Weird ways Ben Horowitz makes Founders more confident

0:00:03 All right, today we’re hanging out with Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of A16Z. These guys
0:00:08 manage 46 billion in assets. They’ve invested in Stripe, Coinbase, OpenAI, a bunch of the big
0:00:13 hit tech companies. But today we’re talking about stuff that you don’t usually get to hear from Ben.
0:00:18 So things like, how do you actually have a high confrontation conversation? The advice he actually
0:00:22 gives his founders. Things like when he met Mark Zuckerberg and he was really young, what he
0:00:27 noticed about Mark that was different and what makes him such a great CEO that you can kind of
0:00:30 steal our copy from Mark Zuckerberg’s playbook. Sam, what else do we got? Dude, we also just
0:00:35 hung out with him, which is like the best part. And so he tells the story about how he helped catch
0:00:40 Tupac’s killer. And we also asked him what interests him right now. What books is he reading? What
0:00:44 content is he consuming? What rabbit holes is he going down? And it was incredibly interesting.
0:00:47 Awesome conversation with Ben Horowitz. Enjoy.
0:00:58 Okay, so I have a good Tupac story for you.
0:01:01 Oh my gosh. All right. I’m incredibly excited to hear it.
0:01:09 So my wife is like the biggest Las Vegas evangelist in the world. And she was talking to
0:01:16 Quincy Jones’ son, QD3, and said, you know, you need to move to Vegas. And he’s like,
0:01:20 fuck that. I’ll never move to Vegas. They didn’t solve the Tupac murder.
0:01:28 You know, his sister, Kidada, was dating Tupac. I was like, let’s have dinner with the Vegas PD and
0:01:35 see what happened. And so me and QD3 and Nas sit down to dinner with the Las Vegas Police Department.
0:01:42 And they bring the whole case file. And it turns out the LAPD really fouled the case,
0:01:48 like almost on purpose, it looks like. So the end of the dinner, I say to the chief of police,
0:01:53 Mike Gennaro, I’m like, Mike, you ought to reopen the Tupac case. And he goes, I’ll talk to the
0:01:58 sheriff. And the next day I called him, I said, what did the sheriff say? He said, if Ben wants
0:02:02 us to open the case, we’re opening the case. And they reopened the Tupac case and they caught the
0:02:02 guy.
0:02:07 That’s insane. So Sean, like the, I don’t know, Sean, if you know the story, but like,
0:02:13 basically like, you know, Pac and Suge got in a fight at a, at a Tyson, Mike Tyson fight. And then
0:02:19 like 30 or 40 minutes later, he was shot right in the strip on Las Vegas. And it was a cold case for
0:02:23 years, but everyone knew who did it. They knew it was this guy named Orlando Anderson. Like that was
0:02:23 like the rumor.
0:02:26 Orlando pulled the trigger. Keefe D told him to shoot him.
0:02:31 And like everyone knew this, but for some reason, like it didn’t happen in Orlando. I ended up dying
0:02:37 a handful of years later. And the craziest thing ever is there’s this guy named DJ Vlad who does
0:02:44 these interviews with all these gangsters and he got them to like, tell the story about the murder. And
0:02:48 this idiot, like went on a podcast and just said, yeah, here’s what happened.
0:02:55 So here’s why he did that. He thought he had immunity because the LAPD proffered him, which means
0:03:01 basically in exchange for test money, we grant you immunity, but they granted him immunity in LA,
0:03:02 not in Vegas.
0:03:03 What a minute.
0:03:06 It’s your latest BD where life, oh, that doesn’t count here.
0:03:11 And then little do we know that Ben’s behind the scenes getting it all done. That’s pretty awesome.
0:03:15 I, like I followed that case religiously. I thought it was riveting. I did not know that,
0:03:18 uh, you, uh, you were involved. That’s pretty cool.
0:03:21 All right. Well, I don’t know where we want to start, but I just thought,
0:03:24 you know, usually Ben, you don’t know this, but we have a little tradition here. We,
0:03:29 we’d like to typically start with our intro music, but for some reason it’s not playing.
0:03:34 I’m trying to get this cassette to play, but it’s just not playing. What are we looking at here?
0:03:42 Oh boy. That is, uh, that’s the blind and deaf crew. So my friend, um, Seth Clark, this was back in
0:03:53 87 or 88, uh, or maybe 86, got, got shot and, uh, was blind. So we formed a rap group, uh, called the
0:03:59 blind and deaf crew, D E F. And, you know, we had all kinds of grimes about being blind and being deaf.
0:04:05 I have one here. It’s like the blind deaf crew, you know, where fly three of us, but we got four
0:04:12 eyes, you know, like that, that, that, that, you know, where did you grow? I mean, like your dad was
0:04:17 like a, uh, I know who your dad is. And he was like, he was like a well-known academic, but where were you
0:04:21 growing up where you, uh, were around guys who got shot and rapping?
0:04:29 Well, so I grew up in Berkeley, uh, California, which, you know, kind of is either like an academic
0:04:34 town or part of Oakland, depending on, you know, where you are. And I was in that kind of more part
0:04:40 of Oakland, Berkeley. And then, you know, I went to school in New York. Uh, and so I got into rap in
0:04:47 New York and then Seth got shot back in the Bay area. And he was very, very depressed because
0:04:54 he’s blind. He was only, he’s a kid, you know, so I sent him these, um, DJ red alert,
0:04:59 check, chill out mixtapes. Um, you know, were tapes that I taped off the radio show, which had the
0:05:05 brand new hip hop, which was, you know, really new at the time. And, uh, that kind of cheered him up.
0:05:11 And so that’s how we got into rap when we came around and we didn’t succeed, but we tried real hard.
0:05:17 Well, we wanted to just hang out with you because there’s, you’ll do, you’ve done 50,000 podcasts. I think
0:05:22 A16Z now has 50,000 podcasts. And so, you know, I consider it like, Hey, is AI a bubble, right?
0:05:26 Like we can kind of do that. And we’ll probably ask you something about AI, but I think more than
0:05:30 anything, what we try to do on the podcast is give people a sense of what it’s like to hang out with
0:05:34 Ben Horowitz, right? Like what is it, if they could just be a fly on the wall, hanging out. And obviously
0:05:38 we come from a business and tech background. So we got a bunch of questions around that.
0:05:44 But I think for me and Sam, the most interesting part that I feel like you’ve, you’ve contributed to
0:05:49 the collective wisdom of founders, right? Is your stuff on leadership. So you’ve written two books.
0:05:56 I feel like that really, I don’t know, like top shelf on how to be a leader. And I think it started
0:06:01 with a general philosophy. So tell me why most management books are terrible. Let’s start with that.
0:06:08 You know, the problem with management generally, I would say is it’s very kind of situational
0:06:16 and emotional. And so it’s like, Oh, here’s a book to teach you how to play NFL quarterback.
0:06:22 And you could read that 20 times. You go out on the field, like things are extremely different. If
0:06:28 there’s a 290 pound guy running at you extremely, very fast, I’m going to kill you. Like what you feel,
0:06:33 like what you think, how you process that is just different. And I think management tends to be like
0:06:41 that in that it really has to do a lot with your situation and the feeling you have at the time it
0:06:48 happens. And so these management books are written like it’s some step-by-step, you know, like, you
0:06:53 know, you’re, anybody with a basic like eighth grade education can understand the principles of
0:06:56 management. They’re not that complicated. Like it’s a cookbook and you could just follow the
0:07:01 recipe. Yeah. And it’s like, Oh, here are the five steps for building a strategy or the three steps for
0:07:06 like, you know, setting objectives. It’s not actually very useful at all because you know, that stuff is
0:07:13 so simple. So I always thought like, well, the difficult thing, you know, you’re either gonna like
0:07:19 run the risk of running completely out of money if you don’t fire half the company, but like, you don’t
0:07:23 want to have that conversation because you promised all these guys that the company was going to be
0:07:29 success when you hired them. So like the level of inconsistency that you’re going to have to go
0:07:35 through the level of like, you know, I was completely wrong about everything. And now I’m
0:07:40 going to fire half of you because I, of the mistakes I made will just cause you to hesitate
0:07:46 in a way that could cost you the company itself. And like, how do you get over that? And then like,
0:07:51 what do you actually say? And how do these conversations work? And all this kind of thing
0:07:55 is, is the actual thing that people need to really kind of get an understanding of? Like,
0:08:02 what are the words, you know, that get me out of this thing, at least temporarily. And, you know,
0:08:07 nobody had been writing like that. The last guy who kind of, I thought, wrote a book like that was
0:08:12 Andy Grove back when he wrote High Output Management. And, you know, that book was really old at the time.
0:08:17 So I was like, well, somebody had to write the sequel. You know, we’re now, it’s been 30 years.
0:08:23 Do you think that it’s like, when it comes to leading, do you think that it’s mostly just getting your
0:08:26 mindset right? I mean, is that what you’re saying? Where it’s like, no, no, no, it’s more,
0:08:32 it’s more complicated than that. You kind of strive to get to a point of honesty, like true honesty,
0:08:40 where you’re actually being true. Like you’re not lying to yourself. That’s hard. You know, that it’s
0:08:45 almost like, you know, like if you’re, you guys are kind of creatives on the pod, but like to be a,
0:08:50 like a great creative, at some point you have to get all the way to that very vulnerable point
0:08:57 where you’ve exposed yourself and all your issues and weaknesses and in everything. And like leadership
0:09:01 is a little bit like that and that you’re kind of pushing and pushing and pushing to get all the
0:09:07 way to what’s true. So that’s, you know, that’s part of the process. But the other thing is just,
0:09:14 you know, you don’t really necessarily completely know what you’re doing, particularly when you start
0:09:18 and you’re building a company. And so you have to kind of have, like, it’s a confidence game where
0:09:25 you have to talk yourself into, okay, you know, like I think I know enough, you know, to do this.
0:09:30 And, you know, it can be very little things. Like I had a conversation with an entrepreneur. He’s like,
0:09:34 Ben, like, I need your help. And I was like, why do you need my help? He says, my CTO is an asshole.
0:09:41 And I said, well, okay. But, you know, like he’s a good CTO. I know that from talking to you before.
0:09:46 So you’re not even asking me, should you fire him, are you? And he’s like, no, I’m not asking you that.
0:09:50 And I said, well, tell me why he’s an asshole. And maybe I can help. And he goes, well,
0:09:57 you know, he made a, like a young woman in our, on our finance team cry yesterday. And I was like,
0:10:03 okay, yeah, that’s kind of mean spirited for a CTO to do that. And I said, well, you know,
0:10:09 so you’re really kind of asking me like, not how to fire him, but just how to have a conversation with
0:10:14 him about his behavior without him quit. That’s what you’re saying. And he’s like, yeah. And I said,
0:10:20 well, look, here’s what I would say to him. I would say, hey, you know, you’re a fantastic
0:10:29 director of engineering, but you’re not an effective CTO. And, you know, if you want to be a director
0:10:34 of engineering forever, like we can just run just like this and it’s no problem. You do a great job
0:10:38 in managing your team. You get stuff done on time. You’re great, but you’re not effective with the
0:10:43 rest of the organization. And that’s what a CTO is. The CTO has got to marshal the resources of the
0:10:49 whole company to get what he needs to get the job done. And if you go to like a junior person,
0:10:56 you’re like five levels below you and make her cry, you know, you’re probably right, but like,
0:11:00 you’re never going to get what you want out of her. So like, you can’t even be effective with her.
0:11:06 Like, how are you going to be effective with like execs? So if you want to learn how to do that,
0:11:12 like, let’s learn how to do that. But, you know, and if not, no problem, but just know that at some
0:11:15 point I got to bring in the CTO. That’s the way I would have the conversation with him. And that kind
0:11:21 of got him to went, okay, now I can talk to him. And so, so much of like the mistakes that CEOs make are
0:11:27 like, they just don’t even know how to have the conversation. And so it’s, it’s a little bit like
0:11:32 the mindset part is correct. And that there is a, like a confidence part about it, uh, where you have
0:11:37 to be able to kind of do things when you’re not sure that you’re right, but there’s techniques and
0:11:42 there’s ideas and there’s things in there that, you know, it’s just harder than it looks. And the
0:11:48 problem is the mistakes, like not talking to him is going to multiply, right? Like, because now you’re
0:11:52 going to isolate engineering and nobody’s going to like them and you’re going to have politics and the
0:11:56 company and like, and, and, and, and, and then pretty soon people just don’t even want to work
0:12:01 there and you have high attrition. And then, you know, well, why the fuck do we have high attrition
0:12:05 and this and that and the other, and then the board’s all upset and this. So it kind of snowballs
0:12:10 on you if you can’t deal with these things. Man, this is so cool because I just read this book called
0:12:14 The Motive and the whole book is how to have a conversation like that. So basically like someone
0:12:18 showed it and it’s like small stuff. So it’s like someone shows up to leave for a meeting. They’re not
0:12:22 prepared. They made someone cry. And I remember reading this and I was like, I don’t want to talk
0:12:25 about this on the pod maybe because I think I feel stupid that I’m having to learn like a script on
0:12:31 how to confront someone. And then I hear you talking about this and I’m like, all right,
0:12:34 I feel a little bit better because why, why is this conversation hard for me? I feel like this
0:12:39 should be easy. I don’t know what to say. I literally don’t know what words to use for this
0:12:42 to be the effective confrontation. And so I had to read a book. And so it’s actually really cool to hear
0:12:48 you describe that other people, I think you even said, I saw another interview about Zuck and I think
0:12:51 you referenced Sam Altman. You’re like, I’ve seen inside these companies, they all face these
0:12:54 like challenging situations where they just don’t know how to like communicate.
0:13:01 Yeah, you know, people get stuck and, you know, like nobody, there’s no way to learn like how to be
0:13:09 CEO of like a big company without kind of being CEO. And so you found a company and it starts growing and you
0:13:14 don’t know what you’re doing and you make mistakes and it’s very scary. And, you know, it’s easy to lose
0:13:22 your confidence. And if you lose your confidence, you hesitate. And if you hesitate, as CEO, then somebody’s got to
0:13:27 step into that vacuum. And then that’s when it becomes very like, political and dysfunctional.
0:13:35 All right, a few episodes ago, I talked about something. And I got 1000s of messages asking me
0:13:40 to go deeper into explain. And that’s what I’m about to do. So I told you guys how I use chat GPT as a life
0:13:46 coach or a thought partner. And what I did was I uploaded all types of amazing information. So I
0:13:53 uploaded my personal finances, my net worth, my goals, different books that I like issues going on in my
0:13:59 personal life and businesses, I uploaded so much information. And so the output is that I have this
0:14:05 GPT that I can ask questions that I’m having issues with in my life. Like how should I respond to this
0:14:10 email? What’s the right decision, knowing that you know my goals for the future, things like that.
0:14:15 And so I worked with HubSpot to put together a step by step process showing the audience showing you
0:14:21 the software that I use to make this the information that I had chat GPT ask me all this stuff. So it’s
0:14:25 super easy for you to use. And like I said, I use this like 10 or 20 times a day. It’s literally
0:14:30 changed my life. And so if you want that, it’s free. There’s a link below, just click it into your
0:14:34 email, and we will send you everything you need to know to set this up in just about 20 minutes. And
0:14:40 I’ll show you how I use it again, 10 to 20 times a day. All right, so check it out. The link is below
0:14:47 in the description. Back to the episode. You’ve said before, like, having confrontation the right way
0:14:54 is super important. And I nodded my head. And then I was like, cool, I really don’t know how
0:14:58 to do that, though. So okay, so what is the right way to have confrontation?
0:15:03 And it’s complicated. But like, the first thing is, you got to stop thinking about yourself, right?
0:15:11 So, you know, and it could be anything. It could be like firing somebody or getting them to change their
0:15:18 behavior or whatever. You’re going to be saying something that they don’t want to hear. And so I
0:15:27 think people get caught up in, well, either I need to be a tough guy, or I need them to like me, or,
0:15:35 you know, some other thing that’s about you. But really, you have to go, okay, what am I going to say
0:15:41 to them that isolates it to this thing that I’m really talking about? You know, so if I need them
0:15:48 to change this behavior, like, how do I get them to hear that in a way they can actually act on it
0:15:54 without getting in their feelings? And, you know, in order to do that, you just have to be like very
0:15:58 straightforward, and you have to be open with how you feel about it. Like, if you think they’re a shit
0:16:02 bird, then you’re probably going to have to fire them anyway. But if you think they’re otherwise
0:16:12 good, then you kind of have to let them know that, but in a way where you’re not clearly setting them
0:16:17 up. You know, you’re not giving them a shit sandwich. You’re the greatest person in the world, but this is
0:16:23 all fucked up, and I love you. Like, that, like, people are onto that. Like, it’s just too simple.
0:16:28 So you kind of have to, you know, you have to get to a very honest place with them and say, like,
0:16:33 you know, we’re working together on this. You’re doing this. It’s not working. It’s not effective.
0:16:39 And, you know, like, I can help you get it to be effective, but I need you to get it to be effective.
0:16:44 Like, you have to get that message across. And a lot of it, you know, like, people will accept things
0:16:51 from you if they feel like you’re basically telling them the truth. Like, you’re, I’m, like,
0:16:54 completely open and honest about this shit. Like, I’m not telling you it’s worse than it is,
0:17:00 and I’m not telling you it’s better than it is. I’m telling you what it is. And this is, you know,
0:17:04 when I said earlier about, like, a lot of leadership is getting all the way to the truth. You have to sit
0:17:09 with yourself and say, like, what do I really think about this? Like, not what, like, motherfuckers
0:17:16 were complaining about him, or this happened, or, you know, like, it hurt my feelings the way, like,
0:17:20 this went down, like, he’s doing that in my company. You kind of have to get beyond that and
0:17:28 go, like, what’s really true? Why do they do it? You know, can it be corrected? If it can be corrected,
0:17:35 what would motivate them to correct it? Like, you have to get all the way to that. Otherwise,
0:17:44 what happens is, you know, they’re just going to get upset and defensive or, like, you know,
0:17:48 they’re not going to hear it because it’s too soft. And it’s like, well, yeah, like, Ben kind of doesn’t
0:17:55 like that, but he doesn’t really care. So, you know, how do you get into that, like, meaningful place
0:17:57 where people can hear what you’re talking about?
0:18:03 And you’ve invested in and known for a long time a lot of the tech, the biggest tech CEOs. And I would
0:18:09 say the stereotype of the most successful tech founders is this sort of, like, slightly autistic,
0:18:16 very high IQ, lower EQ sort of persona. But that’s not really what would be good at the thing you’re
0:18:22 talking about. And so, is it that that stereotype is just wrong? And that’s not what you’ve seen when
0:18:25 you’ve kind of been, you guys, I think, invested in Facebook early on, stuff like that. Like,
0:18:29 is it that the stereotype is wrong? Is it that they learned these things? Is there, like, some,
0:18:33 are they taking touchy-feely at Stanford? Like, what’s helping them be able to do this?
0:18:39 Yes, I think some of these guys have, like, much higher people understanding than you might think.
0:18:44 Like, the ones who truly, like, can’t read people and understand people don’t get, like,
0:18:50 they don’t become Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg, like, his mom, by the way, is, like, a psychiatrist
0:18:57 or a psychologist. And, like, he’s actually pretty insightful. And you can see it, like,
0:19:03 in the deals he’s negotiated, the moves he’s made, you know, guys who are processing information
0:19:09 at that rate of speed, you know, it’s a little weird. Like, you always feel like, okay, what
0:19:15 the fuck is wrong with my clock? Like, this guy’s thinking faster than me. But so my very
0:19:24 first conversation I had was, I think, in 2007. And, you know, at that time, if you guys recall,
0:19:31 you know, the Facebook traffic had flattened. And the current, the executive staff that he had
0:19:36 at the time was trying to run a coup to force him to sell it to Yahoo. So they were leaking all this
0:19:41 stuff to Valleyrag at the time. And Valleyrag was, you know, calling for Zuck to be fired
0:19:43 and, you know, that whole stupidness.
0:19:46 And that was, like, that famous story where he, like, didn’t sell, right?
0:19:53 Yeah, yeah. I mean, he didn’t sell. But, you know, right at that time, you know, his first
0:19:59 question to me was, you know, should I, if I fired my executive team for the second time,
0:20:04 would the board be nervous? I was like, well, you know, it’s not, that’s not even the question,
0:20:09 Mark, because, you know, if you’re asking that question, then you know you kind of have to do
0:20:15 it because you can’t succeed with them. So, you know, whether or not you can succeed without them
0:20:19 is, like, at least a question mark. Like, you know you’re going to die with them.
0:20:26 And I said, but, like, you know, like, let’s talk about, like, why they’re doing this. You know,
0:20:32 like, why has traffic been flat? And he said, well, he said, look, we doubled the size of the
0:20:37 engineering team this year. We went from 400 to 800 engineers. And we had, you know, the way the
0:20:44 product is architected, we had, like, a MySQL layer and then an API, and then the applications are built
0:20:48 on the API. But a lot of the new engineers just wrote straight to MySQL, and they, like,
0:20:54 worked up the whole thing. And now it takes, like, 10 seconds to log in. And so traffic flattened because
0:21:00 of that. And I was like, well, how do you train these guys? And he said, train these guys. And I
0:21:06 never forget that. And I was like, oh, shit. I said, Zach, like, when you’re 10 people, there’s no
0:21:11 knowledge in the company. Like, everybody just comes on and they jump in and they start working and so
0:21:16 forth. But you get to, like, 800 people, 1,000 people. Like, you have a lot of knowledge that’s
0:21:22 in your company about, like, how the product works, how you check in code, everything. You actually have to
0:21:29 teach people that because they don’t know who to ask or how to learn that on their own. And so you
0:21:34 have to do that. And, like, just, you know, to show you what a, like, great CEO he ended up being,
0:21:39 he created this two-month boot camp for, like, everybody in product management. Every engineer
0:21:45 who entered Facebook had to go through this thing, learn everything, and so forth. So he was, like, he,
0:21:52 you know, like, he’s, like, a phenomenal student of management. And, you know, before he became,
0:21:57 like, you know, now he’s, I wouldn’t call him a student, he’s a great CEO. But, like, a lot of
0:22:06 these guys, you know, can figure out the people part pretty fast, I would say. And like I said,
0:22:12 the ones who truly don’t understand people don’t actually turn out to be good CEOs. Like,
0:22:17 they don’t get to that level. Like, you can, you know, you can make fun of Larry Page or Elon or
0:22:21 Zuck and so forth, but they are actually very smart about people, all three of them.
0:22:26 You have these great stories. That’s a great story. One, I think that’s in your new book,
0:22:34 is a story that I feel like is relevant to kind of any business size. So some of these are, it’s like,
0:22:37 oh, well, my company’s never going to be 20,000 people. So, like, I don’t really,
0:22:42 I can’t really relate to this. But one, I thought it was about collection. It was about collecting money,
0:22:45 which I think is that, you know, whether you’re like an accountant, and you have to do
0:22:50 this for your clients, or your 10 clients, or you’re a big business. And I think it’s the CEO of
0:22:54 Nation, uh, Nation Builder. Yeah. Can you tell this story? I thought this was a phenomenal story.
0:23:00 Yeah. So, you know, then they’re, they’re kind of, we’re living on the edge. You know,
0:23:07 they need every kind of thing collected, uh, possible. And, you know, she was just like,
0:23:11 you know, cash collections would just be, you know, and there were all this dumb stuff that
0:23:15 would happen, like they sent out the wrong kind of email or this and that, and, you know,
0:23:20 they didn’t get the thing and so forth. And I said, you know, I learned this technique actually from
0:23:29 Andy, um, Andy Grove, where like, if a project was off track, he would just go, okay, 8 a.m. every day,
0:23:33 we’re going to meet on it, and I’m going to be in the meeting, and I’m going to want answers.
0:23:41 Uh, and what that meeting actually turns into is, you know, every dumb thing going on,
0:23:48 you can just resolve very, very fast because people don’t know who to ask, how to resolve it,
0:23:54 you know, whether it’s a problem and so forth. So I said, Leah, just like every day, 8 a.m.,
0:23:59 get everybody in the cash collection team together and start the meeting by saying, like, where’s my
0:24:04 money? Like, why haven’t we collected it? And like, make them explain to you why they haven’t
0:24:10 collected it, and you’ll be shocked at why they haven’t collected it. And sure enough, you know,
0:24:16 it’s like, well, we didn’t know we could edit the email. It’s just like, well, you didn’t know you
0:24:21 could edit the email. Like, but, but it’s, you know, those kinds of things start popping up. Oh, I didn’t
0:24:26 know that I could do this, um, because this is what we ought to be doing, but we’re not doing it because
0:24:31 I don’t think I’m allowed to do it. And it’s like, well, no, I’m the CEO, you’re allowed to do it.
0:24:38 And then that can unstick a, like, dumb, you know, a project that’s way off track or a process that’s
0:24:44 off track or so forth. So it’s kind of like a different idea about management where, you know,
0:24:51 the, the enemy as, as you grow, like, communication becomes your biggest challenge. And so it’s just a
0:24:58 way to go like, okay, I’m going to manually unscalably fix communication in this organization
0:25:03 right now. And the, the amazing thing about it is does tend to be very long lasting where like once
0:25:10 they get that, um, then, you know, it sustains. I had a good experience with a founder you invested
0:25:15 in. Do you, do you know, uh, Sui Ali? He’s one of my good buddies and you guys invested in, uh,
0:25:21 tiny, uh, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He does this exact thing. The founder emailed us and was
0:25:26 like, Hey, um, you know, we’re going to start raising money. Uh, you know, we really need to
0:25:30 raise money. So, um, it’s important. And I would just love to pick your brain on what it was like
0:25:35 a very, like, can I pick your brain? Would you like to go get coffee for this? My house is on fire.
0:25:38 And we were like, wait, wait, just to clarify, is the house on fire? He’s like, yeah, yeah. The house
0:25:43 is on fire. So we said, okay, well let’s meet like now. Why are you emailing me? Let’s just talk
0:25:48 right now. And so he jumps on the call and like, okay, what do you have so far? You know,
0:25:53 let’s raise the money. And he’s like, ah, here’s the pitch deck. And basically in the first 30 minutes,
0:25:56 we just gave him like, Hey, here’s three things. Let’s go. Like, these are the three most important
0:26:00 things you got to change. This is, this still part of the story is broken. You’re missing this
0:26:04 information and you know, you’re not, you’re framing it the wrong way. You got to frame it this way.
0:26:09 And he’s like, okay, this is so helpful. Wow. Thank you guys. Um, would love to touch base again
0:26:13 next week. And Sully was like next week, how long do you think it’ll take you to make those
0:26:18 three changes? He’s like, well, he’s like, how about we meet today at 3 PM and you show
0:26:22 me and we did two a days with them. And I, I, it kind of broke my brain a little bit. Cause
0:26:27 there was like this invisible wall as a business person. Like you don’t meet twice in a day.
0:26:31 Like that would be a faux pas, you know, like it’s like bad manners. It’s like, fuck
0:26:35 your manners. When it’s like, was this a big problem or not? Like, just clarify that for
0:26:39 me. Cause if it is a big problem, then I’ll just keep showing up and saying, okay, now
0:26:44 what? Okay. Now what? And okay. And if you just do that for three days, the, like all of
0:26:48 the excuses get squeezed away is what I found. Like all the excuses suddenly disappear and
0:26:51 you get to the brass tacks about what’s going on. It was amazing.
0:26:56 That’s definitely right. No, no, that’s a, you know, Sully and I actually had a lot of
0:27:01 conversations about it. He, he went through a lot of crises in that. So he, he, he knows.
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0:27:30 Can I ask you about confidence? Um, you give a talk with a bunch of your portfolio companies
0:27:35 about, I think I saw you say that like they don’t fail due to lack of competence, but a lack
0:27:36 of confidence.
0:27:47 I would say the number one reason why a founder fails at the CEO job is some kind of lack of
0:27:54 confidence, crisis of confidence, whatever it is that causes them to hesitate basically. Okay. I should
0:28:00 do this and I can see that I should do this, but I’m not sure I should do this. So I’m going to wait.
0:28:05 If you had to teach a class, uh, on how to improve someone’s confidence is, do you have
0:28:09 like a framework or, uh, some bullet points that you would, that you would stand by?
0:28:16 It ends up being like at the end of the day, confidence is personal. Um, and you have to feel
0:28:22 it yourself to have it. Like I can’t, um, you know, it’s like the wizard of Oz. It’s like, I, you know,
0:28:28 I can give you like a clock and tell you it’s a heart or whatever, but like at some point you’ve
0:28:36 got to believe that. And the thing that causes that crisis in confidence is, you know, okay,
0:28:42 you invent something, you hire a bunch of people, you make a decision. It’s wrong. People really
0:28:49 suffer from it. You feel horrible because you’re like, wow, I don’t know what I’m doing. And I made
0:28:54 a mistake and it had real consequences. Like most people in life don’t have a situation
0:29:00 like that until they become CEO. And so then, you know, it’s like, well, how do I, how do
0:29:08 I recover that? And so like a lot of the idea of the firm is like, well, you know, what if
0:29:12 you could call anybody? Like, how would that make you feel? Like, what if you could call anybody,
0:29:18 you know, in the white house and Congress in, you know, like any executive, you know,
0:29:26 any kind of big company CEO and be able to have a conversation, you know, like what if we could build
0:29:30 that network for you? So that was kind of the idea behind the platform. And then, you know,
0:29:37 we would do, I used to have this event, which I should probably bring back, but I ran out of room
0:29:42 in my backyard called the CEO barbecue, where we would bring all the CEOs for the portfolio. And
0:29:48 then we would just like put like very famous people around them. So we had like Zuck and Larry Page and
0:29:54 Kanye all at a barbecue and they’re at the barbecue and there’s no like talks. There’s no business agenda.
0:29:59 There’s no nothing. There’s no even toast, right? Like it’s just a barbecue. And so it was just to make
0:30:04 him feel like, Oh shit. Like I know Kanye hit, like I’m, I have to be somewhat important. Like,
0:30:08 so, so you’re trying to like imbue this feeling that like, I may not totally know what I’m doing,
0:30:10 but I should be CEO. You know,
0:30:11 But I’m at a barbecue with Kanye.
0:30:12 Yeah.
0:30:13 I can’t be totally dumb.
0:30:19 What about, what about the inverse when you look at a CEO and you’re like, Oh, they have just like
0:30:24 hit this fork in the road. Now confidence is going to go horribly, uh, is going to go down and it’s
0:30:28 going to be the, their demise. What decisions do those people make? Like, what are the commonalities
0:30:29 between the people who lose it that way?
0:30:33 Sort of like the Charlie Munger, like tell me where I’m going to die. So I know not to go there.
0:30:36 Right. Well, what would be the decisions I would make to take me off the path?
0:30:43 I would say the big thing is it’s almost like a lack of decision, right? Like it’s a hesitation
0:30:48 in football. They always say like, trust, you have to trust your eyes because you could be really fast.
0:30:53 But if you don’t start running, when you see the thing, if you wait, then you’re not fast.
0:30:57 Um, and that’s kind of what it’s like for CEOs. Like you could be really,
0:31:02 really smart, but if you wait too long before you pull the trigger, you’re not smart anymore.
0:31:09 It’s too light. And there, there’s all kinds of like excuses people tell themselves to not make a
0:31:16 decision. So for example, like the, one of the, um, biggest ones on an executive, like is,
0:31:23 well, if, you know, we made such a big deal when we hired him, like, what is the press going to say?
0:31:30 Or what are the people in the company going to say? Or, you know, I don’t have time to hire a new
0:31:35 person to do the job that this guy’s fucking up. You know, like these kinds of, there’s all these
0:31:43 reasons not to make the decision. Um, and they’re all just, if you think about them for more than like
0:31:48 five minutes, you go, well, that doesn’t make any fucking sense. Cause this guy’s like fucking up the
0:31:53 whole org. Like who gives a fuck what the press says? Like you just get rid of him, like start
0:32:00 rebuilding now. You know, like it’s not, if he’s doing a bad job, like no job is better than a bad
0:32:06 job. Like, I think we all know that. And everything kind of ends up like that. I don’t know enough to
0:32:10 make the decision. Like I didn’t give him enough of a chance, this and that and the other. So it’s,
0:32:15 it’s kind of that lack of confidence that generally causes a no decision where there really needs to
0:32:21 be a decision, uh, is, is the main, I would say that’s the common pattern.
0:32:25 Yeah. So in the two examples you gave, the first one was like, ah, the CTO, blah, blah, blah. And
0:32:31 that’s kind of like avoiding the conversation would be the mistake there. And then in this one,
0:32:33 like avoiding the decision would be the mistake.
0:32:38 Yeah. You have to, you know, I wrote a post a long time ago, so called, you know, run out the
0:32:43 pain in darkness. You have to run out the pain in darkness. You can’t run away from it. If you run
0:32:49 away from it, it’s all bad. You’re pretty good at, uh, titling blog posts and books. I think, uh,
0:32:52 you know, the hard things, but the hard things are like bad-ass, but I think you said that I think in
0:32:58 the, in the publishing industry, typically the author’s title is not the winning title. And I think
0:33:01 you were like bragging that you’re like, that’s my title. I came up with it.
0:33:06 Yeah. Well, I, I, I, I, well, yeah, because I didn’t need a book, like I didn’t actually want
0:33:10 to write the book. They asked me to write the book, the publisher. So I felt like I didn’t do what I
0:33:15 wanted. So I, I called it what I wanted. Yeah. What, um, what do you, what excites you? So this,
0:33:19 you know, a lot of the stuff we talked about is like the hard stuff, the pain and, uh, but nobody gets
0:33:24 into this for just the pain, right? Nobody gets into this to do the pain is just a sort of necessary
0:33:29 that we, we go through to get, to do the good stuff. Uh, I’m just curious, what are you really
0:33:33 excited about right now? Like what are either, you know, rabbit holes are going down, cool stuff you’ve
0:33:36 seen that you can’t, haven’t been able to forget. Like what’s really cool and interesting to Ben
0:33:43 Horowitz? Well, so one of the most exciting things that’s going on now, um, is, you know, like kind
0:33:52 of, it’s well known that the United States has kind of fallen behind in defense, manufacturing,
0:33:58 rare earth minerals, all these kinds of, uh, things. But what’s been very exciting is like there are
0:34:04 startups that are like, oh, I’ll solve that for America. And so like we have a company, uh, that
0:34:10 we just funded recently periodic labs, which is using AI to do like novel material science to kind
0:34:17 of enable better kind of design of everything from like rockets to missiles to, you know, all sorts of
0:34:25 things. And then we have a company cobalt, uh, metals that is basically using AI. So they take a dirt
0:34:30 sample and they use AI to analyze the dirt sample and they can tell you, oh yeah, there’s going to be
0:34:37 like, you know, copper below that, um, you know, whatever a mile down into the earth. Uh, and so,
0:34:43 you know, these kinds of techniques where you’re kind of using tech to go, oh, no, we’re going to catch
0:34:49 up fast is been like very, very exciting. I would say. My, my view as a founder on the ground is just
0:34:56 that sometimes you see something and like I said, it, it breaks like an imaginary wall you had. And, um,
0:35:00 and sometimes things become cool and cool. Uh, although we tried to not like follow trends,
0:35:04 sometimes you could use your psychology for you rather than against you. And so the idea, you know,
0:35:09 seeing what Elon has done where it’s like, oh, he goes into these really hard spaces and does these
0:35:14 like, like hardware, hard tech, literal, literal rocket science. Right. And sort of unafraid of that
0:35:20 or, you know, and real going in and doing, you know, weapons and defense tech and making that cool to
0:35:24 be kind of patriotic in that way. Is that what it was? Is that what it took? Or was there something else to
0:35:32 you know, there’s a lot, they’re very challenging companies to build in some ways. Um, but on the
0:35:39 other hand, you know, it’s a good time to do them because people, because Elon has, I mean, you know,
0:35:48 God bless Elon for showing that it was possible. So now, whereas like only Elon could have financed
0:35:54 Tesla, normal people that can start to finance these things now because Elon has shown that it’s
0:35:58 possible. So it’s a little bit like the four minute mile on that way, I would say. But yeah, I mean,
0:36:04 like, you know, the things that, yeah. And even in like public safety, you look at something like,
0:36:10 you know, flock safety in a way, technologically, it’s not nearly as complicated as some of the other
0:36:18 as like a, uh, as an andrel or something like that, but it’s very, very powerful. I mean, you know, they
0:36:24 really make, uh, both kind of policing, being a citizen and even being a criminal more safe because
0:36:31 all of a sudden you’re using AI to provide real intelligence. So, you know, for example, in Las Vegas,
0:36:39 where we deployed it, a huge problem, a huge problem in like police violence, um, police getting killed
0:36:51 are traffic stops. And a big reason for that is somebody reports, there’s a, you know, a 1998
0:37:00 Honda Acura that’s driving, that’s brown, um, that kidnapped a baby. Okay. So that’s a real
0:37:06 situation. But like that description is usually wrong. Like the description of the actual car is
0:37:11 usually wrong. So you have flock safety, you have the exact match. So the difference between a cop
0:37:16 going into a situation where they may have the wrong guy. And if they have the wrong guy, the guys could
0:37:23 get very agitated and then you have a bad situation or they know a hundred percent, this guy, he is in
0:37:30 a car that we know is the car. And there’s a baby in the back. That’s not his. Okay. You’re going in
0:37:36 with a whole, you’re not sending a single person in there with a gun coming off their motorcycle. Like
0:37:42 you’ve got a whole team. That’s going to make sure that that person is apprehended safely and
0:37:47 correctly. And the baby is saked. I’ve heard, I’ve heard flocks, this amazing thing. Is it drones?
0:37:50 Is it cameras? What are they doing? Yeah, you know, so, so it’s, uh, it’s primarily like a camera
0:37:56 system, uh, where AI will basically, so somebody does something, you know, they grab the car on the
0:38:00 camera, that car shows up on another camera anywhere in the city. And they’re like, oh, there it is.
0:38:07 And actually that’s how they caught. Interestingly, the, the, the, uh, Tesla terrorist who set the
0:38:16 Tesla ship on fire in Las Vegas was he came in earlier to case the place, flock safety, pick up
0:38:22 the car. They saw the car come back, um, at night. And they were like, oh, we know whose car that is.
0:38:27 And they just went and arrested him. Did you guys, um, see that ad? I think it was like two weeks ago.
0:38:32 I was trying to find it. It was, went viral on Twitter, but it was basically, I believe it was a
0:38:37 solar company. Was it a solar company where they’re recruiting employees and they had a whole website
0:38:43 just dedicated to the recruitment, uh, aspect of just, they needed more staff and they bought an ad
0:38:48 in the New York times, I believe, or some newspaper. And it was like, um, uh, an old man sitting with
0:38:52 like what it looked like his grandson overlooking a mountain and they were like overlooking, I think
0:38:56 it was solar panels. I’m not exactly sure, but it was like, do you really want to tell your
0:39:02 grandkids that you spent your entire thirties and forties building just B2B software? It was great.
0:39:05 And it like, and there’s this whole trend amongst, uh, young people on Twitter of like being more
0:39:09 traditional and things like that. And I think that to answer your question, Sean, about Andrel and,
0:39:15 and Elon, I think that it’s kind of been like a perfect spiral or a perfect mix of like people
0:39:22 seeing Elon and Palmer do these interesting things. And also just like getting sick of just building B2B
0:39:26 software or something, you know, that’s just a stereotype for what’s boring. That’s may or may not be true.
0:39:30 But like, uh, you know, like seeing this, like there could be more out there.
0:39:37 I think that the, the software had to get good enough to, of course, make, um, make these other
0:39:42 things possible, uh, which is, you know, and it’s amazing that we’re at that time where you can
0:39:46 really imagine changing the world in all kinds of ways.
0:39:52 You, uh, you get to see a lot of pitches of the smartest people in the world telling you what the
0:39:56 future is going to look like in five years. And so you have this like element of your
0:40:01 job. That’s a little bit like a time traveler. So you, you probably have a better sense of
0:40:04 what the world looks. Nobody has a perfect sense, but you have a better sense of what the world looks
0:40:08 like, you know, five, seven, 10 years from now, you don’t know exactly when, you don’t know who’s
0:40:12 going to do it. What’s broken your brain, either from a demo or a story pitch that you’ve heard,
0:40:16 uh, you know, sometime in the last year or so that, that the rest of us will experience,
0:40:17 you know, sometime in the future.
0:40:24 Yeah. So I think, you know, one of the things that, um, I mean, you know, and everybody’s talking
0:40:30 about embodied AI and robots and so forth and rightly so, but I would say like in the creative space,
0:40:38 I I’m starting to realize like this AI video and so forth, it’s not like making the old thing more
0:40:44 efficient. It’s a new medium. It’s an actual new thing in the same ways that like movies weren’t
0:40:53 plays. Uh, you know, AI video is not video. The stories that you can tell are completely different
0:40:59 because you can do things that you just, you know, without a $200 million budget, you had had no chance
0:41:05 to do it. And now it’s like, no problem. And I think that’s going to be like very, very,
0:41:12 very interesting. And then the, how well it’s working on like existing stuff. So people, you know,
0:41:18 the people who are on the cutting edge of the movie industry are now, you know, they’re able to do like
0:41:26 whole movie scenes or edit or change their movie, have the AI actor do the, uh, do this,
0:41:32 do the third cut at a level of quality that even the actor doesn’t know it wasn’t them doing the
0:41:38 acting and, and that kind of thing. So it’s, I think it’s going to change dramatically again. And,
0:41:43 and there’s going to be kind of white space for not only new creatives, but new entertainment
0:41:50 entrepreneurs and so forth that nobody is really imagining now. Is there any AI content that you
0:41:55 consume as a fan? Yeah, no, no. Well, like, you know, I, I’ve been watching that, uh,
0:42:03 the one with the cat, um, was pretty good over the, over the weekend, the cat playing all the
0:42:06 instruments and the lady coming out on four, it’s going like, you got to get that racket out.
0:42:10 Do you guys see that one? Yeah. Was that on Sora? That was pretty good. Yeah. I think it’s a
0:42:18 Sora video. Ben, do you mess around on, uh, Suno at all with AI music? Yeah. Suno, um, and, uh,
0:42:23 well, you know, 11 labs has a model and, uh, UDO has got a very good model. So there, there’s,
0:42:28 there’s a few different really good models. Like, I feel like I could have a music career again.
0:42:35 That’s going to be very, very interesting to me because it, it’s sort of like one thing that hip
0:42:41 hop showed was, so people don’t really realize this, but this is something Quincy Jones pointed out to me
0:42:47 before he passed. He said, you know, Ben, like hip hop started like exactly when they canceled all the
0:42:53 music programs in schools. Like it was the same, the exact same time when people didn’t learn to play
0:43:01 instruments in schools. That’s when that is exactly when hip hop began and hip hop kind of freed you
0:43:08 as a, somebody who was like a musical talent from actually having to learn to play an instrument,
0:43:15 uh, which, you know, and, and even for the producers, right? Like you had a drum machine,
0:43:21 you had samples, so you could hear what you liked and play it, but you didn’t need to be a virtuoso.
0:43:28 And that kind of opened up a world that we didn’t have before. And I think AI music is kind of that
0:43:29 on steroids.
0:43:33 I don’t know if you guys know the number one song in the country right now is an AI country artist.
0:43:34 It’s all walk my walk.
0:43:35 Oh yeah.
0:43:40 And, um, the first, I think the first AI artist that got a record deal recently, like, you know,
0:43:46 so this is definitely what the future looks like is people who, non-musicians, it’s just like,
0:43:50 you know, Replit and others make it so that you don’t have to be a coder to make apps.
0:43:54 And now you don’t have to be a musician to make music. And I don’t think people really understand
0:43:58 how big of a deal that is. Like my, my personal trainer who’s been in the fitness world his whole
0:44:05 life has been in a rabbit hole making, he’s probably in the top 0.1% of AI creators in the world right
0:44:11 now creating music. And he’s like, got like a full band. He’s like his own record label. And every day
0:44:15 he’s up till two in the morning and he knows these programs inside and out. And because it wasn’t really
0:44:20 accessible to somebody who didn’t have a, you know, musical talent before to be able to make
0:44:20 music.
0:44:30 Right. There’s a big difference between taste and creativity and being a virtuoso violinist. Right.
0:44:37 Like those, those don’t necessarily have to be the same thing. And it’s great that, you know,
0:44:44 people, you know, whatever, practice violin for three hours a day and like get amazing at it and all that
0:44:50 kind of thing. But it’s pretty neat to have a world where like, okay, if you can just do this part,
0:44:52 you can still play.
0:44:57 This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least $3 million a year
0:45:02 in revenue. Because around this point, that’s when you’re able to look up after being heads down for
0:45:06 years building your company. And you realize two things. One, you’ve done something great,
0:45:10 but you’re still a long way from your final destination. And two, you look around and you
0:45:17 realize, I am all alone. I’ve outrun my peers, which means you’re now making $10 million decisions
0:45:23 alone by yourself. And that is when mediocrity can creep in. My company, Hampton, we solved this
0:45:28 problem by giving a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs who are going to hold you accountable,
0:45:34 call you out on your nonsense and help show you the way. Because the fact is, is that there’s only a
0:45:37 tiny number of people in your town who know what you’re going through and who have been there.
0:45:43 And they’re hard to find. The biggest risk is not failing. You have a company and it’s working,
0:45:46 you’re going to be fine. But the biggest risk is waking up 10 years from now and saying,
0:45:52 shit, I barely grew in business and in life. And for people like you who are ambitious,
0:45:58 wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid. We have made so many of these
0:46:03 groups and we have a thousand plus members. And I know this stuff actually works. It can change your
0:46:08 life. It changed mine. And I know it will change yours. So check it out. Joinhampton.com.
0:46:15 Sean, can you ask, you have this really cool line about the rules of culture and making them
0:46:19 memorable. Well, yeah. So when I’m doing the research, one thing that stands out is like,
0:46:25 you talk about culture, you talk about like, which is normally culture is like, I just fall asleep
0:46:28 because it is so over-talked about in the business world. You just like, you got to really tell me
0:46:33 something new. Over-talked about without anybody saying anything. Yeah, exactly. Culture, culture.
0:46:39 Right. So cool. Tell me your values. Like integrity. Like, all right, great. Glad to hear it. I was
0:46:42 worried it was going to be the opposite, right? Like it doesn’t really tell you anything. And you know,
0:46:47 when you go walk into the company, the stuff on the wall doesn’t match the stuff you see happening
0:46:51 within the four walls. So it’s just, you get sort of disillusioned in a way. But when you see somebody
0:46:55 doing something interesting or you, or somebody actually pulling it off, which of course there are
0:47:00 examples, I get interested. And so one thing that I thought was cool, a nuance that I hadn’t really
0:47:05 heard before was you were talking about how at A6 and Z, you kind of take time to drive the culture.
0:47:10 Like I think in the new onboarding, you like, I do a culture session one hour, they sign something at
0:47:15 the end. And one of the nuances, I thought that was interesting was you said, my rule for writing
0:47:20 the kind of like the culture rules is it has to have some shock value. Like it has to give the other
0:47:24 person like, Oh, what the hell are you talking about type of reaction? If it’s going to be memorable.
0:47:29 I think the idea was if it’s not memorable, it’s never going to be remembered or used. So you have to do
0:47:32 something to make it memorable. Can you talk about your theory around this?
0:47:39 Yeah. So, I mean, it kind of comes down to what you do every day, right? Like it’s a daily habit. So,
0:47:45 you know, this idea that you put cultural values on the wall and then, you know, once a year at a
0:47:50 performance tree, you say, do you follow the culture? It’s like, that, that means absolutely
0:47:54 nothing, right? It’s nothing. And so it’s like, well, what do you do every day? And so like,
0:47:59 one of the things we do every day is like, we meet with entrepreneurs. So like, what’s a rule
0:48:05 that sets the culture around that? So it’s like, well, if you’re late for that meeting, it’s $10 a
0:48:09 minute. And it’s like, well, $10 a minute. Like, well, what if I have to go to the bathroom? Yeah,
0:48:14 you owe me $50. I don’t care. Um, you know, what, what if I had an important phone call? Okay. You owe me
0:48:18 a hundred dollars. Like, I don’t care. You had an important phone call. Well, like, why am I paying
0:48:25 to work here? You know? Well, because building a company is extremely hard and culturally, we want
0:48:29 to have the ultimate respect for that. And we don’t want to waste any entrepreneur’s time. And so that’s
0:48:33 your most important thing. So you have to plan to do that. You guys have a fine now you’re talking,
0:48:41 this is a real a 16. Yeah. So every time I have to like go to the meeting, you know, like I have to
0:48:46 think about that because I’ve got to be on time. I got to fucking plan my day. So like, there’s not,
0:48:51 I’m not back to back on that one. I got to be on time. Otherwise, you know, I’m going to be embarrassed
0:48:58 and all that kind of thing. And so, well, why, and why am I doing that? And then that, okay, if you do
0:49:03 that, that’s a habit that makes you go, okay, like, no, I’m going to respect what this is. I know how hard
0:49:08 it is to build a company. I may not even know how hard it is, but I know that like somebody here
0:49:12 thinks it’s hard enough that I have to show up on time. So can you keep, can you tell some more of
0:49:16 those, um, interesting, like, you know, the, the tardiness paying thing. That’s pretty cool.
0:49:22 Where does some other, so it’s, well, a second one is like, if you, um, if you talk smack about an
0:49:29 entrepreneur on X, you’re fired. It doesn’t matter if they’re in the portfolio or not. You’re just,
0:49:37 that’s it. Uh, and why is that? You know, well, culturally, first of all, we’re dream builders.
0:49:41 We’re not dream killers. If you want to do something bigger than yourself and make the world a better
0:49:47 place, I don’t care what it is. I don’t care if I think it’s stupid. I’m for that. I’m not against
0:49:52 that. I am for that. And I don’t care if like Sequoia funded you or Benchmark funded you. I’m for that.
0:49:59 Like go get it. Like we’re a pro entrepreneur. And then, you know, kind of related to that,
0:50:05 I don’t want to give anybody credit for making themselves look smart by making somebody else
0:50:10 look stupid. Like, I don’t want to give anybody like a gold star for saying that guy’s, you know,
0:50:16 making selling dollars for 85 cents. Oh, I’m so clever. You know, like, fuck you. Like, nah,
0:50:21 we’re not doing that here. And so it’s, it’s that kind of thing where it’s like,
0:50:28 oh, that seems like a harsh punishment, but I get it. I get it because I’ve heard it and,
0:50:36 and I understand it. And so then that’s like a way to kind of show up behaviorally daily,
0:50:43 as opposed to, you know, like, look, here’s the problem with integrity. What does that mean?
0:50:49 Like integrity only matters when it’s tested. Everybody has integrity. Everybody’s honest
0:50:56 until it’s tested. And then when it’s tested, very few people are, right? Like when it costs you money,
0:51:04 when it costs you a deal, when it costs you your marriage, are you honest then? Because that’s the
0:51:09 actual thing. And so you can’t just have it in the abstract. You have to say like,
0:51:18 what behaviors do you have to work here? You know, how responsive do you have to be? These things
0:51:27 end up making the culture much more so than like a value or like, one thing I really like is the,
0:51:32 the, the samurai called them virtues. They didn’t call them values. It’s like, these are the virtues.
0:51:38 Like this, this is your way of being. This isn’t like some fucking, it’s not a set of ideas. It’s a
0:51:41 set of actions. A culture is a set of actions.
0:51:48 Listen to this, Sean. So if you go to a16z.com slash about, you’ll see their values. And I just
0:51:51 want to read, like, I’ve never seen this before. So I’m just going to read a couple of them, but
0:51:56 the six, one, the six out of seven, it’s we play to win. Our culture only matters if we’re
0:52:01 important. And in order to be important, we must win. We are the best firm in the world. So we expect
0:52:08 to win. It’s just like, that’s fantastic. I love that. And that’s, I don’t know if controversial is
0:52:12 the right word, but it’s polarizing, right? Not a lot of people are into that, but that’s, that’s
0:52:16 badass. And then you say, uh, you have another one that I really like. We only do, we only do
0:52:22 first-class business and only in a first-class way. I think that’s a really, I actually stole
0:52:27 that phrasing from JP Morgan. It was so cool. He said it in court. They were accusing him of some
0:52:33 kind of like, uh, crazy, like market manipulation. And you’re talking about the, the JP. Yeah. Yeah.
0:52:39 Yeah. Yeah. I think that was, I think I read about that line in the, uh, Andrew Sorkin’s got that
0:52:44 like 1928 or 29 book. And I think he says that, but that’s great. So, but okay. So, but like,
0:52:49 when I go to this site and I see these, I’m like, okay, this is kind of like, these are like the high
0:52:52 level principles, but you, what you were saying just now is a little bit different. You were like,
0:52:56 Hey, look, well, there, it’s gotta be behaviors that support the principles. Yeah. Yeah. So you,
0:53:02 you, you basically were like, what are the daily situations and actions where we have a choice?
0:53:07 We either show up this way or we show up this way and we’re going to show up this way. And sometimes
0:53:13 with a penalty punishment or praise based on like the extreme behavior version of that behavior with the
0:53:17 no tolerance policy, right? Like, and I think there’s this great, uh, military quote that you
0:53:23 have in your book. Oh yeah. Well, if you, um, if you see something below standard, uh, and you don’t
0:53:29 correct it, you set a new standard. And, and that’s, uh, that’s very true. And that’s why they have to be
0:53:34 specific because if they’re not specific, you can’t enforce it. How do you enforce? Like you don’t have
0:53:38 integrity that just gets weaponized. It’s like that guy doesn’t have integrity. He’s not following the
0:53:42 cultural value. You know, he doesn’t have, why doesn’t he have integrity? Well, he lied to me.
0:53:47 Well, let’s go talk to him. Oh no, I didn’t lie to you. Did it. Like, so it’s not that. Whereas,
0:53:54 oh, you just put out that tweet. Like that’s clearly against the cultural value. Like, uh, there’s no
0:53:58 backing off that. So like, you know, Facebook famously had move fast and break things,
0:54:03 which I think that was really good by the way, all of fame. Yeah. You know, that’s a, that’s a hall of
0:54:06 famer, but like, that’s kind of the, you know, one of the few that I thought about, I thought
0:54:10 about that for months. Like, I’m like, move fast and break, because it’s so counterintuitive. It’s
0:54:14 like, well, you know, you want me to break things? I’m an engineer. I make things. I don’t break
0:54:21 things. Um, but it was just his way of saying, like, there is no excuse for not fucking ship it.
0:54:24 Like we’re going fast, but they don’t have that anymore. Do they? Is that, well, you know,
0:54:30 they got bigger and then, you know, I think speed wasn’t their main thing that they were trying to
0:54:35 achieve. I think they literally changed it to like move fast, stability and stable it like with
0:54:42 stable infrastructure and reliability somehow lost its edge. So have you seen anything like
0:54:46 that move fast and break things or just a behavior when you walked into the Airbnb office and you
0:54:51 noticed something? Yeah. I mean, so, and you know, Amazon had this thing where they used to make the
0:54:59 desks out of like doors and two by fours. Um, and so I tried doing that by the way, it’s, it’s way
0:55:04 cheaper to get a desk. It’s way cheaper to get a desk, but like, I think the idea back in whatever the
0:55:09 late nineties when they did that was like, like, we’re not wasting anyway, you know, and that kind
0:55:14 of thing, which is, you know, those markers are, are very, very powerful. Like one of my favorite
0:55:20 ones was actually from the Haitian revolution when, uh, Toussaint Louverture basically made a rule.
0:55:26 He’s like, you can’t shoot on your wife. Um, which was like so absurd because here they are,
0:55:32 they’re in a colony, you know, a French colony. They’re, um, you know, the British, the Spanish,
0:55:35 the French, they’re all raping and pillaging and doing all this stuff, all these armies.
0:55:42 And these guys like can’t cheat on their walks. But that little cultural idea that said, look,
0:55:47 this is about trust. I got to be able to trust you. And like the people have to be able to trust you
0:55:56 ended up basically really influencing the war. So one of the things that, um, it was like very
0:56:01 surprising, I think, to people who read about the Haitian revolution was the, you know, here’s this
0:56:06 slave army taking on these European colonies and the white women in the colony supported Toussaint
0:56:13 against like the French. Um, and you go like, well, why’d they do that? Because they didn’t rape.
0:56:19 They didn’t pillage. Like Toussaint, like these guys were like half naked soldiers or slaves and
0:56:22 they weren’t doing any of that. They were super polite. They were, they, they behaved in a certain
0:56:29 way. And the legend is, so he was Toussaint Louverture, but slaves didn’t have last name. So where did
0:56:37 Louverture come from? And so the story is, uh, Napoleon who really was pissed at him brought his
0:56:42 generals together. And it’s like, how in the fuck can you not get this slave? Like, how can you not
0:56:47 defeat this slave? And they’re like, well, we get them backed up. We get them surrounded. And then all
0:56:53 of a sudden there’s an opening and he became Toussaint Louverture, Toussaint the opening. Um, and the
0:56:59 opening, uh, a lot of people say was created by these townspeople, these, you know, these women who were just
0:57:04 like, oh fuck, we’re for him. We’re for that army. I don’t give a fuck about your army. We’re for that
0:57:09 army. So like the culture can be like super influential. That’s a great story. That’s really
0:57:14 cool. You mentioned Amazon. Did you see Jeff Bezos got a new startup? Oh, I didn’t see that. Did Jeff
0:57:20 got a new startup? Yeah. You didn’t see this announcement? They, Project Prometheus, they raised
0:57:27 an initial seed round of 6 billion to, to bring. Is that true? They called it a seed round? Well, yeah, it’s the
0:57:33 first round of funding. Uh, so $6 billion raised and they got a hundred people and they’re building AI for
0:57:38 like the, the physical world. So it’s not just robots, but basically like the manufacturing of
0:57:44 airplanes and ships and things like that. So they’re basically saying, how do we use AI? Yeah. And like
0:57:48 sort of advanced manufacturing, I think is the, I think is the idea, but obviously there’s a little
0:57:53 title details, but that’s pretty cool. He’s like back in a operational role for the first time, which
0:58:01 is cool. Yeah. No, I, I think that I, by the way, like how great is it that the logistics genius of our
0:58:09 is going to help us like get back in the manufacturing game like that? Yeah. Yeah. You know, those things
0:58:15 are just incredible to me. And I think all of us were a little sad when Jeff was just living his best
0:58:22 life just because he’s, is so talented. Um, so this is very great news. I loved it. I was like, ha, this
0:58:27 guy’s having fun. He’s getting jacked. He’s showing a different, uh, you know, a new North star also, which
0:58:32 like has, has kind of also taken over the tech industry. And by the way, like whatever, like, you
0:58:39 know, people always make you into cartoon when you get to that level, he is, you know, for sure, like a top
0:58:48 two or three best CEO in the last 40 years. So you’re, you’re, you’re a bit surprising to me because I’ve read
0:58:53 all your books. I know about your background. Basically, like you have like guided the people who have shaped
0:58:57 destiny. You have also shaped destiny yourself, but like you’re, you’ve done all these amazing
0:59:03 things and you’re a shockingly fun hang. Normally I think, and like, you know, about hip hop and all this stuff.
0:59:09 Normally the people who have outsized results typically have very strange personalities and they’re like a little
0:59:17 quirky and I’m sure you have your quirks, but you just seem shockingly well balanced for how not normal your
0:59:23 success is. Is there anything in your day-to-day life that you think that is, um, would, would surprise probably like
0:59:28 the average person or are there any tendencies that you have that you recognize probably aren’t
0:59:30 at all normal?
0:59:38 Well, you know, I would say probably the thing, the thing that my daughter always says that is unusual
0:59:43 about me. Um, and I think it came from like the beginning of my, you know, like I had, um,
0:59:49 I am different than the modern people. Like I was married when I was 22. I had three kids by the time
0:59:56 I was 25. Like I, I kind of had to grow up fast and, you know, and then I had the company and was trying
1:00:01 to raise the kids and the company and, you know, I didn’t have money for nannies or anything. So like,
1:00:06 it was a lot of that. But what she says to me, she’s like, dad, like you’re like at the top of
1:00:12 Maslow’s hierarchy. Like you’re very Zen with all this. And like, I take things for what they are.
1:00:19 I don’t like, I’m pretty good at not being unemotional, but not letting like my emotional
1:00:20 reaction control my behavior.
1:00:23 Were you always that way or did you become?
1:00:27 No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Definitely not. Like, I think it was just all the trauma that like
1:00:28 forced me to learn that.
1:00:34 What age did you, what made you calm down? Was it age? Was it kids? Was it success? Was it like,
1:00:37 look, I’ve made it. Everything else is just icing on the cake. I don’t care.
1:00:45 Well, hey, I think it was the combination of the kids and the company, you know, the, the,
1:00:52 the first company I founded, Loud Cloud, which then became Opsware, was so difficult, um, that
1:01:00 I never, I, like in life since then, like we, like we’ve had difficulties building the
1:01:07 firm, whatever, but like they never got like a rise out of me that could compare to, you
1:01:12 know, what I’d already been through. So it’s almost like, I feel like it’s almost like I know
1:01:19 guys, my friend Oliver Stone, um, was in Vietnam and like, you could tell everything about him
1:01:26 was I’m not in Vietnam anymore. So much of his life is defined by not being in Nam. And
1:01:30 like, I do feel like I don’t want to compare it to war because people always criticize me
1:01:35 for my war metaphors, but it’s kind of like that feeling where it’s like, okay, I’ve been
1:01:38 through that. I’m just looking at the world differently now.
1:01:43 And I bet it. And like, I’m sure you had some sense of like, all right, I’ve accomplished
1:01:47 something. Like I feel good. Maybe I’m playing with house money a little bit with, with
1:01:51 everything else. Um, yeah, it’s a little house money and then it’s a little like, all
1:01:56 you can do is deal with the thing that it is. You can’t stop it from having happen. It happens
1:01:58 and that now you have to deal with it.
1:02:02 Were there any other sort of a wisdom accelerator? So you have these formative experiences, right?
1:02:06 You got three kids and three years or whatever, and you’re, by the time you’re 25, and then
1:02:10 you’re trying to build a startup and everything you face kind of like the back against the wall
1:02:15 moments. Were there any other formative things? Like, you know, for example, um, in my life,
1:02:19 I went to like a Tony Robbins seminar. It’s like, you know, I sort of got five years of
1:02:22 wisdom in a weekend type of, type of deal. Yeah. No, he’s very good at like dealing with
1:02:26 your own psychology. He’s very smart about that. Yeah. Or you spend a summer doing something
1:02:29 or you read a book at the right time or you get the right message at the right time. And
1:02:33 you have a moment where you just decide like from now on X. I guess like, I’m just curious,
1:02:36 was there any, if I just think about like formative moments besides the kids and besides
1:02:39 loud cloud, what, what else would there have been?
1:02:46 Okay. So when I was a kid, um, I was in this, uh, relay race and it was like, it was a very
1:02:52 big deal for me, you know, like it was whatever the track meet. And we came in second in the
1:02:59 relay race. My father, uh, wasn’t at the race. Um, but we came in second because, and the team
1:03:03 that came in first dropped the baton and like, didn’t pick it up. The guy just ran without the
1:03:09 baton and they gave him first place and they didn’t penalize him. And so I was, uh, you know,
1:03:14 my father said, how’d you do in the race? And I was like, well, we came in second, but it wasn’t
1:03:20 fair. And I was going to explain to him why. And he said, stop right there. He said, life isn’t fair.
1:03:30 And that shocked me so much at the time, but it really stuck with me. And it’s the single best
1:03:37 lesson that I ever got in my life was life isn’t fair. And I see young people wreck themselves so
1:03:43 much because they have an expectation that something about life is going to be fair. Like nothing about
1:03:49 life is fair. It’s not fair where you’re born. It’s not fair what race you are. It’s not fair. Like
1:03:56 what your parents did. It’s not fair. Like the job interviews aren’t fair. Like nothing, the tests
1:04:03 aren’t fair. Nothing is fair in life. And so the way you succeed is you don’t have that expectation.
1:04:12 You just deal with it as it is. And I think that everybody who tries to, or who like thinks, well,
1:04:19 like I wasn’t treated fairly or this isn’t fixed. Like that is devastating. You know, like for sure.
1:04:26 I mean, the whole time, uh, you know, when loud cloud and the.com crashed and half our customers
1:04:31 went out of business, I never crossed my mind to go, this isn’t fair. It was just like, okay,
1:04:40 I have to deal with it. And that is, I would say the single best piece of advice and way of looking at
1:04:48 life that you can have is just, it is what it is. And no, do what you can do with it being as it is.
1:04:50 It was very important.
1:04:57 You’ve referenced a lot of really cool stuff. Um, the, the Haiti story. Um, I’ve heard you talk
1:05:02 about history a lot outside of work, work-related stuff. What interests you right now? You know,
1:05:06 Sean and I, we like to talk about just like, just fun stuff that you were into. I’m, I’m constantly
1:05:10 reading about World War II. I like that. What about you? Is there anything that you’re kind of like
1:05:11 being obsessed about?
1:05:18 Yeah. So I do have this, um, I’ll give a plug for it. So I, I have this, uh, charity that I created
1:05:25 with my wife called the Paid and Fall Foundation, um, which basically, you know, is kind of this
1:05:30 idea on a whim, but we give pensions to the old hip hop guys. So, you know, I got a hundred thousand
1:05:36 dollars a year and, and then we have this award show for them, you know, where we name them
1:05:42 grandmasters and so forth. And, you know, that’s, so the first winners were Rakim and Scarface.
1:05:49 And then, you know, we had grandmaster Kaz and Shantae and, um, Kumo Dee and so forth. And then,
1:05:56 uh, grand poobah and, and, uh, Koji rap. And this year, you know, we added this thing, the, uh,
1:06:01 Quincy Jones award, um, to the guys who got sampled the most and we gave it to George Clinton.
1:06:08 And the event was so, I’m still thinking about, it was so amazing because, so George Clinton knows
1:06:15 all the words to follow the leader. And so he’s on stage and Quincy Jones says, can you rap follow?
1:06:19 And he’s raps, follow the leader. And Rakim came out and rapped it with him. So it got George Clinton
1:06:26 and Rakim. And then Dr. Dre bought a table to the event and he like couldn’t help himself. He goes
1:06:31 up on stage just to say, look, I have no career without George Clinton. And it was just so amazing
1:06:38 to have like all these guys that were so important, that influenced so many people. Um, just being
1:06:45 that appreciative of each other, uh, was, I was like, you know, and it’s kind of, and, you know,
1:06:50 hip hop of course is so competitive and, and, uh, you know, they’re always going at each other and so
1:06:56 forth. But to, for them to be at that point where they could just go, man, you guys meant so much to
1:07:02 me. And, and that kind of thing was, um, it was just very special.
1:07:10 That’s so cool. Yeah. That, that idea of pensions for, for, for the OGs is, is so great. What did
1:07:14 that just come on a whim or you’re just at lunch one day and you’re like, why don’t they, you know,
1:07:18 how does that, cause that one liner gives you the clarity, right? It gives you the clarity of where
1:07:24 to go. So, so I was listening to the, um, the H to the Izzo Jay-Z song where he says,
1:07:29 I’m overcharging for what they did to the cold crush. And it got with us like, who was the cold
1:07:37 crush? And it turns out, right, it’s Grandmaster Kaz and Grandmaster Kaz wrote, um, Rapper’s Delight
1:07:45 basically. Uh, and they stole it from him and they stole it from him so nasty that they didn’t change
1:07:52 the word. So Big Bank Hank rafts up. I’m the G-R-A-A-N-D-R-A-R-A-N-D-E-M-A-S-T-E-R. That’s
1:07:57 Grandmaster Kaz. That’s his, he’s rapping about his name, not Big Bank Hank. Big Bank Hank is the
1:08:01 not named Grandmaster. Why is he calling himself Grandmaster? Cause he stole his fucking rhyme
1:08:07 and he never got paid and he never got credit for it. And everybody in hip hop knows this. Uh,
1:08:14 and Grandmaster Kaz, by the way, like if you meet him, he’s a stunk. Like he’s the coolest guy in the
1:08:20 room. He dresses amazing. He’s like super articulate. He can still rap like crazy today.
1:08:27 He’s 66 years old or 65, something like that. And I was like, wow, like we ought to go back and fix
1:08:32 that. And then, you know, uh, Rakim was like on tour at these little clubs and so forth. I was like,
1:08:38 that’s Rakim. Like, how are people treating him like that? So that was the idea. I was like,
1:08:43 we ought to just do it. Um, you know, I’m like getting it set up with the IRS and all that stuff is
1:08:50 like extremely complicated. Um, but yeah, it’s been, it’s been really, really, uh, I would say
1:08:57 amazing. And like, just like an unbelievable epilogue. So Kaz at the last one, um, tells me,
1:09:00 he’s like, Ben, I bought a house. I was like, Oh, that’s amazing. Kaz, you’ve got a house. He’s
1:09:05 like, no, Ben, it’s the first time in my life. I haven’t lived in the projects. Like
1:09:10 grandmaster Kaz, the guy who wrote the first great hip hop song has never not lived in the
1:09:14 projects. Like how crazy is that? And you know, now here he is with the house in Pennsylvania.
1:09:19 Yeah. And he’s got berries in his backyard and the whole thing. Yeah. He’s got berries in his
1:09:25 backyard. It is pretty nuts. The people who are like, invent the shit. Don’t get it. Like
1:09:31 for example, Sean, I love UFC and like, we see like the early UFC events and these guys are bad
1:09:36 asses and they’re getting $2,000 to show up and they still come to like the legends awards and they
1:09:40 still are talking and you’re like, damn dude, this guy probably is selling insurance or something like
1:09:46 that. Like he, like, you know, he probably got made $15,000 that year. No doubt. No doubt. Yeah.
1:09:50 This happens in the NBA too. This is why like the culture gets kind of messed up because the old
1:09:54 heads keep criticizing all the new players. Yeah. And it’s like, oh, why are you doing that?
1:09:58 And it’s like, cause they made too much more money. They’re making $70 million a year. And that guy
1:10:02 didn’t make seven in his whole career. And he’s like, I’m better than that guy. And that guy, you know,
1:10:07 so that this resentment and then they get on and then they’re the, the guys doing the halftime
1:10:11 shows and it’s bad, bad for the product. Right. Like it’s bad for the lineage. Right. Cause
1:10:16 everything is a creative lineage, like on top of what was before. Right. So you, it’s really
1:10:20 cool to kind of almost like economically fix the, you know, or like try to improve that
1:10:22 ecosystem because it’s like the whole thing.
1:10:27 Yeah. It’s kind of like, you know, it’s funny. It’s, um, it’s also kind of this thought I have
1:10:32 about capitalism, which is capitalism is, is definitely the system that lifted the world
1:10:38 out of poverty and like kind of created the modern world we live in yet. You know, it’s incredibly
1:10:44 powerful, but right over time it does get, um, corrupted and so forth. And even if it wasn’t
1:10:50 corrupted, it’s not perfect. And like certain things happen, like, Oh, you create a musical
1:10:56 art form and are the guys who actually made it happen. And it becomes the biggest musical
1:11:01 art form in the world. And you never got paid like capitalism shit work like that, but it’s
1:11:05 just kind of the way it works. Right. Like, and it’s nobody’s fault. And so like, if you can
1:11:09 go back and say, well, we’ll just correct those things.
1:11:14 I think that, I think you are so cool. Like you’re on one hand, you’re like a pretty like
1:11:17 hard hitting capitalist where you’re getting after it and you’re, you’re talking about making really
1:11:21 tough decisions of having to fire people, whatever. But then you’re also like, but also we can,
1:11:25 we can do good by doing all this other stuff. And I think that like, particularly in tech,
1:11:28 I don’t think that people’s interests are, are particularly that wide.
1:11:34 Well, I think people get very into tech. Yeah. Like tech is so deep and vast that like people can
1:11:40 get stuck in it for sure. Yeah. Well, Ben, we thank you for coming on, man. I know you got a lot
1:11:44 of things going on, but this was, this was a lot of fun. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, it was a good time.
1:11:47 Thanks guys. Definitely. All right. Appreciate you. That’s it. That’s the pod.
1:12:01 Hey, let’s take a quick break. I want to tell you about a podcast that you could check out. It is
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