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Marc Andreessen: Software isn't precious anymore. In this new world, high quality software is infinitely available. "We've always lived in a world in which software is this precious thing that you have to think about very carefully." "It was really hard to generate good software, and there was only...

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834,406 views • 5 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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Marc Andreessen says in the future, we may not have programming languages or even user interfaces: "I kind of think that in 10 years, I'm not sure there will even be a salient concept of a programming language in the way that we understand it today." "If you project forward, you have to think forward to a world in which it's just—I'm going to tell the thing what I need, and it's going to do it in whatever way is most optimal." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Latent.Space
2:40

Marc Andreessen says in the future, we may not have programming languages or even user interfaces: "I kind of think that in 10 years, I'm not sure there will even be a salient concept of a programming language in the way that we understand it today." "If you project forward, you have to think forward to a world in which it's just—I'm going to tell the thing what I need, and it's going to do it in whatever way is most optimal." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Latent.Space

a16z

65,741 views • 5 months ago

Benedict Evans says AI means more software, not less: "There's going to be a bunch of stuff you could do with software that you just couldn't do before at all. And so there will be more competition." "If you think about the enterprise software fleet today, you've got three buckets... big iron horizontal systems, so SAP and Workday and your CRM... vertical software... and then in the middle, this fuzzy improvised space of Excel and email and the shared file system." "Now you add ChatGPT to that. Do you do that in an LLM? Is there an LLM tool that means you can do that in Salesforce where you couldn't do it before, or you can do it in your vertical app that you couldn't do before?" "All of which is a long way of saying, what does this do to software? And it must be more software. Way more software." Benedict Evans with Erik Torenberg
1:36

Benedict Evans says AI means more software, not less: "There's going to be a bunch of stuff you could do with software that you just couldn't do before at all. And so there will be more competition." "If you think about the enterprise software fleet today, you've got three buckets... big iron horizontal systems, so SAP and Workday and your CRM... vertical software... and then in the middle, this fuzzy improvised space of Excel and email and the shared file system." "Now you add ChatGPT to that. Do you do that in an LLM? Is there an LLM tool that means you can do that in Salesforce where you couldn't do it before, or you can do it in your vertical app that you couldn't do before?" "All of which is a long way of saying, what does this do to software? And it must be more software. Way more software." Benedict Evans with Erik Torenberg

a16z

36,975 views • 3 months ago

Anish Acharya: We're going to see a "YouTube moment for software": "If you think about YouTube 20 years ago—we had lots of video and lots of television, and it was high production quality, and it wasn't clear that we needed more and 20 years later, YouTube's a $550 billion enterprise that would be one of the biggest companies in the world if it was independent." "I think the same thing is going to happen for software. People want to make software, and for the first time they can—and they can distribute it and they can consume it." "Sometimes it's going to be important software. Sometimes it's going to be totally trivial. It's going to be software for a bachelor party weekend, software for a joke, software for a prompt. We have this sort of seriousness about software that we had about video and television 20 years ago." "Now it's like—I just took a video on my phone. It's going to be like—I just made an app on my phone. Same energy." Anish Acharya on BILLIONS with Guillaume Moubeche
1:30

Anish Acharya: We're going to see a "YouTube moment for software": "If you think about YouTube 20 years ago—we had lots of video and lots of television, and it was high production quality, and it wasn't clear that we needed more and 20 years later, YouTube's a $550 billion enterprise that would be one of the biggest companies in the world if it was independent." "I think the same thing is going to happen for software. People want to make software, and for the first time they can—and they can distribute it and they can consume it." "Sometimes it's going to be important software. Sometimes it's going to be totally trivial. It's going to be software for a bachelor party weekend, software for a joke, software for a prompt. We have this sort of seriousness about software that we had about video and television 20 years ago." "Now it's like—I just took a video on my phone. It's going to be like—I just made an app on my phone. Same energy." Anish Acharya on BILLIONS with Guillaume Moubeche

a16z

102,995 views • 6 months ago

Cognition founder Scott Wu says most software never gets built because the economics don't work: "The math only really works out to create software if it's going to be used at least a million times or something. Maybe it's 10,000 times or whatever." "You need that software to be used enough times or to create enough value for that to be worth it." "There are so many things out there which only need to be used a few times or even only need to be used once." "I'm going to go look through these 15 LinkedIn profiles. Or fill out these forms. Or do this data analysis and put this Excel sheet together—all of these things are things that could be done with software." "It obviously doesn't make sense to hire a whole team of people to go make you that piece of software which you're going to use one time and never again—versus just having the human go and do that themselves."
1:21

Cognition founder Scott Wu says most software never gets built because the economics don't work: "The math only really works out to create software if it's going to be used at least a million times or something. Maybe it's 10,000 times or whatever." "You need that software to be used enough times or to create enough value for that to be worth it." "There are so many things out there which only need to be used a few times or even only need to be used once." "I'm going to go look through these 15 LinkedIn profiles. Or fill out these forms. Or do this data analysis and put this Excel sheet together—all of these things are things that could be done with software." "It obviously doesn't make sense to hire a whole team of people to go make you that piece of software which you're going to use one time and never again—versus just having the human go and do that themselves."

David Senra

37,919 views • 2 months ago

Marc Andreessen (Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸): Airbnb could have been boutique booking software. Uber could have been taxi dispatch software. Tesla could have been self-driving software. They decided to take over the entire industry instead: "Silicon Valley between 1950 and 2010 was primarily just in the tools business. You'd build a tool like an operating system or a disk drive, sell it to people, and they'd figure out what to do with it. Then something changed. Alternate universe Airbnb is just boutique booking software. A tiny little business building spreadsheet software. But Brian Chesky decided: we're going to go into the hospitality business and compete with hotels directly. Uber and Lyft in the old world were just taxi dispatch software. In the new world, they're full transportation providers. Tesla in the old world would have just been software for self-driving cars. In the new world, it builds the entire car. Facebook, same thing. Prior to Facebook, if you built online ad software, you were selling it to media companies. Mark said: no. We're just going to beat the media company. We're going to build the entire thing. That was the pivot point when the Valley's ambitions went from just building tools to going directly into incumbent industries. And then AI makes that crystal clear. The winning AI companies are raising billions, tens of billions, in some cases hundreds of billions of dollars. The old world of $10,000,000 or $50,000,000 — where VCs tap out — is just not relevant anymore."
1:41

Marc Andreessen (Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸): Airbnb could have been boutique booking software. Uber could have been taxi dispatch software. Tesla could have been self-driving software. They decided to take over the entire industry instead: "Silicon Valley between 1950 and 2010 was primarily just in the tools business. You'd build a tool like an operating system or a disk drive, sell it to people, and they'd figure out what to do with it. Then something changed. Alternate universe Airbnb is just boutique booking software. A tiny little business building spreadsheet software. But Brian Chesky decided: we're going to go into the hospitality business and compete with hotels directly. Uber and Lyft in the old world were just taxi dispatch software. In the new world, they're full transportation providers. Tesla in the old world would have just been software for self-driving cars. In the new world, it builds the entire car. Facebook, same thing. Prior to Facebook, if you built online ad software, you were selling it to media companies. Mark said: no. We're just going to beat the media company. We're going to build the entire thing. That was the pivot point when the Valley's ambitions went from just building tools to going directly into incumbent industries. And then AI makes that crystal clear. The winning AI companies are raising billions, tens of billions, in some cases hundreds of billions of dollars. The old world of $10,000,000 or $50,000,000 — where VCs tap out — is just not relevant anymore."

David Senra

259,016 views • 6 months ago

Marc Andreessen (Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸): Airbnb could have been boutique booking software. Uber could have been taxi dispatch software. Tesla could have been self-driving software. They decided to take over the entire industry instead: "Silicon Valley between 1950 and 2010 was primarily just in the tools business. You'd build a tool like an operating system or a disk drive, sell it to people, and they'd figure out what to do with it. Then something changed. Alternate universe Airbnb is just boutique booking software. A tiny little business building spreadsheet software. But Brian Chesky decided: we're going to go into the hospitality business and compete with hotels directly. Uber and Lyft in the old world were just taxi dispatch software. In the new world, they're full transportation providers. Tesla in the old world would have just been software for self-driving cars. In the new world, it builds the entire car. Facebook, same thing. Prior to Facebook, if you built online ad software, you were selling it to media companies. Mark said: no. We're just going to beat the media company. We're going to build the entire thing. That was the pivot point when the Valley's ambitions went from just building tools to going directly into incumbent industries. And then AI makes that crystal clear. The winning AI companies are raising billions, tens of billions, in some cases hundreds of billions of dollars. The old world of $10,000,000 or $50,000,000 — where VCs tap out — is just not relevant anymore."
1:41

Marc Andreessen (Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸): Airbnb could have been boutique booking software. Uber could have been taxi dispatch software. Tesla could have been self-driving software. They decided to take over the entire industry instead: "Silicon Valley between 1950 and 2010 was primarily just in the tools business. You'd build a tool like an operating system or a disk drive, sell it to people, and they'd figure out what to do with it. Then something changed. Alternate universe Airbnb is just boutique booking software. A tiny little business building spreadsheet software. But Brian Chesky decided: we're going to go into the hospitality business and compete with hotels directly. Uber and Lyft in the old world were just taxi dispatch software. In the new world, they're full transportation providers. Tesla in the old world would have just been software for self-driving cars. In the new world, it builds the entire car. Facebook, same thing. Prior to Facebook, if you built online ad software, you were selling it to media companies. Mark said: no. We're just going to beat the media company. We're going to build the entire thing. That was the pivot point when the Valley's ambitions went from just building tools to going directly into incumbent industries. And then AI makes that crystal clear. The winning AI companies are raising billions, tens of billions, in some cases hundreds of billions of dollars. The old world of $10,000,000 or $50,000,000 — where VCs tap out — is just not relevant anymore."

David Senra

133,308 views • 2 months ago

Replit CEO Amjad Masad: "Code is almost fully automated." "We have an automated software engineer that is as good as a mid-level software engineer. It would get a job at Facebook or Google." "Even professional software engineers are not coding anymore." "If you're a product builder, all you have to care about is who the customer is." "What do you understand about the world that other people don't? And can you put that into an app?" Amjad Masad with
1:00

Replit CEO Amjad Masad: "Code is almost fully automated." "We have an automated software engineer that is as good as a mid-level software engineer. It would get a job at Facebook or Google." "Even professional software engineers are not coding anymore." "If you're a product builder, all you have to care about is who the customer is." "What do you understand about the world that other people don't? And can you put that into an app?" Amjad Masad with

a16z

90,480 views • 6 months ago

Marc Andreessen says AI is hyper democratizing. “Is the future of the world going to be one or a small number of companies, or for that matter, governments or super AIs that kind of own and control everything?” “Or is this a technology that's going to diffuse out and be in everybody's hands?” “This is the time in which AI is actually hyper democratizing. It has spread to more individuals, both in the country and around the world in the shortest period of time of any new technology I think in history.” “The best AIs in the world are in the consumer products.” “This technology is going to be in everybody's hands. And everybody is going to be able to use it to optimize the things that they do, have it be a thought partner, assistant for building companies.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸
1:34

Marc Andreessen says AI is hyper democratizing. “Is the future of the world going to be one or a small number of companies, or for that matter, governments or super AIs that kind of own and control everything?” “Or is this a technology that's going to diffuse out and be in everybody's hands?” “This is the time in which AI is actually hyper democratizing. It has spread to more individuals, both in the country and around the world in the shortest period of time of any new technology I think in history.” “The best AIs in the world are in the consumer products.” “This technology is going to be in everybody's hands. And everybody is going to be able to use it to optimize the things that they do, have it be a thought partner, assistant for building companies.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸

a16z

79,935 views • 10 months ago

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on the proposal that would end open-source software: "It's a kill shot to the industry. How can any software developer anticipate the use of the software down the road?" "If I run a hotel and a criminal stays at the hotel and they plan their operation, does that make me part of their conspiracy? If I'm an engineer on a car and the car is used in a bank robbery, does that make me an accessory to bank robbery?" Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 Chris Dixon Robert Hackett
0:56

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on the proposal that would end open-source software: "It's a kill shot to the industry. How can any software developer anticipate the use of the software down the road?" "If I run a hotel and a criminal stays at the hotel and they plan their operation, does that make me part of their conspiracy? If I'm an engineer on a car and the car is used in a bank robbery, does that make me an accessory to bank robbery?" Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 Chris Dixon Robert Hackett

a16z

44,678 views • 1 month ago

#WATCH | Mumbai, Maharashtra: On the Jevons paradox and software demand expansion, Neelkanth Mishra, Executive Director Designate of the World Bank, says, “…If you think about what the major cost of a software firm is, it is people. So, if the writing of software is getting automated, those firms will be the first to make adjustments. But on the whole, it seems that the Jevons paradox—which dictates that as the cost of writing software falls, the amount of software written goes up—is actually playing out. If an XYZ company, which is a product company, was spending, say, $100 million on writing software and can now do it for $70 million, they might need to lay off some people; that is their business priority. But if the amount of software written goes up three to four times, the number of software engineers in the ecosystem will not change… This panic and paranoia about massive job losses is something that I think is, at this stage, unfounded.”
2:48

#WATCH | Mumbai, Maharashtra: On the Jevons paradox and software demand expansion, Neelkanth Mishra, Executive Director Designate of the World Bank, says, “…If you think about what the major cost of a software firm is, it is people. So, if the writing of software is getting automated, those firms will be the first to make adjustments. But on the whole, it seems that the Jevons paradox—which dictates that as the cost of writing software falls, the amount of software written goes up—is actually playing out. If an XYZ company, which is a product company, was spending, say, $100 million on writing software and can now do it for $70 million, they might need to lay off some people; that is their business priority. But if the amount of software written goes up three to four times, the number of software engineers in the ecosystem will not change… This panic and paranoia about massive job losses is something that I think is, at this stage, unfounded.”

ANI

114,594 views • 2 months ago

Marc Andreessen on why startups need to scale to have impact: “Startups are where a lot of the innovation happens.” “The thing that startups can’t do until they become big companies is have a big impact on the world.” “You have to get big to have a big impact.” “Otherwise the opportunity to make an impact with what you’ve invented... is going to be cut off and somebody else is going to step in and do it.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 at Fortune Brainstorm 2009:
0:59

Marc Andreessen on why startups need to scale to have impact: “Startups are where a lot of the innovation happens.” “The thing that startups can’t do until they become big companies is have a big impact on the world.” “You have to get big to have a big impact.” “Otherwise the opportunity to make an impact with what you’ve invented... is going to be cut off and somebody else is going to step in and do it.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 at Fortune Brainstorm 2009:

a16z

34,315 views • 8 months ago

Marc Andreessen posted that "High IQ experts work for mid IQ generalists." We asked him to elaborate. "So I think two things are true: One is we all underrate the importance of intelligence." "Even just the very idea that some people are smarter than other people just really freaks people out, and people don't like to talk about it. And we really struggle with that as a society." "On the other hand, the people who are in the fields that involve intelligence probably overrate intelligence. And you might even coin a term like maybe 'intelligence supremacist' or something like that." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 Erik Torenberg
2:02

Marc Andreessen posted that "High IQ experts work for mid IQ generalists." We asked him to elaborate. "So I think two things are true: One is we all underrate the importance of intelligence." "Even just the very idea that some people are smarter than other people just really freaks people out, and people don't like to talk about it. And we really struggle with that as a society." "On the other hand, the people who are in the fields that involve intelligence probably overrate intelligence. And you might even coin a term like maybe 'intelligence supremacist' or something like that." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 Erik Torenberg

a16z

456,354 views • 10 months ago

AI power users are here and the case for agent-friendly software is materializing. Aaron Levie on agents outnumbering people 1000x: "If you start to imagine that we all have to build software for agents… we spend as much time now thinking about the agent interface to our tool as we do the human interface." "If you have a hundred or a thousand times more agents than people, then your software has to be built for agents… it's going to be through an API or a CLI or MCP." "What if you give a coding agent access to your SaaS tools and a coding agent access to your knowledge work, workflows and context?" "It can actually code its way or use APIs through whatever task it's trying to achieve." "That appears to be like a paradigm that is starting to compound… and I actually think it kind of makes sense as the ultimate manifestation of this stuff." Aaron Levie
1:23

AI power users are here and the case for agent-friendly software is materializing. Aaron Levie on agents outnumbering people 1000x: "If you start to imagine that we all have to build software for agents… we spend as much time now thinking about the agent interface to our tool as we do the human interface." "If you have a hundred or a thousand times more agents than people, then your software has to be built for agents… it's going to be through an API or a CLI or MCP." "What if you give a coding agent access to your SaaS tools and a coding agent access to your knowledge work, workflows and context?" "It can actually code its way or use APIs through whatever task it's trying to achieve." "That appears to be like a paradigm that is starting to compound… and I actually think it kind of makes sense as the ultimate manifestation of this stuff." Aaron Levie

a16z

42,152 views • 22 days ago

"In the future, you won't need any software at all. The neural network will completely replace it." - stephen balaban, co-founder of Lambda "Here's the idea: instead of generating a program, just go to ChatGPT and say, 'Hi, please behave like a calculator or a spreadsheet.'" "'Generate an ASCII user interface for me. And I want you to essentially just respond, implement the logic of that program in your mind.'" "This is what I call neural software. Normal software is really brittle. 'Neural software' can't have bugs, only misunderstandings." "Large language models will be the software you interact with." From Stephen's appearance on the show in May.
1:42

"In the future, you won't need any software at all. The neural network will completely replace it." - stephen balaban, co-founder of Lambda "Here's the idea: instead of generating a program, just go to ChatGPT and say, 'Hi, please behave like a calculator or a spreadsheet.'" "'Generate an ASCII user interface for me. And I want you to essentially just respond, implement the logic of that program in your mind.'" "This is what I call neural software. Normal software is really brittle. 'Neural software' can't have bugs, only misunderstandings." "Large language models will be the software you interact with." From Stephen's appearance on the show in May.

TBPN

28,665 views • 10 months ago

Marc Andreessen: "Overall, the world, especially the western world, it's just stagnant." "Every once in a while you have somebody that comes along... I actually have an idea how to make things like fundamentally better." "Nobody licensed us to do any of this." "Anybody can start, build a product, start a company." "It's shocking to me how few people actually give it a shot." "The fate of the world over the next 1500 years is riding on the people who actually want to give it a shot." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with David Senra
1:12

Marc Andreessen: "Overall, the world, especially the western world, it's just stagnant." "Every once in a while you have somebody that comes along... I actually have an idea how to make things like fundamentally better." "Nobody licensed us to do any of this." "Anybody can start, build a product, start a company." "It's shocking to me how few people actually give it a shot." "The fate of the world over the next 1500 years is riding on the people who actually want to give it a shot." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with David Senra

a16z

77,308 views • 6 months ago

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev believes mathematical superintelligence could eliminate software bugs altogether. "Math skills and coding actually go hand in hand... In the same way that MSI can be used to make sure that your math is correct, when you have a computer program or a piece of software, it could be used to make sure that's correct and that there are no mistakes." "Rather than it being a cat-and-mouse game of escalating model capabilities, finding breaches and preventing breaches from happening, verification and proof that software is immune to these types of bugs, I think is the future."
2:40

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev believes mathematical superintelligence could eliminate software bugs altogether. "Math skills and coding actually go hand in hand... In the same way that MSI can be used to make sure that your math is correct, when you have a computer program or a piece of software, it could be used to make sure that's correct and that there are no mistakes." "Rather than it being a cat-and-mouse game of escalating model capabilities, finding breaches and preventing breaches from happening, verification and proof that software is immune to these types of bugs, I think is the future."

TBPN

64,506 views • 1 month ago

Marc Andreessen on going direct, in 2013: “We’ve lived in this world... where content only comes from content companies.” “I think content is going to increasingly come from everybody.” “The stuff that we do is complicated and new.” “And so we’re trying to take more responsibility to be able to articulate complex subjects to large audiences.” “I think increasingly, it’s direct communication.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 at CDX Forum 2013:
0:35

Marc Andreessen on going direct, in 2013: “We’ve lived in this world... where content only comes from content companies.” “I think content is going to increasingly come from everybody.” “The stuff that we do is complicated and new.” “And so we’re trying to take more responsibility to be able to articulate complex subjects to large audiences.” “I think increasingly, it’s direct communication.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 at CDX Forum 2013:

a16z

66,092 views • 9 months ago