Substack

a16z Partner: Hollywood Is Secretly Replacing Films With AI

Jul 23, 2026 · 50:27

Justine Moore, a16z partner and early backer of ElevenLabs, explains why AI microdramas — short, vertical soap operas — are becoming the fastest-growing entertainment format, with China's microdrama market now larger than its domestic box office. She argues model quality has reached 90-95% of filming, making it cheaper and faster, and professional storytellers are now using it to create compelling narratives. Amazon and Netflix have announced programs for fully AI-generated animations. ElevenLabs, which she backed at Series A, has crossed $500M in ARR. She highlights consumer agents like Town that automate tasks such as warm intros and expense forwarding, and sees the biggest opportunity in serving less technically sophisticated users and vertical industries like marketing and architecture.

5 Grand Slam Champion Maria Sharapova: Tennis Icon | Entrepreneur | Investor | New Media Creator

May 20, 2026 · 52:29

Maria Sharapova, five-time Grand Slam champion, reflects on her tennis career, emphasizing that most preparation happens when nobody's watching and that commitment to quality defined her proudest moments. She discusses the challenge of balancing fierce competition with personal boundaries, the business of sport and building a team, and how a shoulder injury in her early 20s first made her plan for a second act. Sharapova describes reinventing herself after retirement by taking a break and applying athletic lessons to entrepreneurship and her podcast 'Pretty Tough,' which explores the duality of grit and vulnerability. She shares her take on AI, noting its positive uses in sports like IBM's Wimbledon predictions and automated video analysis, but values human connection in media. In rapid-fire questions, she names Monica Seles and Steffi Graf as admired icons, Serena Williams as both the toughest opponent and a close friend who introduced her into the Tennis Hall of Fame, and says what makes her tough is the ability to say no.

How Many $10 Billion Startups Will There Be? | Eric Hippeau

May 13, 2026 · 57:21

Eric Hippeau, co-founder of Lerer Hippeau, argues that while AI is transforming tech faster than ever, startups must avoid being mere wrappers around foundational models, as they can be instantly disrupted. He explains that physical AI, combining hardware and AI in areas like robotics and defense, offers more defensible opportunities. Hippeau warns that the startup market is disconnected, with inflated seed valuations assuming many will reach $10B, but historically there's no market for hundreds of such companies. He discusses healthcare, where AI-driven diagnostics could make primary care nearly free, but political will is needed to overcome entrenched systems. On media, he shares lessons from building Huffington Post—keeping stories live and separating opinion—and predicts that AI could restore trust by providing verifiable facts. Hippeau also reveals he has rebuilt his firm's workflow around Anthropic's Claude, cites AR glasses as underrated, and notes that solo GPs must build teams to succeed.

How He Built This Full App Using ONLY 3 prompts | Colin Matthews

Oct 15, 2025 · 46:40

Colin Matthews, a vibe coding instructor, demonstrates how to build full-stack apps, convert Figma designs, and clone live websites using tools like Lovable, Bolt, Replit, Magic Patterns, and Alloy, arguing that the real challenge is distribution, not coding. He shows that bolt, Replit, and Lovable all generate similar results using the same underlying LLMs, with differences in UI and cost—Bolt costing about $5 for a virtual fitting room app. For Figma-to-code, Magic Patterns offers better code quality while Figma Make has superior visual fidelity but messy code. Website cloning via Chrome extensions like Alloy takes 5–10 minutes per page but currently lacks multi-page support. Matthews emphasizes that 90% of the work is easy, but the remaining 10% requires debugging skills, and advises aspiring builders to adopt a distribution-first approach—citing his own Wix extension that got 8,000 users with no marketing—rather than just focusing on product.