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Software is Eating Labor

Software is Eating Labor

12 segments available

Software has fundamentally changed the way we record, store, and share information. Its next act is to fundamentally change the nature of our economy, capturing trillions of dollars of value in the process. In this talk from the 2025 a16z LP Summit, a16z General Partner Alex Rampell discusses the history of filing cabinets and databases, how SaaS pricing moved from seats to outcomes, and how AI agents will accelerate the trend of the last 70 years of software progress. Timecodes: 0:00 Introduction 0:27 Historical Context: Automation and Labor 3:25 The Filing Cabinet Era: Digitizing Records 4:12 Case Studies: Software Transforming Industries 8:39 The SaaS Business Model and Its Limits 11:41 Labor Market Scale vs. Software Market 12:19 The Shift: Software Doing the Job 15:44 Case Study: Job Opening 18:11 Real-World Examples: AI in Action 21:01 The Human Element: Demoralizing Jobs & Language 22:52 Market Expansion: New Opportunities with AI 26:02 Conclusion: The Future of Software and Labor Resources: Follow Alex on X: https://x.com/arampell Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, nor used to evaluate any is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details, please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Segments Timeline

1
0:00 - 0:27
0:26 duration66 words

Introduction

"The worldwide SAS market is about $300 billion uh per year. The labor market in the US alone is 13 trillion. What software is now going after, the prize that it's going after is the labor market. Almo..."

2
0:27 - 3:25
2:58 duration610 words

Historical Context: Automation and Labor

"I'm going to talk about how software eats labor. Um and uh you know first Mark wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal a long time ago about 10 years ago about how software eats the world. I guess ..."

3
3:25 - 4:13
0:47 duration164 words

The Filing Cabinet Era: Digitizing Records

"I I want to take you through a journey of what the software market has always been because I think understanding the past is the best window of actually understanding the future and what's possible. S..."

4
4:13 - 8:40
4:27 duration923 words

Case Studies: Software Transforming Industries

"looked like to book an airline ticket in 1959? Like what how did American Airlines handle this? They probably had like lots of filing cabinets with like sheets like this. So Betty Owens calls up and s..."

5
8:40 - 11:42
3:02 duration627 words

The SaaS Business Model and Its Limits

"The people that looked at your time and attendance slip in 1940 were the same people that looked at it in 2015. But now the medium was not paper. It was not mainframe. It was cloud. And the reason why..."

6
11:42 - 12:19
0:36 duration122 words

Labor Market Scale vs. Software Market

"another example of just how much bigger these labor or quasi labor markets are like the $13 trillion of wages that we talked about um you know software revenue is very small. If you just take one cate..."

7
12:19 - 15:45
3:26 duration795 words

The Shift: Software Doing the Job

"And the reason why I wanted to start with the filing cabinets is like this is going to start moving to outcomes. Like the the the software is going to go from being the filing cabinet to effectively o..."

8
15:45 - 18:11
2:26 duration565 words

Case Study: Job Opening

"somewhat scraping Craigslist. Craigslist is this horrible site from the mid90s that has not changed since the mid '90s. And they have lots of listings for apartments. and you go look at an apartment a..."

9
18:11 - 21:01
2:49 duration489 words

Real-World Examples: AI in Action

"thought uh rather than me talk, I want to give you an example. Um, this is one of our portfolio companies, Happy Robot, which serves the uh the freight and uh and trucking space. So, so listen, this i..."

10
21:01 - 22:52
1:51 duration412 words

The Human Element: Demoralizing Jobs & Language

"again, AI very, very good at that. The other example is there there are a lot of demoralizing jobs out there. What is a demoralizing job? Well, collections is kind of a demoralizing job because you go..."

11
22:52 - 26:03
3:10 duration671 words

Market Expansion: New Opportunities with AI

"this is why I wanted to start with the story of filing cabinets because there was no software company for compliance because uh this is actually a fact from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The fastest..."

12
26:03 - 26:21
0:18 duration64 words

Conclusion: The Future of Software and Labor

"um and this is a global opportunity right I mean like the the US labor market big it's 13 trillion a year. The worldwide labor market's so much bigger. And our job on on behalf of your capital here, o..."