The a16z Show
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.
00:27:06 · Josh Elman, Anish Acharya, David Pawlan
[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. [00:27:55] S2: It's really interesting because what I think what you're speaking to is like paternalism. Right? And what I've seen from thirty years in consumer product is like paternalism will kill any product, even a hint or a whiff of paternalism will. And in a sense, this sort of the... We talk about productivity and goals, sort of achievement, but maybe people want the exact opposite of it, which is like, hey, what do I love? I love spending money. [00:28:17] S1: I love
00:28:17 · David Pawlan, Anish Acharya, Josh Elman
[00:28:17] S1: I love [00:28:17] S2: being perhaps irrationally optimistic about what my future looks like. I love, you know, like, seeing myself in a better light than perhaps I appear to the world. [00:28:25] S1: Like Right. [00:28:26] S2: There are all of these things which we may say are the sort of shadow of the, you know, the things that the agents are trying to get us to do that are what we actually wanna do. [00:28:34] S0: Right. [00:28:34] S2: Who's, like, designing with that in mind? [00:28:36] S0: Right. I'm curious what you're seeing on on that.
00:28:36 · Josh Elman, David Pawlan
[00:28:36] S0: Right. I'm curious what you're seeing on on that. [00:28:40] S1: Yeah. So, I mean, I think you have... I I kinda see it split up into two categories. You have the commodities, where I think there's going to be a lot of the point where people actually don't care about preference. Right? You're just ordering paper towels to your home, and you're like, I don't really care. Just get me the cheapest, best, highest quality one. Go for it. But then you do have the ones where you wanna actually have some preference, and you have it... Everyone right now really is approaching this world as just like a general assistant, and people are really taking a quite similar approach into how they're how they're thinking about this space. We're seeing some cool stuff with multiplayer. I think Wabi is gonna be really interesting. Yeah. Because it does create a lot more... You know, it creates a a a different world where you can now be interacting with other humans and have crossover in preference and see how it behaves, that it becomes a little bit more like entertainment. Scout is an interesting shopping one, which adds a unique kind of, like, swipe type flavor to learn your preferences and adds a little bit more entertainment there. Mhmm. [00:29:35] S0: So I [00:29:35] S1: think we'll be... We're we're still so early in the space that I think people are jumping on the bandwagon of what's popular at the moment, which is just your general productivity. Mhmm. I think as time goes on, we'll start to see a little bit more experimentation in some other avenues. Well, and