Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland.

Smartphone components have become a kind of Lego kit for all kinds of consumer technology.

Cameras, sensors, and batteries all get mixed and matched in different permutations to create different gadgets.

It might be something that enables your connected home, offers a video capture system for cops,

or powers a remote video chat slash treat machine for your dog. I know, we all need that.

But since practically every component is now available to everyone and the manufacturing

expertise to tie it all together as well, it becomes very hard to distinguish via hardware alone.

Software is the key to breaking from the pack, say Benedict Evans and Steven Sinovsky in this post-2016 CES podcast.

What Benedict and Stephen saw and learned from this year's gathering of the consumer electronics industry in this segment of the A16Z podcast.

Welcome, gentlemen.

Good morning.

Hey, so Stephen, I was reading your post and you're one of those people you've said it out loud, or at least you wrote it out loud.

You love CES.

And for me, that's a little bit baffling, but I want to know why you love it.

And from your perspective, because I know you go there with a different sort of mindset and a different lens.

So what is that?

Well, you know, I do love it. I love the Vegas thing. I, you know,

but what I really do, really do love is just it's an opportunity to sort of see everything at

once. Now, it's not quite everything because a bunch of the big companies don't go. You can't

really see a ton of startups. But it really is like a snapshot of a massive amount of activity.

Plus, you get to see how they want to sell it and pitch it and talk about it.

And by seeing all the parts at once, you sort of can connect the dots from like small,

...