Hello, I'm Michael Copeland, and this is the A16Z podcast. You're about to hear part two of the Ben and Mark

Explain Practically Everything podcast. If you miss part one, find it on A16Z.com. Part two picks up with a

discussion of disruption theory. Disruption theory has been in the news of late as it relates to

Clayton Christensen, you know, the master of this. And I just want to ask you guys not so much

about the criticism of him, but from where you sit, that theory and his thinking kind of galvanized

itself into a book in 1997, you know.

Do you build companies differently today?

Does, do those theories still hold water or what's changed?

Yeah, so I think his book was actually quite brilliant.

It's funny that it's coming under criticism now

after he's been proving completely right into the general idea that he had.

It actually reminds me of the creationist attacks on evolution where like, yes, from a,

it's like intellectualism at its worst, right? It's like, oh, here's something wrong with Darwin's

original theory. And it's like, okay, now we based all of biology on it. We made tremendous progress.

Like, how about that? And this is kind of like, you know, I don't believe in it. I don't believe in

electricity, no. And, you know, this is kind of the kind of business version of that where, you know,

he developed the theory, all of us in high tech, and it was an amazing business

book at the time because it explained a phenomenon that, you know, now is kind of obvious,

but in 1997 it was tricky, which is why does there, really, why do there need to be new

companies?

Right.

And what's happened, and we just got through talking about,

...