YouSaid · the spoken record

Brian McCullough

lines on the record: 108
first: 2022-03-10
most recent: 2022-03-10
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

“All right, awesome. Well, thank you for being here, and everyone listening should read the book. It's a great book. Thanks.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Separate kind of like they're already out in California, and Sean Parker, at least this is Parker's telling, so granted that. But he's got to convince, Mark, you have this great idea here. Believe in this. So being an entrepreneur myself, I wanted to not bust the myths on that, but show that we'll always come behind 20 years later and say that we were geniuses and we saw it all along, but that's not the reality on the ground”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even when Facebook was sort of taking off, he had Wirehog, which was totally separate. They're already out in California.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like fitting that to a provably great business model, you know. So I think it didn't, maybe it didn't surprise me that, but I want people to see that in the book that it's not just a story of like these are the geniuses that won. Like, why did they win? And guess what? In almost every single case, you know, the whole Facebook chapter is about Zuckerberg almost requiring people to tell him, no, you've got the great idea here. Run with this.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then once he proved it to himself, then he went whole hog. And then. You know, other things like, again, with social media and things like this, how long did all of us think, okay, this is a great thing, but is there a great business here behind this? Do you know what I mean? So like, it's almost the feeling around in the dark, even when you've got approvably great idea.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We know the reason that he started with books. He did all the, okay, this is our, but he was proving it to himself. He did not necessarily believe himself that commerce was better in a virtual environment. But once he proved it, so like run, starting with books and running Amazon was almost like this test that he was running to himself. And then because we see as soon as books proves it, then that's when pedal to the metal get big fast. So even in the case of arguably the most successful entrepreneur of this generation, I think that he did not quit Wall Street, get in the car no matter what he says. There's the hagiography on that or whatever. And he knew from day one I'm going to have an everything store. I think he thought there could be an everything store, but he was right.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're an entrepreneur, you know that that's the truth always. And so, even though the book becomes the story of these were the guys that were successful, like I was always looking for the thing, like, you know,”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So last question, I guess, were there a couple things that you obviously know a lot about the history of technology? I assume already before writing the book, what were some of the most surprising things you learned writing the book or most interesting things?”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then, well, but that turns out to be the way that works in this new era. And so it's harder now because it has been so successful that you have a framework where it almost looks dumb to do things any other way right now. And there's no incentive to do it.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And again, that almost makes me think that it's so beneficial to have a cleansing, a calling of the herd sometimes to blow up the old models and blow up literally the old incumbents, because then that's the only way that people, like what we're talking about is people that are crazy enough to be like, well, we're going to do it this way.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People who see things in a different way, and just maybe, and maybe they have to sometimes sort of forget at least recent history and sort of not or not be acculturated into a certain way of thinking of what. And again, that almost makes me think.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're doing it They just wanted to program a machine of their own. That's it. Gets back to my theory of why we're in a lull is that again people are doing the same playbook and like you need to you need to that generation to come it could just be a generational”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A machine of their own. That's it. Yeah. But in some ways, I think there's so I would argue there's a deeper truth to the hobbyist thing. It's not just, I mean, it's what you said. There's the passion. There's the smart people. But it's also investing on a longer time horizon. And that's a very important, it's sort of a rare thing, I think, in generally in the way capital sort of most corporations are designed today. They just simply aren't designed to operate at that time scale, right?”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Expectation they'll get paid for it Industry, like that's where the next is. Yeah, I like to think of it as one, I had one time I was thinking about this, like, why is it that so many interesting tech things come from hobbies? And one model, this is just one model I'd propose, which is think about the things in life that operate on a two to three year time horizon versus the things that operate on a 10-year. So most businesses, you go to your work nine to five, and almost every normal business, maybe a few outliers here and there, they operate on sort of, they manage to quarterly or yearly cycle, right? And maybe they'll invest in sort of two to three-year things or something. Who in the world invests at a 10-year cycle? I would say it's maybe academics, maybe like things like DARPA, right? Yeah. Government. And then hobbyists, frankly, right? Because the hobbyists don't care. If they're doing it for love, they're doing it because it's just cool, right? And whatever the homebrew computer club, they weren't thinking, oh, what's the ROI on this for the next two years? They just wanted to program.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though they don't think there's a reasonable expectation they'll get paid for it, but they're so passionate about it. The PC industry was literally created by hobbyists. And so you should be looking in those spaces today, even as weird as those spaces might look right now. And, you know, even think of things like esports and things like that that obviously are becoming very successful spaces right now. But like that's where you need to look is where on the developer side, but even literally on the hobbyist side, where are the people doing these things so passionately that it doesn't even occur to them? It could be a business or an industry. Like that's where the next is.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the key things to look for, and go back to the PC era, the Homebrew Computer Club, go back to when the internet gets started and people are just doing it because they want to make cool websites. Go back to when the dot com. Always look for the people that are doing this.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Virtual reality and crypto and all these other kinds of things. There's always these periphery things. And those, I think sometimes, especially if you get a lot of developers fired up, can surprise you in the rate at which they improve. And I think at some point, I don't know when it'll be, but I think at some point there will be kind of A new set of infrastructure that unlocks new capabilities, and then we go back to that kind of low hanging fruit mode you described.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of people would have bet against that. A lot of people did bet against it. The idea that they would be able to add on, get to 200 million people before the people with 200 million people would figure out that people want always on streaming and everything else. I sort of think of it as the enterprise consumer thing. That said, there's always new interesting stuff popping up. And I think there's always this kind of search on the periphery. Personally, I enjoy spending my time is on the periphery on the”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before it can become a good business. My partner, Alex Rampel, said I'm going to butcher the phrase, but it's something like startups try to find distribution for their innovation faster than the incumbents attach innovation to their distribution or something like that, right? So it's sort of a race. And he always uses like TiVo as an example. Great idea, but you're competing against Comcast. And of course, it'll take Comcast five years to add this feature because they're just not very good at adding new features. But they're Comcast and they've got whatever X tens of millions of households and eventually they add the TiVo feature. And, you know what I mean? Or can T-Vots leverage that? Or like Netflix is probably the one of the most interesting ones today, right?”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'm also almost saying it at the level of if you're a company that has the luxury of staying independent, then you have to find, if you have one good feature idea or one good product idea, but it's not actually a good business, you have to bust your butt to make that happen versus if you're in an environment where you have one good feature and someone's going to acquire you just to add that feature to their set, then you don't have to do the work of actually evolving that feature before it can become a good business.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it had look at Snapchat's a great example, right? That was, I mean, they really invented sort of a new media type, right? I mean, that type of whatever, the vertical short video with stuff. It's a brand new idea. And just the way that the ephemeral messaging and all, you know, it's probably on par with things like Flickr and sort of their novelty. And then, you know, and they're still a very successful company and they're publicly traded. But I think their growth, most people would agree was severely limited by the fact that all of the ideas propagated so quickly, and particularly companies like Facebook have gotten very good at execution and leveraging their massive distribution, right? Well, and look, Amazon too. Like you have some great new, Etsy comes along and then Amazon launches, I don't know how well it's done, but Amazon homemade or whatever. Instagram comes along and they launch it, you know, so they're and they just take advantage of their scale and Amazon Prime and just all these other things.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't even buy them in that case So, if we're in a long distribution. You have that great But what I'm saying is that so then if Flickr comes around today, that would just be, it's the most obvious example, tagging photos. But that would just be something that would be immediately scooped up and incorporated into someone's existing product. So are we in a law because we almost got lucky 15 years ago that we had this period where everyone could rise up and no one kneecaps?”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To a feature of their existing products, Instagram story, Snapchat would be the most buy them in that case. That's the counter argument is the distribution on the consumer side. So if we're in a lower distribution is so strong that even if you have that great idea now, but there are limits to this, right? Like there's only so many times Facebook and ad keep adding features to Instagram without the thing becoming. But what I'm saying is that like.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe are we structurally in a situation where the danger is that because the big players at the top are so big and all they do is every time there's a new crop coming through, they just pick them up, incorporate them, and turn them into a feature of their existing products.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'll admit my biases towards consumers. No, and I'll And a bunch Like, you know, Retina iPad and Gmail and Can I pose a question that literally I'm posing this to you? Because I wonder if structurally this is another thing when you had Web 2.0 Flower, Microsoft had already had the antitrust thing, so they're not going to buy anybody, right? The dot-com bubble had happened, so it had cleared the slate. So there was this decade-long period for the Facebooks and everybody to surface, and no one's going to take them out. So I'm almost asking you, like...”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Software and a bunch of other stuff. And then you go home and you're using this retina iPad and Gmail and Facebook. It's a very, you know, it's like a little like a time travel experience, right? The software at the work feels like 10 years ago. So one interpretation I think is what's happening right now is we're just upgrading all that stuff and that's quote unquote SAS and all these other kinds of things going on. And there's a lot of successful companies there.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what probably will happen is you sort of have these archetype companies come up who show a new playbook, right? So you mentioned Flickr and Delicious and those things in the kind of Web2 era. And we were talking earlier about eBay that kind of paved the way for a lot of that stuff. I think there's been a, like right now, at least what I'm seeing in the industry is there's a lot of stuff happening in enterprise software. So if you kind of think about, I mean, one way to interpret the current internet year of the internet is it's actually a corporate slash enterprise era. And I'll limit my biases towards consumers. No, and I'll say, and mine is too, but I work at a firm that does both and I see this stuff happening. If you just think about your typical experience of a corporate worker in 2018, you go to the office and maybe you're using Windows 95 and some archaic, I don't know what ERP.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Users will do this for us with taxonomies and tagging. And then we'll find the business model later. Whereas everybody is still again trying to play from that Instagram and get to a billion users and get to Scale Playbook.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'll tell you why. Because think about it like when we were talking about when the dot com bubble bursts and like, well, people think it's a fad and this is over. But the people that still believed in, people were still using it, they were still using it to do cool stuff, right? And so they weren't trying to, it's not like everyone, because they had the example of the whole.com thing blowing up. So they weren't going to do that playbook. That playbook was dead and over. So they were freed to go off and do crazy ideas, right? So it's almost like we're being held back by the fact that we have been so successful in tech and tech has taken over the world. And so people are trying to follow that model that has been so successful for everybody else. It would almost be useful if we had a couple blow-ups so that people would be freed up to think differently. And also, crucially, be brave enough because, again, when Flickr gets started, it's no other, like this is cool. Like I can, I want to find all photos of the Grand Canyon.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so you're saying less a new piece of infrastructure and more just a new kind of cultural shift? And I'll tell you why. Because”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Saturated right All these candidates They missed VR, maybe it's blockchain We're not at the end of history. Because what I think another thing, and I'm not blaming entrepreneurs for this, but people are still doing the same playbook that people have been doing since 2004. Since the first time that you could achieve a billion users with a product, right? And so what I'm saying is what maybe we're also waiting on is for that next generation to come up behind and be like, well, we're doing it this way because this is the way it makes sense to us, as opposed to maybe especially these last couple years people are still trying to hit from the same playbook. And that's not what happened.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Piece of infrastructure that unlocks 10 years of innovation, or we're at the end of history. We're not at the end of the end.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“websites, Instagram, things like that, right? And I think you mentioned the low-hanging fruit. What happened right there was the iPhone was this major new unlock kind of for a new wave of infrastructure, right? And people suddenly have this, you're holding a thing in your hand, you got a camera, you've got this awesome screen, what am I going to do with it? You're sitting there looking for apps. You don't have that many on your screen. Now it's saturated, right? And so then, and I think history has been that the lull is due to the fact that now the iPhone is 2007, the App Store 2008, so we're 10 years into this cycle, right? And so it's sort of people have entrepreneurs have picked off all the low-hanging applications. But then we're at the end of history or something new comes along. And I don't know, you know, we have all these candidates and maybe it's a new kind of device. Maybe it's cars, maybe it's VR, maybe it's blockchain, maybe it's machine learning stuff, maybe it's whatever. I don't know what it is. And that thing then creates a new.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Other people are doing. Yeah, I guess the question I have is so I think the historical pattern in tech has been sort of this interaction between what's called infrastructures, people call it platforms, but let's say infrastructure and applications, right? And so infrastructure in my mind is computers, the internet, right? It's sort of broadband, smartphones. Applications are the word processor, mosaic.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because all anyone was chasing was scale. All that mattered was getting to that scale. And I think that what we're waiting for now is that it is sort of like the market where it was just the model T and you could only get it in black and there was only what we need to see this next generation develop is that it's about not just the quantity or not about the scale it's about the quality like the way that you'll differentiate and become the new Instagram and become the new what I'm using mostly chat apps right now as the example but is to provide a qualitatively better experience and I actually think that that will create more interesting startups because it's not just you show up here plant your flag in this market and reach a billion users if you're going to reach a billion users now you have to offer something qualitatively different than what other people are doing”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In that way. Because this is more what I, on my daily podcast that I've been talking about a lot lately, is that another symptom of what we have right now is that there was a lot of low-hanging fruit picked. Like when mobile takes off, you can be a 16-person team, coat up a new better, a slightly different chat app, and have a billion users. So we were in this great period of a decade, the better part of a decade where everybody can chase a billion users, right? Well, most of those categories have been filled. I mean, arguably anyone could come around tomorrow and do something slightly differently and take over anybody's place in any of these things.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are we in a lull, or is the internet like TV and now we have CBS NBC and ABC? Is that a symptom of maturity? And then it's just, yeah. Or is it, I guess, so I agree we're in a lull now, and I personally, I'll just say my own bias would be it's a lull and it will unlull or whatever. But another argument, you know, I think if you've read Tim Wu's book, I think it's called Master Switch. Master Switch, yeah. It's a really good book. But he basically argues this is just sort of all forms of media. You get mature, you have four big incumbents, and then you govern either breaks them up or doesn't. Is that where we are?”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back to your original question. I actually think we're in a law right now, if I'm being honest, that remember what it was like. You know, as late as even 2012, where it was like every couple of days, you'd be like, What's this new thing now? Do I have to be on this? Do I have to try this? Do I need this gadget or whatever? Aside from all of the other things about tech right now and people maybe feeling bad about the tech industry generally, I also think that what's not helped is that there hasn't been that new wow factor. And I don't know what that is”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By just turning the knob a little bit, that shades into social, right? Yeah, yeah. And then when mobile is essentially arise at the same time that social goes mainstream and it is serendipitously the perfect consumption and crucially creation device for social, right? So would social have got as far as it had the iPhone not arrived at the exact same moment. It's within the same 18-month period that Facebook opens open registration and the iPhone is released and things like that. But I think that's a crucial thing to remember is that it's not just the perfect consumption device. It's the key device for actually creating all that social stuff.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just passively consuming 2.0. I think it's clay shirky's phrase, which is sort of this idea of Wikipedia and Facebook, whatever, of just sort of this bidirectional. I mean, by just...”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“1915 or something, right? Where are we on the 100? If I'm being honest, where we are right now today, my original answer was going to be almost what you're saying that we're sort of in a lull, okay? So I said, like, you know, the original.com here is this Cambrian explosion that tended to have sort of a flavor towards commerce. And then in the Web 2.0 era, you have this more here comes everybody sort of thing where the web and technology itself becomes more bi-directional, where people aren't just passively consuming. Web 2.0. I think that's cool.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where do you think we are now? Do you think this is the internet? And now, I mean, obviously, it'll get better and improve, but that was sort of it in the same way that, well, you wrote a book about the automobile industry, right? You write about the equivalent of your book would be covering, I don't know, what, 1901 to 1915 or something, right? And then after that, okay, you get more makes and models and they get faster and this and that. But fundamentally, or I don't know, maybe not. Maybe in the automobile industry, you could argue that stage two was about building suburbs and trucking companies. So that would be sort of the history. Where are we? I always think about this. I don't know the answer. Where are we on the 100-year story?”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Example Level too. Where do you think just switching gears here a little bit? But where do you think we are, you must have thought a lot about this, I assume, when you wrote the book? So you wrote about that era, and then you can imagine a follow-up book from 2007 to the day, which I kind of call a smartphone era, I assume”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I'd have to think about it, but there are people, Mark being a perfect example, you know, but the idea that you wouldn't hunker down and wait on your idea to, no one knew at the time you needed smartphones to get the on-demand delivery piece of the puzzle to work. But it's not like people hunkered down and waited. A lot of the people went in different directions. The people that were successful, like a lot of the people that founded PayPal came from other dot-com stuff that they either flipped and sold or IPO'd or whatever. But then they didn't keep going with those original either e-commerce plays or whatever it was that they did. What was Zip2? It was like a directory or something like that. They went in a different direction. So I wanted to track that sort of development on the specific personal story level too.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, there's a lot of those stories in the book, and I wanted to preserve that. I wanted to also show even ideas or people that swing and miss in certain eras, why do they come back? What are the lessons that, because it's not like, well, boy, I...”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Story, but obviously that's a problem that's been solved now. So, in a way, this is always true again in tech, but any technology. There are ideas that will always be bad ideas. And then there are ideas that are only bad ideas because of certain, the technology is not there yet, the market's not there yet, the public's not there yet.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Frothy So many times in this book, so many of the ideas that seemed dumb at the time prove out later because they were just too soon. There was a startup, I think they might have been public in the late 90s called MySpace, but it wasn't the social network MySpace. It was literally you would put a widget on your desk. It was Dropbox. Great. Store your files in the cloud. Right. But this is in the era of dial-up, Wi-Fi doesn't have, there were so many things. One of the most notorious dot-com era flameouts is WebVan, which is grocery delivery, right? The story of the pets.com and all of there was, there were four to five major pets e-commerce plays, and they couldn't find ways to economically ship dog food. Now, again, that's a classic.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You would have had some Maggie Mahar, the journalist from Barron's in the book. I quote her. She said something like, yeah, if someone would have had to invent this, it was the froth on the cappuccino of the longest bull market in history. Yeah.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eventually, if they just Cynical strategy and winning. It's the classic bubble, the greater fool, can I get out while the getting's good before those guys get out while the getting's good? But also then, you know, it's not just the VCs because Wall Street had so much and not just Wall Street itself, but like, as I point out in the book, like this is historically, these are the baby boomers reaching their peak earning years and they're going to, that money had to go somewhere.”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Compan And the way capitalism works is maybe their VCs. I assume there were VCs who were really trying hard to find companies that would really work long term. But eventually, if they just, if their neighbor is doing the cynical strategy and winning the greater fool, like...”
2022-03-10 · a16z Podcast · How the Internet Happened · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source