0:00

With technology moving so quickly, it

0:02

can feel impossible to keep up.

0:04

That's why we recommend the A16Z

0:07

podcast. The chart-topping show brings on

0:09

movers with a track record of

0:11

being both early and right, like

0:13

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Cost Plus

0:16

Drugs Maverick Mark Cuban, and A16Z

0:18

co-founders Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

0:20

Not to mention, folks, you don't

0:22

typically get to hear from, like

0:25

the very first CTO of the

0:27

CIA, or the

0:29

CISOs behind OpenAI, Anthropic, and

0:32

DeepMind. From the science

0:34

and supply of GLP-1s to 3D-printed

0:36

rockets, to the self-driving cars on

0:38

our roads now, eavesdrop

0:40

on the future with the

0:42

A16Z podcast. When

0:47

Google moved from its office in Mountain

0:50

View to its first campus, it

0:53

was the Silicon Graphics campus. So

0:56

Silicon Graphics was once a very great company that

0:58

was big enough to have a campus, but had

1:00

done so poorly that at some point they

1:03

were selling their campus to another

1:05

company. Brett

1:10

Taylor. He

1:13

was there at this time when Google was ascending to

1:15

the pantheon of big tech companies. In

1:20

fact, he was integral to the creation of Google

1:22

Maps. It

1:24

was the first of many world-changing companies he's been

1:27

a part of. Later, he'd be named Chief Technology

1:29

Officer at Facebook, and

1:32

work in another office building with

1:34

a storied Silicon Valley past. When

1:38

Facebook went from having a building in Palo Alto to having a

1:40

campus, it was Sun Microsystems on campus. So

1:44

I had this experience so early

1:46

on in my career of being at these newfangled companies

1:50

that basically took over

1:52

the carcass of a once-great technology company that at

1:54

one point was at the top of the stock

1:56

market and big enough to have these huge campuses.

24:00

I would say I've had the

24:02

privilege of not only starting two

24:04

companies but working at some of

24:06

the great companies, Salesforce, Google, and

24:08

Facebook. And I really

24:11

do view my philosophy on

24:13

management technology as a composite of a

24:15

lot of the pieces that

24:17

I loved about each of those companies. What

24:20

I really have been seeing people that, hey, this AI thing's

24:22

kind of a big deal. That's

24:24

usually when I'm walking into the room,

24:26

people have that worldview already and they're

24:28

saying, why does your thing work? Why

24:31

is it better than our competitors?

24:33

Particularly your question, I would say

24:35

I've had the privilege of not

24:37

only starting two companies but working

24:40

at some of the great companies,

24:42

Salesforce, Google, and Facebook. And

24:44

I really do view my philosophy

24:47

on management technology as a composite of

24:49

a lot of the pieces

24:51

that I loved about each of those companies.

24:54

What I really liked about Google was

24:56

its first principles thinking about developing infrastructure

24:58

and scale. I think that it was

25:00

a very vertically integrated company, the way

25:03

it built data centers all the way

25:05

through the search engine. I think a

25:07

lot of the great AI

25:09

companies have very similar philosophies. You have to

25:11

pay attention to your infrastructure and your cost

25:13

to serve if you're going to make a

25:15

decent margin AI business. And I think for

25:18

me, Google was one of the great examples of

25:20

that in the early days of the internet and

25:22

it would not have succeeded without that, by the

25:24

way. Facebook

25:27

was by far the

25:29

most interesting and innovative product

25:31

culture. There

25:33

was the malign now move fast and break

25:35

things but I actually think at

25:37

the time what that really meant was giving

25:39

people permission to iterate an experiment. I

25:43

really loved the pace of Facebook,

25:45

really comes from Mark Zuckerberg. And

25:48

then Salesforce, I think it's the

25:50

great enterprise software company,

25:53

both organizationally but how

25:55

that company executes its go-to-market, how

25:57

it engages with customers.