Industrial AI targets trillion-dollar markets
Kalanick argues that food production, mining, and manufacturing are each multi-trillion-dollar markets that will be fully automated by industrial AI.
Snapshot · The a16z Show
Ben Horowitz and Travis Kalanick on Building Again
Explore episode
Aug 14, 2026
Where this was said
Uber's Original Culture: Meritocracy and Toe Stomping
At 4:29 · chapter starts 3:05
Ben Horowitz delivers a pointed retrospective on Uber's original culture document, singling out 'meritocracy and toe stomping' as the essential ingredient that was diluted when Kalanick departed [1] — Travis Kalanick "Uber's original culture document prized meritocracy and 'toe stomping' — a willingness to upset people in service of the best idea. Kalanic…" 02:55 . The idea — essentially that you must be willing to upset people in service of a better outcome — resonated with Kalanick deeply enough that he's rebuilt it at Atoms under the banner of 'best idea wins.' Horowitz invokes Andy Grove's Intel philosophy of 'constructive confrontation' as the intellectual ancestor of the same idea. Together, they make the case that the willingness to create productive conflict is not a personality flaw but a competitive weapon — and that companies which sand it down in the name of harmony are choosing comfortable mediocrity.
The Next Industrial Revolution: Food, Mining, Manufacturing
Automated food production cheaper than grocery shopping. Mining companies that own nothing but real estate. Kalanick believes these are near-certainties, not moonshots, and they dwarf anything digital AI has done to enterprise software.
Similar snapshots
50 free tools built total
Bhanu and his team built approximately 50 free tools to attract search traffic, each linked back to SiteGPT.
New tool built in under 5 minutes
With AI coding tools like Cursor, Bhanu can now create a new free marketing tool in less than 5 minutes by referencing existing tools.
KD filter < 10 for rankable keywords
Bhanu filters Ahrefs keyword results to show only those with a keyword difficulty below 10, making them realistic ranking targets for any decent website.
Minimum 1,000 monthly search volume
Bhanu sets a minimum search volume of 1,000 monthly searches when selecting keywords to target with free tools.
20 downloads/day at launch
PropGPT averaged 20 downloads per day right after launching on the App Store through influencer marketing.
4 months of rebuilding with no marketing
Eyal and Yali shut down all marketing and spent 4 months completely rebuilding PropGPT from scratch.
Over 40,000 downloads total
PropGPT has accumulated over 40,000 total downloads since launch.
LLM costs only $20/month
PropGPT's large language model (AI) operating costs are just $20 per month, and the cost is continually falling.
Ad monetization for games
Ad-based monetization works well for game apps where users spend extended time in-session, as seen with Grid and Wordle.
