YouSaid · the spoken record

Josh Elman

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115
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2026-06-23
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2026-06-23
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  1. “Thank you. Excited to be here. For listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or a review.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “You'll be able to email me at jailman at a16z.com. Find me through all the social medias. Find me through a friend. I'm really excited to help.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Distill it into products that we think people would want to use and bring into their lives every day. And I'm super proud of what the team put together is this most recent WWDC and how we've told the story of Apple Intelligence and Syria AI. And I can't wait to bring more of those lessons to companies as well.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Than the past 30 years of my career. It's incredible how much has changed and navigating that, knowing what worked in the past, but translating that to modern times. I'm excited to do that. And then obviously helping companies figure out their own paths, whether that is M&A. There was a period earlier this year where I had a couple different friends who were going through M&A processes and I was talking to them multiple times a week helping them just think through the options, how to set up right for every meeting, how to do this. And then lastly is how to tell your story. And one thing I've gotten this incredible masterclass getting to work at Apple is been right in the heart of how do we tell a compelling story to regular people? How do we take this world of AI and intelligence and”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I think the answer is that the stuff I love helping with the most is thinking about the product and the product loop. How do you onboard people to get to that retained experience? What do you need to do to get people all the way up the ladder? How do you let them bring other people into that network? What does a core product do for them every day? And how do you evolve a single use product into multiple uses and scale that as a product platform? So helping people right in the heart of what that product and product strategy is, but also happy to help talk about how you organize your product team and growth team. And it's completely changed in this new era. I mean, everything is different. Things are more different for a product management function and an engineering function in the past six to seven months.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I love that dude. Talk about maybe for a moment what are the kind of specific challenges you've worked through with companies? You know, is it about distribution? Is it about M&A? What are some of the ways?”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I am so excited to be back in the startup world and really get this opportunity to help Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies figure out their way through this consumer landscape, figure out how to grow, figure out how to tell their stories, figure out how to build their products. And then I'm really excited to help all the future Andresen Horowitz portfolio companies. Let's figure out who they are, what they're doing, how I can help them, how we can help them figure out their paths, and then when it's the right time, make sure they come in. And we, you know, as an Andreasen team, really fund them.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “What are the things though that make me so happy to go? I'm using this every day, and you should too. You should too. And I can't wait till we all are because it makes it better for everyone.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I mean Coming out of having worked inside of Apple for a long time and at Robin Hood and coming back to Venture, I'm thinking a lot about what is this next wave of all the ways that we connect as people, spend time well, whether that helps us, things that help us do things like travel better, manage our finances better, manage our health better, get things done, learn how to do our how-tos, you know, and get through that list. All these ways that we can use all this new technology to help us get through our lives. Spend it really well and connect with other people. Pretty open ended because so much right now is built for the productivity and the enterprise. And I can make this team more effective. And here's 20 workflows and here's 30 prompts that help everybody. I'm like,”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “You can pull people and lull people into that, but the best products can be smarter and connect to take us from idling away time to actually spending it better and you want to say, hey, to an AI, like, hey, I'm a little bored or I need some ideas of what to do. You want to spark you and give you motivation and encourage you to go do things. Either it's get out in the world or just do something new or think about something or be entertained. It doesn't always have to be work or learning. It can just be fun, but still things that add value where you reflect on after that, and you're like, I'm really glad I did that.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I think this idea of time well spent is exactly the right method of what consumers want to get. And this is why building for consumers is so different than building for enterprises is you can't just start me with something and I'm like, I got a problem, I got to solve it. Give me a blank cursor. I'll just dig into it. It's. One of the ways that you want to best spend time, and what we've learned is there can always be a lowest common denominator here. A way to spend more time is more scrolling, more anything. Just keep going infinitely or just keep pushing this button in this game and see what happens.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “And the entire sort of original sin mistake we're all making in assessing these companies is that the average consumer doesn't know what to do with the blinking cursor. They actually need to have things pushed to them so that they actually can explore and not have to be so high agency.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I totally agree. Yeah, it's fun. Somebody that we both know, Eugenia, who you might have actually introduced me to her or at least whispered a good word in her ear on my behalf. Thank you for doing that. We're so proud to work with her. She just said this thing that was so profound, and I keep repeating it, which is, look, people are not trying to save time. They're trying to spend time.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “That's actually a really good tip. I'm going to put that into what I'm writing. And when you're using it that way, these tools are very additive as opposed to replacement.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I mean, I really hope so. And one of the things that's really heartwarming for me whenever I talk to kids is when they tell me, hey, I don't use it to do my work. Because honestly, I just know that, like, that's not what I'm going to get graded on. I might get caught something else. But what I use it is to help me make my work better And the fact that you can turn to something like a ChatGPT when you've done some writing and go, How do I improve this is such a powerful Tool to have in your arsenal. I mean, that's one of the things that I've been using with New Siri on my Mac is, you know, you write something and they just go, how's this sound? How could I spice this up? How could I make this feel, get my point across a little bit better? And the tips and the things it comes back with really help you go, okay.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Which is really, really interesting, you know. And actually, what I think that ChatGPT lets you do or the sort of broad AI is actually, you know, what they call the greats in college, which is studying an ancient Roman ancient Greek sort of everything related to it. It's a sort of individualistic, very abstract intellectual exploration of things just for the sake of it. And it's a lot of what the technology lets you do. So I hope there is enthusiastic about it as we are.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I think that would be amazing. And I think we always forget, but that's the generation they've grown up with. They've grown up fully online. Mostly because we haven't all done the work to make these as safe and as additive as possible. On the other hand, this generation is going to know how to adapt and get the most out of this technology and use it hopefully in better service of others and hopefully look at some of the examples of what's gone right in the world that they can live up to and hopefully what's gone wrong in the world that they can say it's our turn to go fix.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “You know, it would just be so funny and ironic if the result of all this technology is that Gen Alpha, they're just like the most incredible social apex predators, like the art of conversation is back. You know, it's like the 1950s.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I think that that's a really profound way to think about what we can do with this new technology. And so much of it is helping you be better. I mean, I've seen these great little apps that are like helping people learn to date by practicing first date conversations. It's one of those things that it sounds funny, and we're probably both older and not in that lifestyle right now. If you're nervous about something, be able to like. Practice is incredible. I mean, I haven't done one of these in a long time. I have to admit, I did use a little bit of going back and forth to ChatGPT to just practice. Getting back into this kind of mindset because that's how these things help us be better.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “I love that man. Yeah, it does feel like this is a technology to explore our humanity. And we've never had that before, actually. You know, we've had a lot of technology to extend our intellect. And that's led us to incredible things. I mean, SpaceX this week is the best example of it. But we really haven't had any technology that sort of, I don't know, helped us be a little more self-reflective.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I would argue that even that get things done has a soul, but it has a very different soul. It's not trying to replace any human relationships, and none of this really is trying to, it's all trying to augment relationships. It's not even trying to like make you perceive it in some sort of human way. It's trying to like really be a tool. And that's what we are as technologists. We're tool makers. We make things, and they can be net neutral, and it's our job to infuse humanity into them. No matter what we do”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “I agree 100%. I think there's so many that can help us do more of that and explore the world and use in the background, do things with other people and try to figure out what makes sense for you. And by the way.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, it's interesting because if you almost unbundle the two, there's a product that's just about getting things done, which sort of almost has no soul by design. And that's great. And we need that. But then there's also these products that might mirror things that we do in the rest of the world, which is I might join a volleyball team because I'm looking for friends. And volleyball is like a level of indirection to building new adult male friendships. So I think there will also be companion products that look like that.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “It's very much trying to help you get things done. It's designed to help you get things done. It's incredible, helping you get things done with the experiences and the content that you already have and what it knows about you and what it can go access in the world. But it doesn't need to be sycophantic and it doesn't need to be like you look great today and create that personality. But there are other experiences where you actually might want opinions on a wardrobe and how you dress and give you tips and treat you a little bit more in that human relationship. It's a very different product.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Once you accept that that's just the baseline. There's so much to explore that not every product wants to be. You know, lots of products don't want to be your best friend. I mean, if you've used the new Siri, it's incredible.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “I think it is, although having been part of one of the biggest companies learning to ship things that matter and make the world better is kind of the fundamental value of what we do and the fundamental value of what you can do when you get to work at that scale. But when I think about things like the companion products and entertainment and how AI can sort of take us on these journeys, I think it's incredible how much different it can be than everything we've had in the past. We've never had an experience like that. On the other hand, I think it's also a high level of responsibility. We have to be very, very careful with kids, with safety, with sexuality, with letting people who might be going through any mental challenges to feel like they're getting something served through a product that isn't bringing them back to the community or helping them get the help they need. So I think we have to very much find that balance.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Look, I totally agree. And I also think there are ways that startups can play that incumbents can't, and labs can't. To me, companion is such a great example of this because I feel like companion touches on everything that every committee at a big tech company doesn't want you to do. Disagreement, there is probabilistic behavior, there's sexuality, there's, you know, there's just all these ways that you can interact with a product that are very human. And as you know, when you're at really big scale, it's hard to ship things like that.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “And part of why I went to Apple was to go learn and work at the biggest scale you can and tried to deliver that value to everybody's pocket. But I think right now, I think the world is so open again. That the main chat bots, the main assistants are going to do a lot for us. We're going to rely on them for a lot of things. But I think we're going to expect everything to work like them. And we're going to rewire so much else of what we do in life and our services and the way we get things done that the opportunities to fill. All of those areas of our lives and help us connect and help us get information that we want and help us explore things are not just going to go to like, there's only two products we ever use.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “And I'm not sure if I was wrong. I mean, I mean, ChatGPT is obviously. But what about Discord? Well, I had invested in Discord and we had just sold musically. And I was like, those are going to make it through. I joined Robin Hood, which I said that one's going to make it through. But starting from scratch, you have to get enough momentum to get to that billion user scale. I was like, I'm not so sure. And this is part of my own, if I didn't really believe that I could find that path and venture, I was going to go and work on them instead”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “If you can truly build another consumer startup from scratch, it's part of why I actually left Venture. To go. And I said, I just want to build a get. And I went to Robin Hood That led me over to Apple and said, gosh, I'm not sure if you can actually build something big enough in kind of pure consumer areas.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “So, I think a funny way to think about this is, you know, 20 years, everybody was like, oh, well, won't Google just do it, right? And then all of a sudden, Google could do everything. And certainly there's a bunch of categories that Google has absolutely expanded on and done great. There's a 20 years ago, there's a ton of startups that have grown and become massive companies since then, 15 years ago, 2010 era. Everybody was like, well, isn't Apple just going to do it all? It's going to be, everything should be their own mobile apps of this great world of mobile enabled apps that we could have never imagined before in these social apps. But about 10 years ago, I kind of started thinking that too. I kind of started thinking about. I'm not sure if there's a world in these networks that are now 1 billion plus users.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Okay, so one topic that we discuss a lot is Are the labs just going to win it all? Should we all just go home? And I know it feels like we have a version of this conversation every time there's a new product cycle. What's your view?”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “But I think we're going to be figuring out what the models, even that you can run on iPhones or on laptops, how to push more and more of the complex or the less complex inference that needs to be done.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Because part of the benefit of these massive network effects was free distribution to everybody Helps you get there. And so I haven't totally figured out what that balance is, but I think that's what I'm excited to go work through over the next few years. Very start”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “I think there's a willingness to pay and necessity to pay. Is definitely shifting. You know, we had this period 15, 20 years ago where everything was shifting to the cloud and all of a sudden the startup cost for a company became much less than ever before. You didn't have to buy a bunch of servers. Rack them and sure serving costs a little bit of money and bandwidth and compute use, but it was actually relatively low for what you thought you were getting as a startup. Obviously now, if you're running a ton of inference, You need your customers to be willing to pay for it. But I think they are, and the ability to pay in apps is so much easier than has ever been. Getting payments is easy if you're providing value. I think you have to. I think it hurts companies that need massive network effects”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “That's right. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. It's sort of adjacent to this is a debate we've had, which is, on one hand, it's amazing that consumers are willing to pay for software in a big way. You know, if you look at the top ChatGPT SKU, it's $250 a month, the top Grock SKU is $300 a month, Gemini Ultra, I think, is $300 a month. So wow, consumers are paying for software. On the other hand, because there's no zero marginal cost of distribution, inference costs money, you can't really build a mass market-free product Without a massive balance sheet, is it better or worse? Is it just changing the shape of startups? I mean, what's your view?”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “I have no problem with people doing paid if they understand it Like paid to both get people in who will become very good retain users. And Cool spread the word for you Be a great catalyst. What you can't do is spend a lot of money to burn 10 people to find the one who actually stuck with your product and think that that's going to scale because that only gets more and more expensive.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Because you would sign up for it and all of a sudden, with a couple swipes, you were deeply personalized. Your friends who were already there on musically were coming back and trying new things. So you were seeing that. And it was really energizing and the whole loop worked. And I still took them pouring a lot of money in. Get that distribution, but the retention really worked. And I joke at the same time Quibby was pouring similar amounts of money to get people to download Quibby. Which didn't totally”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “And so they had kind of both modeled some after musically, had had their own invention, and had this great AI team. And they were like, we can help musically scale even more worldwide. And so they bought musically, and the team that was already in China became part of that high dancing. And then they spent about six months or so kind of tinkering, rebuilding the product, moving musically into a shared code base. And then they relaunched it with ads with dollars. Because what they figured out was to get from here to where we want to go, we need to pour a lot more into it. They got, they spin. They were probably one of the biggest spenders on Facebook, Twitter, kind of every social media to get people to download TikTok at that time. But the product loop was so good that everybody retained.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “And it created this great loop. And the company got really big. We got to tens and tens of millions of users daily hundreds had tried it and it was in incredible shape. And then they started thinking about whether or not to keep going independently, raise a lot more money, sell and got this incredible offer from Bike Dance to go and join Bike Dance. And Bike Dance had had a product Doyin that was very, very large in China.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “And then on musically, they'd become the number one stars. They'd become the A listers, the ones with the most followers because they were getting featured in the feed. So now you have this loop where the influencers were posting a ton of stuff on Instagram. So you were starting to see musically on Instagram. You're starting to have a better experience in the feed. And people were talking about with their friends. And it all started to compound. And the other secret was there was always a little musically bug at the bottom of the Instagram video. Right. Of course. You can actually download the video. It was like unheard of at the time. You'd create the video musically, download it. Upload it to Instagram and keep the music we bug. People weren't cutting that out”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “They really created this loop, and then they found out that there were a bunch of, I'd call them like Bars stars on Instagram who weren't quite getting enough credibility and were only posting pictures and Instagram video was just coming up at the time. And they were like, let me use musically to create some cool content for my Instagram feed.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “And musically, though, design their product in two really smart ways. The first was it was really easy to take your video and still go posted elsewhere. So you could create this great lip sync video and post it elsewhere. But the second thing was they also curated a feed of the great lip sync video. So when you'd open the app, you'd swipe through, you'd add some friends, and you'd create your video and you might go posted on Instagram. And so that loop was create something you couldn't create anywhere else, the level of quality, then be able to Post it out to Instagram, and your friends, you start following your friends, so you'd see what your friends had posted alongside some other really cool stuff they were curating.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “And they built this and they put it on the App Store, and it said LipSync. And they were seeing spikes every week because, as Alex, who was the founder of Musically, had actually went and ran a lot of TikTok, was telling me this, that they were so confused and they found out finally that the spikes on Thursday night, I think it was Thursday, was because of when Lipsyn battle appeared on like MTV. Lipsy battle would run and then people would go type sync into the app store and they download musically and they start creating lip syncs.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Yeah. Well, and this is a crazy kind of multi part story. Musically was a group of a small team in China that was trying to build for the Western markets. That was actually their initial vision. They started trying to build an education app, hadn't really worked. They had seen some fun things happening around lip syncing. And so they decided that they were going to build a little lip sync app.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Great design, great product trust for the user, something people are proud to talk about and share. And they've really been able to win people back and grow a ton from there. It's awesome.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Out of everyone. I mean, I'm just blown away by what they've done with the company since I've been gone. I left at the end of 2019. And it's turned into this incredible, realizing the vision, multi-platform. It's no longer just trading, it's retirement, it's credit card, it's got some banking components and all these products that bring in the same care, design, trust for the user. Truly trying to bring value. Vlad has just done an incredible job navigating the seas. They went through some real bumpy times too. I mean, so many great companies have had these existential crisis moments, and Robin has had a few, but both between some crazy downtimes that happened and critical moments in the stock market, what happened around GameStop that. Like that almost might be existential for the brand, but they came back to their core values.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Or the incentive for me is so good, which they know the incentives are getting the same one. And so it really became this powerful mechanism. And then the brand just kept building and building and building and people started to trust it more and the design got even better. And all of a sudden, one day you're like, whoa, this is no longer this little upstart financial thing, but every other company is dropping commissions because they now see the threat. Schwab did it, Ameritrade did it, Schwab then went and bought Ameritrade. Like it transformed. The brokerage is. All from this little plucky let's try to democratize”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “And problems ability balance that made it a very, very cost effective mechanism. So look, when you're doing paid ads to bring people in who are already susceptible to the message. When you're bringing in this referral program, to then have people share it and advocate it. And again, referral is not quite as pure as word of mouth. It's pretty close. I'm only going to bother somebody if I at least believe in it.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Robin here is 10 bucks to invest. What are you going to invest in for 10 bucks? You couldn't even buy a share. So the team came up with this mechanic to figure out how to make it give and get a share. An actual share. And then was able to use the fact that that share was a lottery. Sometimes it would be a $2 stock, sometimes it would be a hundred dollar stock. And enough people got the $100 stock that they raved about it, and that made them very, very excited. People get the $2 stock and they're like, oh, I have a whole share of stock. I can sell that. I have $2 in my account that I didn't have before.”

    2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source