A16z's Chen Warns Startup Policy Vacuum Leaves Big Tech to Shape Rules

a16z合伙人陈警告初创政策真空致使科技巨头主导规则制定 由于早期初创团队缺乏游说立法者的生存资金跑道，不断累积的监管默认沿用既有巨头模式，恐将扼杀新兴竞争者或迫使它们撤离核心枢纽。 Andrew Chen深入剖析了a16z旗下Speedrun加速器中早期公司搭建的过程，微型团队在餐桌旁白手起家，并在紧张的12周周期内验证其想法能否发展为可行的业务。由于这些创始人每周工作100小时，资金跑道仅能维持数月，他们既缺乏资源也没有精力参与立法进程，导致政策讨论严重偏向老牌行业巨头。Matt Perault与Chen强调，加州隐私法规和AI监管等累积性政策给早期创业者带来了过重负担，并影响了敏捷团队的注册地选择。最终，他们探讨了如何通过Tech Week和直接圆桌会议等倡议，在决策者与推动技术创新的坦诚、乐观的创始人之间架起沟通桥梁。 Andreessen Horowitz旗下的Speedrun加速器面向处于起步阶段的初创公司，提供高达100万美元的早期资金，并在旧金山开展为期12周的孵化项目，最终举办面向1000多名天使投资人和种子基金的Demo Day。 (0:00) 早期“小科技”（Little Tech）团队平均为两到三人，资金跑道仅能维持3到6个月，使他们完全没有精力和预算参与立法辩论或聘请游说人员。 (20:00) 政策制定者往往将科技巨头的立场视同为“行业”共识，忽视了累积的监管负担如何给缺乏法务部门的新生初创公司带来不成比例的损害。 (18:24) 由于早期团队高度敏捷，创始人通过地理流动性行使影响力，依据当地AI法规、实验室空间以及天使资本密集度来选择设立或迁移地点。 (25:00) 像Tech Week这样的倡议已演变为发掘平台和政策论坛，直接将1000多名公职人员和1000多名政策专业人士与早期一线运营者汇聚在一起。 (30:00)

Andreessen Horowitz general partner Andrew Chen and policy partner Matt Perault argue that early-stage startups—or 'Little Tech'—face severe disadvantages under cumulative regulatory regimes because their founders must dedicate all operational bandwidth to survival rather than policy advocacy. Operating Realities of Earliest-Stage Micro-Teams (0:00) Chen describes 'Little Tech' not as mature firms in office parks, but as two- or three-person teams working 100-hour weeks from kitchen tables or temporary Airbnbs. In a16z's Speedrun accelerator, which invests up to $1 million in 12-week cohorts based in San Francisco, teams are divided between an inward-facing technical founder using AI coding tools to stretch capital and an outward-facing partner conducting customer discovery. Because their primary existential question is determining product viability within a three- to six-month runway, founders lack the bandwidth to track policy debates, let alone attend legislative hearings. Venture Failure and Founder Recycling (14:48) Early-stage venture capital operates under extreme power-law dynamics, where Chen notes roughly half of funded companies fail outright, two to three return modest capital, and a top-decile outlier generates the fund's overall returns. Rather than discarding founders whose companies dissolve, Chen emphasizes that venture firms preserve their reputations by supporting those who worked intensely. Failed founders often take one of two pathways: pitching a stronger idea to secure immediate re-funding, or spending two to three years recovering financially and physically by leading product initiatives inside peer portfolio companies before launching another startup. The Disconnect Between Policy and Little Tech (20:00) Perault and Chen highlight a structural blind spot in tech policymaking: when lawmakers claim 'all of industry' agrees on a framework, they are typically consulting Big Tech incumbents and large financial institutions with dedicated compliance and lobbying departments. Early-stage startups inherit a cumulative baseline of overlapping privacy, data provenance, and AI rules (such as California's SB 53) designed for corporate giants. Policymakers frequently resist speaking to venture representatives and ask to hear directly from founders, but nascent companies operating on scarce capital cannot afford the time or expense to travel to Sacramento, Washington, or Brussels. Founder Mobility and Ecosystem Competition (25:00) Because policy participation offers virtually no return on investment for early-stage teams, Chen argues their principal defense is geographic mobility. Founders migrate to jurisdictions offering the best balance of capital access, operational facilities, and sensible regulations. While San Francisco retains vital investor density—bolstered by the generative AI wave—hardware and robotics teams are moving to regions like El Segundo or Texas for cheaper industrial warehouse space. Chen warns that policies such as California's proposed wealth tax risk driving away angel investors and family offices, which would erode the regional capital base. Bridging Startups and Policymakers Through Grassroots Gatherings (30:00) To counter fragmentation and expose officials to early builders, a16z developed citywide Tech Week events in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. The initiative attracted more than 1,000 government officials, 1,000 policy professionals, and foreign consular representatives, creating forums where lawmakers can observe early-stage constraints directly. Chen stresses that cities and states make a deliberate policy choice in whether they attract innovation, urging lawmakers to recognize that regulatory requirements vary widely across pure software, compute-intensive AI, and supply-chain-dependent robotics companies. Chen and Perault emphasize that preserving a vibrant startup ecosystem requires policymakers to intentionally lower cumulative compliance barriers for micro-teams. However, whether lawmakers will accommodate category-specific startup needs rather than defaulting to broad compromises negotiated by Big Tech incumbents remains an unresolved challenge.

a16z合伙人Andrew Chen与Matt Perault指出，处于“零到一”阶段的“小科技”（Little Tech）初创企业面临严苛的生存考验，但由于缺乏游说资源且受制于极短的生存跑道，它们在政策博弈中长期处于结构性缺位状态；早期风险投资机构正通过加速器推动创业进程，并呼吁监管机构正视初创企业与科技巨头之间的利益分歧及累积性合规成本。 极早期团队的孵化模式与AI赋能 (0:00) a16z设立的Speedrun加速器专注于在公司构思的“第一天”介入，为入选团队提供最高100万美元投资并在旧金山开展为期12周的孵化，最终对接超1,000家天使投资人和种子基金。Chen指出，早期业务构想高度易变（如Slack最初为网页游戏公司后转型为协作软件），因此Speedrun重点考察创始人的个人特质与驱动力，例如顶尖运动员、拥有数千星标的开源贡献者或AI名校毕业生。这些团队平均仅有2至3人，通常由大学好友自筹资金3至6个月，在厨房餐桌或客厅中起步。团队规模若超过3至5人，往往会过早稀释股权或带来难以承受的市场薪资压力。 在最近一期包含70家公司的训练营中，约有十余位创始人在刚辞去大厂职务、甚至尚未设立法人实体时就加入了项目。Chen表示，加速器的目标是将原本可能推迟5至10年的创业行动提前。在日常分工上，团队通常清晰划分为负责技术的合伙人与负责业务拓展的合伙人；技术合伙人借助现代AI编程工具大幅提高产出，无需过早雇佣外部人员即可完成早期验证，而业务合伙人则专注于客户访谈与试点签约。 风投幂次法则与失败创始人的生态循环 (14:48) 早期风险投资在数学上高度受制于失败法则。Chen坦言，行业经典规律是约50%的被投企业彻底破产，20%至30%仅能收回少量资本，整个基金的超额回报几乎全部依赖前10%的极少数超级成功案例。然而，风投机构在创业者中的长期声誉，很大程度上取决于其如何对待那些全力以赴、每周投入100小时但最终未能成功的创始人。 当Speedrun的初创项目宣告失败后，通常会衍生出两种路径：其一，a16z积极资助同一位创始人开启下一个项目，Chen透露近期就有一位退回上一轮剩余资金并带着更强构想回归的创始人再次获得投资；其二，由于长期高强度工作导致个人财务与身心耗竭的创始人，往往会迅速成为被投企业组合中的核心骨干，带领团队攻关前沿技术2至3年后再次独立创办新公司。 累积监管负担与政策博弈中的缺位困境 (18:24) Perault结合a16z发布的《来自车库的问候》（Greetings from a Garage）指出，法律政策专家常犯的错误是孤立评估单项新提案是否合理，但初创团队从成立第一天起就要承受既有监管框架的“累积基线”。在加州，这包括最新的人工智能法案（如SB 53）、早期的数据来源法规以及全面性隐私法案，给在咖啡馆办公的双人小团队带来了巨大的合规摩擦。 Chen和Perault强调，处于生存模式的早期团队跑道通常只有3到6个月，根本没有时间、预算或法务部门去参与萨克拉门托、华盛顿或布鲁塞尔的立法听证会。当立法者声称“整个行业都赞成某项政策”时，其指代的往往是能够承担高昂法务成本并倾向于维持现状的科技巨头或传统行业。早期风投代表初创企业发声并提出异议，正是因为二者在生态系统中的诉求截然不同。 地理流动性选择与生态级政企沟通 (25:00) 由于参与政策游说的投资回报率极低，初创团队最核心的博弈手段是“地理流动性”。Chen回顾了自2007年以来科技重心的变迁：从硅谷半岛逐步转移至旧金山市区，近年来进一步向纽约、伦敦等地分散，而洛杉矶埃尔塞贡多和得克萨斯州则凭借低廉的厂房与研发空间吸引了硬科技和先进制造团队。Chen提到，风投支持的创始人中近50%为第一代移民，若算上跨州搬迁则接近100%。尽管生成式AI热潮正吸引人才回流湾区，但诸如加州财富税等提案可能驱离家族办公室和高净值天使投资人，从而危及维持生态系统所必需的资本密度。 为了打破政策盲区，a16z在旧金山、洛杉矶、纽约和波士顿等地通过Tech Week活动搭建草根生态，并在过去一年中吸引了超1,000名政府官员、超1,000名政策专家以及包括英国领事馆在内的外交代表参会。Chen向立法者呼吁，培育创新经济是一项政策抉择，监管层应深入了解纯软件、AI模型与硬件机器人等不同赛道的差异化需求，直接与2至3人的微型初创团队展开对话。 初创企业凭借高度的乐观主义与敏捷性推动创新，但其生存极度依赖容错环境、资本密度与合理的监管门槛。Chen与Perault认为，政策制定者若仅与头部巨头沟通，将持续加剧对早期生态的制度盲区；能否在地方税制、AI合规与行业准入上为微型团队留出空间，将直接决定各地区能否在下一波技术周期中留住核心创新力量。

## Background 本期播客发布于 2026 年 9 月 11 日的 a16z 官方音频播客渠道，由 Matt Perault 与 Andrew Chen 共同主讲。节目主要探讨了极早期“小科技”（Little Tech）创业团队的真实生存现状，以及为何在当前的政策与监管辩论中，两三人的微型初创公司往往处于发声缺席的状态。 ## TL;DR a16z 合伙人兼 Speedrun 负责人 Andrew Chen 深入剖析了极早期初创团队从餐桌起步、仅有两三名成员、高度聚焦于产品验证与生存的现实处境。对话指出，监管负担对微型团队是全盘累积的，而由于缺乏游说资源和时间预算，这群最脆弱但最具活力的创业者往往被政策制定者忽视。与此同时，早期团队具备极高的地理流动性，各地若想培育繁荣的创新生态，必须主动理解不同赛道初创企业的差异化诉求，而非将 Big Tech 的利益误当为全行业共识。 ## Atmosphere & style 对谈整体洋溢着硅谷风险投资圈务实、敏锐且充满活力的专业氛围，双方交流自然流畅、默契十足。Andrew Chen 的讲述兼具一线孵化的烟火气与宏观战略视野，既有对年轻创始人拼搏状态的生动刻画，也有对监管壁垒和“财富税”隐忧的严肃警示。整场对话不仅传递出对早期创新纯粹冲劲与乐观精神的感染力，更透着一种为无声小微企业代言的真诚呼吁与使命感。 ## Bulletin - `04:59` a16z 旗下 Speedrun 项目聚焦两到三人的极早期微型团队，提供最高达 100 万美元投资，并在最新一期 70 家公司中有十几家是在创始人尚未正式辞职或注册实体时即达成投资意向。 - `22:30` 由于极早期创业者时间窗口仅以月甚至周计算且无力雇佣游说团队，其在政策制定中严重缺席，导致立法机关常将大型科技公司的诉求误判为整个行业的共识。 - `16:32` 初创企业面临的合规成本具有复合累积效应，多项隐私及数据法规叠加在缺乏法务资源的微型团队身上，反而成了巩固大公司垄断地位的行业壁垒。 - `25:00` 轻资产运行的初创团队具有极高的地理机动性，加州拟议的“财富税”及严苛监管可能会加速高净值资本与新兴 AI 团队向德州或欧洲等更友好的地区迁移。 ## Key takeaways - `00:00` “小型科技”（Little Tech）在最早期多为两到三人在厨房餐桌办公的微型团队，全天候专注于产品生存，几乎没有任何专职公共事务代表。 - `02:30` 早期风投的核心逻辑在于押注高上限的人才而非静态点子，业务方向在验证期剧烈变更是常见现象（如 Slack 转型）。 - `04:59` Speedrun 机制通过早期介入将创业者的时间线大幅前移，促使大量优秀人才提前数年从大公司离职开启 AI 创业。 - `10:00` 早期微型团队通常呈现明确分工：技术联合创始人深度使用 AI 编程工具追求极致人效，商业联合创始人全天候推进客户访谈与销售。 - `13:17` 风投行业遵循严苛的幂律法则，全部行业利润几乎来自前 10% 的超级赢家，但机构声誉建立在如何对待失败却全力以赴的创始人之上。 - `13:17` 创业失败者具备极高的人才流动价值，往往能迅速被成长型企业吸收为新产品负责人，并在两到三年后重新成为连续创业者。 - `16:32` 监管对初创企业的压力并非源于单一提案，而是多年叠加的数据、隐私法规所形成的“全盘累积负担”（Cumulative Burden）。 - `20:00` 现行监管框架普遍是为拥有成熟法务团队的大型企业量身定制的，在客观上成为阻碍微型初创团队生存的摩擦力。 - `22:30` 立法者容易陷入将“大科技达成一致”视作“全行业共识”的误区，完全忽视了微型初创企业截然不同的诉求。 - `25:00` 微型 AI 初创企业具备轻资产与高度流动性，政策环境直接决定了地方能否留存全球高素质移民与核心创新人才。 - `25:00` 深科技与硬件初创企业因场地和成本外迁至洛杉矶等地，而拟议中的“财富税”可能加速高净值资本外流，削弱硅谷投资生态。 - `30:00` Tech Week 已成为连接地方官员、跨国领事馆与科技生态的重要桥梁，吸引了数千名政策制定者深度介入初创圈。 - `32:15` 城市或州是否拥有繁荣的初创生态本质上是政策制定者的自主选择，且软件、AI 与机器人赛道对政策的需求各不相同。 - `35:00` 政策团队的核心职责在于跨越认知鸿沟，向立法者传达极早期创业者纯粹且前沿的创新实践与担忧。 ## Detailed walkthrough ### `00:00` 真实存在的“小型科技”：Speedrun 与最早期初创团队 “小型科技”（Little Tech）在创业最早期呈现出一种极为真实的生存状态。这群初创团队平均只有两到三名成员，他们既没有像样的独立办公室，也不在联合办公空间里工作，绝大多数人仅仅是围坐在自家厨房的餐桌旁敲代码、跑业务。对于这些创始人而言，他们的首要目标是活下去并让业务运转起来，以至于根本无暇参与公共事务。他们没有专职的说客，在政策制定层面几乎没有任何发声渠道或代表。然而，一个城市或州是否愿意张开双臂接纳初创企业，本质上却取决于政策环境的选择。 本期播客由 Matt Perault 主持，对话 a16z 普通合伙人兼 Speedrun 项目负责人 Andrew Chen。两人围绕早期初创企业的生存现状展开对话。这些团队正倾尽全力寻找初代产品与第一批客户，却常常被关乎其生死存亡的政策辩论排除在外。了解这些创始人的处境，不仅能让政策制定者看清监管壁垒带来的实际负担，也关乎整个生态系统如何培育下一代科技企业。 ```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Speedrun项目流程 accDescr: 展示从互联网招募到Demo Day投资的Speedrun孵化全流程 subgraph INTAKE["项目招募与选拔"] A["全网公开招募<br/>(播客/Substack/社媒)"] --> B["筛选优秀人才<br/>(极高上限背景)"] end subgraph PROGRAM["12周集中加速"] B --> C["投资至多100万美元<br/>(旧金山集中孵化)"] C --> D["a16z全方位资源倾斜<br/>(人脉网络/业务辅导)"] end subgraph OUTPUT["生态对接与成长"] D --> E["Speedrun Demo Day<br/>(超1000位投资人)"] E --> F["走向更广阔生态<br/>(长期合作/后续融资)"] end ``` - **全网招募与资金支持**：Speedrun 项目常驻旧金山办公室，通过官方营销渠道、播客、Substack 等全网公开招揽项目，为初创团队提供最高达 100 万美元的早期投资。 - **目标人群**：重点关注处于起步阶段的创始人——可能是刚萌生创业想法的在职好友组合，也可能是刚刚辞职或刚走出校门的应届毕业生。 - **12 周项目运作与 Demo Day**：入选团队会经历为期 12 周的孵化，获取 a16z 平台的所有资源与人脉网络；结营时会举办 Speedrun Demo Day，吸引超过 1000 位天使投资人与种子基金参与后续投资。 --- ### `02:30` 早期投资的核心逻辑：投人而非固守点子 在初创企业的极早期阶段，业务点子（ideas）发生剧烈变更是家常便饭。一个最具代表性的例子便是如今全球广泛使用的协作工具 Slack，它最初只是一家制作网页端视频游戏的公司。鉴于早期项目的多变性，Speedrun 在筛选入围团队时，核心逻辑是把赌注押在最优秀、上限最高的人才身上，而非某一个静态的产品规划。 Andrew Chen 强调了他们考察人才背景的多样性： “我们尽量在最早期投资于最优秀的人。”（“And so what we try to do at its core is to really just invest in the best people.”） 团队考察的维度包括极端的个人成就（例如从顶尖运动员成功转型科技领域）、开源社区的影响力（如创立了获得数千颗 Star 且快速增长的 GitHub 代码库），或是顶尖名校毕业并在前沿 AI 公司掌握了独特技术洞见的技术专家。在地域分布上，除了湾区本土创业者，项目吸收了大量来自全美各地的团队——包括纽约、德克萨斯、佛罗里达和中西部地区，亦有少量海外创始人。许多团队来到旧金山体验湾区的创业氛围并接受辅导，随后一部分人选择留下来创办公司，另一部分人则返回家乡社区继续深耕，这两种选择都获得了 a16z 的支持。 --- ### `04:59` 规模边界与“催化”初创企业的诞生 谈及入选 Speedrun 的企业规模时，Andrew Chen 直言这就是最纯粹的“小型科技”： “这就是真正的‘小型科技’，你知道，当我们讨论小型科技时，说的就是这个。”（“Yeah, this is truly little tech, you know, when we talk about little tech, this is it.”） 团队规模通常极小，平均在两到三人左右，在自家厨房餐桌上开始创业。关于申请门槛的上限，如果一个团队已经从外部机构获得了大笔资本，就不再是该项目的核心目标；但如果是三五位大学同窗好友自掏腰包闭门研发了半年，这类具备高度互信的团队依然广受欢迎。不过，团队规模通常很难超过三到五人，因为早期过早稀释股权并不明智，且团队成员的人生阶段往往需要稳定的现金薪酬支持。 Matt Perault 指出 a16z 内部有覆盖各个成长周期的团队（如 Growth 基金专门投资中后期成熟公司），并询问为何要将重心下沉到最前端。Andrew Chen 解释称，自己早年专注于 A 轮与 B 轮投资，单笔支票金额高达 1000 万至 2000 万美元，彼时企业已经拥有成熟的数据指标、稳定的团队和付费客户。然而，Speedrun 的使命在于将触角伸向“创始人与企业诞生的前一刻”。 - **在最新一期 Speedrun 的 70 家公司中**：约有十几家公司的创始人在拿到投资意向时甚至还在全职打工，他们不得不当场交还工牌和工作笔记本电脑，甚至因为还没有正式注册公司实体，导致 a16z 一时间都无法将投资款电汇过去。 - **时间线前移效应**：部分创始人原本可能需要再打工 5 到 10 年积累财务安全感与行业经验，而 Speedrun 的早期介入促使他们在 AI 时代的最佳契机提前迈出创业步伐。 --- ### `09:00` 早期创始人的典型生活画像 随着话题转向入围团队在项目期间的实际日常，Andrew Chen 勾勒出了一幅高动态、充满地域流动的创业者日常画面。参与 Speedrun 的团队来自全美各地——从奥斯汀、芝加哥、犹他州，到纽约以及太平洋西北地区（如西雅图等地）。这些背景各异的小团队往往拖着行李来到湾区，开始了为期数月的密集开发与产品验证。由于他们普遍处于从零到一的破土阶段，缺乏职能部门支撑，创始人们的日常完全被极其琐碎且繁重的产品迭代、寻找初始用户和争取生存空间所填满。 ### `10:00` Speedrun 创始人的日常与分工 Andrew Chen 勾勒了典型入选 Speedrun 项目的两位联合创始人的成长轨迹：收到入选通知后，他们会兴奋地完成公司注册，收到这辈子从未见过的巨额打款，然后立刻买机票飞往旧金山。a16z 团队甚至为他们编写了一份详尽的“旧金山入驻指南”，手把手指导他们通过 Airbnb 选择安全、合适的街区。进入项目后，这两位创始人通常会租住在靠近 a16z 办公室的公寓里，成为 24 小时待在一起的室友，过着毫不奢华、高度沉浸的同居创业生活。他们平时会在住处或者 a16z 提供的共享办公空间干活，有时走路、打 Uber 或乘坐 Waymo 无人驾驶出租车通勤。 创始团队的时间表被极度压缩，目标只有一个：在极短的时间内验证商业模式是否行得通，即“打造产品并卖出产品”。在典型的双人团队中，往往存在着清晰的内外分工： - **技术/产品联合创始人（对内）**：重度依赖最新的 AI 辅助编程工具。与过去不同，他们不再需要外包写代码或过早雇佣大批初级程序员产生高额开销，而是通过一人搭配 AI 工具来实现极致的人效，优先确保公司活下去。 - **商业联合创始人（对外）**：全力负责外部沟通，不停地访谈潜在客户、挖掘需求并努力促成交易。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Speedrun 早期双人创始团队分工与日常运作 accDescr: 展示技术合伙人与商业合伙人的不同职责，以及 Speedrun 每周集中培训机制 subgraph Team["极简双人团队架构"] Tech["技术/产品联合创始人（对内）<br/>- 深度使用 AI 辅助编程<br/>- 追求极致人效与零多余人力成本<br/>- 快速构建可用产品"] Biz["商业联合创始人（对外）<br/>- 客户访谈与痛点验证<br/>- 早期商务谈判与促成首单<br/>- 寻找产品市场契合点 (PMF)"] end subgraph WeeklyProgram["Speedrun 每周集中赋能"] Office["每周一次 a16z 办公室集会"] Speakers["行业顶尖导师分享<br/>(Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz,<br/>Zynga 及 Vercel 创始人等)"] OfficeHours["20-30 家团队分组 Office Hours<br/>(招聘首批员工、首单签约、社媒发布、<br/>大企业与中小企业销售差异等)"] Network["沉浸于旧金山科技生态圈<br/>(接触投资人、同行交流与资源链接)"] end Tech --> Office Biz --> Office Office --> Speakers Office --> OfficeHours Office --> Network ``` 为了留给团队充足的冲刺时间，Speedrun 每周仅安排一次正式活动。在这一天，所有人齐聚 a16z 办公室，聆听顶级创业者的内部分享（包括 Marc Andreessen、Ben Horowitz 以及 Zynga、Vercel 的创始人等）。随后展开 20 到 30 家公司规模的分组答疑研讨会（Office Hours），共同探讨初次招聘、获取首批企业客户、社交媒体发布策略、大型企业与中小企业（SMB）销售差异等实战问题。一周其余的时间，创始人则完全沉浸在旧金山的科技创业圈中接触投资人和同行，在数周内经历高密度的洗礼。 ### `13:17` 早期投资的幂律法则与创业失败后的价值 针对 Matt Perault 提出的“当早期项目无法成功时该怎么办”的疑问，Andrew Chen 直言不讳地指出，风险投资从本质上遵循极其残酷但数十年未变的幂律分布（Power Law）。在传统的风投数学模型中，大约有一半的公司会彻底关门注销（Fold）；另有 20% 到 30% 能够收回成本或微赚一点；全行业的全部利润，几乎都来自那处于前 10%（十分之一）甚至更少、打出全垒打（Grand Slam）的顶级公司。 对于那些未能成功的公司，Andrew Chen 强调这并不意味着终点。虽然投资机构通过顶级项目实现财务回报，但机构在业界的声誉却是靠如何对待那些每周工作 100 小时、拼尽全力却依旧倒下的创业者建立起来的： - **再次投资创始人**：在硅谷文化中，这笔投资相当于花了上百万美元给创始人上了一堂最高级别的创业实战课。Andrew Chen 直言：“We make our reputations with how we work with all the founders that are working hard, working 100 hours a week.” 无论回顾微软、Uber、Slack 还是 OpenAI，核心创始人往往都有过多次历练。就在访谈的前一周，a16z 刚刚再度投资了一位此前失败并退还了少许剩余资金的创始人，因为他带来了更成熟的第二个点子。 - **人才回流与生态循环**：创业失败后，许多创始人需要一段时间休整健康并恢复个人财务状况。这类创始人是就业市场上的极度稀缺资产——他们习惯解决非结构化问题，掌握最前沿技术，执行力极强。其他处于上升期的初创企业往往会抢着雇佣他们去负责内部新产品线。两三年后，这批人通常会再次自立门户，届时 a16z 又能获得优先投资的机会。 ### `16:32` 创业者的政策盲区与累积监管负担 Matt Perault 将话题引向政策层面，提到 a16z 政策团队近期撰写的《来自车库的问候》（Greetings from a Garage）报告。该报告模拟了几个年轻人在加州的车库里开发下一代科技产品时所面临的真实法律与合规境遇。Matt 强调，立法者和传统法务团队往往陷入“增量思维”，只讨论某项单独新提案（如某项 AI 提案）是否会增加负担，但 a16z 州政策团队负责人 Kevin 提出的核心洞见在于：对于初创团队而言，监管负担是**全盘累积的（Cumulative）**。 在加州，即便是一个刚在咖啡馆敲定构想的双人小团队，在着手写下第一行代码的瞬间，就必须同时面对堆叠多年的法律框架：去年通过的数据相关法案、前年设立的数据溯源要求，以及数年前落地的加利福尼亚州隐私法规（CCPA/CPRA 等）。Matt 总结道：“And so really the policy picture is the composite of all those things. It's not an individual one of them.” 这种复合型的合规壁垒，往往直接砸在完全缺乏法务支持的极早期创作者身上。 ### `20:00` 早期初创团队的生存法则与监管重负 在车库创业、合租当室友、或者一起拼乘一辆无人驾驶 Waymo 前往 a16z 办公室的最早期阶段，创始人们对于“政策”和“监管”的感知与大公司截然不同。对于这个阶段的团队来说，他们所做的事情甚至很难称得上是一家“公司”，往往只是两三个伙伴试图验证一个产品原型或想法。Andrew Chen 指出，这个时期的创始人处于极度的使命聚焦状态，任何横亘在他们面前的制度性阻碍，都在凭空增加试错摩擦。当创始人好不容易完成公司注册、准备招募前几名员工时，立刻就会面对一沓厚重的合规法律文件。然而，这些法律条文与繁琐程序在设计之初往往针对的是规模庞大、拥有成群法务专家与合规团队的大企业。尽管 a16z 也会尽力协助旗下团队应对，但这些初创企业的唯一目标只是“生存”，面对监管的直接体验几乎不可避免地是负面的——更糟糕的是，很多现行规则在客观上反而成了大型科技巨头或既得利益产业的护城河。 与此同时，这些极早期的初创团队根本没有精力参与公共政策议题。他们既雇不起游说人员，也没有任何渠道在政治决策过程中发声。Andrew Chen 感叹，这些创始人为了让业务运转起来，每天都在拼命工作，甚至连好好吃顿晚饭或洗个澡的时间都没有，根本不可能腾出精力去处理日常生存之外的事项。这种话语权的缺席并非暂时性的疏忽，而是一个在时间维度上不断滚雪球的结构性困境。 - 创立初期状态：往往仅有两三名创始成员，在车库或合租公寓中办公，其业务形态更偏向“项目”而非成熟企业。 - 监管合规错配：现行的诸多监管法规与文件流程是为具有成熟法务体系的大企业设计的，小微初创公司缺乏专业支持与合规资源。 - 精力分配瓶颈：创始人处于每周超长工作周期的极限生存模式，完全缺乏游说团队与参与政治流程的闲暇。 - Andrew Chen 谈及早期创始人的生存现实时直言：“There's no company because it's just the two guys or gals trying to make things work.” - Andrew Chen 描述合规负担对微型团队造成的压力：“Every obstacle that is put in front of them, along the way for them to just prove that their initial product can even work just adds friction.” - 针对创始人为何无法在政策场域发声，Andrew Chen 强调：“These guys don't have lobbyists. They're not involved in the political process. They're not really represented in all these ways because, frankly, they just don't have time.” --- ### `22:30` “小科技”的缺席与政策制定者的认知盲区 Matt Perault 与 Andrew Chen 探讨了投资机构替初创企业发声时面临的现实悖论。政策制定者往往更希望直接与创业者对话，而非听取风险投资人的意见；但现实情况是，创业者正忙着以极短的节奏赶工迭代，根本抽不出时间驱车前往加州首府萨克拉门托，或者搭乘航班飞往华盛顿特区乃至布鲁塞尔去陈述监管诉求。两三个人的微型初创团队所面临的生命周期极为紧迫——他们的规划窗口可能不是一年，甚至不是六个月或三个月；在此期间如果无法突破，公司可能就不复存在了。因此，从投资回报率（ROI）的角度来看，创始人亲自参与政策游说的机会成本高得令人无法承受。 这种现实导致政策辩论中的声音严重失衡：大企业、成熟跨国集团以及面临颠覆的传统行业在立法机关前设有专门团队长期游说，而代表着未来就业创造与技术创新的“小科技”（Little Tech）群体却几乎完全缺席。Matt Perault 提到，当 a16z 在政策讨论中代表这些新兴初创公司提出不同观点时，往往会遭遇政策制定者的抵触。官员们常以“整个行业都已经达成共识”为由要求 a16z 妥协，但他们口中的“全行业”实际上仅代表了 Big Tech 或大型金融机构的诉求。Matt Perault 明确回应，初创公司与巨头的诉求不一致完全是常态，因为两者的生态定位与生存诉求从根本上就是截然不同的。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 政策博弈中“大科技”与“小科技”的声音失衡 accDescr: 对比大型科技企业与极早期初创团队在时间预算、政策参与渠道以及政策诉求上的差异。 subgraph BigTech["大型成熟企业 (Big Tech)"] BT1["拥有充沛合规与法务团队"] --> BT2["常驻游说代表（华盛顿/布鲁塞尔）"] BT2 --> BT3["主导并定义'行业共识'"] end subgraph LittleTech["微型初创企业 (Little Tech)"] LT1["仅有 2-3 人，规划周期仅数月"] --> LT2["全天候赶工，无法离开工位"] LT2 --> LT3["在政策制定场景中缺席"] end BT3 -->|"形成合规壁垒与护城河"| Outcome["政策过度偏向大企业<br>增加微型团队生存阻力"] LT3 -.->|"由 VC 等机构代为发声"| Outcome ``` - 规划周期差异：初创公司的生存窗口以月甚至以周计算，缺乏传统大企业按年度规划公共事务的从容度。 - 发声渠道失衡：监管决策者接触到的大多是大型科技公司或面临被颠覆的传统巨头，极少能听到三十岁左右日夜拼搏的年轻创始人的诉求。 - 行业共识陷阱：立法者常将“大企业达成一致”误认为是“科技行业整体意见”，忽视了小企业截然相反的利益关切。 - Andrew Chen 解释初创公司生命周期极为紧凑的现实：“You may not know if you have a company in a year.” - Matt Perault 讲述政策官员对多元诉求的排斥态度：“Like they'll say, well, all of industry agrees on this.” - 针对为何必须为初创群体发出异议，Matt Perault 坚定表态：“We're representing a different part of the ecosystem. So, of course, we don't agree on everything.” --- ### `25:00` 初创公司的地理流动性与硅谷生态的维系 由于初创团队在创立初期规模极小，他们拥有极高的地理流动性，能够自由选择“在何处扎根生芽”。Andrew Chen 回忆自己于 2007 年搬到旧金山湾区时的情景：当时整个科技世界的重心还在帕洛阿尔托（Palo Alto）、山景城（Mountain View）以及半岛一带。随后，创业中心整体北移至旧金山市区；紧接着，纽约迅速崛起为另一个庞大的创业中心，各大风险投资机构也在过去几年纷纷进驻伦敦及欧洲其他核心枢纽。这种流动性在 AI 时代尤为明显：如果某地过早出台严苛繁琐的监管限制，仅由两三人构成的 AI 初创团队可以轻易搬离并选择更友好的地区。在历史上，近半数风险投资支持的初创团队是由第一代移民建立的，湾区一直深刻受益于这种全球人才的高流动性。然而，Andrew 警示称，这种生态繁荣并非理所当然，加州不可能永远无条件保持其创业圣地的统治地位。 创始人选择创业地点的考量往往是多维度的。一方面是硬性生活与运营成本：例如硬件制造或 Deep Tech 类初创公司需要大量平价的厂房和仓库空间，促使洛杉矶的埃尔塞贡多（El Segundo）或德克萨斯州成为新兴聚集地。另一方面，尽管远程协作让写代码、拿首笔收入和招募早期员工变得扁平化，但真正实现规模化扩张依然高度依赖资本、顶尖大学、大客户与投资机构高密度协同的集聚效应。本轮 AI 浪潮的爆发让大批疫情期间分散在各地的开发者重新回流旧金山湾区，进一步延续了该生态的生命力。然而，加州目前正在讨论的“财富税”（Wealth Tax）等政策提案令 Andrew 深感忧虑，这类举措可能会直接促使大量家族办公室和资深投资人撤离加州，进而严重削弱硅谷原有的生态活力与核心竞争力。 - 硅谷地理演变：从 2007 年半岛（Palo Alto、Mountain View）独大，到旧金山市区崛起，再到纽约及欧洲伦敦等全球多中心格局。 - 团队高度机动：微型初创团队轻资产运行，对营商环境与 AI 监管政策极其敏感，能够随时迁移到摩擦更小的管辖区。 - 移民驱动创新：统计显示近 50% 获风投资助的创业公司拥有第一代移民背景，跨国与跨区流动性是创新生态的重要支柱。 - 硬件与深科技外流：受场地成本与实验室需求影响，部分产业外溢至洛杉矶 El Segundo 或德克萨斯州。 - 资本密度与回流：疫情后 AI 浪潮促使人才重聚湾区，但拟议中的“财富税”可能加速高净值资本与家族办公室外流，冲击投资网络。 - Andrew Chen 强调维护湾区独特生态的重要性：“It is something that is unique, not just in the world, but even within the U.S., in order to have this fertile of an ecosystem for startups and new technology.” ### `30:00` Tech Week 的生态拓展与政策圈的深度参与 Andrew Chen 介绍了由 Speedrun 团队孵化和运营的 Tech Week 项目。Tech Week 的核心宗旨是在各大主流城市庆祝初创企业、前沿技术与创新进步。该活动已经在旧金山、洛杉矶、纽约等地成功举办，并且当年首次拓展到了波士顿。关于如何提前发掘尚未意识到自己是创业者的潜在人才，Andrew 指出，如果一个人具备特定的工作经验与履历背景，又频繁出现在各种初创活动中，那么这个人很可能处于“对创业充满好奇”的状态，并在未来几年内真正迈出创业步伐。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Tech Week 政策生态网络 accDescr: 展示 Tech Week 如何连接政策制定者、领事馆、风投机构与早期初创团队 subgraph Participants["政策与政界参与者"] Gov["1,000+ 政府官员与市长办公室"] Pol["1,000+ 政策研究专业人员"] Cons["各国驻地领事馆（如英国领事馆）"] end subgraph Platform["Tech Week 核心平台"] TW["Tech Week 多城联动<br/>(SF, LA, NY, Boston)"] end subgraph LittleTech["早期初创生态 (Speedrun)"] Founders["2-3 人微型初创团队<br/>(Little Tech)"] VC["a16z 及风投机构桥梁"] end Gov --> TW Pol --> TW Cons --> TW TW <--> VC VC <--> Founders ``` 在回应政策话题是否渗透进 Tech Week 时，Andrew 透露，政策生态的参与度正以令人兴奋的速度增长。在过去一年的所有 Tech Week 活动中，与政策相关的专题活动共吸引了超过 4,000 名参与者，其中包括 1,000 多名政府官员以及 1,000 多名政策专业人士。地方政府机构（例如市长办公室）和联邦层面的政策制定者纷纷借此平台展开对话。同时，多国驻美领事馆也深度介入，例如英国领事馆就极为积极，致力于搭建本国创新生态与旧金山湾区科技枢纽之间的跨国桥梁。 - 举办城市：旧金山、洛杉矶、纽约，以及最新加入的波士顿。 - 参与规模：各类政策主题活动共有超过 4,000 人参加，包含逾 1,000 名政府公职人员及逾 1,000 名政策专家。 - 国际联动：英国领事馆及其他多国领事机构积极参与，促进跨国资本与技术交流。 ### `32:15` 对政策制定者的三点建言：理解“小科技”的真实诉求 当被问及如果在 Tech Week 的走廊上偶遇国会议员、地方官员或外交代表时会传递什么信息，Andrew Chen 给出了三条核心洞察。首先，每个城市或州是否拥有繁荣的初创生态完全是一种自主选择：“I think the first is to just have them, you know, understand that it's a choice whether or not each state or each city wants to have startups or not. And if you want to have startups, you have to do things to make it conducive to having startups.” 他强调，友好的环境不仅针对创始人本身，还必须覆盖天使投资人、早期员工等围绕生态的所有参与者。 其次，绝大多数政策制定者并未与“小科技”（Little Tech）展开实质性对话。由于微型团队缺乏公关与游说力量，与他们沟通需要政策制定者主动跨越摩擦成本。不同赛道的需求存在巨大分化：纯软件公司与 AI 公司截然不同，而 AI 又与硬件或机器人企业大相径庭。例如当年机器人公司激增，这类企业对物理地产、供应链、特定类型投资者和产业合作伙伴有着独特的急迫需求。最后，Andrew 代表 a16z 向政策制定者发出公开邀请，表示非常乐意充当桥梁，安排政策官员与 5 到 10 家精心挑选的、仅有两三人的微型初创企业闭门座谈，倾听真实痛点。 ### `35:00` 早期创始人的纯粹乐观与跨越认知鸿沟 Matt Perault 分享了自己的亲身体验，透露自己即将前往 Speedrun 的最新训练营与创始团队交流。他回顾了以往与早期创业者沟通政策议题时的场景：有时某些法规并不切中要害，但在另一些时刻，当提及正在推进的某些监管法案时，创始人的脸上会闪过一丝恐慌。那种神情传达出的潜台词是：“我正在构建的使用场景可能会面临监管阻力，但我认为这个场景极具吸引力，而政策制定者根本不理解我们到底在做什么。”Matt 指出，政策团队的职责正是弥合创始人与立法者之间的认知鸿沟（delta）。 Andrew Chen 对此深表赞同，并感叹与这些早期团队共事的奇妙体验。在 Speedrun 当期批次中，创始人普遍极其年轻，许多人刚满 20 岁出头，甚至有一支由 18、19 岁年轻人组成的团队，他们选择放弃大学学业来全职追求梦想；与此同时，团队中也不乏曾打造出数十亿美元独角兽公司的二次创业者。由于大家正处于项目的起步阶段，交流格外真诚且充满乐观。他们站在技术前沿探索，尚未被现实中的条条框框所束缚，这种纯粹的冲劲让对话格外富有感染力。播客在双方探讨科技未来与常规法律免责声明中落下帷幕。 ## Notable quotes > `32:15` I think the first is to just have them, you know, understand that it's a choice whether or not each state or each city wants to have startups or not. And if you want to have startups, you have to do things to make it conducive to having startups. — Andrew Chen > `13:17` We make our reputations with how we work with all the founders that are working hard, working 100 hours a week. — Andrew Chen > `22:30` You may not know if you have a company in a year. — Andrew Chen ## Mentioned Andrew Chen, Matt Perault, Speedrun, a16z, Slack, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Zynga, Vercel, Waymo, Uber, Microsoft, OpenAI, Kevin, Tech Week, Airbnb, GitHub, CCPA, CPRA ## Video description a16z’s Matt Perault sits down with General Partner and Speedrun lead Andrew Chen on the a16z AI Policy Brief to explore what “Little Tech” actually looks like at the earliest stages, and why the realities of building a two- or three-person startup are often missing from policy debates. Andrew takes us inside Speedrun, where founders are often starting companies from kitchen tables, working with tiny teams, and trying to determine in a matter of months whether their idea can become a viable business. He explains why these founders rarely have the time or resources to engage with policymakers, even as regulation can have an outsized impact on whether and where they build. Matt and Andrew also discuss how regulatory burdens accumulate for young companies, why startups can choose where to put down roots, the role of ecosystems like Tech Week, and what policymakers can do to hear directly from the founders who may otherwise be absent from the conversation. This episode originally appeared on the a16z AI Policy Brief. [Source](https://mgln.ai/e/1344/afp-848985-injected.calisto.simplecastaudio.com/3f86df7b-51c6-4101-88a2-550dba782de8/episodes/6aaa7c3b-d4a0-432b-a65d-49def5d32074/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=3f86df7b-51c6-4101-88a2-550dba782de8&awEpisodeId=6aaa7c3b-d4a0-432b-a65d-49def5d32074&feed=JGE3yC0V)

[32:15] Andrew Chen: I think the first is to just have them, you know, understand that it's a choice whether or not each state or each city wants to have startups or not. And if you want to have startups, you have to do things to make it conducive to having startups. [13:17] Andrew Chen: We make our reputations with how we work with all the founders that are working hard, working 100 hours a week. [22:30] Andrew Chen: You may not know if you have a company in a year.

[25:00] Andrew Chen: It's not certain that California will always be the best place to start companies. And so I think it's important for us to preserve this ecosystem because it is very, very special.

[0:00] This is truly little tech. The average team is two to three people. They're running their companies not in their office, not in the co-working space. They're running it at the kitchen table. For these founders, they are so mission-focused trying to survive as a business. They just don't have time to participate. They don't have lobbyists. They're not really represented. It's a choice whether or not each state or each city wants to have startups or not. What does it actually look like to build a startup from day one? Matt Peralt sits down with A16Z general partner and speedrun lead, Andrew Chen, to talk about Little Tech, the tiny teams at the very beginning of building a company. Andrew shares what life looks like for founders who are often just two or three people building from a kitchen table, focused on getting a product to work and finding their first customers. They rarely have lobbyists, policy teams, or even the time to participate in debates about rules that could directly affect them. startups choose to build, what policymakers can learn by hearing directly from founders, and what it takes to create an environment where the next generation of companies can get started. Andrew, welcome to the A16Z AI Policy Brief. Thank you for having me. So you lead our Speedrun program. So can you tell us a little bit about what Speedrun is? Yeah. So, you know, many folks in the audience will know that startups have to try to find them on day one. when the founders are just starting to think about their companies. And so what's great is we host a program based in the San Francisco office, where we will announce to the broader internet and through our marketing channels and podcasts and Substack D's letters and everything else that we'll be investing up to a million dollars into brand new startups. And the ones that we really focus on are the ones where folks are just getting going. Folks that maybe have full-time jobs and they're starting to come up with a new idea with their best friend and they want to go start something. It could be folks that have already left their roles or they just graduated from school and they are coming up with something new. And so what we do is we spend 12 weeks with them. They get the full force and power of the firm and all of our relationships and all of that great stuff. And then after we invest, share them with the broader ecosystem. We host a speedrun demo day where we have over a thousand angel investors and seed funds and many others come and invest. And then we go from there and kind of release them off in the world. And hopefully we have the opportunity to invest more in the future and to work with founders as kind of the beginning of a lifelong relationship with them. That's the idea. How do you decide what looks like a company that you want to have as part of the speedrun program? At its core, in the earliest days, there are just so many examples of ideas changing all the time. Many of you guys know that a product we use every day, Slack, originally started out as a browser-based video game company, and many, many other examples down the line. And so what we try to do at its core is to really just invest in the best people. unique experience in their past. And that could be anything from enormous athletic accomplishments, you know, on their way to a career in tech, or it could be that they started a GitHub, you know, repo that has now thousands of stars and it's growing incredibly fast. Or it could be, you know, some of the traditional markers where they have gone to elite universities and had, you know, sort of learned elite, you know, like incredible, unique insights at some of our best AI companies. And then they're ready to use that in a new company as well. I think we're very open-minded. And so we actually have, mostly folks out of the Bay Area actually all over America, a little slice from other places in the world, mostly focused on the U.S. And it's amazing to watch founders that are from, whether it's New York or Texas or Florida or Midwest or any of these other places actually come to San Francisco, get to experience what it's like to be in the Bay Area. We work with them, of course. And a lot of them go back to their home communities and continue to build their companies. And of course, quite a few of them stay in the tech companies here. We're very happy when either of those happen. So what is kind of interested in the range of types of sizes of companies that might participate in speed run it sounds like on the small side it might be a couple of people who just decided to, who just have an idea, like really the smallest of the small, how large did the companies get? Yeah, this is truly little tech, you know, [5:00] When we talk about little tech, this is it. I think the average team is two to three people. They are running their companies not in their office, not in a co-working space. They're running it at the kitchen table. It's really the source of a lot of the success that we've seen in the overall American industry really starts in these very small places. We invest up to a million dollars and then hopefully they raise more at Demo Day and hopefully they keep going. And eventually they become incredible employers and pillars of the industry. And we want to be with them from that journey from day one. And what are organizations that would be too large to apply to? for the speed run. Like what's the, what's the upper bound? Yeah, the upper bound. I mean, honestly, for us, we would say, as soon as you've taken capital elsewhere, you're We would consider that maybe not disqualifying, but it would be sort of like, maybe. So you're kind of at a point where the question is, well, how many folks can you get to bootstrap the company together? So if you have a group of five friends that all went to college and they trust each other a lot and they want to spend six months on their own dime working on something, of course, we would love to back a team like that, especially one with that much trust. But very rarely would we see a team above... you know, three, four or five people at that point. At some point, you know, you kind of don't want to, you don't want to divide the company's ownership to be too small, especially because people come and go. You probably need to, you know, some people's life situations will be such that you'll need to actually pay them. And so, yeah, so we, again, really, it's like a two or three person thing, typically. So we invest in different phases of company life cycles. We have a growth team. That's when companies tend to get larger. or speedrun as you're describing it as like the littlest of the little tech. Why did we as a firm and why did you decide that this was an important part of the lifecycle to support? Yeah, I think that... The way I see the mission for A16Z speedrun is that we're in the We want to get as close as possible to the moment that founders are actually created and new companies are created. Um, My first couple of years at the firm, I spent more in Series A, Series B. And so you're writing checks there where these are mature professionals. mature businesses, or there's at least a glimmer of a business there. And so you're investing 10, 15, $20 million. And so by that point, you know, yeah, you have customers, you have, you have, you have metrics to look at, you have a team, etc. And that's a wonderful place to invest. And historically, it's been maybe the best place to invest. For us, one of the really magical things, something that I take a lot of just personal pride and excitement in, is the idea that we are not just waiting for entrepreneurs to show up at our doorstep, at A16Z, but we're actually helping create the companies in the first place. So for example, in the last Speedrun dashed through 70 companies. And of the 70, there was probably a dozen where These were folks that had full-time jobs, and they had to turn in the laptops and their badges. And we couldn't even wire the money over because they didn't have a company to even incorporate. And so we sort of helped incept the idea of like, hey, let's create the most powerful and best path to starting the company. And I think a lot of those founders eventually would have eventually started businesses. you just can't get that bug out of your ear. But I would like to think that we maybe pulled some of that ActiveV forward. And so maybe folks that maybe would have... waited another for another five or 10 years of work experience and financial stability, you know, maybe they would have taken that that that jump. And what an amazing time in the AI era, you know, to encourage them to to, you know, jump in at the right moment. Can you give a little texture to what a day in the life looks like for a speed run company, like when they're part of the program? What does their day to day look like both as part of the program? And then I assume you see, you know, again, there's like high, high levels of variance, I'm sure. But like, what are the kind of the common things that you see about founders who are operating at this stage? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, you know, if you can kind of picture in your head, you might have, you know, two founders, that are originally, you know, they're based in Austin, Texas, they're based in Chicago, they're based in, you know, pick your city. We also have had teams from, you know, from Utah, we've had teams from all over the US, quite a few from New York, quite a few from Pacific Northwest as well. [10:00] So kind of imagine you have two people, they get accepted to this program, they're very excited, they're very excited. They have to incorporate the company. They get the money. It gets wired in. They've never seen that much money in their life. They're excited. So they buy plane tickets. They come to San Francisco. And they typically, you know, what we'll do is we have a, we literally have a welcome to SF guide that is, these are the neighborhoods we recommend. Here's how you go on Airbnb and, you know, pick the right ones. And so they do that. And we try to create a community. And so we have all these Slack instances and email lists and, you know, and you're meeting other founders. And so, you know, back to your kind of a day in the life of you, you kind of imagine a founder, you know, waking up, they're often, for the duration of the program, they're roommates with their co-founder. So you are spending 24-7 together, truly. You're not living somewhere fancy. You're somewhere typically close to the A16Z office. A lot of these folks are either working together at their homes. And we also offer access to the A16Z offices. So sometimes they'll end up walking in or taking an Uber in, taking a Waymo into the office and then they end up in... We have a couple of co-working spaces where you'll spend time. And the only thing that they should be spending time on really is just to figure out is this business going to work? They got to build the product and they got to sell the product. And they got to do it in a short period of time. And so typically you'll have maybe two co-founders. One will be more of a business co-founder. One will be more of a technology and product co-founder. The technology and product co-founder is typically using a lot of AI right now, a lot of AI coding. So rather than going out and needing to to add a lot of cost and maybe outsourcing parts of your coding or hiring a bunch of young people to do coding, you can just focus on just, hey, how effective can one or two people be right now? And let's just make this business stable and survive. Then let's go hire a bunch of folks. Then the business co-founder is often out there interviewing customers, talking to customers, trying to make deals happen. And so there's often this dichotomy that we see of the outward-facing and then the inwards-facing product and technology founder as well. What we do with Speedrun is once per week, we end up having some formal programming. So we want to make sure the companies have as much time to work as possible. But we will call them in once per week. They come to the ACC and Z office. We'll typically have a speaker who is, you know, we've had some amazing, amazing founders, you know, the founder of, you know, Zynga or, you know, Vercel. We've had, of course, Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz with us many times as well. You know, that's always fantastic. And then we do these office hours where they will sit in a group of 20, 30 companies and they will talk to each other about problems they're trying to solve. So we run these office hours. We talk about everything from hiring your first employees to signing your first customers. How do you launch on social media? What's the difference between selling into a large enterprise versus selling into SMB? All the things that you do. And of course, Thank you. We spend a lot of time on that as well. And then hopefully the rest of the week, they're out and about working and they're being immersed in the milieu of the SFTech ecosystem. So they're meeting a ton of people, meeting a ton of investors, learning all of that. And so, yeah, we're very excited about just everything that can happen in just a couple of weeks. So I know, like, obviously... the most exciting thing to talk about is success, the success part of the ecosystem. But in venture, like there's a lot of not success, right? It's like sort of the nature of the business. And I assume the majority of the business will be in, in, and the earlier you go in the life cycle, the more true that is more companies don't succeed. So what does that look like for speed run for Spence? Like, When companies come through the program and then they're not able to launch a successful business, at least the one that we funded as part of the program. What does that pathway look like? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think historically in in the venture capital business overall, you often, you know, the colloquial description is something like half the company's. don't work out at all. They just kind of outright fold. Then you'll have another, if that's like five in ten companies, you'll have another two or three where you make a little money, and then all the money is made in that [15:00] kind of top decile, the one out of 10, where you get the grand slam. And that just seems to be true mathematically, which is just amazing. It's been very consistent over many decades. So, you know, To your question on what happens to the ones that fold, well, a bunch of great things happen, right? I mean, first, we... We think that even though we as a firm make the money on the power law kind of exceptional companies that break through. We make our reputations with how we work with all the founders that are working hard, working 100 hours a week. They're completely plugged in. They're working weekends, like the whole thing. And it just doesn't work out. And sometimes it's to no fault of their own. Sometimes there's just a market downturn. They're starting a pre-AI you know it's because of of all these kind of you know like many many different potential things that could happen and so as a result um The best thing we can do for those companies is, number one, should we back the founders again? That's one very special thing about that Silicon Valley mentality. You've just spent... you know, a million bucks educating these founders. about how to start a company. Hopefully, they can start another company. And by the way, whether you're talking about Uber or Slack or Microsoft or OpenAI or any of these companies. And when you look at the CEO and the founders involved. very frequently, more often than not, they have been involved in many other things along the way. And so we often love the idea of, and we just did actually, just actually last week, we just funded a founder again on a better idea than his first idea, even though he ended up just returning a little bit of the capital that he spent. So I think that's great. The other version is sometimes these founders, they need a little bit of a recharge. And what that means is they went at it completely, just 150%. And what they need is they need a little bit of time to rebuild their finances. They probably weren't paying themselves that well. They probably need some time to focus on their health. We find that a lot of these founders become very hot commodities because that means that you can get somebody that works hard. works on unstructured problems, is completely current on all of the newest technology, and you can get them at your company. And so what we've been seeing is a lot of teams will end up hiring each other. If one doesn't work out, you respect the founder, great, you hire them. And then maybe they spend two or three years with you. Maybe they'll lead some new initiatives and new products in your business. And then a few years later, they spin out and they're ready to start a new company. And then hopefully we as A16Z get another shot at them to work together. So yeah, that's all by perfectly expected, you know, as outcomes. And we just want to partner with these founders for their whole professional career. So I'd love to turn to policy now, since we're a policy substack. This is a policy, yes. Yeah, it's a policy brief. And so I'd love to like understand more about how the companies you work with think about policy issues. This is something that we We obviously do to some extent, but you're like living and breathing the founder side of it on a daily basis. And we've tried to kind of channel the concept in different ways. Like we recently wrote this piece. called Greetings from a Garage about what it looks like from a policy perspective if a couple of people go into a garage to build the next great tech tool in California. What is the regulatory landscape that they have to deal with? And it was a really helpful exercise because, you know, Often policy teams, legal teams will think about just incremental burden, like, If we pass, there's a new law that's been proposed. What happens if we pass this new law? How in the risk or not is it going to be? How helpful is it going to be? End. I think the insight that the head of our state team, Kevin, had when we were thinking about this piece is like, it's not just the incremental burden. It's all the things that a founder has to face from the moment they're building with the technology. So like in California, that doesn't just mean SB 53, which was passed last year. It means all these data provenance requirements from the session before. It means privacy law in California that was passed several years before. It's all cumulative. And the moment that you start building the tool, you have to comply with all these things. And so really the policy picture is, the composite of all those things. It's not an individual one of them. So I'm curious what you like, you know, when you're at the stage, like you're literally at the, like we just met in the coffee shop. We, [20:00] You know, we're in the garage, we're roommates. Um, we're, you know, we're, we're in the shared Waymo on the way to the A6CZ office. Um, At that phase, how do the people that you work with think about policy issues? for these founders, they are so mission-focused, right, to just make their company, make their product. I mean, it's not even a company at that point. It's like they might even think of it as a project or as a product. There's no company because it's just the two guys or gals trying to make things work. And so for them, from a policy perspective, look, I think every... Every obstacle that is put in front of them, along the way for them to just prove that their initial product can even work just adds friction. for the most part. So I think most of the founders, when you talk to them, they really see all that stuff as like, oh, wow, I've incorporated, I'm doing this thing, I'm hiring these people. Okay, you get the stack of paperwork this big. And, you know, a lot of these laws, a lot of the paperwork is designed for companies that are much, much larger than them, right, and have the ability to comply because they have teams of lawyers and teams of, you know, people, experts, you know, that are in there. And of course, we as H16Z try to help them. But for most of these folks... All they're trying to do is they're just trying to get going at all. and to survive as a business. And so generally, their interaction on the regulatory side of the world is usually negative because these are things that actually create protections often for either big tech or for other parts of the industry that they end up trying to disrupt. So I'd say that's Thank you. They just don't have time to participate, right? They don't. These guys don't have lobbyists. They're not involved in the political process. They're not really represented in all these ways because, frankly, they just don't have time. They may not even have time to shower or to have a nice dinner for themselves. They're working that hard, much less to do things that are kind of sit outside their kind of just day-to-day of just survival at that point. And that's a compounding thing. I mean, I think that's a dynamic that we encounter all the time because we show up, we represent little tech. but we're not, or I'm not a founder. And so... When... when we show up, people are like, well, we would, we'd rather talk to the startup. We don't want to talk to the investor in the startup, but the challenge is the, like, as you're saying, like the startups are, not showering, working 100-hour weeks, they're not going to go and make the drive to Sacramento or the flight to Washington or flight to Brussels and represent what it's like for... them to try to build under in the current regulatory environment. That's right. Yeah, well, and their timeline, a two-person startup's timeline, not only is it not, a year. You may not know if you have a company in a year. right? It may not even be six months. It may not even be three months. You might be working on really small time schedules. And so to make the investment, to fly to one of these places and to be involved, I do think it's really hard to carve out time and do it. Which is why I think both it's really important to have some mechanism to represent these things. people because these are the future job creators. These are the companies that are going to be employing folks and driving, continuing America's success on the technology field. But also, on top of that, the folks that maybe do show up in all these places and do advocate for tech. you get a very skewed view because you don't hear from little tech, but you might hear a lot from big tech. You might hear a lot from the industries that are getting disrupted and very little from the 30-year-olds that are – You know, that are spending night and day trying to make that happen. So sometimes we actually get hostile reactions from policymakers when we raise that point. Like they'll say, well, all of industry agrees on this. And when they say all of industry, what they means is big tech companies or sometimes it might be big financial services companies like large organizations. And they say, you have a different view and we need you to get on board. And we'll say in the policy conversation, Like it's sort of by design, at least some percent of the time, because there's lots of time where we agree with big tech companies. But we'll like when we disagree, we'll say, like, it's by design. We're representing a different part of the ecosystem. So, of course, we don't agree on everything. That's right. That's right. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's just from our [25:00] By a time ROI standpoint, it just doesn't make any sense. I think there's also a really unique thing because these teams are so small and they're kind of at their inception, which is they get to pick where they start the company from. Right. And, you know, I, I, I moved to the Bay Area in 2007, and in 2007, the world revolved around Palo Alto and Mountain View and the peninsula, what we think of as Silicon Valley. But I think folks I think are familiar with this now, that We saw a whole-scale migration of the center of the startup ecosystem being from the peninsula to San Francisco proper. And then, subsequently, we've seen it now spread where New York is now one of the huge startup hubs that's emerged. And over the last couple of years, all the major venture capital firms have opened offices in various places in London And in Europe, there's been other kind of major hubs that are created. And so I think there is also an interesting thing where that almost becomes part of one of the most important choices that you can make as a startup. which is where are you going to plant roots, where are you going to hire people from, where are you going to do that? And if you end up working on an AI company and you know from day one, that there's going to be a bunch of extra rules about how you can use AI. you know, the two guys, two gals... you know, startup, uh, They're very mobile. They can pick and choose where they want to go, and they do. And historically, the Bay Area has benefited from that mobility. I think there's some interesting stats about how nearly 50% of venture-backed startups are first-generation immigrants, for example, people who relocate in order to do it. It's probably approaching 100% at that point. I think the important note there is the Bay Area has certainly benefited from this. It's not certain that it'll last forever. It's not certain that California will always be the best place to start companies. And so I think it's important for us to preserve this ecosystem because it is very, very special. It is something that is unique, not just in the world, but even within the U.S., in order to have this fertile of an ecosystem for startups and new technology. Are you hearing founders talk about regulatory issues as one factor that they consider and where they end up citing the business? It is sometimes indirect, but... I think, for example, just, you know, like cost of living is a great, is a really simple one. Or if you're building a deep tech company, if you're building the next generation of manufacturing, you have to go somewhere where people are building large, that there's large scale lab and warehouse space at reasonable prices. And so I think you're seeing these pockets like El Segundo in LA, you're seeing folks building things in Texas for many of those from just the AI wave, you know, really centered here. So I think that's really extended the life of this ecosystem in a big way. A lot of people have been coming back to the Bay Area since the sort of COVID dispersal. And then I do think that... The ability for another indirect force is that the startups have to really move where there's investors. It turns out it's a lot easier to code and it's a lot easier to get your first dollar revenue and it's a lot easier to hire your first employee. You can do that anywhere. But actually getting capital to really scale your business requires the ability for investors to be there. where you have great universities co-located with customers, co-located with investors, kind of all in one spot. And I wonder and I worry about things like the wealth tax that are currently under discussion in its ability to potentially relocate a bunch of family offices and investors that are currently contributing in a big way and moving them to other geographies as one of the potential negatives for sort of... you know, making the Silicon Valley thing like less less dynamic and less powerful as a result. We've been talking a lot about the one to one relationships that you've developed as part of the speed run program, but you've also been really invested in trying to create ecosystems through the tech week program. What was the idea behind that? [30:00] program. So we started Tech Week and it's a program that sits in our team here within the speedrun umbrella. And what Tech Week really does is it's really a celebration of startups and technology and progress in all the major cities. And so we host it in San Francisco, we host it in LA, we host it in New York. And for the first time this year, we're actually hosting it in Boston as well. How do you discover a founder before they know if they're a founder? Well, we just feel like if you're a type of person with certain kinds of work experience, certain resume, and you're finding yourself attending a bunch of startup events, you know, like the probability of you starting something, like you're probably startup curious, but you're probably going to get there like sometime in the next few years. So that's what we found which which has been which has been fantastic our policy i is policy showing up at tech weeks like are you seeing it in the various different local ecosystems that you're tapping into yeah so we would love to do more um we we it definitely um uh exciting to see more and more of uh of an ecosystem around policy um so for I think across all of the tech weeks last year we had 4 attendees attending various policy-related events. And that includes over 1,000 folks from government, over 1,000 policy professionals. And then oftentimes, we've had events where local government will come together. So I know, you know, whether that's, you know, in the mayor's office or, you know, folks that work on the national sphere. We also have had a bunch of the consulates, you know, involved as well because, you know, they're all very interested in kind of building that bridge between their countries and particularly the San Francisco, you know, system. So, you know, the British consulate's been super involved on tons of stuff and then, you know, many other countries as well. So, yeah, so it's all it's been it's been great to have that as a burgeoning part of the Tech Week ecosystem. So if you see a local policymaker or a representative from a consulate or member of Congress at a Tech Week event and you chatting with them on the sidelines what would you relate to them about the realities of building a competitive company given what you know about what the early early stage really looks like yeah yeah Well I think I think I say a couple of things I think the first is to just have them you know understand that it a choice whether or not each state or each city wants to have startups or not And if you want to have startups, you have to do things to make it conducive to having startups. And there's a long list of things that might be involved in there. And it's not just for the founders, it's for the angel investors, it's for the employees, it's for all these things that surround that whole group. the second thing is as we were just talking about a couple minutes ago I think a lot of policymakers are not having real conversations with little tech it takes a little bit more friction you have to put in a little bit more time into it but again if we decide hey we want to have more startups in America we want more innovation in America or we're talking about that at the city level We have to figure out what are the things that we can unblock for a lot of these companies And those things change A software company will tell you something different than an AI company which will tell you something different than a hardware company and a robotics company It's very dynamic. One year, for example, this year, we are seeing way more robotics companies than in any year past. And they have very different needs compared to, they have supply chain needs, they have real estate needs, they have a different set of investors, they have potentially a different set of partners. And so we have to actually dig into that in a real way. And then maybe thirdly, to just maybe talk our book, I think working with folks like A16Z and other venture capital firms and other ecosystem kind of players, what we can do is we can certainly help open the door to creating those conversations. And so open offer to the policy folks that are listening to this. Anybody that wants to come and spend time with five or 10 really curated little tech startups that are two, three people and just kind of hear like, okay, what do you need to be successful? We're very happy to arrange that. Also, a lot of these companies are very... [35:00] to, you know, like certain sectors are particularly interested in partnering, you know, with government. So I think I think that's all great. I'm a policy person who's interested in doing that. I'm actually coming up to talk to a speed run, talk to a speed run cohort next week. So I'm looking forward to it. It's been fun doing that in the past, because like you said, you really see in those conversations, like when you talk through various different policy issues, sometimes they're not that relevant necessarily to people in the room and then others really are. We've had conversations in the past where we're talking about, various different policy initiatives that are moving. And then you see like a panic look on someone's face where they're like, I'm building, I'm building in a way that I think, I'm building into a use case that might face regulatory headwinds, but I think the use case is really compelling. I don't think policymakers understand what we're trying to do. And so it's like interesting to see that delta and we've engaged with the sport speed run team in the past to make sure policymakers also appreciate that delta. Yes, I think that's right. And I think it's, you know, it's such a It is a wonderful thing to spend time with these teams because they're often, you know, very much young people. You know, we have a lot of folks that are in the early 20s. I think we even have a team that's all 18 and 19 year olds, for example, and then the current batch who decided to forego college and instead start the dream company. We also have. folks that are co-founders of billion-dollar companies that are now in the current management speedrun as well. But because these guys are all getting started, the conversations are so genuine. They're just full of optimism. They're so fun to talk. They're all on the cutting edge. They're not at a point where they are at the risk of hitting into a lot different things. Like it's often like just a really fantastic, you know, set of conversations just based on what these guys are. Andrew, thanks so much for joining the AI Policy Breed. Awesome. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. also an X at A16Z and subscribe to our Substack at a16z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only. It 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. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com forward slash disclosures.