set up to begin on July 28.
Daniel and Levan are highly technical polymaths who deeply understand mobile advancement and distribution, which has allowed them to develop a wonderful platform rapidly, Chen told A Technology NewsRoom over e-mail.
Theyre precisely the type of founders were thrilled to back with a16z Speedrun.Even much better than the financing, paying users are gathering.
2 months after Shumers viral tweet, this group of 2 hit $550,000 ARR, Dhawan says.And now hes off the floor and living in his own apartment or condo, too.Note: this story was updated to clarify that Dhawan, not Kvirkvelia, was the one sleeping on a bed mattress on the floor.