We're announcing today that we're expanding the A16Z 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.
More 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.
By 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.
Had I had Astra at Netscape in 1994, like, oh my god, Ben, like, what would you and I have been able to do at Netscape?
We would have built the whole damn internet.
You were 18 today, how would you think about what you might study? Stealing Mark's line, but I think there's one thing to do, which is study.
Chris, we have a big announcement today.
We're expanding the mandate. I'll let you do the honors.
Yeah, so we're announcing today that we're expanding the A16Z crypto fund to A16Z Frontier. The idea is, I'd say a couple of kind of motivations behind this. One is, you know, crypto has in some areas worked really well. Stablecoins 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 considers it part of their toolbox.
Wall Street firms are moving heavily into crypto with tokenized stocks and other kinds of assets. It's a growing, fast-growing category. But as a result, the lines have kind of blurred, which, you know, we find ourselves asking: is Stripe a crypto company? Is, you know, somebody, many of these companies where they're sort of sitting at the intersection of, let's call it, fintech and Wall Street and crypto. 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, the lines have blurred and it's become kind of more part of the tech landscape. So that's number one.
And then number two, and I can let Mark and Ben talk about this more, I think we felt that at the firm there's a feeling that the other kind of groups have so many interesting opportunities in their core areas that what we kind of, 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 more core planets and there's kind of these wackier outer planets. That outer planets, which historically we've done a lot of kind of both types of investing, I think the feeling was that because they're so busy with so many interesting opportunities and doing an amazing job with that, that there was an opportunity to kind of, there's maybe a gap, so to say, in some of the coverage there.
And then I think just, I'll just speak personally, 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 we, you know, came in with that kind of mandate. I talked to Mark and Ben and I said, hey, I want to do this crazy stuff, and they were like, great. 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 effects. 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 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 was first into drones as I recall and got me into them. But the kind of the thesis behind it beyond just they're cool is that now that you have this supply chain of, you know, all these great parts that entrepreneurs can kind of recombine them and build, you know, we invested in Oculus as an example, and that was really kind of a reconfigured smartphone. Skydio, that was one of our investments from back then, that was, you know, at the beginning was kind of a reconfigured smartphone. It's gotten much more advanced now. 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, you know, and kind of coalesce around these blockchains.
So for me personally, I'll just say this is sort of, I feel, you know, kind of a continuation of a long area of interest, and I think the firm has, you know, there's many other investments the firm has had in these kinds of frontier areas. So we felt, I think it's kind of consistent with things we've been doing for a long time.
Ben, Mark, let's hear from you. I know this was a joint effort and something you guys were very excited about and felt like filled a gap or really expanded the mandate of the firm. Ben, why don't you add your take?
Yeah. So, look, I think that there's areas that are really novel. So it's taking, 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. But, you know, there's a class of these things. And, you know, what we've done typically or historically is...
was first like Chris would just look at these new areas himself. And then kind of as we identified new areas, we'd create a vertical behind that area. 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 verticals, and the process of turning that into a practice 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 at some point, or maybe Frontiers turns into that thing because it gets so interesting like that could be as well.
And so I think that, you know, it's very exciting for us because it kind of 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 real way to get to that.
And to me this seems like a, you know, continuation of what we were talking about at the last offsite, which is, which struck me because, you know, as ambitious as the firm has been, as early as the firm has been, 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 only regrets we have are not even going even harder, even earlier, even bigger. And Chris, you're someone who, you know, has made bets in some of these emerging categories, but it just feels like a continuation 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 ask one historical question, which is, you know, Chris, I believe, is the longest-standing consecutive partner at the firm, you know, besides Ben and Marc, having joined in 2013. I'm curious, Ben and Marc, when you, you know, met Chris, what did you see in him that made it clear that, oh, we have to have him at A16Z? And did you anticipate the type of career he would go on to have? Ben, I'll ask you to start.
Look, I think originally we just knew Chris as a very smart guy, and we really liked his ideas from his blog. I mean, like, that's really what it came down to. He was a really good writer, his ideas were very original, and, you know, 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, which, you know, was very, very important to us in the early days to set the culture of the firm the way we wanted it.
You know, over time he's had probably the most original investment ideas that we've had in the firm, and so we've kind of copied those and multiplied them across. So, you know, 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, because, and then...
a bad idea, but where an entrepreneur has a secret that actually makes it a good idea. And 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. And so, you know, and he's had quite a few excellent ideas like that. So, you know, it's been great working with him over now like way more than a decade.
Yep. Maybe I could add also it's not just Chris, as special as he is, it's also Chris's team. And 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 a technology, it's a very deep technology, and it's very complex technology, and you need to have like really deep technical expertise, you know, kind of coupled with like really good business judgment and really good market judgment in order to successfully invest in crypto, which we've done.
Including, by the way, literally Chris's team 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, you know, things like that, you know, very deep software concepts. And so it's one of the things I'm really excited about is in addition to Chris, his colleagues and team members and the team that he's built, now being able to work on a broader set of topics.
Yeah. And to that point, I mean, so thank you. But I think that also the team, I think the team's amazing. And I would also mention one other thing besides the technical side, we've invested very deeply over the years in policy.
And regulatory, and I believe that a lot, you know, if you just, self-driving cars, drones, AI itself is now becoming a political issue. I think more and more of these cutting-edge technologies will have kind of a policy angle, and we believe that that expertise that they've built kind of in the crucible of the kind of crypto journey will be useful for many other entrepreneurs.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well, on that end, we'll do one last historical question. You know, you pioneered not just some of the investments, but also some of the ways in which the firm works, 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 were your thoughts about where things were going?
Well, I always knew Mark. I mean, Mark has a, you have a big poster of J.P. Morgan on your wall in your office.
And so these, Mark and Ben do not lack for, you know, drive and ambition.
It's a famous photograph. It's a very famous photograph. It was, he hated J.P. Morgan.
It's inspiration, inspiration.
Inspiration. For people who haven't seen the photograph, you can Google it, it's a very famous one. J.P. Morgan hated to have his picture taken. For this, he had this condition. He had this, anyway, he has this nose-related issue. Anyway, so he hated having his photo taken. This was pre-antibiotics, let's put it that way. And so he was grouchy most of the time, and so he had his photo taken. So that, but they needed a formal portrait of him, and so he finally, literally, you put him and set him down, and the photographer saw the whole thing coming, and so it's lit in a way where he's sitting in darkness, 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 what it is is the edge of the chair lit in a very specific way, and it's like very clear the photographer intentionally did that.
Yeah, so that's the photograph that was inside my office door for...
You looked very, very scary.
Yes, exactly, exactly.
The other, we took a lot of inspiration from him.
But one of the other things 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 when he said it, he was on trial. 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 then only in a first-class way.' Which, you know, Mark and I really loved that attitude about like, 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 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 we got a lot from him.
Yeah. 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, could I have predicted everything. I think things generally went really well, and, you know, I didn't obviously know that all along the way, but obviously know that Mark and Ben are incredibly ambitious. I've never, it's funny, sometimes I'll have some idea and like some crazy thing we want to do, and people like, what are Mark and Ben 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 it? Can you double down? Can you get more aggressive? 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 is a good example right here, that, you know, when we, you know, we sort of adapt, see what's happening in the world, change things around. We went through a whole kind of restructuring of the firm, you know, bring in new ideas. Sort of anything's fair game as long as you can kind of defend it.
And so, you know, that's also why I've enjoyed working here. It's a very entrepreneurial culture. I think also what Ben said is very important, the culture of the firm. 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. And that's, I think everyone, literally everyone that I know at this firm comments on the culture and how important that is and how they enjoy working here and feel like they're doing some of the best work of their life. 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.
Well, it's funny that you mentioned, 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 ups and...
That's how all startups are. It's 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...
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. And so, yeah, it's just a testament there.
Let's go to the frontier, let's go to the future. So, sometimes there's this phrase in venture, you know, being too early is as bad as being, you know, too late or something. You've been early a lot. You've been, you know, mostly right 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 the idea of being too early in our era now.
Yeah. I mean, we talk about this a lot. Like, 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 involved technology has eventually worked or we believe will work. Okay, if it hasn't worked yet, and the important qualifier, good idea. There are bad ideas, but it's just kind of remarkable, especially having lived through the internet, how many things, just, you know, almost everything that ended up working had a precursor that didn't work and maybe was 10 years too early.
And so so much, you know, and that's the hardest thing I think in technology is to predict the timing of these things. 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. So, you know, and so I would say with, you know, I think generally at the firm, I would say specifically in the Frontier Fund, we want to err on the side of being too early. We understand that sometimes things will be too early, and we're okay with kind of cool category risk. Some categories may not work.
Look, I mean, even things that sort of worked didn't work. Like, you know, we sold Oculus, it got bought, but the reality is like it's now 13 years later. I still believe very strongly in VR. We'd love to make VR investments, but it's 13 years later and it's not, you know, it hasn't got as mainstream 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 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 believe this and I kind of want to invest behind it, where 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 engineering project, I think we have to re-evaluate that whole frame right now, because I think things, you know, the sort of, 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 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, very thoughtful, 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? How do I... You don't want to be two feet in front of the AI frontier and get sort of washed over by the tidal 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. And so it, I don't know, it feels like an especially exciting time.
Yeah. So I would add, so talk about AI as sort of a catalyst. So this is the biggest delta between I would say what the early adopters understand is possible now versus what kind of everybody, kind of normal people understand. And I think that's, you know, true at the individual level, but it's especially true at the company level.
And the AI-native early-stage startups have just a completely different view on what they can do with AI than the typical incumbents in almost any industry, almost without exception. And I think that that gap is as wide as I've ever seen in my career. And then that gap seems like it's gapping further and further out, which is AI is just racing ahead in capability even week by week.
And so the leading-edge entrepreneurs and technical people we deal with, like they're just by the week they're getting steadily more advanced than a typical incumbent. So it's the biggest delta I've ever seen. And if you kind of extrapolate from that, like, you know, if that's what happens, 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 profound way than maybe has been the case in the past.
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 Netscape in 1994, like, oh my god, like, you know, like Ben, like, what would you and I have been able to do at Netscape?
We would have built the whole damn internet. I mean, absolutely incredible. It would be absolutely incredible. And, you know, as Chris said, like we're seeing this, we're seeing entrepreneurs come in with plans of a level of depth and sophistication, you know, multiple parts...
By the way, we would have gotten crypto done then.
Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Like, by the way, in like two weeks, like we'd have streaming video a lot sooner. I mean, like, all kinds of things would have happened. 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.
And so I just, like, I think that the leading-edge entrepreneurs now are going to have, like, capabilities, 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. They're going to be building companies that just, like, ramp much, much faster, you know, the scope of the product that they build and then, you know, hopefully the scope of their business.
And then again, this goes right back to, like, those entrepreneurs are going to color way outside the lines. Like, they're not going to, 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 think very broadly and expansively about exactly, you know, how many different areas they want to touch and how they want to combine things. And so the sort of, you know, conceptual artist 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 this idea too ambitious? And I don't think, I think we're much more likely to ask, is this ambitious enough?
Because, you know, what's possible is so spectacular. And if you do something moderate, like, it probably won't be differentiated enough. And by the way, look, incumbents, you know, we spend a lot of time, I have a lot of friends in incumbent companies, by the way, including incumbent tech, including incumbent companies in Silicon Valley. And 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 new tools also. 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, like...
I mean, like, I am basically, I mean, I'm full-time, I'm basically drowning in the pace of development right now.
and the speed with which things are changing. And I'm trying to keep up with all of it, and it's nearly impossible.
Like, the super-empowered 24-year-old with AI is going to just achieve, like, amazing things in the next decade.
And this is a question we were asking right before this, which is, you know, is AI more sustaining or disruptive in terms of, like, will more of the gains go to incumbents or startups? And it seems so far it's both in some sense, which is, you know, the companies like, you know, Meta and others have, you know, sort of adjusted very well, and also there are net-new companies that are, you know, almost trillion dollars in, you know, within a decade. And 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 most 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 primary AI developers. But at least right now the pattern is not that. I mean, 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.
And their employees are, and their employees are not necessarily telling the management what's happening. 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 do all my work, or at least let's say fact-check all my work, proofread all my emails.
Even if not have them written outright. 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. And by the way, and again it goes back to like our role in the world, which is like 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.
And so I think startup formation is going to skyrocket from here, because these...
By the way, it already is.
Oh, yeah. I mean, we're seeing it. I mean, we're seeing it 100% for sure. So anyway, just to kind of go back to the theme of this, is just I'm completely convinced like we're going to see a wave of like much more technically aggressive, much more business aggressive, much more expansionist, creative, original thinking, many more combinations of things that we would have considered to be separate things in the past.
And we're going to see, yeah, founders and teams with just like an incredible level of skill, an incredible level of skill that they otherwise might have needed, you know, 30 years to achieve or something. They're going to have like right out of the gate.
And by the way, the other thing I'd say is that 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 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 we just announced our investment in Adams, like they're going and they're building like a full-stack kind of food service and other things, right? And so I think that 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 companies or 10 and all the startups going against the other Fortune 500 or the rest of the economy.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
I'm curious where you guys think we are in the development, or how you, because it feels like, you know, in the internet era, application, you know, we're sort of, you know, the biggest companies, you know, Facebook, Amazon, etc. But in sort of this era, it feels like, you know, Nvidia and some of the more hardware companies are taking a lot of the margin or some of the bigger companies. How do you think about, you know, where we are? Are we in the sort of applications or consumer? Like, how do you think about that?
I think Mark would say 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 AI labs, but, you know, open source is growing very, very quickly, there's obviously the serious efforts in China, the serious efforts in the US, a lot of application-layer things are doing really well, that, you know, so, you know, maybe at some point, you know, obviously over time that shakes out and the kind of value chain, there's certain things, certain layers that do better than others, but...
And then the other, I think it's just the, it's still, it's like, it's kind of crazy. You have the demand for a lot of this stuff is still very early by most metrics.
I think your team just put out some charts on this. It's like 3% of, you know, measured enterprise use or something like this.
And so, and it's just hard, and it just seems like, you know, the market for intelligence is very, very large, and it's only getting started. So...
Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, I agree. And one of your points also is, you like, you mentioned that every new technology 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, 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 '90s 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 version, 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 an 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 cultural change or behavioral change.
So in some ways they were taking more risk because they were betting on, you know, the technology and these broader changes, but that's where you got the really kind of world-changing stuff is in the 2000s, social media, you know, all of that. And then of course mobile accelerated it, and I think that's a, my own view is that's a kind of pretty common pattern, and just human nature, right? You build something, and the first thing you do is you do these things you already know 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, 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. But we've only begun to explore the space of like what are the radical things that are new behaviors, new activities, right? Things that people have never done before.
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 find that I always find those waves in technology the most personally exciting. They're kind of more, 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 to 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 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, there was Snap, TikTok, and then it felt like there was a little bit of a drought on the social side. But 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 to, that there's going to be some way that these are hooked up and enabling a whole new set of social experiences.
Well, 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 most numerous participants on the internet will be agents and not people.
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. And then 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 sharing knowledge and doing all the things people do. And so it's probably going to be a whole series of innovations along those lines.
Rent a human. That's like inverts the model, right?
Yeah, yeah, totally. That's, well, you know, yeah, Moltbook was the public, public kind of version, and then it turned out the agents figured out how to do their own...
the mold book in the Hugging Face.
So, yeah, it's going to be a lot more. Yeah, 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 social or consumer or even just this frame of like the skeuomorphic, you know, things that sort of the, you know, worked in the past sort of platform era, and now like what net-new use cases or what is native to that you're seeing or anticipating or looking forward to?
Well, I'll give you my version, maybe a little bit of what Chris was saying, but like 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 this thing I've just observed. But I saw the internet era earlier, and I call it product manager brain.
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, or, you know, book me a 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'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? And it's a little, which also means 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 like there's just going to be this sort of, we just had this very, just the nature of the early companies who just had this very blinkered view on human activity, what people are going to want to do. And it's to your point, like with Muse and Instinct, it's starting to open up. But like, look, this is going to be a much more entertaining, fun, enjoyable, exciting, by the way, lucrative, people are going to make money. There'll be all kinds of ways for people to make money.
Be able to save money, be able to be parts of, you know, participate in parts of the economy, be able to be creators, you know, be able to 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.
On like an incredible array of creative ideas and topics.
