Insight certainty 3/5 debate potential 3/5

Nazarov: The tech industry overrates top-down innovation due to survivorship bias

Dennis Nazarov · a16z Podcast | Cryptonetworks and Cities -- Analogies · Jan 2, 2019 · at 12:10

Dennis Nazarov, partner at a16z crypto, discusses the limits and inefficiencies of top-down, Apple-style product development versus open, distributed crypto experimentation.

0:00 / 0:33exact quote · 34.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“On the top-down approach, I think we give too much weight to the beauty of top-down. You know, we only see it when it works, that there's the genius iPod product, there's the genius iPhone product, but, you know, how many, what, how many hundreds of products did the Apple team iterate, you know, whatever the, Johnny Ives office, the white box that you have to have high clearance to get into, what were the crazy ideas that didn't go to market, and how, how efficient can a top-down organization be in terms of, you know, catalyzing, you know, tons of experiments to try different ideas”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Dennis Nazarov

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Nazarov: Collateralized applications like stablecoins cannot be hard-forked
“Like you can't fork in the case of a stable coin because it has all this collateral. You can't fork the collateral because you, your DAP doesn't control that. You know, you are using the existing platform's collateral.”
Dennis Nazarov Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 40:40 a16z Podcast | Cryptonetworks as Emerging Economies (Done Right?)
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Nazarov: Blockchain services naturally gravitate toward singular network monopolies
“If this The theory you were talking about is correct that blockchain services, you know, maybe like information wants to be free, like blockchain services want to be like singular monopolies that dominate the entire network. That there should be one service do…”
Dennis Nazarov Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 31:16 a16z Podcast | Crypto And The Evolution Of Open Source
Opinion
Nazarov: Automatic protocol upgrades present worse catastrophic risk than consensus models
“So if the network automatically upgrades into some, you know, specific version of the code, the catastrophic scenarios are much worse because everyone opts into a default, whereas in this more weak consensus model everyone has to agree in kind of a broader way…”
Dennis Nazarov Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 36:17 a16z Podcast | Cryptonetworks as Emerging Economies (Done Right?)
Insight
Nazarov: Token-Mediated Access Aligns Platform and Developer Incentives
“If a token is used to mediate access And use of a service that there's huge incentives to build a very great service because if the more and more ecosystem participants rely on you, the more valuable you will be.”
Dennis Nazarov Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:02 a16z Podcast | Crypto And The Evolution Of Open Source
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Nazarov: Blockchain open data and code will drive unprecedented compounding innovation
“This openness in terms of both data and the code itself and the ability for anyone to contribute improvements to it and also just reuse it. It's again, you know, it's, will be compounding innovation that is unprecedented, you know, in the open source movement …”
Dennis Nazarov Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 22:09 a16z Podcast | Crypto And The Evolution Of Open Source
Insight
Nazarov: Technical network forking is easy, but social coordination hurdles limit success
“While a fork is technically possible, there's kind of all these kind of social Hurdles to get over to actually make it functional and to get a critical mass”
Dennis Nazarov Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 33:38 a16z Podcast | Crypto And The Evolution Of Open Source
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.