0:00We're announcing today that we're expanding the ACC crypto fund to A16Z frontier. This is the biggest delta between what the early adopters understand as possible. Now that gap is as wide as I've ever seen in my career.
0:11More than categories, more than products, we invest in entrepreneurs and so many of the most interesting entrepreneurs are outer planet. Startup formation is going to skyrocket from here.
0:22By the way, it already is. We used to ask the question, is this idea too ambitious? We're much more likely to ask is this ambitious enough because what's possible is so spectacular.
0:33Had I had astronaut at Netscape in 1994 like oh my god Ben like what would you and I have been able to do at Netscape?
0:40We would have built the whole damn internet.
0:41You were 18 today how would you think about what you might study stealing marks line but I think there's one thing to do which is study.
0:49Chris we have a big announcement today.
0:52Uh we're expanding the mandate. Uh I'll let you do the honors.
0:55Yeah. So, uh, yeah, we're announcing today that we're expanding the ACC crypto fund to A16Z Frontier. Um, the, um, the idea is, I say a couple of kind of motivations behind this. Um, one is, you know, crypto, um, has in some areas worked really well. Um, stable coins have become kind of a normal part of the tech landscape used by companies like Stripe and sort of almost, you know, every fintech company now kind of consider considers it part of their toolbox.
1:23um Wall Street firms are moving heavily into crypto uh with tokenized stocks and other kinds of assets. It's a growing fast growing category. Um but as a result, the lines have kind of blurred um which you know we find ourselves asking is Stripe a crypto company? Is you know somebody uh many of these companies where they're sort of sitting at the in the intersection of let's call it fintech and Wall Street and crypto.
1:47Um, and so it's really become kind of, you know, whereas, you know, years ago it was sort of its own world with its own companies and its own investors, it's the lines have blurred and it's become kind of more part of the um tech landscape. So that's number one. And then number two, and I I can let Mark and Ben talk about this more. I think we felt that at the firm there's a feeling that the um other kind of groups are are um have so many interesting opportunities in their core areas uh
2:15that uh what we kind of my my partner Martin calls outer planets, meaning the sort of the metaphor I think comes from Firefly, the TV show. It's the idea the inner planets are kind of the kind of the more core planets and there's kind of these wackier outer planets. Um that uh outer planets which which historically we've done a lot of kind of both types of investing. Um I think the feeling was um that because they're so busy with so many interesting opportunities and doing an amazing job with that um that there was an opportunity to kind of uh there's maybe
2:45a gap so say in in some of the coverage that um there and then I think just I'll just speak personally um you know I kind of see myself and my background I see Frontier as an area I'm comfortable with. this sort you know I joined the firm in 2013 and um we you know came in and with that kind of mandate I talked to Mark and Ben and I said hey I want to do this crazy stuff and they they were like great um and so you know that led to a couple of themes at the time and they're all kind of what I would call kind of second order
3:13effects like you know you had smartphones obviously started in 2007 and by 2013 had gotten mainstream and there were all these kind of first order effects like building apps on top so like the firm was an investor in Instagram and you know, incredible uh product built on smartphone. But a second order effect was that you had the components of smartphones. You had, you know, sensors and chips getting better and better and maybe people could repurpose those in different ways. And so that led to I think Mark was the one who's first into drones as I recall and
3:42got me into them. But the kind of the thesis behind it beyond just they're cool is is that now that you have this supply chain of um you know all these great parts that entrepreneurs can kind of recombine them and build you know we let we invested in Oculus as an example and that was really kind of a reconfigured smartphone. Um Skyio that was one of our investments from back then that was you know at the beginning was kind of a reconfigured smartphone.
4:04It's gotten much more advanced now. uh crypto I think at the time was kind of a downstream effect to me of sort of the open source software movement morphing into services and also kind of a result of social media where you could have these communities form without mainstream acceptance and build build uh you know and kind of coales around these these blockchains. Um so for me personally I'll just say this is sort of I feel you know kind of a continuation of long area of interest and I think the firm has you know there's many other investments the firm has had in these
4:31kinds of frontier areas. Um, so we we felt I think it's kind of consistent with things we've been doing for a long time.
4:38Uh, Ben Mark, let's hear from you. I know this was a joint uh effort and something you guys were very excited about and felt like filled a filled a gap or really expanded the the mandate of the firm. Ben, why don't you add your take?
4:49Yeah. So, look, I think that there's areas um that are really novel. So, it's taking it it's looking at, you know, what's possible technologically and problems in the world and they're just the first ones in it. And it may end up being a category. It may end up being a successful company. It may, you know, blow up. Um, but you know, there's a class of these things. And you know what
5:16we've done typically or or historically is was first like Chris would just look at these new areas himself. Um and then uh kind of as we uh identified new areas, we'd create a a vertical behind that area. Uh and what we found with our vertical strategy which has worked very well is that you know there's still new things that fall outside of the
5:44verticals and the process of turning that into uh a practice um is a little bit undefined. Not that we haven't done it but it's a little bit undefined. And so by Chris doing this, we kind of will have the motion to invest in the very most interesting founders who are outer planets and then you know if that works you know maybe that becomes a whole fund
6:13at some point uh or or maybe frontiers turns into that thing because it gets so interesting like that could be as well.
6:20And so I think that you know it's very exciting for us because it kind of uh fills a hole in the architecture and then also you know we really at the end of the day more than categories more than products we invest in entrepreneurs and so many of the most interesting entrepreneurs are outer planet. So this gives us a a real way to get to that.
6:45And to me this seems like a you know continuation of what we were talking about at the at the last offsite which is which struck me because you know as uh as ambitious as the firm has been as early as the firm has been as as big of the bets that the firm has made. You know the big focus of the offsite was how do we bet even bigger or the the the only regrets we have are not even going even harder even earlier e even bigger.
7:04and and Chris, you're someone who, you know, has made bets in some of these emerging categories, but uh it just feels like a continuation of of that of that message. We're going to spend most of the time in the future, but while we're talking about history, I have to to ask one historical question, which is, you know, Chris, I believe, is the longest standing consecutive uh partner at the firm, you know, uh besides Benark having joined in 2013. Uh, I'm curious, Benmark, when you uh, you know, met Chris, what did you see in him that made it clear that, oh, we have to have him at at Acing Z? And did you, uh, anticipate the type of, uh, career he
7:34would go on to going to have? Ben, I'll ask you to start.
7:37Look, I I I think originally, um, we just knew Chris as a very smart guy and we really liked his ideas from his blog.
7:46I mean, like that that that's really what it came down to. He was a really good writer. um his ideas were very original and you know we we were looking for like somebody smart who could do that. And then the other thing we liked about him is he had real experience as an entrepreneur. So he knew kind of like what that journey felt like uh which you know was very very important to us in the early days to to set the culture of the firm the way we wanted it. um you
8:14know over time he's had probably the most original investment ideas that we've had in the firm and so and we've kind of copied those and uh multiplied them across. So you know one one of his early things was look we're not really looking for good ideas that look like good ideas. We're looking for good ideas that look like bad ideas. Um because and then a bad idea but where an entrepreneur has
8:43a secret that actually makes it a good idea. Uh and that that that framework was extremely useful for us in kind of understanding like what was going to be truly unique and have massive upside versus something that was going to get where all the profits were going to get competed away. Um, and so, you know, and he's he's had quite a few uh excellent ideas like that. So, you know, it's it's been great working with him over now like way more than a decade.
9:13Yep. Maybe I could add um also it's not just Chris as special as he is, it's also Chris's team. Um and um the the thing that I think people may not appreciate maybe hard to see from the outside is just you know crypto has this you know crypto's like been so sexy in so many ways and it's been so you know it has this sort of flashy elements and you know it's a cultural you know kind of phenomena kind of moments but at the core of crypto it's it's a it's a technology it's a very deep technology and it's very complex technology um and you need to have like really deep technical expertise you know kind of coupled with like really good business
9:42judgment and really good market judgment in order to successfully invest in crypto which which which we which we've done. Um, including, by the way, including like, you know, literally Chris Steam has had like, you know, math professors and, you know, cryptographers and like people who are, you know, very very deep into the theory, you know, game theory, uh, you know, things like that. Um, you know, very deep software concepts. Um, and so it's it's one of the things I'm really excited about is in addition to Chris, his his colleagues and team members and the team that he's built, uh, now being able to work on a work on a broader set of topics.
10:09Yeah. And to that point, I mean, so so thank you. But I think that also the Yeah, the team I think the team's amazing. And I would also mention one other thing besides the technical side um we've invested very deeply over the years in policy.
10:19And regulatory and I and I believe that a lot you know if you just self-driving cars, drones, AI itself is now becoming a political issue. Um I think more and more of these cutting edge technologies will have kind of a policy angle and and we believe that that that expertise that they've built kind of in the crucible of of the kind of crypto journey um will be uh useful for many other entrepreneurs.
10:42Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Well, on that end, no, we'll do one last historical question. Uh, you know, you pioneered not just some of the investments, but also some of the ways in which the firm works, I the policy arm and when you joined in 2013, you know, could you have imagined that the firm would have grown in this way? What was what were your thoughts about where things were going?
10:57Well, I always knew Mark I mean Mark has a you have a big uh poster of JP Morgan on your wall in your office.
11:05And so these Mark and Ben do not lack for uh for you know drive and ambition.
11:10It's a famous photograph. It's a very it's a very famous photograph. It was it was he hated JP Morgan.
11:14It's inspiration inspiration inspiration. For people who haven't seen the photograph, you can Google it's a very famous one is JP Morgan hated to have his picture taken for this he had this this condition. He had this anyway he has this nose related issue. Anyway, so he hated having his photo taken. Uh this was pre- antibiotics, let's put it that way. Um and so he he was grouchy most of the time and so he has photo taken. So that but he they needed a formal portrait of him and so he finally literally you put him and set him down and the the the photographer like saw the whole thing coming and so it it's
11:42lit in a way where he's sitting in darkness um just absolutely giving the camera the stare of death and he's holding it looks in the photograph like he's holding a carving and and and what it is is the edge of the chair lit in a very specific way and it's like very clear the photographer like intentionally did that.
12:00Yeah. So that's the photograph that was inside my office door for You looked very very scary. very Yes. Exactly. Exactly.
12:06The other we took a lot of inspiration from him.
12:11Uh but one of the other things that that that we have in the firm that's actually in the culture document from him is we do first class business and then only in a first class way, which is, you know, it's like a cool phrasing of it, but that that when he said it, he was on trial. Um and they were kind of accusing or he was in court. They were accusing him of kind of nefarious things and he was like, "No, we only do first class business and men
12:40only in a first class way." Which, you know, Mark and I really loved that attitude about like you're you're definitely not going to tell me who I am. I know who I am and I'm going to let you know who I am. And that kind of thing I I think is really important in venture capital to like be principled and people know where you're coming from and be able to trust you and that kind of thing. So, so we got a lot from him.
13:06Yeah. So, JP Morgan.
13:08Yeah. And so, I mean I have never I mean I think a couple things I'll say is like I mean look like any venture there were ups and downs and you never you know I could I have predicted everything. I think things generally went really well and you know I didn't obviously know that all all along the way but um obviously know that Mark and Ben are incredibly ambitious. I've never I it's funny sometimes I'll have some idea and like some crazy thing we want to do and people like what are Mark inventing like I've never in my not once have they ever if anything have they ever pushed back if anything it's always can you double
13:37it can you double down can you get more aggressive um so just you know and then just it's a very entrepreneurial place and I think this has shown over the years of like how many this this is a good example right here um that you know when we you know we sort of adapt um see what's happening in the world change things around we went through a whole kind of restructuring of the of the firm. Um, uh, you know, bring in new ideas. Sort of anything's anything's fair game as long as you can kind of defend it. Um, and so, you know, that I that's also why I've enjoyed working here. It's a very entrepreneurial
14:07culture. I think I think also what Ben said is very important, the culture of the firm. Um, that's why I was initially kind of attracted to it. Having been a customer of venture capital before that and experienced the product, I understood that there could be a better product. Um u but that and that that's I think everyone literally everyone uh that I know at this firm like comments on the culture and how important that is um and how they you know enjoy working here and and feel like they're doing some of the best work of their life. So
14:35um so I think that's all like a very you know there's obviously have to make good investments and this and that but I think it all really starts with the people and the culture.
14:43Well it's funny that you mentioned um it's related to the culture. It's funny you mentioned ups and downs because you know from the outside looking in it feels like it's all all all ups and that's how all startups are is like you know like the successful startups always look you know look great from the outside as someone who's I think we can all comment as people who have been in inside of startups basically I don't know of a startup that wasn't a show at some point or at multiple points it also speaks to the culture I've heard from all three of you guys you know things like you know never complain never explain you know happy warrior um
15:12and so yeah it's just a testament there let's uh let's let's go to the frontier, let's go to the future. So, sometime there's this phrase in venture, you know, being too early is as bad as being uh, you know, too late or something. Um, you've been early a lot. You've been, you know, mostly right or or right in very big ways, but you've also, you know, been too early at times. I'm curious how you think about technical risk or or the idea of being too early in in our era now.
15:34Yeah. I mean, we talk about this a lot.
15:35Like I think we I think I can speak for Mark and Ben, they can comment, but we believe that basically every good idea that we've ever seen that involve technology has eventually worked or we believe will work. Okay, if it hasn't worked yet and and the important qualifier, good idea. There are bad ideas, but um it's just kind of remarkable, especially having lived through the internet um how many things um just, you know, almost everything that ended up working had a precursor that didn't work and maybe was 10 years
16:04too early. Um, and so so much, you know, and that's the hardest thing I think in technology is to predict the timing of these things. Um, and and there's just so it's so complicated, right? There's the technology, there's the culture, there's the business environment, there's the political environment. There's so many factors that go into these things and having it all line up.
16:19Um, so, you know, and so I I would say with, you know, I think generally at the firm, I would say specifically in the Frontier Fund, we want to air on the side of being too early. We understand that sometimes things will be too early and we're we're okay with kind of cool category risk. Um, some categories may not work. Look, I mean, even things that sort of worked didn't work. Like, you know, we sold Oculus, got bought, but the reality is like it's now 13 years later. I still believe very strongly in VR. Um, we'd love to in make VR investments, but it's 13 years later and it's not, you know, it hasn't got as
16:48mainstream as we would have liked. So, it took long. It turned out there's just many more hard technical problems to solve. I kind of believe I don't know what Mark believes. I think that there that with the stuff we're seeing in AI now, you know, you see the first sort of tipping happening, first software engineering getting dramatically better than math. I think there's a scenario and I I believe this and I kind of want to invest behind it where we're we may be pulling forward 20 years of things that you know our whole mindset of how we think about technical risk and oh that's a science project not an
17:16engineering project I think we have to re-evaluate that whole frame right now um because I think things you know the sort of the you know if you look at these the growth of I mean math is not the last thing that's going to change you know you're about to have physics a lot of stuff's going on in hardware right now I think it's dramatically I think you a 30 person team can credibly build like a full stack device company in a way that you might have needed a thousand people or something a decade ago, right? And I think and you have these very, you know,
17:43very um thoughtful uh deep entrepreneurs who are looking for how do I take these new capabilities and do dramatic things and you know so some of it's tactical like how do I create more defensibility?
17:55How do I You don't want to be two feet in front of the AI frontier and get sort of washed over by the title wave, but a lot of it's about just you have these amazing new capabilities and people have only begun to explore what you can do.
18:06Um, and so it I don't know it feels like an especially exciting time. Um, and we don't it's it um it's it's Yeah. So I don't know if you Yeah. So I would add so talk about AI as sort of a catalyst. Um so this is the biggest delta between I would say what the early adopters understand is possible now uh versus what kind of everybody kind of normal people understand. Um and I think that's you know true at the individual level but it's especially true at the company
18:37Um and the early the AI native early stage startups have just a completely different view on what they can do with AI than the than the than sort of you know typical incumbents in almost any industry. Uh almost without exception and and I think that that gap is as wide as I've ever seen in my career. And then it that gap seems like it's gapping further and further out which is AI is just racing ahead in capability even week by week. Um and so the leading edge entrepreneurs and technical people we deal with like they're they're they're getting they're just they're they're just by the week they're getting sort of steadily more advanced um than than than
19:05than a typical incumbent. Um so it's it's it's the biggest alt I've ever seen. And if you kind of extrapolate from that like you know if you if if that's what happens um then there's just there are going to be a lot of industries that are really up for grabs in a fundamentally you know kind of more more profound way than maybe has been the case in the past and then the and that's going to be because the founders are going to have a level of superpowers coming from the use of these tools and these technologies that they just simply haven't had in the past. I mean, you know, had I had, you know, Astra in
19:33Netscape in 1994, like, oh my god, like, you know, like Ben, like, what would you and I have been able to do at Netscape?
19:42We would have built the whole damn internet. I mean, absolutely incredible. It would absolutely incredible. And, you know, as Chris said, like we're seeing this, we're seeing entrepreneurs come in with like a with plans of a level of depth and sophistication, you know, multiple parts connecting together.
19:55By the way, we would have gotten crypto done then. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Like, by the way, in like two weeks, like we' have streaming video a lot sooner. I mean, like, all kinds of things would have happened. And and then, by the way, hardware, I mean, we never even, you know, bit off hardware, but, you know, had we been able to, there's all kinds of things we could have done. Um, and so, um, I I just like I think that the leading edge entrepreneurs now are going to have like capabilities and which means they're going to have business plans that are like a lot more, you know, they're going to have product plans that are a lot more technically intensive and complex. They're going to have business plans that are more ambitious and complex. Um, they're going
20:24to be building companies that just like ramp much much faster. um uh you know the the scope of the product that they build and then you know hopefully the the scope of their business. Um and then and then and then again this goes right back to like th those entrepreneurs are going to color way outside the lines like they're they're not going to cons we already see this. They're not going to think of themselves as like I'm just a software company or I'm just a hardware company or I'm just a whatever or even I'm just an AI company or anything. They're going to they're going to think very broadly and expansively about exactly what you know how many different areas they want to touch and how they want to combine things. And so the the sort of you know conceptual
20:53artist kind of aspect of this is going to like just like blow way out. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, we used to kind of ask the question, is is this idea too ambitious? And I I don't think I think we're much more likely to ask this is this ambitious enough um because you know what's possible is so spectacular. And if you do something moderate like it, it probably won't be differentiated enough. And by the way, look in incumbents, you know, we spend a
21:23lot of time, I have a lot of friends in incumbent companies, by the way, including incumbent tech, including incumbent companies in Silicon Valley.
21:28And it's like, you know, we wish them all the best. And, you know, we, by the way, we have lots of companies that would like to arm them up with all these all these new tools also. Um, and so, you know, so no doubt some of them are going to be able to adapt, but like, you know, if any of them are listening right now, I would say like the clock is ticking. Like it it like stuff is moving.
21:44I mean, like I I I I am basically I mean, I'm full-time. I'm basically drowning um in the the in the in the in the in the with the pace of development right now and the speed with which things are changing. Um and I'm trying to keep up with all of it and it's nearly impossible.
21:58Like it it the yeah the the the the supermpowered 24y old with AI is going to just achieve like amazing things in in the next decade.
22:06And this is a question we were asking right before this which is you know is AI more uh sustaining or disruptive in terms of like will more of the gains go to incumbents or or startups? And it seems so far it's both in some sense which is some you know the companies like you know Meta and others have you know uh sort of adjusted very well and and also their net new companies that are you know u almost trillion dollars in you know within a decade and it's so is that your read that that's effectively both or how do you think about the sustaining disruptive? Well, the incumbents that are adapting are actually the incumbents I think for the
22:35most part that are actually going directly into AI, you know, and then there are others and then there are certain, you know, there's certain companies certainly in tech that are on the leading edge even if they're not prim primary AI developers. But at least right now the pattern is is is not that I mean it's it's just really actually there's a very specific thing that I think maybe it's a topic for a different podcast. There's a very specific thing I think is happening which is I think many companies are not adopting AI while their employees are.
22:57Um and their employees are and their employees are not necessarily telling the man management what's happening. And I and by the way I'm going to guess every single person listening to this podcast right now is thinking oh yeah that's what I'm doing. You know I'm using AI you know to you know do all you know do all my work or at least let's say fact check all my work uh you know proof read all my all my all my uh emails um even if not have them written outright. Um, and so there's this weird thing where there's something about AI right now where it's like it's much easier for the individual to adopt than it is the institution. Um, and by the
23:27way, and and again it goes back to like our role in the world, which is like those some of those individuals are going to figure out like, oh, with this tool, I can now like start my, you know, it's now easier than ever for me to start my own business.
23:37Um, and so I I think startup formation is going to skyrocket from here. Um, because these by the way, it already is.
23:43Oh, yeah. I mean, we're seeing it. I mean, we're seeing it 100% for sure. Um, so anyway, just you kind of go go back to the theme of this is just I I I'm completely convinced like we're going to see a wave of like much more technically aggressive, much more business aggressive, much more uh expans expansionist creative original thinking, many more combinations of of of things that we would have considered to be separate things in the past. Um, and uh and uh we're going to see yeah founders was just like an in and teams was just like an incredible level of skill level uh incredible level of skill that that they otherwise might have needed, you
24:13know, 30 years to achieve or something.
24:14They're going to have like right out of the gate. And by the way, the other thing I'd say is that the the Christensen disruptive innovation frame assumes that sort of the technology world is relatively contained and that these are companies fighting with each other. Yeah, I think it's probably the wrong frame right now, which is it's really sort of people who are techn technologically modern going out into other industries and just changing the economy more broadly. Yeah. Right. Especially with these kind of full stack companies, you go and you create a full, you know, like
24:42uh we just announced our investment in Adams, like they're going and they're building like a full stack kind of food service and and other things, right? And um so so I think that the you talk about this sometimes like the market has sort of gone from, you know, the 10 big tech companies fighting with each other to the 10 tech company or 10 and all the startups going against the the other Fortune 500 or the rest of the economy.
25:06Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
25:08I'm I'm curious where where you guys think we are in the in the development or how you because it feels like you know in the internet era um application uh you know we're sort of you know the biggest companies um you know Facebook, Amazon etc. Um but in in sort of this era it feels like you know Nvidia and some of the more hardware companies are are taking a lot of the margin or some of the bigger companies. Um how do you think about you know where we are are we in the sort of applications or consumer like how do how do you think about that?
25:34I think Mark would say all all of the above and I think a lot of people think that actually right now it seems like a lot of stuff is working you know obviously the big the big AI labs but you know open source is growing very very quickly there's ser obviously the serious efforts in China the serious efforts in the US um a lot of application layer things are doing really well um that you know so you know maybe at some point you you know obviously over time that shakes out and the kind of value chain there's certain things that certain layers that do better than others but um
26:04and then the other I think it's just the the it's still it's like it's kind of crazy. You have the demand for a lot of this stuff uh is is still very early by most metrics. Um Yep.
26:14I think your team just put out some charts on this. It's like 3% of you know measured enterprise use or something like this.
26:20Um and so and it's just hard and it just seems like a you know the market for intelligence is very very large and it's only getting started. So um yeah, I don't know.
26:30Yeah, I agree. And one of your your points also is you like you mentioned that every new technology uh has this sort of first this you know phase where people think about what are the old use cases how they just do the new technology and here u and then of course people figure out net new cases that are native to that technology and so where are we there yeah I mean like sort of the classic example I like to use is the internet right where in the '9s you had sort of people taking existing behaviors like you might order a Sears catalog or something and instead Sears puts it on the internet and of course when they do that you want to use the internet
26:59version it's easier and a lot of the early internet was like that and then you had you know in the 2000s you had YouTube and they come along and they put up a empty website and they say well someday there's going to be these YouTube influencers and that's going to populate the so they were betting on they weren't just betting on the technology and taking something they knew would work right they were betting on a on a on a cultural change or behavioral change um so in some ways they were taking more risk because they were betting on you know the technology and the and these yeah and these broader changes um but that's where you got the really kind of world changing stuff is
27:28in the 2000 social media you know all all And then of course mobile accelerated it and and I think that's a my own view is that's a kind of pretty common pattern and just just human nature right you you build something and the first thing you do is you do these things you already know um in a better way and I think that's what we've seen in AI so far where you have you know people already coded people already did math um people already did knowledge work people already were used to like search engines and sort of semi-hating and they're doing those things now um but we've only begun to explore the space of like what are the radical
27:58things that that are new behaviors new activities, right? Things that people have never done before. Um, it seems like we're probably at that tip. I believe we're kind of at that tipping point where we're going to start to just sort of get see the crazier, weirder stuff, which I personally am very excited about and and find that I always find those waves in technology the most personally exciting. They're they're kind of more um and and there's sort of more layers of risk. going back to frontier like you can find some things will be you know kind of more direct shots on goal and other things will be these kinds of bank shots where you have
28:27to have multiple things go right and maybe there's more layers of risk but maybe if you're right there's more upside as well yeah I'm I'm really excited in social used to be in the 2000s like every few years there was a new major network there was Facebook you know what there was snap tik tok and and then it felt like there was a little bit of a darth on the social side but it with AI it does feel inevitable you know and been dating with Tinder of course and there hasn't been something in a while. It feels inevitable that hey if there's this you know interface or device that I'm you know giving all my information
28:57to that there's going to be some way that these are these are hooked up and enabling a whole new set of social experiences.
29:02Well I mean you can talk about this Mark but we you know we're headed to a world where it looks like the main the the most numerous participants on the internet will be agents and not people.
29:12Uh we're early phases of that but it seems somewhat inevitable. you have these products like Muse and Instinct that are sort of utility proxy agents for people. Um, and then you're you're going to I think you see a whole different sets of categories of these agents and they'll become the main participants on the internet. And then there's questions of like, you know, will they need their own ways of communicating and transacting and uh sharing knowledge and doing all the things people do. Um, and so it's probably going to be a whole series of
29:41of innovations along those lines. rent a human.com. Yeah, rent a human. That's like inverts the model, right?
29:50Moltbook was cool, too.
29:51Yeah. Yeah, totally. That's Well, you know, Yeah. Molt book was the public public kind of version and then it turned out the agents figured out how to do their own uh the mold book in the hugging face. So, yeah, it's going to be a lot more.
30:03Yeah, the agent the agent ecology online is going to be spectacular. People are going to plug into that in all kinds of ways. Yeah, Mark, I'm curious if there are things that you're tracking either in in social or consumer or or even just this frame of like the skuorphic, you know, things that that sort of the, you know, worked in the past sort of uh platform era and now like what net new use cases or what is native to that you're seeing or anticipating or or looking forward to?
30:26Well, I'll give you my my version maybe a little bit of what Chris was saying, but like I I think so many I mean look there's a lot of great demos, a lot of great products releasing right now, but there's there's this thing I've just observed. But I saw the internet era earlier and I I call it product manager brain um which is product manager is basically designing products for product managers right it's like it's by the way it's the one thing everybody does is they build products for themselves product managers have the story that they're building for other people and yet somehow all the use cases are you know book me a restaurant you know to eat in San Francisco to go have dinner with my friends who are also product managers um or you know book me
30:55a plane flight to go to a product management conference where I also get to hang out with all my product manager friends and so there there's this you know it's a little and again there's a role for this but it's a bit like I think it's like the anthropic I'm a what is it? I'm a happy, helpful, harmful, harmless. I'm a happy, harmless, whatever it is. Honest assistant, right?
31:11And it's a little which also means I'm I am the most boring possible thing you could possibly imagine that's going to be constantly lecturing me. You've asked me a question I'm not allowed to answer, right? And so it's it's like there's just going to be this this this sort of we just had this very just the nature of the early companies who just had this very blinker view on on human activity what people are going to want to do. And it's to your point like with with Muse and Instinct, it's it's starting to open up. Um, but like look, this is going to be a much more entertaining, fun, enjoyable, exciting. Um, by the way,
31:40lucrative people are going to make money. There'll be all kinds of ways for people to make money.
31:44U, be able to save money, u, be able to be parts of, you know, participate in parts of the economy, be able to be creators, you know, be able to, uh, you know, create new kinds of art. I mean, just in the last like three weeks, there's been an explosion of people making music videos like Denovo.
31:57On like an incredible array of like creative ideas and topics like video games in the last three weeks have blown up. Uh, can we mention that just because that's so striking?
32:04Yeah, I mean I always think I always find video games interesting because they they're kind of the the lead I find they're often the leading edge of media because it just it's a technical culture that kind of iterates quickly. But like the I just saw one where it's like you can take any two video well first of all you can disassemble everything port them and just crazy stuff going on now where you can you can now run like Windows games on Unix faster than on Windows like because of these these disassemblers and these AIs are so good.
32:28Um, but also there was like this one where you can take any two video games and it will mash them up together and create a combo video game of it, which you know, just like a crazy new behavior.
32:38Super Mario and GTA, right?
32:41Spider-Man and Jurassic Park.
32:43Um, and it's just and it's literally the crazy like to Mark's point, it's been I think like two weeks or something. It was like since what like Opus 55 or something. Um, and so it's just like the rate at which this stuff is happening and like what in a month there'll probably be some other, you know, two weeks there'll be some other big wave of this. Um, uh, you see Epic just yesterday said no more humans, right?
33:03And so like, yeah, there's been cultural resistance in the video game industry to AI, but like I think that's the first of the dominoes to fall because it's just inevitable because it's a much better way to build things and you're going to it's going to be great for consumers.
33:14You're going to have this I think it's going to be a creative renaissance. you're going to have this, you know, any independent developer can go and build like they have a huge team and um and and still have I think they can still have there's a lot of room for human creativity. It just it's a it's a is superpowers human creativity. Um so I think I think you were mentioning movies. Well, oh yeah, that might take longer. I don't know when that when that where that is on the you know the the or that that death door meme or whatever like I don't know which door it is but uh
33:42you can snap it quite quickly. I just I'm completely I was giving I'm completely obsessed with the movie this movie Digger that came out and I'm like literally the only person who saw it.
33:50You will be 100% tempted to walk out after the first half hour. Like you you will want to I I have a friend who literally took I have a friend who took her mother to see it and they walked out after the first half hour and now the running joke in the family is oh digger 2 is out. let's, you know, let's head to the theater, you know, just because it's such a comical idea, but so like a lot of people have had that, but if you actually watch the entire movie, there's a reason why they did what they did, and it's not what you think it is, and I don't want to spoil it, but like it's not it's not the way it is is presented at all. It's very clever. Um, anyway, but but like, you know, it's it's so it's this incredible creative achievement, but it's a $200
34:19million like cash loss for the for for for the studio, but it's that's because it had like $180 million production budget. Um, and so it's like with AI, what if that movie had had a $20 million production budget and what if it had made, you know, or a two or a $2 million production budget, right? Like that that level of art and creativity um at a lower price would have been great. As a business, by the way, as a business thing would have been f two million that that movie on a $2 million budget would have been insanely profitable. Would have been made the investors back 10 times their money. Um, and so yeah, there's there's a huge thing that's going to open up in in the entertainment
34:48business. And then the other one, you know, Chris, you and I have have sort of, you know, been in and around hardware for a long time. like my whole career, you know, hardware, you know, for I'm a software person. Hardware has always been like terror incognito, which is like, you know, there are dragons there, right? Like it's just it's been so easy to blow up companies by going into hardware. And then again, your point like just in the last 3 weeks. So this this open source tool dropped called REA, reverse engineer anything.
35:10And it's this thing harnesses an AI model and you point it at anything, it'll reverse engineer it and give you source code. And one of the things that you can reverse engineer now is any piece of hardware, right? And so you have a thermostat that's like pissing you off in your house because it's not like working right. You can point this thing at the thermostat, reverse engineer it, and and the AI will write you new code and install it and put a new interface in the thermostat.
35:29And the same thing is true for ba basically anything like basically any form of hardware can now be taken over and reprogrammed with with this stuff.
35:35And so all of a sudden it's just like I mean I mean you take all these spaces I don't if anybody's doing this yet, but like just home automation is home automation's always been a complete nightmare of a market and and to implement as a customer. If anybody's ever done any sort of, you know, new house build, it's just a nightmare. But like home automation maybe should just be an AI bot that just like takes over all the hardware in your house and runs it however it is that you want to do that. And I I have friends that are literally doing this like right now in their in their own homes. Um, and so there is we we are potentially entering here like we're entering a renaissance.
36:03One way to think about it is like any anybody who understands software may sort of automatically be able to do a lot of the things that historically have been difficult in hardware um in a way that's just never been conceivable before. Um and so yeah, it just Yeah.
36:15And then you this sort of multiplicative thing you know these you know these are kind of the fields that are like closest into tech but then you just you know you you you expand out and you just you kind of think bas you know the entire economy is kind of uh open for for this kind of thing. Now Ben are there any uh any native uh AI native use cases that you're seeing or or are hoping to see or frontier uh sort of spaces that you we haven't discussed?
36:38Well that I think that was a really good discussion. I mean, I I think to me the the key is like these are going to be hard to anticipate because they're brand new things. You know, it it's funny like how the film industry has reacted where, you know, some people have really embraced it and you know, and then there's a bunch of people who have buried their head in the sand. But I think that, you know, what's going to happen with movies is there's going to be a new media. Um, you know, I think
37:05the AI film is not going to be a movie.
37:08it's going to be something very very different. Uh and and then look AI will also be used to make regular movies uh kind of more efficiently and and you know with better special effects and so forth. But the stories you can tell if you have this thing are just completely different than what you could ever tell before. Like there's you know it just hasn't been viable. I mean it's barely been viable for like Christopher Nolan but he's like the one guy who could do
37:37it. Um, but nobody else had a chance and and now everybody's going to be able to do it. And then there will be new ideas that that that come because you could do whatever you want.
37:46Yeah. I always think of like the camera.
37:48So the camera on the negative frame of the camera's invented. The negative version I guess is if you know if you're somebody who paints landscapes or something, it could replace you. The positive frame is is it unlocks motion pictures. You couldn't have had that without that, right? And so, you know, a lot of these technologies will both change an older form of media, but then also uh allow people to invent a new one. To Ben's point, like I I I would I don't know what it is, but I bet you there's a AI native form of media. Um people will make movies with AI, but
38:16they'll also do things that are probably hard for us to imagine right now. Um that'll be brand new.
38:22Yeah. The the brilliant Peter Teal once had this quote, I think a decade ago or something where he said, you know, crypto is libertarian. AI is uh is is communist which meant you know crypto is decentralizing AI is centralizing but I'm not sure that's entirely true given the conversation we're having about how AI uh gives so much leverage and so much power where you know one person companies or 30 person companies can do you know orders of magnitude what they could do prior.
38:45Yeah. Yeah. I I I think there's all these interesting questions embedded in that like one is what is the end up final market structure of AI like I think where it's headed right now is you're going to have very successful like the big open AIS and anthropics but I you're also seeing a really big rise in uh open if you look at the open router data and things like open source is growing I think I believe much more quickly in terms of token consumption and then you know we haven't really seen yet and I think we may see with all the trends are there which is local models like people running these things at the edges running them on their computer
39:15maybe in the near term you can get you can run a top-end coding agent on your computer or chatbot or something like that. So I think that I think that there's a lot of opportunity for um a market structure that's sort of more broadly um decentralized like that. And then in terms of crypto I think crypto can play an important role like the natural way when you have an economy of Asians for them to pay each other would be stable coins.
39:37Yeah. And then on top of you know once you have sort of that base layer programmable money you would build you know decentralized lending and um and you know all the other things that people have built out in the crypto world. Um and so these are all open questions. Um I think it's what makes it kind of exciting and you know something we'd love to have an influence on is sort of you know I think we're you know we're big believers in open source software uh openweight models um uh crypto obviously blockchains and I I think I would love to see a version of
40:05this future that has all this great technology including these big centralized companies but also uh a lot of open source you know kind of level playing field I think it's better for consumers to have options like that it's better for startups to have options like that and so you know we'll do what we and to kind of hopefully nudge things that way.
40:23On that note, are Mark Ben are you guys encouraged with the you know where this sort of state of open source is currently from a technological perspective but also from a sort of you know um sort of just how it's perceived and how how it's uh the success of the industry in general.
40:37I mean right now it's great. I mean yeah so right now open source is racing ahead. you got this great dynamic where you know there's you know the two the two great tech superpowers of our age are the US and China both have you know very active um open source uh you know kind of worlds in addition to you know companies building building proprietary systems you know there there there's been this looming threat I mean you know we've talked about this in the past there's been this looming threat for the last three or four years of a level of what I would consider to be you know draconian and completely unacceptable you know either regulation or banning of open source that various folks in in governments have been threatening um I
41:06think the EU still aspires to do it um they just don't quite have the leverage.
41:10Uh threaten everybody with fines until we stop doing it, I guess. But um you know, the the current US administration is 100% pro uh open source has been very encouraging. Um in fact, very much so 100% the current administration 100% wants American open source to happen and to to win AI uh globally. The Chinese also um and by the way, a big surprise to me is I would have never thought the Chinese Communist Party would be like this enthusiastic about, you know, open source AI for the world, but at the moment they are. Um and so at the moment it's just it's just incredible. Like
41:40it's just absolutely ab absolutely amazing. And then you know the the open models are you know kind of lapping the um you know the uh the closed models by you know 6 months 12 months depending on how you count. Um, and then as as and then by the way the educational part of this I also always think when people talk about you know banning open source or regulating it they're like you know it's going to get used for bad things and you know there's there's sort of that whole discussion but the other is like do we want people to learn how this stuff works and do we want people to understand it and be able to deal with it and by the way right by by the way be be able to actually understand the problems as they arise and how to fix
42:10them and do we want the next generation of kids to actually understand how this stuff happens like what if to learn about AI like how how would you feel if the only way your kid could learn about AI is to go to work for one of two companies like that you know as a parent I think would probably drive you pretty crazy.
42:23Um whereas in a world of open source like every kid can learn how this stuff works and it's actually amazing. One of the really underestimated things about AI is AI will teach you about AI.
42:31Well with one exception which is that the AI models from certain of the large companies actually will refuse to do that which is sort of very interesting. Um but the open source models 100% will teach you how to make open source AI.
42:42Um and so every kid in the world I think should have as their birthright the ability to like fully understand and utilize this technology.
42:47By the way defend yourself. So like how how did hugging face defend themselves?
42:51Open source software. I mean like open source means everyone has the most advanced vulnerability scanner to protect themselves from cyber. Um yep.
42:59Everyone has a doctor and a genius professor in their pock pocket. You know I mean y it's how we have why why the internet's ubiquitous. You can get internet access with all the world information for the price of a $10 cell phone because of open source. So, one of the things that started real quickly, Ben, one of the things that started is like wilderness explorers are starting to take local LMS with them on their phones completely loaded up to not require internet connection. Um, and the reason is cuz like if they get like in a you know, I don't know if like I don't know whatever if a bear I don't know what happens in the wilderness, but I don't
43:28Hi, bit by a rattlesnake.
43:30Bit by a rattlesn bear clamps on your leg and won't like go or what whatever the hell it is that happens. You got to tell which bear is poisonous or whatever. It's like you want to be able to talk to an AI but you might not have connectivity. And so an open source model on the phone um all of a sudden is just like you have like a you know professor expert on I guess all aspects of wilderness survival um or what right whatever and right and that's a level of capability that you would not have if you were reliant on a handful of proprietary vendors where everything's running in the cloud and so yeah I I at the moment I feel really good about it I I am still worried that the you know the
44:00the various governments around the world are going to you know really kind of get hostile to this and it and by the way it goes back to your your your Peter Teal framing which is like without open source AI inevitably centralizes And inevitably centralizes down to, you know, one or two companies or maybe just flat out the government, right? And and I and I guess I I would ask people the following question, which is just close your eyes and picture the concept of government sushi. Um, and then keep your eyes closed and picture government AI and you know, how do you feel about that? Um, and open source is the is the
44:28is the guarantor that that's that's not the future.
44:31Yeah. I I I mean to Mark's point I think the one thing that we know has always led to badness in the world is a massive concentration of power and you know one company one government one when one anything is is always been bad but you know kind of back to the point on open source like if you look at the problems in AI now the safety problems and so forth probably the biggest safety problem is this reward hacking phenomenon where the AI will do something that you didn't tell it to do
45:00but is kind of a means to an end to get its reward. And the labs so far haven't really worked on that very hard um for whatever reason. You know, they're they're busy kind of racing each other.
45:13And maybe there's no way to figure out what's going on with that and no way to kind of build a model that is more resilient to that kind of idea. But like what if every PhD student, every professor, every undergraduate in every university could look at the weights and the reward hacking and uh you know see if they could solve that and like maybe that would be a pretty darn darn exciting thing. And so you know these kinds of things are just not possible if
45:42only one company can work on the problem. Like you really want the whole world making this technology great and making this technology safe, not just the people who happen to work at two companies or maybe three companies. Go Meta.
45:58Four companies. Go SpaceX.
46:00Yeah. Exactly. Every um well inspires a couple points. One is, you know, every week or every day, you know, there's a technological development or or breakthrough that we're blown away by.
46:09And then also it's coupled with the statement of like this is the worst the technology will ever be. like every day it just it just gets you know it gets better and better and we're it's compounding you and funny uh you know Tiel also had this quote around uh we wanted flying cars and all we got was 140 characters um and it's funny because the guy who now runs a company who does the 140 characters or it also is building flying cars and we're investors in both and so uh it's funny how full circle uh it all all is um Chris I want to come to
46:38a different point uh that you had in in one of your wups which is uh the business model of the internet is breaking or is vulnerable. Why don't you talk about that? Yeah, I mean the internet was sort of there I I think of it as I call it the covenant the internet's covenant which is sort of a deal between a deal between the distribution side of the internet Google Facebook and so forth and the the content side you know news sites travel sites whatever it might be um you think about Google like the idea was you kind of give Google a snippet let them index
47:07you and then they'll send you some clicks right um that started to break like maybe last decade but particularly now you go to Google you get an answer right um you're get, you know, more and more you're sort of the social networks are trying to keep you on there, not linking out. Um and what that does is it has downstream effects, right? It means that the websites that make money on ads and conversions and other things um can no longer do that. I think that's probably going to you know, you see the early signs of this like, you know, Stack Overflow and some other websites
47:36where the traffic dropped precipitously when you had sort of a AI replacements.
47:40Um and so you know the the but but look people will still be booking tra like maybe they won't go maybe maybe your agent will go to the travel website or maybe um you know some other you know you'll get a recipe in some other way people will still get these things but you know many of these transactions will still happen um they just won't happen in the way they were happening and so that the the negative is it's painful in the near term and there's a bunch of businesses that are built on the sort of human attention economy that will have challenges. is I think on the entrepreneur side there's a chance to rethink these things from first
48:10principles and say okay what what is a what does a better internet look like you know internet where people are empowered with you know AI and everything else um and want to do things and and how do we kind of reorganize it so I think this is going to happen over the next let's call it decade is you're going to have sort of this kind of great reconfiguration of the internet and and how the economics work how the attention flows how knowledge is shared how people produce things together collabor collaborate
48:38um how organizations interact over the internet. Um so it I don't know it feels and in a way that I I feel like mobile didn't have that kind of impact. Mobile obviously, you know, I think, you know, made the internet go from whatever 500 million to 5 billion people and increased engagement and a whole bunch of other things, you know, empowered people with all the information in their pocket had a lot of good effects. But this is something that's much more dramatic, I think, in the way it will it will reshape things and, you know, so I
49:07think there's a lot of also, you know, it'll be some somewhat painful for some, but I think it'll also be a lot of opportunity. On that note, just because we're talking about mobile, do you have any predictions or things you're excited about as it relates to computing or devices or or sort of form factor in which you know, ever since sort of the iPhone has been pretty pretty locked in.
49:23Are there new forms that you're you're particularly excited about or looking forward to?
49:26Well, I mean, everyone's talking about wearables and I think you'll see a b you pretty clearly going to see a bunch of Yeah, that just seems like it's unlocked in a way that it wasn't before with AI and voice. Um, and I think that's very interesting. Obviously, that's something that's sort of well covered. I've like I've always long believed in VR. I think it's just a question of get getting to the right format. You know, still heavy, you kind of sweat it. Um, a lot of it's just ergonomics. Um, but you know, it just seems kind of obvious to me as it has to many people and science fiction writers and others that if you have, you know, there are times in which people
49:56want deeply immersive u, you know, kind of otherworldly experiences. Um, and once that gets to the right point, I think, you know, AI might be the unlock because now the you can create this amazing content that actually is seeing on Twitter now. Like someone just did a port of Titanfall and so like by himself and it's like this incredible port. I don't know if it's going to you know, survive copyright lawsuits, but people will invent new stuff um that that you know that they invented. Um and and so you know I think it will just sort of
50:24unlock this wave because it was really kind of technically hard to build a you know VR game um or a world or something. Um, so I think I think you might see like kind of the resurgence of older devices like that. Um, there's all this kind of more crazy futuristic stuff happening with like, you know, Neurolink, brain computer interfaces.
50:40Um, obviously vehicles, you know, like we talked earlier about drones and and obviously cars, self-driving cars are are widespread. Yeah, I think you'll see I'm hoping you'll see kind of this resurgence of kind of homebrew hacking.
50:53Um, uh, you know, I I anecdotally I've seen a lot of that because you can now like just Claude will design a a 3D printed case for you and you get some cheap motherboards and then you write some custom firmware code and like you're off to the races. And so, um, maybe we'll see kind of a like there was kind of a movement like 12 years ago, 15 years ago kind of around Makerbot and all these Maker things and but it was just the problem was just kind of hard.
51:20Yeah. So, you know, that would be cool. Uh I don't know what else.
51:23Yeah, I mean architecture I have a friend I shouldn't name uh but uh done a complete architecture design everything for a new new building. Um and you know you know people are assembling it but like the whole thing is is being steered by AI.
51:36Um uh I think the new models are capable of doing is what they call design for manufacturing the the the final diagrams and specs to be able to factory which is very hard to do normally part of the manufacturing process. I think the models can just do that now.
51:50Um and so um yeah, no I mean like this these these are great examples of this like these domains that historically have been extremely difficult or prohibitive or impossible for kind of either normal people or for normal companies to do all of a sudden become you know quite possibly you know possibly just straightforward.
52:04Yeah. Is it worth saying more about your idea that uh you know AI right now is in really in single player mode and there's opportunity you know for machine age networks.
52:11Sure. I mean um I mean just a simple idea right is that just you you know in the internet era most um uh most technologies have had sort of multiple phases where you sort of first people will build some like you have the initial early iPhone apps or like these little flashlights and other kinds of sort of simple single single player apps something you use on your phone um and then over time people sort of said hey what we could do some things that are more social collaborative um you know you had inventions like Uber
52:41which is sort of a commerce network. You had um you know Instagram which is a social network and so forth. Um so one one might one observation one might make when you're looking at the AI landscape as amazing as it all is, it's still mostly you're sitting in front of a computer and you're typing and getting responses. Um there's some like little minor light sharing features, but at some point one might expect to have um you know sort of a network a multiplayer phase of AI where where you know you see you see it also like in a hugging face
53:10hack. there's a swarm that's obviously a bad a negative use case of a swarm. Are there positive use? You know, you also saw I think a swarm is one of the things that solve the one of the math theorems.
53:19You know, you can imagine a world where there's, you know, another word for swarm is a, you know, collaborative fleet of agents or something, right? And so like you can imagine lots of use cases where solving a hard problem, designing a building, you know, doing some kind of scientific breakthrough, uh you might might that might be the the right way to do it. You also see like I think Muse and Instinct have these features where you can like trust other people and you can imagine that sort of evolves into a trust network. So if you kind of squint you're seeing the early signs of this um and I think people are
53:49you know just kind of an experimental phase but it just based on on you know history and what might you know the kind of the possibilities of these products it seems like it might be a fertile area for entrepreneurs. But by the way, we've alluded, we talked a bit bit about sort of the uh education and just, you know, the learning uh opportunities that are enabled via this technology. I'm I'm curious, you know, obviously we just uh you know, uh incubated Haritz and Academy. Um thank you for for your support on it. If if you were 18 today, um how would you think about what you
54:18might uh study? Obviously, you have, you know, academic uh philosophy background.
54:22Um I think I'm stealing Mark's line, but I think you think there's one thing to do, which is study modern alchemy, right?
54:28Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it. Go for it.
54:30Well, humans fig is Mark's idea, Mark's framing, but I mean, humans just figured out how to turn sand into intelligence.
54:37And the way to learn that, I think, is math, computer science, maybe economics, I don't know. And um and it's, you know, obvious look, I think it's also like like I I and I think Ben and Mark were lucky enough to have our, you know, a lot of our careers uh happen during the growth of the internet. And I think that was I feel very fortunate that I was able to do that. you know, I think that was something bequeathed to me by by people before me and that was I'm grateful to them. Um, and you know, I
55:06think now, look, it's obvious that, you know, um, that that the AI stuff we're talking about now is going to be the dominant narrative of the next 20, 30 years. Um, so I think being and it doesn't have to, you don't have to necessarily be solely technical, but I think being in some way uh, in that in the mix and at the cutting edge and sort of using these tools feels like Yeah, kind of the the obvious thing to do. I don't know what you Yeah, I think I think a lot of other fields are going to be revolutionized, right? So I mean just you know the field
55:36field of the classics is being revolutionized because now you've got the vuvia scroll project and you're like able to use like AI to like decipher like dark scrolls and you know there may be entire new schools of philosophy that get you know discovered to study classics you know things you know lost lost books um economics uh I just having lunch with an economics professor and like the whole field of economics going to be is going to be transformed around this um and biology biology yeah exactly direct discovery design by the way design you know we talk about movies but also just broadly broadly design creativity of all kinds all all the all the all the forms of art
56:06music zoologology you're going to know what the animals are saying this is super interesting like we are plausibly heading towards a world in which we're going to understand what the animals are saying right um animal psychology will be actually real yeah so like okay like dog you know I don't know like dog you know dog training is going to take on a whole new thing when you actually understand what the what the the dog is saying right I think there's an X- prize for that I'm serious it's like a it's like a
56:34And they're they're definitely I mean anybody has a dog know they talk. They're in some weird language, you know, but but they they definitely are saying something and certainly cats do. Um I wait the entrepreneur listening to this who uh you comes in with a pitch.
56:50Totally. Totally. Um and then um uh um yeah, the the other way I think about it Yeah. in terms of like Yeah. thinking about like 18-year-olds or kids is um Douglas Adams had like the defining description uh of um the guy who wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy of like how technology is received on a generational level and his his famous framework was there's there any new technology is received three different ways by three different age cohorts. If you're um if you're u below the age of 15, it's just the natural way the world works. Um, and I I've told in other settings the story of introducing my kid
57:18to Chat GPT at age seven. And I'm like, you know, this is such a big deal because the computer answers questions. And he's like, duh. Like, what good is a computer that doesn't answer questions, right? Um, uh, so it's just normal.
57:29Uh, if you're between the ages of 15 to 35, it's new, exciting, and hot, you know, hot field, and you might be able to make a career out of it, in which case you want to learn all the all the new things. And if you're above the age of 35, it's unholy and evil, uh, and will surely, you know, overturn all existing structures and destroy society.
57:43I'll never answer the telephone.
57:46Exactly. Exactly. Old old men yell at cloud is a is a recurring recurring phenomenon.
57:50And so I I think 18-year-olds right now I mean it's a talk about prime time to to to gra to grab these new capabilities and run with them. Um um and you know the create like look it's going to be creation of entirely new fields uh of entrepreneurship and creativity and art and everything. Um and then look I mean I think kids younger than that I'm seeing with my my kid but like yeah they're just it's just of course you have this capability like of course you do. It's just like completely obvious.
58:11Um well and and actually the schools the schools are doing us a favor like so the the schools are not responding well to this um and so you know the schools are you know banning AI or having all these you know controversies with it but of course if you're a kid that just makes it cooler.
58:23Right. And so a AI is going to be like the you know AI is your like secret superpower um that you have to like deviously figure out how to take advantage of. Um and so I think kids are going to have all kinds of ideas for what they're going to do.
58:33It's funny because adults keep saying oh what should the kids do? Like this so hard to be a kid. It's like, "No, no, no, no." Like, basically, it's you that's got the problem cuz you're obsolete. The kids are going to be all superhumans and they're going to be able to do anything and the world is open to them and they're going to, you know, they're they're going to be able to enter fields that they could never enter before.
58:57What I see in this conversation and in your fund and your work more generally is to use another Tism kind of definite optimism. The the future is happening.
59:04It it's going to happen. uh you know a lot of the what science we talked about science fiction is going to happen it's a matter of when and so we're going to bet early and as and maybe sometimes it be too early but we're going to keep betting and as long as you you know keep keep having that conviction uh you know it's it's going to work out.
59:20Yeah. Yeah. And to be clear, it's one thing I want to clarify is that, you know, we're throwing out all these theories and everything, but in the end, I think as Ben said in the beginning, like we're we're in the betting on great entrepreneurs business. And so, um, you know, we any plenty of ideas that were not discussed today that are probably, you know, more interesting and more creative. um if if for whatever reason they don't fit in the in the other kind of core areas at our firm, like we're open-minded and and willing
59:49to, you know, to engage with those kinds of creative ideas. So, um so I would say you said definite optimism. I'm like optimism, but also I would say humble definite optimism or something. Intellectually humble. Yeah. and that I've been wrong so many times that uh we just we really want to we want to find great people who have their own definite optimist and back them.
1:00:11The entrepreneurs get to be optimistic.
1:00:15That's a great place to wrap. Chris, thank you guys for coming on the podcast.
1:00:18All right. Okay. Thank you.
