a16z Podcast - a16z Podcast: The Changing Relationship Between Tech and Government

Episode Date: July 10, 2015

Just a few years ago if you were mayor of Washington D.C. –- or any other city -- you didn’t have to wrap your head around the likes of Airbnb, Lyft, and other companies in the fast-growing 'sharing economy'. They didn’t exist. Now, you have no choice says Washington D.C.’s current Mayor Muriel Bowser ... because the citizens in your city certainly already have. Bowser joins the a16z Podcast, along with former D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty (who is currently a special advisor to a16z), to discuss how technologies and tech companies are changing cities and government, and how moving forward government may play a bigger role. That, and the case for more transparency in government, on this segment of the pod.

Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland. Just a few years ago, if you were mayor of Washington, D.C., or really any other city, you didn't have to wrap your head around the likes of Lyft, Uber, and Airbnb, and the other companies in the fast-growing sharing economy. The reason is they didn't exist. Now you have no choice as D.C.'s current mayor, Muriel Bowser, because the citizens in your city certainly already have. The sharing economy and the sharing business,

businesses got in front of government, but they didn't get in front of their customers because their customers are demanding these services. So in a lot of ways, we've had to catch up. Bowser joins this segment of the pod, along with former D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, now a special advisor to A16Z, to discuss how technologies and tech companies are changing cities and government and how moving forward they may play an even bigger role. If there's anything that I think is ripe for. more innovation and solutions in government is in the human services.

All that and the case for more transparency and government on this segment of the A16Z podcast. The stars have aligned and we have two mayors of Washington, D.C. The current mayor, Muriel, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. And the former mayor and special advisor here at the firm, Adrian Fenty. Adrian. How are you, sir? You guys are both ward four stars, right?

We both used to represent Ward 4 and City Council, and now I'm former everything, and you've got the current mayor here, and we're so glad she's on the West Coast. So I want to talk about then that relationship between technology and between Silicon Valley and the tech industry and D.C. in particular, what are you looking to technology for and to do? And really, honestly, what can it do? Well, we actually have seen a pretty remarkable growth, I think, in interests and in technologists and in starting and startups and people wanting to start up companies in D.C. For so long, Adrian and I are born and raised in Washington, and we were always known as a government town. Right. And we've actually seen in our city that we're growing more private sector jobs than the jurisdictions that surround us. And a lot of that is from a young, a startup. companies. Young people are attracted to D.C. We have just a great city to get started in. So now as a

government, we have to figure out how do we harness that energy that people are attracted to just because we're a great place to live. So tech companies tell us that we just have to be a better business environment. And I think we're doing things like making sure our regulations make sense and making sure our tax structures make sense. But they also want to be around other technologists. So how do we use our convening power as a government to attract more companies and make sure that there's opportunity? But also what we know, and probably the biggest disadvantage that we have, if you compare us to Silicon Valley and some other cities, is that they have to be able to raise the money that they need to grow their companies.

And so we want D.C. to be on the map, and we want to have companies that have started there, have grown and stayed in Washington, and have been able to raise some money to continue to grow. I was going to just say one thing, and then turn it back to the mayor, who's our star and our guests. So I left office January 2011, which is obviously just a little bit over four years ago. When I left office, there was no lift. There essentially was no Airbnb, no Uber. Zinifis, OpenGov, any of the companies that we were talking with today, they didn't even exist. And now, at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which we've been at for the last three days, if you talk about tech, really, those are the companies everyone is talking about. So, like, I mean, it's amazing how much things have changed.

And the mayor visited with Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb. I mean, I think it's, like, I don't really have, I've never worked on. regulatory issues as mayor for tech companies, and this is a big part of what the new mayor has to do. So that's my question. Is it more and more on your plate because these companies are more and more in your business, as it were? Well, they're more and more providing opportunities to DC residents and visitors. And this is some of the sharing economy and these sharing businesses got in front of government, but they didn't get in front of their customers because their customers are demanding these services. So in a lot of ways we've had to catch up. It's,

from food trucks to ride sharing to now house sharing and all of those things, people have demanded additional choices and that's why these companies are finding success. So it is, it makes sense for us, mayors and people who have to make the public policy work and make sure people are safe and make sure that we have the level of regulation that we need, but we don't want to tamp down innovation. I don't think we've had a mayor on our podcast. I think it would be, useful for everyone in the Silicon Valley to kind of know what is the mayor when you meet with a Brian Chesky or you know John Zimmer or Logan at Lyft what do you what do you guys talk about what are some of the exchanges about how can they help you how can you help them better well we

we always want to know what they're experiencing what what how they're working with our residents so if they can tell me how many DC residents are taking rides some of them even want to share information. If they can tell us how much revenue they're collecting and how many taxes they're remitting, that's even better. And we want to know how they have interacted with our government. And some of these companies now have been proactive about suggesting ways to regulate the environments that they're in. And that can be helpful too. So as mayor, my job is to make sure all the executive agencies that regulate business or collect taxes or provide permits and licenses are being supportive of new and creative ideas, but also balancing that with the

need to protect our residents and visitors. It's interesting though that that push or that wave of new and creative ideas, as you say, they could have been food trucks. They can be sort of other things that happen in the physical world. But increasingly, their technology kind of undergirded ideas aren't they they are and um they in what we see is that they're disruptive to the way that people have been used to doing things um but many people are are choosing these different services that make their life uh easier but governments are just slow moving um by by nature and so it it takes some time uh to everybody to get their ideas around these new ideas but i think what's in What's really special about DC is that a lot of the technology companies use the laws and

regulations that we have created to both encourage business and protect consumers. And now they're using those, our laws and regulations, as models around the country. So I think what people see is that D.C. has embraced the sharing services and sharing technology. And we have done it in a very practical way. you you said it and i didn't but that government moves slowly and that's probably a good thing you know for for all of us citizens but what would you advise sort of parties on all sides of those equations if you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to come to town if you're a consumer and you're feeling kind of wait a second is this good this is change i'm not sure how i should

wrap my head around it what do you like how should they approach you and and adrian you too like how should entrepreneurs come into this mix and and make the most of it? Well, I think when you have a great service, you go out, you go out there and market it. You let officials know. It's always helpful to let folks know you're coming to town. This is what you do and work hand in hand with officials. I think what you're going to find is most elected officials just want to have the best services possible that are affordable and safe for their residents. And if the more they know

about your business and your service and what it does to make your jurisdiction the best, then you're going to have a lot of support. Yeah. And there's a couple of things that are, like, I didn't even have that are now, I think, a part of almost every city. Again, it's a reflection on how much things have changed. So, like, one, you were talking another about you've got a chief innovation officer, and two, 1776, which is the incubator in D.C. and in Chicago, 1871, and maybe you could talk a little bit about how important those are the cities and how you guys are working with those two things. I think that's also a part of what Michael was talking about. Sure. One thing that we, when I was out trying to become mayor,

the District of Columbia, we talked to a lot of people, every kind of business that you can imagine. And what we what we knew for sure is that we had to transform the way that government approached its problems, whether it was distributing benefits to residents or how we paid for parking or how people could start a business. We really had to use technology to do that. And change it in a way that made it more like what and less like what? Made it, we think we want to reduce the number of trips that people have to make to government agencies. So the more you can do at home, the more you can do from your office, the more you can do from your mobile device is what we have to do. And we went out to the private sector. We hired a chief innovation officer who comes from

a background of coding, using, you know, coding to solve government problems. We attracted him. He's connected to all of the technologists in D.C., and that's important. We also make it part of our economic development platform, that it shouldn't be hard to get started. I mean, we actually want to harness the energy that kind of came organically to D.C. technology and be intentional about it from our economic development arm of the government. Starting and supporting these small businesses as a part of our strategy to grow jobs in D.C. This sort of connects to something that you've promised, I think, when you were campaigning, but that you're working on, which is body cameras for police officers, and bear with me

for a second, which is all about transparency. So if you extend that across government, why is transparency important? And then how does technology help you get there? Transparency is so important because we need to have the people behind us to do just about anything, whether it's taking over the schools that Mayor Fenty took on in D.C., whether we're going. Whether it's making our police department more accountable or how, you know, I can convince people that we have to spend $100 million every single year on affordable housing, the people will get behind you on all of those things if they understand what you're doing. And the more information we can get out in that regard gives the people the information that they need to support their

political leaders. So having trust in government. And you know, from time to time, trust between citizens of a community and their elected officials. And especially in D.C., part of my whole reason for running is to regain the trust of our citizens so that we can get big things done in the city. So we started with just simple things like making the budget more transparent, making my schedule transparent, making sure that people have open meetings in the government. But you've touched on something that's really critical to us. Public safety.

Mayor is the first responsibility of a mayor is to make the city safe. And having accountable police forces is part of that. And we're going to need Silicon Valley when it comes to these cameras. You hear people talking about a lot of these cameras, but it's virtually impossible right now to quickly redact the information that these cameras pick up. and so for us to go from where we are as body cameras now I know in a year from now we're going to be in a whole different place

with the ability to review that material I mean everybody with a GoPro thinks that like well how hard could it be but it's clearly it's a question of how much data when is that data available who gets to do what with it and when so it's the balance between accountability and privacy and so when you have a police officer coming into your home you you deserve

some privacy. You have a right to it. But at the same time, if that police officer does something wrong, we want certain bodies to have access to that information. But if you're calling, if I ever have to call the police, I don't necessarily want to see it on the evening news. Right, right. It's funny because Scott Weiss, who's a general partner here at the firm and I had a conversation with your police chief maybe a year or two ago. And we were just, I think Scott asked the question, what technology do you find yourself using the most? And she said that she used Palantir a lot. And I mean, I was obviously using it when I was in office too.

And I didn't even know that. And so I really, I was really pleasantly surprised by that. Okay. I know she's incubating a company called Mark 43, which is going to do some really great software stuff. But I was wondering, like when I was leaving office, there was, we were starting to put more in DCRA that you could do mobile or through the internet, more on DMV. I just wonder how that push is going to have, as you said, to have more services that you can, you don't have to go in. How is it going? I think it's going well, but there's a lot more that we can do.

For example, I think the work you did around DMV has been great. Like, I haven't been inside a DMV in a while because I can do it all by mail or online. I can pay my registration. I can pay for my tickets. Perfect. So really extraordinary circumstances. I just want to be clear that the mayor does get tickets. Okay.

Not anymore. And now for, I think, for DCRA, we can do more around all these plans. You've seen these big roles of plans. DCRA stands for? Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. So they do all of our permits and business licensing. Okay. But if we can take plans for a building like this and get them paperless.

Right. And so they can be approved. They can be amended. And they can be paid for all online. then that is going to be a huge, huge for us. And we're a city that actually has a lot of building going on, unlike a lot of cities. So we still have, our permits office is very busy. And so if we can get that paperless, we're going to be going far.

Well, you have a very busy schedule, both of you, I know that. But this might relate to sort of my final question, which is, you know, this podcast has a lot of entrepreneurs who listen in. So I want to know from you the next time you come out to Silicon Valley and you meet with companies, or maybe there are companies that are started in Washington, D.C., what can technology do for you? What can they build for you that you're like, God, if I only had this or these things or this approach, how can they help? I really want them to help me with some of the human services problems of our city, which I think that if they can do that in Washington, they can do it for any city in the United States. So we're hugely invested in affordable housing. So how can we make sure that the money we put in is getting to the right people?

We want more of our babies to be born healthy. How can we use all of this fitness technology, really, to help us track and support mothers? We want to end homelessness in the district. How can we use technology to make sure we're moving people to the right places? So if there's anything that I think is ripe for more innovation and solutions in government, it's in the human services. Well, you heard it, get to work. Everybody out there, Mayor Bowser, Mayor Fenty. Thank you guys so much.

Thank you, sir. It's been fun.