Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland. Just a few years ago, if you were mayor of Washington, D.C., or really any other city, you didn't have to wrap your head around the likes of Lyft, Uber, and Airbnb, and the other companies in the fast-growing sharing economy. The reason is they didn't exist. Now you have no choice as D.C.'s current mayor, Muriel Bowser, because the citizens in your city certainly already have.

The sharing economy and these sharing businesses got in front of government, but they didn't get in front of their customers because their customers are demanding these services.

So in a lot of ways, we've had to catch up.

Bowser joins this segment of the pod, along with former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty, now a special

advisor to A16Z, to discuss how technologies and tech companies are changing cities and government

and how moving forward they may play an even

bigger role.

If there's anything that I think is ripe for more innovation and solutions in government,

it's in the human services.

All that and the case for more transparency in government on this segment of the A16Z podcast.

The stars have aligned and we have two mayors of Washington, D.C. The current mayor,

Muriel, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. And the former mayor and special advisor here at the

firm, Adrian Fenty. Adrienne. How are you, sir? You guys are both Ward 4 stars, right?

We both used to represent Ward 4 in the City Council, and now I'm former everything, and you've

got the current mayor here, and we're so glad she's on the West Coast.

So I want to talk about then that relationship between technology and between Silicon

Valley and the tech industry and DC in particular. I mean, what are you looking to technology for

and to do? And really, honestly, what can it do? Well, we actually have seen a pretty remarkable

growth, I think, in interest and and technologists and in starting and startups

and people wanting to start up companies in D.C. For so long, Adrienne and I are born and raised

in Washington, and we were always known as a government town. And we've actually seen in our city

that we're growing more private sector jobs than the jurisdictions that surround us.

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