podcast

The $700 Billion AI Productivity Problem No One's Talking About

01.12.2025
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Russ Fradin sold his first company for $300M. He’s back in the arena with Larridin, helping companies measure just how successful their AI actually is.

In this episode, Russ sits down with a16z General Partner Alex Rampell to reveal why the measurement infrastructure that unlocked internet advertising's trillion-dollar boom is exactly what's missing from AI, why your most productive employees are hiding their AI usage from management, and the uncomfortable truth that companies desperately buying AI tools have no idea whether anyone's actually using them. 

The same playbook that built comScore into a billion-dollar measurement empire now determines which AI companies survive the coming shakeout.

Timecodes: 

— Introduction 

— Early Career, Ad Tech, and Web 1.0

— Attribution Problems in Ad Tech & AI

— Building Measurement Infrastructure

— Software Eating Labor: Productivity Shifts

— The Challenge of Measuring AI ROI

— The Productivity Baseline Problem

— Defining and Measuring Productivity

— Goodhart’s Law & the Pitfalls of Metrics

— The Harvey Example: Usage vs. Value

— Surveys vs. Behavioral Data

— Interdepartmental Responsiveness & Real-World Metrics

— Enterprise AI Adoption: What the Data Shows

— Employee Anxiety & Training Gaps

— The Nexus Product & Safe AI Usage

— The Future of Work: Job Loss or Job Creation?

— The Competitive Advantage of AI

— The Product Marketing Problem in AI

— The Importance of Specific Use Cases

Resources:

Follow Russ Fradin on X: https://x.com/rfradin

Follow Alex Rampell on X: https://x.com/arampell

 

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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and 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 http://a16z.com/disclosures.

Stay Updated:

Find a16z on X

Find a16z on LinkedIn

Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify

Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts

Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg

 

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and 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.


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