YouSaid · the spoken record

Josh Elman

lines on the record: 115
first: 2026-06-23
most recent: 2026-06-23
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

“Really helped Robin Hood have that initial credibility. Over time, as figuring out, okay, how do we grow from here, tried a lot of things? Definitely tried some paid ads. And you know what? They worked free. Free trading was a message that worked for people who were already kind of in a trading mindset. But if you weren't, it wasn't. But the referral program was really magic. And the C to the referral program, There's a lot of referral programs that were big enough time, Airbnb, Uber had ones like give 10, get 10. You'll get $10 for getting somebody. You'll give $10. The $10 are the. Starter for the person who does it. And, like, those are nice because you have a little bit of a discount, but it's a dollar amount. You're like, is it worth $10? Am I trading off my friend for $10?”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was all word of mouth at the beginning, and they figured out how to, they were on Reddit, there were Reddit communities that were really excited about it. Anybody just word of mouth on mobile was saying, I kind of want to invest in the stock market. This app is great. And by the way, it also had beautiful design. Like one of the things that you needed when you were dealing with people's money was trust. And so beautiful design, an app that showed that people cared and put a lot into it”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, I think what's interesting with Robin is it didn't start paid. They started with a product that they thought was just a better way to invest in the stock market. Let's remove the cost of commission. I mean, back then, it cost five bucks or more a trade with any of the other big platforms. And so they said, we're going to figure out how to give it away for free. We know there's going to be other ways that we can monetize, including, they found several mechanisms through the ecosystem that still were better trading costs for the key was”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actively thinking about wanting to invest or actively already trading, we should be a better product for you. And then, hey, for those people who aren't there who might not even ever want to be investing in single stocks, how can we overtime get the right to expand the platform to everybody else? But not, let's go out with 30 products today because that would have confused everybody and landed”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Figured out how to both have that vision of what billionaires or scale and why is the world different when we're actually everybody's using it. But then go, but I'm not going to get there today. Today I've just got to get to this, and I have to win. This area and convince this group to become passionate. Robinhood's an incredible example where they had a vision to democratize finance for everybody. Imagine anybody in the world who didn't formally have access to the stock market, to the type of investing products that other people were able to do, able to give that to everybody. But that certainly didn't mean overnight you need to be getting every single person to be able to do it, you know, in your retirement account and everything else. It was like, no, it started very small with, hey, if you”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the problem is you have to be able to think in both at the same time. Right. Like the best founders I've gotten to work with.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once you find that, then it becomes how do we repeat that? And everything I've gotten to work on my career has been really fortunate to have found its way to that and then build and compound and set the company up to really scale from that.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's part of what got me so excited to come back to the startup side and the venture side was we can actually get people to try new things. But trying new things only matters if people stick and bring it into their lives and it becomes part of their lives in a way that they're so excited to tell about the next people. And everybody is like, how do you get to this many users so fast? And the answer is don't. Get to a smaller number who have moved their lives over to your product. Who have truly Found something new that they are doing that they will not want to go back from.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it's always been this idea of do you really use the product? You can get me to try something and willingness to try what's really cool about this era, willingness to try is bigger than it's always been.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that's why ChatGBT blew up. And I think for every experience consumers have today, With this new possibilities of building things differently, of presenting things differently, of experience them differently, one of those things at the moment you use it, you're like, oh my God, I can never go back to the old way”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of a sudden, you start putting those searches into ChatGPT. You're like, this answer is more than 10 times better. This experience is more than 10 times better than Google links back and forth.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this is what we got to figure out over the next couple years. I think The short answer is there's a lot of ways to get to scale today. People can get to 10 million, 50 million users in ways you never could before. And all that really matters is if you get to them, they actually use you. Do you stick? Do you become part of their lives? So I'm less worried about finding just the distribution methods for awareness. As much as what are the products that are actually going to move our habits and change us? And part of being an AI product today is has to be so much better than the products were before. ChatGPT was amazing for a whole bunch of searches that we thought were totally solved through Google.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, chat is great to get some lists of stuff, but then, like, it's not awesome. You got to like turn it into like bookings and.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a lot of them will become part of their own services. They'll have some chat experience, but a lot, a lot more. You know, when you're trying to plan a trip”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But what would be really cool is if it said, hey, I know you're trying to plan trips. Here's a bunch of things. By the way, here's the resources to go deeper. And maybe they'll want to own a few of those verticals, but they can't own them all. And actually being even smarter about knowing when it's good to hand you off. I think will be great, and then it'll create a lot of opportunity for those tools.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I start trying to solve a problem with ChatGPT or COD, it does everything it can to solve my problem. I want to plan a trip. Hey, I want to figure out a good bottle of wine. I want to do this. Yeah.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, I don't think any of the core assistants kind of have that mentality that referring people out. Makes them actually stronger. But I think that's the biggest opportunity”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I kind of brushed over this, but we always talk about virality and search. And search was sort of the single purpose tool. I think we're going to be back in the same world where People are going to need this sort of spread, this word of mouth, whether that's accelerated through creators or just through individuals being so excited. Yeah. At the same time, you're going to need to figure out how to do what they call GEO, generative optimization, where the agents talk about you. And when someone's trying to solve a problem, the agents will actually do that. And I think there's both huge opportunity for whether it's the directories or whether you're just getting into the content for the model training or the rag or Ultimately, whether these products become really smart and they realize that referring things out makes them better.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would go, hey, I'm trying this new tool, it's way better than what we've been using before. Everybody jump on it, and that one person would bring everybody in their group that they played games with, and then a few people would go, that was really cool. And I also play games with this group. I'm going to get this group on, and then they do that. So that's even, you know, it's not a micro influencer. It's a dumb word of mouth. That's pure word of mouth. I think it scales all the way down to that. Yeah, interesting.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's my travel routine. And I went here, here, here, and these two I liked, and this one wasn't as good. Like you're actually, if you've learned to trust them and build that relationship and follow them along You actually believe it much more. And yet, it scales all the way down. There are influencers in college, the ones who actually influence our college to be the ones in high school. And they're always that. And so it is still about community. It is still about influencing your friends, but it is there. I'm in Discord, for example, another good example. Through all through influence, all through this kind of influence, but it wasn't like these mass influencers. Sometimes it was streamers going, hey, we're playing on Discord now, but most of it was the person who gathers everybody for games.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find that they're the biggest form of that because actually most creators have earned their reputation based on trust and based on a trusted relationship. Now I remember in the olden days a very famous athlete that would then get up and go, I endorse this serial. And you're like, there's no way that that athlete is eating that cereal every day. Like they're just getting paid to endorse it in the commercial. But now when a creator says, here's my health routine.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, okay, so let me challenge you on this a little bit because there's something intellectually dissatisfying about creators being the next gen channel versus the traditional networks. You know, in the old days, the old days, I mean, the value of the Insta network or the Facebook network or the X network is so powerful. And you could argue that the ones who own those networks have sort of maybe abuse their powers or use them in ways that benefited them more than the ecosystem.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They'll go and tinker with these things and talk about them to the world. That's the new path of discovery, is you have to be so good that you're getting those people to talk about it. And sometimes you can even pay for those endorsements and try to get that started. But honestly, everything only ultimately works if it's true organic word of mouth. I love this so much. I'm telling you about it at some level. And everything then you do is you feed a lot into the engine to get to that point where your product's so good it's spreading itself.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then we got so many of those that everybody got a little bit jaded, and you're like, why are you inviting me to another thing, Aniche? And you're going to stop doing that. And so we had to move into this world, you know, search was the other big wave. Search and, you know, being able to be search optimized for Google was a massive thing. What we've seen in the past five or ten years that are really the working methods now are the trust we have now in these new creator relationships. Sometimes they're true social relationships, sometimes they're somewhat parasocial, but the creators are able to talk about the things that they're doing and exploring and figuring out. And you learn to trust that this person isn't just doing it to make money or an endorsement. They're doing it because they're passionate about what they're tinkering with. And if I like what they're doing, whether it's in beauty or health or restaurants or technology, I follow some really cool Apple creators.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I mean, I think this has been this really interesting wave of the internet, of how much so much of it's powered branded distribution methods. We both grew up through the social era where most of it was virality. And it was a lot of techniques and tactics and testing and learning of how to drive more virality, how to get one person so excited about something they would share it. And sometimes some people overhack this with how to get one person to inadvertently invite their whole address book. Right. But that never worked. It was always the intentional viral sharing. This is so great. I want you to join me.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's still going to have to do a lot of its core functionality again. Not every Gen Alpha is going to go, I need to start my accounting software from zero. I need to start my travel planner from zero. But once they've got the thing that does most of those functions, they're going to want to tinker with it. They're going to want that flexibility and the apps that will win in the next generation will give people that sense of ownership at the end.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, does that mean that the sort of gen alpha that's coming up, the Roblox Minecraft generation, will they expect to be able to kind of fork and remix all their utility apps? I mean, what does that mean in practice?”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they were used to playing a game where they controlled the world, where they chose to join the world. Roblox is this incredible coexperience platform where you get a couple people together and they're playing games and having conversation at the same time with their friends. And they're going to expect as that group grows up more and more experiences like that that are rich, that allow you that sense of control, that sense of ownership, that sense of tinkering, that sense of privacy in this bigger world, but yet the world should be so much richer because of AI and so much more open-ended.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To be witcher or a modern Well, I think this is a huge area for a lot of consumer invention too is this ability to have these immersive stories and experiences and new kinds of entertainment become these beginnings of worlds, but then you're exploring in all new ways. We have a generation of kids growing up that grew up on Minecraft and Roblox. Yeah.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it's interesting. I mean, games is a great way to think of how these two interfaces can reinforce each other because if you're playing, not Zork, but maybe Witcher or a modern RPG, there's obviously there's these very like graphic heavy experiences, but then there's a lot of fun and just talking to the NPCs and kind of exploring the dialogue. And all of that should get a lot richer.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, you're never going to replace that, but chat is a great way to kind of get started and to help me think through something before I'm ready to have that experience.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And forth. But we don't, but after we're dialoguing, we then want to explore information and see things in bigger ways and be able to actually experience it. And, you know, I look at things like games. Chat's never going to replace a game. Like a chat game like Zork, like I used to play when I was a kid. Zork. Great reference. That is very different than a rich immersive experiential game.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's an incredible starting point, an incredible substrate. I mean, if you think of human language, how do we have most of our conversations? They are dialogues.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Apps and experiences, and being able to visualize and explore information or spend time in an app consuming content or interacting with things, none of that's going to go away. Now, what I think we'll be able to do through these agents, through these types of experiences, is more quickly get to what we're looking for, more quickly get into an app where everything's set up right, and I can further customize it and explore from there rather than have to start everything with my own set of tabs. But I definitely think that we're going to want to spend more time in rich experiences instead of just back and forth.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, a lot of people have used this moment to go is this the death of Adams? Because you'll just get to everything through a command line. And I'm very much a believer that”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that was really the hard work there. And I think we're going to have agents that are able to help us be more prepared and ready to have better debates. And when we go down different paths and we're like, actually, we're missing this piece of information. The ability for an agent to go retrieve that for us very, very quickly and help kind of lay out some of the pros and cons or whatever the sides of the issue are. It's going to be tremendous.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hope so too because I think a lot of it is the best work happens when you've got the right information in front of you and you're actually really able to have the point of views and information. You know, one of the things I learned a lot at Apple was how important the culture of debate was. To get to the best answers, you need to really discuss them. But the only way you can have real debate is to have as much information and thought prepared ahead of time.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or negotiate this thing, and then we're going to make sure that. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting as a level, it's a level of indirection. Which I think actually has a lot of interesting implications for work. You know, you think work, there's so much conflation of what is the truth with what is sort of personal to me. And the likes and the dislikes and the disagreements, even often intellectual, can lead to these sort of emotionally charged situations. I'm optimistic or at least hopeful that agents will diffuse a lot of that and work can be more about the honest pursuit of truth.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I ultimately think that we're going to have this set of agents or things working on our behalf or things in the background that will be solving things for us that we'll talk to just like we talk to regular people, but we'll expect different things from it. We'll expect a set of understanding that I think you understand a lot of me, but you don't understand all of me. And I'll expect my agent to have an even deeper understanding. That's when I give it hints or things, it'll be much better. And then I think it will actually help us interact with other people. It'll be like, hey, I'm going to go talk to Anisha's agent or negotiate this thing. And then we're going to make sure that you guys are set up to have this great conversation or whatever it is.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I think with AI, you can go down these self-journeys and go down. And I think one of the challenges with AI is it can also be very self-reinforcing in a way that if you are going down this very solo journey with a companion app or something, you can get like in this mindset that you don't need the rest of the world. And I think the products that can kind of take that energy and take that exploration and take those groups and take that sort of great man theory and put us in a place where it's like encouraging us to actually do different things and get out in the world and connect with other people and do things in the background that help us be in a better place to do that.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's interesting. I think a bunch about this sort of great man, great woman theory of history. And it feels like at least the intersection of technology and us as people has mostly been intermediated through groups, as you said, in social. And now we have a chance to kind of be that great man, great woman via this technology. It's a very different shape of it. And that's not necessarily even just a comment on productivity. It's a different shape of entertainment and exploration as well. Like what are the sides of yourself that are just totally undiscovered still?”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's what a lot of people are building, but they're not exposing us to new ways to connect, new ways to get out in the world, new ways to solve problems that we're trying to solve in our lives, whether it's how-to or everything else. And we're going to have to figure out those 10X things that replace some of those habits that we've already formed.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we did. And then we figured out how much more fluid that makes the world, how you can get information that isn't just brokered through a few channels, but through the people you care about and the people you learn about and the people you're interested in, we've seen a lot of the negative implications of that too. But I think on the positive side, we're so much more kind of connected to who we are and what we're interested in and what we can discover about the world. And so when you think of AI, right now you think of AI as just like short circuiting things you already do.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one part of it is some of us think a lot of those problems have been solved. We had to find ways in the early days of social networking with LinkedIn and with Facebook, and then with Twitter, people didn't have a way to even connect. You know, LinkedIn was like, you're going to put your resume online. Like, what? I would never put where I've worked online. That's only if I'm looking for a job. Facebook was like, connect to everybody you've met in high school and college.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, maybe to wind it back to the social era, we had a lot of entertainment apps, we had a lot of social apps, we had a lot of connection apps. We're not seeing that today with AI. Is that like ecosystem problem? Are founders just not interested in those problems? Why?”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even if something's already coded and is working, you can tinker with it and ask it to be customized in the way that you want. I don't think we've unpacked much of this for consumer yet. I think most of the hard work and effort has gone into all these productivity tools. I think there's a massive set of opportunities.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I think it's how do we navigate the world, the information that we have access to, things we want to do, places that we want to go spend our time and our energy, how do we connect with other people? I think right now AI has been so much about productivity, job replacement, work replacement. And I think we have a moment to shift that, which is how does these new tools help you get more out of your own day and your own life and the things you want to do? And it's a massive paradigm shift in interface. We haven't even all processed what it's going to mean when everything can start with natural language. When you get options and you're able to explore across a variety of options right there in a really dynamic interface that is generated for you. You have an idea and you just want to create an app or a website or an experience that's very personal to you and you can just express what you want. And everybody I think they're talking about how you can create something from scratch. It's amazing. You can code in ways you never could before.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think we're in a really interesting spot. I mean, ChatGPT in many ways is a consumer app, and it's one of the biggest consumer apps that's come on like a storm just in three and a half short years.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so maybe diving right in. There's been obviously a lot happening in the product cycle around AI, machine intelligence broadly. I'd say a lot of it, at least for startups, has been more B2B oriented than consumer-oriented. What do you think is the sort of state of consumer today?”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think that's right. And I think we've always kind of expected Siri to be great and understand you and understand everything. And I'm so glad I can't wait.”
2026-06-23 · a16z Podcast · What’s Next for Consumer AI? | Josh Elman Joins a16z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source