YouSaid · the spoken record

Matthew

lines on the record: 39
first: 2017-01-21
most recent: 2017-01-21
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

“I think it does very much come back to the knowledge gap, and that's what's so encouraging about seeing policymakers come out here and want to learn about the ecosystem out here is they understand, they're starting to understand that there's more to the private sector.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Example would be let's say you're at the defense department like Matt was, and you're not even aware that there are companies in Silicon Valley that could do something as well as the traditional defense contractors that you're going to for a third of the price, right? Like, I mean, if you live in Washington and you work in defense, your vision for private sector engagement with defense is Raytheon, Boeing. It's not some of these smaller cyber companies out here.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When Ted came on board and I interviewed him for a QA, it was actually a big eye-opener for me when he described a flavor of regulatory capture that's actually more about being able to walk the hallways and having these longstanding 20-year relationships where you know the industry, you know the people, you know the lingo and that's the advantage that a lot of people don't have.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't know how much the hairstylists are paying, but I mean, it is crazy when you think about it like why do you need all these crazy certifications? Why is the government even getting it involved? So that does happen, but I think the irony is it doesn't happen the ways you think.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there are two types that I think there are two real buckets of regulation. Some is the regulatory capture rent-seeking behavior incumbents trying to use the government to make more money, which is not what you want our government to do. The second bucket is these are just really hard issues and hard problems. You're trying to figure out. The thing that's interesting, just being, you know, coming from seven years in Washington to Silicon Valley is I think there's too much of an assumption here that regulation is the first bucket. The rent-seeking behavior, like that the FDA or the SEC or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is out to affirmatively shut down some startup. They're trying to defend some other. And that does happen. There is some regulatory capture, but the regulatory capture happens more, I think, at the state and local level when you have like taxi unions, hotel unions and lobbies and things like that.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, there's plenty of times you want to be under the radar that you're in stealth mode as a company You don't want people to know exactly what your plan is, or maybe you haven't precisely worked out your plan. So the minute you tell your pro innovation story and then somebody comes back and says, well, how are you complying with law X and you don't have an answer? And then you should have your act together. But it's good to be aware that there's going to be a lot of people telling the opposite story, the anti-innovation story, the story about why your new product is dangerous, why it's bad, and why it must be stopped right now.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tell the pro innovation story For what you're doing. So drones are about, they're not about spying or neighbors or making life difficult around international airports. They're about great applications for industry, for agriculture, for construction, for insurance, for public safety, finding lost people in forests, making a lot of jobs a lot safer. And if you tell pro-innovation stories like that, or ride sharing is a great way for my mother now that she's in her mid-70s to start getting around rather than having her drive on a Bay Area streets. Or it's a way to reduce drug driving. Once you're out there telling those stories, then a policymaker says, okay, great. This is an interesting perspective. And had the startup waited to let some newspaper write a big expose driven by somebody else incumbent.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm glad you share the perspective of where some of the people who wear the policymaker hats are coming from and how you had to explain sort of what the mindset of startups to them. I would say that the flip side of that, and we've had this on the podcast because we've had quite a few politicians on this, the message that I hear over and over and over from them whenever I ask them the question and I always ask them, what's the advice you give to entrepreneurs? They all say over and over and over again, talk to us. Explain to us. Don't just assume, don't blind, don't black, you know, black wallet. Talk to us. And it's not about giving us a demo and giving us stats and making a case. It's just about have a conversation and just explain the bigger context and trend at”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The government 20 people are going to see. And then, I mean, like, I would tear my hair out at just the sheer inefficiency of government that you have. Like everyone feels this. You don't walk around saying, this is working really well. We need more concrete windowless buildings in Washington. And so we all want to stabilize and streamline this. So how do we get there is the question.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the bottom line is I got asked this a lot by policymakers, like, why do these rules matter so much? Because put yourself in the perspective of an entrepreneur. You've raised a seed round a few hundred thousand dollars. You've raised a series A round, maybe $2 to $10 million. The cost of hiring either a lawyer or a lobbyist or someone who specialized in that or having someone on your dedicated team who they just do with compliance and regulatory issues, that's a big chunk of money after the money that you've been fundraising. So I think for policymakers to understand, if you're a new company, you're focused on making a great product and selling it and everything that distracts from that that's complying with rules really takes away with the core mission.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Both like roles for tech, like bringing actual tech entrepreneurs and senior tech people into the government to explain the impact of regulation. So I think there was definitely not this idea we're going to blindly regulate and figure it out later. There was really an effort to go and work with tech companies or work with entrepreneurs.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I proudly am. But I think for all the talk about Democrat overregulation, I think the Obama administration made a lot of efforts to really build partnerships with the tech community. Not only was it culturally, it was just very cool to be part of tech, but I think they really worked.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yourself in the shoes of an attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of a state, from the perspective of Republican attorneys general for the last, they've, you know, from their perspective, they've been spending the last eight years battling what they perceive as kind of regulatory overreach. And so they're going from a position not only where they no longer have to be on defense, but actually can be proactive.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Given the law of state X, does a state level law passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, does that preempt a city law or is the city given some latitude to set laws within its boundaries? And it does vary state to state. So you could have an instance where the city says, well, we want to be a laboratory under the law that could either be an exception to the statewide law or the state might not have moved on that law. So that's an example of one where if the state occupies the field and says, well, no city in the state can allow this, then I've seen instances where cities will challenge such a rule.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or a forcing function for the federal government. And where's the role of the city in the state? Because I'm thinking now examples of cities like Pittsburgh or another city that's doing very advanced things on this front. Like how does that dynamic play out, especially by the way, given that you have in the numbers you shared earlier predominantly Democrat mayors and predominantly Republican state? Like just in general, how does a dynamic play out?”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Guidelines. No rules. There's no rules. It says these are the parameters under which we think you should be creating your own laws with respect to driverless cars. The really exciting thing is that so for the states that haven't yet done anything with that, they can now become the gold standard for whatever the ultimate federal rules are going to have to be. All these states have the opportunity to kind of tinker and experiment. And then the U.S. Department of Transportation can look at those models and say, this one's working really well, this one's not working as well. So I think that's kind of one of the more, all of that is to say that the states can almost be a forcing mechanism or a forcing function for the federal government to respond more quickly.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's the challenge of regulators err on the side of being slow to respond, but then also the technology is evolving so quickly. Fundamentally, there is this knowledge gap too. So you look at the driverless car example and NITSA under the US Department of Transportation put out these federal guidelines to the states that essentially said, clear guidelines.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The other argument I've heard too is that there are many existing laws that cover a lot of the things and the behaviors that new technologies might bring to bear, like drones and privacy. There are existing peeping tom laws. You don't necessarily have to enact a new thing specifically for drones just because it happens to go fly a little higher. But I do have a question for you. I don't know if even if the narrative is often painted as like, you're the way regulations do and don't affect you. More pressing is inaction. Or sluggishness or slowness in acting one way or the other. And then in fact, the issue is that it's not so much the outcome of the regulation that necessarily matters, but that people might take too long to decide. And one example that pops to mind is drones. Some people argue it's not fast enough.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That this technology is going to evolve in this way, or that we're not going to be able to solve this problem, or that your old system is going to be better than what we could offer. Let us develop for a while. Let us run this for three, four, five years. Different companies will try different mechanisms. And in terms of user protection and customer protection, customers are likely, especially with software-based technologies, the switching costs are quite low. So if they find a bad experience with one company, they'll leave to go to another provides better consumer protection.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was a very smart person, well intentioned, but is not up to speed on all this, just has never been exposed to them. And then at the same time is mindful as a government official of the dangers of this and the public safety imperatives or financial security imperatives or anti-fraud imperatives that many government bodies try to enforce and try to guarantee. And so they're going to react to the new technologies in a way that's usually not helpful. They're going to try to channel a new technology into an existing box to impose existing regulations, whereas what we and most entrepreneurs want to see is, hey, it's still early days in this technology. Don't jump in and assume that this is”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say it's hard enough for us as venture capitalists and others to anticipate how products are going to play out and what's going to succeed and what's not and to keep pace with technology and to be able to foresee today The potential uses. And so imagine Well, imagine the challenge to a regulator.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Analogy that comes to mind in the most obvious way is this notion of permissionless innovation, which created the internet economy today. And if people had said, like from the very get-go, because no one predicted the internet would lead to all these different businesses. And to be able to say then like, oh, but we have to proscribe the use of it for commerce. It wouldn't have created this economy that we have today where actually the biggest companies are now internet companies.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going back to this question about what is deregulation actually mean, I think the biggest implication for startups is just reduced barriers to actually launching your product. If you think about where the biggest obstacle exists for these startups that want to release something, oftentimes that kind of last obstacle, final clearance, final blessing from the relevant regulator is what's going to prevent you from actually doing it. So it's less so in the development phase. I think you wouldn't see it's not like you would see with increased regulation, fewer people delving into these interesting issues and taking on interesting problems. It's just actually releasing the products that address them, I think is in a deregulated environment is a little bit easier.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Believe strongly, and you know, common rules of the road, the federal government often does a better job setting that for a variety of reasons. But in tech policy, the rivers can really be true because you look at the technologies Ted referred to, you know, fintech, drones, driverless cars, they're all moving so quickly. There's not one answer right now. And this idea that the states or a laboratory of democracy or your experiment, you try some things may work, some things may fail. Traditionally, that's more of a conservative Republican issue, but I think on tech policy, that's saying a lot of Democrats are behind because it's so new and the technology's changing. So we need to experiment. So I think it's a really good thing.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think this is one of those issues that's not a traditional Republican Democratic divide. To your earlier point. Yeah, I mean, speaking of someone who worked in the Obama administration, Democrats.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Health, safety, general welfare prevent disasters. Many tech companies figure, well, we've got new ways of preventing that. The great example is ride sharing, of course, where you say we could have a taxi commission that prescribes a bunch of rules that and puts a number in the back of the taxi cab that you can call if you have a complaint, or you can just do this app and have crowd have ratings by drivers and users. And if you think you got ripped off on the way from LaGuardia into the city, then you can, instead of trying to remember, if you don't know the area, instead of trying to remember what route you took, Lyft and Uber have it on the app and they can retrieve it and say, yeah, you were.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Speaking as the Republican, I think it's almost always a good thing to have a deregulatory environment. It gives more freedom to the entrepreneur to With new forms of new products, new forms of reaching consumers, new forms of giving disclosures, alternatives to traditional, a lot of regulation Samsung desire to promote”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, before we break down some of the verticals, what does that mean when you say do regulatory? Like, what does that mean for startups? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, I don't mean to be so black and white about it in moralistic terms, but how should an entrepreneur think about that?”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's much more like his Republican control. It's much more likely that their ideas are going to get adopted into law. Yeah. Than it has been for the past eight years Taking a step back, as you say, sown. And this is where we can start to get into some of the federal implications. We can talk about what the future of tech policy is, what the immediate outlook for tech policy is. On the federal level, but one of the interesting implications is that Republicans generally are in the main deregulatory. On balance, there'll be fewer instances in which a federal regulation preems to set aside overrule a state law or to obviate the need for a state law. So you'll have more opportunities for state legislatures and governors, just state governments generally, to step up and say, wow, the federal government is not telling us what to do here and it's not occupying the field with its own regulations. So now the question is up to us. What should we do about fintech? What should we do about drones? What should we do about autonomous vehicles?”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the significant effects that we see over the near term and for the next four years is on executive branch, the president, his appointees and so on. One of our reflections on this is that now you have a Republican president and a Republican Congress. This is where Matthew is going. It's when you had a Democrat president, President Obama, the presumption was any major project, any major legislative project that was initiated by Republicans would be treated with some skepticism, unless it had massive Democrat support. It would be treated with skepticism. In other words, Republicans majorities in the Senate and House only went so far because they could pass a bill that imbied their views and then they would get vetoed the minute it got to the White House. Now that you have a Republican president, you could see the White House saying, you know what, this is these are great ideas you guys have come up with over the past four years, over the past six years, past eight years. And now, great. If you send them over and you pass them over.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even if a Democratic governor wanted to institute some sort of anti-tech policy or did not want to pass some sort of pro-tech policy, the Republicans in these state legislatures could overturn that bill.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Republicans now control 33 governorships. The governor of Alaska is independent, so Democrats only control 16, that Republicans actually outnumber two to one Democratic governors. They control 68 out of 99 state legislative bodies, so both upper and lower houses or both upper and lower chambers. That's over two-thirds. And then perhaps most importantly, in 32 of the 50 states, they control both legislative chambers. And they have a veto proof majority in 17.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Emer Right, because tech is clearly, I mean, just you know, to be state the obvious it's a driver for job growth and change and positive innovation. But the interesting theme, the tension here that's kind of fascinating to me is you said that about 70 out of 100 of the biggest cities are Democratic mayor dominated, and we're talking about cities as this new rise of power yet the way that the outcome of the election shook out for state and Congress, it's predominantly Republican. That's right. What's the implication?”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, Hartford, Connecticut, who thinks about them as a tech city? Yeah, I think it's emerging from bankruptcy, but they recently started a program where they're converting the old cult armory, which used to manufacture cult firearms into an incubator, with the extent that, okay, we have software, we have hardware you can manufacture. They're trying to lure tech entrepreneurs and create high-wage, lasting jobs. And it's also a Democratic mayor who's doing that, which is kind of a more pro-business take.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of these cities and states, for that matter, are competing to be these innovation hubs. From our perspective, one of the more promising aspects of the distribution of power at a state and local level is that the Democrats control about 70 of the 100 largest cities, but they're all competing in a way to be tech-friendly.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another point is a lot of the tech policy issues that people think about today that are the headline issues in the world of tech policy are ones that are decided much more the state and local government issue or international rather than US federal if you think about the issues in ridesharing the issues in home sharing the so-called gig economy issues 1099 versus w2 There's a federal component to that, but most of the action has been at the state and occasionally local levels.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, in the sense that look at some of the most interesting tech issues interact with policy, financial technology, medical technology, drones, driverless cars, Bitcoin. The issue is not that you can look at someone and say, oh, that's a real conservative view. Like the breakdown falls upon like, what's your expertise? What's your background generationally in some ways? And I think that's a thing that people don't really expect. Like, so you can't identify what some of these most important issues are based on the party convention they go to. And that's something I think that was missed in the debate over the election. You know, a lot of people are saying the fact that Donald Trump means will mean a specific set of things for tech policy. And it's a much more nuanced story in that. You got to dig down what it means for each individual vertical.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're on the, you would say, the pro law enforcement, anti-encryption side. That's just to simplify. And then on the other side, on the pro-encryption side, you have similarly a Republican Democrat pairing as the leading advocates of encryption that would be Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, and Rand Paul. Republican of Kentucky. And former presidential candidate”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our thesis coming into the election was there's some things where it'll make an effect where the choice between a Republican president, a Democrat president, would make a difference or tech policy. But in many instances to a very large extent, there wouldn't be as big a difference as people think. And that's because one, many of the issues are nonpartisan or bipartisan in nature or breakdown along lines in Congress, but not along necessarily Republican Democrat lines. Encryption's a classic example of that. You had until now the leading proponents of backdoors, let's say leading opponents on the hill of encryption have been Feinfeinstein, California Democrat Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican.”
2017-01-21 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Of Presidents, Policies, and Tech · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source