Everything Blake Masters said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Masters: Society risks conflating technological progress exclusively with computer innovation
“The more that, that goes we run the risk of just sort of conflating progress with computers and kind of stop, you know, stopping demanding it in all these other, you know, other contexts.”
Masters: Every great business is built on a secret
“When you come out and declare that, like, hey, secrets exist, and every great business is built on a secret, I think it just I think it just shifts the conversation towards a more, you know, taking a more ambitious tilt.”
Masters: Future trajectory hinges entirely on developing new technology
“Actually the future is going to be, you know, radically better. Than what we have now, or it's going to be radically worse, and that's going to hinge on the question of whether we can develop new technology.”
Masters: Tech progress since the 1970s was mostly limited to IT
“And since since the early seventies we think there's been tons of Globalization and limited progress in technology. Almost all that progress has been confined to IT, which of course we know all about in Silicon Valley.”
Masters: 'Disruption' framework is designed for incumbent firms, not startups
“Disruption is a term very much anchored in the vantage point of like bigger firms. The book was written for bigger firms as to how to avoid You know, threats from these technology startups.”
Masters: Focus on becoming the last mover, not a competitor, in an industry
“What you really want to do is, is ignore competition and figure out how you can be the last mover in any industry, how you can define it. You never want to be like a competitive player in social networking. You want to be the company that defines social networ…”
Masters: Every company is a conspiracy to change the world
“Every company is a conspiracy to change the world. And like when you bring someone on, You can recruit someone if you can successfully convince them that your secret is, is valuable and that you can pull it off.”
Masters: Publicly sharing all beliefs implies holding only conventional views
“If you're comfortable telling like, you know, everything, you know, or think to be true on a podcast, then it actually literally means like you have purely conventional beliefs.”
Masters: Food production cannot achieve Moore's Law-style exponential growth
“It would be really hard actually to like improve you know, global food production in any sort of exponential way that, that resembles Moore's law.”
Masters: Startups cannot match Google or Facebook compensation to recruit top talent
“And I think that's the only way that if you're a startup, that's the only way that you're going to, you know, you're not going to be able to pay as much as Google or Facebook at this point. And that's the only way to attract people. Probably.”
Blake Masters
the a16z Podcast 1