Alex Danco on Speechwriting, Blogging, and Giving Founders Power

0:00:06 What is the job of VC? The job of VC is literally you are the legitimacy bank, right? Your job is to
0:00:11 make founders powerful. As you put in the work to write and as you put into work to read, what
0:00:15 happens is actually reshapes your brain a little bit. It reshapes your understanding of what you’re
0:00:21 talking about such a way that the person writing can actually transfer some legitimacy to the
0:00:26 person reading. There is something that is missing of the craft of like putting in an extraordinary
0:00:31 amount of tortured effort into creating, you know, like a 5,000 word delivery of what
0:00:36 is it that you have to say this year? Fresh off the news of his move from Shopify to join
0:00:41 A16Z, Alex Danko joined TBPN to talk about the trade deal that brought him here and what he’s
0:00:46 setting out to do next. Alex shares why he’s betting big on the craft of writing in an AI
0:00:51 saturated world, why speech writing might be venture’s most underrated medium, and how great
0:00:56 writing can serve as power transfer technology for founders. He reflects on his years at
0:01:00 Shopify, his long-running career as a blogger, and why giving people the right words can change
0:01:05 the directory of a pitch, a partnership, or a company. We’ll hear about the formats he’s most
0:01:11 excited to explore at A16Z, the role of legitimacy in venture capital, and why sometimes the most
0:01:15 important negotiation point is just getting unblocked on Twitter. Let’s get into it.
0:01:26 We have Alex Danko. We got a trade deal. Trade. The news broke today. He’s going from Shopify to
0:01:27 A16Z.
0:01:29 Andresen Horowitz.
0:01:31 Eric Torenberg’s latest pick-up.
0:01:32 There he is. Alex, welcome to the show.
0:01:33 How are you doing? Welcome to the show.
0:01:34 Hey, guys. Thank you for having me on.
0:01:38 Break it down for us.
0:01:43 Ananomy of the deal. What’d they do? Did Mark Andreessen sit down with your mom?
0:01:46 Did Mark Andreessen sit down with your parents?
0:01:50 Tell them you’ve got a bright future. We would like to take your son to the big leagues you’re
0:01:53 going to. I did have to have the phone call with Mark Andreessen right next to my mom because I was
0:01:56 on vacation that week. We were seeing my parents.
0:01:56 Fantastic.
0:02:03 And the call with Mark was actually a stressful one because I had to give him my final negotiation
0:02:05 demand, which was he had to unblock me on Twitter.
0:02:08 No way.
0:02:11 That’s amazing. He’s a notorious blocker and unblocker.
0:02:13 He did. What did you do? What did you do to get blocked by Go?
0:02:15 Never give up if you’ve been blocked by Go.
0:02:16 What did you do to get blocked by the Go?
0:02:19 So we don’t know. We’ve decided not to look into it.
0:02:22 Some things are best left as mystery in life.
0:02:25 But we reserve the right to find out later.
0:02:29 I’ve been blocked by people. I had to apologize. I don’t know exactly know why I got blocked.
0:02:32 But, you know, you always live to live to fight another day.
0:02:33 Anyway, what’s…
0:02:34 It could have been an accident. Some could have slipped.
0:02:40 Yeah, it’s possible. So what’s at the top of the to-do list today, this week, this month?
0:02:42 What are you going to be doing for Andreessen Horowitz?
0:02:48 So I’m coming on board. Eric brought me into this amazing group of people he is putting together.
0:02:50 Not to be understated and also not complete.
0:02:54 There’s more. Eric has more work to do yet. I’m coming on board to help them.
0:02:55 Job’s not finished.
0:03:04 Yeah, Job’s not finished. I’m coming on to help make all of the written content coming out of Andreessen be truly world-class and as good as it can be.
0:03:07 I think a lot of people on the internet know me from my writing online.
0:03:11 I’ve been a blogger for a long time despite having done other things like be a founder.
0:03:13 I’ve worked in VC before. I’ve been at Shopify for five years.
0:03:29 Most people, I think, know me just from writing and mouthing off on the internet and generally doing the craft that has been internet blogging, which is just a really amazing and valuable part of tech that has been around for such a long time.
0:03:39 A really formative conversation in my career was once upon a time when I was a founder, my co-founder and I were trying to figure out how to launch a product.
0:03:41 We didn’t know what was involved in that or what that meant.
0:03:45 And we went to a more experienced founder, our friend Amanda, and said, hey, what do we do?
0:03:46 How do we launch this product?
0:03:50 And she said, oh, well, I think you should email your email list and say, hey, we’re going to go and do this.
0:03:51 Tell us what you like.
0:03:52 Tell us where we should reach you.
0:03:55 Tell us – get lots of feedback on all these things and then they’ll help you out.
0:03:56 And I said, wait, wait, wait, stop.
0:03:59 What do you mean email your email list?
0:04:01 What’s an email list?
0:04:05 She’s like, oh, you don’t have thousands of fans that adore you and wait for your every email every week?
0:04:09 And I was like, I need to be someone with one of those.
0:04:21 So ever since then, yeah, writing and newsletters and just the craft of having something to say has been a really important part of how I’ve always thought about how to be a great live player on the internet.
0:04:23 How do you think about breaking through with text?
0:04:26 Because the link ban on X is tough.
0:04:29 AI is going to –
0:04:29 Yeah, yeah.
0:04:32 Like should you just lean into more of the formats?
0:04:39 I mean there’s certain amounts of like you can just be built different like Chris Pike who just drops a link to a Google Doc.
0:04:40 Can it always work somehow?
0:04:43 People do screenshot essays like what’s interesting?
0:04:48 Something that stands out to me and why I’m excited for you to take this new role is I was having this thought yesterday.
0:04:57 I was reading some particularly like sloppy AI-generated text and I was just – I was like, yes, the models are going to get better.
0:05:08 But like in a few years, like at what point is like all the text that you’re reading online and throughout your day just generated and there’s no soul and craft put into it?
0:05:18 And it’s like you can still – you can remove hyphens and delve and it’s not this, you’re not this, you’re that, like language.
0:05:21 And you can still identify writing today.
0:05:32 And I just think like craft – like the craft of writing and thinking clearly and coming up with – trying to come up with new ideas is super important.
0:05:33 It’s Lindy.
0:05:34 Very Lindy.
0:05:35 Yeah.
0:05:39 So I like to think of it is that writing is power transfer technology, right?
0:05:40 When you do it.
0:05:45 It takes a lot of work to write something down and it takes work to read something, right?
0:05:47 It takes more work to read something than to listen to it.
0:05:54 But the important thing that happens is that as you put in the work to write and as you put in the work to read, what happens is it actually reshapes your brain a little bit.
0:06:03 It reshapes your understanding of what you’re talking about such a way that the person writing can actually transfer some legitimacy to the person reading, right?
0:06:04 They can actually speak to this thing.
0:06:07 They have words for something that they knew but like didn’t quite know how to say before.
0:06:09 And that gives them power, right?
0:06:13 And it doesn’t work the same way when you’re talking, right?
0:06:21 There is this fabulous complementary kind of media called podcasts which is listen for three hours and hear about all these great things.
0:06:25 But to me, podcasts are an invitation to go find out something more.
0:06:33 But if you actually want to do that power transfer, right, from the writer to the reader and give them something that gives them that power, like you’ve got to write it down, right?
0:06:37 And if you think about this for the job of a VC firm, right, it’s like what is the job of VC?
0:06:42 The job of VC is literally you are the legitimacy bank, right?
0:06:45 Your job is to make founders powerful, right?
0:06:49 And having an amazing free tier of that by saying we think a lot about these things.
0:06:58 We want to give you words to express what you’re trying to say so that a client, a hire, an investor will take you a little more seriously is really important to do.
0:07:03 So that’s a big part of why we want to emphasize the goal is to give founders power.
0:07:08 This is the job of the whole firm and writing is just a pretty good part of that.
0:07:13 When I think about writing at A16Z, I think of a few buckets.
0:07:17 There’s a ton because the firm’s written a lot for a long time.
0:07:24 I think about maybe it was like a decade ago, but I don’t know how often it still happens.
0:07:30 But the general partner who does the deal writes basically a deal memo and says this is why we’re investing in this company.
0:07:32 And that’s very interesting.
0:07:37 There’s also the Marc Andreessen op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, software is eating the world.
0:07:38 It’s time to build.
0:07:46 These like big, like just like, you know, bombs on the timeline that drop and stick around for a long time.
0:07:52 Then there’s the market map, which is, it’s been maligned, but I think it’s deeply underrated.
0:07:54 It’s a time-honored tradition.
0:07:58 And I think these are in a unique position to actually put out great content there.
0:08:01 And I’ve actually really enjoyed digging into those as we’ve been doing the show.
0:08:04 And then there’s also like the wildcard ones.
0:08:08 Like I remember Andreessen used to do these interviews with founders in the portfolio.
0:08:13 Just basically like, it’s like, what’s your everyday carry, but in the digital world?
0:08:15 So it was like, what apps are you running?
0:08:16 What tools are you using?
0:08:17 Those are really cool.
0:08:19 So there’s a ton of stuff.
0:08:22 And I probably mentioned, I missed like half of it, but maybe even more.
0:08:24 But what’s exciting to you?
0:08:25 What’s interesting?
0:08:31 What kind of formats are you, do you see as like fertile ground to go explore if you’ve had the time to think about it so far?
0:08:32 Yeah.
0:08:38 So I’ll tell you what I think is a really interesting meta that I’m going to spend a lot of time going after is speech writing.
0:08:38 Okay.
0:08:53 Speech writing is an interesting and kind of thrown by the wayside craft because now when you think about long form, it’s like when you are interesting and you have something to say, you can go on a podcast, you can talk for a long time, or you are going to tweet about it, right?
0:09:04 But there is something that is missing of the craft of like putting in an extraordinary amount of tortured effort into creating, you know, like a 5,000 word delivery of what is it that you have to say this year?
0:09:16 And if you’re a GP, right, it’s like, hey, you know, you get time and perspective to figure out like this year, what is the core thing that you want to say, right, that is going to help inform all the other content, frankly.
0:09:20 Like people like Catherine at A16Z are also already incredible at this.
0:09:24 And bringing that sort of to more throughout the culture is going to be important.
0:09:27 Either way, though, so you mentioned all these different types of content, right?
0:09:30 Speech is, I just, yes, speech is incredibly underrated.
0:09:33 We utilize them internally with the team.
0:09:48 And they’re not, every week, they’re not on a schedule, but sometimes you need a speech, you know, just nail it, and they can really set the tone and the energy within the company.
0:09:59 And I’m getting chills thinking about Mark Andreessen standing on stage in front of thousands of people saying, we chose to raise this growth fund not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
0:10:03 To test the ability of our LPs.
0:10:04 To test the capital markets.
0:10:05 To measure them.
0:10:08 Why do we go to the moon?
0:10:11 To test the health of the global capital markets.
0:10:13 There will never be enough venture capital.
0:10:19 I mean, yeah, like a well-defined phrase, Andreessen has been fantastic, coinages.
0:10:22 And I feel like, yeah, the speeches, that’s an interesting answer.
0:10:25 I was not expecting that, but that makes a ton of sense.
0:10:27 Well, it’s good to buy low on things.
0:10:31 I think buying low on speeches is your daily tip.
0:10:32 That’s great.
0:10:32 That’s great.
0:10:34 Where else should we go with this?
0:10:35 What else is talking about?
0:10:39 Speeches could be an entirely new launch video meta, right?
0:10:41 Everybody, like the-
0:10:42 Bar burners.
0:10:44 Launch, everybody has a launch video.
0:10:45 There’s like three new launch videos every day.
0:10:52 A lot of them like blur together because they’re cool graphics and this person invested and here’s this product UI.
0:11:02 And if you just have the CEO just like rant at the camera and you can get people to like truly listen to that, it probably ends up being, you know, pretty powerful.
0:11:09 Those kinds of things can go viral in really powerful ways because it tells people that you have something to say, right?
0:11:14 And it’s doubly important because you talked about all these different forms of writing that are all great in their own way.
0:11:21 And the one thing that they all have in common is I’ll tell you what all bloggers know, right, about writing is you have two audiences, right?
0:11:25 The first audience is the people who actually read what you said, which is small.
0:11:30 The second audience is the people that they tell that thing, right?
0:11:32 Because they get something out of retelling it, right?
0:11:33 Like they get that legitimacy.
0:11:35 They get that ability to express themselves or whatever.
0:11:43 And there is a trade between the writer and the inner circle of people who are going to actually listen to that speech or actually read that thing all the way through.
0:11:56 And something that was great about the old VC blogging meta way back in the day, so 10, 12, 15 years ago when, you know, like AVC was cooking and Semel Shah and Mark Schuster and people like that is the way a blog worked.
0:12:04 Like the microstructure of blogging was you had a blog and you had readers and a comment section and everybody came to your blog and the readership would be there.
0:12:08 And the way that you would tell what blogs were good was you would have lots of comments, right?
0:12:11 And that’s where your primary readership would then go and invisibly tell other people about it.
0:12:13 Then the feed emerged, right?
0:12:14 We got Twitter.
0:12:15 We got Hacker News.
0:12:19 We got places where suddenly the discussion moved in public.
0:12:24 And what happened then is that, first of all, the ability to reach a secondary audience exploded.
0:12:29 So the returns to writing were only got bigger, but it became less obvious to do, right?
0:12:34 The trade became a little bit obscured by virtue of the fact that it’s all in public, right?
0:12:36 And it’s all based on how many retweets and likes you get.
0:12:45 And I think what’s happening now as we go even further past this is that the returns to writing and reading have never been more valuable but never been less obvious.
0:13:04 So, you know, it’s time to go – if you go bring the output of a firm as legendary as A16Z with all the amazing things they have to say and the statements of record that they want to put out into the world, you know, my job is to go help Eric and the whole GP crew and Ben and Mark bring this back and make it amazing again.
0:13:06 Making it really like a brand that’s going to shine.
0:13:09 I can’t wait for your first software is eating the world moment.
0:13:15 Also, yeah, I mean, I feel like the speech thing really ties into the new A16Z brand.
0:13:18 Like when I see the coin, I feel like that’s like –
0:13:19 The Art Deco coin with the abacus.
0:13:22 Yeah, I feel like speech is kind of Art Deco in some ways.
0:13:25 I don’t know why I’m making that association, but it feels somewhat linked.
0:13:27 It’s like a bygone era.
0:13:29 Or is it a bozar, right?
0:13:30 Like, do you remember the line?
0:13:32 It’s like, Art Deco is made by dwarves.
0:13:33 Bozar is made by elves.
0:13:33 Yeah.
0:13:35 But it’s very –
0:13:35 I don’t know.
0:13:36 It’s very –
0:13:37 What is it?
0:13:38 It was –
0:13:43 Like the style, it was Randian, and I feel like in Ayn Rand’s writing, there’s a lot of speeches that happen throughout the book.
0:13:45 There sure are, famously.
0:13:45 Makes sense.
0:13:46 Yeah, famously.
0:13:50 Anyway, thank you so much for hopping on.
0:13:51 Congratulations on the trade deal.
0:13:53 Congratulations on the move.
0:13:54 Yeah, excited to see your work.
0:13:56 And we look forward to seeing your work and hearing it.
0:13:57 Thank you for having me on, guys.
0:13:58 Come on and give a speech soon.
0:13:59 Absolutely.
0:14:00 Speech.
0:14:01 Speech.
0:14:01 Speech.
0:14:02 Speech.
0:14:02 Speech.
0:14:03 Speech.
0:14:04 Thank you, Alec.
0:14:04 Take care, everybody.
0:14:05 Cheers.
0:14:10 Thanks for listening to the A16Z Podcast.
0:14:16 If you enjoyed the episode, let us know by leaving a review at ratethispodcast.com slash A16Z.
0:14:18 We’ve got more great conversations coming your way.
0:14:20 See you next time.
0:14:32 This information is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any investment or financial product.
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0:14:53 Information is from sources deemed reliable on the date of publication, but A16Z does not guarantee its accuracy.
0:14:55 This podcast has been produced by A16Z.
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0:14:57 This podcast has been produced by A16Z.
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0:15:00 This podcast has been produced by A16Z.