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

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: 

0:00 — Introduction 

2:15 — Early Career, Ad Tech, and Web 1.0

3:09 — Attribution Problems in Ad Tech & AI

4:30 — Building Measurement Infrastructure

6:49 — Software Eating Labor: Productivity Shifts

8:51 — The Challenge of Measuring AI ROI

14:54 — The Productivity Baseline Problem

18:46 — Defining and Measuring Productivity

21:27 — Goodhart’s Law & the Pitfalls of Metrics

22:41 — The Harvey Example: Usage vs. Value

25:18 — Surveys vs. Behavioral Data

28:38 — Interdepartmental Responsiveness & Real-World Metrics

31:00 — Enterprise AI Adoption: What the Data Shows

33:59 — Employee Anxiety & Training Gaps

38:31 — The Nexus Product & Safe AI Usage

42:08 — The Future of Work: Job Loss or Job Creation?

44:40 — The Competitive Advantage of AI

53:45 — The Product Marketing Problem in AI

55:00 — 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

 

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; 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 Podcast on Spotify

Listen to the a16z Podcast 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.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.