Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland, and we have with us today both A and Z, Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

Welcome, guys.

Hey.

All right. Thank you, Michael.

So right about now, it's been five years since the firm was founded, since you guys founded the firm.

And we thought it was a good time not to look back, but to sort of take stock and talk about some tech trends that you're seeing now

and then spin things forward.

So one of the pillars that this firm really rests itself on is software eats the world.

And Mark, just to refresh us, we sort of use it as shorthand around here,

but what is the thesis?

Explain a little bit, and then let's get into where we are in that thesis.

Yeah, so the thesis is that the computer itself

is only about 75 years old, right?

The computer was originally invented to crack codes

during World War II, and then,

you know, got adopted by governments and big businesses in the 60s and 70s, and then the PC

arrived, and then sort of, you know, rich people then developed world. U.S., Europe were able to get

PCs in the 80s and 90s. You know, leading up to basically about five years ago, you lived in a world

in which maybe a

billion, a billion and a half people had had PCs. And then some of those PCs were on the

internet, and then at some point all those all those PCs finally got on the internet. And that's

all fine and good, but it sort of meant that most people in the world didn't have access to computers

...