The a16z Show
00:01:58 · Anish Acharya, David Pawlan
[00:01:58] S2: That's totally right. So... Okay. So maybe let's start with last night, you hosted an agent meetup. Yep. Kinda tell us about the event, tell us about the vibes, tell us about the topics. [00:02:07] S1: It was great. So, we had just over a 100 people come out, all just proud agent nerds, loving everything to do with agents in that whole world, and it was just people just hanging out, talking. We did have a pitch competition of sorts, so a bunch of 10 different AI assistant builders were able to pitch their startup and what they're working on. And it was just good conversations. It's interesting how the general thing that really stuck out to me was that people are craving community even in the agent web world. Everyone's like, why don't we have more of these meetups? Why don't we have more of these opportunities to get to know each other? Which is... It's kinda funny hearing it from people who are spending all their day, all their time just messaging agents. [00:02:50] S2: And it's funny because it feels like, oh, so many of these products are at least overlapping in a cursory way that the founders might be a little bit more cagey, but that's not what you're seeing. [00:02:58] S1: No. Everyone is incredibly open minded, just very interested to be getting feedback. I think because we're we're so at the frontier of this, nobody really knows what the landscape is really gonna shake out to be. Yeah. And so we're all just kinda playing in the sandbox together.
00:02:58 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman, Anish Acharya
[00:02:58] S1: No. Everyone is incredibly open minded, just very interested to be getting feedback. I think because we're we're so at the frontier of this, nobody really knows what the landscape is really gonna shake out to be. Yeah. And so we're all just kinda playing in the sandbox together. [00:03:11] S0: Well, isn't it also that we have so much more time because we're just using our agents to do all these things? Right. We have more time to actually hang out together Right. And be in person. So maybe that's part of it too. [00:03:19] S1: That's right. That's right. [00:03:20] S2: It is actually fun. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of the early days of social gaming or social networks broadly. I mean, do you think that's right, Josh?
00:03:20 · Anish Acharya, Josh Elman
[00:03:20] S2: It is actually fun. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of the early days of social gaming or social networks broadly. I mean, do you think that's right, Josh? [00:03:28] S0: I mean, I think what's really cool is this is not a zero sum game. I mean, at at some point, it might be that there might be one or some agents that have the majority of the behavior. But right now, we're at such a beginning, like Cambrian phase of we're inventing so much. And we're trying to figure out so many things that everybody can learn from each other, can share these best practices, can figure out what things people are enjoying, what things are work once but don't actually work reliably. And these are gonna be built in so many directions. I mean, we're not just gonna all have one agent that does one thing in our lives, and I'll use it, and you guys will only all have to use the same agent. We're gonna have so many different products that do so many things for us that I'm excited for why we're all inventing it together. [00:04:10] S2: So I totally agree that we're gonna have a whole world of agents, as many different sort of types of humans as we might have or archetypes of humans. I think we'll have a similar number of agents. But maybe talk about what you think are the different axes for differentiation. Like, there's a sort of spectrum between really serious and productive to really playful and maybe even sort of adversarial. And I'm sure there are many other ways to think about these things.
00:04:10 · Anish Acharya, Josh Elman, David Pawlan
[00:04:10] S2: So I totally agree that we're gonna have a whole world of agents, as many different sort of types of humans as we might have or archetypes of humans. I think we'll have a similar number of agents. But maybe talk about what you think are the different axes for differentiation. Like, there's a sort of spectrum between really serious and productive to really playful and maybe even sort of adversarial. And I'm sure there are many other ways to think about these things. [00:04:32] S0: Yeah. I mean, I think what's gonna be really interesting is we have so many different facets of our life, whether it's how we're managing our finances or planning trips or dealing with our health or just getting through our day or managing our calendar or sometimes just wanting to think something out loud. And agents are gonna be able to fill different facets of these. And you call different friends for different things. You spend different friends who have different expertise that you call when you need expertise. And I think we're gonna get used to having kind of an army of agents that will do this. And some will be very matter of fact. And we'll be like, hey, I need to get this thing done. It'll be your productivity agent. [00:05:03] S1: Mhmm.
00:05:03 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman, Anish Acharya
[00:05:03] S1: Mhmm. [00:05:03] S0: Some will be plugged into your email, and it'll be like, here's the five emails you need to get done right now. And some are gonna be sort of these agents you'll kinda wanna talk to all day that'll be fun, that might even be a little bit gossipy. I've been playing with a few agents that are are very kinda playful and gossipy, and they're connected to a few of my friends too. And they'll share information back and forth. One just told me that my friend's power had been out all weekend because he'd been doing some renovation, and they'd cut the power. And I called him that evening, and I was like, dude, you didn't tell me your power's out. The agent told me. He was like, yeah, yeah, I I knew that's how you'd find out. I'm like, that's like creating these better connections, but that has nothing to do with booking a trip or saving money or getting anything done. [00:05:40] S1: Right. I think from over a 147 different assistants that have come across my plate so far Mhmm. I've seen them really broken down into four categories. You have the general, you have the work oriented, you have the multiplayer, and then you have the travel. And the one that I have not really seen come to fruition yet is more of, like, the finance side of things. Yeah. And I think it actually does make sense when you start digging into the numbers. So of all the different group chats that I'm running of AI powered users, there's about 3,600 give or take messages so far. [00:06:14] S2: Mhmm.
00:06:14 · Anish Acharya, David Pawlan
[00:06:14] S2: Mhmm. [00:06:14] S1: And when looking at the pain points of what are the fears of the space, the number one fear that people talk about, 22% of the messages, are talking about trust as the main fear. And so it's really interesting to see because you have one camp that's this productivity and aspects of fun that's just interesting and brings a different sense to life. But then you have another camp that really still is sitting in this kind of fear space of being a little trepid and not really knowing where the space is moving. And I'm really curious to see how things are gonna play out on that trust layer. And if we can solve that trust layer, then what do we end up seeing on more of the finance side of stuff?