The a16z Show
00:34:02 · David Pawlan
[00:34:02] S1: So I've been seeing a lot of stuff working at the infrastructure layer. Okay. And I think the interesting point is... So if you look at the pain points of consumers, again, it's not all individuals using them, but at least of the power users I've I've surveyed, Trust, obviously, is a huge one. Mhmm. But another one is just getting blocked in in their day to day, and people get really frustrated when you try to perform a task and it doesn't work, and they're like, well, why am I even using AI at this point? I could have just gone on the browser and done it myself. So seeing some really cool innovation on that layer of commerce of of the browser use of direct integrations to check out against inventory itself. Some, whether it's browsers that are built in and and really... Like, Heart does a really cool way of displaying the browser and seeing it move along, and it it looks to be really fast when you're watching it. Who knows if it's actually that fast behind the scenes? But really cool in that way. Again, Kicker, as I mentioned, Chrome extension to tackle the browser use in that way. Mhmm. So I've seen that as as a really interesting kind of differentiator. I think that something that has stood out to me that isn't necessarily something that's different but has made me kind of question this whole concept that software is becoming a commodity is that there is pretty stark performance difference when you're looking at these products at scale. Mhmm. And I think people are talking about, you know, software is no longer a moat and all of that kind of conversation, but there there really still is some moat there. Maybe that moat will be able to be crossed in a year or so, but at least for today, the the agents that are able to perform with hundreds of thousands of users Yeah. There are some that are starting to scale up, and the performance just degrades immediately. And the founders are dealing with outages and figuring out how to scale, and and there's a pretty clear difference in performance there. And so it's it's really interesting to see as I'm kinda working through these. I feel like I've almost become, you know, blinded from some of the more social components to it because I'm just talking to these agents all day.
00:35:54 · Josh Elman, David Pawlan
[00:35:54] S0: Mhmm. [00:35:54] S1: And I'm starting to geek out a lot more in the actual infrastructure layer behind the scenes of, like, how is it actually working and what are the tweaks that different ones are making. So it'll it'll be interesting to see, like, know, how do we view this space growing from a scalability point of view. Yeah. But then how do we also view it to solve the pain points that currently exist, whether it's trust, whether it's actually being able to complete a task. Memory is another one. Yeah. It's ability to actually continuously have context on you and not forget the little things and all that. [00:36:23] S0: And, you know, you mentioned Kicker, which, you know, you said runs in your current local browser. But have you looked at other on device assistance yet? Whether that's things like Underdog or a lot that are trying to, like, bring models, run locally, you know, totally use your own infrastructure Yeah. As opposed to needing to use something on a cloud and running the browsers on clouds.
00:36:23 · Josh Elman, David Pawlan
[00:36:23] S0: And, you know, you mentioned Kicker, which, you know, you said runs in your current local browser. But have you looked at other on device assistance yet? Whether that's things like Underdog or a lot that are trying to, like, bring models, run locally, you know, totally use your own infrastructure Yeah. As opposed to needing to use something on a cloud and running the browsers on clouds. [00:36:41] S1: Totally. So it's it's a really cool paradigm. I've spent most of my time in the preconfigured, just plug and play type world because I tend to find that it's it's easier to compare them across the board when you're not responsible for the setup itself. But it is really interesting, and I think that there's totally a world where you're gonna start bringing all of that in house. Because if you can control the model, if you can can, you know, tailor it to how you want, right, like Thinking Machines is doing some really cool work of being able to allow people to really tinker their models however they want. And if we can eventually hit a world where that takes into the consumer form in a really easy way, it's gonna be an interesting space.
00:36:41 · David Pawlan, Josh Elman
[00:36:41] S1: Totally. So it's it's a really cool paradigm. I've spent most of my time in the preconfigured, just plug and play type world because I tend to find that it's it's easier to compare them across the board when you're not responsible for the setup itself. But it is really interesting, and I think that there's totally a world where you're gonna start bringing all of that in house. Because if you can control the model, if you can can, you know, tailor it to how you want, right, like Thinking Machines is doing some really cool work of being able to allow people to really tinker their models however they want. And if we can eventually hit a world where that takes into the consumer form in a really easy way, it's gonna be an interesting space. [00:37:16] S0: I mean, that was kinda how this all started with, you know, this brilliance of OpenClaw that was this thing where you had to... You felt like you had to get your whole Mac mini Right. To set this all up, plug in to one of the models that you were using, whether local or or a cloud model on the server, and that was where you got started. And we've moved into, like, plug and play products where you just download an app. [00:37:34] S1: Right. [00:37:35] S0: But I am interested to think if that, like, sheer power of you setting it up and owning it yourself will become a paradigm again. Yeah.
00:37:35 · Josh Elman, Anish Acharya, David Pawlan
[00:37:35] S0: But I am interested to think if that, like, sheer power of you setting it up and owning it yourself will become a paradigm again. Yeah. [00:37:41] S2: It'll be really interesting. I'm glad you mentioned Open Claw because it feels like one of the unasked questions right now that's sort of hiding in plain sight is if Instinct and Muse were the kind of consumer product version of Open Claw, what is the, know, mass market version of Moltbook? Yeah. And Moltbook was just like Open Claw was far ahead of its time. Yeah. And I think will... Something like that will exist. How can [00:38:02] S1: it not? It's it's it's gonna be interesting. So at the event that we did last night Yeah. Everyone who was there was able to scan a QR code, and there was the human meetup. And then I... We also had an agent meetup. Oh, wow. And so while all the humans were hanging out, you could scan in and send your agent into the agent meetup and just let them kinda free form talk. And it's it's interesting. There's... You know, it got to the point where after, like, a 150 messages, some of these agents are just speaking gibberish. It's like, I have no idea how you got that concept and why you're why you're talking about that. The the initial prompts did start off with a little guidance of, you know, introduce yourself. Who's your human? What are they working on? What type of help do they need? But it's... It is gonna be really interesting to see this paradigm of what happens when our agents can just hang out and communicate with one another.
00:38:48 · Josh Elman
[00:38:48] S0: Well, and again, what I get really excited about is not just hang out and communicate with each other, but discover new things, learn about things from each other, learn about an individual's preferences, you know, learn about a way that like, hey. Josh is really into this. Oh my gosh. You're doing that too. You... You're, you know, your your human is doing that too. You could help Josh. Hey, Josh. Do you wanna actually meet this person? They could be very complimentary to you. Like, I think when we have these agents that are not just hanging out because they don't know what to do, which was kind of what was initially happening is you got... Went and read those, like, very long malt book threads that were incredibly fascinating. But, like, when it becomes... Each one of these has a little bit of a goal, is to help their human Right. It might get so much more interesting. And, you know, I'm looking for a great wine for a dinner party, you know, some night, and you meet somebody else who's like, you know what? I've been working with this incredible, you know, winery, and they've been trying to advertise something. I mean, that's gonna be how the world gets out, and that'll come back to me through the agent network. Totally. Yeah.