a16z Podcast
Russ Fradin sold his first company for $300M. He’s back in the arena with Larridin, helping companies measure just how successful their AI actually is.
In this episode, Russ sits down with a16z General Partner Alex Rampell to reveal why the measurement infrastructure that unlocked internet advertising’s trillion-dollar boom is exactly what’s missing from AI, why your most productive employees are hiding their AI usage from management, and the uncomfortable truth that companies desperately buying AI tools have no idea whether anyone’s actually using them.
The same playbook that built comScore into a billion-dollar measurement empire now determines which AI companies survive the coming shakeout.
Timecodes:
0:00 — Introduction
2:15 — Early Career, Ad Tech, and Web 1.0
3:09 — Attribution Problems in Ad Tech & AI
4:30 — Building Measurement Infrastructure
6:49 — Software Eating Labor: Productivity Shifts
8:51 — The Challenge of Measuring AI ROI
14:54 — The Productivity Baseline Problem
18:46 — Defining and Measuring Productivity
21:27 — Goodhart’s Law & the Pitfalls of Metrics
22:41 — The Harvey Example: Usage vs. Value
25:18 — Surveys vs. Behavioral Data
28:38 — Interdepartmental Responsiveness & Real-World Metrics
31:00 — Enterprise AI Adoption: What the Data Shows
33:59 — Employee Anxiety & Training Gaps
38:31 — The Nexus Product & Safe AI Usage
42:08 — The Future of Work: Job Loss or Job Creation?
44:40 — The Competitive Advantage of AI
53:45 — The Product Marketing Problem in AI
55:00 — The Importance of Specific Use Cases
Resources:
Follow Russ Fradin on X: https://x.com/rfradin
Follow Alex Rampell on X: https://x.com/arampell
Stay Updated:
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!
Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16z
Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z
Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX
Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711
Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg
Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.
Stay Updated:
Find a16z on X
Find a16z on LinkedIn
Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify
Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts
Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg
Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
-
David Sacks: AI, Crypto, China, Dems, and SF
David Sacks, White House AI and Crypto Czar, joins Marc, Ben, and Erik to explore what’s really happening inside the Trump administration’s AI and crypto strategy. They expose the regulatory capture playbook being pushed by…
-
Why Speed, Not Size, Will Define the Next War
As global tensions rise, AI and autonomy are transforming how nations prepare for conflict. In this episode, Horacio Rozanski, CEO of Booz Allen Hamilton and Gary Shield, CEO of Shield AI join Erik Torenberg to…
-
Beyond Chatbots: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz on AI’s Future
In this closing keynote from a16z’s Runtime conference, General Partner Erik Torenberg speaks with our firm’s cofounders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz on highlights from throughout the conference, the current state of LLM capabilities, and…
-
“Is there an AI bubble?” Gavin Baker and David George
In this conversation from a16z’s Runtime conference, Gavin Baker, Managing Partner and CIO of Atreides Management, joins David George, General Partner at a16z, to unpack the macro view of AI: the trillion-dollar data center buildout,…
-
Building the Real-World Infrastructure for AI, with Google, Cisco & a16z
AI isn’t just changing software, it’s causing the biggest buildout of physical infrastructure in modern history. In this episode, Raghu Raghuram (a16z) speaks with Amin Vahdat, VP and GM of AI and Infrastructure at Google,…
-
Google DeepMind Developers: How Nano Banana Was Made
Google DeepMind’s new image model Nano Banana took the internet by storm. In this episode, we sit down with Principal Scientist Oliver Wang and Group Product Manager Nicole Brichtova to discuss how Nano Banana was…
-
Raghu Raghuram: AI, Robotics, and the Rebirth of Infrastructure
From Netscape to VMware, Raghu Raghuram has been at the center of nearly every major inflection point in enterprise technology. In this episode, Raghu joins Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado and David George to reflect on…
-
Marc Andreessen: How Movies Explain America
In this episode of Monitoring the Situation, Marc Andreessen, Katherine Boyle, and Erik Torenberg dive into the movies that best explain America, from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to Tropic Thunder to Fight Club.…
-
Marc Andreessen and Amjad Masad: English As the New Programming Language
Amjad Masad, founder and CEO of Replit, joins a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg to discuss the new world of AI agents, the future of programming, and how software itself is beginning to build software.…
-
Why Creativity Will Matter More Than Code
In this episode, a16z’s Anish Acharya joins Kevin Rose for an in-depth, fast-paced conversation on the rebirth of consumer technology, and how AI is reshaping what it means to build, invest, and create. They talk…