Loading...
Loading...

Anish Acharya speaks with Peter Yang, creator and product lead at Roblox, about how personal AI agents are replacing the apps we open every day, why coding agents feel like slot machines, and what happens when the cost of building software drops to near zero. They discuss why future companies will stay radically small, how the IDE is becoming a thinking tool rather than a making tool, and why human ambition will always create more jobs than AI eliminates.
Follow Peter Yang on X: https://x.com/petergyang
Follow Anish Acharya on X: https://x.com/illscience
Stay Updated:
Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube
Find a16z on X
Find a16z on LinkedIn
Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify
Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts
Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg
Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Interesting stuff. We'll eat the world. I feel like coding will eat all knowledge work, right?
And we've got to go into the direction already. The whole agent stack is emerging.
Yeah. Identity, payments, marketing, even CLI versus MCP.
All of these are really new things. And I think a lot of the old playbook goes away.
Yeah, it's the whole whole whole new world. I hope more companies will stay small.
And I think the founders of this generation realize that. They want to stay as small as possible.
Yeah. And instead of having a 10% product team, you have a 203% product team,
and a bunch of agents help help you. Yeah. Someone tweeted that the job market is so bad that
I can only pursue my dreams now. Yeah. So like, it's like, you know, it's like, yeah.
So maybe you lost your job, but like, now you have to do your own thing.
Yeah. And have a shot at actually achieving it. Yeah. Yeah.
Most people open their phone to feel something connected, productive, entertained.
Each app is a door to a different emotional state.
In 2007, the iPhone gave us the app grid. 19 years later,
billions of people still tapped the same colored squares dozens of times a day.
The interface became so familiar. It stopped feeling like technology. It became reflex.
Now a generation of builders is collapsing that entire grid into a single conversation.
One agent that checks your analytics, updates your documents, runs your errands,
and gives you a pep talk on your morning walk. Not because the apps failed,
but because talking is faster than tapping. The question is, what happens to products,
companies, and careers when building software costs almost nothing? A16Z general partner,
Anish Acharia speaks with Peter Yang, creator and product lead at Roblox.
All right. Welcome, everyone. I've got my friend Peter Yang here. Peter, welcome.
Yeah, good to be here. It's good to see you again. Yeah, it's great to see you. Peter and I
worked together at Credit Karma for a brief stint, and then we went our separate ways,
and I rediscovered Peter from his prolific posts on X and your YouTube, and you've got a little
bit of a Clark Kent Superman thing going because you've still got a day job, right? That's
what I said with a job. Yes. Yeah. Can you share where? Yeah. I like our Roblox as a PM.
Amazing Roblox. And Jason Portfolio company. Yes. One of my favorites. Well, incredible,
man. Let's get right into it. Maybe I'll start with a softball fun question, and then we're
going to talk about everything in the claw ecosystem. We're going to talk about coding agents.
We're talking about a little bit about maybe what students should study, advice, and some of the
things that you've talked about online. Yeah. Sure. Maybe to start, what is the name of your,
how many claws do you have, and tell me their names? I don't have one. I call her Zoe. Zoe.
But I have like multiple conversations going with her. Okay. Yeah. And why Zoe?
I have two girls, and I was going to call my younger one Zoe, and I did not. So I'm like,
I call my open claw Zoe. I say, yeah, it is your fallback plan. Peter, tell me a little bit about
open claw, how you discovered it, how you're using it today, and what you think the implications are.
Yeah. I was lucky to interview Peter Steinberger before he became super famous in the whole thing
blew up. And then Rathra, you know, we have set up the thing. It took forever to set up super
janky. And yeah, it does a lot of things for me. It like pulls Alex from me across YouTube and
like memory, bank account. It can help take Google talk comes from me. It can be a little
with websites from me. But if I was honest with you, dude, like I mostly just talk to it through
voice and get a voice replies. And like every other day I asked you to give me like a pep talk.
Like look through all your memory and like give me some like deep insights that I don't know about.
Okay. And it gave me like, like, I was on a walk and it gave me like a three minute pep talk.
That was like really amazing, really amazing. It was something about, oh, you're like,
talking to me about your creator business and the blah blah and like your job. But just remember
that your kids seven four are going to grow up very soon. And they're going to spend time with you.
Wow. So you should re optimize for them instead. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah.
And I mean, very cool. But also something that all the language models could have done prior.
Yeah. So what's the difference between this in a use case like that?
Yeah. That's a really good question. So I don't know. Because I think install on
10th program, it just feels like more personal than using like cloud or chat GPT. And it just feels
like something like texting bed. Yeah. This is probably not very healthy, but like I text to
it in bed. I talk to it during my commute. And it feels like it feels more like a personal like
after a human. Yeah. Yeah. So then so how much for you is open claw about the kind of interface,
like pushing it to messaging and maybe helping to trick our brain into feeling like, hey, this is
a person or a person asked thing versus all the other components of the stack, the self modification,
skills, directory, every all the rest. I think it's probably 80% just the purple person,
but part of it because I mostly just talk to it and like, you know, sort of voice. But I also think
like it's something for first of all, it is pretty janky. It tends to forget things a lot.
Yeah. To keep in mind. Yeah. But like any kind of zany idea that I have, I just have to talk to
it and it can probably just do. Yeah. It's kind of just like, like the other day I was doing voice
replies with it. I was like, hey, could we just have a live phone call instead? And then it's like,
okay, you got to connect to it or you got to do all the stuff. And then okay, fine. I went off and
did it. Yeah. And then we had a phone call. It called my phone. I really have that set up.
Yeah. I'm dying to set that up. Okay. It's not very good though. It's like the latency is bad.
But the fact that I was able to get going is like pretty impressive. So it's kind of like any kind
of crazy idea I have, it can kind of kind of do. And then in practice, how are you doing that?
Are you asking it to write a skill on the fly? Are you discovering a skill? How much of the code
genre are you actually using? I mean, I thought doing super casual way with like just like a friend.
So I'm like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
phone call. Yeah. Okay. You gotta do that. Is that okay? Fine. I, all my computer, I'll do
all the stuff. And then it's like you know, call in and we troubles you a little bit and then it works.
So I, I, with cloud, I have like very fan, and I see prompts, like very long prompts,
but with mom, I just kind of text it. Yeah. Really interesting. So we sort of touched on a
couple of things, actually. So one, there's mobile messaging. Yeah. There's the memory system.
There's the sort of code generation component. How much do you think the memory system, like,
Is it innovative because it's file-based?
You said that it forgets things, but so do language models.
Do you think the memory system is well done?
Does it hold it back?
Or does it enable it?
I think the default memory system is actually not that great.
Okay.
Like the way I understand it works is just like a M-memory to MD text file.
Yes.
And every day, pretty right?
And every updates.
And it's tested for getting things a lot.
Yeah.
So I actually installed this like three layer of memory system that I don't fully understand.
But it has like fancy.
It has Toby's QMD search tool.
Okay.
And then you install like a two gigabyte thing and then it got a little bit better.
Okay.
But I said to remind it, I have to put it into the agents like MD, pay like before you
answer any question from me, go through all your memory and check everything.
Yeah.
And they also have to forget that it can do stuff like you got them a good dog.
It's all I can do that.
Yes, you can.
It's your file.
Yes.
So you have to remind it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Really interesting.
Well, maybe let's get into a little bit of the controversy.
You'd said that apps will die.
Claw is going to be everything and everywhere.
Yeah.
I mean, talk us through that point of view.
Yeah.
Well, first of all, I do all kinds of random stuff that's not very well thought out.
We take it all as fact.
Yeah.
But I do think like ever since I set up all these apps like Mercury, MCP and all this
kind of crap on my open call, like I don't actually open those apps much anymore.
Yeah.
But I do agree with you.
Like I think the ones that are going to die first or like maybe get less usage first
is like apps that you're just opening to try to complete a task.
Right.
You actually try to do something.
Like apps that you don't need to get entertainment can probably survive a little bit longer.
Like apps that I want you to complete a task, like it's just ways to text my agent to
do it for me.
Yeah.
It's like you have a really good admins.
Is it do stuff for you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so how much are you finding is this reduced your smartphone usage outside of modular
open call?
Yeah.
No, because I'm like a Twitter addict.
So you just don't want to wait too much.
But yeah, in terms of using those apps, it's definitely reduced it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because you're not going to ask Zoe, hey, read my ex for me and tell me what's interesting.
I mean, it sends me like a morning briefing with the top two tweets and stuff that like
a trend trends.
But yeah, still open X.
I look through it.
Yeah.
It's interesting because I've always had this theory that people open apps on their phone
because they want to feel a feeling.
Yeah.
And I think, of course, there's some like functional set of needs, which is why you open
calendar or something.
But I also think that what's up is you want to feel connected and slack as you want to
feel productive.
And of course, TikTok is you want to feel entertained.
So I do wonder with just one agent, how do you sort of do the context switching of like,
when are you flirting?
When are you getting shit done?
I mean, in a sense, app gives you a nice, it sort of gives you a nice division of the
intent.
Yeah.
That's what you don't get with Zoe.
That's a good thing.
But I do have multiple channels set up with Zoe in Telegram.
Like why is just to write random voice replies?
And then why is we're actually working on our project together?
And then I want to have a public channel where like I'm giving demos.
I don't want to reveal private information.
Yes.
So I have like multiple channels.
And is that implemented as sub agents or no, is this something junky set up?
I found online.
Like you can set up a multiple Telegram channels.
And I'm not sure if you actually remember us across the channels, but like you can
have separate conversations at least got it.
And how transparent are you with your agent?
Does it do this year of personal email or I'm like super transparent.
Well, I did it by the Mac many I set up.
It's on email.
Okay.
And but I gave it like read access to my email and like counter.
And I also gave it like write access to some docs.
Yeah.
But it kind of scrolled my entire drive or something.
Yeah.
So how do you imagine OpenClaw, which it's sort of an architecture and primitive?
Yeah.
How does it get productized packaged for the world?
I mean, I think that's what Peter Steinberg is working out at OpenClaw, right?
It's probably going to build something to chat GPT, which every use is.
So that chat GP can actually get stuff done for you and like maybe feels more human.
Yeah.
Let me round about chat GPT.
Please.
Yeah.
For some reason, they trained the model.
So that at the end of every conversation is always, if you want, I can also do X and
Y.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I got so annoyed by it that I kind of turned from chat GPT.
Oh, really?
It probably increases their metrics, but it's just like super annoying.
It's like, why don't you just do it in the first place?
That's like, are you a cloud guy now?
Yeah.
I'm a cloud guy now.
But I either use codex to code.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You like codex, you prefer to code code or you use both.
Codex when I want to try to do something real and the cloud code is when I'm just like
by it, by it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting.
I think they live at different points and there's a sort of space of trade-offs.
Yeah.
Whereas I find a cloud code in Opus 4.6.
It's a little more chatty.
It makes more assumptions, but it can be more pleasant for a synchronous experience.
Yeah.
It really thinks hard and it's more often accurate, but sometimes it's sort of like being
in a conversation or the other person pauses for three minutes to think.
Yeah.
So you don't have to flow state, right?
It's hard to get a flow.
Like, cloud code, dude, I do that our day at a clock almost like a slot machine.
It's like it has different things each time and it's just 100% just like, I do think that
if you think remember we were talking about an old social networking era, it was variable
scheduled rewards.
Right.
That was the whole magic of it.
Like, you open your Facebook feed and once it was like, boring, boring, oh my god,
this is so exciting.
Yeah.
So coding agents have the exact same property, also the time is variable.
So sometimes you get something in a second, sometimes it takes five minutes.
So up to a certain point, I actually think that both of those things give it that casino
like feeling.
Yeah.
And then everything that's very different about the proshoes you're maybe just the way
works.
It's like code is kind of like self explanatory.
Yeah.
Like, clock hole, you have all this crazy shit.
You have like hooks and like skills and like you have to plug in.
If you're not following, yeah, if you're not following X, you have no idea how to customize
this thing.
Yeah.
You're like, it's part of you.
So it's kind of hard to charm.
It's interesting with, so I've customized mine because also I read the long thing that
Boris put out.
Yeah.
But I will say that I think that cloud code, a lot of the reasons that I enjoy it are
just harness features and like, for example, if you cut an image, you have to paste it
into a file before and then paste that file into codex.
Okay.
You can't just take a subset of the screen, screenshot it and then paste it directly into
codex the same way you can with cloud code already.
Okay.
Things like that, cloud code added voice, it's a little bit janky right now, but it's
going in the right direction.
So they've just got a bunch of quality of life things.
Yeah.
Cloud code speaks to cloud and Chrome.
Okay.
And codex doesn't speak to Atlas.
Got it.
So I think these are all things that open AI will fix.
Yeah.
I think codex is actually a much better model, but they don't exist today.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They need to fix it.
I mean, but they're going to go all the way on codex.
I'm sure.
Yeah.
Talk to me about coding agents.
What's your general view?
Do you think it's the end of SAS?
Do you think these are just a toy?
Well, first of all, I'm like a lot of engineers.
I'm like a novice.
But I do hear that I was talking to some folks the other day and AI native start startup.
And they're basically trying to have a bunch of vibe quarters and all the vibe quarters
are just trying to build internal tools that replace their SAS that they're paying for.
Really?
So it's an actual company is doing this.
It's an actual company.
Yeah.
It's an AI native company.
It's like one of the vibe coding companies.
It's like one of the more powerful growers.
Interesting.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
Oh, I see.
So they're actually an app-gen company.
They're app-gen company and they're paying for a bunch of SAS.
They want to get rid of the payment.
They want to buy code internal tools.
They're using it.
Okay.
So in that case, they might be the most extreme form of adopter because their own product
is app-gen.
So they use app-gen for everything.
Yeah.
I guess is your prediction, though, that the average company will turn off a slack or
deal or...
I don't think...
I feel like slack has a lot of legs because slack can also be the place where you talk
to agents themselves.
Mm-hmm.
But some of the other ones...
They are pretty complicated.
So it's kind of hard to buy code like that stuff.
But I feel like if you have an app like maybe Cali or something more simple, then why
actually I pay for it.
I'll just...
Why should I pay for it, though?
The Cali point is that it's not that expensive and do you really want to maintain your own
calendar thing?
Yeah.
Versus pay 20 bucks a month.
It always gets updated.
It's always up.
Yeah.
Because it's just like a fixed amount of capacity that anyone in the organization is going
to have for all this stuff.
Yeah.
That's true.
I know.
Unless you hire like that, you get a buy code and it's like the start-up doesn't make
sense.
Yeah.
Just buy pull stuff.
But then it's the cost benefit versus just paying for Cali.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Isn't it just something about...
For example, like a lot of people are tweenbox sigma.
Reversally.
Like the stock is down.
Like, you know, are you going to survive?
Yeah.
And I feel like the jury's out there.
It's kind of hard to say.
Yeah.
I feel like all the designers are still on the fake pygma.
But as a designer, you kind of need to learn how to buy code.
Otherwise, you're going to...
If you don't want to do pygma, you're probably going to be like, I'll update in a couple
years.
Yeah.
My counterpoint to that is that I think that I've thought a lot about the sort of thinking
tools versus making tools, right?
Yeah.
The IDE was historically a making tool.
It's a place for execution.
I think it's migrating away from that.
And now, with execution when it's zero, I think these sort of like multi-agent next-gen
idees, a lot of them are about trying things and using the trial and error as a way to
inform your thinking.
Yeah.
Like, a lot of times I'll just build a feature in a really naive way and I'll hammer the
coding agent until it works, then I'll say, hey, write all the things that you would have
done differently.
And I'll go back to the initial point and redo it.
So I wonder if...
And I think the pygma actually does both.
I think it's a place for design execution, but it's also an important place for design
thinking.
Yeah.
And you need to be highly relevant in the knee stack.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I totally agree.
But I think the A16Z has like a, you guys investing pencil or something?
Pencil.dead.
Speedrun.
Yeah, speedrun.
And yeah, think of what needs to like level up this AI tooling, because like wasn't
used as agents clever with you and do stuff that's like very interesting.
I know it's top of mind for them.
Yeah.
What do you think are the most under-discussed capabilities of coding agents?
What's under-hyped and maybe what's over-hyped as well?
This is probably not under-hyped, but I feel like, I feel like, and interested in
software, we'll eat the world.
I feel like coding will eat all knowledge work, right?
And kind of going that direction already, like I think levelable recently launched like
today.
Yeah.
But they can support everything.
And it can make decks.
Yeah.
So yeah.
And I feel like everyone's changed.
It's just.
And it's probably in the lead.
Yeah.
I don't want to use PowerPoint anymore.
I don't want to write a group.
Yeah.
I hate writing Google Docs, dude.
Plus my entire life.
Yeah.
So like for the other day, I was writing my blog post and instead of just like typing
it out, I was like, hey, let me just use Cloud Code and let me give you a bunch of
feedback.
And you write it for me.
Yeah.
And then you stick it down.
Yeah.
It did the first 80 percent.
The last 20 percent I said, it's a madly equivalent.
They're like two to three things stuff.
Yeah.
But like that's the way I work now.
I never start from zero.
Like I always get the first 80 percent from AI, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
If you look, there are also like historical analogs of this.
I think Satya said this, which is that Excel is the most powerful or most popular programming
language in the world.
Yeah.
And then it's sort of a programming language that millions and millions, I mean, a hundred
billion plus people must know maybe even more.
And yet we don't think of it that way.
It's a way to sort of describe and solve problems.
Yeah.
And I think coding agents are going to be that, of course, times a thousand, where even
things that feel subjective, like writing Google Docs, can be represented in the coding
domain in such a way that it's more satisfying, more productive, more high leverage to use
agents to do it.
Yeah.
Because Excel was like popular because it was super approachable, right?
Yeah.
And like coding agents, the code is basically gone.
It was like app shadowed away.
You're just talking to some agent and getting it do stuff.
So yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It's going to be huge.
Yeah.
What do you think the future company looks like?
Is it just a bunch of agents with a CEO?
Is the CEO an agent?
I mean, what is the role for people in a company in the future?
Okay.
Well, I have some hot tech.
So we both work to add some companies together and let me give you a hot tech man.
Maybe we cut this out.
But I feel like as a company gets bigger, it tends to become like a shitty, shitty replace
to work, dude.
Yeah.
Because there's a lot of people.
You have to align.
That's axiomatic, right?
That's coming.
I remember our company.
Yes.
We have what is like okay, our meetings and everything, a room for three hours.
I'm about okay.
I'm just like, dude, this is like wasting my life.
Yeah.
So what I'm going with this is I hope more companies will stay small.
And I think the founders of this generation realize that like they want to stay as small
as possible.
Yeah.
And instead of having 10% product team, you have a two or three% product team and just
have a bunch of agents to help you.
Yeah.
I think it's way easier to cross-fansher align with agents than with humans.
Yeah.
Well, actually, in a sense, the agent's actually because it takes the emotion out of it,
too.
And imagine if I sent my agent, you sent your agent to go negotiate something and they
came out with some conclusion, it's not emotional.
It's not for you.
That's great.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, it's funny.
One of the things that we've been talking about is what is the pro case for AI work in
terms of employee experience?
And I think it's what you're describing, right?
Like how do you increase the NPS of work?
Yeah.
So if we go all the way back or even broadly the NPS of the human experience, right?
I think of the NPS of the day to day human in 10,000 BC when it just don't get eaten by
the line.
That's a good day, right?
Or maybe a hundred years ago, it's, okay, don't get killed at the factory, crush by the
steam press or whatever else.
And now a lot of it is, like, just don't get sucked into some high emotion, sort of negotiation
with another VP's subordinate.
Yeah, like a 50-message of the slack thread going back and forth.
Yeah, which exactly.
And then eventually, everyone's like, I don't want to tell the CEO, and eventually it
goes there.
And it's just terrible.
So maybe the future of this is that a lot of that emotional subjective work gets handled.
Yeah.
It's kind of guiding the process, but not in the middle of it in a way that just doesn't
suit us as humans.
Yeah.
At least that the life was a PM creator.
And like, I feel like all the PMs actually just want to create products, just want to create
products.
Yeah.
Well, that's why we all got into it.
It's so interesting.
I mean, Nicole talks about it a little time.
Like every PM's sort of view of the ideal PM is the innovator, like I came up with the
new thing.
Yes.
I had the big insight in it.
Unlock the product.
Yeah.
I think the black pill is, I don't think most PMs know how to do that.
In fact, many companies have zero people that know how to do that at all in any function.
Yeah.
So it would nonetheless.
I think PMs aspire to be able to do that.
And they should either do it and either be successful or maybe not successful and move
to a different function.
My house for like my hot take is like basically all the PMs I know are trying to buy code
a nice and weakens.
Yeah.
And I feel like my hot take is that I feel like if you're actually unemployed, like you
probably have more time to be a builder and like to be innovative.
Yeah.
As you like play all this stuff and learn all the stuff, what the PMs are trying to do.
Or maybe be an engineer in the team.
Yeah.
I used to be an engineer and I got sort of, I don't know if I got forced to be a PM.
And maybe I also perceive PM as like being a little more high status when I joined
Google.
But then eventually you come around on the other side, you're like, this is terrible.
Yeah.
Like you never really get the satisfaction of actually shifting other than once a quarter
when you shift.
I mean, the PM skills of talking to users and like trying to figure out what to do.
Like with the problem to solve it.
Like those are very important.
Still.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, you got to learn multiple has to do.
You got to go put a thing yourself, go prototype it and get some feedback.
And then maybe brand engineer law.
How much do you think that everyone has to go as fast as, I mean, like Gary was talking
about stymies and skipping sleep and very 10G stack?
I mean, is, hey, I mean, is that like the default way that we all need to work?
Or do you think there's a trade-off for thoughtfulness?
I think it's very easy now with all these AI tools just going like 10 different directions
at once.
Yeah.
So sometimes you do have to slow down and try to figure out where you want to go.
Yeah.
But I also believe that the traditional process where you like do any planning and do
is for like fully realizing a local, a sort of local maxima, you should go very fast,
right?
So let's say you kind of hill climb, you get to the bottom of a new local maxima.
I think with agents, you should be able to get to the top of that hill extremely fast,
right?
You have a new insight, build everything around the insight.
So it's fully expressed.
And then I think to get to the next, the next sort of hill, should have like fast and
slow.
That's probably the future way.
Yeah.
I think so.
And like, you got to go to that random log, trying to find where I'm going to take a take
as a lot, right?
Yeah.
So we're talking before we started recording about some of the business in a box platforms.
Have you looked at them?
Do you have a view?
I've looked at post, post, yeah, that we talked about.
I don't know if the guy intentionally made it the opposite of AI Slot or is it kind
of a thing?
I think so.
Yes.
Yes.
That's funny.
Well, I mean, I have a pretty big public presence, right?
So I collect all my shit to it.
And then I mean, it definitely gives a good peek into what's possible.
But like right now, it's probably still pretty like early stage, like it's time to run
like Facebook ads.
Yeah.
Why am I running Facebook ads?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm very excited about it because it does feel like it's a path for more people
to build companies.
Yeah.
There's single one person companies.
If you think about how competitive it is to build a billion-dollar business, like the
markets that support it, the number of people trying versus 100 million versus 10 million
versus 100,000-dollar-tam, like maybe there are these pockets all over the country, all
over the world, where there are opportunities for 100,000-dollar-tam products.
Yeah.
And that would change somebody's life.
Now, that's not an enterprise venture-backed company, but that's okay.
Yeah.
So I hope that whole thesis works because I do think it's a way to get more people to participate.
Yeah.
And all my kids do.
I want them to just build push-out businesses in high school, and they can skip the whole
college in a corporate life.
Yeah.
Well, dude, I think this is for 10 years, there's this moral panic about the kids want
to be YouTubers.
Yeah.
You're a YouTuber.
Yeah.
And in the vein of Mr. Beast, I think the pro-case for that actually is that the kids wanted
to be entrepreneurs or have agency.
And the only channel for people if there weren't programmers was creating YouTube videos
at least online.
Yeah.
So if you're like an online native generation, you want to create something you're not
a programmer, you make a YouTube show.
Now you can make a lot more than that.
Yeah.
You can build whatever you want.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So exactly.
You'd be very excited.
Yeah.
Any other heart takes for us?
I'm curious about your thoughts, but it's actually.
So I feel like a lot of people are saying like agents will interact with your product first.
Yeah.
And then you see all these great companies like building like APIs and MCPs.
But like, how do you think about you being a consumer for a while?
So like, the consumer is like, you got to get the user to come back and use your product,
right?
Yeah.
But now the user is like, hey, it goes down to the agent to use it.
So how do you think about retention and all this basic stuff, like, how do you even
like brand equity?
Because the agent is supposed to put in some API.
Yeah.
I don't know, okay.
We had to have indirect monetization.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Like, we're never charging consumers directly for these products, which is why you got to add
the stuff.
Add.
Isn't just large scale network.
And we all obsessed with retention and engagement and whales and all of these things
really mattered because we didn't simply charge people for products.
Mm-hmm.
So I think one big thing that's actually really helped in the AI era with that is that
consumers are now excited to try new things.
They're willing to pay.
They're willing to pay a really high price point.
There's also consumption revenue and consumer for the first time.
Like the first time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you have to charge our customer on day one.
Mm-hmm.
So the one thing is that like the business model simplification, I think, will really help
with a lot of what you're describing.
Mm-hmm.
To, I think that a lot of the products will have a sort of, it'll have an API interface
for your agency interact with or for transactional sort of wrote things.
Yeah.
And then it'll have a consumption based interface as well.
Mm-hmm.
So you can also imagine like a mobile app or there's like the feed, but then you can kind
of turn it over to where the wires are and you can just ask for things to get done or
you can just see the log of the things that got done.
Yeah.
Maybe people will do both, right?
I mean, you can imagine credit karma where we work.
Like once in a while you want to just take a look at your score history and a few other
maybe credit card offers.
I don't know.
I mean.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, if I think in my score of all the credit card offers, I'll definitely do that.
Exactly.
Yeah.
On the other hand, like sometimes you want to just be like, yo, can you just fix all
my stuff or what stuff did you fix this week?
How much money did I say?
Yeah.
I've got it.
Yeah.
It's definitely interesting.
Yeah.
But look, I also just think the whole agent stack is emerging.
Yeah.
The comments marketing, we don't even see a why versus MVP and like all of these are
really new things.
And I think a lot of the old playbook goes away.
Yeah.
Is the whole new world.
And like in 2025, I thought agents was overhyped, but now I think it's a really
common com name like, too.
I don't know.
It's just the word is frustrating because it gets so overloaded.
Yeah.
There's like workflows like oscoshion.
Totally.
I've been trying to just say, can we just say like modeling a loop?
Yeah.
Is that the model that I use to was?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But nobody likes to hear that it's agents is much flashier.
Yeah.
Yeah, my, my hope is that all this stuff's like a lot of people are think we're going to lose our jobs
It was probably what we happened at some point, but I hope all this stuff makes just makes the human work more fun
Like I got jobs more fun. Yeah, dude
I don't think we're all going to lose our jobs
Like I really think the and we see this a lot of companies
So we look at a ton of companies and we've seen two different buckets
So one bucket is hey, we dramatically increase productivity for a person or a team
We see this in like recruiting
But we couldn't do 100% of the job
So we could do the phone screen
But we couldn't obviously show the candidate around the office
Or we could do the phone screen and we could answer all the questions about the company
And we could even do the like comp negotiation
But we couldn't do the onboarding
Yeah
The other style of company which we see which is maybe a Deckergon
Right or a happy robot is hey, we did a 100% of a job like customer support
Okay, the customer called in, they had a question
We hopefully resolved their query and then that's it
And that is 100% automated
I'd say that second group where you have 100% automation of a job function is really rare
Almost every AI product, AI native X or Y we see is able to provide dramatic lift
But it's not able to do 100%
And the last 10% is doing these humans
Yeah, so it's today anyway, it's still humans that do that stuff
And it's interesting too because the buyer looks at that as software
As expensive software
Whereas in the case of something like a happy robot, Deckergon Sierra
They look at it as like cheap labor
So I do think there's a different buyer mindset
But because there's been this difficulty of getting to 100% automation
I think a lot of the efficiency gain shows up
In just a different way, probably not last jobs
Maybe we get like the European software day work week
Maybe companies got like twice as productive
I have no idea
But you don't think that there's going to be a transition from like
These like 10,000 plus people companies
Laying a lot of people off
To hopefully like more smaller companies like solar partners and stuff like that
I think yes, I think that the sort of shape of the economy is going to change
Like the amount of concentration
But I just don't think there's going to be last jobs
I think human ambition has no ceiling
Human desire has no ceiling
And just read any mildly interesting science fiction book
There's no way this is the peak expression of all the stuff that we want
And we need and we're going to convince ourselves
And all the new things that you read about every day
Is these luxuries, peptides
And everybody is going to have all of that stuff
And then want even more
You know, dude, I saw we get through about this
Like someone tweeted that the job market is so bad
That I can only pursue my dreams now
Or something
So yeah, so maybe you lost your job
But like now you have to do your own thing
And have a shot of actually achieving it
Well, awesome, man, maybe that's a good positive note to end on
Yeah, that's a good note
Yeah, cool, good to see you, dude
Thanks, Peter
Thanks for listening to the A16z podcast
If you enjoyed the episode
Let us know by leaving a review at ratethispodcast.com slash A16z
We've got more great conversations coming your way
See you next time
As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only
Should not be taken as legal business, tax, or investment advice
Or be used to evaluate any investment or security
And is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16z fund
Please note that A16z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast
For more details, including a link to our investments
Please see A16z.com forward slash disclosures
The a16z Show
