RORK founders were almost broken when a viral tweet led to $ 2.8 million and A16Z

Rork Levan Kvirkvelia and Daniel Dhawan live a life conspiracy to a movie. But it really happened.

They moved from collapse, saving life, and debt 15,000 dollars each on credit cards – Kvirkvelia was sleeper in the apartment of a friend – to $ 100,000 of revenue in five days.

This led to a seed tour of $ 2.8 million led by the new Speedrun program from Andressen Horowitz, with other supporters accumulating in Elizabeth Yin, Chapterone, Foundone, Austen Allred, Expo Charlie Cheever, and Evan Bacon, Runway Siki Chen , And more.

All this because one person tweeted about the programmer programmer for their mobile applications, and the tweet is gone viral. RORK allows people with limited technical backgrounds to build mobile phone applications with a simple text router.

On February 12, after months of work and one axis, Kvirkvelia and Dhawan Rork launched a tweet.

“We were completely weak. I really ran out of money soon,” Duan told Techcrunch:

They got a small check from one angel investor, Matt Schumer, CEO of the co -founder of Ethesidei, which makes the AI ​​HyperWrite writing tool.

Their first tweet was passed a little, but it was not until February 24, when people were overcoming a competitor from a company called Bolt, this Shomer posted on X that he believed that RORK was better than Bolt.

“Jobs just decrease” He wrote in his book x. “RORK allows you to create the entire iOS apps only by describing them! Zero. Code. Required. This changes everything to develop the app.

Shomer also included a video of Rork. The post exploded, and watched more than a million times.

RORK’s use increased immediately, but the founders were trapped. Each of them raised $ 15,000 of debt on their credit cards to keep the application to run.

“We were paying the price of artificial intelligence from our pockets, mainly, because we did not raise a lot of funding.” “We, like, almost, of money. Then 15 minutes after this post, Austin Austin invested $ 100,000.”

By the end of the SHUMER tweet, Yin Found’s Inc. was Hustle Fund is already ready for investment, while warm investors and angels were flying. “So it was the case, $ 350,000 on that first day. It was really crazy.”

Of money

Although this seems to be an immediate success-and by some measure, it was like a rescue from the almost death experience of the founders.

This was the third start starting for each of them; They have previously developed mobile applications that started when they were teenagers. They are now between the ages of 25 (Kvirkvelia) and 27 (Dhawan).

But they have gone through a lot of the money that these other applications have acquired on Rark Rark, an author -like author directed towards non -technical users.

Dhawan has been in San Francisco since December to the Inc. And collect donations, and it works during Christmas and Sleeping in the apartment of the YC Founder’s friend, while Kvirkvelia stayed at home in Georgia to build the new product. The collection of donations did not go well.

Then a competitor I launched a loved one and immediately went viral. But their product was not ready to compete with Lovable. “We have already finished the initial model, then we launched,” Dhawan recalls. “We were really disappointed.”

So Kvirkvelia Dhawan persuaded that they should change the path. Instead of building another beloved, which deals with web coding of artificial intelligence, they should return to their roots and build a beloved of mobile applications.

No one did this before – at least not good – because it is difficult to develop the web, building original mobile applications “like 10 times more complicated”, as Kvirkvelia Techcrunch told ..

Kvirkvelia said, referring to two parties to developing famous mobile applications.

Then Bolt Startup launched the competitive product, and the founders were Deja Vu, fearing that they would be beaten from the market again. Duan said they fired the same day as Bolt.

After the Schumer Virusian tweet went and the angels began to flow, one of their newly founded angels came to Andrew Chen, the general partner who runs the new Speedrun program from Andressen Horowitz. Speedrun is a 12 -week A16Z program for startups in the early stage. It includes things such as $ 5 million credits from the company’s partners such as AWS, Google Cloud, Openai, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Stripe, Deel and others. Usually you invest up to one million dollars, as well.

Chen continues, but Duan did not jump immediately. He explained to Lashn that he had already had a pre -seed leaf on hand from another company. Chen, the designer, did not miss the exit, at his own speed in his company and quickly made a competitor. Before the founders of RORK, they delivered their seed money, and they will attend the regiment scheduled to start on July 28.

“Daniel and Levan is a very technical polyma who understands strongly the development and distribution of mobile devices, allowing them to build a great platform quickly,” Chen told Techcrunch via email. “They are exactly the type of founders who we are excited to return with A16z Speedrun.”

Even better of financing, users flow. Two months after Schumer’s viral tweet, this team arrived from two from 550,000 dollars, says Dhawan.

He is outside the ground and lives in his own apartment, now.