2023 Big Ideas in Technology - a16z Podcast  ## Metadata - Author: **a16z Podcast** - Full Title: 2023 Big Ideas in Technology - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/fd414334-8509-47d2-9f01-6c00485b4da2 ## Highlights - Ideas for the Year Ahead Key takeaways: • Social platforms will become a natural place for product discovery. • Platforms will seek to ease the friction between inspiration to purchase intent, and finally the completed purchase transaction. • Video is going to be a fantastic way to sell things and teach consumers about a product's value proposition. Transcript: Speaker 1 And in this two part series, we'll be covering 12 of those big ideas. In today's part one, we'll cover ideas spanning consumer, AI, games, and enterprise, featuring the voices and big ideas of Connie Chan, Ann Lee Skates, Jack Sausleau, Doug McCracken, Sarah Wang, and Smit Singh. In these conversations, you'll hear several important themes, including how physical transfers to digital, what the next wave of AI might look like, and specifically what role fault Tolerance might play in this equation, what we can learn about social commerce from the East, and what role the growing number of bots in our lives might play. Alright, let's get to it. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only. It should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors In any A6UV fund. For more details, please see a6 This will be a great year. Speaker 4 Social platforms will become a natural place for product discovery, and platforms will seek to ease the friction between inspiration to purchase intent, and finally the completed Purchase transaction. Whether it's short form, long form, or a live stream, video is going to be a fantastic way to sell things and teach consumers about a product's value proposition. ([Time 0:00:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/66fa6ff8-a640-4b17-8874-417e95ec0d29)) - The Future of Instagram Ads Key takeaways: • Instagram is a great source of product inspiration, but it's not always easy to find the purchase button and complete the transaction. • Live video is a powerful way to sell products, and it is something that is still underdeveloped in the West. Transcript: Speaker 4 So I think you're right in the sense that we're already all shocked from Instagram. Most of the time we get lots of product inspiration from the ads, but whether or not we actually complete the transaction right there, and then that's still a TVD. And I think it's because a lot of the platforms today, the Western platforms still have way too much friction between inspiration to discovering more, learning about the product, To finally doing the actual checkout, the actual payment completion. Today, you might find inspiration on Instagram. You might find a video of an influencer talking about a product, but you might not click and complete the purchase right there, and then you might instead open a browser and go to Sephora.com And go search for that item, or go to Nordstrom.com and go search for that outfit. The transaction right now is still kind of being broken up, and that's because there's a lot of friction and the actual implementation of it's not great. But I think the other thing about video that's still very underdeveloped is the idea of something like live video. And live video is a fantastic way to sell things. And it is something that I'd say we haven't really explored out in the West yet, outside of these other platforms, like whatnot, that does live shopping for collectables and other categories. And the reason why live is so powerful is a bunch of things. One, there's community. The people who are all buying at the same time are talking to each other through comments in the chat. They're talking to the seller. You can ask the seller a question directly. Say you are buying a used luxury purse. You can say, hey, turn it inside out. Can you flip it over? I see a little stain. Can you put it up closer to the screen? I want to look at it more closely. So basically as a consumer, you get more confidence to buy. And shopping is all about giving consumers confidence that this is the thing that's going to change their life and make their lives better, right? So live video just gives you more ways to answer questions and get that information to the consumer. But also live video allows you to do these kind of limited time discounts or these window duration promos in the same sense that you have Black Friday sales. ([Time 0:02:37](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c6740a6c-b504-4de8-a874-49bcd3c8939f)) - The Third Space: A New Era for Connecting and Building Community Key takeaways: (* There is a need for new tools and platforms that can be used to facilitate deeper discussions and relationship building between real humans and not bots., * Generative AI can be used to create user experiences that facilitate deeper discussions and relationship building.) Transcript: Speaker 5 Hi, I'm Anne Lee Skates, and I'm a consumer partner at A16Z. My big idea for 2023 is unlocking the third space. Ray Oldenburg coined the term third space, places that host regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings outside of home or work. These used to be in real life community-gathered spots, such as bars, coffee shops, churches, gyms and clubs. But remote and hybrid work, as well as this generation's natively digital habits, have given way to an online first era. So many interactions and first encounters occur online, whether it's over Zoom or meeting like-minded friend with similar interests over Twitter or TikTok or in a Discord group or a game. What are the next generation of tools and platforms that are built to serve consumers, community builders and creators in the post-COVID hybrid world? And how can new technologies such as generative AI create user experiences that facilitate deeper discussions and relationship building between real humans and not bots? ([Time 0:16:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/33552b98-3ffe-442f-bceb-a878423fec28)) - The Third Space: A New Era for Connecting with Others Key takeaways: (* Third spaces are physical locations that are not your home and not your work, where you can explore different but important parts of your identity., * Third spaces can be found online, in real life, and in hybrid forms., * These spaces can be beneficial to both consumers and community builders.) Transcript: Speaker 5 Hi, I'm Anne Lee Skates, and I'm a consumer partner at A16Z. My big idea for 2023 is unlocking the third space. Ray Oldenburg coined the term third space, places that host regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings outside of home or work. These used to be in real life community-gathered spots, such as bars, coffee shops, churches, gyms and clubs. But remote and hybrid work, as well as this generation's natively digital habits, have given way to an online first era. So many interactions and first encounters occur online, whether it's over Zoom or meeting like-minded friend with similar interests over Twitter or TikTok or in a Discord group or a game. What are the next generation of tools and platforms that are built to serve consumers, community builders and creators in the post-COVID hybrid world? And how can new technologies such as generative AI create user experiences that facilitate deeper discussions and relationship building between real humans and not bots? Speaker 1 All right, Anne, I am so excited to talk about this topic because we've been seeing this theme across several of our big ideas, this transition from physical to digital. And before we get into that, I just want to hear from you. I mean, we heard Ray Oldenburg's definition, but how would you define this idea of a third space? Speaker 5 I think that third spaces is physical locations that are not your home and not your work, where you can explore different but important parts of your identity. To me, there's sort of two dimensions. One is obviously the actual physical location, but the other is a person's mental and psychological state. ([Time 0:16:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/39dccf8f-b4b2-4434-a191-3401760c14b6)) - The Pros and Cons of Going Physical Key takeaways: • There is an opportunity for digital products and features that prompt or create inperson interactions. • Pokemon Go to Me was a recent mass market product that showed how digital data can be used to create richer interactions in the physical world. • There are benefits to both the physical and digital worlds when they are blended together. Transcript: Speaker 5 I would say another under export area here is thanks to Zoom, COVID and remote work, we're now really comfortable interacting with people online, whether it's strangers or colleagues Or even your loved ones. But I think there's an opportunity in digital products and features that prompt or create in-person interactions. So, Pokemon Go to Me was last such mass market product, and now we're seeing some innovations around the creator economy of fandoms and creators and celebrities gathering online and Translating those online interactions to the physical space. Imagine like you showed up for a physical concert and you're prompted to meet other fans that you've already interacted with digitally before, who made me share the same favorite songs Or share the same favorite experience with a celebrity or collect the same digital good. Speaker 1 I've been thinking a lot about how we have in many cases so much data from the digital world, but then we don't, as you're saying, translate that back to when they're physical gatherings. Like I see so many podcasts or communities thrive in the digital world and then they organize these in-person meetups and they're just like, hey everyone, stand together, like figure It out, meet people. And they have so much information about the types of topics people like talking about, even potentially demographic data where they can connect people who have the same problems or Who are at the same phase of life. Speaker 5 I think you can facilitate such richer discussions and richer interactions once you use all those pieces of digital data that you're talking about. Exactly. Speaker 1 I love this idea of blending the two because there's positives to both the physical and digital. And again, I think when we go physical, the digital, we often just copy and paste in strange ways. ([Time 0:28:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/77899fe8-ba12-4408-aba9-be894e0033e3)) - The Impact of Platform Shift on Product Development Key takeaways: • Not everyone will go down the route of attempting to build a model of that size. • The real question is which use cases need what and how much will it cost? • And how do you trade that off between control, having inhouse talent, and not relying on an independent vendor versus just being able to move really fast? Transcript: Speaker 2 And not everyone will go down the route of attempting to build a model of that size. But the real question is which use cases need what and how much will it cost? And how do you trade that off between control, having in-house talent, and not relying on an independent vendor versus just being able to move really fast? Speaker 1 In addition to that, I also think about competition, right? If we think about GPT-3 as an example, there have been several products built off of that. Some that come to mind, Jasper, Lex, these writing tools that, again, are all built on the same foundation. And the question has come up repeatedly from my experience of how are they going to differentiate? And of course, there's differentiation through distribution, through product, through UX. But do you have any thoughts there on if there really are only a few models that so many products are built off of? How do you really differentiate in that environment? Speaker 2 It goes back to, I touched on this a little bit in the big idea, but it really goes back to owning more of the workflows. And if we work in the idea of fine-tuning your model, right, how do you collect the data that enables you to do so and makes your product better? I think it goes back to product improvement cycles, if you will. Speaker 5 This isn't a perfect parallel, but if you look at the last great platform shift, which is the shift of ([Time 1:06:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/749e37fd-aede-43fb-a455-31bf8cbdebff))