Ben Horowitz on Investing in AI: AI Bubbles, Economic Impact, and VC Acceleration

1. 0:00 – 1:33

   Introduction

   1. BHBen Horowitz0:00

      You know, if you, you wanna change the world, you have to believe you can change the world. What you're really trying to find is, are they literally the best in the world at a thing? And that's always the thing that's worth investing in, as opposed to, um, they're pretty good at a lot of things and, and I can't figure out what they're not good at. We just have a higher concentration of talent here that-- than that's probably possible in a company in terms of just sheer IQ. There's a lot of VCs, very few who can actually help you succeed as a company, and so being one of those, I think, is, is still, like, quite a special position.

   2. JKJen Khaemel0:39

      [on-hold music] So, um, I'm gonna start first with more of, uh, how you manage a firm, and particularly, you know, lessons, uh, that you've learned over the years, obviously extrapolating lessons as a, as a founder as well, um, and then how we think about running the firm on a day-to-day. So, um, the first question I'll, I'll start off is, uh, is, is from your book, uh, but it's, I think, relevant, um, to this, this conversation, in part because, you know, when, when you wrote that in technology businesses you rarely know everything up front, and we're sitting in this massive AI wave right now where, where it's still incredibly early. Uh-

   3. BHBen Horowitz1:17

      Yeah

   4. JKJen Khaemel1:17

      ... but the difference, of course, between a mediocre company and one that's magical is often the difference between letting people take creative risks and then holding them too tightly accountable. So, uh-

   5. BHBen Horowitz1:28

      Mm-hmm

   6. JKJen Khaemel1:28

      ... there's many ways we could take that direction, uh, uh, this question, but maybe for start,

2. 1:33 – 4:33

   Managing GPs vs. companies

   1. JKJen Khaemel1:33

      how do you manage a group of GPs? Because it... And, and particularly what's different about managing GPs versus a company, and, and what's the same?

   2. BHBen Horowitz1:40

      Yeah, no, no, it's pretty different than a company, um, in that y- you know, with a company, like, there are functions, there are things, you know, people, there are very specific outputs that you're driving to, and then, uh, you know, the, the, the people in the company are, uh... I, I would just say, like, we just have a higher concentration of talent here that-- than that's probably possible in a company in terms of just sheer IQ. So if you look at, like, Chris Dixon and Martine Casado and Alex Rampell and so forth, like, you know, I mean, these guys, uh, one, they've all run companies, and then it would just be very hard to have that many people that high IQ on an executive staff. And so, you know, if you have somebody, you know, like Martine, who is kind of the, probably the best architect in networking software in the last twenty years, plus, like, a really talented investor and so forth, y- you know, I'm not really telling him... I'm not giving him that much direction. I'm more kinda helping, um, him understand, uh, like, the, the process or, or like how the, the process of the conversation affects the process of investing and, you know, kind of how you work your way to the right answer, taking the right amount of risk, um, you know, not getting... And the, the biggest mistake we make is we get too wrapped around the axle about some weakness that a company has, uh, as opposed to focusing on what they're great at, um, and how great they are. So it's not like y- you know, everybody is, like, kind of you could talk yourself into as great at something. But what you're really trying to find is, are they literally the best in the world at a thing? Um, and that's always the thing that's worse in-- worth investing in, as opposed to, um, they're pretty good at a lot of things, and, and I can't figure out what they're not good at. That's a mu- generally a worse investment. So just kinda orienting around that and then, you know, kind of helping think through, uh, the, you know, the platform, the personnel, and how, how to deal with the conflicts, um, and then, you know, how to close deals and that kind of thing. So it, it, it's very different, I, I, I would say. Um, and then just, you know, like understanding, you know, when people run out of gas. L- like, i- investing in technology, uh, you really have to be in, deep in the tech to be good at it, and I think that it's very possible as, you know, people get older, th- you know, they get less into it sometimes. And so, you know, at that point, we gotta make a change.

   3. JKJen Khaemel4:31

      But maybe just sticking on the topic of, of

3. 4:33 – 6:23

   Framework for evaluating GP performance

   1. JKJen Khaemel4:33

      GPs, how do you also think about, um, accountability? 'Cause one question I've come up over, you know, when to promote the right people, when to manage out the right people, and, and ultimately, you know, the vertical levels are making decisions, but you're also making decisions. You and Mark are making decisions at the firm level as well. What's your sort of, uh, thinking and framework? Has that evolved over the last sixteen years?

   2. BHBen Horowitz4:53

      Y- yeah, I mean, I thi- I think it's evolved a little, but the, the main things [chuckles] are, are kind of the same. So, like, I, I think it's dangerous to, in VC, kind of wait for the outputs 'cause they're so far out, um, you know, to kinda wait and see, okay, does somebody have a great portfolio after ten years or fifteen years before kind of deciding what to do with them. Uh, it's just such a long time, and, you know, you can make a lot of bad investments in that timeframe or, like, you could miss out on a lot of good investments in that timeframe, you know, if you don't put that person in position to do more stuff. And so we-- I really try to look at, okay, you know, at the point of attack, you know, like, how are they showing up? Like, how good are they at finding opportunities? Um, how, uh, good are they at winning those opportunities? And, you know, what's the general, like what do we think the quality is at the time of investment? BecauseY- you know, so- some work out and some don't, but it's all in-- it's not all magic, you know. Like, it, y- you kind of know, um, okay, this is a great... y- you know, how great an entrepreneur is Mira or how great an entrepreneur is Ilya. Well, like, th- those are pretty special people, so if you can win that deal, like that, that means something whether or not those companies work.

4. 6:23 – 10:14

   Verticalization strategy & firm structure

   1. JKJen Khaemel6:23

      Maybe just to, to focus in on verticalization, because verticalization, I think, was probably one of the seminal points in the history of the firm in changing the structure of it. Um, and you and Mark have talked about this, and now in retrospect, it's clear that that was the right decision at that point in time. How do you avoid, um, some of the pitfalls associated with verticalization, meaning the communications and strengthening communication across verticals and making sure you still have that connectivity as the firm continues to, to size and scale?

   2. BHBen Horowitz6:54

      Yeah. So look, I think that the most important observation, and this is, uh, actually a conversation Mark and I had with Dave Swenson, the l- the late, great Dave Swenson, back in two thousand and nine. And what Dave said, which I thought was very interesting at the time, he's like, "Like an investing team, like shouldn't be too much bigger than a basketball team." You know, a basketball team's like five people who start. Uh, and the reason for that is the conversation around the investments really needs to be a conversation. And so I always had in mind that like, okay, any investing team, w- we really don't wanna be too much bigger than that size, and so how do we kind of maintain that? And the only way to do it, uh, is to verticalize. And then, you know, the other thing that was happening simultaneously in the industry was, you know, software was eating the world, so, you know, we had to get bigger, [chuckles] um, in order to address the market. But I didn't want like teams being bigger than a basketball team, and so that kinda led to the vertical structure. I think, you know, in effect, um, the, the most important thing is that those teams be good, and then the communication across the teams, um, we do in different ways. So like one way is if the teams are very close, like AI Infra and AI Apps, then we have people from, uh, each team going to the other team's meetings, and so there's like good kinda just hardcore connectivity that way. Um, and then in addition, uh, you know, we've got like a kind of management meeting of that, of that group in AD that we do. And then we have, uh, you know, kind of, kind of the big thing is the GP offsite, so we just take everybody away for two or three days twice a year, um, with not much agenda.

   3. JKJen Khaemel8:54

      I do think, you know, David Haber has this thesis of like opportunity lies at the intersection. Like I think everyone not only culturally knows, but also economically is incentived to see everyone win. And so th- there isn't that level of politicking, I also think, that sometimes can be prevalent at other organizations where it's very zero-sum and like protecting fiefdom-type of behavior as well.

   4. BHBen Horowitz9:17

      Yeah. You know, that's kind of like a cultural idea that we have at the firm. And I, I, I would say, I mean, my, um, you know, the feedback we get from people who come from other firms is we have less politics than firms with, you know, ten or eleven people. Uh, you know, and it's just... It, it-- That, that's a cultural thing. Like either, y- you know, politicking gets rewarded, um, you know, and then you have everything from coups to, [chuckles] you know, infighting all the time, and they don't like each other and so forth, or politicking, um, you know, gets deincentivized and, and that's what we have here.

   5. JKJen Khaemel9:53

      Another point around culture I, I always, uh, remark to you, like I'm always in awe of the fact that you always hear the goss around the firm, even detail around minor things where I'm like, "How do you know that, Ben?" And [laughs] Mark comments and he, he, he... and, and you often say, you know, "You gotta r- whenever you run something, it's gotta be in the details. That's the only way to do it." But I-- maybe I'll ask the question slightly

5. 10:14 – 12:46

   Culture and staying in the details

   1. JKJen Khaemel10:14

      differently. How do you stay on top of the details, right? How do you hear all this? How do you find this settle, but without also micromanaging? 'Cause I, I think there's also the creative sort of process of letting things run its course as well. How do you balance those two things?

   2. BHBen Horowitz10:28

      Y- yeah, if you think about my job, a lot of it is, um, kind of setting the direction and then making decisions when like things get into conflict or, or we're not sure what to do. And the kind of-- If you think about, you know, what's decision-making, it's, you know, what makes you good at it, it's a combination of, um, intelligence and judgment, or it's judgment kind of, um, which is a combination of intelligence and knowledge. So like what do you know, and then how smart are you at kind of turning that into the correct judgment? And the knowledge in a, in an organization tends to live with the people doing the work. Um, so meaning, uh, you know, the, not the managers [chuckles] I, I would say. Uh, you know, like, so it's, you know, what are the deal partners doing? What are the, uh, you know, kind of individual people on the, um, IT team doing? You know, like what are the kind of accountants doing? What, you know, like what, what are people, what are people on... You know, who, w- when we go, uh, visit LPs, like, you know, that's where the knowledge is, like in, in talking to people who are kind of at the point of attack, so to speak. We're talking to entrepreneurs. And so I just spend-- I try to spend enough time both, you know, kinda in the team meetings and, you know, we're doing that, I just end up knowing a lot about a lot of things, and then plus I'm a founder, so if something gets effed up in the firmSomebody calls me, you know? [chuckles] Like that, that, that happens a lot. Like, they're like, "Okay, I'm gonna tell Ben," you know, like, "this-- he's not gonna like this." So it's, uh, th-this is a, I think, a key thing for leaders is you never want people to think, "Oh, we shouldn't bother Ben with that," because it didn't take me-- but it took me, like, 14 seconds to resolve it. Um, and you know, generally people aren't looking for... Y-you know, they're just looking for clarity. You know, like a lot of-- what an organization needs often is clarity, not, like, correctness. Uh, and you know, if you have clarity, you can move.

   3. JKJen Khaemel12:40

      Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Um, last question on verticals. Uh, so we have seven verticals today.

6. 12:46 – 17:49

   How to identify the right markets

   1. JKJen Khaemel12:46

      Um, one topic, uh, that has come up is, is how do we know these are the right verticals? And then h-how, um... Maybe give some examples of vertical ideas that you've resisted to start but maybe sound good on a- on this premise, but doesn't either have the right, uh, technological legs or even entrepreneurial kind of capability around that, that, uh, we've decided to not pursue.

   2. BHBen Horowitz13:08

      Yeah. So they're, they're really kind of designed around the market, um, and, you know, kind of where are the entrepreneurs? So we try to match up to, you know, if there's a big cluster of important entrepreneurs that are gonna create multi-billion dollar companies, you know, do we have a team that's gonna win those deals? And, y-you know, different categories end up having fairly different needs, so, you know, the needs of a crypto entrepreneur, a bio entrepreneur, um, an American dynamism entrepreneur are very, very different. And so you kind of have to have a product that matches that market. Uh, you know, in picking markets, you wanna [chuckles] not be too early and not be too late, right? So it's, um, it's a little bit of an art. I think that what we've seen is, um, I'm very confident those are the right markets 'cause there's lots of very interesting a-activity in all of them. Now we've gotta then perform in each market, so it's not, like, a given just 'cause we show up and we're Andreessen Horowitz that we're gonna win that market. Um, but, you know, so we have to [chuckles] kind of evolve the team and, and, like, evolve our thinking and make sure that we win. Uh, but I think that the markets we're in are, like, pretty clearly, uh, very good markets. Um, we have had, you know, a few that have popped up, uh, that, uh, you know, people have proposed that we haven't done. I don't think we got that serious with them, but the other one, uh, was kind of ESG kinds of things, you know, um, clean tech, uh, green energy, this and that and the other. And i- you know, we thought that, um, the right lens on that was much more gonna be American dynamism one because it wasn't, like, weirdly constraining, and it was much more oriented around the kinda economic outcome as opposed to the do good, um, [chuckles] do, do good by doing well or whatever the fucking phrase is. Uh, y-you know, like the, th-those things kinda can lead you into very weird decision-making. So, like, investing is hard enough without, like, introducing other criteria other than is this thing gonna be a giant company and make a lot of money. Um, and you want to have a focus on that. And I think the beauty of American dynamism, like, there's a lot of things that, like, would be m- you know, maybe good for America or whatever, but, like, there's so many opportunities in that space, uh, because the US really does have to modernize the way they do defense. Um, we really do have to get much better intelligence and public safety to keep everybody safer, uh, that, you know, there, you know... And then we've got, uh, we've gotta solve the energy problem. Um, we've got to solve the rare earth mineral mining problem. Like, there, there, there's very good problems to go dig into where, you know, if you look at, like, okay, we're gonna come up with, um, an alternative energy source or an alternative fuel, uh, you know, like, that's like, will any of those work? Like, maybe, you know, uh, and, and that kind of thing. So we never did ESG.

   3. JKJen Khaemel16:33

      Yeah. I remember actually w- as you were going through that, I remember, uh, very early on, um, in our discussion around American dynamism, I remember you pushing the team and asking them like, "Hey, is this a marketing message or is this, like, real technological transformative change?" And, like, they went and did the work around it and, like, it was very clear now in retrospect there was real tech change, especially happening on the supply chain side and, you know, the defense side and, and really how people actually even engaged with the government. Um, but I think that oftentimes when people ask us this question, like, it's both a combination of is there a real technology change? 'Cause that's when you make and generate venture returns. And then also is entrepreneurial talent actually there to build it?

   4. BHBen Horowitz17:12

      Yeah. AD is a good marketing idea. Um, and I think what the... Right, when they presented it [chuckles] internally, they presented the marketing idea, and I was like, "Well, I wanna know what the fund idea is." [chuckles] Y-you know, like, w-how do I make money? Like, uh, w-we have investors. We gotta make money. Like, we're, we're-- like, it's a great marketing story, but, like, we're not doing all that. We're gonna do the things that, you know, the, the fund is gonna be less than the, the, the marketing in terms of its focus. It's gonna be tighter focus.

   5. JKJen Khaemel17:40

      Yeah. And then we ultimately, you know, zoomed in on, on three kind of core vertical areas that the-

   6. BHBen Horowitz17:44

      Yeah

   7. JKJen Khaemel17:44

      ... that there was actually a tech change happening. Um, maybe switching gears. So Marc and I believe

7. 17:49 – 21:28

   Mission: giving people a shot

   1. JKJen Khaemel17:49

      the best thing society can do for a person is give them a sh-sh- a shot. Give them a shot at life, a chance to contribute, a chance to do something larger than themselves, and make the world a better place. That's the best we can do. So can you elaborate on this and how it's driving how we are evolving as a firm and, and particularly looking ahead as people think about, you know, what's gonna be a, a set of funds that are deployed over the next two to three years but also ultimately have an impact over the next 10 to 15? How do you think about that as you, you think about leading the firm?

   2. BHBen Horowitz18:18

      You know, I think it's important to put the work that people do into context andYeah, we're in a, like super special position. You know, what, what I wanted to get at was like, if you take a step all the way back and you say, "What's been good for humanity?" Um, what's been good for humanity historically is when people have a chance to kind of do something larger than themselves and contribute. And look-- and, and I think there are o- there are many systems ideas like, well, what if like we could make utopia or everybody equal or this and that and the other? And, you know, that's kind of ended up doing the opposite, if you look at the history of communism or, or, or what have you. It, it's kind of everybody has an equal chance of getting no shot, um, is, is much more what occurs. And so you really want to enable, um, contribution, and kind of the rise of America kind of coincides with that rise in kind of a free market, capitalistic rule of law system. And that, you know, if you look at kind of the history of the country and the history of humanity, that, you know, the rise in wealth, lifespan, um, you know, population size of the Earth all kind of grew, uh, spectacularly in the last two hundred and fifty years. And so America's been very important in that. And then America today is still, I think, very clearly the country where, um, and the system where people are most likely to have a shot, a real shot at life. Um, and you know, like we've done some things to screw that up and, and so forth, but, you know, that's certainly still the case. And the-- for America to maintain its importance in the world, um, it has to win economically. It has to win-- which means it has to win technologically. It has to win militarily, which means it has to win technologically. Uh, and our job is to, you know, kinda help the country win technologically. And it's, it's not only important for us, it's important for the country, it's important for humanity. Uh, and that's really kind of what I was driving at. And I think that, um, you know, for our people, it's, uh, it, it really kinda helps them go, "Okay, like this isn't-- y- you know, these things matter." Um, you know, creating these opportunities matter. And, you know, just to give you, um, an idea of some of the things it leads to, so actually, you know, Jen and I, um, were just in Mexico, and you know, a lot of that was catalyzed by kind of a junior person on the team going, "You know, what we're doing is so important, uh, and we need to kind of help with this alliance. We need to help secure the border. We need to help, um, with our own kind of defense manufacturing. We've gotta, you know, help with energy. Like, I'm gonna get this meeting." Um, and then, you know, we got the meeting and so, you know, if you, you wanna change the world, you have to believe you can change the world. And, uh, and that's a lot of what it was about.

8. 21:28 – 22:09

   M&A landscape opening up

   1. JKJen Khaemel21:28

      It seems like little tech M&A, uh, is opening back up. Uh, what's your view on, on whether that is here to stay and whether that might actually expand to, to larger opportunities as well?

   2. BHBen Horowitz21:38

      AI is such a disruptive phenomenon that every company, every incumbent is under threat from, like AI in general. And so a lot of the ways that, um, you deal with the threat is you just acquire the DNA of the future. And so I think it's-- I think there's gonna be a lot of M&A, uh, because I think that people need to reconstruct how they work if they're gonna survive. So

9. 22:09 – 25:46

   Why foundation models alone aren't enough

   1. BHBen Horowitz22:09

      if you go back, uh, say three or four years, I think people believed that, you know, there would be the big foundation models would be these giant brains that could do anything, um, better than anybody. Uh, it has not played out quite like that. Um, the way it's played out is that the big models do provide a very important infrastructure, um, that, you know, all of our companies, you know, end up building on to some extent. Um, but often the kind of-- for any particular use case, the long tail of not only kind of, uh, scenarios, but the long tail or the fat tail, I should say, of, um, human behavior is-- ends up itself being something that you have to model and understand very, very well. And so if you look at Cursor, uh, Cursor consists as, uh, I think of thirteen different AI models, all which kind of model different aspects of how you program, how you speak to a programmer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and those models end up being very important, so important that they in fact release their own foundation model, um, for specifically for programming, uh, and for coding. So they have a coding model that, you know, you can swap in in place of Anthropic or OpenAI if you want, or you can use the OpenAI or Anthropic models with their kind of other set. And so-- and, and that thing has gotten great adoption, so, like it's kind of going, well, maybe the application behavior is actually in some ways more important than having a gigantic, like the biggest model trained with the most GPUs, um, you know. And it's not clear exactly how that plays out, but right now, currently, I would say that, uh, the complexity of the application itself is very high and is not subsumed in the foundation model. And so I think these things are not as, uh, straightforward as they appear, and the benchmarks can be misleading. Uh, and you know, like I think that this also is showing up inEvery aspect of AI. So we've seen this, there's a great, uh, post that, uh, Justine Moore from our team did on, you know, There's No God-level Video Model, um, which I would encourage you to read, which kind of gets into like, you know, look, different use cases end up needing different models, which is, again, not what we thought four years ago.

   2. JKJen Khaemel24:59

      For sure. Yeah. This actually goes back to when I, when I started, um, this webinar with w-your quote from, uh, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. In technology businesses, you rarely know everything up front. So as folks are, are figuring out everything that's happening in AI, like the calibration also, benchmarking is changing, and also the expectations around the utility of those things are changing.

   3. BHBen Horowitz25:20

      Yep.

   4. JKJen Khaemel25:20

      And also [chuckles] the founders that are building that are changing. So it is, uh, it is a very fun time, to say the least, but also one in which we're learning in, in real time as a, as a part of it. Um, which can be sometimes deeply unsettling, I think, for, for also [laughs] folks as well, uh, who, you know, may be, uh, anxious about where valuations are and, uh, the, the market and environment as a, as a part of that. Um, okay.

10. 25:46 – 29:03

    Ownership and the future of VC

    1. JKJen Khaemel25:46

       Uh, I am gonna switch gears actually to the future of VC, uh, investing, which is, is very related. So some believe leaner, more efficient businesses will allow founders to retain more on the cap table. Do you worry about that at all when you-- when it comes to ownership and what you've been, you know, working with GPs on in terms of expectations of ownership in this new environment?

    2. BHBen Horowitz26:03

       So I think that, like what we've seen is we're getting pretty good ownership. So, um, if you look at a lot of the recent investments we're, you know, at twenty percent or better. Um, there are ones that we're not, we're-- you know, we don't get to that level of ownership. But, um, those companies, uh, get so valuable, um, so fast that it's been fine. And, you know, like th-th-there have always been special companies with very, very special founders, you know, at a moment in time where like, okay, you know, that is what it is. But, uh, I, you know, for us, it's, um, you know, for a lot of the just like core infrastructure things, the core applications and so forth, like, uh, you know, the ownership has been like pretty reasonable.

    3. JKJen Khaemel26:56

       Question around just the VC landscape today, because when, when you s- you and Marc started the firm sixteen years ago, you know, there weren't nearly as many VC firms. There's now three thousand plus VC firms running around. There is still this rate limit of great entrepreneurial talent, but also increasingly there's more, uh, sources of capital flooding in, whether that be on the retail side, et cetera. How do you see the power dynamics between whether it be the LP, GP, and founders also evolving as you think about the future of the firm and anything you're doing at the firm, um, to, to prepare for that?

    4. BHBen Horowitz27:28

       Well, I mean, I think it, it's still like very hard to build a company and, um, you know, to-- if you're just like an engineer or AI researcher and you're kind of an inve- you invented something and you're jumping into the world, it's a very competitive world. Uh, you know, having a, a financial partner that can help you build a company is so, you know, does the initial valuation matter more, or the partner? And I think that like, you know, most entrepreneurs who are smart realize it's the partner. And there aren't that many good pr- like, there's a lot of VCs, very few who can actually help you succeed as a company. Um, and so like being one of those, I think is, is still like quite a special position. I, I-- So the one area that, uh, we're kind of, you know, con- you're upping our emphasis in is this kinda entrepreneur who's just like starting something and doesn't, you know, it doesn't quite yet qualify for VC money, uh, with our Speedrun accelerator. And, you know, one of the reasons why we're emphasizing that so much now is it is... You know, with the new tools, it is possible to convert an idea into a product much more easily than it has been in the past. So we just wanna make sure that we keep a very, very close eye on that. And then, uh, and, you know, and then the brand is translating into that accelerator. We're just getting a lot of talent in there and, and so that, that phenomenon we wanna make sure that we're on top of.

    5. JKJen Khaemel29:02

       Building

11. 29:03 – 32:01

    Why AI will produce more winners than previous technology cycles

    1. JKJen Khaemel29:03

       on earlier question about being multiple winners in AI, w-why did prior, um, cycles of technology not play out the same way? I.e., why were there only Google, Amazon, you know, a concentration of a small number of winners in those product cycles compared to what you think about in, in what's happening in AI?

    2. BHBen Horowitz29:19

       Well, y-you know, we don't know quite what's gonna happen yet. Um, but I, I, I would say, you know, AI is a new computing platform, so you kind of have to look at it as like how many winners were there who built applications on computers and like that's the order of kind of the size of, of what this is. Um, you know, I think in the internet era, if you say, well, like what are all the businesses that got built on the internet? It was actually like a reasonably, um, large number of businesses from, uh, you know, Meta to Netflix to, uh, Amazon to, you know, Google and so forth. And, and, you know, those were very, very like spectacularly huge winners. I think in AI, um, the products are having even bigger economic impact. Uh, and so I think there are gonna be more things, um, certainly more companies that are worth, you know, over a billion dollars and over ten billion dollars, and in the last era, I mean, from what we've seen so far. Uh, but it's a very big design space. Like it's an enormous design space, like one we've, we've never seen that before in technology. And, you know, I, of course, nobody's asked me this yet, but got a lot of questions about the AI bubble, and I think that one of the reasons why people are so worried about it being a bubble is, you know, the valuations have gone up so fast. Uh-But like if you look at what's going on underneath in terms of the customer adoption, the revenue growth rates, um, et cetera, like we've never seen demand like this. Uh, and so we've never seen valuations rise like this, but we've never seen demand rise like this either. So it, it is, uh-- We are in a bit of a brave new world, at least from anything that I've seen in my career. And, uh, we'll see how it plays out. But like, I think like even like the NVIDIA multiples aren't-- You know, they're not like outrageous, uh, that, you know, particularly when you look at the growth rate, um, and the-- just the size of the earnings and so forth. Like they're not historically nuts, uh, to the point where people would be claiming bubble like that. Um, so I think that people think, "Oh, well, is that growth fake? Is it this?" It's that. And from what we're seeing, no. Like they-- like the demand is, is very intense. Uh, and, you know, we'll see how it plays out. But I think this is as big a-- this is a bigger technology market than I've ever seen. And, you know, we'll see how many companies actually

12. 32:01 – 34:07

    Rapid-fire personal questions

    1. BHBen Horowitz32:01

       win in it.

    2. JKJen Khaemel32:01

       I'm gonna ask you a few fire, uh, round-- lightning round questions, Ben, and then we'll close out here. Uh, what will be your most played song on Spotify Wrapped this year?

    3. BHBen Horowitz32:10

       [chuckles] Uh, so I think it's, um, uh, that, that, uh, Young Thug song, "Do you know how it feel to see your face on the news? Mama call you a boo hoo." Yeah. It's, uh-- That, that one really touches me. [both chuckling] Like, like jiggly stumps.

    4. JKJen Khaemel32:30

       I, I love it. Um, I, I will say, I think, uh, for me, Follow the Leader is gonna be on, on one of my most played. I will say that was, uh-

    5. BHBen Horowitz32:37

       Yeah. That's a great song. Yeah.

    6. JKJen Khaemel32:39

       Wrote, wrote the piece and also, uh, saw Rakim in person, uh, earlier this year at your event, and then also, um, you know-

    7. BHBen Horowitz32:46

       George Clinton. Yeah.

    8. JKJen Khaemel32:47

       Yes. Uh, it's, uh, it's been-

    9. BHBen Horowitz32:49

       Yeah

    10. JKJen Khaemel32:49

        ... been fun to dig back into the, into the database of songs that I had never, uh, really listened to. Um-

    11. BHBen Horowitz32:56

        Yeah, no, that, that, that's an all-time great song. [chuckles]

    12. JKJen Khaemel32:58

        Yes, indeed. Uh, what's one AI tool that you use every day?

    13. BHBen Horowitz33:03

        [sighs] Well, for sure, you know, Grok and ChatGPT I use every day. Um, and then, uh, you know, probab-- I've been playing with like, uh, Veo and, uh, Nana Banana a lot on a, on a daily basis, so of, of the big guys. Yeah.

    14. JKJen Khaemel33:21

        All right. Follow Ben's feed on for Nana Banana, uh, drops. Um, okay. And because we asked Mark, we have to ask you, do you plan to be cryogenically frozen?

    15. BHBen Horowitz33:31

        No.

    16. JKJen Khaemel33:32

        Same answer as Mark. Do you plan to go to Mars?

    17. BHBen Horowitz33:35

        [laughs] Nope.

    18. JKJen Khaemel33:37

        Same answer as M-Mark as well, despite, despite your background. All right. Uh-

    19. BHBen Horowitz33:41

        Look, I, I'm trying to stay healthy so that like we don't have any, uh, generational transfer, but I'm not, uh... I, I don't necessarily believe in living forever. I, I don't know.

    20. JKJen Khaemel33:51

        [laughs]

    21. BHBen Horowitz33:51

        That's my destiny.

    22. JKJen Khaemel33:52

        [laughs] [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 34:08