AI could change what it means to run a company

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:03:00

   It's all playing out in real time right now on the leading edge. So I think there's like three layers of it and see if this makes sense. I think there's like three layers of it. I think layer one is they're thinking, all right, how does AI redefine the products themselves? Right. Right. And this is kind of the this is kind of the time honored, you know, kind of thing that happens with technology transitions.

2. 1:03:18

   And this is kind of what, you know, a lot of venture capital is based on, which is, you know, OK, there's a new technology that comes out. And, you know, maybe it's the personal computer or the iPhone or the Internet or now it's AI. And it's like, all right, is this a new capability that gets added to existing products? Right. So all of a sudden you've got, I don't know, an existing, you know, software business.

3. 1:03:38

   And now you've got your PC version of it and now you've got your iPhone version of it and you just kind of keep on going. and, you know, you kind of add, the new technology kind of gets kind of added into the mix, you know, it's kind of another ingredient to an existing formula. And, of course, you know, a lot of new technologies are like that, right? You know, I don't know when Flash, when Flash storage came out or something, you know, it didn't really, it didn't really redefine the software industry because people just went from using, you know, hard disk using Flash storage or something.

4. 1:04:06

   But when the internet came out, like, basically old school on-prem software for the most part, you know, not entirely, but like a lot of it died and just got replaced by like web software. Right. And so, so sometimes you get the kind of, it's additive to an existing thing. Sometimes you get the, actually it redefines an entire product category, redefines an industry, the actual company, you know, in many cases, the companies themselves turn over. And so, so, so, you know, so there's sort of this question and like, you know, an example, you just mentioned Nano Banana. So like a great example is there, you know, there are these businesses like, you know, just take Adobe, like, you know, Photoshop is built a whatever 40 year franchise in image editing. Okay, is AI a sort of a feature now that gets added to Photoshop to be able to do AI based image editing? Or, you know,

5. 1:04:47

   do you just like stop editing images entirely because you're using Nano Banana and all images are just being generated and it's just easier to just have AI generate a new image than it is to try to edit an old one. So I think, you know, there's many areas of tech in which that question is being asked. And, you know, the answers I think will vary by domain. But, you know, obviously, as a venture firm, we're betting hard on many of these categories being totally reinvested. And a lot of the best founders are trying to figure out how to do that. So that's kind of AI, you know, changing the definition of the product. I think the next layer is actually a lot of what we've already talked about, which is AI changing the jobs. And so it's, you know, a lot of what we already talked about. But like, okay, if I'm a founder of a company, and I've got, you know,

6. 1:05:27

   if I have, you know, room in my budget for a hundred coders, you know, how do I get those coders to be super empowered AI coders? Not, you know, not the kind of coders I used to have. And if they're super empowered AI coders, then does that mean, you know, do I still need the hundred? Maybe now I only need 10 or does that mean I still want a hundred, but now they're doing 10 times more. Right. And so that, you know, as you know, like a lot of the best founders are working on that right now. And then I think the third shoe to drop hasn't quite dropped yet, but it's, it's, you know, it's kind of the big one, which is like, all right, like the, the, the, the basic idea of having a company, right? You know, does that change? And again, here, you've got this concept of the super powered individual, which is like, okay, you know, can you have entire companies

7. 1:06:06

   where you have basically the founder does everything, right? Because what the founder is doing is like overseeing an army of AI bots. And there's sort of this, you know, there's kind of this holy grail in our industry that's been running for a long time, which is like, can you have the one person billion dollar outcome? And, you know, we've had a few of those over the years. Bitcoin is probably the most spectacular example, you know, with Ethereum right behind it, you know, which wasn't quite one person, but, you know, a very small team.

8. 1:06:31

   You know, you had, you know, kind of Instagram and WhatsApp that had very big outcomes with very small teams. You know, every once in a while you get one of these things where you just, you know, something hits and you just have a very small number of people associated with it. You know, but that said, you know, most software companies obviously end up with, you know, huge numbers of employees. and so I think the most leading edge founders are thinking of like okay how do I reconstitute the actual very definition or idea of having a company and can you have a company that's literally basically just all AI and if you're doing anything in the real world that's hard but if you're doing software like that seems like it might be feasible in some cases and then there's like the ultimate example of that which is

9. 1:07:10

   like can you have like autonomous AI economy stuff happening where you have like AI bots in the blockchain or something, you know, that are basically out there like functioning as a business and like making money and just, you know, literally where the AI does all the work itself and just, you know, issues me dividends. And so maybe, you know, maybe that, you know, maybe that, maybe that's the final outlier result. We have, we have a few founders who are chasing that kind of thing. So I would describe that as, I would describe that as kind of the ladder that the best founders are on. Super interesting. This whole idea of a one person