David Friedberg is a investor and serial entrepreneur, who is now heading ‘The Production Board’. He is an astrophysics major, was one of the early employees at Google, later started Climate Corporation and Metromile. (For more information checkout the wikipedia page or crunchbase profile). I got to know about him as the “Sultan of Science” in the All-In pod, a fun and informational podcast that encompasses tech, investing, geopolitics, culture and little bit about their personal lives. As an avid listener I would urge you to give it a listen sometime.

I found Friedberg to be an interesting character, you seldom find a guy who is so informative and loves to nerd. He is well informed and passionately talks about science, economics, climate change and you would find yourself agreeing to most of the stuff. But the guy is so humble and down to earth, at one instance he says “you could find more information from a YouTube video than from me”.

As we have set the context, lets dive in -

In the first xx mins of the show, Friedberg talks about a the importance of grit and narratives in running a business, giving anecdotal examples of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Then the discussion moves to production of goods.

Manufacturing

A century back the production was mostly one-to-one with demand. Only after industrialisation the production was done centrally and in huge quantities. In retrospect, the system is hugely inefficient and with a large carbon footprint. He illustrates this by citing an example of making a burger -

To wrap your head around the complexity and time, just securing the ingredients needed to make a burger is a multi-year process involving 50+ stakeholders.

With the advent of new technology, the production of all consumables can be reinvented. Bio-manufacturing eliminates multiple processes in the traditional supply chain, as we can engineer cells to produce plastics, leather, meat, fabric, etc. to name a few. Further, 3D printing and additive manufacturing enable decentralised production, eliminating large overheads like farming, transportation, storage, etc. The interplay of all these factors will bring down prices, increases availability, and adds a layer of customisation to products like personalised drinks, clothing, vaccines, and so on.

People are hardwired to desire more, this drives the markets to build more — stimulating economic growth. The thought process behind “consume less to be sustainable” is a fallacy. Rather than limiting consumption, the focus should be solving the productivity problem. In doing so we produce more with less input cost, thereby cracking the sustainability problem.

Friedberg does this with his beverage company *Cana.* They make the drink of your choice at your home with their beverage printer. This eliminates the need for manufacturing plastic bottles, bottling plants, and huge storage, and transportation systems to get it into your hands. All you need is a cartridge, water, and the mixer machine at home. The discussion now moves to decentralised media and businesses.

Decentralisation and Personalisation

With content creators becoming individual brands, traditional methods of marketing and media consumption are disrupted. People consume more content from individual creators than from big studios and media houses. Rather than competing for a prominent space in a physical store, products are introduced through social media profiles which can be purchased online. This is a profound change when companies spend millions on marketing and customer acquisition. He points to the success of Mr. Beast’s Burger and Kylie Jenner’s makeup products as examples of this.

Friedberg believes that in the next decade we would see

the emergence of tools for creators to leverage and monetize their brands
shift of consumer demand for goods from big faceless brands to creator-led ones

The interplay between decentralisation and personalisation will push the next major shift in consumer products. We have seen this in media with the emergence of personalised content from YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, TikTok, etc.

Later in the show, Friedberg talks about fusion energy, the effects of AI, and protein folding problems. Catch them in the second part of the article.

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