Jeremy Liew was the first outside investor in Snapchat, putting $485,000 into the company in 2012, and parlaying that early interest into an ownership stake that's now worth close to $1 billion.



Currently, he thinks the next big consumer tech hit will be the company that finds a way to replace "ambient" TV watching —and he believes smart home assistants like Alexa may take that place.

Recode's Kara Swisher interviewed Liew for the Recode Decode pod cast (transcript here). Liew noted that the average American watches 5 hours of TV a day, but they're not always paying full attention: Sometimes, the TV is on in the background, as a sort of companion.

He called this "ambient TV," as opposed something like "Game of Thrones," which is "appointment TV."

Internet video providers like YouTube, , and Hulu are all competing to become the digital equivalent of appointment TV, but Liew argues that nobody's doing a good job yet of becoming the replacement for ambient TV.