Lenny Rachitsky: observation

Transcript context

…Look, I was building hardware when it wasn't in Vogue in 1995 and '96. Everyone's like, "Tony," and this was in the Valley, "Tony, you're crazy. It's all about the internet. We don't need any hardware." And then iPod comes, and I was pitching new businesses in '99 and 2000. They're like, "Well, that's the stupidest idea ever." Then the iPod comes out, "Tony, you want to leave Apple and start that business you wanted to do with hardware?" And then it was like, okay. Then it was all software mobile stuff again, like, " Okay, we don't need anything," but we can't get to the next level of software if we don't make the next level of hardware. And the revolution has to happen completely. You got to have the mobile network and the mobile network software for the mobile network to work. You had to have the MP3 player and the MP3 format bits to make that work. We're seeing with AI, we got to have AI plus all the data centers and edge compute to make that work. And then over time, the hardware becomes less, it becomes more mundane. Okay, it doesn't change as much, but all the software starts to then... So I've always just been continually going through the things that I love to do and doing the things at the full stack level, because that's where I know is innovation, that's what we had to do at Nest. We had to innovate at the software level, the hardware level, the network level to get the first thermostat out and then the Nest Protect and all that stuff. If we look now, going on, people are like, if you're a SaaS company or if you're a software only company, your software companies' worthless because anyone can vibe code it into the thing. And then they're like, "We're only funding companies that have atoms in their business plan with software." I'm like, "Duh. Where have you guys been?" So it's just funny to watch these cycles go and happen, and it's like, "Okay, all right, you guys can go chase your tails. I'm going to just keep here doing these full system kind of products and businesses." Yes, they're a lot harder, and yes, they cost more money, and yes, they're going to take longer to scale and adopt and blah, blah, blah, but they have staying power for years. And they bring new features that you could have never had if you just did software only because you need, especially, let's say, in robotics, you need new sensors and new this and new that and what have you. Look at Waymo, it's an electric car with tons of sensors and everything. It's a hardware platform. Maybe it doesn't look as streamlined as maybe a smartphone, but it's an incredible hardware platform with an incredible software platform. And that is something that we're going to be able to innovate on, and it'll become a platform for something else, I'm sure, delivery or this or whatever else. When Evan Spiegel's on the podcast, Snapchat founder, he said exactly this. This is why they've spent so much money on these specs, and he's just like, "This is the only way to survive in software is you need to have a hardware component now. " Yeah, just very interesting. Everything old is new again, and I've been in this game 35, 40 years. You just see it, and you're like, okay, I was there at '99 when the bottom fell out, and AI is different, but there's a lot of similarities, and we're going to have the gen one companies, the gen two companies. And when people really understand product instead of selling technology platforms that people have to figure out for themselves. So it's fun to watch. It's a game.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.