The New Rules of Media | Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz
Recorded live at the New Media Summit, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Erik Torenberg, and Gaby Goldberg discuss how media, communication, and influence are changing in the internet era.
The conversation explores the shift from legacy media to creator-led platforms, why authenticity has become a competitive advantage, and how founders can build audiences by communicating directly with customers, employees, and the public. They discuss podcasts, social media, storytelling, corporate communications, and the changing relationship between companies, journalists, and audiences.
Along the way, they examine how founders can develop a public voice, why some leaders become influential communicators, and what it means to build a brand in a world where distribution is increasingly decentralized.
Resources:
Follow Marc Andreessen on X: https://x.com/pmarca
Follow Ben Horowitz on X: https://x.com/bhorowitz
Follow Erik Torenberg on X: https://x.com/eriktorenberg
Follow Gaby Goldberg on X: https://x.com/gaby_goldberg
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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
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Is AI Stalling Out? Cutting Through Capabilities Confusion, w/ Erik Torenberg, from the a16z Podcast
Erik Torenberg joins to debate whether recent developments suggest AI progress is slowing down or stalling, addressing arguments from Cal Newport and others. Nathan counters this view by highlighting significant qualitative advances, including 100X context window expansion, real-time interactive voice, improved reasoning, vision, and AI's growing contributions to hard sciences. The conversation then covers AI's impact on the labor market, the potential for AI protectionism, and concerns about recursive self-improvement. This episode argues that AI capabilities are not stopping, with frontier developers seeing a clear path for continued rapid progress in the coming years.
Sponsors:
Tasklet:
Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai
Linear:
Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr
Shopify:
Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive
PRODUCED BY:
https://aipodcast.ing
CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(03:49) Is AI Slowing Down?
(09:15) Newport's Scaling Law Theory
(16:56) The Value of Reasoning (Part 1)
(17:17) Sponsors: Tasklet | Linear
(19:57) The Value of Reasoning (Part 2)
(24:52) Explaining GPT-5's Vibe Shift
(31:39) AI's Impact on Jobs (Part 1)
(36:50) Sponsor: Shopify
(38:47) AI's Impact on Jobs (Part 2)
(44:08) Recursive Self-Improvement via Code
(49:35) The Future of Engineers
(53:24) Economic Pressure vs. Protectionism
(58:29) Progress Beyond Language Models
(01:07:11) The State of AI Agents
(01:19:19) China's Open Source Models
(01:29:44) A Positive Vision Forward
(01:37:39) Outro
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Tech Acceleration vs Deceleration: e/acc vs. d/acc debate | Erik Torenberg & Haseeb Qureshi
Erik Torenburg and Haseeb Quereshi join us for today's debate.
Should we accelerate or decelerate our tech progress? How about when it comes to something as powerful as AI? This is not just a debate in tech circles - this is a political debate that poised to define the next decade.
We’ve had leaders from both sides of the debate on the podcast - episodes with Elizer Yudkowski and Beff Jezos. You’ve heard what they think.
Today’s episode is a discussion and at times a debate on these opinions to help you think through where you stand on this issue - Haseeb Quereshi tends toward the EA side which favors more caution and regulatory intervention around AI while Erik Torenburg tends toward the e/acc side of the issue which favors faster progress and lighter touch.
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🏙️ CONSENSUS | SAVE 20% WITH CODE BANKLESS https://bankless.cc/4aykesD ------ TIMESTAMPS 00:00:00 Start 00:03:51 Intro To Haseeb and Erik 00:05:58 Definind EA 00:11:30 Reflecting on EA 00:19:23 Erik's Case For E/Acc 00:23:05 Defining E/Acc 00:27:18 The Problem with E/Acc & Humanism 00:34:20 How Big is This Debate Really? 00:46:31 AI Safety & Regulatory Capture 00:56:39 EA's Political Affiliation 00:59:43 Extinction Risk 01:11:04 Politicizing the Debate 01:19:56 The Pro Tech Case 01:24:08 Productive Tension 01:28:33 AI Ethics vs Safety 01:32:53 Pick a Side
------ RESOURCES Haseeb Qureshi https://twitter.com/hosseeb
Erik Torenberg https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg
------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures
Is decentralization overhyped? And the future of voice tech.
Today I'm at AngelList HQ in San Francisco for a bit of a reunion with two friends and investors: Parker Thompson and Erik Torenberg.
Parker Thompson is a partner at AngelList and early stage investor. Prior to joining the family here (Product Hunt is an AngelList company), he was a partner at 500 Startups where he invested in Erik's first company, among many others. Before that, Parker spent six years at Pivotal Labs. As you'll hear, he's also behind the popular Twitter account @StartupLJackson.
Erik Torenberg is co-founder and partner at Village Global, a network-driven venture firm. He is also co-founder and chairman of crypto company TokenDaily and On Deck, a community of top talent looking to start or join their next company. Erik was actually the first full-time teammate to join me at Product Hunt and prior to that, he co-founded rapt.fm, an app for participating in live online rap battles.
In this episode we talk about:
How investors choose which companies to bet on, including how investors think about investing in companies with distributed teams. We also run through the lessons learned from the early stage investing Parker, Erik and I have done and discuss the strategies founders should use when pricing their initial fundraising rounds.
The emergence of crypto and whether it will pose a threat to Facebook as well as the challenges Facebook faces in trying to regulate what can and can't be said on their platform. We also talk about when decentralization makes sense and why some of the benefits of centralization might be overlooked in the rush to decentralize.
How new business opportunities emerge through platform shifts, including whether voice as a platform is finally seeing its often-forecasted and much-anticipated shift to the mainstream. Erik and Parker also run through some of their requests for products.
Of course, we also talk about some of their favorite products, including a social network for books, an app to help freestyle rappers, and a device that lets you cook food to perfection by vacuum-sealing it and submerging it in hot water.
We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸
Quotes from This Episode
“Every time there's a platform shift you sort of have two different types of companies built on the new platform: new-old things — you take legacy products and add internet to it, like Casper, bed plus internet, or Coursera, education plus internet. Then you have the new-new thing — things that could only be created on the new platform, which for the internet is something like eBay or PayPal or Napster.” — Erik
“I think just as a macro point, often we're too quick to extrapolate patterns like the new-new versus the new-old and with respect to crypto, I’m old enough to remember the lesson coming out of the 90s that open was always going to win. That’s how we built web 2.0… but then Facebook and Twitter came along… but now open/decentralized is coming back we're and saying actually we were right before and open is the future.” — Parker
“You make choices in defaults — these algorithms are choices, and even when you try not to pick winners, you’re still picking winners.” — Parker
“A lot of people criticize these incumbents, like Facebook or Amazon, saying these are the rent-seekers taking way too much and that we are going to build a decentralized version of them and pass on all the value to consumers. But what they don’t give enough credit to is that these products already pass along a lot of value to consumers... What I’m excited about with crypto networks is the ability to incentivize a lot more stakeholders, like the early users that contribute a lot to the platform. You have the ability to give upside to a lot more people than just early employees.” — Erik
“A puzzle to me is, why is there not a billion dollar exercise video company? It just seems like something that should exist, and the way I think about investing is: you're just wandering through the world and encountering these puzzles and the answers are not obvious but then someone walks in the door with the answer because they’ve figured it out. That's when you get excited and do the deal.” — Parker
Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode
Anova — Connected temperature-controlled cooking device.
Goodreads — Popular social network for book lovers.
Rhymeo — Freestyle app that provides material for your shareable raps.
STEEZY — Online dance classes at your own pace.
Udemy — Learn anything, on your schedule.
a16z Podcast: A Podcast about Podcasts
Podcasts and podcasting have been around a while, but seem to be going through a renaissance of sorts -- partly enabled by connected cars and other technologies. But how do we discover podcasts; is the ideal atomic unit the show, or an individual episode/topic? What makes a good podcast? And given their intimacy, how can brands and communities engage with podcasts?
We discuss this and more in this oh-so-meta episode of the a16z Podcast-about-podcasts. And to help us do that, we invited longtime podcaster and radio host Roman Mars -- of the highly regarded design show 99% Invisible -- as well as fans (and now curators of) podcasts, Ryan Hoover and Erik Torenberg of Product Hunt. [Along with, of course, your a16z Podcast producers and hosts Sonal Chokshi and Michael Copeland.]
The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.
This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/.
Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.
Stay Updated:
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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
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Product Hunt Radio: Episode 10 w/ Zack Shapiro, Erik Torenberg, & Connor Montgomery
I know I say this all the time but this may be one of my favorite PHR episodes yet. Zack Shapiro (Co-Founded Luna, hacking on Product Hunt), Erik Torenberg (CEO of Rapt.fm, hustling on Product Hunt), and Connor Montgomery (Builder at Pinterest) join me, Ryan Hoover, on my windy rooftop. We chat about tinder for the elderly, our favorite easter eggs, and Erik raps about Product Hunt. No joke. Listen. Products mentioned: - Swift (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/swift) - Apple's innovative new programming language - Stitch (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/stitch) - Tinder for older adults - BarkBuddy (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/barkbuddy) - Tinder for dogs. Adopt cute pups that need a home - Kittyo (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/kittyo) - Play With Your Cat. Even When You're Not Home via Phone - Electric Objects (http://www.electricobjects.com/) - Put the Internet on your wall - Domainr (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/domainr) - Worldwide domain search - Oyster (https://www.oysterbooks.com/) - Netflix for books - EPIC! (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/epic) - Netflix for kids books - Pocket (https://getpocket.com/) - When you find something you want to view later, put it in Pocket - ClickHole by The Onion](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/clickhole-by-the-onion) - The most irresistibly shareable content on the internet - InstaNerd (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/instanerd) - Be smart, instantly - 5iler (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/5iler) - A notepad for the rhythm of your mind - OneTab (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/onetab) - Manage Your Tab-Hoarding - to.be Camera (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/to-be-camera) - The Augmented Reality Camera - "Hook" Product Hunt API](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hook-producthunt-api) - Unofficial Product Hunt API for retrieving today's hunts - Notifyr (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/notifyr) - Receive iOS notifications on your Mac - Alfred (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/alfred) - Never use your mouse again - Shuddle (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/shuddle) - Uber for Families - Rhymer's Block (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/rhymers-block) - In-line rhyming dictionary for hip hop & poetry lyrics - Yo (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/yo) - A simple app to say "yo" to friends - bttn (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/bttn) - Press the bttn & Magic Happens™ (internet connected button)
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