Eric Simons is CEO and Co-Founder of StackBlitz, the company behind Bolt.new, an AI-powered platform that enables anyone to build full-stack web applications directly in the browser. Bolt.new reached $40M ARR in just five months after launching in October 2024, making it one of the fastest-growing startups in history.

Eric co-founded Thinkster, an online programming education platform focused on full-stack development, which he led as CEO for over five years before its acquisition in December 2018. He famously squatted at AOL's headquarters for two months while building Thinkster, spending only $30 his first month.

Eric pioneered WebContainers technology over seven years, enabling full Node.js development environments to run entirely in web browsers. The platform went from near shutdown with only $80K ARR in late 2023 to viral success after integrating Claude 3.5 Sonnet in mid-2024.

Bolt.new converted 30,000 paying customers in its first few weeks and grew from 0 to $20M ARR in just two months with a team of only 12 people. In January 2025, StackBlitz raised $105.5M in Series B funding led by Emergence Capital and GV at a $700M valuation.

Over 8 million users including 72% of Fortune 500 companies now use Bolt.new to build software. The platform enables product managers, designers, and non-technical users to create prototypes in 60 seconds that previously took 6 business days, fundamentally changing how software is created.