Inside a16z’s $15M Bet on Cluely: Lead Investor Bryan Kim Reveals All

31:22Yeah. Individual decision making, health, personal life, work, et cetera. Absolutely. What are some other areas that you've invested in consumer AI? I've been very excited about creation. We go back to this era of AI, which I think is very, very early. And internet has that law, right? Like 99.1, where like 1 % creates. Think about the number of people who actually fluently use AI today. I would say that's less than 1 % today. And my belief is there's a strong overlap between that early, early adopter curve and the creative energy. So what I am really excited about right now in this era of AI is, especially as it relates to individual AI almost, is creative energy, creation tools.

32:07So Captions, Vigil, Civit.ai, and all these sort of glyphs, these are all the creative tools that I've invested because I'm very excited about that energy. and I think you know that that side is one and I think over time that creative energy flows into a little bit more professional side of things so then you have like the caption 11 labs and you know again like I think lovable is a great lovable is a great example there that that's sort of channeling that creative energy in a more professional setting and and seeing that and I think we're at that stage and ultimately I think you know I haven't watched a full human in the loop But my guess is that there's a strong belief that AI for general population, 7 billion devices out there, will become very popular and will become democratized.

32:58I can't wait for that to happen. And I think we're probably just one or two steps away from that. What are the biggest risks with unleashing mass creation and automation of all of this? There are concerns about deepfakes. I don't know if you saw Mountainhead, but I brought this up with the Jack Altman podcast because Mountainhead kind of exposed like, oh, if we give everyone tools for this, there's going to be fake news everywhere. We're never going to know the difference. Roy would probably counter that and say, people know. People know it's fake or not. But where do you think the risk lies with these creation tools and do you think it needs to be regulated?

33:39so first and foremost on people know i think people know but his people what he means is young people know internet native people know mobile native folks know there's a time like even go back what like six months where if you look at facebook posts they're commenting heavily on ai generated you know houses and like this is so beautiful like how could you there are there are a group of people that are they may not know immediately right like so i give i i give a lot of thought to that as well right so part one i think uh there is a thing around people need to now think about is this real right and uh ultimately photoshop is a good example of it where and and sci-fi visual effect is a good example of this where before, you know, people didn't think about that.

34:33And now it's a very, very common thing to Photoshop any pictures, have visual effects on any movies, and people accept that. So I think acceptance is going to be there. The discernment aspect, I think, will always be an aspect of humanity that we're going to need to have, of like we need to digest information for ourself and choose what to believe. believe. So I think that's going to be a continuous struggle is the wrong word, but a continuous battle for people to understand what to accept as a belief system or not, and what to accept as a content as truth or not. And I think there is, you know, insofar as you want to, I actually talk about one of these products where I believe Particle News went on stage, right?

35:18They went on stage. And then when you look at sort of the article that's written, they actually have this spectrum, right? Of like, this is a left-leaning article, this is a right-leaning article, and there's all these dots for these articles, and you kind of pick and choose what you're going to read, but you know where you're picking and choosing. You know your belief system, and you're subscribing to it. I think that level of disclosure is really good. You're telling people, look, there's all these different things. You pick and choose. I'm not going to moderate. I'm not going to say this is the truth, that's not the truth.

35:47Here's a spectrum of things. Go make that decision. So I think that's a good example. what I think will be very useful for people in the future. Do you think it needs to be regulated? It's a good question. I think oftentimes regulation tends to be a little, what's the word that I'm looking for? Slower than the actual movement at the bleeding edge. And so it's almost trying to catch something when it's already moved away and you now have this funky rule that allows and disallows a bunch of things that may or may not be relevant depending on interpretation so from that side i think what and this is you're talking to an a16z team member who you know where we believe in techno optimism and we believe that you know advancement in technology can actually help people live better lives and so i think my belief is that there are certain things that should never cross the line and those whether it's child protection or whatever like you we can have regulation for that and continue to have those.

36:51In terms of like, you know, enabling companies and people to continue to build in this bleeding edge, I think any effort to curb that will probably not result in more innovation. It'll probably result in more gunk, if you will. Right. So at Humans in the Loop, the whole purpose of that was kind of to emphasize and bring light, hey, consumer has been around for a while. It's not changed. It's still here. We've also been in an environment where exits have been frozen. It's kind of picking up again. Where are you seeing trends in the exit environment and liquidity and growth and outcomes for this consumer sector?

37:35Again, let's sort of think about this consumer sector as like individual set of things, like notions used by individuals and figmas used by individual designs. And of course, like over time, it gets into like team, team play, what have you. But all of those to me fall in the bucket of products that appeal to individuals who make decisions. And so from that standpoint, I think the exit environment is an interesting word where I guess I am sort of more on the earlier stage side. So I'm shielded from needing to think about immediate exits, et cetera. What I am excited about is seeing how fast these are growing.

38:13So when I think about exit, so to speak, it's less about liquidity immediately and thinking about what size and what impact these companies are having, because that to me does loosely translate to exitability, if you will, whether it's M &A or IPO, what have you. So when I see companies that are going from zero to 50, zero to 100, zero to 500 in run rate in a very short time. To me, that says there's an incredible value that is being created and market may or may not be efficient in the short term, but sure as hell, it will do the right thing in the long term. And I think there's an incredible amount of value being created right now.

38:52I'm very hopeful and excited about that. And so immediately as I think about exit, I think we're in the generation of seeing incredible companies being built that are creating a bunch of value. And I don't know when they'll exactly go out and gain liquidity. But I also think there's a little bit of a misnomer now in liquidity. Like IPO is IPO because it gives you a tradable shares, it gives liquidity for early employees, etc. But now we're at a place where private companies are very large, have been staying private for a long time, their secondary, their tender offers, there are different ways of getting liquidity back as well.

39:27So I sort of look at this trend as larger companies have opportunities to continue to build and continue that momentum to grow into gigantic companies and whether that's done in semi-private it's funny or semi-private or public i think that matters a little less right now love premium merch just as much as we do that's why sorcery uses fourth wall everyone from creators like marcus brownley to podcasts like acquired to orgs like the smithsonian institute are using fourth wall they let you create and sell premium products without having to stress the details. They handle everything from production, shipping, customer support, taxes, even giveaways.

40:05When it's time to level up and make gear that people are actually proud to wear, that's when it's time to use 4th Wall. And that's why we've trusted 4th Wall for all of our brandware at Sorcery since day one. Use my link in the description to get free credits for your first order. And for any VCs, DM me on x and I can get all your portfolio companies set up with a free samples credit deal. Mark particularly talks about the barbell strategy or the barbell effect. You either have really, really small, either investors or ones that are huge. And the huge ones are betting on these ginormous outcomes, these trillion dollar outcomes.

40:41What do you think about that? I think, hmm. We talked a little bit about it, but there is a thing around like we VCs are around because we also want to return capital for LPs. And that equation or mathematics work differently for different sides of funds. So of course, if you're a larger fund, you're looking for decacorns, essentially, right? You're looking for a very large outcome, then you're sort of back, you're trying to find those founders, back those ideas. I do think there is a world where if you have a smaller fund, then finding a very nice exit of, you know, X amount is actually a really good vehicle to return capital to your LPs and do what you love.

41:26So I think that's true. I think one of the things that's happening now is that you're seeing a bifurcation of what you need to appeal to the founders to win. Because world-class founders nowadays have all the options. Dollar is green. You can work with A16D of the world and you can work with an angel. It's the same sort of dollar, if you will. And I think the way to appeal to a founder has changed. The whole idea around, And I'll just sit around and schedule meetings and maybe tell you I'll invest or not. Like, I think that has changed a little bit. The best founders have all the options. And so large funds or not need to appeal to the founder.

42:05This is why you need to work with me. So it's less about the fund size to me and more about what value can you add to the founders. And if you work at places like A, 16Z, we get to actually benefit from an incredible scale of operating partners who have incredible experiences that I don't have. I don't come with. I'm one person. I may not have the Rolodex of the entire firm. The CEO, the founder may not have that. We can come bear that. And that is a reason to work with us. And at the same time, whatever size you are, you may actually come with very distinct advantage that is helpful to the founder.

42:40And I think that's what funds need to, and investors need to think about these days. And you have a ginormous media empire. uh we i think we i like to think we help we help our companies distribute as well and that that is a that is a benefit it's an amazing benefit amazing okay so going back a little bit more um you talked about building a company now you can escape velocity a lot faster a lot quicker i was at a breck's dinner a couple weeks ago it was a cto dinner so this was more technical We were going down to the infrastructure layer. There were different sized companies there. It was off the record, so I can't share too much.

43:19But the general thesis of this, or I guess the general takeaway from this conversation was pre-2024 companies are structured so differently than post-2024 companies. Post-2024 companies have an extreme advantage to scaling super fast, organizing their databases really well. using these ai agents and tools using cursor using co-pilot that sort of thing so that they don't have to worry about unjumbling this like as what elon musk would call like the u.s government but like a ball of worms of an organization but actually like go at speed and scale and then get to that 100 million dollars in revenue much much faster how do you think about that are you seeing that as like a much more attractive way to invest into companies look for those companies that have really clean infrastructure yeah um maybe two things come to mind one is that um it's funny that sort of folks are delineating like 2024 and pre-imp post i tend to think about like pre-chat gpt moment or ai moment and post and i think there's certainly a mind share shift And this is, again, why I have the momentum as a moat thing where post-AI, you do get to build with smaller team, perhaps.

44:45But I think you come with a mindset of I'm going to build fast, ship fast. And I think a lot of team had that thought prior to the AI moment. But it was slightly different time horizon, right? Mobile has been a platform that's been around for two decades. the biggest news is oh ios is going to actually come as this net new you know products and when you think about how to utilize those and that was a product cycle essentially and now we're in a new world where things are happening every week so you do have to move fast and i think that's the mindset shift versus um you know the size of a team or cleanliness of infrastructure second thought that comes to mind is there are so many companies that have been around that actually is taking advantage of the AI moment to get their second coming, if not more.

45:41Replets, been around for a while. And, you know, it was like a tool to try to teach, you know, middle school, high school kids coding. And if you think about the difference between what they built now and growing really well on and what they were before, it's pretty different. The same with Bolt. And so the idea that pre-2024 companies have this infra debt and it's so hard to unjumble and you can't innovate, you can't grow fast, I don't think that's true. What I do think is true is you need founders who are understanding of the technical advancement that's coming out. You don't need to be a researcher.

46:21But you do need to understand what's coming available from the model advancement and understand how that translates into your product. or it's the scope that you're interested in and folks who are able to do that and move fast i think has just as much ability to succeed and grow extremely quickly now versus companies that are being built right now so i don't i guess i'm saying no i think uh infra and jumbling is it's relevant to extent but i i think uh there are many examples that sort of uh you know goes against that yeah we're seeing at least on the mna side thanks to new regulation and regulators that have left that be an open door for advancing these later stage companies these larger companies and going after an acquisitive strategy for this yeah i suppose um I think I'm thinking more around companies that have been around that are moving very quickly, understanding what's becoming available and pivoting their way very quickly into net new product spaces.

47:29So not just, okay, so there's a couple different categories to which this can happen. So it's those kinds of companies. And then it's also Meta, who is like going all gas, no brakes, acquiring things. Move fast and break things. Yeah, move fast, break things, but also acquire like every brand name possible, do this huge scale AI deal and try to rebuild their position against something like an open AI. I think there is a way to actually attract talent. And I think one of the ways that I see Meta doing is they're attracting some of the best talent. Of course, there are multiple people who can build application layer, but I still think at a research layer, there are a set number of people who are on the bleeding edge, who are setting the tone or setting the research agenda and moving the ball forward on the frontier.

48:22and having those folks in sort of four walls of your company, I do think is important, especially if you're aspiring to be one of the largest sort of AI company that is rebirthing yourself, if you will. One of the things that I've seen recently with KOTU's East and East West conference, it was fantastic. It was great. They highlighted OpenAI's usage and now it's starting to eclipse, if not eclipse, social media. So we're seeing a shift towards knowledge as being one of the most, I guess, used tools or most attractive tools. How are you seeing this from all the categories that you cover? What will come next?

49:04What are you most excited about? You know, I think Harvard Business School did this, right? Like there's a famous article that I think one of my partners, David Haber, penned a long time ago. It's this aggregating like Craigslist. and I think Harvard Business Review came up with this like top use cases of AI and it has like 40 different you know use cases and first was a therapy companion and the list goes on what I do see is for each of those lines we're going to see incredible companies being built and when we say oh, like for the first time, chat GPT, open AI, it cliffs social. I think I'm actually heartened by that.

49:51That probably means that creative energy, the curiosity and productivity is outpacing some of the consumptive energy. And I think, again, that points to us being in the very early stage of AI. And there's a tremendous amount of creative energy that is currently being unleashed. And for those, again, for each of those line items, that sort of, again, I think it's Harvard Business Review that published like 30, 40 different use cases of ChatGPT. I think for each of those, we're going to see giant companies. What's your favorite AI right now? What's my favorite AI? That's a great question. Got to sell a company.

50:27So like 11 Labs, I love. I use 11 Labs Reader, 11 Reader every day, which is an easy way to just consume things. There are a lot of other tools that I like. Of course, ChatGPT, what have you. And the creation side for these clips, You know, there are multiple tools that you can just put it in, dunk it in and say, hey, give me the best clips. And then there are multiple tools that do that really, really well. So those are some of the tools that I really like using. Love that. I'm obsessed with Opus. Yep. We shall not name names, but there are multiple tools that are amazing. Captions is cool, too.

51:03That's right. I want to dig in more on the metric sides of things. So Brex is all about spending smarter, moving faster, performance. They like to track performance and growth, and they do this really well within their platform. It's awesome. I use it. Everyone uses it. We love Rex. So does Cluelly. When you're looking at companies at the earliest stages, what metrics are you looking to determine their success, and which ones are you looking for their growth? Great question. So I did, I wouldn't say 180, but I changed. Okay. So again, like prior to 2024 or prior to 2023, my North Star metric was retention.

51:47And the whole question that I was trying to answer was, why do people use your product? And if you're answering that very effectively, the theory that I've learned hard way at Snapchat, helping build the growth team there, was that you will naturally see a very high retention. theory back then was distribution. You can go viral on TikTok, you can viral on Twitter, like you can do all these things. But retention was a thing that was really, really hard to get. Your product actually needed to be excellent and work. So I used to be very, very set in mind in terms of like, there's a retention hurdle that I need all my product to meet.

52:30And I only get excited when you meet that metric. And of course, there's all other things that actually talk about retention. It's not just D30 retention. There's a, what I would call illness curve, how, how many people, how many times people use your product in any given week. And there are all these other metrics that I look for. So that's prior. I still think that's important and we'll get to that world. But right now you ask like, what metrics do I look at right now? I'm more of a series A investor or what I call traction seed or series A investor. What that means is I want to, I want to look at some numbers.

53:08You're telling me this is the idea is a kind of hard thing to invest on in my mind or there are multiple people who are good at that. It's just not me. I need numbers. So what I now look for is velocity. And what I look for in those are two to three things. Velocity in user growth or revenue. Nowadays, people are very willing to pay for tools, especially in this early age. So tools that are actually effectively monetizing and seeing the revenue grow quickly is very important to me because that tells me not because we're making money, but because your product is actually useful and it deserves to exist and people are loving it.

53:49That's how I understand it. The other thing that I look for revenue now is the retention of the revenue, which is kind of interesting now. Like before, retention of the revenue mirrored very closely retention of the unique customer count. Because if you're selling it to individuals, if X churn, that revenue is gone. What is different now is because of AI, because you can introduce different tiers, you can introduce credit for overage usages or what have you, you actually see revenue retention being higher than unique user retention. That gap to me is interesting. Because what that means is for whatever reason, people are paying you more, like whoever's left in your cohort, they are deciding to pay more.

54:33I don't know if that means they're upgrading their plan. I don't know if that means they're giving you more credit or buying more credit, but they're staying and they're paying more. That tells me your product's important to them and to the workflow and what they're trying to achieve. So those two, I looked deeply. The third one is a little harder to, a little harder to exactly call it a metric. What I do look at is product shipment velocity. Oh yeah. and I you know I don't I wouldn't say we completely standardize it but there are a couple of memos that I've written with a team where we try to compare the product shipping velocity across all players in the same sort of space and there's a theory there that I have which is again if you're shipping product faster there's just higher chance you're going to catch something and shipping product faster 10 % 20 % each week that should compound Like it's not just, oh, you ship product faster to 20 % than the other, so therefore you're 20 % better.

55:35No, if you ship 20 % more in week one, you have 120 % versus someone else 100. Based on the 120%, you're going to ship another 20 % on top of that, and that just will compound. So the metric, not metric metric, I look for is how fast are you shipping? And that's the type of thing that I look for now. That's amazing. I've noticed that as a theme too. with some of the highest growth companies that we've had on the podcast too, like WAP. They are constantly shipping. They're constantly shipping code. They're constantly shipping products. They're constantly tweaking them. It's a complete iterative execution strategy.

56:13It's incredible. Like there are companies that are literally announcing fairly large net new product every week or twice a week. And I think mine's blown. Like, how are you doing this? Yeah. Which also helps our go-to-market strategy because you're always in the news. Absolutely. And that is what I mean by momentum is the moat because it's not just distribution. That aided by actual product announcement and people seeing that and seeing it result in revenue and you building in public and talking about that revenue momentum. That's the whole game. Positive. Yeah, exactly. Positive feedback loop.

56:47And that continues. That's so hard to break. Yeah, people just need to ship more. And that makes it really also hard to catch them. Catch them. If you're like a newer entrant or you're not a number one in mindshare, what have you, you better hope that the number one guy, dominant guy is like slipping and shit in velocity. Cause if they don't, they just fly higher and higher and you're just looking at that. I'm like, how do I do that? It's a good point. Also, if you know that there's a gap, you have a strategic advantage to go in and do something big. Yep. You better ship twice as fast. Yeah. I think like zooming out something to kind of like, push back on a little bit is within these bubbles huge innovation cycles there are two narratives well there's a narrative that just that goes back and forth okay it's a seesaw you're either driving for growth or you're driving for profitability in these different loops uh when you're going up and it's like a good positive macro environment it's all about growth right when times are tough It's all about getting the profitability.

57:55Right now we're in the upside. We're all about growth. Things have switched back over. Do you think we're still in the early stages of this hype cycle, this innovation cycle? When do we start to worry about, okay, now it's time for profitability? I sort of demure because I get your question where there's like a dichotomy of growth or profitability. and depending on macro cycle, there's, you know, focus on either side. And I think you're right to say we're in sort of the gross Trump's era. What I do want to say is that the current dynamic of the cost structure, especially for apps companies, really favor this equation of gross almost equals profitability.

58:48the margin structure of some of these companies that we're investors in is incredible i used to be a cfo i look at their pnl and i'm like this is a public company pnl wow it is so when you think about the profitability you know the whole like sass of like 80 percent mark like all of that a lot of that still holds true even if it doesn't hold true there are multiple ways that it is very easy is the wrong way, but easy to imagine margin expansion. Whether it's you over time take a bunch of queries in-house and start cutting costs that way. And we all know that compute cost is going down at a very rapid speed.

59:33So you get to actually price it at a point where it may be a lower margin today, but it'll expand over time. So it's not to skirt your question, but I do think we're in this funny stage where some of the winners that are emerging have this benefit of increasing profitability and growth and get to actually choose to reinvest that. there might come a time where it's more prudent to actually use those capital to invest in other things. And that may come, but I still think we're in the era of gross equals profitability to some extent. And, and, you know, the momentum and gross actually winning out.

1:00:14That's a really good point. We're in a completely different environment. Companies are getting a lot more efficient. Teams are getting smaller. Who's to say like, yeah, people are shooting for that one employee unicorn honestly some of these uh there were i think six months ago molly if we sat down and you're like oh what are the interesting metrics i might have said revenue per you revenue per employee i don't even know if that makes sense anymore there's so many companies that are just that's mind-boggling number that it's hard to compute yeah okay so also in kotu's deck there there was a really great chart for applovin versus microsoft applovin's uh revenue per employee is like huge delta between microsoft's microsoft is kind of like flatlined a little bit but like that that is like a true trend we're seeing yeah even in large private even in large private so imagine companies that are being now being built now is you know the unjumbled infra i suppose and companies that get to actually think about their customer support a completely different way think about sales and outbound motion completely differently it's just uh it's mind-boggling what's possible now there are a couple critical questions that calci suggests with these and they have them in their markets one is calci the one that have sorcery or is it it's calci we are only calci in this household it's calci calci i i i have to ask we love calci two billion dollar valuation now they're in your company they're crushing it yeah they're right they're right up the street too yeah they're great um so one of their they have two questions around this okay one of them is do you think there's gonna be more as like a secondary effect do you think there's gonna be more tech layoffs this year than in 2024 huh so that's like one question yeah do i am i betting on this yeah are you bet like what do you want to put i would i would actually bet that there would be less okay i think the opportunity cost is cost of not having the manpower to actually build and accelerate is too big.

1:02:22And while on margins, they may be, oh, maybe we can have less of X or Y. Overall, I think speed remains so important. Overall, I think building quickly remains so important that my belief now is that it's not the time to actually try to get to super efficient and take sort of the foot off the gas a little bit, if that makes sense so my bet is no good okay so one thing it's not betting it's trading fantastic first federally regulated excellent yeah good thank you thank you for the correction i stand corrected okay but good to know okay so we're past the get fit era we're now in speed velocity keep the gas on the pedal do you think maybe you already answered this question then do Do you think unemployment is going to drop by 2030?

1:03:142030. Or is it going to increase? You know, I think that's like a, okay, I'm going to say I'm not the best person to answer because I actually don't know which sector has the highest large amount of employment, to be honest. And to say, oh, employment writ large is going to change not knowing what the biggest size of the pie is. It might be manufacturing. And if that's true, I'm like, I don't know. I think my answer is don't know. Okay. valid there okay well i've learned to say don't know when i actually don't know the answer that's commendable some people wouldn't do that so it's great you're being honest you know as we uh wrap up so i i jumped the gun i i went a little bit too far we usually end with these cal sheet predictions markets oh before we do that i want to know what you're most looking forward to this year this year yeah i am really looking forward to the first emergence of first emergence is the wrong word but the beginning of pure consumer ai products really uh breaking through i i think we're i think there are a couple products like i would say chat GPT has been the runaway winner in the consumer AI mind share.

1:04:33And I'm very excited to see more popping through. Exciting. And we'll get very, very busy. Very busy. Very busy. You know, I thought like I would have more time in the day, but now I just have more jobs to do because I need things to do. See, this is why I don't think unemployment goes up or layoff goes up, it goes up because it's just there's more to do yeah there's always more to do somehow i have five jobs now you you do have five jobs and i probably will need to increase my job count as well you gotta you gotta increase that number okay so as we formally go into the calci predictions market now let's do a couple clearly ones all right one do you think roy will go to jail no not even in a stunt No.

1:05:22Okay. I kind of think it would be funny if he did a stunt. You know, going to jail affects background checks, which affects next rounds of funding. You know, that's... No. Good compliant answer. Love that. Do you think he's going to become a billionaire? Oh, okay. So I got to look at the count. Do you think he can reach that? I sure hope so. This is what you're betting on as an investor. Yeah, I sure hope so. So, you know, I guess my answer default is I bet with our wallet. More clearly. More clearly. We got to make Roy a billionaire. We do. Internet, please help. Internet, please help. Comment section, please help.

1:06:05Okay. Going into consumer, what do you think the Johnny Ive and OpenAI device will be? My guess it's an ambient device.

1:06:23i think it'll be closer to i airpods of the world than glasses like i i need glasses i'm negative eight negative seven i don't know what that means it means that i'm blind without contacts okay i still don't wear glasses you know like i love it's the form factor i think it's uh you know not necessarily for everyone so then i need to think about what form factor can be ambient on people all the time accessories have personalized taste it's kind of hard you know i like your necklace but i can't wear that so i think it needs to be a form factor that makes sense to be ambient and my guess right now is probably airpods-esque but who knows who's to say who is to say who's to say airpods do make up a large portion of apple's revenue i think it's one of the best hardware product that like got launched that people don't talk about like it's an incredible product it really is they're great they you know you drop them they fly all over the place they're gone they're gone you gotta replace it you gotta buy it immediately it's like they almost have some sort of like ergonomic factor inside of bounce away to bounce as far as possible i think that's right i think that's incredible design i have three of those you do yeah you just just gotta you don't know if you're gonna lose one you know do you keep them like one on the charger at all Yeah, I do.

1:07:41You do? Yeah, I do. You always have a full one. Because without it, I don't answer phone calls. Okay. Neither do I. I don't know how to pick up a phone anymore. It's a button, but I don't really know how to do that. I love that. That's a good one. I can totally see that. Pins, like, you know, it's funny. Are we past pins? I don't know if we're past pins, but there's a very funny, it's not a social experiment but in my mind was an a-b test where we had a consumer ai event in new york same day there was a consumer ai event that one of my partners uh did in sf and then um in sf some portion of people came with pins and recording the whole thing ambiently there blah blah i don't think you can get away with that in new york zero chance too much noise no know what I mean?

1:08:38It's just like, it's just cringe. You can't, you can't come to an event with a pin that's recording. Yeah. No one would want to talk to you. No. So it's just like a very interesting social test of what's ready. And of course, you know, um, robo taxis or, you know, Waymo really started in San Francisco and it's now going everywhere. So maybe that's the start of it. So I'll never rule anything out, but socially right now, I think, uh, there are probably other form factors that make a little more sense. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. On the Waymo part, Waymo is coming to New York. It's hard to believe.

1:09:14I hope they're treated well. I hope they're treated well as well. I say thank you every time I get off. You have to. Yeah. I say hello. Thank you. I'm very polite. How's your day? How's your day? How are you feeling? It's important. In case they're listening. Well, they are listening. They are listening. They're listening and they're watching. In case there's a pure, you know, highest form of AGI, what's the downside of being nice to them or having them know that you have been always nice to them? You also want to train them to be nice. Exactly. It's like having good friends. When you have good friends, it rubs off on you.

1:09:49This is exactly, yeah. If you're good to the robot, the robot will be good to you. Exactly. I'm excited for it to come to New York. Well, we'll see how that does. I know. They're going to be hardcore. core yeah we'll we'll see how they weave through all the uh honking and and the and the bikes in la that's where i'm from they're not treated well at all right i mean they they just set them all on fire they had to send them home essentially their their home is sf i i think so treated nicely in sf i believe they're treated really yeah we're we're kind to them how many cities do you think they're gonna be able to scale to this year like how many more cities what cities yeah three more three yeah what's which i mean cities it's so funny like we live in the u.s right so cities i'm like oh like what state and what cities like people forget i don't know i need to verify this as a fact but somebody once said if you had la and new york at the market consumer wise that is bigger than continental europe yeah so that's two cities yeah it's bigger than continental Europe.

1:10:58So we're saying, oh, maybe three cities, whatever. But that's huge. That's huge. It's pretty big. That's how I think about it. I'm from Korea. It's a tiny, tiny place. California is four times larger than Korea. So I sort of think about that. I'm like, I don't know. Three cities can be 10 countries more. That's a really good perspective. That's a good point. We live in a big place. There's a lot of consumers. There are a lot of money. There's great great opportunities to build here it's great it's great it's time to build it's time to build that's a great way there we go and and and this is the end there it's time to build the next clueley there we go thank you so much thank you molly this was a lot of fun this was great thank you bro bro hey it's molly if you enjoy our interviews check out our newsletter sorcery.vc where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews.

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