The a16z Show
00:22:13 · Josh Elman, David Pawlan, Anish Acharya
[00:22:13] S0: That's Yeah. [00:22:13] S1: It's pretty it's pretty terrifying. But they they have this one thesis that, you know, if you don't need it, they're gonna forget about it. And so if a photo seems as though it it has context that it doesn't necessarily need or things that you probably wouldn't want it to know, they're they're going to try to get ahead of that and just forget it and not even include it in the set. So it's gonna be interesting to see how these these different players do approach the the photo context and how that actually does then influence the behavior of the agent and how well it knows you. [00:22:39] S2: It'll be interesting to see. I'm a tiny bit more skeptical. You know, I built an app because I've always been fascinated by screenshots because screenshots are sort of the only way on the mobile phone Yeah. To be able to capture context across every app. [00:22:51] S1: Right. [00:22:52] S2: So it's actually a really interesting kind of data asset, and you go back and look at your screenshots, and it gives you a little view in your work and your world at the time and and also your interests and preferences. So I built an app that just extracts key information from all the screenshots on my phone. And it was fine, but I didn't find myself coming back to it. Like, the value of the information sort of decayed quickly over time. [00:23:13] S0: Mhmm. [00:23:14] S2: Now it will be really fascinating if people start to then take more screenshots [00:23:17] S1: That's what was gonna [00:23:18] S0: say. Yeah.
00:23:18 · Josh Elman, Anish Acharya, David Pawlan
[00:23:18] S0: say. Yeah. [00:23:19] S2: Right. Knowing that it will feed the model and the agent. [00:23:21] S0: I mean, I think that's actually the idea is that if you actually get used to capturing information you wanna retain and being able to then loop it back in your life, that's great. I talked to one founder who's building something. He's calling it taste for now. That actually takes all the screenshots and things you save. You can actually then organize them, like, on Pinterest mood boards. Then And whenever you go to actually go code and build an app, you're like, hey. Use, you know, the examples that I saved here. So it's actually... You're building your, like, real fun flavor profile. Mhmm. So it actually is actually able to use your styles. And so as you navigate the world, the web, apps on your phone, it can actually create this kind of really cool, you know, reservoir of stuff that you like and actually organize it in a way that you can then use it later. And so that'll actually make you create a lot more content in that loop. [00:24:02] S1: Right. And I'm... So I'm curious with the app that you built in in this context for it. So in this same survey of what people are purchasing, the second most popular category was Amazon retail, 35%, saying that they're doing some form of shopping. And so, this context that you're gathering [00:24:18] S2: Sorry, Amazon shopping or just some form of shopping? [00:24:21] S1: Amazon plus retail. [00:24:22] S2: I see. Yeah. Got
00:24:22 · Anish Acharya, David Pawlan, Josh Elman
[00:24:22] S2: I see. Yeah. Got [00:24:23] S1: it. So for your app and the context it's building Yeah. Where my mind goes is, okay. If it has thousands of photos Yeah. And it has pictures of what I'm wearing Yeah. Does it now know what I wanna shop for better than I actually do? [00:24:35] S2: Yeah. Potentially. I think that's actually really interesting, and you can do some stuff there. Mhmm. I also think that there's a... You know, we've discussed the ones who are restricting access, like Amazon, Delta, you know. We're not at all talking about who are the net winners. Right. And I actually think the long tail are going to be huge structural winners in this because they're ones who presumably have better products but worse marketing. Yeah. They certainly have worse marketing. I'm not sure if they have better products. And the agent, you know, has this sort of infinite patience to go search for things and find things that are exactly tailored to your taste [00:25:04] S1: Right. [00:25:04] S2: Even if they're not on the top 10 internet sites. Right. [00:25:07] S1: I mean, [00:25:07] S0: I think it's really direct shopping. Right? We've all talked to direct to consumer. Right. It's been a category where you build your own brand, you build your own storefront, you sell things. Now the agents can know about those at a much bigger scale than you ever knew the hunt and peck work to find it on your own. [00:25:20] S1: That's kinda
00:25:20 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman
[00:25:20] S1: That's kinda [00:25:21] S0: why Shopify is really empowered and is making things available Yep. To these agents because they are the ones that support so many of these direct brands. And I think about the idea that like maybe aggregators are the ones that actually get compressed, is why they're doing so much defensive work here. Totally. Because, you know, if I can figure out, you know, that sweater looks great or Yeah. I want that shirt and they can figure out who the actual maker is and I can go buy it direct from them, they no longer have to pay all those transaction and, you know, wholesale to retail costs in the middle. Well, if [00:25:48] S1: you want this, sure, your agent can buy it for you too. That's great. [00:25:51] S0: But it Oh, please. [00:25:52] S1: As a... It goes to Patrick Collison's tweet, right, of talking about this future where consumers become a lot more rational because our agents are doing all the work on our behalf. Yeah. It's really gonna create a world where businesses have to put a lot more thought and and value into the quality of what they're giving out. And it's gonna be really interesting to see that.
00:25:52 · David Pawlan, Anish Acharya, Josh Elman
[00:25:52] S1: As a... It goes to Patrick Collison's tweet, right, of talking about this future where consumers become a lot more rational because our agents are doing all the work on our behalf. Yeah. It's really gonna create a world where businesses have to put a lot more thought and and value into the quality of what they're giving out. And it's gonna be really interesting to see that. [00:26:09] S2: So somewhat, I'm gonna quibble with this point. Okay. I love Patrick's vision. Yep. And I think that that there... That, like, broadly, that will be true that agents will make often better choices on our behalf than we might make for ourselves. But I do think that agents are going to have their own revealed preferences Mhmm. And their own sort of sort of directions of irrationality, though will not be of a human mind. It will be of alien mind. And I'll give you an example. I think agents may have an irrational preference for clean APIs with great docs. [00:26:36] S1: Okay. [00:26:36] S2: You know? Yep. And they may actually ascribe a lot of value to that Yeah. [00:26:39] S1: If it's a [00:26:40] S2: proxy for something, and they may really dislike janky APIs with, you know, Java code behind it. Like, I don't know. So I do think really, really interesting to see because they too are going to need shortcuts. [00:26:50] S0: You know?
00:26:50 · Josh Elman, Anish Acharya
[00:26:50] S0: You know? [00:26:50] S2: How will the agents actually know what product quality is? So one part of it is they'll probably have these revealed preferences, and then another is we'll need some sort of a consumer research, but for agents Right. That will then presumably be paid per transaction to do this research. [00:27:04] S0: To grow the ratings. [00:27:05] S2: I don't know. [00:27:06] S0: I'm I'm also more biased, and I just think people are people, and people are gonna make the choices that they wanna make that are most satisfactory. So the question then is, is the agent gonna be very careful in curating the set of options that it presents? Because again, like like, all of a sudden, you're like, hey. I'm really hungry. I wanna eat. And my agent knows I need to, like, lose some weight or something. Like, it's like, well, here's the four meal options that you have. Like, is that actually where you wanna be with your agent? So I'm actually not as convinced that agents are gonna make us more rational. I think they're just gonna give us better, faster access to things we really want. Mhmm. And actually be able to, like, unlock things that were hard to get to otherwise. But I think we're still gonna be people with our own preferences and tastes. And if the agent's not meeting us where we are, we'll just switch to another agent. We'll import and export our our stuff and be like, oh, this other agent's gonna meet me on my preferences better. Right.