# The Agentic Shift: From App Grids to Lean AI Enterprises

**Podcast:** a16z Podcast
**Published:** 2026-04-06

## Transcript

The interest in said software will eat the world.
I feel like coding will eat all knowledge work, right?
And we're kind of going that direction already.
The whole agent stack is emerging.
Identity, payments, marketing, even CLI versus MCP.
Like, all of these are really new things.
And I think a lot of the old playbook goes away.
Yeah, it's a whole new world.
I hope more companies will stay small.
And I think the founders of this generation realize that.
Like, they want to stay as small as possible.
Yeah.
And instead of having, like, a 10% product team, you have, like, a 2 or 3% product team.
And you just have a bunch of agents to help you.
Yeah.
Someone tweeted that, like, the job market is so bad that I can only pursue my dreams now.
Something like that.
So, like, it's like, you know.
It's like, yeah.
So, maybe you lost your job, but, like, now you can actually do your own thing.
Yeah, 100%.
And have a shot at actually achieving it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Most people open their phone to feel something.
Connected.
Productive.
Entertained.
Each app is a door to a different emotional state.
In 2007, the iPhone gave us the app grid.
19 years later.
Billions of people.
Billions of people still tap the same colored squares dozens of times a day.
The interface became so familiar, it stopped feeling like technology.
It became reflex.
Now, a generation of builders is collapsing that entire grid into a single conversation.
One agent that checks your analytics, updates your documents, runs your errands, and gives you a pep talk on your morning walk.
Not because the apps failed, but because talking is faster than tapping.
Yeah.
The question is, what happens to products, companies, and careers when building software costs almost nothing?
A16Z general partner, Anish Acharya, speaks with Peter Yang, creator and product lead at Roblox.
All right.
Welcome, everyone.
I've got my friend Peter Yang here.
Peter, welcome.
Yeah, good to be here.
It's good to see you again.
Yeah, yeah.
It's great to see you.
Peter and I worked together at Credit Karma for a brief stint, and then we went our separate ways.
And I rediscovered Peter from his prolific posts on X.
And you're YouTube, and you've got a little bit of a Clark Kent Superman thing going, because you've still got a day job, right?
That's right.
I still have a day job, yes.
Yeah.
Can you share where?
Yeah, I work at Roblox as a PM.
Amazing, Roblox.
And recent portfolio company.
Yes.
One of my favorites.
Well, incredible, man.
Let's get right into it.
Maybe I'll start with a softball fun question, and then we're going to talk about everything in the claw ecosystem.
We're going to talk about coding agents.
We're talking a little bit about maybe what students should study, advice, and some of the things that you've talked about online.
Yeah, sure.
Maybe to start, what is the name of your...
How many claws do you have, and tell me their names.
I only have one.
I call her Zoe.
Zoe?
But I have multiple conversations going with her.
Okay.
Yeah.
And why Zoe?
I have two girls, and I was going to call my younger one Zoe, and I did not.
So I'm going to call my open claw Zoe instead.
I see.
Yeah.
So this is your fallback plan.
Yeah.
Peter, tell me a little bit about open claw, how you discovered it, how you're using it today, and what you think the implications are.
Yeah.
I was lucky to interview Peter Steinberger before he became super famous, and the whole thing blew up.
And then right after I interviewed him, I set up the thing.
It took forever to set up.
It was super janky.
And yeah, it does a lot of things for me.
It pulls analytics for me across YouTube and my Mercury banking account.
It can update Google Documents for me.
It can build little websites for me.
But if I was honest with you, dude, I mostly just talk to it through voice and get voice replies.
And every other day, I ask that you give me a pep talk.
Look through all your memory and give me some deep insights that I don't know about.
Okay.
And it gave me like...
I remember I was on a walk, and it gave me like a three-minute pep talk that was like really amazing.
Really amazing.
It was something about, oh, you're like talking to me about your creator business and blah, blah, and like your job.
But just remember that your kids, seven and four, are going to grow up very soon, and they're not going to want to spend time with you.
Wow.
So you should re-optimize for them instead.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's really cool.
And I mean, very cool, but also something that all the language models could have done prior.
Yeah.
So what's the difference between this and a use case like that?
Yeah, that's a very good question.
So I don't know.
Because I've installed Telegram.
It just feels like more personal.
Mm-hmm.
Than using like Cloud or ChatGPT.
And it just feels like something I can text in bed.
Yeah.
So it's probably not very healthy, but like I text to it in bed.
I talk to it during my commute.
And it feels more like a personal, like an actual human.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So how much for you is OpenClaw about the kind of interface, like pushing it to messaging, and maybe helping to trick our brain into feeling like, hey, this is a person or a person-esque thing, versus all the other components of the stack, the self-modification, the skills directory, Yeah.
everything.
I think it's probably 80% just the personal part of it.
Because I mostly just talk to it and like, you know, through voice.
But I also think like it's something, first of all, it is pretty janky.
It tends to forget things a lot.
Yeah.
To keep it in mind.
But like any kind of zany idea that I have, I just have to talk to it.
And it can probably just do.
Yeah.
It's kind of like the other day I was doing voice replies with it.
I was like, hey, can we just have a live phone call instead?
Mm-hmm.
And then it's like, okay, you got to connect to it.
You got to do all this stuff.
And then, okay, fine.
I went off and did it.
Yeah.
And then we had a phone call.
It called my phone.
Oh, really?
You have that set up?
Yeah.
I've been dying to set that up.
Okay.
It's not very good though.
Like the latency is bad.
But the fact that I was able to get it going is like pretty impressive.
So it's kind of like any kind of crazy idea I have, it can kind of do.
And then in practice, how are you doing that?
Are you asking it to write a skill on the fly?
Are you discovering a skill?
How much of the code gen are you actually using?
I mean, I talked to it in a super casual way with like just like a friend.
So I'm like, hey, Zoey, can you give me a phone call?
Yeah.
I was like, okay, you got to do that.
I was like, okay, fine.
I'll open my computer.
I'll do all this stuff and then give me a call and it will troubleshoot a little bit and then it works.
So with cloud, I have like very fancy prompts, like very long prompts.
But with open cloud, I just kind of text it.
Yeah.
It is.
Really interesting.
So we sort of touched on a couple of things actually.
So one, there's mobile messaging.
There's the memory system.
There's the sort of code generation component.
How much do you think the memory system, like is it innovative because it's file based?
You said that it forgets things, but so do language models.
Do you think the memory system is well done?
Does it hold it back?
Or does it enable it?
I think the default memory system is actually not that great.
Okay.
Like the way I understand it works is just like a memory.md text file.
Yes.
And then every day.
Per day, right?
And every day it updates.
And it tends to forget things a lot.
Yeah.
So I actually installed this like three-layer memory system that to be honest, I don't fully understand, but it has like- That's fancy.
It has Tobii's QMD search tool.
Okay.
So I installed that and then I installed like a two gigabyte thing and then it got a little bit better.
Okay.
But I still have to remind it.
I have to put it into the agents.md.
Hey, like- Before you answer any question from me, go through all your memory and check everything.
Yeah.
And it also tends to forget that it can do stuff.
Like, can you update my Google Doc?
It's like, oh, I can't do that.
Yeah.
Yes, you can.
It's in your file.
Yes.
So you have to remind it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Really interesting.
Well, maybe let's get into a little bit of the controversy.
You'd said that apps will die, Claw's going to be everything and everywhere.
I mean, talk us through that point of view.
Yeah.
Well, first of all, I tweet all kinds of random crap that's not super well thought out.
We take it all as fact.
Yeah.
Yes.
But I do think like ever since I set up all these apps, like Mercury, MCP, and all this kind of crap on my open call, like, I don't actually open those apps much anymore.
But I do agree with you.
Like, I think the ones that are going to die first or like maybe get less usage first is like apps that you're just opening to try to complete a task.
Right.
Like, you actually are trying to do something, you know?
Like, apps that you're opening to get entertainment can probably survive a little bit longer.
But like, apps that I'm opening to complete a task, like, it's just way easier to text my agent to do it for me.
Yeah.
It's like you have a really good admin to do stuff for you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so how much are you finding?
Is this...
Has this reduced your smartphone usage outside of Modulo open call?
Yeah.
No, because I'm like a Twitter addict, so I still use my phone way, way too much.
But yeah, in terms of using those apps, it's definitely reduced it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because you're not going to ask Zoe, hey, read my apps for me and tell me what's interesting.
I mean, it sends me like a morning briefing with the top two tweets and stuff that like trends.
But yeah, I still open apps.
I look through it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting because I've always had this theory that people open apps on their phone because they want to feel a feeling.
Yeah.
And I think, of course, there's some like functional set of needs, which is why you open calendar or something.
But I also think that WhatsApp is you want to feel connected and Slack is you want to feel productive.
And of course, TikTok is you want to feel entertained.
So I do wonder with just one agent, how do you sort of do the context switching of like, when are you flirting?
When are you getting shit done?
I mean, in a sense, app gives you a nice, it sort of gives you a nice division of the intent.
Yeah.
That's what you don't get with Zoe.
That's a good point.
But I do have multiple channels set up with Zoe in Telegram.
Like one is just to write random voice replies and the other one is we're actually working on our project together.
Oh.
And I don't want to have a public channel where like I'm giving demos.
I don't want to reveal private information.
Yes.
So I like multiple channels.
And is that implemented as sub-agents or?
No, it's just some janky setup I found online.
Like you can set up a multiple Telegram channels and then I'm not sure if it actually remembers across context across the channels, but like you can have separate conversations at least.
Got it.
Yeah.
And how transparent are you with your agent?
Does it do this to your personal email?
I'm like super transparent.
Well, I did it by the Mac mania.
I set up his own email.
Okay.
And, but I gave it like read access to my email and like calendar.
And I also gave it like write access to some docs.
Yeah.
But it kind of screwed up my entire drive or something.
Yeah.
So.
How do you imagine OpenClaw, which it's sort of an architecture and a primitive.
Yeah.
How does it get productized, packaged for the world?
I mean, I think that's what Peter Steinberg is working on at OpenAI, right?
Yeah.
He's probably going to build something to ChatGPT, which everybody uses so that ChatGPT can actually get stuff done for you.
And like maybe it feels more.
It feels more human.
Yeah.
Dude, let me rant about ChatGPT a little bit.
Please.
Yeah.
For some reason, they trained the model so that at the end of every conversation is always like, if you want, I can also do X and Y.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And dude, I got so annoyed by it that I kind of churned from ChatGPT.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
So, so it probably increases their metrics, but it's just like super annoying.
It's like, why don't you just do it in the first place?
It's like, are you a cloud guy now?
Yeah.
I'm a cloud guy now.
But I do use Codex to code.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You like Codex?
You prefer to code or you use both?
Codex is when I want to try to do something real and CloudCode is when I'm just like vibing.
Well, it's interesting.
I think they live at different points and there's a sort of space of trade-offs.
Yeah.
Whereas I find CloudCode and Opus 4.6, it's a little more chatty.
It makes more assumptions, but it can be more pleasant for a synchronous experience.
Yeah.
Whereas Codex, it really thinks hard and it's more often accurate, but sometimes it's sort of like being in a conversation where the other person pauses for three minutes to think.
Yeah.
So you don't have to flow state, right?
It's hard to get a flow.
Like CloudCode, dude, I tweeted the other day that CloudCode, it's almost like a slot machine because it has different things each time.
Oh, a hundred percent, dude.
It's like a slot machine.
Look, I do think that if you think, remember we were talking about in the old social networking era, it was variable scheduled rewards, right?
That was the whole magic of it.
Like you open your Facebook feed and once in a while it's like boring, boring.
Oh my God, this is so exciting.
And the coding agents have the exact same property.
Also, the time is variable.
So sometimes you get something in a second.
Sometimes it takes five minutes.
So up to a certain point, I actually think that both of those things give it that casino-like feeling.
Yeah.
And the other thing that's very...
It's very different about the product strategy or maybe it's just the way it works.
It's like coding is kind of like self-explanatory.
Yeah.
And CloudCode, you have all this crazy shit.
You have like hooks and like skills and...
Plug-ins.
If you're not following...
Loops.
Yeah.
If you're not following X, you have no idea how to customize this thing.
Yeah.
But once you customize it, you kind of feel like it's part of you.
So it's kind of hard to turn.
It's interesting with...
So I've customized mine because also I read the long thing that Boris put up.
Yeah.
But I will say that I think that CloudCode, a lot of the reasons that I enjoy it are just harness features.
Like for example, if you...
If you cut an image, you have to paste it into a file before...
And then paste that file into Codex.
Okay.
You can't just take a subset of the screen, screenshot it, and then paste it directly into Codex the same way you can with CloudCode.
Oh, really?
Okay, okay.
So just like little things like that.
CloudCode added voice.
It's a little bit janky right now, but it's going in the right direction.
So they've just got a bunch of quality of life things.
Yeah.
CloudCode speaks to Cloud and Chrome.
Okay.
And Codex doesn't speak to Atlas.
Got it.
So I think these are all things that OpenAI will fix.
Yeah.
I think Codex is actually a much better...
Model, but they don't exist today.
Yeah, yeah.
They need to fix it.
I mean, they're going to go all in on Codex, I'm sure.
Yeah.
Talk to me about coding agents.
What's your general view?
Do you think it's the end of SaaS?
Do you think these are just a toy?
Well, first of all, I'm like not an engineer, so I'm like a novice.
But I do hear that...
Like I was talking to some folks the other day and AI Native Startup, and they're basically trying to...
They have a bunch of vibe coders, and all the vibe coders are just trying to build internal tools that replace their SaaS that they're paying for.
Really?
Yeah.
So it's an actual company that's doing this?
It's an actual company, yeah.
It's AI?
It's an AI Native company.
It's like one of the vibe coding companies, one of the more popular ones.
Interesting.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
Oh, I see.
So they're actually an AppGen company.
They're an AppGen company, and they're paying for a bunch of SaaS, and they want to get rid of the payment.
They want to just buy app coding internal tools.
By using...
Okay.
So in that case, they might be the most extreme form of adopter, because their own product is AppGen, so they should use AppGen for everything.
Yeah.
I guess, is your prediction, though, that the average company will churn off of Slack or Deal or...
I don't think...
I feel like Slack has a lot of legs, because Slack can also be...
The place where you talk to the agents themselves.
Mm-hmm.
But some of the other ones, they are pretty complicated.
Yeah.
So it's kind of hard to vibe code that kind of stuff.
But I feel like if you have an app like maybe Calendly or something more simple...
Yeah.
...then why should I pay for it?
I just...
Why should I pay for it?
Though the counterpoint is that it's not that expensive.
Yeah.
And do you really want to maintain your own Calendly thing?
Yeah.
Versus pay 20 bucks a month, it always gets updated, it's always up.
Yeah, yeah.
Because there's just like a fixed amount of capacity that anyone in the organization is going to have for all this stuff.
Yeah, that's true.
Unless you hire...
Like, dedicated vibe coders like the startup does, and it's just one of the vibe code stuff.
But then it's the cost-benefit versus just paying for Calendly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting to think about, for example, like a lot of people are tweeting about Figma recently.
Yeah.
The stock is down, and like, you know, are you going to survive?
Yeah.
And I feel like the jury's out there.
It's kind of hard to say.
Yeah.
I feel like all the designers are still on Figma, but as a designer, you kind of need to learn how to vibe code.
Otherwise, you're going to...
If you don't know how to do Figma...
Yeah.
...you're probably going to be, like, out of date in a couple of years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The only counterpoint to that is that I think that...
I've thought a lot about the sort of thinking tools versus making tools, right?
The IDE was historically a making tool.
Mm-hmm.
It's a place for execution.
I think it's migrating away from that.
And now, with execution going to zero, I think these sort of, like, multi-agent next-gen IDEs...
Yeah.
...a lot of them are about trying things and using the trial and error as a way to inform your thinking.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, a lot of times, I'll just build a feature in a really naive way, and I'll hammer the coding agent until it works.
Mm-hmm.
Then I'll say, hey, write all the things that you would have done differently, and I'll go back and forth.
I'll go back to the initial point and redo it.
Mm-hmm.
So, I wonder if...
And I think Figma actually does both.
I think it's a place for design execution, but it's also an important place for design thinking.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think that's their opportunity to be highly relevant in the new stack.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I totally agree.
But I think A16Z has, like, you guys investing Pencil or something?
Pencil.dev?
Speedrun did, yeah.
Yeah, Speedrun.
Mm-hmm.
And, yeah, Figma needs to, like, level up its AI tooling, because, like, watching these agents collaborate with you and do stuff is, like, very interesting.
I know.
It's top of mind for them.
Yeah.
What do you think are the most...
Most under-discussed capabilities of coding agents?
What's under-hyped and maybe what's over-hyped as well?
This is probably not under-hyped, but, like, you know, I feel like entrances to that software will eat the world.
I feel like coding will eat all knowledge work, right?
Yeah.
And we're kind of going that direction already.
Like, I think Lovable recently launched, like, today.
Yeah.
That they can support everything and can make decks.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So, I feel like everyone's chasing this.
And Anthropic is probably in the lead.
Yeah.
I don't want to use PowerPoint anymore.
I don't want to write a Google...
Yeah.
I hate writing Google Docs, dude.
Plus my entire life.
Yeah.
So...
So...
So, like, the other day, I was writing my blog post, and instead of just, like, typing it out, I was like, hey, let's...
Let me just use Cloud Code, and let me give you a bunch of feedback, and you write it for me.
Yeah.
And then you just keep...
How did it turn out?
It did the first 80%.
The last 20% I said, I had to manually go in there and, like, tweak, tweak, tweak stuff.
Yeah.
But, like, that's the way I work now.
I never start from zero.
Like, I always get the first 80% from AI.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
If you look at...
There are also, like, historical analogs of this.
I think Satya said this, which is that Excel is the most powerful, or most popular programming language in the world.
Yeah.
And that it's sort of a programming language that millions and millions, I mean, 100 million plus people must know, maybe even more.
And yet, we don't think of it that way.
It's a way to sort of describe and solve problems.
Yeah.
And I think coding agents are going to be that, of course, times 1,000.
Yeah.
Where even things that feel subjective, like writing Google Docs, can be represented in the coding domain in such a way that it's more satisfying, more productive, more high leverage to use agents to do it.
Yeah.
Because Excel was, like, popular because it's super approachable.
Right?
Yeah.
And, like, coding agents...
The code is basically gone.
Like, it's, like, app shut away.
You're just talking to some agent and getting to do stuff.
So...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
It's going to be huge.
Huge.
Yeah.
What do you think the future company looks like?
Is it just a bunch of agents with a CEO?
Is the CEO an agent?
I mean, what is the role for people in a company in the future?
Okay.
Well, I have some hot takes.
So, we both worked at some companies together.
And let me give you a hot take, man.
Maybe we cut this out.
But, like, I feel like as a company gets bigger, it tends to become, like, a shittier, shittier place to work, dude.
Cinematic, yeah.
Right?
And I remember at...
Maybe I shouldn't mention this company, but I remember, you know, our company together.
Yeah.
We used to have all these, like, OKR meetings.
Yeah.
And I remember sitting in a room for three hours talking about OKRs.
I'm just like, dude, this is, like, a waste of my life.
Yeah.
So, where I'm going with this is I hope more companies will stay small.
And I think the founders of this generation realize that.
Yeah.
Like, they want to stay as small as possible.
Yeah.
And instead of having a 10-person product team, you have a two- or three-person product team.
Yeah.
And you have to have a bunch of agents to help you.
Yeah.
I think it's way easier to cross-launch a lot of the agents than with humans.
Yeah.
Well, actually, in a sense, the agents actually, because it takes the emotion out of it, too.
Yeah.
Like, you can imagine if I sent my agent, you sent your agent to go negotiate something.
Yeah.
And they came out with some conclusion.
It's not emotional.
It's not.
For either of us.
It's very objective.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, it's funny.
One of the things that we've been talking a bunch about is, what is the pro case for AI at work in terms of employee experience?
And I think it's what you're describing, right?
Yeah.
Like, how do you increase the NPS of work?
Yeah.
So, if we, like, go all the way back.
Yeah.
Or even broadly, the NPS of the human experience, right?
Think of the NPS of the day-to-day human in 10,000 BC.
Yeah.
Just don't get eaten by the lion.
Yeah.
And that's a good day, right?
Or maybe 100 years ago, it's, okay, don't get killed at the factory, crushed by the steam press or whatever else.
And now, a lot of it is, like, just don't get sucked into some high emotion sort of negotiation with another VP's subordinate.
Yeah, like a 50 messages of Slack thread going back and forth.
Yeah, exactly.
And then eventually, everyone's like, I don't want to tell the CEO.
And eventually, it goes there.
And it's just terrible.
So, maybe the future of this is that a lot of that emotional subjective work gets handled.
Yeah.
And we're sort of guiding the process, but not in the middle of it in a way that just doesn't suit us as humans.
Yeah.
I believe that Double Life was a PM creator.
And, like, I feel like all the PMs actually just want to create products.
Yeah.
They just want to create products.
Well, that's why we all got into it.
It's so interesting.
I mean, Nikal talks about it all the time, but, like, every PM's sort of view of the ideal PM is the innovator.
Like, I came up with the new thing.
Yes.
And I had the big insight in it.
Unlock the product.
Yeah.
I think the black pill is I don't think most PMs know how to do that.
In fact, many companies have zero people that know how to do that at all in any function.
Yeah.
So, nonetheless, I think PMs aspire to be able to do that.
And they should either do it and either be successful or maybe not successful and move to a different function.
I also feel like my hot take is, like, basically all the PMs I know are trying to vibe code at nights and weekends.
Yeah.
And I feel like my hot take is that I feel like if you're actually unemployed, like, you probably have more time to be a builder and, like, to be innovative.
Yeah.
You can actually, like, play all this stuff and learn all this stuff.
A lot of PMs are trying to...
Or maybe being an engineer in the team.
Yeah.
I used to be an engineer and I got sort of, I don't know if I got forced to be a PM.
Maybe I also perceived PM as, like, being a little more high status.
Yeah, yeah.
When I joined Google.
But then eventually you come around to the other side.
You're like, this is terrible.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, you never really get the satisfaction of actually shipping other than once a quarter when you ship.
I mean, the PM skills of talking to users and, like, trying to figure out what to build, like, what's the problem to solve.
Like, those are very important still.
Yeah.
But, yeah, you've got to wear multiple hats, dude.
You've got to go put a thing yourself, go prototype it, and get some feedback, and then maybe brand, engineer a lot.
How much do you think that everyone has to go as fast as...
I mean, like, Gary was talking about stimmies and skipping sleep and Gary Tam, G-Stack.
I mean, is...
Hey, I mean, is that, like, the default way that we all need to work?
Or do you think there's a trade-off for thoughtfulness?
I think it's very easy now with all these AI tools just going, like, 10 different directions at once.
Yeah.
So sometimes you do have to slow down and try to figure out where you want to go.
Yeah.
But I also believe that the traditional process where, like, you do annual planning and do all this bullshit, I just feel like that is...
Fully realizing a local, a sort of local maxima, you should go very fast, right?
So let's say you kind of hill climb, you get to the bottom of the new local maxima.
I think with agents, you should be able to get to the top of that hill extremely fast, right?
You have a new insight, build everything around the insight so it's fully expressed.
But then I think to get to the next, the next sort of hill, you should have, like, fast and slow.
That's probably the future way.
Yeah, I think so.
And, like, you've got to go that random log.
You've got to try to find a market fit, which takes a while, right?
Yes.
So this is not...
Yeah.
So we were talking before we started recording about some of the business-in-a-box platforms.
Have you looked at them?
Do you have a view?
I've looked at posts, yeah, that we talked about.
Uh-huh.
I don't know if the guy, like, intentionally made it the opposite of AI slot or is it kind of a...
I think so.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's funny.
Well, I mean, I have a pretty big public presence, right?
So I connect all my shit to it.
And then, I mean, it definitely gives a good peek into what's possible, but, like, right now, it's probably still pretty, like, early stage.
Like, it's time to run, like, say, Facebook ads.
Yeah.
Like, why am I running Facebook ads?
Yeah.
So...
I don't know.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I'm very excited about it because it does feel like it's a path for more people to build companies.
Yeah.
Even if they're single, one-person companies.
Yeah.
If you think about how competitive it is to build a billion-dollar business, like, the markets that support it, the number of people trying versus 100 million versus 10 million versus $100,000 TAM.
Yeah.
Like, maybe there are these pockets all over the country, all over the world, where there are opportunities for $100,000 TAM products.
Yeah.
And that would change somebody's life.
Now, that's not an enterprise venture-backed company, but that's okay.
Yeah.
So, I hope that whole thesis works because I do think it's a way to get more people to participate.
Yeah, that's my plan for my kids, dude.
Like, I want them to just build, like, bootstrap businesses in high school.
Yeah.
And they can skip the whole college and corporate life.
Yeah.
Well, dude, I think this is...
For 10 years, there was this moral panic about the kids want to be YouTubers.
Yeah.
You're a YouTuber.
Yeah, yeah.
And in the vein of MrBeast, I think the pro case for that, actually, is that the kids wanted to be entrepreneurs or have agency.
And the only channel for people, if they weren't programmers, was creating YouTube videos, at least online.
Yeah.
So, if you're, like, an online native generation, you want to create something, you're not a programmer, you make a YouTube show.
Now, you can make a lot more than that.
Yeah, you can build whatever you want.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So, exactly.
It'd be very exciting.
Yeah.
Any other hot takes for us?
I'm curious about your thoughts about this, actually.
So, I feel like a lot of people are saying, like, agents will interact with your product first.
Right?
And then you see all these great companies, like, building, like, APIs and MCPs.
Mm-hmm.
But, like, how do you think about you being...
You've been a consumer for a while.
So, like, the consumer is, like, you've got to get the user to come back and use your product, right?
Yeah.
But now, the user is, like, hey, go send the agent to use it.
So, how do you think about retention and all this basic stuff?
Like, how do you...
Or even, like, brand equity?
Because the agent's just, like, pulling some API.
Yeah, I don't...
Okay, so...
We had to have indirect monetization.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Okay, like, we just can't...
We're never charging consumers directly for these products, which is why you got...
Got ads and stuff.
Ads and just large-scale networks, and we all obsessed with retention and engagement and whales and...
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
All of these things really mattered because we didn't simply charge people for products.
Mm-hmm.
So, I think one big thing that's actually really helped in the AI era with that is that consumers are now excited to try new things.
They're willing to pay.
They're willing to pay a really high price point.
There's also consumption revenue in consumer for the first time.
Like tokens and stuff?
Yeah, like tokens.
So, you have your subscription plus your token.
So, and then the actual, like, the sort of blessing in disguise is that there are real costs as well.
You have these inference costs.
Yep.
So, you're like, wow, we have to charge our customer on day one.
Mm-hmm.
So, I think one thing is that, like, the business model...
Well, simplification, I think, will really help with a lot of what you're describing.
Mm-hmm.
Two, I think that a lot of the products will have a sort of...
It'll have an API interface for your agents to interact with or for transactional sort of rote things.
Yeah, yeah.
And then it'll have a consumption-based interface as well.
Mm-hmm.
So, you can also imagine, like, a mobile app where there's, like, the feed, but then you can kind of turn it over to where the wires are, and you can just ask for things to get done, or you can just see the log of the things that got done.
Yeah, and then people will do both, right?
I mean, you can imagine Credit Karma, where we work.
Yeah.
Like, once in a while, you want to just...
Take a look at your score history and a few other, maybe, credit card offers.
I don't know.
I mean...
Yeah, yeah.
If I can get my score with all the kind of credit card offers, I'll definitely do that.
Yeah, 100%.
Exactly.
Yeah.
On the other hand, like, sometimes you want to just be like, yo, can you just fix all my stuff?
Or what stuff did you fix this week?
How much money did I save?
Yeah, yeah.
Got it.
Yeah.
It's definitely interesting.
Yeah.
But look, I also just think the whole agent stack is emerging.
Yeah.
Identity, payments, marketing.
We don't even see a live versus MCP.
Like, all of these are really new things, and I think a lot of the old playbook goes away.
Yeah, it's a whole new world.
And, like, in 2025, I thought agents was overhyped, but now I think it's really kind of coming.
Me too.
I know.
It's just the word is frustrating, because it gets so overloaded.
Yeah, there's, like, workflows, like, all this kind of shit.
Totally.
I've been trying to just say, can we just say, like, model in a loop?
Yeah, exactly.
Model that use tools in a loop.
That's the best definition.
Yeah, yeah.
But nobody likes to hear that.
It's agents is much flashier.
Yeah, it's flashier.
Yeah.
My hope is that all this stuff's...
Like, a lot of people think we're going to lose our jobs, which is probably what would happen at some point.
But I hope all this stuff just makes the human work more fun, like, our jobs more fun.
Dude, I don't think we're all going to lose our jobs.
Like, I really think...
And we see this in a lot of companies.
So, we look at a ton of companies, and we've seen two different buckets.
So, one bucket is, hey, we dramatically increase productivity for a person or a team.
We see this in, like, recruiting.
But we couldn't do 100% of the job.
So, we could do the phone screen, but we couldn't, obviously, show the candidate around the office.
Or we could do the phone screen, and we could answer all the questions about the company, and we could even do the, like, comp negotiations.
But we couldn't do the onboarding.
The other style of company, which we see, which is maybe a Decagon, right, or a Happy Robot, is, hey, we did 100% of a job, like, customer support.
The customer called in, they had a question, we hopefully resolved their query, and then that's it.
And that is 100% automated.
I'd say that second group, where you have 100% automation of a job function, is really rare.
Almost every AI product, AI native X or Y, we see is able to provide dramatic lift, but it's not able to do 100%.
So, the last 10% is done as humans.
Yeah, it's still, today, anyway, it's still humans that do that stuff.
And it's interesting, too, because the buyer looks at that as software, as expensive software, whereas in the case of something like a Happy Robot, Donkey Kong Sierra, they look at it as, like, cheap labor.
So, I do think there's a different buyer mindset, but because there's been this difficulty of getting to 100% automation, I think a lot of the efficiency gain shows up in just a different way.
Probably not less jobs.
Maybe we get, like, the European-style four-day work week.
Maybe companies get, like, twice as productive.
I have no idea.
Yeah.
But you don't think that...
I feel like there is going to be...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's going to be a transition from, like, these, like, 10,000-plus people companies laying a lot of people off to, hopefully, like, more smaller companies, like, solopreneurs and stuff like that.
I think, yes, I think that the sort of shape of the economy is going to change, like, the amount of concentration, but I just don't think there's going to be less jobs.
I think human ambition has no ceiling.
That's true.
Human desire has no ceiling.
And just read any mildly interesting science fiction book, there's no way this is the peak expression of all the stuff that we want and we need and we're going to convince ourselves and all the new things that you read about every day is these luxuries.
These peptides and everybody is going to have all of that stuff and want even more.
You know, dude, I saw a really good tweet about this.
Like, someone tweeted that the job market is so bad that I can only pursue my dreams now or something like that.
Yeah.
So, maybe you lost your job, but, like, now you can actually do your own thing.
Yeah, 100%.
And have a shot at actually achieving it.
Yeah, cool.
Well, awesome, man.
Maybe that's a good positive note to end on.
Yeah.
That was a good note.
Yeah.
Cool.
Good seeing you, dude.
Thanks, Peter.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me.
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