You've probably heard of Lil Miquela.

The 19 year-old has millions of followers. She's partnered with Samsung and Prada – even had fan fiction written about her!

But she's also not *real*.

I got to chat with her creators about her origin story.

Absolutely mind-bending. 👇 In an era where it's easier than ever to create an influencer, how to you get people to care?

Narrative.

Sounds easy, but is unthinkably hard.

@whatdotcd talks about inverting the media pyramid and what we can learn from the Kardashian narrative universe dating back decades.

God this is wholesome.

"A JAGUAR!"

The people wanted part 2. Here's part 2 AND part 3.

Does not disappoint. Somebody get Kenny a TV show!

🔗 Part 2: vm.tiktok.com/ZMY5tp7KM

🔗 Part 3: vm.tiktok.com/ZMY5tV1Ar

I've been following @jbrowder1's experiments for years...

Ranging from minor parking tickets all the way up to offering $1m to defend a Supreme Court case with his robot lawyer.

The latter was met with a threat of 6 months jail time.

We got the full scoop on the @a16z podcast. We tackle whether AI belongs in the courtroom, but also:

• Corporate & legal pushback
• Where AI currently falls short
• Why the law is so complex
• Cross-border possibilities
• AI's deflationary impact

And more. Plus, is AI already writing laws?

Entrepreneurship can look like an overnight success.

But it's often far from it.

For @zhaosaurus, building @SandboxVR meant a 7 year rollercoaster, including investing his life savings, a VR nuclear winter, a worldwide pandemic, and even Chapter 11.

Such an inspiring story. 🎢 People often talk about going "all in" on their startups.

But investing your own nest $500k egg when no one else will takes conviction to a whole new level.

One of the best decisions I've ever made was learning to code.

It took me 300 hours. 300 hours to change my life!

With new tools like Copilot and Ghostwriter, how quickly do you think ppl can learn today? I had the privilege of chatting with @amasad about this question and much more.

How might AI change the developer landscape?
Is it still worth learning to code?
Will the 1000x engineer exist?

Would recommend for anyone even remotely curious about code:

We’re officially 10% through the year, but that means we still have 90% left to create something remarkable.

Not sure what to build?

Here are 12 big ideas from partners at @a16z, ranging from games to compliance to healthcare to space, and of course... lots of AI opportunities. 1️⃣ Breakthroughs in Buying

@conniechan shares what's next for social commerce, as platforms aim to bridge the gap between inspiration and purchase.

While Western social apps increasingly look alike, there's opportunity to look East, where commerce intersects with entertainment.

After 5 years, just lost my drone to the Pacific Ocean.

Although I'm bummed, the little guy followed me all around the world.

From Alaskan glaciers to South African wineries to the waterfalls of Bali or the shores of Australia...

Thought I'd share a few of the adventures 😊 Bali: My on- and off-again home for 3 years.

This video features the few times I decided to get off my laptop and be a tourist. :)

Featuring waterfalls, the ridge walk, and Mount Batur.

Be sure to watch these in HD!

You can only have one. How would these rank from 1️⃣ to 6️⃣?

• 30% raise
• fully remote
• no meetings
• unlimited PTO
• access to a VA
• 4-day workweek Over 200 comments! I think I'll hire a VA to compile the data, just for fun.

Despite much variance in the data, it's clear there are several "perks" that many ppl would take over a substantial raise, signaling just how valuable they are.

HR peeps should be taking notes. 👀

6 months in and still pinching myself that my job is to host the @a16z podcast.

Today we released our best clips of 2022, with folks like @pmarca, @stevewoz, and @balajis, with topics ranging from generative AI to the supply chain to space debris.

So many lightbulb moments...💡 1/ Our first clip was from @pmarca, as he describes the moral panic around the automobile and how that resulted in red flag laws. 🚩🚩🚩

Makes you wonder what fear-based responses toward technology today might sound just as ridiculous in 100 years.

Southwest trolling everybody rn They've canceled 70%+ of flights and rebooking shows no availability through the new year.

MON: 2909/2989 canceled are Southwest
TUES: 2480/2750 canceled are Southwest

Callers waiting 10 hours on the phone. Might even be investigated by the US department of transportation...

In this episode of airport delays…

Pilot: “An employee overfueled the plane by 10,000 pounds, so we need to remove it. If it was just a little bit, I could burn it off, but in this case it’d take hours.”

10,000 pounds?! 😂 “Folks we have some bad news. They were only able to get the fuel out of one side of the wing.

So we might be here a little longer than expected.”

Hey @elonmusk, just listened to the space you were on.

Amazing attendance (100k!), some interesting dialogue, but terrible listener experience.

A few relatively straightforward product changes that would make the Spaces experience 10x better: 1) Give speakers the ability to test their audio, like Zoom does. Or at the very least, have a notification that pops up on their phone to notify them of bad connection or low-quality audio.

A nontrivial amount of the conversation was “can you hear me?” or “hey bro we can’t.”

The most underrated value add of ChatGPT:

The elimination of recipe sagas Compare the output above to position 1 on Google...

A truly unbelievable journey to get to the recipe.

I think I counted 13 ads?

This year’s most heated Thanksgiving debate: what is the most athletic sport?

Some arguing basketball. Some soccer. One person arguing surfing. Another arguing it’s definitely not football.

Help us settle it for good…

What is the most athletic sport and why? Overheard from the debate:

“I don’t think that Tom Brady is that great of an athlete.”

“How much of gameplay is actually in your control?”

“Kelly Slater is as athletic as LeBron.”

“Running fast is cool but it’s not athleticism.”

“Wait you think Phil Mickelson is athletic?”

Today is the day!

We relaunch the @a16z podcast with not 1, not 2, but 3 new episodes with some killer guests.

Together we cover the historic panic towards technology, generative AI, and space sustainability.

Plus, we'll be dropping episodes 2x a week from now on.

More below! 1️⃣ Pessimism toward tech is not new, yet still pervasive.

In our first episode back, @pmarca charts the historic panic around technology, how it upends power, regulation & red flag laws, changing your mind, reform, and why he still chooses optimism.

Couldn't be more excited to share what we've been working on.

New episodes dropping in just 48 hours.

Tell us, who do you want to see on the podcast next?

Much coverage of technology is lined in pessimism, despite it being a positive undercurrent of progress.

Just consider: you're likely reading this from a pocket-sized computer!

The @a16z podcast will highlight the bright side of technology, alongside the founders building it.

I recently went back down the rabbit hole 🕳 of untranslatable words and can't help but feel like they should be taught in schools.

There is such beauty and wisdom embedded in many, each only requiring a moment of exposure.

A few examples... Let's start with a familiar one.

In Japanese, the term "ikigai" is your reason for being.

More specifically, it's the intersection of:
1️⃣ what you love
2️⃣ what you're good at
3️⃣ what you can be paid for
4️⃣ what the world needs

I wish I had this frame earlier in life.

This was officially my last week at @TheHustle and @HubSpot.

The last 3 years with this team has been a dream.

A few (of the many) learnings from this period: Media is (still) golden.

It's not easy to master, but media provides infinite optionality.

Bc media = trust. And that can be applied to whatever you build next.

And no, it doesn't have to be a course. Could be a fund, a film, a product...

Mr. Beast is a great example of this.

In 1994, Jeff Bezos famously spotted a stat that made him leave his high-paying PE job to start Amazon:

💡 The Internet was growing 2300% per year.

What are the generation-defining stats of today?

I'll post a few to kick things off... 💡 The cost of mapping a genome has fallen ~100,000% over the last 15 years.

If that doesn't speak to you, we're talking about $100m down to <$1k – faster than Moore's law.

I love that people like this exist.

@SculptTheWorld creates the most incredible land art, taking hours at a time, despite his works often not lasting much longer than that. He also creates maaassive sand pieces, sometimes up to 50m (160ft) across!

Truly incredible.

Check out his entire gallery here:

🖼 instagram.com/sculpttheworld/

If you're looking in the right places, the internet is a treasure trove.

The best internet gems you've never heard of: I'll share 20+ tools, so I'll start by breaking them into 4 categories.

Tools that:
• Give perspective
• You can play with
• Center around data
• Can help creators

The common theme across all is that no one "needed" to make them, but we're all better off bc someone did.