Right now, AI has been so much about productivity, job replacement, work replacement. And I think we have a moment to shift that, which is how does these new tools help you get more out of your own day and your own life and the things you want to do? So it sounds like you're saying retention is still the most important metric. Is that true? I mean, I think it's always been. But you've been a part of really every product cycle, the big ones and the small ones,

and now most recently leading product marketing for a lot of the AI efforts at Apple. One of the things I learned a lot at Apple was how do we tell a compelling story to regular people? One of those things that the moment you use it, you're like, oh my God, I can never go back to the old way. We forget that technology is no longer the underdog. the parts of the products we've made are running the world.

You know, we used to say real life, but like online life is real life now. Chat Chachibouti was amazing for a whole bunch of searches that we thought were totally solved through Google. And all of a sudden you start putting those searches into chat to BT. We're like, this answer is more than 10 times better. This experience is more than 10 times better than Google links back and forth. And I think that's why chat to be team pool. One topic that we discuss a lot is, are the labs that's going to win it all? Should we all just go home? And I know it feels like we have a version of this conversation every time there's a new product cycle. What's your view? So I think a funny way to think about this. For more than two decades,

Josh Ellman has been at the center of some of the most important consumer technology platforms in the world. From LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to Robin Hood, Discord, Musically, TikTok,

and Apple, he has spent his career studying how products grow, how people connect online,

and why some technologies

become part of everyday life.

Today, as AI reshapes the technology landscape once again, many of the biggest questions

are consumer questions.

How will people discover products?

What new behaviors emerge?

And what does the next generation of consumer companies look like?

In this conversation, Anish Acheria speaks with Josh Elman about consumer AI, network effects, product design, and why he believes we're entering a new era of consumer innovation.

Welcome back to the Andresen Horowitz podcast. I'm here with a person that I've been friends with for a long time. I admire for a long time. Was my investor for a brief time. And now I'm proud to call him partner, Josh Hellman. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited about this. It's going to be awesome. Yeah. So Josh, everybody sort of probably already knows him. but you've been a part of every important consumer story. I don't know if that's because you've been the catalyzing force behind them, or perhaps you're a good picker. I like the thing sometimes it's like just forest gum showing up at the right place at the right time and being on the journeys. But it's been really incredible to get to be part of creating technology that we all use every day in our lives. Yeah, I was reading some of the background. It sounds like you sort of set an intention at Stanford to be a part of the intersection of culture and technology, and you've kind of done that. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. I think my resume had this objective. It was like to create great technology that changes people's lives. As I think back on that, I'm like, I wish it was even more like benefits people's lives that makes people's lives even better because I think changes lives. Technology is kind of neutral, but there's so much that we've done that's just tried to like make the world better and more connected, more human. Yes. And give us all these new tools and powers that we never could have had before. But it's interesting because you came from a time, you know, when you graduated, technology was sort of these weirdos in the back of the classroom. You know, it always felt like a toy. Yeah. And now it's something that sort of some of the most important conversations in our society are about technology. Yeah, they're about technology. They're happening through technology. Yes. I mean, we used to joke that if you got to like 10 million users, you were impacting so many people in the world. And then it became 100 million. And then it became a billion. And then it became billions every hour. We forget the technology is no longer the underdog. Like the parts of the products we've made are running the world. It's like we used to say real life, but online life is real life now. Yeah, it really is. I think it is sort of default. I think the pandemic proved that for us, most of all. We kind of maxed out on how much you could actually do in the online life, and there were so many things where we would meet over Zoom, and we would all have these conversations, even with like family reunions and friends and birthdays and dinners.

Totally.

We've got to maxed out what that was.

And I think what's been really cool as we've come out of that is so much of that has

lasted and has made a lot of things more natural and we still like to sometimes even connect

over video.

But now we also are getting much more back in the real world,

and technology can do a lot more, I think, to bring that together.

So before we get too deep into it, let me make sure I kind of frame up the background.

...