a16zThe Frontier Ideas a16z Wants to Fund Now | Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz & Chris Dixon
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
75 min read · 14,603 words- 0:00 – 0:49
Intro
- CDChris Dixon
We're announcing today that we're expanding the a16z crypto fund to a16z Frontier.
- MAMarc Andreessen
This is the biggest delta between what the early adopters understand is possible now. That gap is as wide as I've ever seen in my career.
- BHBen Horowitz
More than categories, more than products, we invest in entrepreneurs, and so many of the most interesting entrepreneurs are outer planet.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Return information is gonna skyrocket from here.
- BHBen Horowitz
By the way, it already is. [laughs] 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.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Had I had Astro at Netscape in nineteen ninety-four, like, oh my God. [laughs] Ben, like, what would you and I have been able to do at Netscape?
- BHBen Horowitz
We would've built the whole damn internet.
- MAMarc Andreessen
[laughs]
- ETErik Torenberg
If you were 18 today, how would you think about what you might study?
- CDChris Dixon
Stealing Mark's line, but I think there's one thing to do, which is study-
- 0:49 – 15:15
Announcing a16z Frontier
- ETErik Torenberg
Chris, we have a big announcement today.
- CDChris Dixon
Yep.
- ETErik Torenberg
Uh, we're expanding the mandate. Uh, I'll let you do the honors.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah. So, uh, yeah, we're announcing today that we're expanding the a16z crypto fund to a16z Frontier. Um, the-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- CDChris Dixon
... um, the idea, uh, is, uh, I'd say a couple of kinda 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 kinda consider it, just considers it part of their toolbox. Um, Wall Street firms are moving heavily into crypto, uh, with tokenized stocks and other kinds of assets. It's a, 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. Um, 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, that, uh, what we kind of [laughs] my, my partner Martine 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 was maybe a 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, uh, as I see Frontier as an area I'm comfortable with. It's so, you know, I joined the firm in two thousand thirteen, and, um, we, you know, came in and with that kind of mandate. I talked to Mark and Ben, and I said, "Hey, I wanna do this crazy stuff," [laughs] 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 kinda second-order effects. Like, you know, you had smartphones obviously start in two thousand seven, and by two thousand thirteen 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 that, 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 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, [laughs] is, is that now that you have this supply chain of, um, uh, you know, all these great parts that entrepreneurs can kinda 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, 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. Uh, crypto, I think at the time was kind of a downstream effect to me of sort of the open source and 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 c-coalesce around, 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 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. Um, so we, we felt I think it's kinda consistent with things-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... we've been doing for a long time.
- ETErik Torenberg
Uh, then Mark, l-let's hear from you. I know this was a joint, uh, effort and, 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-why don't you, uh, add your take?
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah. 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. [laughs] Um, but yeah, there's a class of these things and, you know, what we've done typically or, or historically is y- or 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 verticals, and the process of turning that into, uh, a practice, um, is a little bit undefined. Not that we haven't done it, [laughs] 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. Uh, or, or maybe Frontiers turns into that thing 'cause 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, uh, fills a hole in the architecture and then also, y-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.
- ETErik Torenberg
And to me, this seems like a, you know, continuation of what we were talking about at the, at the last offsite, which is-- which it 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, or the, the, the only regrets we have are not even going even harder, even earlier, e-e-even bigger. And, and Chris, you're, 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 gonna spend most of the time on 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 of the firm, you know, uh, besides Ben and Marc, having joined in twenty thirteen. Uh, I'm curious, B-Ben and Marc, when, 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 a16z, and did you, uh, anticipate the type of, uh, career he would go on to, go on to have? B-Ben, I'll, I'll ask you to start.
- BHBen Horowitz
Look, I, I, I think originally, um, we just knew Chris as a very smart guy, and we really liked his ideas from his blog. I 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 know, 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 like, 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, [chuckles] because... And then a, a bad idea, but where an entrepreneur has a 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 gonna be truly unique and have massive upside versus something that was gonna get where all the profits were gonna get competed away. Um, and so, you know, and he's, he's had quite a few, uh, excellent ideas like that. So, y-you know, it's, it's been great working with him over now, like way more than a decade.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yep. May-maybe I could add, um, also it, it's not just Chris as, as specialty, it's also Chris's team. Um-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- MAMarc Andreessen
... and, um, the, the thing that I think people may not appreciate, may be hard to see from the outside, is just, you know, cry-crypto has this... You know, crypto's like so-- been so sexy in so many ways, and it's been so, you know... It has the sort of flashy elements and, you know, s-s-cultural, you know, kind of phenomena kind of moments. But at the core of crypto, it's, it's a, it's a technology, and it's a very deep technology, and it's a very complex technology. Um, and you need to have like really deep technical expertise, you know, kinda coupled with like really good business judgment and really good market judgment in order to successfully invest in crypto, which, which, which we, which we've done. Um, in-in-including, by the way, including like, you know, 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, 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-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- MAMarc Andreessen
... and team members on the team that he's built, uh, now being able to work on a, work on a broader set of topics.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. And, 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-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Mm-hmm.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- MAMarc Andreessen
... and 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, [chuckles] of the kinda crypto journey, um, will be, uh, useful for many other entrepreneurs.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Well, uh, w-well, on that end, you know, we'll do one last historical question. Uh, you know, you pioneered not just some of the investments, but also s-some of the ways in which the firm works, i.e. the, the policy arm. And when you joined in twenty thirteen, you know, could you have imagined that the firm would have grown in this way? What, what was, what were your thoughts about where things were going?
- ETErik Torenberg
Well, I always knew Marc. I mean, Marc has, has a... You have a big, uh, poster of JP Morgan on your wall in your office. [chuckles]
- MAMarc Andreessen
True. [chuckles] Yes. Yes.
- ETErik Torenberg
And so these... Marc and Ben do not lack for, uh, for, you know, drive and ambition.
- MAMarc Andreessen
It's a famous photograph. It's a very, it's a very famous photograph. It was, it was... He, uh, JP Morgan-
- BHBen Horowitz
It's, uh, inspiration. Inspiration.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Inspiration. J... For people who haven't seen the photograph, you can Google. It's a very famous one. It's JP Morgan hated to have his picture taken because he had this, he, he had this, uh, this condition. He had this jag... [chuckles] Anyway, jag... He has this n-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 was, he was grouchy most of the time. And so he had his photo taken. So the... But he... They, they needed a formal portrait of him, and so he finally literally put him and sat him down, and the, the, the photographer like saw the whole thing coming. And so it, it's lit in a way where he's sitting in darkness-
- 15:15 – 18:18
Is being too early still a risk?
- ETErik Torenberg
let's, 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, uh, you know, uh, too late or something. Um, you've been early a lot. You've been, you know, m- mostly right or, or right in very big ways, but you've also, you know, been, 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 e- era now.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah, I mean, we talk about this a lot. Like, I think we b- I think I can speak for Marc 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. [chuckles]
- ETErik Torenberg
Okay.
- CDChris Dixon
If it hasn't worked yet. And, and a- the important qualifier, a good idea. There are bad ideas. But, um, and 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 too early. Um, and so so mu- you know, and that's the hardest thing, I think, in technology is to predict the timing of these things. Um, and, and you, 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. Um, 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 wanna err 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 quote 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 Oc- 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 invest, make VR investments, but it's 13 years later, and it's not, you know, it hasn't got as mainstream as we would've liked, so it took longer. It turned out there was just many more hard technical problems to solve. I kinda believe, I don't know what Marc 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, then math. I think there's a scenario, and I, I believe this, and I kinda wanna 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 that, oh, that's a science project, not an engineering project. I think we have to reevaluate that whole frame right now, um, because I think things, you know, uh, it, the sort of the, you know, if you look at these, the growth of... I mean, math is not the last thing that's gonna change.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
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 can, a 30-person team can credibly build, like, a full stack device company in a way that you might have needed 1,000 people or something a decade ago, right? And I think, and you have these very, you know, very, um, thoughtful, uh, deep entrepreneurs who are looking for, how do I take these new capabilities and do dramatic things? And, you know, so, so some of it's tactical, like, how do I create more defensibility? How do I... You don't wanna 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. Um, and so it, I don't know, it feels like an especially exciting time. Um, and we don't, uh, it's, uh, um, it's, it's, yeah. And so I
- 18:18 – 22:06
The widest gap between early adopters and everyone else
- CDChris Dixon
don't know if you-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah, so I would add, so we'll talk about AI as sort of a catalyst. Um, so this is the biggest delta between what 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, I think that's, you know, true at the individual level, but it's especially true at the company level. Um, 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, it, that, 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, uh, by the week, they're getting sort of steadily more advanced, um, than, than, than, than, than a typical incumbent. Um, so it's, it's, it's the biggest delta I've ever seen, and if you kind of extrapolate from that, like, you know, if you just, if, if, 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 then, and that's gonna be because the founders are gonna 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, k-k- had I had, you know, Astra [laughs] in Netscape in 1994, like, oh my God. Like, you know, so like, Ben, like what would you and I have been able to do at Netscape? Uh.
- BHBen Horowitz
We would've built the whole damn internet. [laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
I mean, it would've, it would've been absolutely incredible. It would've been absolutely incredible. And you know, as Chris said, like we're, 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.
- BHBen Horowitz
By the way, we would've gotten crypto done then. [laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Oh, 100%. Yeah, yeah. Like by the way, in like two weeks, like-
- BHBen Horowitz
We'd have streaming video a lot sooner. I mean, like all kinds of things would've happened. And, and then by the way, hardware, I mean, we never even bu-, you know, bit off hardware, but, you know, had we been able to, there's all kinds of things we could've done.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, and so, um, I, I just like, I think the, the leading edge entrepreneurs now are gonna have like capabilities, uh, uh, which means they're gonna have business plans that are like a lot more, you know, they're, they're gonna have product plans that are a lot more technically intensive and complex. They're gonna have business plans that are more ambitious and complex. Um, they're gonna 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, the scope of their business. Um, and then, and then, and then again, this goes right back to like tho- those, those entrepreneurs are gonna color way outside the lines. Like they're, they're not gonna consi- We, we already see this. They're not gonna 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 gonna, they're gonna think very broadly and expansively about exactly what, you know, how, how many different areas they wanna touch and how they wanna combine things. And so the, the sort of, you know, conceptual artist kind of aspect of this is gonna like, just like blow way out.
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah. I, I, I was gonna say, you know, we used to kind of ask the question is, is this idea too ambitious? And I, and I think, I think we're much more likely to ask this, is this ambitious enough?
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah.
- BHBen Horowitz
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.
- MAMarc Andreessen
And by the way, look, incu- incumbents, you know, we spend a lot of time, have a lot of friends in incumbent companies, by the way, including in incumbent tech, including inc- incumbent companies in Silicon Valley. And it's like, I, I, you know, I, 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, so no doubt some of them are gonna be able to adapt, but like, you know, [laughs] if any of them are listening right now, I would say like the clock is ticking. Like it, it, like stuff is moving.
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
I mean, like I, I, I, I am basically... I mean, I'm full-time. I'm basically drowning, um, [laughs] in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, with the pace development right now.
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
And the speed with which things are changing. Um, and I'm trying to keep up with all of it, and it's near like nearly impossible. Like it, it, it, the, yeah, the, the, the, the, the super empowered 24-year-old with AI is gonna just achieve like amazing things in the, in the next decade.
- 22:06 – 28:33
Will AI favor incumbents or startups?
- BHBen Horowitz
And there's a question we were asking, uh, uh, right before this, whi-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 incumbents like, you know, Meta and others have, you know, uh, sort of adjusted ve-very well and, and also their net new companies that are, you know, um, almost a trillion dollars in, you know, wi-within a decade, and it's so, it... Is, is that your read that that's effectively both, or how do you think about the sustaining disruptive?
- MAMarc Andreessen
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, you know, there are certain comp- you know, certain companies certainly in tech that are on the leading edge, even if they're not primar- primary AI developers. But at least right now the pattern is, is, is not that. I mean, it's, it's just really... Uh, uh, actually, there's a very specific thing that I think of maybe as a topic for a different podcast. There's a very specific thing that I think is happening, which is I think many companies are not adopting AI while their employees are.
- BHBen Horowitz
Hmm.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, and their employees are, and their employees are not necessarily telling the m-m-man-management what's happening. And I, and by the way, I'm gonna guess every single person listening to this podcast right now is thinking, "Oh yeah, that's what I'm doing."
- BHBen Horowitz
[laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
You know, I'm using AI, you know, to, you know, do all, you know, do all my work or at le- at least let's say fact check all my work. Uh, uh, fact, you know, proofread all of my, all my, all my, uh, uh, e-e-emails, um, even if not have them written outright. Um, and so there, there's this weird thing where like there's something about AI right now where it's like, it's, it's much easier for the individual to adopt than it is the institution. Um, and by the way, and, and, and again, it goes back to like our role in the world, which is like tho-those, some of those individuals are gonna figure out like, oh, well with this tool I can now like start my own, you know, it's now easier than ever for me to start my own business. Um, and so I, I think startup formation is gonna skyrocket from here, um, because these-
- BHBen Horowitz
By, by the way, it already is. [laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Oh yeah. I mean, we're seeing it. I mean, we're seeing it 100% for sure. Um, so anyway, just to kind of go, go back to the theme of this is just I, I, I'm completely convinced, like we're gonna see a wave of like much more technically aggressive, much more business aggressive, much more, uh, expansion, ex-ex-expansionist, creative, original thinking, many more combinations of, of, of, of things that we would've considered to be separate things in the past. Um, and uh, and uh, we're gonna see, yeah, founders with just like an, and, and, and teams with just like an incredible level of skill level, uh, incredible level of skill that, that they otherwise might have needed, you know, 30 years to achieve or something. They're gonna have like right out of the gate.
- BHBen Horowitz
And by the way, the other thing I'd say is that the, the Christensen disruptive innovation frame
- CDChris Dixon
Assumes that sort of the technology world is relatively contained, and that these are companies fighting with each other.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
I think it's probably the wrong frame right now, which is it's really sort of people who are technol-technologically modern going out into other industries and just changing the economy more broadly.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
Right? Especially with these kind of full stack companies. You go and you create a full, you know, like, uh, 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 so-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Mining, yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... um, so, so I think that the mar- You talk about this sometimes, Mark, 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, um.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
- ETErik Torenberg
I'm, I'm curious where, where you guys think we are in the, in the development or how, how do you th- 'cause it feels like, you know, in the internet era, um, application, uh, you know, were, were sort of, you know, the, the biggest companies, um, you know, Facebook, Amazon, e-e-et cetera. Um, but in, in the 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, or some of the bigger companies. Um, how do you think about, you know, where are we, are we in the sort of applications or consumer? Like how do, how do you think about that?
- CDChris Dixon
I think Mark would say all, all of the above. [chuckles] And I think a lot of people think that actually right now.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
It seems like a lot of stuff is working. Um-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... 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-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... and the kind of value chain, there's certain things that, certain layers that do better than others. But, um, then the other thing is just the, the, it's still, it's, like it's kinda crazy you have the demand for a lot of this stuff, uh, is, is still very early by most metrics, um.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yep.
- CDChris Dixon
I think your team just put out some charts on this.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
It's like 3% of, you know, measured enterprise use-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- 28:33 – 30:08
AI social networks and agents online
- CDChris Dixon
well.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. I'm, I'm really excited in social. It used to be in the 2000s, like every few years there was a new major network. There was, there was Facebook, the, you know, What-WhatsApp, there was Snap, uh, TikTok, and, and then it felt like there was a little bit of a dearth o-on the social side. But it, with AI it does feel inevitable, uh, you know, and then 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 gonna be some way that these are, these are hooked up and enabling a whole new set of social experiences.
- CDChris Dixon
Well, we're, 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, the most numerous participants on the internet will be agents and not people.
- MAMarc Andreessen
That's it.
- CDChris Dixon
Uh, we're at 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 gonna, I think you're gonna 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, w-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 there's probably gonna be a whole series of, of innovations along those lines.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Rentahuman.com. [laughs]
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah, rentahuman.
- MAMarc Andreessen
[laughs]
- CDChris Dixon
That like inverts the model, right?
- MAMarc Andreessen
[laughs]
- CDChris Dixon
Molt Book was cool too.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah, yeah, totally. That's, uh... Well, you know, yeah, Molt, Molt Book was the, uh, public, public kind of version, and then it turned out the agents, they figured out how to do their own, [inhales] uh, the Molt Book and the, and the Hugging Face app.
- CDChris Dixon
The Hugging Face thing, yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
So it's gonna be, yeah, it's gonna be a lot more... Yeah, the agent, the agent ecology online is gonna be spectacular-
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah
- MAMarc Andreessen
... and people are gonna plug into that in all kinds of ways.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah.
- 30:08 – 38:22
Beyond “product manager brain”: games, film and hardware
- CDChris Dixon
Marc, Marc, but I'm curious if there are things that you're tracking either in, in social or consumer or l- or, or even just this frame of, like, the skeuomorphic, you know, things that b- that sort of, uh, you know, worked in the past, uh, sort of, uh, platform era and now, like, what net new use cases or w- what, what is native to AI that you're seeing or anticipating or, or looking forward to?
- MAMarc Andreessen
Well, I'll give you my, my version, maybe a little bit of what Chris was saying, but, like, I, I, I think so many-- And, 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. I saw it in the internet era earlier, and I, I call it product manager brain.
- CDChris Dixon
Hmm.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, which is product manager is basically designing products for product managers, uh, right? It's like, it's-- By the way, it's the one thing everybody does, is they build products for themselves.
- CDChris Dixon
Totally.
- MAMarc Andreessen
It's just product managers have this story that they're building for other people.
- CDChris Dixon
[laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
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.
- CDChris Dixon
[laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, 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 th- there, there's this, you know, it, it's a little-- And again, there's a role for this, but it's a little bit like, I think it's like the anthropic, I'm a, what is it? I'm a happy, helpful, harmful, har- harmless. I'm a happy, harmless, whatever it is, honest assistant, right? And it's a little, which also means I'm the, I'm, I am the most boring possible thing you could possibly imagine that's gonna be constantly lecturing you that you've asked me a question I'm not allowed to answer, right? And so it's, it's like th- there's just gonna be this, the, the, this, this sort of, we, we just had this ver- just the nature of the early co- early companies who just had this very blinkered view on, on human, human activity and what, what people are gonna wanna do. And, and to your point, like with, uh, with Muse and Instinct, it's, it's starting to open up. Um, but like, th- th- look, this is gonna be a much more e- entertaining, fun-
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah
- MAMarc Andreessen
... enjoyable, exciting, um, by the way, lucrative. People are gonna make m- There'd be all kinds of ways for people to make money, uh, be able to save money, uh, 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 de novo.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
On, like, an, an incredible array of, like, creative ideas and topics and styles.
- CDChris Dixon
And like video games in the last three weeks have blown up, uh-
- MAMarc Andreessen
You might mention that just 'cause that's so striking.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah. I mean, I always think, I always find video games interesting 'cause they, they're kind of the, the leading-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... I find that they're often leading edge of media because they're 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 vi- 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. Um, 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.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Su- Super Mario and GTA.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
[laughs] Right?
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Spider-Man and Jurassic Park.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Like they just come out.
- CDChris Dixon
Um, and it's just, and it's literally the crazy, like to Marc's point, it's been I think like two weeks or something.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
It was like since what? Like Opus 5.5 or something.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah. Wow.
- 38:22 – 46:37
Is AI centralizing? The case for open source
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
The, the brilliant, uh, P-Peter Thiel once, uh, had this quote, uh, I think a decade ago or something where he said, you know, "Crypto is libertarian, AI is, uh, is, is communist." It-- which meant, you know, crypto is decentralizing, AI is centralizing. But I'm, 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, or 30-person companies can do, you know, orders of magnitude what, what they could do prior.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah. I, I, I think there's all these interesting questions embedded in that. Like, one is what is the end of final market structure of AI? Like, I think where it's headed right now is you're gonna have very successful, like the big OpenAIs and Anthropic, 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're-- 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. It may be 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, uh, the natural way when you have an economy of agents for them to pay each other would be stable coins.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
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-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... 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 that's what makes it kind of exciting and, you know, something we'd love to have an influence on is sort of w-you know, I think we're, you know, we're big believers in open source software, uh, open weight models, um, uh, crypto, obviously blockchains. And I, I, I think w- I would love to see a version of this 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 can to kind of hopefully nudge things that way. On, on that note, are, Marc and Ben, are you guys encouraged with, uh, 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, w-where sort of just how it's perceived and how, how it's, uh, the success of the industry in general?
- MAMarc Andreessen
I mean, right now it's great. I mean, yeah. So right now open source is racing ahead. You've 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, uh, open source, uh, you know, kind of worlds in addition to, you know, companies building, building proprietary systems. Uh, 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, uh, folks in, in governments have been threatening. Um, [chuckles] I think the EU still aspires to do it.
- CDChris Dixon
[laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, they just don't quite have the leverage. Uh, this is, this is gonna threaten everybody with fines until we stop doing it, I guess.
- CDChris Dixon
[laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
But, um, you know, the, the current US administration is 100% pro, uh, open source, uh, has been very encouraging. Um, in fact, ver-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, and by the way, a big surprise to me is I, I would have never thought the Chinese Communist Party would be like this enthusiastic-
- CDChris Dixon
[laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
... 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, it's just absol-ab-absolutely amazing. And then, you know, the, the open models are, you know, kind of lapping the, um, you know, the, uh, the, the closed models by, you know, six months, 12 months, depending on how you count. Um, and then as, as-- And then by the way, the, 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 gonna 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 the way, be a-be able to actually understand the problems as they arise and how to fix them, 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 can 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.
- CDChris Dixon
Right.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, whereas in a world of open source, like every kid can learn how this stuff works. A-a-and it's actually amazing. One of the really underestimated things about AI is AI will teach you about AI. Well, with one exception, which is the, the AI models from certain of the large companies actually will refuse to do that-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- MAMarc Andreessen
... which, which is sort of very interesting. Um, but the open source models 100% will teach you how to make open source AI.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Um, and so every kid in the world, I think, should have as their birthright the ability to, like, fully understand and utilize this technology.
- ETErik Torenberg
By the way, defend yourself. So like-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Oh
- ETErik Torenberg
... how did, how did Hugging Face defend themselves?
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yes. [chuckles]
- ETErik Torenberg
Open source software. [chuckles]
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yes.
- ETErik Torenberg
I mean, like, yeah, open source means everyone has the most advanced vulnerability scanner to protect themselves from cyber, um-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yep
- ETErik Torenberg
... everyone has a doctor and a genius professor in their poppet pocket, you know what I mean?
- 46:37 – 49:12
The internet’s broken covenant
- ETErik Torenberg
Ch-Chris, I wanna come to a different point, uh, that you had in, in, in one of your write-ups, which is, uh, the business model of the internet is breaking or is, is vulnerable.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
Why-why don't you talk about that?
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah, I mean, the internet was sort of the-- I, I think of it as, I call it the covenant, the internet's covenant, which is sort of a deal betw- 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, when you think about Google, like, the idea was you kind of give Google a snippet, let them index you, and then they'll send you some clicks, right? Um, that started to break, uh, like maybe last decade, but particularly now, you go to Google, you get an answer, right? Um, you 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 where the traffic dropped precipitously when you had sort of AI, AI replacements. Um, and so, you know, the, the, uh, but, but, like, 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. I think on the entrepreneur side, there's a chance to rethink these things from first principles 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 wanna do things, and, and how do we kind of reorganize it? So I think this is gonna happen over the next, let's call it decade, is you're gonna have sort of this kinda great reconfiguration of the internet [chuckles] and, and how the economics work, how the attention flows, how knowledge is shared, how people produce things together, collaborate, um-
- CDChris Dixon
Um, how organizations interact over the internet. Um, so it, I don't know, it feels in a, 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, uh, 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 think there's a lot of also... You know, it'll be some-somewhat painful and for some, but I think it'll also be a lot of opportunity.
- 49:12 – 53:59
What comes after the iPhone
- BHBen Horowitz
On that note, just 'cause 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 l-locked in? Are there-
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah
- BHBen Horowitz
... new forms that you're, you're particularly excited about or looking forward to?
- CDChris Dixon
Well, I mean, everyone's talking about wearables, and I think you'll see a bun- I mean, we're pretty clearly gonna see a bunch of-
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... you know, and 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.
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
I think it's just a question of g-getting to the right form fa- you know, still heavy, you kind of sweat. Um, it's, 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 want deeply immersive, uh, you know, kind of otherworldly experiences. Um, and once that gets to the right point, I think, you know, AI might be the unlock 'cause now the c- you can create this amazing content that actually it's seeing on Twitter now, like someone just did a port of Titanfall and so, like by himself, [chuckles] it's like this incredible port. I don't know if, if it's gonna, you know, survive copyright [chuckles] 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 unlock this wave because it was really kind of technically hard to build a-
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... 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, Neuralink, brain computer interfaces. Um, obviously vehicles, you know, like, I mean, 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 home brew hacking. Um, uh, you know, I, I anecdotally have seen a lot of that because you can now, like just Claude will design a, a three-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.
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
Um, so you know, that would be cool. Uh, I don't know what else.
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah, I mean, architecture, I, I, I have a friend I shouldn't name, uh, but uh, you know, has done a complete architecture design, everything for a new, new building. Um, and you know-
- CDChris Dixon
Oh
- BHBen Horowitz
... y- y- you know, pe-people are assembling it, but like the whole thing is, is being steered by AI.
- CDChris Dixon
Mm-hmm.
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah. Um, uh, I think the new models are capable of doing, what is it, what do they call it? Design for manufacturing.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah, yeah.
- BHBen Horowitz
The, the, the, the, the final diagrams and specs to be able to send to a factory-
- CDChris Dixon
Which is very hard to do normally. Yeah
- BHBen Horowitz
... which is very hard to do normally a part of the manufacturing process. I think the models can just do that now.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah.
- BHBen Horowitz
Um, and so, um, yeah, no, I mean, like these, these, these are great examples of this, like these domains that historically have been extremely difficult or prohibitive or impossible for kind of neither normal people or for normal companies to do all of a sudden become, you know, quite possibly, you know, possibly just straightforward.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah.
- BHBen Horowitz
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 to, you know, from machine agent networks?
- CDChris Dixon
Sure. I mean, um, I mean, just a simple idea, right, is that just you, you know, in the er- 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, which 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 like 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 the Hugging Face hack, there's a swarm that's obviously a bad and a negative use case of a swarm. Are there positive use ca- You know, you also saw, I think a swarm is one of the things that solved the, one of the math theorems.
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah. Right.
- CDChris Dixon
You know, you could imagine a world where there's, you know, another net word for a swarm is a, you know, collaborative fleet of agents or something, right? [chuckles] 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, 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, you know, just kind of in the experimental phase, but it's 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.
- 53:59 – 1:00:24
What to study if you’re 18 today
- BHBen Horowitz
But by the way, we've alluded, we talked a bit, bit about sort of the, uh, education and just, uh, 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 Harwood's Andreessen Academy. Um, thank you for, for your support on it. If, if you were 18 today, um, how, how would you think about what you might, uh, study? Obviously you have an, you know, academic, uh, philosophy background.
- CDChris Dixon
Um, I think, uh, stealing Marc's line, but I think you, you think there's one thing to do, which is study modern alchemy, right?
- BHBen Horowitz
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it. Go for it.
- CDChris Dixon
Well, humans fig- This is Marc's, I think-
- BHBen Horowitz
Go for it
- CDChris Dixon
... Marc's framing, but I mean, humans just figured out how to turn sand into intelligence and the way to learn that, I think is m-math, computer science, maybe economics, I don't know. And um, and it's, you know, obvi- Look, I think it's also like Like I, I, I, and I think Ben and Marc were lucky enough to have our ca- you know, a lot of our careers, uh, happen during the growth of the internet.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah.
- CDChris Dixon
And I think that was-- I feel very fortunate that I was able to do that. You know, I think that was, uh, something bequeathed to me by-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... by people before me, and that was-- I'm grateful to them. Um, and you know, I think 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 twenty, thirty years. Um, so I think being, and it doesn't have to, you don't have to necessarily be solely technical, but I think-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... being in some way, uh, in that, in the mix, and at the cutting edge, and sort of using these tools feels like-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah
- CDChris Dixon
... kind of the, the obvious thing to do. I don't know what you-
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah. Like I think, I think and, and a lot, a lot of other fields are gonna be revolutionized, right? So I, I mean, just, you know, the field, field of the classics is being revolutionized 'cause now you've got the Vesuvius Scroll project, and you're like able to-
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah. Yeah
- MAMarc Andreessen
... use like AI to like decipher like burnt scrolls and-
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah. Yeah
- MAMarc Andreessen
... you know, there may be entire new schools of philosophy that get, you know, discovered to study classics, you know, the things, you know, lost, lost books. Um, economics, uh, I just, uh, happened to have lunch with an economics professor, and like the whole field of economics can be-
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah
- MAMarc Andreessen
... is gonna be transformed around this. Um, and d-d-
- CDChris Dixon
Bio-biology
- MAMarc Andreessen
... biology. Yeah, exactly. Drug 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.
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Music, music. The-
- BHBen Horowitz
Zoology, you're gonna know what the animals are saying. [laughs]
- MAMarc Andreessen
This is super interesting. Like we are plausibly heading towards a world in which we're gonna understand what the animals are saying, right? Um, and-
- BHBen Horowitz
Animal psychology will be actually real.
- MAMarc Andreessen
Yeah, yeah. So like, okay, like dog, you know, I don't know, like dog, you know, as long as dog training is gonna take on a whole new thing when they actually understand what the, what the-
- CDChris Dixon
Yeah
Episode duration: 1:00:34
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