Chris Dixon on the "second-order effects" behind a16z's early bets on Oculus, drones, and crypto: "I joined the firm in 2013. I talked to Marc and Ben, and I said, 'Hey, I wanna do this crazy stuff,' and they were like, 'Great.'" "That led to a couple of themes at the time, and they're all kind of what I would call kinda second-order effects. You had smartphones obviously start in 2007, and by 2013 had gotten mainstream, and there were all these kind of first-order effects like building apps on top." "But a second-order effect was that you had the components of smartphones. You had sensors and chips getting better and better, and maybe people could repurpose those in different ways." "We invested in Oculus as an example, and that was really kind of a reconfigured smartphone. Skydio, that was one of our investments from back then that was, at the beginning, kind of a reconfigured smartphone." "Crypto, I think at the time was kind of a downstream effect to me of sort of the open-source software movement morphing into services and also kind of a result of social media where you could have these communities form without mainstream acceptance and coalesce around these blockchains." @cdixon Quoted @a16z: Today, a16z Crypto is becoming a16z Frontier. Since joining a16z in 2013, @cdixon has focused on technologies that look futuristic well before they reach the mainstream. Those themes led to investments in Oculus, Skydio, Zipline, Coinbase, Solana, and Uniswap. Frontier expands that mandate beyond crypto to back "outer planet" founders who are building new technologies and creating markets that may take years to develop. Chris joins @pmarca, @bhorowitz, and @eriktorenberg to discuss why crypto has become part of the broader tech landscape, why Frontier fills a hole in the firm's architecture, and why they'd rather be too early than too late. They also get into why the gap between AI-native startups and incumbents is the widest Marc has ever seen, how AI could pull forward 20 years of frontier technology, why stablecoins may become the way AI agents pay each other, how AI is breaking the internet's business model, and why today's 18-year-olds are about to become superhumans. 0:50 Introducing a16z Frontier 2:49 Smartphone parts to drones and VR 4:47 Backing the "outer planets" 7:11 Good ideas that look like bad ideas 10:43 The JP Morgan photo in Marc's office 15:13 Good tech ideas eventually work 16:53 AI may pull tech 20 years forward 18:18 The widest AI gap Marc's ever seen 22:06 Workers adopt AI before companies do 26:32 Old use cases vs. AI-native ones 30:08 Beyond "product manager brain" 34:45 AI can reverse engineer any hardware 38:23 The case for open source AI 46:36 How AI breaks the internet's model 49:11 VR, homebrew hacking, multiplayer AI 54:00 If you're 18, study "modern alchemy" YouTube: https://t.co/Vpb9eJsdTZ Not an offer or solicitation. None of the information herein should be taken as investment advice; Some of the companies mentioned are portfolio companies of a16z. Please see https://t.co/nX2FtaLE06 for more information. A list of investments made by a16z is available at https://t.co/A9eTFq6Xbx.