YouSaid · the spoken record

Brett Goldstein

lines on the record: 61
first: 2016-05-17
most recent: 2016-05-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We tell that story all around the world. The great one was we had David Cameron come for a visit. We talked about cybersecurity, but he was the only person, we handed him a 1776 t-shirt. And he goes, I don't think I will be wearing that. But we have British phone booze.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Essentially, he says in there when institutions no longer serve the needs of the people, the people need to rise up and create new institutions. So you put those four things together. We think we are at a similar inflection point in history. And if you sat there in 1776 and you were in August of 1776 and you knew that all four of those events happened, you'd probably think, wow, our world has changed beyond imagination and you would have no idea. Was coming right, like just how early in that process you were, so that's why 1776”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Captain Cook, right? Mapping out, basically finishing out mapping out the globe, connecting the globe together. The third is that Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in Edinburgh, laying out the sort of philosophical underpinnings of markets and capitalism and entrepreneurship. And Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, and paraphrasing, right?”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting because, again, we do stuff all around the world, and it isn't so much about the United States, actually. There were four things that happened in the year 1776 between March and July. The first was that the first steam engine was put into production in the north of England, kind of kicking off the industrial revolution.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's the thing DC feels the same way when it goes to Silicon Valley. Oftentimes this almost becomes sort of ideological. In the valley, everything is pure and libertarian. It's wonderfully collaborative as the valley is. It still matters who you have a relationship with. They're just relationship businesses.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've been here for a couple of days, but I'm always struck by we're in a gathering of people, and you start to see the chessboard and realize you really have no idea how it's played. I mean, I'm like, wow, we are in DC because all these people are like, okay, you should go talk to them. I'm like, who are they?”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, Tetto also talks about our thing. He always says we're never going to ever do. I think the point is that. There's existing established systems for doing things. When you're trying to do something new, Have to go about a different way, but you can't also ignore the existing structures, and this is how you navigate that”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Particularly at the federal level. Lobbying is a very, very long term game. It's hugely resource intensive. You chip a little bit away. Your opponents chip a little bit away to get something interesting done. This is much more about being able to understand the networks of power, the regulations, how you deal with stuff to actually get things done in these kinds of sectors. And in some cases, yes, part of your regulatory hacking strategy is maybe you need to go lobby, but that is exceptionally rare.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You build that network. We view what we do at ACNZ as being sort of a network of networks. And this is a different way of thinking about it, which is just incredible. This is really interesting. The art of the regulatory hack, you start with a power map. I mean, it doesn't have to be sequential. There's the move, which can include grassroots and grass tops, bottom up, top down, navigating, brand, story, and then figuring out which players in order to figure out what moves to make. And then is there anything?”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How does the valley solve a problem think about it? How does DC solve a problem think about it? How do you put those two together? And how do you help startups, the best startups anywhere in the world leverage that and bring the networks, pre-series A, pre-series B, startups, they don't have the resources and the time and the runway to be going around going, I'm going to build a giant global network of mayors just to be able to launch my product. That's what we do.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Yes. And we would very strongly take that perspective. I mean, we focus on the areas that we focus on because we think those are, we think we're playing Wingrettsky, right? We're sending the puck to where we think everything's moving towards. So everything I talked about, there's tons of people in DC who just probably couldn't even articulate everything we just laid out because it's so obvious with them. In the same way that there's a whole bunch of stuff that's totally obvious and instinctive people in the valley that is utterly foreign and baffling. And I'm sure every time you have a mayor or a governor or a congressman or some think tank person from DC who comes to the valley and they're blown away and they're like, what's going on? It's the same problem. And so we think very, very much about the fact that D.C. and Silicon Valley are inevitably smashing together in a whole bunch of different ways. But one of them is actually methodologically.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We started this in some ways about talking about the nastiest problems and nastiest sectors, but the way you keep describing this, it sounds like this regulatory hack approach, this applies to everything and that your discipline and your kind of view of the world”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that is exactly the kind of element that we play with a lot, which is how do you go and give a mayor a like totally prepackaged here's how you be a hero? Because for a lot of mayors, like there's big giant long-term structural things that they're trying to solve that frankly aren't ever going to come to fruition till they're out of office anyway. But I made it much, much easier for you to do all the stuff you have to do in my city with less frustration. Like that's an easy quick win thing that they can show their constituents that they did. And so, you know, yes, in some cases it's easier when you can leverage grassroots and you can get the citizens to rise up. But in a lot of cases, it's just being real smart about what people's interests are and how you help them. Gets where they want to get to.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you want to play that up because then you can compete like Google Fiber did when it was trying to make cities bid and mayors had the full discretion to say, hey, I'm going to make my conditions very favorable for you. So come over here. I mean, Mark describes this as like regulatory arbitrage. Yeah.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly right. And that mayor has direct things they can control, but they also are very, very likely to be at least an influencer over the health system in their city and the utility and their city and the universities in their city. I mean, all of that sort of civic infrastructure that is just in the early phases of going through a radical 20-year reinvention. But the interesting thing about mayors is they all talk to each other and they're connected and they have their own network effects and they're all looking to be a hero and they're in a certain sense competitive. They're collaborative, they're competitive.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because actually, mayors in our entire political system, in the US context, in our political system, mayors are Pretty much the perfect blend of very, very powerful and yet incredibly responsive to very immediate citizen. Yes.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You might be able to scan it and email it, but then, like, they send you something in the mail. Then you have to write a check, send it back to them, and then like four weeks later. And most people probably don't object to the idea of like maybe there should be rules about who can camp out in parks or not. What they object about is that the user experience of government and trying to interact in a city like that is so frustrating. Sealing stocks allows you to take government to take all those forms. You can upload the PDF into their system. It automatically takes the PDF, reads it, scans it, turns into responsive Webble Mobile app. I've got the permanent right on my phone. That would be an example where you're not likely to activate Vas citizens to rise up and go, you, my government, should deploy similar stocks. But that would be where understanding grass tops and influencers around different networks to be able to get directly to mayors. We are massive fans of mayors.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're right. And so if you're an enterprise product, you're not likely to employ a grassroots strategy, you're likely to employ a different strategy to get there. One of our portfolio companies is a company out of New York called Seamless Docs. So in the simplest way possible, they allow, I always use the example of like, you live in a city and you want to like camp out with your kid in the local park. We've all had some issue like this where you have to go under their website and dig around and find the form. It's a PDF. You download the PDF, you print it out, you fill it.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incredibly interesting. Just one quick note on the moves and the story and starting with why. It occurs to me that it's incredibly biased towards consumer-centric companies because people can relate to a story where it's something they experience personally. It's like this whole joke about you can never get rid of ride sharing because like half the congressmen would like freak the fuck out. Oh my God. You can't do that. We use it every day. It's way better than what we had before. That's not necessarily true of enterprise products that are invisible.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly Like the case of Hubskip Drive, don't start talking about how you fingerprint, start talking about this, for whatever reason the way we've structured our society is such that parents are expected to work incredibly long hours. Kids get out at 3 o'clock. And this is expensive and it's stressful for the parents. People can really really.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so we talk an awful lot with a lot of our startups about make sure you are crafting your brand and a story in a way that puts you, aligns you with issues that the grass tops are going to care about and puts you into an endearing story. So, you know, tell the why of your business.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But health groups did health groups have great access. They're a wonderful, like everybody cares about the health of their kids, right? They're operating from a position of strength in that standpoint, but they're often looking for an issue. They need something to go and show that they're making progress to their City Council tries to shut them down, and they've already built a group of their consumers who can immediately activate a grassroots lobbying commitment. You get into obviously building your brand and public relations.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe at a juice bar, I've heard that word. Grassroots is activating citizens, grasshopps is engaging the actual decision makers, then there's influencers. Who are the people who influence the grass tops? And that can be think tanks. It can be corporations. It can be associations or unions or other venture firms. It can be anybody who has influence and has relationships and access who shares your interests or is opposed to your interests. And so when we went back to that example of”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then you start getting into how do you make moves? What are the moves you make? And you get into things like understanding the grass tops, right? Who are the actual people with power? These are very DC tops, grasshopps would be like, so you've heard the term grassroots.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, totally. But that's where we talk an awful lot about what we try to do as through our startup network, through our fund is find oftentimes really, really smart disruptive people. They're often outsiders. They have great ideas and go, that's wonderful, but let's get you connected up with a level of sophistication about how you play this game you want to play.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, at the very naivety that suggests is almost like the type of person that needs to do the business in the first place because it's almost like you know too much. You're just like, I'm never going to do anything. Yeah.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In every sector in which one of our startups operate, there is formal and informal power and there are people who influence other people and there are people who make rules and there are people who know those people and there are interests and there are interests that align and interests that diverge and that forms a chessboard. If you are operating in one of these sectors and you don't know that there's a chessboard and a game of chess being played. You are at a very significant strategic disadvantage.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so the interesting part was that that founding team immediately viewed this as an opportunity for collaboration and an opportunity to work with California to put in place a set of structures so that they could reassure their customer base that it's a safe service because the founders are three moms. They recognize that this isn't just an efficiency lifestyle thing. You are not going to take advantage of this service as a parent until you are very, very, very confident that it is safe and that it's secure and that your kids will be taken care of.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There needs to be a level of regulation around how you do this and who the drivers are and what happens in the same way that there's regulations around who can work in daycares. Or there's regulation around who can work at a pediatric doctor's office.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And by the way, by Uber and Lift's own terms of services, right, you can't have kids under 18 driving these cars. But almost immediately after HopScript Drive launch, California took a big interest in driving kids around.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have a, you know, if you use a local example or a recent, a timely example were investors in Hopskip Drive, childcare on demand. They hire certified nannies nurses, anyone who's had at least a certain number of years of childcare experience, they fingerprint them, they do detailed background checks, they do the whole deal. They're trying to solve that issue of you get off at work, you get home from work at 6.30 or 7, your kid gets out of school at 3.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By giving them the data back right, because if I remember correctly, what they do is behavioral modification for consumers to understand their energy consumption in order to, and they're using like best practices from the world of persuasive psychology to help people reduce their energy usage.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Utility companies buy their service in large part to meet regulatory mandates. And so in some cases, those mandates already existed and might not have been enforced. In other cases, you had to create that mandate. But they'll talk a lot about the fact that they have a two-pronged strategy. One is... Erect and enforce mandates that say utility should be helping their rate payers to reduce electricity consumption, and then they're helping utility firms in a very cost-effective way to meet that mandate.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because of the nature of the, so if you think about it in the sense that there are certain areas of the economy that have such a large sort of social welfare to them that it is simply the case that government is not going to allow the provisioning of those services without a significant level of oversight. In the extreme case, you get into the provisioning of national security, right? There's government's not going to let alternative new, interesting models of national security of all.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look at SpaceX, you look at Solar City, you look at Tesla, you look at all of these tremendous, tremendous leveraging of what we would call regulatory hacking. I spent a lot of time in the Valley and I spent a lot of time in DC and I spent a lot of time around the world, but there's a sort of mindset and assumption that to the extent that the Valley is often thinking about regulation, it's often from a how do I keep it out of my life. And sometimes you do need to play that game, right? There are times when there are a set of entrenched interests that are just not going to let you get market entry and will do everything they possibly can, at which point you have to deploy some form of beg forgiveness strategy. But in a lot of cases.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's how you built Tesla. He uses subsidies. And people talk about that sort of 1% innovation that he does where he started with the most, for the most expensive. Richest. And now, just recently, he's able to take an upper middle class and then potentially middle class.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The cities, particularly ones in the north, that had really high rates of carbon monoxide poisoning, and they were like, your cities have a giant health crisis killing your kids. Then they went to all the other cities. They're like, these cities have implemented this. They're doing the right thing. Do you not care about your kids?”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But no, I mean, you can absolutely use a lot of these techniques. So we talk all the time about the case study of why do we all have carbon monoxide alarms in all of our homes and how did the company kitty that originated that how did they actually get that to happen in short order so fast? And like this is tons of regulatory hacking to create a marketplace, which is step one. Well, maybe you try and you go talk to the building code groups in cities around the country. Well, it turns out the building code groups are kind of regulatory captured by the big developers who don't want more mandates about things. They ended up partnering with a lot of the pediatric, nursing, and pediatric groups and said, in fact, kids all across the country are dying from carbon monoxide poisoning, and this is a public health issue. And they use that to ultimately get mandates in place that said all new housing had to have them. They went first to the...”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If some large automobile manufacturer very carefully gets a rule change that helps them open up more market at less cost and maybe even potentially erects a bit of a barrier for one of their competitors, they are never going to talk about that. Never and so this entire sort of world of they know how to walk the halls they know the right people but it's an art form it's a technique it's just like you know Silicon Valley style growth hacking it's just something nobody talks about”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so here's the thing, right? Like growth hacking in general, if you're in New York or the Valley or Austin and you come up with a cool new growth hack, the first thing you're going to do after you implement it at works is you're going to write a blog post about it. That is the DNA of the startup world.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of our DNA, we talk a tremendous amount to our entrepreneurs all around the world through our Challenge Cup program, through our incubator program. We talk all the time about regulatory hacking. How do you growth hack in a highly regulated sector?”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of our partners, Ted Ilyot, said the same thing that regulatory capture sometimes has this nefarious thing. But in reality, there's one group of people who have a much more, who do have entrenched income and interests, but just know the hallways and the conversations and the people much better. In fairness, that is tougher for new people to compete with.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are based in DC, but our mission is not supporting startups in DC. Our mission really is how do we accelerate innovation in areas of essential human need? And so we think about that in terms of supporting startups anywhere in the world that are tackling these kinds of challenges. We think about that in terms of how do you support municipal governments, giant health systems, utilities, government agencies that are trying to innovate faster and often struggle with it. We think about that in terms of how do you address giant irritating, frustrating regulatory barriers and challenges, often ones that aren't, you know, people have enough of this idea that there's this giant conspiracy of evil entrenched interest in a Machiavellian way erecting barriers. There is some of that. There's regulatory capture. But in a lot of cases, it's like policymakers are trying to achieve an objective and they have no idea.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You look at problems like that and you're going, you're taking so many of the learnings from on demand and supply chain logistics and microcredit and all that stuff, but you're solving a problem that drives massive, massive social value, but also can become a gigantic business.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No brand at all. Because they were able to offer overnight microcredit. Now they're able to just say, great, you've done 10 transactions with us. We'll just start extending you more credit. You don't have to carry cash. They can sleep in later. They're getting better prices. And so the major issue with Twiga is really supply constraint. Like as fast as they can build out depots, as fast as they can put more tuk tux on the street. Because if you're that micro vendor, you order it on your app. And the next morning a tuk-tuck just pulls up. Here's your crate.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Change that motion. Yeah, in a lot of cases, I mean, this is, you know, you talk about you want to find problems you can solve that have at least 10x value creation. This is like 100 X value creation for these micro”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so we, you know, we worked through the negotiation. Everybody kept their machetes at hand. And then we ended up arriving at a good equilibrium that we were comfortable with. And so we supplied some fire relationships. I'm sorry. I'm trying to imagine a startup sitting in Palo Alto, like, I had my gang of machete. They looked at me then and they're like, no, it's not like that. Like if you go to buy bananas, you negotiate the deal, you cut them off the tree, you load them and you buy them on the spot. So when you go to buy bananas, you bring a gang of used with machetes and like everybody else has their gang of views with machetes. And they're like, no, we don't mean like we were going to war. We just mean like, okay, there you go.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, and so, you know, absolutely massive market. But the crazy thing is they are able to deliver for a much lower price at the point of sale. They're cutting out a whole bunch of inefficient distributions. They can pay the farmer more and still maintain great margins. But you're right. You want to do that in Africa. You have to be prepared to roll your sleeves up. And one of my favorite stories when I was last with them was they were talking about the first time they went to go negotiate for the first purchase of bananas. And they're like, so we showed up with our gang of youths. And some of the other brokers had their gang of youths.”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Inventory on demand. I love what I love about that anecdote is that. I feel like there's a lot of amazing learnings people have about logistics and infrastructure, but you can't completely translate them internationally. So to build that bottom up is just fascinating”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He sits there, and that's again, and they're trying to formalize it. They're saying these are actually entrepreneurs, they're micro vendors, indexes to all the same services, so they can sit there now at 7 o'clock the night before and go, I need 10 bushels of bananas, I need some more AA batteries, I need some tissue paper, and I need more”
2016-05-17 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source