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disclosures. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6 andZ podcast. I'm Sonal. And today's episode is all about

network effects. And it's based on an event we did that was itself based on a set of slides

that we released that you can find online at bit.ly slash network effects A16Z.

Welcome to our network effects event. Before we get started, let me actually just quickly introduce our guests.

You probably know because you came here knowing who they are, but just to quickly tell you about who they are.

Anu is an electrical engineer by training. She used to work at Qualcomm, where she built the video streaming solution there.

And then later she worked at BCG, and she's now a partner in her deal and investing team,

and she covers all things, marketplaces with Jeff. Jeff's a general partner here. He was

previously the CEO at Open Table, which is why the network effects theme is particularly strong

here, and president at PayPal and SPP at eBay before that. And his board seats include a lot of

our companies that have network

effects like Airbnb and many more. It's actually funny because this whole deck started off as

the result of an internal debate. And we're pretty opinionated as a culture and there's a lot of

strong opinions floating around. But I think it's kind of funny because this is probably one of the

most internal contentious debates we've had around. What is a network effect? And I think it's kind of funny because this is probably one of the most internal contentious debates we've had around what is a network effect?

And I think it's because it's one of those concepts that's really easy to learn but difficult to master.

So on that note, let's just start off by defining what's a network effect.

Yeah, simply put, I think the simple definition is as more users join the platform, it's more valuable to existing

users. So it's really as simple as that, right? And it actually started with hardware. So think of the

...