YouSaid · the spoken record

Martin Casado

lines on the record: 104
first: 2025-12-30
most recent: 2025-12-30
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

“Like, there is this dialectic. There is this evolution of humans. We are continuing to get better. And then listen, he thought maybe we'd arrived. I think the conclusion now is that we haven't arrived. But I love this idea that we as a species are improving how we interact, how we have policies, how we socialize. And so all of these kind of have this general theme of, listen, we as a species are going to continue to solve problems. We're going to continue to have to work together. We're going to continue to have to cooperate and like ultimately listen, it'll be us versus entropy.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's phenomenal. It was interesting because historically he's actually recanted on that, but it's like this Hegelian view of humans. And his conclusion is like liberal democracy is the end of history. And I think that's been questioned right now, but he does such a great job of taking the Hegelian view that”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you just take the long arc here because we're being philosophical, like, you know, like the ultimate enemy is entropy. It never goes away. I don't think any single tribe solves that. I think you need pro-social behavior to actually do planetary level innovation and understanding how we work around trusts and coordination and cooperation is very critical. So listen, I don't think it's the ultimate book. I think it's great at that. By the way, one more book I'd add is The End of History and The Last Man Is that what it is?”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, it basically says, listen, the Protestant Revolution has changed the way that we associate with ourselves and with each other. And it basically, we used to be very, very tribal. And so that kind of has certain impacts on trust. And the Protestant Revolution kind of forced nuclear families and forced separation. And that required us to be pro-social. And then it also has a second thesis on how free markets also produce pro-social behavior. The reason that I would include it there is listen, I think humanity.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Heritage. Yeah. And unfortunately, these days, it seems only Southern Spanish. I come from the most backwards part of Spain, right? From what Spain and like, you know, like CS is a God-given right. I think everybody should.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know what the title of the, like, you know, when after 300 years of doing this experiment, like the title of the report will be. Does it mean to be human”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time construction. Okay, so no ethical constraints, no time constraints on limited resources. Yeah, 100% nature versus nurture. And you can imagine how I do it, right? I just clone, I'd have a whole bunch of people. I'd clone a whole bunch of people and I minorly tweak these things and I'd let them live out their entire lives. I'd simulate entire worlds for them and I'd answer the question, what is innate and what is not? And then ultimately that'll be the question on free will too, right?”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, 100% Nature versus Nurture. I would like to go to space. I would clone a whole bunch of people. I would have a whole bunch of controls. I would like play out their lives. Can I live forever too?”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which, like, let's say a car crash, right? You could sue the developers. And so I think from the United States standpoint, we've not done what we've done in the past. We've used the precautionary principle. We've changed the way that we approach technology from a policy standpoint historically, and we've done it in a way that slowed down innovation. And as a result, we're on our back foot. And being on our back foot, you know, with China with respect to technology, I don't think is in the national interest. And so I'm, you know, I've been very encouraged with the current administration has done with regards to AI. I think there are kind of policy recommendations have been fantastic. And so I am cautiously optimistic that things are changing, but we're not there. We've got a lot of work to do.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Best models, and they're being used all over the place. And so I think in some ways, you know, we had the wrong approach as a nation and as an industry. Now that is being rectified, I think that's being understood. But I think now we have a lot of catch-up to do. I think that, you know, like our models aren't the best. And honestly, a lot of it just comes down to policy questions, right? Like there's a lot of risk to release something. Open source, if somebody else is going to try to find something copyrighted in it and then sue you for, right? There's a lot. I mean, there's a lot of spurious”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think it's something we should all be concerned with. It's kind of funny. This is the reason why I got so involved in the political discussion, which I'll never do again just because it's such a terrible space to be in. But, you know, you had VCs who should know better and who should be pro-innovation talking against open source. Academia was entirely silent. And so it's like the United States just decided that it wasn't going to invest in the number one thing for proliferating technology the way that we see it. And I think largely because of that, the proliferation of open source has been pretty muted in the United States. And I do think that China really answered the call. They've done a phenomenal job. I would say many of the best AI teams are in China. The models are many of them.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think we're part of the long march of technology to solving all problems. And even if we stopped AI research right now, there's been enough that's been unlocked to create a tremendous amount of value. And there's going to be new things that are unlocked. And so I just view this as the same continuum that we were on 10 years ago and 20 years ago and 30 years ago. And we're going to continue have to unlock new things. And I just feel because these things are so startlingly impressive that sometimes we kind of don't view this as part of a continuum that has to go. And like we've already solved it, now we just have to sit back and wait for it to happen. I don't believe that. I believe like, listen, the way that I view investing now is the same as I did five years ago and 10 years ago. And we need to have more improvements. But what I do acknowledge is that we've unlocked a ton. And so now is a”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, it's conversational and discourse quality. That's the problem with the term AGI, not the fact that like someday we will have computers at a smartest team. Of course we will. But right now that's not helpful.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, well, then, you know, this is how we sort of, you know. And also, it becomes a universal justification without having to actually have a justification. Well, why, you know, why is this, why is the marginal risk for AI greater than traditional computer systems? Oh, AGI. That doesn't mean anything. It's not a statement, right? Why is this going to put end people out of a job? Oh, AGI. That does it. Now, both of these are great questions. The labor question is an important question. The marginal risk question is an important question. We should have those discussions. We have those discussions not in terms of AGI, because that's not a thing. We should do it in terms of what's actually happening now. And in my experience, every time you say AGI, this is what people use to justify whatever their fear is, whatever their concern is, or whatever their most optimistic hope is. And the problem is when you dig into it, it's like this kind of belief that there's this magic thing that will provide it. And so it did.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Using AGI as some goal or measuring stick or destination, all it does is encourage very sloppy thinking because it ends up becoming the place that you put all of your expectations and all of your fears. And right now it's not even a real place. And so I really try and force people not to use the term AGI, not to trick in terms of it because it's very hard to have a conversation because it's such a holding place for magic and magic fears. And so I like to talk about, you know, concrete problems, solutions, products, technologies, technology trends, technology directions, and then, hey, maybe at some point in time, we will know the architecture that will provide human level intelligence with all the flexibility that can learn just as fast, etc. And then we can start talking about AGI. But until that time, it just erodes.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tell us why I think at the very foundations, I don't think. We have figured out how the human brain works. And I don't think, you know, I think maybe a language model or something is a small subset of it. But I tend to agree with Jan Lacun, which is, you know, we'll get to AGI at some point in time and we keep chipping off pieces of it, but there isn't a straight path from where we are now. It's not like you just add compute and data to the existing models and then we have AGI. I think that we just keep chipping off each pieces of the problem. And so for me.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You don't have enough immersive content. And so there's probably somewhere in the middle. If you look at a lot of online purely virtual experiences, the gating factor is like, how do you build these very, very large worlds? It takes years. It takes teams of people years to build kind of these levels and these worlds and these 3D environments. And what's very interesting, I think this is such an important point. It was very interesting. So I work very close with World Labs. I go in on Wednesdays. I work with a TV team. I write code.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe for some people, I mean, listen, I love VR. Every time I do VR thing comes, I buy it. And my problem is unlike a video game, which are deeply immersive and you've got a ton of content. Like I walk a plank and then I'm done, right? I shoot a zombie and then I just feel like.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I blindfold you and I put you in a room. The lights are off. And I try to describe the room so you can navigate it or do any task. Like the words are just not going to be accurate enough, right? Like I'll be like, there's a cup in front of you. It's about three feet, you know, like that won't work. On the other hand, if I give you a camera and then you kind of recreate the 3D and you're positioned in that 3D, of course, you can now navigate the room. And so there's something very fundamental to this solution space for embodied AI.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Us all on the same page VR, online gaming, et cetera, is really gated on content. It is so hard to build 3D scenes. It is so expensive. And so I think that markets that weren't markets before can become markets. That said, I agree with you that long term, if we're going to have embodied AG, I'm not an AGI guy, but I'm going to say if we're going to have embodied AI, embodied AGI that looks at the world. Creates a re representation of that world and decides how to interact with that world somewhere somehow you're going to need to recreate that world in 3D right you can't do it with link right like the like the the description i like to say is like let's say”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the past, you know, like they were small acquisitions, they were never really profitable that were trying to build 2D images. And yet now we have companies like MidJourney, which famously has bootstrapped the hundreds of millions of ARR. We've got BFL, we've got Ideogram, very successful companies, et cetera. And so I think in general, when you bring the marginal cost of creation to zero, the market size explodes, right? Marginal cost of image creation, of video creation, of music creation, et cetera. And again, I know that this wasn't the point of your question, but I think it's very important to touch on is if you bring the martial cost of 3D content creation to zero, I think that that market is infinitely large. I mean, one of the reasons VR sucks is because there's no content. I've got a Quest 3. I love it, but like I go, I spend 24 bucks and I get the stupidest little thing. And so I would say a lot of metaverse, I hate the term, but I mean, just to.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let's go back to the market size first just because I feel this is a mistake we keep making in the AI world, which is nobody would have said 2D image is a market. Nobody, right? There's a whole class of companies which were like,”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like that. And then actually, ultimately, this is very relevant in robotics, right? So the problem with just 2D video is you actually don't have depth. You can't see behind things, right? And so you need to create some 3D representation if you want like a traditional program, let's say like a robotics brain to decide things. Like, you know, how far away is this? What might it look like on the other side? How do I plan around these things? So the more 3D representation you can create, kind of the smarter, like an embodied AI would be. And so they're really trying to tackle this kind of holy grail of problems that I just have one view in the world that's 2D, which is what our brain does. And then how do I kind of recreate that in 3D so that I can kind of process it?”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Problem because Lots of, you know, the way that you train models is with data, and there just isn't a lot of 3D data. So is this kind of this unsolved problem? But it turns out to be a very horizontal problem, right? Like, so for example, why would you need a 3D scene? Well, you could use it because you wanted to create a pure virtual environment that you want to interact with, right? You want to place a character with, you want to change the angle with it, you want to augment it, you want to step into it like VR, right? You know, you could also use it for any sort of kind of design, you know, like architecture. You could use it for AR, right? Like actually I just saw this grade, this guy named Ian Curtis did this cool thing where like he had a 3D representation of his living room in his Oculus. And then he was like overlaying changes on it that he made with World Labs. And so he could like, he could like switch between like the virtual labs recreation and the real recreation. So he could like change furniture and changing.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, this even goes back to my experience with writing 3D engines for video. I mean, it's just a particular interest. So listen, World Labs was created by the true pioneers in 3D. That's Fei Fei Lee, who did ImageNet, super famous Fe. It's Ben Mildenhall who created Nerf, which is the neural radiance field. It's Christoph Lassner, who was like Gaussian splats before they were cool. It's Justin Johnson, who's the style transfer guy. I mean, like, they've just got the most epic team. The easiest way to articulate what they're doing is they want to take a 2D representation, like an image and create a 3D representation from it, like a scene or a world. And it's a very, very tough problem because if you just have an image, you can't see everything. You can't see in the back of the table. You can't see behind you, et cetera. So there's a ton of generative components to it. And it's also a”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you have new behaviors, incumbents have a tough time executing, and we clearly have new behavior here, right? It's like it's an individual behavior, it's a new relationship. There's actually often an emotional component too, like the shift between TPT 4 and 5, we saw that. And so I think new behavior's advantage challengers, I think we're seeing this play out. And so I worry much less about the incumbents. I think if you're a founder listening to this and you're doing an AI company priority zero is finding that white space, not worrying about defensibility in my opinion, you know, and then once you find that white space, you know, rely on traditional modes to protect it when the market slows down.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But right now it's like somebody invented cold fusion and people show up for electricity, right? So it solves your customer acquisition problem. But from a defensibility standpoint, you have to go to traditional modes, right? You have to like, you know, we know how to do modes and whether that's a two-sided marketplace. It's an integration mode. It's a workflow mode, like whatever it is, like you still as a company have to build that. You know, the good news relative to incumbents, last last point on this is.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So my general rule of thumbs is while markets are accelerating in their growth, they will fragment. And that's a natural law of physics. And so everybody worries about defensibility on day zero, which is just dumb, in my opinion. It doesn't matter until markets slow down or they consolidate, right? And that literally just kind of falls out of the like, listen, if I have to spend a dollar, if I know I'm in a company and I've got to spend a dollar, am I going to spend a dollar in an area where I don't have competition or I do have competition? Well, of course, you're going to do it where you don't and where you're the leader anyways. That's why we've seen basically fragmentation in most of these domains. We've got companies growing in most of these domains. And so I think when it comes to code, long term, what keeps them defensible? So here's my current view is I don't think there's any inherent defensibility in AI. I don't think that exists. I think that AI overcomes the bootstrap problem. So it's trying to solve your customer acquisition problem because it's so magic. And that won't be the case forever.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so you've got an infinitely sized market that AI is very effective at going. And so I think we're going to see a bunch of super successful companies. What do you think will sort of...”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's say you get 10%. It's $3 trillion. I mean, we're talking about like in an infinitely sized market. And if you ask me, like, what is the one area that AI has surprised you? It's encoding. Listen, I've been developing my whole life, and I would never have guessed it'd be this good.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like the PR for an interface to the developer, right? Like using GitHub as the interface for the developer, but it was also pretty clear that cursor's ambitions was to change all of code. It was also very clear that code was evolving. And so, you know, from our perspective, a very, very product focused team working on tools for developers that has this kind of broad vision was the right bet for developer tooling for us. And then, of course, that's worked out quite well. It's just so important. I said it before, I want to say it again, that that doesn't mean that all of these, like there isn't tons of value in all of these other areas, like coding models, tons of value, CLI tools, tons of value. I mean, this space is enormous. If you just do rough math, right? Like, let's say there's 30 billion developers. There's more, but let's say it's 30 million. Let's say they get on average 100K a year. I mean, what is that? About 30 trillion dollars.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, listen, I mean, it depends on what you're doing. I'm a developer. We were looking at developer tools. The developer tool is the IDE. Now, listen, the coding space is enormous, right? There's repos, there's testing, there's PR management, et cetera, right? But in the case of coding, I mean, the co-pilot had given us a glimmer of how powerful AI could be integrated into the development process. You know, the cursor team executed so exceptionally well. Half of our companies were using it. And, you know, and they were, they were just, you know, at the time, just very, very focused on building out the IDE and being the leader. So just for that bet, that was very clear. That didn't mean that we didn't think CLIs were a good bet. So it was just different, right? That's different. I mean, you could give. And at the time, there really wasn't as many approaches that were using.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I honestly believe we're going to see both of these paths. And I think the biggest mistake is people are subject to be one or the other, right? Like everything's going to be one model. But the problem with that is composition is just real. We've got an existing, you know, set of tools. We've got existing tool chains that use components of outputs that you're going to want to use. And so I think that's a mistake. And the other one is, oh, these big models aren't going to be useful. Like you need a collection of small models. Clearly that's not true because the bitter lesson will continue to make these single models much more powerful.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is Genie 3. So it just does everything, right? So there's like one path, which is the God bottle path. And the argument for that is the bitter lesson argument. You have all the data. The model is smart, etc. This is kind of, you know, and that's clearly a viable path. The other path is the composition of models paths, which is, let's take the pixel case again. Actually, I just saw this amazing video this morning on X, where somebody made a video and they're like, I used Midjourney to make the images. I use World Labs for the 3D scenes. I use Suno for the music. It's this composition of different models. And you look and they have this just beautiful, you know, video that was created. And so the argument for the composition is if you have an opinion on what comes out, you'll just have a lot more control, right? If I want fine grain camera movements and feel the view, I'll need 3D. Maybe I want very specific images and I want consistency across those. So I'll need an image model. I want the music a certain way. I may want to change it over time. So I want a separate thing for music, right? And so I.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think that what we're seeing is we're seeing two pretty distinct paths that these AI model companies take. So one of those paths, the model just does more and more and more, right? And so you basically have one model that does more and more and more, right? Like, you know, like these code CLI tools like Codex, for example. So you could be like, I'm going to make it super complicated and do all this prompt engineering and have all this software. Or I could just expose the model to the user. And it seems in these situations, you just expose the model to the user and it just does better because the model is smarter than whatever code you're going to write. And then it's just so hard to kind of interpret what the model is going to say anyway. So that's one path. It's like, you know, we're also seeing this in the pixel space, which is, you know, instead of like having a model for image and a model for 3D and a model for music and a model for characters, I'm going to have one video model that does everything. And oh, by the way, I'm going to make it interactive.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now we always tell our stories like, oh, these unprecedented times. We've never done this before and blah, blah, blah, blah. But, like, they said those words back then too. Did they were like, oh, this is unprecedented. We've never done this. It's the end of the nation. Really? For me, anyways, it's nice to realize that this is a continuum. It's been going on for a long time. The US is anti-fragile. It is the best country on the planet. We have always have challenges to deal with. And we do a good job of dealing with them.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Decades ago, or something like that. What's cool is to actually rewind the clock and listen to the rhetoric during the Vietnam War and listen to the rhetoric during the dot-com boom and listen to the rhetoric around the Warren Court and realize I don't think it's actually that much, you know, we always have this kind of story.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, as being part of a historical Like a historical trend than some total aberration. I like to be part of the broader narrative.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I've just been in Eisenhower lately. I've been going through a bunch of Eisenhower books. What's interesting about Eisenhower, right? He's a conservative president. He was a moderate. But he was also, you know, it was under his watch at the Warren Court was created. And the Warren Court, you know, I mean, very famously, you know, was the vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement as far as overturning policy and kind of getting rid of a lot of the Jim Crow laws, et cetera. And so a lot of kind of my questions have been, you know, today people criticize the court system and there's a lot of rhetoric on how the court's being stacked, et cetera. And so I've actually been kind of having conversations with Grock comparing and contrasting the rhetoric around the war in court with the rhetoric around the current Supreme Court. And it's so interesting how similar the criticisms actually are. And so, of course, it's a different environment in a different era. But for me, I just feel much, much closer to what's going on.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like the question I have are kind of analysis, synthesis questions, not fact based questions like make an argument of why the school of Salamanca in Spain in the 1300s was a progenitor to the Austrian School of Economics, right? And so I actually have these conversations about what I read. And I just find that I think more deeply about it when I do it. And I actually find it interesting and it's kind of more well rounded. So that's personally been great. I think I'm a bit OCD when it comes to writing. So I will not use AI for writing. I think writing is thinking and I use writing to think. And so if something did that for me, I wouldn't be thinking. And I think this for me has just been a lifelong tool. And so I don't think I've ever used AI to write a single, I mean, maybe that's not true. I don't want me to be too categorical, but I never use AI for writing. So that's the one area that I've really tried to protect.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. It's kind of my relaxing time, but it's really just lovely to be able to just kind of focus on code again. You know, another kind of just personal thing I like. So I love reading historical. Books on a historical figures that are closely tied to innovation or economics. And often I have a lot of questions. And so these days, what I'll do is I'll read a chapter. And then when I walk, my dog is silly. When I walk my dog, I use grock audio mode, and I actually have conversations about the chapter. And in a way, I don't even care if.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give me boilerplate for an app so I can write a video game, and all of those decisions were made by AI. So I use AI coding very heavily. I do it almost every night, and it's really just been lovely.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, like I mentioned, so I code with AI. So the reason I stopped coding is I just didn't want to learn the next framework, right? I mean, the thing with developing the late 90s is you'd sit down to your computer and you'd write code, you know, and it was all kind of there and you didn't have to learn a lot of stuff. You mostly just write in code. And then I, you know, through the 2000s, I did my PhD. And, you know, so then, you know, I kind of invested enough time to understand all the frameworks and whatever. But I step awake because I'm building a business or I'm becoming an investor. When I go back to it, I just have to learn all of these new things, especially with all this web stuff. And you're not learning anything fundamental to computer science or anything foundation or anything that's useful outside of that context. You're learning, you know, whatever stupid design decisions some random person that created the framework did. And so that's really what slowed me down from coding. And with AI, I don't have to deal with any of that. I'm like, you know, whatever.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's going to have a totally different adoption cycle. We've not yet cracked like the direct sales enterprise. I would say for those enterprises that are listening rather than doing your own kind of project for now, it's probably better to work with like a vendor or a product company that's actually doing these things. And then over time, just like the internet, by the way, the internet was the same way, just like the internet, it will make its way into the enterprise in a way that we all understand. But it's not there yet.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some internal effort to go ahead and do stuff, buy yourself without really, you know, then I would say the fatal rate, of course, is going to be very high. That has nothing to do with the fact that now many tens of millions of users are using the technologies, technologies, getting value from them and driving that value into whatever the workplace is. And so I just think that. When it comes to this wave of AI, we have to realize it's a very new thing.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think, what are the problems with AI is that it's better, and so we have all these presuppositions on what it is, right? So here's my view on AI. Right now, AI as it is, is very much an individual. Prosumer type technology that's attached to individual behavior, right? It's like me using ChatGPT, me using cursor, me using Ideogram, right? Me using mid journey. And the value that organizations get is that their users are using ChatGPT. Their users are using whatever. That's what it is. However, there are platform teams within the enterprise and their boards are like, we need more AI. Go implement stuff. And so they're scrambling to do these AI projects. And of course, those are failing, right? This is such a different technology and a different shift. So if you measure”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that is because, so I agree we're in a bit of like terra incognito as far as understanding what the capital structure is long time after you've raised this much money. But what we do know is you can actually convert it into revenue and into users. And so I think this is where we're going to see a lot of rationalization and normalization in the market. But again, I don't think it's basically, it isn't speculative, right? It is just trying to understand what the market is doing. I ultimately think markets are very efficient. And so I think we'll rationalize, but there's a true True value of being created in this AI. And I think that if money is not following it, it's going to miss the greatest super cycle in the last 20 years”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally, totally. That's a different level. This is actually a very, I mean, maybe, you know, on this podcast, we're not going to have the time to dig into it. This is very interesting construction about the current technology wave is you can actually deploy capital and you can get revenue on the other side of it. And these are very capital intensive businesses, right? And I think that is what the market is trying to normalize. Like you can't even really enter the casino without a billion dollars for these foundation models, for example.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's right. So we actually have a foundation underlying it. So I would say, yeah, I mean, it kind of feels a little bit 2019-ish, but it's real. And so, you know, unlike, you know, the 2021-22 collapse, I mean, you could argue that we're still early in cycle. And yes, it's going to continue to oscillate. But I don't think we're anywhere near the top.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, you have valuations waxing and waning. I think it's great to actually apply it to 2021. I mean, 2021, there was a lot of excitement, but it wasn't actually driven by real business usage, right? It was like COVID, the flight to online, and then just a bunch of private capital flooded in the market. Remember like, you know, Tiger, Kotu, Inside, all of these were deploying very heavily. And so in a way, there was kind of this excitement and exuberance. But not for any sustainable business reason. It was really like an influx of capital and then this kind of, you know, quirk of the macro that wasn't sustainable. But with AI, I mean, you know, we were, you know, three, four years in. It looks sustainable. We understand retention. We understand growth. We understand margins.”
2025-12-30 · a16z Podcast · Why a16z's Martin Casado Believes the AI Boom Still Has Years to Run · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source