The Newcomer Podcast

Science fiction author Daniel H. Wilson joins the hosts to discuss the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. They explore how AI could turn dystopian and debate whether humans will remain in control. They also touch on the limitations of AI technology and the plausibility of dystopian storytelling. The chapter ends with a discussion on interacting with AI and the potential end of humanity.

The podcast explores the rise of generative artificial intelligence and its impact on Silicon Valley. It discusses the evolution and milestones of AI, advancements in language models, limitations of AI models, predicting life in 2028, the impact of AI on various aspects of life, and the creative capabilities of AI.

Top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs discuss life extension. James Peyer acquires majority stakes in drugs for broader use. Celine Halioua develops drugs to make dogs live longer. They explore pharmacological interventions, different categories of innovations, and the impact of influential individuals like Brian Johnson. The podcast also highlights personal health experimentation and evidence-based practices for maximizing health.

Chris Lehane was once the consummate Democratic spin man and campaign wonk. He introduced the world to the vast right-wing conspiracy against the Clintons. In 2015, Lehane dove into the high-growth startup world. He joined Airbnb to run policy and communications. He taught the home sharing company how to fight nicely with cities, dishing out data and tax cooperation in exchange for favorable local regulations. Unlike Uber’s confrontational approach that had it going to war with Bill de Blasio in New York City, Airbnb tried to foster a cozy relationship with urban policymakers.Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and President Barack Obama built a tight relationship. A year ago, just as the crypto winter was starting, Lehane joined Katie Haun’s self-named venture fund, which had raised $1.5 billion. Haun Ventures positioned itself as a leader in regulation, policy, and communications. Haun is a former assistant U.S. attorney. Rachael Horwitz, the firm’s chief marketing officer, once ran communications for Coinbase. And Lehane brought the political experience, especially with Democrats. But there’s only so much one firm can do to change crypto’s reputation in Washington, especially with Democrats. Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, had become the crypto world’s standard bearer with Democrats, donating to their campaigns and speaking to their values. Then when Bankman-Fried’s empire unraveled and he headed to jail, many Democrats grew disillusioned with crypto. This year, two Republican-led House committees moved forward crypto-friendly legislation that would clarify the regulation of crypto currencies and give the Commodities Futures Trading Commission more power to regulate crypto (denying the SEC some of that power). Meanwhile, the Biden appointed SEC chair Gary Gensler has sued crypto exchange Coinbase and Binance for failing to register their exchanges with the SEC. I invited Lehane on the Newcomer podcast to take stock of crypto’s status in Washington. We talked about the bills working their way through Congress, the SEC lawsuits, and the crypto winter. Lehane and I also talked about how he believed that America needed to embrace a “common sector” that served as a hybrid between government regulation and corporate self-regulation. Think Airbnb data sharing with cities or Facebook’s oversight board. We also commiserated over co-existing with Silicon Valley Republicans in the MAGA era. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Rey Flemings, luxury services entrepreneur, talks about helping the ultra wealthy spend their money and the challenges of sudden wealth. They discuss exclusive experiences and destinations, onboarding and verifying wealthy clients, and finding happiness beyond financial milestones.

Jane Poynter spent two years and 20 minutes in a biosphere back in the early 1990s. (There’s a documentary about it.) Later, Poynter set her sights on a mission to Mars. Wired wrote in 2014, “Meet the Couple Who Could Be the First Humans to Travel to Mars.” The story was about Poynter and her husband, Taber MacCallum. These days, the duo is working together on building a hydrogen balloon that will take tourists to space for $125,000. Poytner came on the podcast to talk about her startup, Space Perspective. We also discussed SpaceX, Elon Musk, Virgin Galactic, and the state of the adventure tourism industry in light of the deep sea deaths on a OceanGate submersible headed to the Titanic. On the show, Poynter said that Space Perspective, which has about 130 employees, has raised almost $70 million. Prime Movers Lab and LightShed Ventures are major investors, Poynter said. She told us that she hopes to commercial operations “around the end of 2024.” Venture capitalist, chief of staff newsletter author, and AI event host Ali Rohde joined me as a guest co-host for the episode. (She’s a friend of the show and I’m exploring different podcast episode formats. I always welcome your feedback and advice. In that spirit, I’ll mention that I’m still looking for a podcast producer.)Think of the episode as part two in my exploration of space startups. Last week, I talked with Delian Asparouhov, the co-founder of Varda Space Industries. This week, we interrogate space tourism. Give it a listen.Highlighted ExcerptsThe transcript has been edited for clarity.What if anything did you take away from the OceanGate situation?Jane: What’s fascinating is we got almost no customer questions or refund requests due to the OceanGate accident. It’s incredibly different from what we do. Also, in the 60+ years of deep ocean submersible operations there had never been a fatal accident until that incident. You have to ask why. I don’t want to focus on OceanGate specifically, but the big takeaway for us was that we embrace regulatory oversight. We want the FAA and Coast Guard to work with us since we also operate at sea. We go so far beyond any standards they would set that it’s good for us and the industry to have that accountability and transparency. That was the main takeaway: We welcome reasonable regulations and oversight.Space tourism more akin to safaris than Virgin GalacticJane: It’s interesting that you talk about Blue Origin and Virgin not being competition because the experience is so differentiated from what we offer. Our experience is more akin to incredible safaris, trips to Antarctica, and other wonder travel that deeply transforms people. That’s why we priced our tickets at $125,000. It’s in line with those kinds of life-changing experiences. When Antarctica tourism opened up, there was a huge demand from people willing to pay high prices for a once-in-a-lifetime trip. We’re seeing incredible excitement and demand from customers wanting to go to space with us. We have an event coming up soon with over 100 of our explorers gathering here, and they all want to connect with each other too. We’re building a real community around spaceflight and this experience. It’s going to be such an extraordinary, bonding experience for people. I truly believe it will bring people together in a deep way.You mentioned Blue Origin, Virgin, and SpaceX — obviously some of the first names people think of when space is mentioned like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. They are controversial figures, likely quite different from our target customer base. But I'm curious. What do you think about them? Are you grateful for how they've helped popularize and mainstream space travel?Jane: Taber and I worked with Elon before he started SpaceX, so we have an interesting perspective. In the early days of SpaceX, space tourism was considered a joke and the idea that commercial companies could enable space travel or moon/Mars missions was insane. It was assumed that only governments could do that. Elon deserves a lot of credit; Gwynne Shotwell too. She's done an incredible job revolutionizing the space industry by lowering costs, improving efficiency and effectiveness, and showing us what's possible. SpaceX paved the way for the over 100 small rocket companies operating now, which never would have happened without that trailblazing. So while there are likely narrative or cultural elements we wouldn't fully align with, overall we are absolutely grateful for the pivotal role SpaceX played in advancing commercial space and making it seem achievable.What excites you about exploring space?Jane: When I think about space exploration, I don’t view it as leaving Earth never to return. I actually quite like this planet! To me, space exploration is more of an extension of the perspective-broadening we do now. When people look down on Planet Earth from space, it’s a mind-blowing experience. Now imagine yourself standing on the moon or Mars and seeing Earth. It’s that exponentially more impactful. It will give people a wildly different perspective on what it means for all of us to live together. We should think of ourselves as one human family living on Spaceship Earth. As we venture farther out, it will become increasingly clear that we’re holding up a mirror to humanity, seeing ourselves somewhere other than Earth for the first time. It’s a wild concept. So that’s how I view space, not as leaving the planet but expanding our perspective to appreciate that we’re all in this together.How do you prevent accidents in the air?Jane: A common question we get is what happens if something goes wrong with the balloon? The balloon technology is incredibly well understood with a long legacy. Hundreds have been flown in the last 20 years without a single in-flight incident. However, we obviously need backup systems. We have a series of parachutes, similar to those used on SpaceX’s Dragon capsules or other space vehicles. They are robust, proven parachutes. We have four total, with only two needed for a safe landing. The parachutes are only used in an emergency scenario because normally the ship ascends under the balloon and descends back onto the balloon, keeping the flight system consistent. This is a very safe approach, never transitioning between flight systems. We’ve focused on simplicity everywhere possible because simpler systems tend to be safer overall. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Last time I remember writing about Varda co-founder and Founders Fund partner Delian Asparouhov, I was giving him a hard time about his subdued impromptu Clubhouse run-in with then San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin who he’d been flaming on Twitter.But since then, Asparouhov has mellowed out online. When I texted him after our podcast recording session and mentioned that his Founders Fund colleague Mike Solana was sassing me on Elon Musk’s social networking platform, Asparouhov wrote back, “Bro I’m tryna do 3 jobs over here. I don’t have time to pay attention to what Solana is up to.”Besides Varda and Founders Fund, I wondered what the third job was.He texted me back, “Fatherhood.”On the latest episode of the Newcomer podcast Asparouhov and I covered a lot of ground. We talked about Varda’s satellite mission and its ambitions to manufacture in space. We discussed SpaceX’s reusable rocket and the media conversation around Starship’s explosion. Asparouhov mused about UFOs and missions to Mars. It was a wide-ranging conversation about space and technology.The conversation started off digging into Varda’s excited research into LK-99.Varda ran an experiment which they initially thought might show verification of room temperature semiconductors.By the time we recorded our conversation, you could tell Asparouhov was more muted about Varda’s findings.Later he tweeted, “alas, the rocks we made floated due to iron impurities.”Highlighted ExcerptsThe transcript has been edited for clarity.Eric: What is Varda’s focus at the moment?Delian: Our goal is to take some of the research that’s been shown on the International Space Station to have a ton of promise in terms of, as we’ve been talking about, solid state formulation. It turns out solid state formulation is significantly affected by gravity - that may also be true in superconductors. So one day down the line, if somebody does discover these formulations and they’re showing issues that we think gravity could actually solve, there’s a world where Varda flies a superconductor. You know, four or five years, definitely not anytime soon, given that the biopharma side is so much more preserved currently.Eric: I’m gonna be dumb again. To me, solid state is like hard drives. Is that what you mean by solid state formulation?Delian: If you look at what’s happening both in superconductors and what we do in the pharma world, you’re taking things that start as very fine grain powders or liquids and making solid state crystalline versions of them. In the pharma world that ends up looking like a little bit of table salt that you take, and it turns out that thing actually has drug cancer molecules and mRNA molecules. In the world of superconductors, it turns into these things that look like, I mean you’ve seen them on Twitter, they look like these kind of weird half ceramic, half metal objects. So solid state is just the form of the matter. Solid state in particular typically means a larger crystalline lattice structure, not just individual small molecules.Eric: The whole story of milestones you’re talking about, what would be viable, reminds me of the SpaceX experience. Where a few months ago one of their rockets blew up. It’s so hard as a layperson, even when cheering these things on, to know as an external observer what signs show the company’s on track. What was your reaction to media like The New York Times framing the SpaceX explosion super negatively?Delian: I think the layman’s view, particularly The New York Times, was clueless and off base. In aerospace, it’s easier to publicly verify traction, unlike software where companies just claim things. You can see did the rocket launch? Did the spacecraft enter orbit? Those are physical facts. SpaceX is developing an extremely ambitious new rocket alongside their workhorse Falcon 9 that has flown over 200 times without exploding. This new rocket is riskier but more capable. It’s interesting because even though Falcon 9 lands part of itself, it still loses the top section on every flight. So travel is expensive if you had to rebuild the cockpit after every plane flight. This new rocket Elon’s making aims to be fully reusable to lower costs.Because it’s so ambitious, SpaceX’s approach is to test and fly rapidly rather than get stuck analyzing indefinitely. Their early Falcon rockets blew up but they learned. Nobody expected this new rocket to even get off the pad, but it went way further than expected before failing around stage separation. Calling it a failure seems crazy to me given this is the most ambitious project ever. It did way better than anyone thought, proving out concepts. Failures are part of pushing forward ambitiously. The NYT calling it a Space Shuttle-type failure shows cluelessness - this explicitly developmental rocket had no people aboard. To get to safe, you have to start unsafe and prove it out over time.Eric: How much does Varda depend on SpaceX’s continued success in bringing down the cost curve? Could Varda work with today’s cost of satellite deployment? Or are you counting on further reductions in deployment costs?Delian: At today’s launch costs, where we’re spending $1.5 to $2 million per flight, that is low enough for us to build a strong business around what we’re doing now. So I’d say none of our models or thinking depends on future cost drops. Obviously I’d be thrilled if something like Starship came online, though I think that’ll take time. I’d be excited for more players to start landing rockets - no one has really done that yet, even though it’s been eight and a half years since SpaceX’s first landing. So I’m not counting on it happening soon. We’ve architected our business so it doesn’t depend on further cost reductions.. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Claire Hughes Johnson writes in her book, Scaling People, about a moment early on in her time at Stripe when an Irish journalist shouted to her, “You’re the lady! You’re the lady with the lads!”Hughes Johnson, who joined Stripe in 2014 as the payments startup’s chief operating officer, works closely with two of the most iconic Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Patrick and John Collison. During her tenure as COO, she helped bring her management know-how from Google and experience working for Sheryl Sandberg to help organize the growing company. I invited Hughes Johnson on the Newcomer podcast to talk about her time at Stripe and the management lessons that she has put down on paper in Scaling People, which she published this year. Toward the end of our conversation, Hughes Johnson turned the tables on me and gave me some coaching.Our conversation circles around two sections of her book, in particular. We talked about giving feedback and honesty in a corporate setting. She talked about her principle that managers should encourage people to “say the thing you cannot say.”She writes,How often have you sat in a meeting and mused, “It really feels like there’s something that isn’t being talked about right now”? Or had a conversation with a report and thought, “I think they’re getting upset about what I’m saying”? Or caught yourself filtering everything you say? These questions prompt a bigger one: Why don’t managers say what’s actually on their minds?People often think that good management is about having a lot of filters, and for good reason. There’s a lot that might feel risky to say, or that feels like a personal judgment. But be wary of over-filtering. Fine-tuning your filters and pushing yourself to name your observation in a constructive way means you’ll be able to have a more honest conversation about what’s going on. Then you can all start working on a solution in earnest.Hughes Johnson concludes scaling people with a chapter titled, “You.” It looks at how managers manage themselves.She writes,The more senior you become, the more creative reality gets at finding ways to beat you up every day. You will have days—sometimes many in a row—when your highest performer is threatening to quit, a top customer has just informed you that they’re moving to a competitor, you’re leading a company-wide meeting the next day and haven’t had time to prepare, and the cross-functional project you kicked off last week is already going off the rails. Many people don’t have the psychological strength and resilience to keep going. In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz calls this “the struggle,” when “nothing is easy and nothing feels right.”To make it all work, you have to learn how to manage your time and energy. First, diagnose what gives and takes your energy. The easiest way to do this is to map out your good and bad days and track what activities add to and detract from your energy. An easy tactic is to keep check marks on your calendar of good days and bad days. After a month, look at all the good days and all the bad days, and then the good weeks and bad weeks, and see what trends jump out. When I did this exercise, I found that the weeks when I had more than one work event that kept me from having dinner with my kids and getting them to bed were bad weeks. I then resolved to restrict my work-related late nights to once a week—a personal guideline that I occasionally break, but not often. Your goal is to study what combination of time spent on which activities creates your best performance, then determine where you need to set boundaries to preserve your strongest self.Coming up as a reporter, I was always resistant to “management” and “leadership” advice. Those words made me think of Dale Carnegie books and cash-grab leadership seminars. But as I’ve started to build Newcomer into more of a company (we’ve got a full-time chief of staff, three summer interns, and am looking to hire a full-time reporter), I’ve come around to the idea that being intentional about how you spend your time and how you work with people are essential skills, worthy of serious reflection. These days, Hughes Johnson is a corporate officer and advisor at Stripe. She’s spending a lot of her time working with individual managers and offering coaching inside the company. So we got a taste of how Stripe’s management guru thinks.I really enjoyed our conversation. Give it a listen. Highlighted ExcerptsThe transcript has been edited for clarity.On Good Management.Claire Hughes Johnson: One of the topics that came to mind during my interview with John and Patrick was the importance of good management and smart operating structures. I emphasized that we shouldn’t be reinventing the wheel. I believe in fundamentally sound management practices, rather than creating an entirely new way of thinking about performance feedback.I paused and told them, “You guys have to be with me on this. We might start with a very basic version of performance feedback, but it’s better to do that than to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” What’s wrong with doing everything from first principles? At some point, it becomes exhausting, and you might not be the best at constructing the system.I also discussed the permanence of management structures and hierarchies that have been in place for hundreds of years. There have been attempts to innovate, such as holacracy, and workers’ expectations have changed. I’m not suggesting we do things the same way we did 100 years ago, but we must pay attention to history.Patrick became particularly interested in this topic and started reading studies on management practices. He found academic research and data that showed countries with good management education and practices tend to have better economic outcomes. He agreed, saying, “Yeah, I think you’re right. Let’s put some fundamentals in place.”Unfortunately, some young companies want to reinvent more than they should. They may have invented a great product and feel compelled to create new ways to manage people. But I believe this can be a mistake, and it’s better to rely on proven methods and structures.Young companies, especially, should practice giving feedback.Claire Hughes Johnson: The book has a lot of stuff on operating structures. It’s really important to have goals and metrics that everyone recognizes as the company's most important goals, and to review them publicly with everyone. The mission should be clearly articulated, along with the direction for the next three to five years. Clear feedback structures are vital. Ideally, feedback should be continuous, but in young companies, many managers are new to this process, so they’re not giving as much feedback. Therefore, you actually have to build more structures for it, which may seem counterintuitive. Some companies might say, “Oh, we’re just running after this prize, and we can’t be distracted by that.” But I respond, “Well, actually, it’s the most important thing, because you aren’t used to doing it.”How do you think about feedback? How direct or brutal should the feedback be?Claire Hughes Johnson: When I first started working at Google, I was shocked at how direct the engineers were, saying things like, “That’s a terrible idea.” It was not the world I had been in working in consulting or government. At first, I got defensive, but I’ve come to love it. However, when I talk about feedback, there’s a level of directness that I don’t think is productive. If it’s so direct that it feels like an attack, people stop listening and think about survival. It becomes a matter of adapting or dying.I have an operating principle that I talk about in the book: “Say the thing you think you cannot say.” I try to push myself and others to be open and willing to put things on the table without creating an attack response. For example, I might say to a leadership team member at Stripe, “From my seat, 10,000-20,000 feet away, I have a couple of things I’m worried about.” Then we can have an interesting conversation, looking at the problem together.As a leader, it’s also about reading the room, even virtually. What’s the body language? Are people making eye contact? Are there weird comments in the doc? My job is to get everyone else’s opinion on the table first. Sometimes I'll say, “It feels like there's something we’re not saying. It feels tense in here.” Then I might call on someone to break through to the real thing.There are different dynamics at play, such as power dynamics and layering issues. Sometimes you can tell the team isn’t behind their leader. Other times, there’s friction within the team or with another team. And sometimes, it's a matter of seeing the forest for the trees, stepping back to look at the bigger picture. Is this actually a good product? Why are we not seeing more user adoption? Why have we only grown 10% when the rest of the products are growing 40%? As a leader, your job is to have that bigger picture in mind and to ask, “Is this the right strategy?” Sometimes, you have to zoom out and say, “We’re having the wrong conversation, folks.” Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Lightspeed Venture Partners can sometimes live in the shadow of its noisier rivals. Andreessen Horowitz has a massive war chest, sprawling payroll, and insatiable appetite for attention. Meanwhile, Sequoia Capital is, well, Sequoia. But Lightspeed has established itself as one of the top multi-stage technology investors of this era. In July 2022, Lightspeed announced that it had raised more than $7 billion to invest in startups. Now, as Sequoia spins off its Chinese and Indian venture capital arms and as Lightspeed builds out its presence in Europe, Lightspeed is looking like one of the most globally-oriented venture capital firms. I invited Bejul Somaia on the Newcomer podcast to talk about Lightspeed’s investments in India and its global strategy. Somaia is one of the leaders of the firm and relocated to the United States after many years investing for Lightspeed in India. “We want to see, access, and compete for the best opportunities wherever they are,” Somaia told me. Venture capital investments in India fell to $25.7 billion in 2022 from $38.5 billion in 2021.“Forcing capital into these companies is not necessarily the answer and I think we’ve learned that time and again,” Somaia said. “2021 — we know was out of control everywhere. But in shallow markets, out of control is even more damaging because the asset price inflation is even more significant in shallow markets. The movements are more jarring,” he said. A correction was healthy, necessary, and painful. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Union Square Ventures has some of the best performing funds in the venture capital industry. As I’ve reported, USV-backer UTIMCO disclosed in a recent filing that USV had delivered the public investment fund an internal rate of return of 59%. And that number will likely go up over time. (For instance, USV portfolio company Casetext sold to Thomson Reuters for $650 million after the UTIMCO performance update.) I invited USV managing partner Rebecca Kaden onto the Newcomer podcast to talk about how USV consistently invests in unconventional companies. We started off our conversation talking about Journey Clinical, the psychedelics company, in which Kaden announced a Series A investment in January. We also discussed USV’s $200 million climate fund strategy, her interest in the AI application layer, and how rising interest rates are effecting the venture capital asset class. Give it a listenHighlighted ExcerptsThe transcript has been edited for clarity.Eric: How do you repeatedly invest in weird things like psychedelics?Rebecca: This thesis around access to care, which has attracted so much capital — some of it ours and is proving to be a good category — has been where the market has gone, but it’s actually only one piece of the puzzle. The way we get into things that are unusual is by having strong theses about where things are going versus being extremely opportunistic. Obviously, there’s a balance. But that thesis thinking is important. A lot of thesis work on this category really led to the belief that access to care is only half the puzzle. The other is how is care itself going to evolve, and you start unraveling that thread: how is care itself evolving? The real biggest last evolution of care is SSRIs. Those are prescription drugs and have been very important to the treatment for mental health crises, but there’s a lot of things they don’t treat. They’re not a one size fits all model. And they’re basically all we got, right? The innovation has not had a lot of other layers, except for psychedelics. And so we became very interested in psychedelics as the next card to get turned over and the next option in needing a bucket of options to treat a crisis.Eric: There are pharmaceutical companies. If there’s money to be made, shouldn’t they be trying? What’s happening that it feels like you need a real outsider thinking to bring ketamine, a drug that’s legal, to people’s lives that the medical system is unable or unwilling to do what’s happening?Rebecca: Well, this isn’t really unique to psychedelics or to mental health. Pharmaceutical companies make drugs, so the development of drugs goes with them, but the distribution and networks of access is outside of it. That’s not particularly new or unique here. That’s where business opportunity has been. So the idea is, when you talk about distribution and networks of access, that’s often where these business opportunities lie. The development of drugs is kind of a different beast, which lies in the pharmaceuticals. Why is there a business opportunity with creating access? Because the same reason technology drives business opportunity into anything. Offline access is slower, it’s more gated; it’s more piecemeal. You have to be at the right doctor at the right time, you have to find it. By creating a network, you just allow anyone anywhere to find access and education at a faster speed and with much broader supply, which brings efficiency to the market.Eric: Do you think mushrooms are going to be on the table soon? Or how much was this a bet that the regulatory regime would change?Rebecca: I don’t think mushrooms as we think about them in a recreational sense are just gonna get legalized, maybe they will, but that’s a separate kind of thing. I think other forms of psychedelics in formats that are right for care are very much going to get legalized. And actually, as we did our research, to us that’s a when not an if. When you dig into what’s going on clinical trials and in the clinical world, in some ways that seems pretty easy to bet on that these will continue to happen. And if not exactly the form that we’ve outlined, rapid new forms of options for care for mental health diseases are going to get approved and released. They’re going to need a network of education and distribution to go into the therapist network.I do think there’s a regulatory risk here. There’s some amount of regulatory risk on psychedelics. We have to be honest about it. But I actually think more about regulatory risk across broader online healthcare in general. We’re at somewhat of a time of that whole market still getting worked out on not unique to mental health and not unique to psychedelics, but what you can prescribe online and to whom and to how and how to allow that really important access that we’ve come to rely on, but also do it in an appropriately controlled way.Eric: You come from a consumer focused firm. When you were interviewing with USV, was it clear that you were shifting away from consumer, and how have you thought about consumer professionally?Rebecca: We don’t think a lot about the divide in our portfolio if we think about our fund construction, or how we're looking at the world between consumer and B2B. What we think about is this thesis and the mechanics involved, for instance the role of building network driven businesses and the opportunity to leverage bottom up networks to create moats and scale and to broaden access by driving value and down costs systematically across categories we care about. Sometimes the right application when you pull the threads of that thesis is a consumer product or service, and sometimes it’s the enabling infrastructure of them. But most of USV’s investments had been one of those two things. They’ve either been the end application or the enabling infrastructure involved, but a common theme throughout our investments is how do you build important networks that can change industries, but rise outside of them. If you think about Journey Clinical, it’s a network of therapists. They’re stronger, and the more you add on to them, it’s a bottom up growing network of acquiring the therapist, even though it interacts with the healthcare system and can change it. But it’s growing this network outside of the infrastructure to then impact the existing structure. We really like that if you think across of our investments, and sometimes that turns out to be consumer, if you think about an Outschool in education, or a Duolingo, or a Twitter, and sometimes it turns out to be the enabling infrastructure or the B2B Marketplace application like Journey Clinical.Eric: What are your thoughts on AI in consumer?Rebecca: The piece of the AI craziness that I’m most excited about is the application layer. There’s still a lot of kind of complexity and uncertainty on the foundational model and on the enabling infrastructure on where equity value aggregates — how much of the stack the models own, how defensible those models are, how that shakes out — but what I feel like we can have more conviction about is that it unleashes a wave of consumer innovation that’s going to be really fun. The way this is gonna get utilized is by products that we want to use. I’m excited about unleashing this rejuvenated value around fun things to do, where the coolest thing about AI driven applications is they get better if people actually use them. So the strongest incentive of the team is to increase engagement and utility. The only way to do that is to combine utility with fun. There’s gonna be so many things in the market that if things aren’t fun to use, you’ll go to another option. But the team has a huge incentive to get you to stick because that’s how their product gets better. So if you think about something like Duolingo, which has been on this for a long time of leveraging machine learning and AI to create better consumer experiences — streaks, gamification, fun — infused with the utility of language learning is critical, because their product gets better if I use it. I’m really excited to see that apply to lots of different consumer applications. We’ve been talking a lot and everyone’s been talking a lot about whether they’re going to be moats. Is stickiness going to be possible? The barriers are so low. The moat is going to be fun and teams that can create rapid new fun things that keep you on the platform. We haven’t seen that in a while. I’m excited about it. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe