Why Does A16z Frontier Choose to Be Too Early?

Chris Dixon says a16z Frontier chooses to be too early because every good idea the firm has seen that involved technology has eventually worked, or he believes it will work if it has not worked yet. The qualifier is a good idea. Bad ideas exist. Almost everything that worked had a precursor that failed and was maybe 10 years too early. Timing is the hardest thing to predict, because the technology, the culture, the business environment, and the political environment all have to line up.

The fund accepts category risk. Some categories may not work. Oculus was bought, and 13 years later he still believes strongly in virtual reality, but it is not as mainstream as he wanted, because more hard technical problems remained. He does not claim to know what Marc Andreessen believes. The scenario he wants to invest behind is that AI may pull 20 years of work forward. Calling a hard problem a science project, rather than an engineering project, has to be reevaluated. Math is not the last field to tip. Physics is next, and hardware is moving. A 30-person team can credibly build a full-stack device company in a way that might have needed 1,000 people a decade ago.