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Rork founders Levan Kvirkvelia and Daniel Dhawan are living a lifespan that sound like a movie secret plan — but it actually happened .
They croak from broke , with depleted sprightliness nest egg and $ 15,000 in credit card debt — Dhawan was even sleeping on a mattress at a booster ’s apartment — to generating $ 100,000 of gross within five days .
And that chair to a $ 2.8 million seed rhythm conduct by Andreessen Horowitz ’s Modern Speedrun program , with other backers quickly 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 more .
All because one somebody tweeted about their wandering app vibe computer programmer product , and the tweet went viral . Rork lets masses with special proficient desktop work up mobile apps with a bare textual matter command prompt .
On February 12 , after month of work and one pin , Kvirkvelia and Dhawan launched Rork with a tweet .
“ We were complete underdog . We were really running out of money really soon , ” Dhawan told TechCrunch .
They had have a small check from one holy person investor , Matt Shumer , the Centennial State - founder and CEO of OthersideAI , which makes the AI write tool HyperWrite .
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Their first tweet got take place around a bit , but it was n’t until February 24 , when people were tweeting about a competing product from a company shout Bolt that Shumer post on X that he call up Rork was good than Bolt .
“ My jaw just DROPPED , ” Shumerwrote in his decade post . “ Rork lets you create entire iOS apps just by identify them ! Zero . Code . ask . This deepen everything for app evolution . Rork blows Bolt out of the H2O ( and yes , I invest immediately after trying it ) . ”
Shumer included a video of Rork , and the Wiley Post blew up , gaining more than 1 million views .
Usage of Rork at once rocket , too , but the beginner were financially trapped . Each had run up $ 15,000 of debt on their credit cards to keep the app running .
“ We were paying for AI out of our own sack , fundamentally , because we did n’t raise much financial backing , ” Dhawan say . “ We ’re , like , almost out of money . And then 15 minutes after this mail , Austen Allred enthrone $ 100,000 . ”
By the end of the 24-hour interval of Shumer ’s tweet , Founder ’s Inc. and Hustle Fund ’s Yin were ready to invest , while strong intros to other investors and angels were flee . “ So basically it was like $ 350,000 that first twenty-four hour period . And that was really , really screwball . ”
Out of money
Although this sounds like an crying success — and by some measures , it is — it was more like delivery from a near - death experience for the beginner .
This was the third bootstrapped startup for each ; they had previously germinate rack up roving apps starting in their teens . They are now ages 25 ( Kvirkvelia ) and 27 ( Dhawan ) .
But they had guide through much of the hard currency clear by those other apps working on Rork ’s herald , a Cursor - like vibration coder pitch toward untechnical exploiter .
Dhawan had been in San Francisco since December to see Founders Inc. and fundraise , crop through Christmas andsleeping on a mattress at a YC laminitis friend ’s apartment , while Kvirkvelia stayed home in Georgia to build the new product . Fundraising was n’t proceed well .
Then competitorLovable launched and pass away instantly viral . But Rork ’s product was n’t ready to compete with Lovable . “ We had the prototype finished already , and then they launch , ” Dhawan recalls . “ We were really frustrated . ”
So Kvirkvelia convinced Dhawan that they should convert row . Rather than construct another Lovable , which tackles AI web secret writing , they should return to their root and make a Lovable for mobile apps .
No one had done this before — at least not well — because as hard as web development is , build up aboriginal mobile apps is “ like 10 times more complicated , ” Kvirkvelia told TechCrunch .
“ We are the Lovable for Expo . The Lovable for React , ” Kvirkvelia said , referencing two popular mobile app maturation framework .
Then rival startup Bolt set up a peregrine vibration tantalize product , and the father had déjà vu , fear they would be beaten out of the marketplace again . So they launch the same sidereal day as Bolt , Dhawan say .
After Shumer ’s tweet go viral and backer began pour in , one of their new holy man bring out the founders to Andrew Chen , the general better half running Andreessen Horowitz ’s new Speedrun program . Speedrun is a16z ’s 12 - week mentorship program for former - microscope stage inauguration . It let in things like $ 5 million worth of credits from the firm ’s cooperator like AWS , Google Cloud , OpenAI , Microsoft , Nvidia , Stripe , Deel , and others . It typically invests up to $ 1 million as well .
Chen touch out , but Dhawan did n’t jump immediately . He explained to Chen that he already had a pre - seed terminus sheet in hired hand from another house . Chen , determined not to overlook out , did his own speeding run at his firm and apace deliver a vie offer . The Rork founder accepted , nabbed their seed money , and will serve the cohort schedule to begin on July 28 .
“ Daniel and Levan are highly proficient polymath who profoundly understand nomadic maturation and distribution , which has tolerate them to build a wondrous platform promptly , ” Chen tell TechCrunch over e-mail . “ They ’re exactly the type of founder we ’re excited to back with a16z Speedrun . ”
Even better than the funding , pay users are pouring in . Two months after Shumer ’s viral tweet , this squad of two off $ 550,000 ARR , Dhawan says .
And now he ’s off the level and last in his own apartment , too .
Note : this story was update to clarify that Dhawan , not Kvirkvelia , was the one slumber on a mattress on the floor .
