Marc Andreessen at a16z LP Day: the co-founder's view on where the firm and tech are heading

geopolitics uh raising a huge fund. There's so many things to talk about. So excited to have Mark on the show. excited to go uh deep with him on everything Andre's up to and the firm that he's built. So, we will welcome into him into the studio. Welcome. How are you doing, Mark? Hey guys, what's happening?

It's been a great I'm going to hit this real quick. The sound effect board. Uh thanks so much for joining us. Um and thanks for wearing us. Thanks for wearing a suit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you look special occasion. Yeah, special occasion. This podcast, by the way, congratulations on the podcast.

I just wanted to start out by saying I've been watching. It's just it's tremendous. Thank you so much. Well, you know, I have a funny story.

We uh the the moment that I realized that you were maybe paying a little bit of attention to what we were doing and it gave me some conviction that we were on the right track is we we did a reply guy of the week to this guy Baldo and it was like this inside joke and I was like, "Holy [ __ ] Mark just followed Baldo.

" Very talented guy. But u but yeah, so it's it's thank you for uh for following along and it's been awesome talking to your whole team today. They're fantastic. Um, so let's go through some hot topics. Uh, I want to start with we're in the AI era. Uh, you obviously live through the dot era. There's some comparisons.

What have you learned and what uh how is this time different? Uh, companies are making more money. Valuations are high, but uh how are you thinking about uh teaching the next generation what they should learn or what they should ignore from the people that might say this is the dot boom 2. 0? Yeah. Yeah.

So, look, I guess I say I think it was Mark Twain who once said, "History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. " And so, you know, I think people looking for like a direct compare and contrast. Sometimes you see people like drawing charts where the stock market's going to do the same thing or whatever.

Like, I don't think that stuff ever quite happens that way, but you know, it does rhyme. Um, and you know, the line that John Door had in 1995, I remember, was that the internet is a cream that you rub on investors to get them all excited. Uh, so John Door said that. That's hilarious. Yes. Yes.

I I have many I have many many John. Oh yeah, exactly.

Um but um uh you know so you know AI's like that now um you know look the AI a sorry the internet went through you know went through phases people actually forget but there was like you know there were like these even the phases like on the way up from you know 95 to 2000 um you know there were these phases of like skepticism and panic um you know it looked like the whole thing was going to fall apart in '98 and then you know in 2001 you know after the do crash you know like all the big companies just like completely wrote the internet off and they just said you know thank god that's over.

Um and then and then the internet itself just kept growing, right? And then you know by 2005 it was back to you know kind of back you know back to back to where it had been before and we you know the rest was was history. And so you know you know people kind of go people are kind of bipolar on these things.

They kind of get overly excited they get overly depressed. I you know I just always thought then and I think now the substance matters you know the sub substance overwhelming overwhelmingly matters and so you know is is is is the technology great? Like are the products great? Are people using them?

And you know AI is like off to the races so far with just like unprecedented rate of growth of actual use. Yeah. Right.

Um you see that in in in all the numbers and then um you know look the businesses I I you know I just I talked to I had another conversation yesterday with like you know a company that's raised seed money.

They're already over 10 million AR with this incredible you know like it's just and you know there's like a there's a lot of those like you know they're all over the place. And so you know the the the the things that are working the products are fantastic.

um you know the users are getting tremendous value out of them and and the and and as you know the base technology is moving really fast so I feel really good about it. Yeah, I mean it can move faster because we have the internet.

Like the these apps can get to hundreds of millions of daily active users because there's hundreds of millions of people. There's billions of people on the internet. Uh very interesting.

Uh not to linger on the dot stuff too much, but I'd love to know uh a little bit of a history lesson around the way the browser wars played out and is there anything you can learn from that that applies to the open-source versus closed sourced AI debate? You've been very opinionated on that.

I'd love to know kind of if is there are there any previous eras of tech that you're mapping to when you think about open source AI. Yeah.

So, you know, look, you know, a lot of the browser wars, you know, there was kind of a big comp little company kind of big company thing and, you know, I think that's repeating itself and, you know, I think one one of the ways to think about what's happening right now was OpenAI is kind of growing up to become Google and Google's kind of, you know, re reinventing itself to be open AI.

And so, you know, there's like a similar thing there. And you know then you know look Microsoft and Apple and Google control the operating systems you know for for end user devices and they all have you know AI strategies um and Amazon as well.

So you know a lot a lot of those issues are going to are going to come back up. You know two two of these big companies are actually on federal trial right now you know in big FCC cases in in uh in Washington DC actually in the same courtroom.

Um and so you know that many of those issues will will will repeat or you know will be intense. Um you know the open source thing in tech has always been the wild card. Um I I think it's always been an incredibly positive wild card. you know, I've always been an, you know, enthusiastic supporter of it.

My original work was all open source. Um, and so, you know, the real thing that happened with open source is in operating systems, you know, basically Unix one and then and then, you know, specifically Linux one, you know, for everything on on on the back end.

And I, you know, like you you know, I remember like in the 1990s there was like a furious operating system war and there were these companies that were making huge amounts of money on server operating systems, you know, companies like Sun and many others and then, you know, Linux just like commoditized that entire thing.

Yeah. you know, I think it's plausible, you know, we'll see. But it look, it's plausible that open source AI may just be the standard like it it you know, and whether whether that deres out of, you know, Deepseeker Lama or, you know, any of the other new things that are coming out, you know, we'll see.

But like I think that's entirely feasible and, you know, I think that would be obviously, you know, there are companies that would have to adjust to that if it happens. But the other side is if if kind of the world had AI for free, um, I I think that would be a pretty magical result also. Yeah, totally.

I mean, shifting to the geopol the geopolitics of all this, is it important not just that there's an open- source champion, but that there's an American open- source champion or a western open-source LLM? Yeah, I I believe so. U and I believe so for two reasons. One is just actually cultural reasons.

Um which is just, you know, the you know, open weights is great, but like the open weights like they're baked, right? Like the the the training is in the weights and you can't really undo that.

Um and so and and and so are you being trained by, you know, a company or an organization or set of people with American or Western values? Are you being trained, you know, by by by, you know, company with with Chinese values? Um and look, you know, there's issues on both sides.

You know, they they you know, the American train models have their have their issues. They have their weirdnesses, you know, but the Chinese train models, you know, look, they they like score really well, you know, they literally in the Chinese benchmarks, they literally have like line items for like Marxism, right?

Right. And you know, Deep Seek like is like a 100 out of 100 on Marxism, right? And so let's hear her for deep sea. Really knocked it out of the park with that one. Congratulations. Yeah, exactly. It's fantastic. Right.

And so it's like, all right, so these are going to be, you know, this is going to be the technology that's going to intermediate your the legal system, right?

The courts, the education system, the medical system, like, you know, how, you know, you want your, you know, if you guys have kids, like do you want your kids to, you know, your kids are going to be learning from these things their whole lives?

Um, and you know, do do they have, you know, do they fundamentally have western values?

do they or do they have you know sort of you know CCP values I think is really critical and then the other thing just I would say just close your eyes and just imagine two states of the world one is which the entire world runs an American open source LLM and the the other is where the entire world including the US runs on all Chinese software and I you know I don't know for me that's a you know very straightforward it's a very important topic and a very straightforward answer yeah I mean in in the American dynamism context is it kind of mission accomplished there or are there new territories that you're looking to expand and into with the broader American dynamism thesis.

Uh we talked to DU about energy and whatnot, but what is exciting about you outside of artificial intelligence on the national interest investing side? Yeah. So, I mean, look, we made tremendous progress.

I'm super proud of that team and then, you know, this this in this new political environment, the new administration has embraced it, but also a lot of Democrats are actually quite excited about it also. And our, you know, our event that we hold has has lots of people from both parties.

So, I think there's a, you know, there's this unified view now, I think, in the American, at least in in the political world, of like, all right, it's it's time, you know, it's time for the US to step up on a lot of these things. Um, it's time for the US to build more.

Um, it's time for the US to, you know, reinvent energy. It's it's time for nuclear um, you know, it's time for, you know, infrastructure, you know, the housing, like all these things. Um, and so, you know, I think there's a lot of momentum. I think we're at the very beginning of it.

Um, you know, like one of the ways to think about what we're doing in American dynamism is we're going after all the sectors of GDP that are like really big and not yet basically affected by tech.

And so education, healthcare, housing, uh, defense, law, you know, just to pick five, um, you know, those are giant important slices of the economy that largely have not been transformed by technology in the last 50 years. You know, the US defense department spends, you know, coming up on a trillion dollars.

very little of that money is going to technologies and companies that have been invented frankly in the last 20 years. You know, most military hardware in the Department of Defense is, you know, the F-16 is from the 1970s.

Uh right, like the the US uh plane that does high altitude photography, the high high altitude spy plane, it's still the U2. Yeah. Which is it's just like literally a 70-y old plane. So like there's just like enormous changes um you know that that really have to happen.

And I think everybody kind of in the system knows that, but it's hard to get there. And I think, you know, a big part of that is, you know, these new companies, you know, that we're, you know, that we that we try to support, you know, they they need to show up and make their case.

But, um, you know, the entrepreneurs are fantastic. And then, you know, we we see more receptivity coming from the the system than we ever have. Yeah. Talk about the, uh, kind of position, the position that the firm is in today.

In many ways, it feels like you and Ben and the team had somewhat of a crystal ball to see how the private markets were evolving, companies staying private longer.

AI being this massive platform shift that's going to upend, you know, every industry, and then now the sort of political environment that enables industries to kind of get a a a second or third life. Uh, did you just get lucky or or did you see a lot of this coming? I mean, I think we got a few things right.

We got a bunch of stuff wrong. Um, you know, we we buried those ideas out back behind the shed. Uh, we talk about those. So, you know, we made a bunch of mistakes along the way or changed changed a bunch of things, but um, you know, we we got a few big things right.

You know, I I think the things I think we got right, you know, one is like look, the venture ecosystem, as you guys know, has just evolved enormously um, in a very positive way.

And the kind of old model of having a sort of a bunch of kind of mid-size firms, they kind of sit on Sand Hill Road and wait for the founders to, you know, to come in like that that you know, those days are kind of over.

you you have the rise of the high scale, you know, firms like like us, but you also have the rise of all these seed and angel investors, um, you know, that are that are really, you know, first money in and then really working closely with founders from the very beginning.

And I think that that ecosystem is healthier than ever and doing really well. And so, you know, that's been a big change.

um you know on the IPOs like I I don't know I would say we have changed on that which is I used to I used to complain a lot like I used to give these interviews years ago and you know like early 2010s and just complain about like the that it was basically becoming impossible for companies to go public and you know the things that had had caused that to happen and what needed to change and then you know of course nothing happened like you know there were no reforms you know there were no improvements if anything everything got worse um and so you know we and others adapted to that by you know by basically putting you know putting ourselves in a position to fund companies, you know, later in their life cycle at higher higher, you know, big larger amounts of money, you know, later growth stages.

Um, and, you know, it's now much more common for companies, tenders and these kind of private private sales, even for their employees, you know, so that's been a big change. Um, you know, but look, maybe the best directional bet was just technology was going to keep becoming important.

It's just like in in every area of our life, the the the in sector X, tech is going to be more important. There are going to be big tech companies built. They're going to really matter. Um, you know, that that that I think is just I think that's a very good bet.

I think frankly like I don't it's hard for me to ever see that ending. Yeah. What are you uh you know you guys are are with your LPs today, tomorrow, uh what are you hoping they they take away from the event? Oh, so um this is not a John Door quote, but I'll give you another quote.

uh uh for when we were raising money originally.

We're going around we're going to we raised our first fund in 2009 and you know the world had you know completely collapsed after the financial crisis and um we you know went around and we sort of briefed all the all the um all the all the you know all the vent VCs we respected u to just give them a heads up what we're doing um and um one of the GPS took us aside at the end and said you know you guys have been dealing with like these you know very smart public market investors uh he said you know you're going to the part of the job you're going to hate the most is is working with these LPs you know they're just terrible um and he said the key is you need to treat them like mushrooms Um, you uh put the you put them in a cardboard box.

You put the lid on the cardboard box and you put the box under the bed and you don't open it for two years. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. They're like, what's what's the markup today that was not John?

Um, and so, uh, you know, look, the the view Ben and I always had was the exact opposite of that, you know, which is our investors are our partners, you know, and you know, and look, that's how we want to be treated by the companies we invest in.

Um, you know, that's how we always, you know, viewed it when we were running public companies. um our investors are our partners. You know, they're they're they're they're they're in it with us together. You know, they're they're they're making a big bet on us and trusting us.

And then, you know, look, correspondingly, the promise that we made to them is like, look, we're going to try to like deliver, you know, excellent returns, but in this business, it's just going to take a long time.

And, you know, the the you know, you guys know this for for any company that really succeeds, it takes, you know, 10, 20, 30 years, you know, to to really have it succeed.

And like and along the way along the way like a lot of things happen you know everything from negative headlines to you know lawsuits disasters chaos you know all kinds of crazy you know twists and turns changes happen along the way um and so I just think it's like really important for us as a firm like we really always need to make sure that we're treating our LPs as full partners and so we what we're trying to do is be as just really like open the kimono all the way show them everything kind of expose them to everything that we're doing make sure they really understand it go as deep as they want to go on the on the technology and on the companies and I you know this is like year 15 of this for us and and so far that I think they would say that that's gone well.

That's great. Last question from me. Uh just general advice for the next generation of entrepreneurs. Are you hoping more college, less college, more coding, less coding? Like there's a ton of technological change right now. How can the next generation of entrepreneurs set themselves up for success? Yeah.

So there's an old Steve Martin uh uh Steve Martin line u you wrote this great book on on how to be a successful standup comedian.

Um, it was just, you know, short short little book, really well written and, you know, every aspired comedian in the world open it up and says Steve Martin's, you know, advice for being a great standup comedian and it was be so good they can't ignore you, right? It's like, okay, thank you, Mr. Martin.

Um, you know, I'll get right on that. Um, but like that that remains the best advice, I think, which is just like quality, like we said, like quality bears out, like quality shows.

Um and so you know a an you know really excellent thinking um coupled with a high degree of you know energy and courage um you know team building a great team and then a great product you know and a real you know insight into a market with customers figure out how to design you know not just design a product but also design a business like that's basically like my my view my view of that as an entrepreneur always like that's my job as an entrepreneur um and like if I you know if I put a lot of time and effort into that I'm very serious about it I can hopefully do a good job and I think time spent improving the quality of the thing the the product and the business is almost always better than time spent trying to you know is I don't know networking or you know publishing a presentation or you know trying to get positive press coverage or kind of all the external stuff um and so it's really it's really the quality of the thing and then you know again you know my hope would be that like we as a firm and others like us like that we really you know that we really recognize that and see it you know see it you know kind of see it when it shows up and I think that's the thing and then I think the other thing would be look like AI is superpowers right and like if you as a founder have access to you know, just to pick, you know, say Chad GPT deep research.

It's just like, oh, you know, it's just like, oh my god, like I I have a, you know, like I have a PhD level. It used to be so hard to get information, right? Um, and it and and then it's been so hard, you know, even still to figure out what to do with it.

And so to now have this tool, you know, these tools for thinking through everything and, you know, increasingly being able to do things like write code, um, you know, we ought to see a generation of of founders here that are just like incredibly capable, uh, you know, relative to to, you know, to what to what we used to be like.

Um, and you know, and we're starting to see those. We're starting to see, you know, it was say a handful of those. You know, that said, I'm still waiting for like the real conceptual breakthroughs.

Like I'm I'm still waiting for the, you know, the, you know, the company where it's like, you know, it's got a thousand employees, 999 are bots. Like, you know, I haven't seen that yet.

Um, and you know, some somebody's going to really figure out uh how to use this technology to really not not just bring a product to market, but like fundamentally change how companies operate. And I think that's probably that's probably the next big unlock.

How do you think about uh an individual's edge around their own proprietary knowledge? There had been talk of with Warren Buffett, you know, retiring, he read something like a 100,000 plus earnings transcripts, he had this incredible recall.

You're often credited with having this incredible recall and it certainly gives can give you an edge in thinking through, you know, net new opportunities and decisions.

Um do you do you think that edge remains in a world where all human knowledge is accessible in a single query or or what's your kind of mental model there? Yeah.

So I think it's going to be I mean look I think there's basically like two ways to really have a differentiated edge like in general right there's sort of you know there's kind of go deep or go broad um you know go deep has kind of become a more and more specialized expert over time and and you know look there are domains in which that like really matters you know biotech and and and things like or you know by the way designing you know AI you know working on AI foundation models like that that stuff really matters the deeper you are the better um so there's you know certain fields where that really matters I think for most fields though now with these new tools I would probably bet more on basically people who are able to be broad.

um which is to say basically can you know something about a lot of different you know kind of aspects of life and how the world works and then you can use the tool you can use the AI to go deep whenever you need to but then your job as the human is to basically then you know basically cross the domains uh across the disciplines and and look and look you see this if you talk to any like the great CEOs you see you know you kind of see this which is like the really great C great tech CEOs they're great product people and they're great sales people and they're great marketing people and they're you know and they're great legal thinkers and they're great finance people and they're great with investors and they're great with the press, right?

So, it's it's this it's this it's, you know, this sort of multi-disiplinary, you know, kind of approach uh and being able to cross domains and I, you know, I don't know, we'll see we'll see how good, you know, we'll see how good the AI gets at that. Hopefully, it gets good at that also.

But, um, you know, that's that in a lot of way, you know, the entrepreneur has always kind of had the burden um of, you know, for somebody who wants to do something serious like they have to be like that, at least to some extent.

Um, and you know, the the the best entrepreneurs of the future, I think, will probably be like quite skilled at like six or eight things and then able to kind of cross and combine them.

How do you think about the responsibility of the venture industry broadly to try to influence uh you know world you know outcomes in the world?

Uh I was sort of laughing uh you know less than a month ago uh a lot of investors were clearly shifting capital out of the US and just you know yoloing into French bonds and things like that. uh venture capitalists obviously didn't do that, right?

But at the same time, there was a high-profile story of a venture capital firm, you know, investing in in a in a Chinese AI company that that we won't mention here.

Um and it and it got me thinking around there, you know, if you're operating a a hedge fund, you can go invest wherever you want without a ton of scrutiny, right? People don't look at that as, you know, fin if you if you you know, move assets uh into some, you know, Chinese.

it's less of a um yeah it does it doesn't feel like you're you're betting against your own team in the same way. So I'm curious how you think of the the generalized kind of responsibility of of venture capitalists uh even especially as a as the sort of aum has scaled dramatically actually been the the arrow of progress.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I the big thing I think I would say is like we always we always thought and aspired that we were building things that mattered and that were going to have an impact on the world.

And for a long time, you know, we were trying to convince people that we were doing that and they never quite took us seriously because it's like, you know, it's like, all right, databases, routers, like, okay, nice, you know, nice guys, I don't even know what those things are.

Um, you know, even personal computers like a thing on my desk, I write letters on it, you know, whatever. Like just like tech was never like relevant to politics really.

um you know and called this I'm talking about like between the modern era 1950s call it through like the 2000s um and so you know and look you know generally speaking like our press coverage was you know generally people were like wow startups are exciting and you know when companies succeed it's great and then you know in the last 10 or 15 years you know like issu questions like yours you know have started to come up and then you know correspondingly just as you know like just enormous amounts of kind of criticism attacks you know kind of indictments of of you know people with all kinds of points of view on on on the industry and I would say you know in the beginning that kind of irritated me because I had gotten used to the environment where either nobody cared about us or people just said nice things about us.

What I came to realize is we're the dog that caught the bus. Like we actually now are building things that matter, right?

And so, you know, tech now interfaces direct, you know, when when Elon goes into the car market, like he just, you know, the repercussions of that, you know, to your point, like on many countries are just gigantic. And there's, you know, a thousand examples like that that we could give.

And, you know, AI probably being the big biggest of all. Um, and so, you know, look, we it worked like the the the stuff that we do now, the companies that we fund, they really matter. they really have, you know, really big implications for society and for for for policy and politics and geopolitics.

Um, and so mainly I think the responsibility is is on us as a firm as well as, you know, our companies like we need to go explain ourselves.

Um, you know, we we need to go be present in the policy debates as you know like we have a you know, we have a huge push now into policy and politics that I never imagined we would have by the way something I got wrong.

I never thought we would have that and then it became very clear that we need that you know kind of for this reason. So, so look, I I just think that's part and parcel of like of of it working, like we're going to have to do that.

And then the geopolitics, you know, the China thing, I think, is probably the most intense version of that. Um, you know, I maybe that's one we got right. We just never really did anything in China for a bunch of reasons. Um, you know, and you know, look, and by the way, we'll see.

You know, this is a fluid situation and you guys, it's been publicly reported that there, you know, talks underway with China. So, the relationship with China could be better or worse, you know, in six months. I think that's what everyone wants. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everyone wants like cooperation in general. Yeah.

Like look, it's possible. Look, I mean, I'll get that I'll give you my favorite here's my favorite story. So, um in 20 I think it was like 2011 um the at the time the Obama administration was trying to uh reestablish was trying to reestablish a relationship with Russia.

Um and this there was a famous moment where the secretary of state who was this this uh this this woman named Hillary Clinton, I don't know whatever happened to her.

I hear rumors that she then went on to I don't know did something in politics but um uh she was the secretary of state and there's this famous photo where she was on stage with Sergey Lavrov who was the foreign minister of Russia her counterpart and she brought like a big plastic red button which was the reset button right to reset you know warm relations with Russia and then and then what happened was Medvidev who was the showman showmanship the reset the reset air horn yeah exactly and then Medvidev who was the Russian he who was Putin's number two actually came to Silicon Valley and the the the secretary of state's office called all around to Silicon Valley saying, "Please, you guys, roll out the red carpet to Russia.

There are new friends. Like, do everything with them. Do whatever they want. You know, please go invest in Russian companies. Russia's building this new Silicon Valley. See what you can do to support them. " And and so it was like, you know, like it was just like a love fest.

And then, you know, fast forward four years later and, you know, Putin became, you know, Putler, as they say, and, you know, just, you know, and then, you know, Russia gate like every everything that followed.

And so, look, I I would just say part of being citizens, I think, is you know, we're just going to have to navigate through shifting geopolitics. uh our our view and quite honestly like our view is just we're going to put ourselves squarely on the side of the United States.

Our our we say our foreign policy is a firm is the United States foreign policy.

Um if they you know if they don't want us to do things in China they don't if by the way if they come to us and they say we should do more like you know we'll we'll look at it at that point but you know we're we're trying to be good citizens among everything else. Yeah, makes sense.

Talk about the evolution of the A16Z brand. you guys came out with a new logo and a website. Uh, and as always, you're good at getting the attention of, uh, the internet. So, this we talked about it on the show. We we liked it.

Yeah, I I think it's something that's different and, uh, and will age very well, but I wasn't exactly sure like what are you trying to say with it? What are the references? And even what was the process? Like, did you pick the color? I don't know. Or even that conversation. I want to know more about the brand. Yeah.

So, first of all, um you know, I know we got some Twitter controversy on it, and I just I just want to thank Kanye West um for drowning that out entirely. Yeah. Yeah. Like I don't think at at the moment. So, yeah. So, that that worked out well.

Um so, anyway, um so um yeah, look, so it's we have this incredible designer, Greg Trudell. He's got he's got a team. They did a fantastic job. I worked I I did I worked really closely with them on it. I I have no design skills, but I I provided a lot of input.

Um, you know, I think the big thing about it is what what it's intended to sort of reflect is is like an embrace of what I think is a broad a broad set of cultural changes that are happening right now. You know, that frankly you guys are a part of as well.

um which is this what I would describe as I don't know 15-year era of I don't know like cultural almost shrinkage everything get you know and you see in the design world it's like everything getting like ultra clean minimalistic and then culturally everybody getting like very cautious and careful about what they say and you know with all this kind of censorship and speech control and then you know this whole thing of everybody needs to feel feel bad about everything all the time and everybody needs to feel bad about the country and bad about their you know ancestors and bad about this and bad you know everybody's just miserable all the time Um like I I just think like that whole thing got kind of as you know I don't know you may call it like pur you know neopitinism or something totally um like that thing kind of crested in I don't know 2021 or 2022 and and you know basically in the last 3 years I I think there's this like renewed sense of energy enthusiasm ambition um you know uh achievement um you know dynamism um but like you know and and again it's like literally yeah we should have nuclear energy yeah we should have rockets going to Mars you know yeah we should like we we should have these things.

Um, and that, you know, that it's good to succeed. Um, it's good to build businesses. It's good it's good it's good to make make new things in the world, you know, and yeah, we should have the thousand, you know, yard tall, you know, shiny colossus on on Alcatraz Island. Yeah. Yeah.

I was I was going to ask my my only request is like make it make it real, you know, like like make it the Statue of Liberty of the West Coast. Yeah. I'm imagining a massive instantiation of that coin in the office and maybe physical. Not the coin like the the actual figure. True. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we need you know she has a name. She has a name. She has a name. No. What's the name? She has a name. Technomedes. Technes. I love it. Fantastic. Amazing. That's great. All right. Well, Technomedes, buy a plot of land somewhere visible from the Golden Gate and just, you know, build it the mile high, please.

Mile high. Make it happen. Make it happen. Thank you so much for joining. This is Thank you for coming on. Really enjoyed it. Have fun with the with the team and the LPS. Cheers. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Fantastic. Let's give it up for Mark Andre. Absolute dog. Fantastic. Allocator size lord. All the above.

People love to yap online, but you talk to the team and it's hard not to be gigab bullish. For sure. There will never be enough venture capital. We didn't even get to that, but we'll save that for Ben. Yeah, we'll save that for Ben. Anyway, should we do some timeline? Should we get out of here?

What are you thinking, Jory? Well, John, I'd like to talk to you about Figma. Okay, tell me about Figma. Figma is the tool to design and build products. It's the tool that we use. Everybody knows that already.

Y I've been a DAU for my entire career at this point and we are very lucky to have them as a sponsor and a partner on the show. Uh crazy story by the way from David George earlier talking about how uh Dylan came to him uh during during the middle. That is so funny. You want to invest?

Yeah, we've been talking about this for a while. Yeah, same price. We've been discussing the price, right? That price, but I mean that was a fantastic time to actually invest. Yeah, had basically uh you know, just shut off and that was when uh how about now? How about now? Put your money where your mouth is.

That's why Dylan's one of the best ever doing. But um but I I really appreciated getting a snapshot of of everybody at the firm. It's such a fun massive organization. And like Eric said, 600 million or sorry, 6 600 people, not 600 million. Sorry, we're we're in hour hour four of the show. Anyways, what else we got?

What else is in the news? Um, Tigers kind of out of the game. They led 47 series A's in 2022. This is from Aaron Harris. Tiger hasn't led a series A since June 2023. Although, we saw that they are changing their strategy and they're doing pretty well on their OpenAI investments.

So, we'll see how the overall fund performs. But they were, you remember back in 2022, they were going crazy. They would meet meet a founder, term sheet, same day on the call, they would give you a decision.

It was actually really nice because you just take the meeting and you'd know exactly where you stood by the end of the call. Um, but obviously a shifting strategy for Tiger and the crossover funds, a lot of them stepped back. All I want is for them is for OpenAI to to hit that one T mark and then Tiger You know what?

We actually were on to something there. Spam. It doesn't even It felt like they were doing more than 47 series A's, but that was 2022. Series A's. Well, yeah. They were doing B's and C's. They were doing everything really fast.

But also 2022 was there was really only like four or five months where things were really ripping and then things became it became obvious that that things were getting a little dicey. Yeah. Yeah. Interest rates went up. No board seats move very fast.

That uh that Walmart capital as Ev Randall at Kleiner Perkins refers to refers to refer to it as uh Ryan Peterson says a gentleman is never rude except on purpose. And Paul Graham chimes in to say the the original version, a gentleman is someone who is never unintentionally rude. Makes a stronger claim.

It's defining the term instead of just telling us one thing that's true of them. I like this because it's it's essentially a coinage. So instead of saying a gentleman is never rude on purpose, say a gentleman is someone who's never intentionally unintentionally rude, define a gentleman.

It's kind of recoining the phrase. So you take a you take a word that everyone knows, you know, uh an entrepreneur is someone who never accepts a down round, who always pre always announces a preempted round, who always has who always gets preempted. Yeah.

A generational go they go out to raise they they still get preempted. Yeah. It's great. Uh PY is talking about Harry's. They just launched a new razor. They've been in the business for so long. These Harry's guys, you had a good take here. So they So it's a very polished ad.

It is honestly a fantastic ad that's like half vibriel, half comedy. The founders are in there. I thought it was a fantastic ad and I learned that hey, they launched a new razor. It's kind of like four blades has a pivot. So it's a more modern design. Apparently that was under patent. the patent expired.

So, they were able to enter that market and they already own a German razor factory. Do you know the story of Harry's? They their seed round was like hund00 million dollars and they bought a razor factory because the the whole industry was very monopolistic. Yeah.

And um but they're they're positioning themselves as like we're going up against big razor which is true like Gillette is huge huge company. Um, but also I think that they tried to sell themselves to Big Razer at some point.

And so there's a question here in my mind of like do can they really say that they're little tech still? Can they really say that they're little razor once you at what point claim we're now big razor? Exactly. I think at this point it's over a decade old. You're part of big razor.

I'm putting you in the big razor bucket. Yep. Anyway, um Sean Frank had a good post. Talked to a founder today. Her business was worth more than Ridge, growing 100% year-over-year. I asked a personal question. How much money do you have? Oh, basically none. Business is huge, growing fast.

Only ever raised a small amount, but no cash for salaries, no cash for dividends, no secondaries. I think this is really stressful. She's top 1% of 1% of outcomes on paper worth hundreds of millions. Still has to rent an apartment. Rush to your first million liquid.

Even if even if you have to grow slower, even if you have to take a lower valuation to get secondaries, money doesn't make you happy. But it certainly reduces the level of stress. So interesting take. Um what else is here? Oh, we got to cover the 747s.

They're uh the 7478 Boeing business business jet BBJ VV VIP aircraft. Here's a comprehensive list of these planes. People think 747s are around. People think private jets are around. Really the the overlap of private jets that are at this scale is quite quite small.

And so Qatar has three, Kuwait has one, Oman has one, Brunai has one, Morocco has one, Turkey has one, Saudi has one, Egypt has one, and the US has technically has two for Air Force ones, and that's it. And so, first, shame on all of the tech elite for not stepping into the 747 BBJ game.

We're going to get a lot of uh He's a 737. The other one, the other one that we saw, which will go unnamed recently, that was also a 757. Ah, so 747 is the biggest, the most expensive, the truly elite. Two two stories in many configurations, absolutely massive plane, very expensive.

And it's of course the plane that uh that is being rumored to have been delivered to Trump as a gift, and there's a lot of debate over that. Um, but I mean, I say America needs more 747s, BBJs for sure. That's essential. Uh, this PY post kind of relates to what Mark was talking about.

Everything is technology is breaking down 2025 venturebacked exits over1 billion dollars and you're gonna have to hit the size gong multiple times for this because we got whiz at 32 billion core at 23 billion ampier at 6. 5 billion deliveroo it's 3. 9 billion winds surf at 3 billion derabit at 2. 9 move works at 2.

9 scorpion at 2. 5 poppy at 1. 7 ninja trader at 1. 5 hidden road at 1. 3 and seven rooms at 1. 2 too. So, an absolute stacked year of liquidity above the $1 billion mark for tech companies. Everything is technology. Thanks for highlighting it, Py. You'll love to see it.

The data is from Pitchbook and he's breaking it down for you. Oh, I like this post from Signal. And then we'll get out of here. You should be able to trade employees like sports team but like sports teams trade players. Would be hilarious.

Today, OpenAI traded two mid-level engineers for a researcher and a veteran UX manager. There should be a trade deadline every year. Okay. I love Signal, but I I basically posted this exact same thing like six months ago. You remember that? I think you did. I think we also went equally equally viral.

So, I think I uh I think I must have um I must have He's trading your post for one of his posts and he's play the hits. If you're not going to play them, he's going to play them. I love to see it. Anyway, uh the last piece of news from Semi analysis.

Over the past 30 days, the tech leads responsible for RockM PyTorch have submitted 14 PRs. That's uh that's AMD's implementation of PyTorch that runs on AMD graphics cards that have been behind uh versus Nvidia. PyTorch tech leads have submitted 22 poll requests and so AMD is finally catching up to Nvidia.

Just like VLM ma maintainers, we are working on internal infra infra pipeline to track the quantity and quality of PRs for Nvidia and AMD to gain additional insights. Stay tuned. And so Dylan Patel from Silh from Semi analysis uh fantastic analyst obviously, but he's coming on the show in a few weeks.

Uh we'll have to ask him about the race between AMD and Nvidia, but it feels like it's heating up and I love a horse race in tech. So love a horse race, John. So stay tuned. We'll see you tomorrow. We have a massive show for you. Um, and we're going to be in a new studio soon.

So, please leave us five stars on Apple Podcast, Spotify. One of directors said, uh, if we don't ask you to leave, you have to do it. You have to do it or we're going to shut the show down. If you like the show at all, leave us five stars. They said they're going to pull the plug. We're gonna pull the plug. Go do it.

Thank you for tuning in today. We love doing this show and fantastic. We hope you have a wonderful evening. We'll talk to you later. Cheers. Bye.