0:00:05 Hi everyone. Welcome to the A6NZ podcast. I’m Sonal and we’re here today because we’re doing our
0:00:14 500th episode of the A6NZ podcast. Episode 499 was with Margaret Wenmarkers, the head of marketing
0:00:20 at Andreessen Horowitz, who built the A6NZ brand. And for the 500th episode, we’re here to answer
0:00:24 for the first time. So it’s sort of a behind the scenes about how the podcast works. A lot of
0:00:29 frequently asked questions people constantly ask us. And that also I got on Twitter, our special
0:00:35 guest host and interviewer is A6NZ general partner, Connie Chan. Connie will also ask any
0:00:39 questions she’s interested in because she’s actually very into podcasting and investment
0:00:44 podcasting as well. So that’s a context. So let’s first start with the history of the A6NZ podcast.
0:00:48 Tell me about how it got started, how you got involved. It was actually created before I even
0:00:53 joined. There was already a culture of writing at Andreessen Horowitz before they even built
0:00:57 an editorial operation. I mean, there was a popular P-marker blog. There’s Ben Horowitz’s blog and
0:01:01 then book. And this all happened right before I joined. And they were also already writing blog
0:01:06 posts about announcements. And they also had done very few specific op-eds that we talked about
0:01:12 in episode 499. So that was a context. And then I believe the story was that Dixon, Chris Dixon,
0:01:16 we all call him Dixon, came in one day as like, we should do podcasting. And Dixon was an early
0:01:21 blogger. So my speculation is that I think he thought it was like the evolution of that sort
0:01:26 of type of communication. And so the podcast was pushed by Chris Dixon and Kim Milosevic was
0:01:30 hiring up the editorial team for Andreessen Horowitz. And she first hired Michael Copeland,
0:01:35 who got the podcast off the ground and was the host for the first year. I started producing it
0:01:40 behind the scenes, not hosting about three months in. And then I only started hosting about a year
0:01:43 in, but I’ve been very involved since about three months in. There’s been a lot of stuff behind
0:01:49 the scenes. So Lovelessut, what year was this? I think it was late 2013, early 2014. And it was
0:01:55 actually that exact same year I had gone to XOXO. And I heard a talk from Marco Arment about the
0:02:00 resurgence of podcasting because it’s been around for years, as you know. And he talked about how
0:02:04 brands and others, when they do podcasting, there’s a certain intimacy that comes with it.
0:02:09 And so it has a very similar feeling to blogging in that there’s parallels in the authenticity
0:02:13 and intimacy of communication. In fact, the way I think of it is that if you think about our history
0:02:18 of oral storytelling and how we can all sit around a fire in the olden days, that used to be an
0:02:22 experience of one-on-one. And now we can do the almost the exact same thing where you have the
0:02:27 feeling of a one-on-one intimacy, but it’s scaled to thousands and thousands. In our case, hundreds
0:02:31 of thousands of people. What gave you the inspiration that we needed to double down on podcast?
0:02:37 You invested so much of your thinking and your energy into this. What was it that audio was
0:02:41 unlocking for you? It’s funny that you say audio because I actually did not think of it as audio
0:02:45 then. But I love that you’re saying that because that’s how I do think about it now. At the time,
0:02:50 quite frankly, I was scratching a personal itch, which was I had come from Wired where I had the
0:02:55 opportunity to edit hundreds and hundreds of different thinkers, writers, famous thinkers,
0:02:59 emerging tones. But all in written form. All in written form. I’d never actually done audio, by
0:03:03 the way. I didn’t have that experience. And I got here and I kind of was like, oh my god, I love my
0:03:09 team. I love the partners, but I’m going to kill myself with boredom if I only have eight partners
0:03:14 where I had come from hundreds. And so for me, the podcast was a way to answer your question about
0:03:19 doubling down to bring more diverse voices onto the platform. Right. Because before our blog posts
0:03:23 were mostly just written by general partners. That’s right. And then with podcasts, now you
0:03:28 open it up to more internal voices, more external voices. Exactly. And in fact, the external voices
0:03:33 was built on what I did at Wired and building the expert opinion section there. And I had three
0:03:37 views on it. So first was, I think it’s really interesting that in our modern world of media,
0:03:42 we even have intermediaries at all to dilute the voice of an expert. Okay. So in your case,
0:03:47 perfect example, you wrote a beautiful WeChat piece that we worked on. I remember it ran the
0:03:52 exact same day that David Pierce at Wired wrote a piece about WeChat, which is also very good and
0:03:58 well done. Very different pieces. Yours was a first person, first principles, first party expert
0:04:03 take that was not based on reporting it, but in using it, observing it, bringing your own thinking.
0:04:07 It was what I described as an ethnographic kind of piece. That’s first person expertise.
0:04:11 David’s was reported. He talked to people at WeChat. He did interviews. He was coming out
0:04:17 as a reporter. Also great. But in my view, why was a venture capital firm focusing on reported
0:04:22 stories when we have a huge network? This is our defining thing, a network of networks, in fact.
0:04:28 So why wouldn’t we bring in experts on various topics, but not have them diluted in their expertise?
0:04:32 And so when they come on as guests, we have the first person versus the third person. That was a
0:04:37 huge important thing to me. And it’s also my bias for builders and makers. And so as you bring in
0:04:41 external folks, though, I mean, that puts a lot more pressure on how you program it,
0:04:45 how you research for it and prep for these podcasts. Talk to me what that’s like.
0:04:49 Yeah. Other questions people have on Twitter. One of the most common questions that came up
0:04:52 is how do we program the podcasts? Like, how do you even decide who to bring on?
0:04:58 So to give you some more context, I think of a podcast in three phases. There’s everything
0:05:02 that happens before, during, and after. I would say that the majority of the work is before and
0:05:06 after then during the podcast itself. Okay. So let’s talk about programming. And then I want
0:05:11 to dive into each of those sections. Okay. So in programming it, I think of every episode as an
0:05:15 op-ed or a feature story. And so just like an op-ed or a feature story, you think to yourself,
0:05:21 what is the argument or topic or angle and what is the take? What’s the differentiated
0:05:25 fresh view and then who are the people to have that? So do you take that same like editing
0:05:30 framework as a written author and then think, okay, I need to have one main argument and a
0:05:33 conclusion at the end? So obviously conversation is so much more organic than that. Okay. You
0:05:38 actually don’t really decide the argument upfront. I would actually even argue writing is organic.
0:05:41 Sometimes you kind of know what you want to talk about, but you just kind of go with it and figure
0:05:45 it out as you write it out. It’s not like we walk into a room and say, hey, I’m going to come on
0:05:49 the podcast and I’m going to argue X. That never happens. But what we do do is figure out, okay,
0:05:54 so let me think of a good concrete example. Let’s say we want to do a topic on emojis,
0:05:58 which is one of my all-time favorite podcasts. And there’s lots of different ways to take it.
0:06:03 Well, okay. I think it’s really interesting that emojis are pervading our culture and that yet
0:06:09 at the same time, people have to propose through proposals specific emoji to get into the set.
0:06:14 So what if we did a conversation with someone who proposed the dumpling emoji? So Jenny Aitley did
0:06:23 this. And then Fred Veninson, who actually translated Moby Dick into all emoji using
0:06:28 mechanical Turk. And so you have two people at very different kind of perspectives on it.
0:06:32 But here’s the thing they have in common. Very different takes. Both, however,
0:06:37 are first principles, non-derivative experts who are going at it at a first person way.
0:06:43 Secondly, through this lens, we can then bring in all the concrete and abstract,
0:06:48 tangential ideas of governance, open versus closed, proprietary systems, how to design,
0:06:54 Apple versus Android, Twitter, Facebook, and use that as a concrete way to have a really thoughtful
0:06:59 conversation. It’s funny because you think the podcast is about emoji, but it’s actually about
0:07:03 how innovation comes about when you’re trying to have a system across all. So how do you even decide
0:07:07 I want an episode on emojis? Oh, well, that’s just what editors do. And this is actually probably
0:07:11 the broader context for the editorial operation, which is you always ask yourself, what are the
0:07:15 topics we want to cover and how. And you may not know the exact how, but you have an idea of how.
0:07:20 And one of the things that I always tell people, if we were to take this up even a notch, the
0:07:24 editorial operation is about innovation. And Margaret talked about this in our past episode
0:07:29 499. And I’ve had a rule of thumb. People ask me this on Twitter. So I’m going to answer this question,
0:07:36 which is whenever I think about any kind of brand or lens for content, I want it to go through two
0:07:40 words. And the funny inspiration for this, by the way, is from Domino Magazine. They once did
0:07:45 a feature about how you can find your signature style. And there’s like a stylist who would come
0:07:50 in and say, Connie, you are urban warrior. And this is your two word word to describe your style.
0:07:55 Here at Andries and Horowitz, it’s innovation brand. When I was at Wired, it was informed
0:08:00 optimism that came from Chris Anderson. And when I was at Xerox Park, it was entrepreneurial
0:08:05 scientists. And my point is that you use that as a lens with which to decide what to run,
0:08:09 what not to run, and how to treat it, and even how to edit it. And that serves as a filter
0:08:13 for what makes a cut and what doesn’t. We are about telling the stories of the future,
0:08:17 building it, explaining it, and really how tech changes our world. So that’s a lens.
0:08:20 So on the programming piece, how do you actually choose which guest to bring on?
0:08:25 Right. So this is, again, going back to the same philosophy I had for the expert section.
0:08:31 I am looking for the expert, not a expert. And again, going back to this idea of an
0:08:34 individual op-ed or a feature story for every podcast, you ask yourself, if you’re doing
0:08:39 a feature story, who are the third party experts you would bring in? So similarly,
0:08:44 we look for either the expert or the next best expert or someone who has very specific expertise.
0:08:48 We don’t really love consultants and derivative experts and people who just talk about the thing
0:08:53 versus do the thing. And then I look for a complimentary expert. And this is sort of the
0:08:57 person who can add texture. We don’t want two people constantly agreeing. We also don’t want
0:09:01 them completely disagreeing. Sometimes people talked about in the early days, we should do podcasts
0:09:05 where you have pro-con. And again, it’s like, exactly. I love debates and Oxford style debates
0:09:10 in particular. But what I find, what I call the panel problem where podcasts becomes a conference
0:09:14 panel. I don’t know if you’ve seen this at every conference you go to. Inevitably,
0:09:19 the smartest people, four people, so smart on a single panel, it’ll be the dullest, dumbest
0:09:23 conversation. And why is that? It regresses to the mean. And to me, it’s a pure statistical
0:09:27 thing. It’s like in statistics, if you sample from the extremes of a data set, you essentially
0:09:32 regress to the mean. It is literally the exact same thing happening when you do that with experts.
0:09:37 So having a pro and a con, it’s actually a case of like negating the conversation. You want to
0:09:42 have a thoughtful nuance conversation. So I like to avoid what I call one note narratives. I don’t
0:09:46 want an expert who has just a single observation. They’re going to do it like 10 different ways.
0:09:50 Do you kind of give them a guidance on what you’re going to ask about? Tell me about the prep
0:09:55 on the actual figuring out what questions you want to run. Do you let people do a dry run as it’s
0:10:01 scripted? What do you do? So the process is that I tell them, this is actually baked until all our
0:10:06 emails and how they get on, that they are not supposed to prep. Now, people hate that because
0:10:09 they want to prep. Yeah, I’m sure everyone wants to know what you’re going to ask them.
0:10:12 Right. And in fact, I kind of realized early on like, oh, someone will just because you like
0:10:16 that. I mean, everyone else likes it. What’s the downside of prepping? That’s a great question.
0:10:21 So one of the things I learned when I was at park and I worked with a really good event producer
0:10:26 for this event that we were hosting O’Reilly Media’s Make. It was a first inaugural hardware make
0:10:31 workshop. And one of the event producers on that said, I never put two people in a green room before
0:10:37 an event because inevitably everything they say on stage will refer back to what they were talking
0:10:41 about right before coming on stage. And you’ve probably seen this at many events. And the audience
0:10:47 doesn’t have that exact same sharpness that they feel when they hear that idea. For me, when I record,
0:10:51 I start the recorder before the person even walks in the room and I stop it only when they leave
0:10:55 because the best stuff comes when it’s a little bit unfiltered. So when we prep to answer your
0:10:59 question, what I tell people is I don’t want you to actually tell me what you’re going to say,
0:11:02 because actually then the second time, if you say it, it’s going to be 10 times worse.
0:11:06 It’s much better raw and real the first time. Of course, the speakers get freaked out though,
0:11:09 because they’re like, what if I sound like an idiot, which means that you have to do a lot of
0:11:13 editing. Oh, we can come back to editing. I mean, it’s not by accident that you make a lot of us
0:11:17 sound a lot more eloquent than we do in real life. Well, first of all, it’s not an accident because you
0:11:22 guys are all also experts. Let’s just be very clear that one of the reasons this works is that A6NC
0:11:28 does have experts and one of the number one rules of thumb I use for all editorial written
0:11:32 podcasts or otherwise is the concept of what I coined a number of years ago called writer topic
0:11:37 fit jokingly WTF. And the idea being that the writer has to have the topic and fit for the
0:11:41 expertise. This is not credentialist. It could be earned expertise. It could be data, it could be
0:11:45 whatever, but they have to have that. So the people who are freaked out about their executives
0:11:49 coming on and not having any idea, we don’t send questions in advance. I like the conversation
0:11:54 to be very organic. One of the questions people asked on Twitter was, do you prepare their script?
0:11:59 And the answer is no, there is no script. What we do at the beginning of every episode is we,
0:12:01 and sometimes these people have been in met each other. Sometimes you’re meeting Christina
0:12:05 shoe for the first time and the three of us are doing a conversation about stickers and memes
0:12:09 and live streams. So in that case, what we do is we’ll spend literally five minutes at the beginning,
0:12:13 maybe less just talking about what we want to talk about, meaning topics, but not the
0:12:16 actual argument. Exactly. Because then I get mad and I say, no, no, no, because people inevitably
0:12:20 start sharing what they’re going to say. And I’m like, wait till we get to that part. So we do
0:12:24 that. And then we just go through. And then this is where the editing lets you then reorganize it
0:12:28 into an arc that makes sense. And by the way, by arc, I don’t mean it has to be linear,
0:12:34 like point A, B, C, D. In fact, I want it to be nonlinear, slippery, raw, with an edge, not always
0:12:39 clean and clear. At wired, I had a phrase, which I use for my op-eds, which is three turns of nuance.
0:12:42 Like I like that kind of thing. What I’m doing with the editing of the story arc is again,
0:12:46 just listening for how the listener is going to move through it. Do they hear the organization?
0:12:50 Do they have to work to follow it? Can they just naturally flow along and learn as they go?
0:12:55 Okay, so that means you’re recording how much footage an hour, an hour, and that gets edited
0:13:00 down to what? Anywhere from 20 to like 45 minutes. 20 to 45 minutes. Right. But I want to say something
0:13:05 about that. This is why there are what I consider two types of editors. There’s what I call shaping
0:13:10 editors who are people who love as much raw material to work with as possible and then to kind of carve
0:13:16 out the arc their own way. I think of this a bit like a sculptor who’s given a slab of marble
0:13:20 and figures out the shape. That’s what I like to do. And then there are editors who take what
0:13:23 they’re given and they do a really good job figuring out how to rearrange it, how to put it
0:13:28 together, think about it. That to me is a more straightforward type of editing. As a shaping
0:13:34 editor, I look for maximum optionality in my recording, in that hour recording period,
0:13:37 because I want to have enough material to carve out the thing that I’m working on. Whereas for
0:13:42 some of the other editors- So when you’re editing, it’s not just taking out ums and blank spaces?
0:13:46 Oh my God. No. And in fact, I want to just deconstruct a myth here because we get a lot
0:13:50 of flak for people saying, “You guys remove the brets and you guys do this.” And it’s actually
0:13:56 ironic, we never do that. What we do do in fact is add brets because our people talk too fast
0:14:01 and don’t pause. And so sometimes we have to manually slow them down. Mark Anderson does speak
0:14:04 very quickly. It’s not just him though, he does. By the way, why do you joke about him when you get
0:14:08 like a written transcript is for every written page, for every page of a transcript, you can
0:14:13 estimate about two minutes. And in his case, it’s like one minute, the density is so high,
0:14:18 but the rest of the firm talks pretty fast too. And so PSA for everyone, do not listen to our
0:14:22 podcast at 1.5 or 2x speed. You should only listen to it at regular speed. But back to your
0:14:27 question. So it’s not ums and aus. I mean, we do do some tics. So my rule about tics is we don’t
0:14:32 want to remove all those tics, actually. We do however remove tics that are a little too repetitive
0:14:38 to the point of being disruptive to the listener. And I, by the way, have this tick there. You’re
0:14:43 going to love this. So when I first started doing podcasting, I was only a behind-the-scenes person,
0:14:47 so I really was insecure about being a host quite frankly. Right. You didn’t host the whole first
0:14:51 year. I don’t really want to host because I just felt like, no, no, I’m a behind-the-scenes person.
0:14:55 What are you talking about? I’m an editor. I can’t be a host. So it’s funny because everyone hates
0:15:00 Son of their own voice. And I noticed all my tics. And the first one would be like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
0:15:05 Got it, got it, got it. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Like, like, like, or yeah, you’re right. Mm-hmm,
0:15:11 various versions of this. And so what I would do is I would hear my tics and then systematically
0:15:16 decide conscientiously not to say them. Guess what happened? Well, they went away.
0:15:21 And another one popped up in its place. It was like a game of whack-a-mole. It didn’t matter
0:15:25 how many tics I got rid of. A new one just jumped right up in its place. And so my theory about this
0:15:29 is, and maybe it’s grounded in science, I don’t know, I’ve never looked it up, is that there’s
0:15:34 something psychological with how we use these tics, whether it’s an anxiety management or a natural
0:15:39 way of thinking or like some kind of dead space words between thought-out words, like subconscious
0:15:45 words even. Anyway, that is how people talk. So you edit those sounds or specific phrases and words,
0:15:50 but the actual content, is it moving things? So a lot of the people on Twitter asked about
0:15:55 how do you edit the podcast from, you know, the whole, it’s a story arc to rest. So the edits are
0:16:03 to optimize for what I call insights per minute. There’s three things to that. One, it’s that
0:16:08 if you have a non-cultiv personality show, and I talked about this before, how there’s a taxonomy
0:16:13 of types of shows, and cult of personality shows, which are very host and personality driven.
0:16:16 You mean like a Joe Rogan show? Like a Joe Rogan, that’s a perfect example.
0:16:20 The audience is following Joe Rogan, they almost don’t care who his guest is, of course they care
0:16:24 if it’s Elon Musk or someone else, but because of that combo, they’re willing to listen for three
0:16:28 hours to the two of them on air smoking pot. Basically, you don’t want to abuse the user’s
0:16:32 time. It’s not so much to abuse the listener’s time, it’s that ear shares and you mind share,
0:16:37 you’re competing for that share. So the show has to be differentiated, and if you want people to
0:16:41 listen to your show and it doesn’t have a cult of personality, then you have to make sure it’s
0:16:45 resourceful, and they have a high insights per minute. So their time and their payoff is worth it.
0:16:48 Insights per minute. Is that an actual metric, or is this like a new metric?
0:16:52 No, it’s a thing that I coined, but it’s not like we measure it formally, but it’s what we
0:16:58 listen for. And to answer your question about starting it off, it matters more in the first
0:17:03 five to 10 minutes, because it’s just like editing an article. So I call myself a chartbeat editor,
0:17:06 because when I was at Wired, I was obsessed with the leaderboard, and I, of course, like love
0:17:10 seeing where I was on that, especially because I had a flailing section that I wanted to take to the
0:17:15 top. And so I was very motivated by that. But then what I noticed in chartbeat besides a leaderboard
0:17:19 is you saw where listeners, or sorry, where readers dropped off. And that was super valuable
0:17:24 to me, because then I started seeing patterns of, oh, well, if people drop off here, I need to work
0:17:30 harder to really get the nut graph up here before the third paragraph. And the more I work to make
0:17:34 sure that every sentence is calculated to keep the listener, the reader engaged, the better the
0:17:38 piece. And then by the middle and the end, when they’re committed, you have a lot more room to
0:17:43 be loosey-goosey and fun. So in the podcast, that’s the exact same thing, the chartbeat model
0:17:48 that I brought here. This is how I learned editing just by doing it. So to me, the first three to
0:17:52 five minutes are incredibly important, because that’s the highest drop-off point. So we use the
0:17:56 intro as a technique. This is why we actually record our intros after the fact, not before.
0:18:00 Introing who the person is. We intro who it is, the topic, the range, and there’s various ways
0:18:03 of doing it. We experimented for a while with having snippets. We did all kinds of experiments
0:18:08 throughout the years. But what I find is that the intro is a tool to let you start the conversation
0:18:12 in medias res, which is the term from literature for starting it in the middle of the story.
0:18:15 And why that’s so important is if you don’t have a cult or personality show, like a Joe
0:18:20 Rogan and an Elon Musk, if you have seen someone new who’s really smart, but no one’s heard of,
0:18:24 if they start out with their personal story, that’s probably going to be boring because they’re not
0:18:29 bought into this person. They don’t know who it is. However, if you start with their advice
0:18:34 and the thing that you find resourceful and useful as a listener, then the listener is going to be
0:18:38 like, oh, that’s interesting and remain hooked. And then by the middle or the end, you can then
0:18:45 weave in their story. So the editing is about reflowing and rearchitecting that arc for that
0:18:49 type of journey of a listener through the entire episode. And, you know, back on this note of
0:18:54 scripting versus not scripting, one of the folks on Twitter asked, do you guys do these sort of
0:18:58 informal hallway style conversations? And the answer is that’s how they actually started.
0:19:03 But what I found is that if you’re really trying to grow the show, it was only when we started
0:19:07 editing it that it significantly, you look at the charts, it was like upward curve with the edits.
0:19:11 And that goes back to the fact that if you’re not a cult of personality, people don’t, I mean,
0:19:14 doesn’t it bug you to hear people just chit chat when you’re not, you’re kind of like, get to the
0:19:19 point. So we do do hallways to all conversations, but mostly they’re just kind of these organic
0:19:23 conversations that are working towards some point of view. So tactically, how are you doing this?
0:19:29 Are you using a document? Great question. One of the questions people had on Twitter was about
0:19:34 the technology stack we use. So a couple of things on this. So I’m embarrassed to say that
0:19:40 the way I edit podcasts is by starting with the transcript, because I’m a word person and do like
0:19:44 a rough paper cut. And I actually do this without listening to the podcast. After the paper cut,
0:19:49 the technical audio editor turns it into a first cut. And the reason I do it this way
0:19:53 is because I want to see the whole shape of the narrative without being distracted by the sound.
0:19:58 The problem with that approach is that when you see on a text is unidimensional and flat, whereas
0:20:02 in voice, it’s much more multidimensional. There’s multiple factors. Yeah, like I might be super
0:20:05 excited in one sentence. Right. And then you suddenly have up talk and down talk. And you
0:20:09 can’t put that right next to another sentence where I’m quiet. That’s exactly it. So that’s why
0:20:14 it’s kind of a dangerous method, which is why the tool descript is a really interesting one because
0:20:18 they actually democratize the process. So to me, the first round is about seeing the global arc.
0:20:23 The second round is about listening to it and really seeing how it truly works and flows. And
0:20:27 the third round is really about sort of polishing it and making sure it just has this ease of listening.
0:20:32 So when you’re editing, can you boil that down to principles that we should take away when we
0:20:36 think about editing stuff? Yeah. So I guess the number one thing I would say is the biggest
0:20:42 difference between text and audio is that audio is a living breathing organism. So every change you
0:20:48 make introduces a new interaction effect. It’s like you’re adding a new variable. And so every
0:20:52 time you decide like in this cut, I’m going to do this, when you listen to your next cut, it messes
0:20:56 something else up, which is why tools like descript are so important because they shorten the time
0:21:00 between what I call the design and manufacturing phase of designing something like a semiconductor
0:21:04 chip. The ability to have that sort of iterative feedback loop is critical, which is why all the
0:21:09 new editors are getting trained on descript. So the living breathing organism, the different
0:21:14 framework required then as well. Yeah. It means it’s not unit dimensional, which I mentioned,
0:21:18 it has multiple layers. And I described that for every podcast, there’s like five dimensions,
0:21:22 or five levers even that you can use. So one is obviously the content itself, like what the substance
0:21:26 of what people are saying. One is the energy of the individual speaker, their tone, their excitement,
0:21:30 do they sound flat? And that can’t be edited, can it? Well, not really. I mean, you can actually do
0:21:34 some manipulations like raise a voice a little to make someone not sound so flat, but you don’t
0:21:38 want to distort the voice. Right, right, right. The third thing is charisma. Sorry, that’s a charisma
0:21:42 of the speaker. So that’s not just their level of energy for how they talk, but their sort of
0:21:47 charismatic way of drawing people to their ideas. Is that editable? Not really. You can do other
0:21:51 things though, because what I find with charismatic speakers is that they often also talk in platitudes.
0:21:55 And so one of the things that I tell our editors is you actually don’t want to be efficient with
0:21:59 the words. You want to cut the platitude statement and then keep the specific wonky statement. So
0:22:04 then they don’t come off as like BS. And then the fourth one is chemistry, which is the interaction
0:22:09 of the guests all in the room. So what do you do with chemistry when sometimes we’re meeting
0:22:13 that person for the first time? I don’t think having a pre-meeting helps with that chemistry.
0:22:16 So I think a great episode for this maybe as an example would be me and David Yulovich
0:22:21 when we did a podcast about what time is it and he has a fun chemistry and the two of us are just
0:22:24 very irreverent. This is when he first joined. It was about six months in and we did a podcast
0:22:27 about his career and the editing side. I put his story at the end because I don’t know if people
0:22:31 know him that well. So we started with his advice for founders. So that was like one of the arc
0:22:35 decisions I made because by the way, the fifth variable is arc or narrative flow. And anyway,
0:22:39 we have such chemistry because we had this like fight in the middle of the episode about how to
0:22:43 pronounce GIF or GIF. Which way do you say it? Oh my God, I say GIF, not GIF, which is what he
0:22:47 says. Ugh, I don’t even get me started on that. But like, you guys listen to that episode if you
0:22:52 want to leave a drop on that fight. But I kept it because it conveyed a certain chemistry. So to
0:22:57 answer your question, you have these five levers and the job of the editor is to take the material
0:23:01 they’re given with, whether fully all over the place like my material or more linear arc like
0:23:07 others, and then shape it into what it needs to be and edit it. So often that means removing
0:23:11 redundancies, but not to the point of being so efficient that it sounds like mechanical. It
0:23:16 means tightening flow, insights per minute. And then this is a beauty now of this five framework.
0:23:24 If you have like okay chemistry, but great content, you can work with that by rearranging the order
0:23:30 because then you keep people hooked by the flow. If you have wonderful chemistry and energy, but
0:23:36 very little substance, you can shorten it. So you have the energy, but reduce the length because
0:23:40 the payoff is so low. So basically what I’m saying is you can use one of these five levers and
0:23:46 manipulate them to get more or less dial it down or up or down to get what you need. And of course,
0:23:51 there’s only so much you can do. But what’s really cool is Descript has a company called Liarbird
0:23:55 and they are doing synthetic audios. And what’s up with timing? Like, is there a sweet spot for
0:23:59 how long a podcast should be? Yep, this is so funny because what I found when I asked people,
0:24:03 like, what’s your ideal length for a podcast? Guess what? The answer was exactly proportional
0:24:07 to their commute or workout time. So if their commute was 15 minutes, that’s what they thought
0:24:11 that was a perfect length. If there was 45, that was great. Is there like a time that you aim for?
0:24:15 No, we don’t aim for a time. It seems like the sweet spot is somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes.
0:24:21 My philosophy about time and length, and this is so strong both for written and spoken content,
0:24:25 is I think discussions about length are so arbitrary, religious debate, it should be
0:24:30 as long as it needs to be. So if it’s gratuitously long, cut it. If it needs to be longer because
0:24:35 we’re going in depth and it’s so interesting, why would we cut that arbitrarily? But this is
0:24:39 the caveat to that. The payoff and the insight per minute has to be proportional to the length.
0:24:42 So if the person is listening for a long time, there’s not enough payoff,
0:24:45 that’s a complete waste of their time, they’re never going to trust you, you destroy that trust,
0:24:50 you lose them as a fan. So that’s the first thing. The second thing to your question about the ideal
0:24:55 length, I do believe that short form podcasting is a really important form. That’s one of the
0:25:00 trends in the space. And I had a moment, kind of an insight was, I had this realization that,
0:25:04 gosh, all these other people are doing news shows like the New York Times Daily and Vox Today
0:25:10 Explained. And again, it’s a reported model, third party experts, which is great. But why aren’t we
0:25:14 doing a first person where people who know this industry are commenting on it directly
0:25:19 and do that way? So I was like, I want to do a news show and news podcasting is actually a
0:25:23 growing trend. And then why don’t we combine it with short form? So then I thought, let’s do
0:25:28 it for 16 minutes because Andrews and Horowitz, A16Z, 16, why not? So it had 16 minutes.
0:25:30 Now I think this one must be much harder to edit though.
0:25:34 Well, first of all, I’ve not gotten it to 16 minutes. Sometimes it’s like 17. Sometimes it’s
0:25:40 19. I try to only have it below 20s. A couple of times I’ve abused it. So for the first episode,
0:25:45 I tried doing it where everyone just did one full take a few times. And then what I had found was,
0:25:49 this is actually true for you in particular, you said different things on each take. And I was
0:25:53 like, Oh my God, what she said there was so good. And what she said, the other take was also really
0:25:59 good. So I use the editing to then seem together the best parts of what you said. And if you again,
0:26:03 think about insights per minute and the fact that you have only this many minutes,
0:26:06 how do you add value for the listener? You want the highest insight per minute,
0:26:10 hence the editing. So yes, it’s now a more highly edited show. And I’m kicking myself
0:26:15 for it because it takes a lot of time. It’s a lot of work and it’s freaking aiming to be a weekly
0:26:16 new show. So I’m pretty burnt out.
0:26:21 Okay. So how do you think about frequency of programming? Does it have to come out at the
0:26:22 same time every week?
0:26:25 It’s funny to leave. That’s another area where people have a lot of theories. And when I first
0:26:30 joined someone from the outside said to me, it should be exactly every Friday at 3 p.m.
0:26:33 There’s all kinds of theories around this. And that’s all wonderful. Here’s the three
0:26:38 things I learned. The best content will always win. Time of day, all the other stuff aside.
0:26:44 As you know, I am a master of timing things. This is how I made my section successful and
0:26:47 writing the specific timing for zeitgeist and virality. But for podcasts, there is no such
0:26:52 thing. So someone asked on Twitter about the tools for creators and distributors of podcasts
0:26:56 for people seeking to start their own podcasts, because not everyone is a big brand like this,
0:27:00 is actually sub-stack, which people think of as a newsletter only tool. It’s really about
0:27:06 connecting writers and people with their audiences. So people are seeking a place to both host and
0:27:10 distribute what better place than within the email ecosystem because you really own your
0:27:14 audience when you own that. Here’s the thing. People may talk about a podcast on social.
0:27:18 Like you’ll see a ton of people talking about a certain episode, but the reality that they’re
0:27:24 actually listening to it is very little. And so I think that the evolution of social podcasting,
0:27:28 which I know you were interested in as well, it’s still too early. So technically podcasts have
0:27:33 what I call, quote, “slow burn virality.” They don’t just go viral overnight. It takes about a week,
0:27:38 like the first wave of listeners is in that first week, and then you kind of see it grow from there.
0:27:42 Kind of like how I watch TV now. Oh my God, that’s such a good point. Well, you and I did a podcast
0:27:45 on a podcast about podcasting with Nick Quaw. People should listen to that episode if they want
0:27:49 to hear our thoughts on the trends because we did talk about binge watching and other things.
0:27:53 Back on the timing thing, I do believe editorially and especially for written content. And this thing
0:27:57 that I dubbed the McCluskey curve after Mark McCluskey, my former colleague, got wired.
0:28:02 He’s now at Sports Illustrated, I believe. But anyway, he always talks about how you add value.
0:28:05 And I say it’s when you’re offering something new or differentiated or leading early in the
0:28:11 cycle, or you do it in the end of a news and discussion cycle where it’s after it’s very noisy
0:28:14 and you have a very fresh or differentiated take and kind of being in the middle of all the noise
0:28:19 is like the worst position to be in in terms of value and for the timing of it. So that’s like
0:28:23 literally my philosophy. One thing I didn’t mention in the cycle, because someone asked about
0:28:29 the cycle from ideas to publishing that a big focus for us is around more promotion. And you
0:28:33 know, that’s sort of the whole cycle of things. And so one of the experiments I had wanted us to
0:28:38 do was to start doing audiograms and people promote podcasts through video. You know, the whole
0:28:44 definition of what is a podcast is blurring. Tom Webster of Edison Research was sharing how
0:28:49 for many young people, especially those that are streaming, whether on video or audio and Spotify,
0:28:52 they don’t know the difference between whether it’s on video or not. And so when people say
0:28:57 subscribe in your favorite app, it could be YouTube. What about sound effects music? Yeah.
0:29:02 So on the sound effects and music, we tried. So Hannah did a great episode for Halloween a few
0:29:06 years ago where she had sound effects for the person who was talking about the why behind the
0:29:11 weird. I would like us to have music on our show. As long as it doesn’t come off as like corporate
0:29:15 overproduced slick, because that’s not our aesthetic at all. However, I do think we need that and it
0:29:19 adds more dimensionality. I mean, it just sets the tone in the beginning. So for Ben’s new show,
0:29:24 it’s Ben Horowitz and Chaka Senghor. They co-host this show called Hustlin Tech, which is guides
0:29:28 to technology for hustlers. But what it really means, it’s really helping people use technology
0:29:35 to help themselves, which is an amazing concept. Basically, for that show, I did add music and
0:29:40 it was interesting because I didn’t want like stock music. And so I asked Chris Lyons, you know,
0:29:43 who runs our cultural leadership fund, but I didn’t even know he’d put his own sample in there.
0:29:48 He sent me like six tracks, including all these stock things that had a more hip hop sound to it.
0:29:53 And it turns out the one we all liked happened to be his personal one. So I was so excited,
0:29:57 but it sets a tone for the show. And I do want that. The reason we haven’t been able to do it
0:30:02 though is because licensing for songs is very complex. It’s not just copyright. It’s like layers
0:30:04 and layers of record distribution labels. So music is like one of the things that you’re
0:30:08 experimenting with. It almost sounds like you’re treating this like a startup or like a product.
0:30:13 Totally. I had a moment of emotional where I got a little teary-eyed because I was solo
0:30:17 for a long time. First, it was me and Michael. Then I was solo for a long time. Then I hired Hannah
0:30:22 and then it was me and her. And then about almost a year ago, I hired Amelia to be our managing editor.
0:30:29 And she’s growing the team so that we can scale this. And I had proposed that we hire an editor
0:30:33 for every vertical so we can really just go deep and kind of channelize our insights there and
0:30:39 truly self-select the audience. So anyway, to that point, I kind of got emotional when I saw
0:30:44 that all these desks that had been empty around me had people sitting in them. I got kind of like,
0:30:49 “Oh my God, is this how a startup CEO feels? If this is it, I’m in. Count me in.” Because I’ve never
0:30:54 done that. Okay. What are some new experiments you’re thinking about? So in general, in podcasting,
0:31:00 I’m fascinated by audio fiction. That’s like a really interesting and important trend. However,
0:31:04 I cannot for the life of me think about what our version of audio fiction would be. So maybe I’ll
0:31:07 just maybe do something personally. So who knows? At some point, I can experiment with that.
0:31:09 I’m still waiting for your book, by the way. I know. So am I.
0:31:18 Okay. So experiments in our podcast. Okay. So there’s a blending of, as you talk about, you wrote
0:31:24 about this in your knowable post, that you get this found time with audio. One of the things that
0:31:29 I’m interested in is that if the blinds and definitions of podcasting is blurring and you
0:31:33 really talk about this more than anyone, Connie. So I feel like I’m preaching to the choir here.
0:31:39 But the idea that audiobooks and podcasts and educational content all kind of blurs together,
0:31:44 for that same reason, why wouldn’t people listen to blog posts in podcast form or email
0:31:49 newsletters in podcast form? So I asked some of the other partners to read out loud their blog posts
0:31:54 on air. I’ll probably read a couple. And I do want to experiment more with us doing more
0:31:59 content in the audio form in that way. There’s already tools like autumn out there and media
0:32:04 outlets, but just more like a voiced way and not so manual. There’s like a new set of tools
0:32:09 coming about in that one. What are some experiments that didn’t work early? Oh, that’s a good question.
0:32:13 So very early on, Michael Copeland recorded a conversation with like four kids from a youth
0:32:16 and tech conference. And he told me about the footage and how complicated it was. And I was
0:32:21 like, why don’t you make it into like a narrative where you narrate it? And he did a beautiful
0:32:26 job of turning it into sort of an audio narrative story. So I’d like to do that. And it’s not that
0:32:29 it didn’t work. It’s just that we haven’t invested in it because we were so building one style.
0:32:33 So I’d like to do more of that. Experiments that didn’t work. So back to the question you asked
0:32:38 me about the ideal length. So I thought, well, what if I experimented with interstitials, where we
0:32:43 could segment an episode. Interstitials, like music in the middle. So not music. Kind of like
0:32:47 a intermission almost like a pause point that the listener would know. Hey, if you want to take a
0:32:53 break, this is a good spot. My thesis at the time was that people on campus, some kids on campus
0:32:56 at Stanford told me they were listening to it like while walking a class. And they don’t want to
0:33:00 listen to a long episode because the commitment was so big. So I was like, well, what if it’s a
0:33:05 long episode, but I segment it for them like the way you have chapter turns. That didn’t really
0:33:09 work because then I realized very fast from other people like, duh, I don’t need that. My app holds
0:33:13 my spot. So it doesn’t really matter. So it’s kind of orchestrated and contrived. So that didn’t
0:33:16 really work. Although that might come back because as with all experiments, sometimes it’s a matter
0:33:20 of timing. You probably do a hundred little experiments that you just don’t even think about.
0:33:25 Sometimes yes. But the reality is that I actually think you should have more focus. And I have a
0:33:30 very specific focus and a strategy for the existing Zee podcast and what I believe and where it’s
0:33:35 going. So I have a very particular vision for that. And when you have a vision for, of course,
0:33:40 the big podcast, but also each particular episode, are you editing until it hits that vision? Oh,
0:33:45 for an individual episode, how do you want to stop editing? Oh my God. This is the hardest question,
0:33:50 believe it or not, because right now we’re onboarding some new editors. Yeah. And how do you
0:33:54 teach other people? Well, this is what I’m struggling with. And frankly, I read Ben’s book
0:34:00 recently and it’s beautiful, by the way. And how do I think about doing this culturally and thinking
0:34:04 about it? This is the exact challenge because well, I learned podcast by myself, like everyone can
0:34:08 do it. And I’m realizing that the way we do things is quite things that I take for granted
0:34:12 as implicit or not that explicit, or they’re very tacit things or mindsets that are really
0:34:18 unique and foreign. So to answer that question, the answer you can’t use when you’re scaling
0:34:21 is, well, I’ll know it when I know it. Like, you know, the line from Justice Potter Stewart
0:34:25 about porn, he said, I’ll know it when I see it. I mean, that’s how I think about investing sometimes.
0:34:29 Really? So it’s like instinct. So this goes back to that whole like view of like instinct.
0:34:34 But the reality is that instinct is trained by experience. But what I find is taste is very
0:34:37 difficult to train. And you can’t just say to someone, well, you’ll know it when you hear it.
0:34:42 That’s not a good enough answer. So it’s frankly not helpful. It’s not helpful. And it’s hard. I
0:34:48 don’t have a full answer yet. But I will say that you can figure out the bar by having some
0:34:51 principles for what you’re doing. So what are your editorial principles?
0:34:56 They’re things like I mentioned non derivative experts, true to the maker, the culture of
0:35:00 adding a very fresh and differentiated take. We don’t want to say what everyone else is saying,
0:35:05 the art of timing. Does this meet the bar? Is this really adding value to the conversation?
0:35:11 Is it signal versus noise? Is it more of the same? Is it spinning forward? I use that phrase all the
0:35:14 time, spin it forward, spin it forward, spin it forward. How do we do it? At the same time,
0:35:19 how do we make it concrete? Because our audience is not just people like big Fortune 500 companies
0:35:24 thinking about the future of tech or startups. I mean, I hear people talk about the podcast who
0:35:27 don’t work in tech. That’s to me is a bar of success right there. So actually,
0:35:33 I describe it as the podcast is influencing the influencers. And so to me, when media outlets,
0:35:37 reporters say like, oh, I listened to that episode, I love that because they may not write it up,
0:35:41 but it informs their thinking. One of my big principles is that we need to either provide
0:35:47 a framework for how to think about something, if not an answer, or tease apart height versus reality
0:35:50 and think about like how big tech trends like VRAR or whatever the topic is,
0:35:55 it may play out concretely, then it informs the influencers. Give me a concrete example,
0:35:59 like what’s the proudest moment of that? So one of my most favorite moments and stories about
0:36:04 the podcast is that a Senator, a US Senator was listening to the episode and this is a testament
0:36:08 to the network and they come across our content and the whole thing kind of reinforces like a
0:36:15 flywheel. And he heard the episode, it was about health data, and he literally had his staffer
0:36:19 reach out to us and the staffer quoted his line to us, like what he said. And he’s like, I can’t
0:36:23 believe this idea is not already being done already. I want to propose it in the upcoming
0:36:28 session as legislation. Can you please put me in touch with that founder? So you’re affecting
0:36:32 policy. I literally call it policy by podcast. Now, I don’t actually think that came about,
0:36:36 but that is one of my all time favorite stories. Wow, that’s awesome. And by the way,
0:36:39 in the early days, in terms of thinking about the audience, there was an incredibly strong brand
0:36:44 that Mark and Ben and Margaret built as a base and a foundation for sure. And the network is
0:36:49 a thing that continually reinforces it. But initially, I had to beg my contacts, people I
0:36:52 edited people in the book publishing industry to get them on the podcast because A, they didn’t
0:36:58 really know A, six and Z. B, it was a fledgling nascent podcast. It hadn’t had like an established
0:37:02 presence. And so I convinced one or two of the key publicists and book publishers because I ran
0:37:08 their excerpts in my section, I then got the, once I got one big name author in, then the rest
0:37:12 started following. And then I started getting pitched because you must get pitched books all the
0:37:17 time. Not only pitch books, we get at least five to 10 emails a week that are just pitching us.
0:37:20 Then of course, people, book authors going on podcasts became a thing because it actually
0:37:24 moves book sales. By the way, one author told me that he came on our show and we moved a thousand
0:37:28 books in like a few days because it’s a very self selected audience that’s, you know, listening
0:37:33 and very motivated and there’s no better way. But we try to break the script for book podcasts.
0:37:37 So one of my rules is again, going back to editorial principles of differentiation is
0:37:40 if you have someone like Yuval Harari who’s been doing the circuit and he’s like on every major
0:37:45 podcast show and he’s a really well read author and the person who put him on is my friend,
0:37:48 Rimjim Day. She’s one of the people who took a very early bet on us.
0:37:50 He has to talk about something different with you.
0:37:54 Well, it’s that he has to talk about his book, but we have to do it in different way.
0:37:58 So I want to go back to a topic you mentioned early on, which is how in that first year,
0:38:01 you didn’t like hearing your own voice. That’s why you don’t want to get on the podcast.
0:38:06 But now I have been with you in public where people run up to you and say they recognize
0:38:12 your voice. So how does that feel being a voice celebrity? I’ve seen people want to take photos
0:38:16 with you, but what does that feel like? It goes back to feeling that sort of vulnerability of being
0:38:20 a person who wants to be behind the scenes. I don’t know if you know this, but my first two years,
0:38:26 I didn’t even put my name on the byline of the podcast. In fact, people found me proactively,
0:38:30 which is crazy to me because I thought the goal of the host, because this is what editors do.
0:38:35 Editors do tremendous work. The shaping editors do tremendous work to shape a piece. They practically
0:38:40 co-write them. But I did not include myself on the byline because I thought it was my job to be
0:38:44 invisible as the host and the moderator. And I always view myself as a shepherd for the audience.
0:38:48 That is my job. Although it’s funny because over the years, then people started finding me. I
0:38:52 eventually added my name on the byline. It’s incredible when people come up to you because,
0:38:56 frankly, when you’re sitting in a room and this is what I love about podcasting, is that that’s
0:39:00 intimacy. People think they know you. I love that. They feel like they know me because I’m in their
0:39:05 ear, but there’s a huge asymmetry there. But anyway, it’s amazing and powerful and moving to see
0:39:10 your work in action. And I’m so grateful to our fans and to Andreessen Horowitz for letting podcasts
0:39:15 go off the ground. Dixon and Kim and Michael started it, but after a while, I don’t think
0:39:19 really people paid attention to it. I think Mark told me about a year and a half in.
0:39:23 I think it surprised us all. I think it did. People didn’t really think it’d be so big.
0:39:27 But like I said, we had to earn those listeners because it’s not like you have brand and they
0:39:31 come. It’s that you have the guest and then they listen and it gets better and this is where the
0:39:38 editing comes in. Yeah. I feel like I have seen you edit and work magic. Even our WeChat piece
0:39:42 that we did years ago, you made that into a completely different thing. I’ve seen you edit
0:39:46 ever since and it’s really funny because once you were in the zone, like one time I was watching you
0:39:51 on Google Docs edit and I really felt like I was watching a painter paint. I just saw these like
0:39:56 sentences moving around and it was like watching a paintbrush. That’s so beautiful. I love that
0:40:00 you’re saying that. Don’t make me cry on the podcast. Were there podcasts that surprised you,
0:40:06 things that made you cry? The podcast that made me cry, there’s actually been two or three.
0:40:10 So one was with Leila Gena of Sama Source. They were empowering people around the world
0:40:17 with micro work. They found a way for a woman who previously had no spending money to be able
0:40:23 to for the first time in her life by makeup. And that sounds so frivolous, but that made me,
0:40:28 it completely, I started crying. I edited it out, but that was one of the episodes that made me cry.
0:40:34 Another one that made me cry recently was Ben and Shaka when they interviewed Deshawn and Cherie
0:40:40 about Maven and there was a moment that just brought me to tears and you should listen to that
0:40:45 episode, but that was also another one of the episodes that made me cry. So I want to talk about
0:40:50 your policy on cursing on the podcast. Do you do it? Do you bleep it out? It’s funny because I felt
0:40:54 a lot of tension about it. I remember I once asked Ben and Margaret about it because I was like,
0:40:58 you guys think it’s bad that I cuss? Should I stop? And Ben was like, entrepreneurship is hard,
0:41:03 it’s a struggle. It’s meant to be hard. And then I started getting folks on Twitter, some being very
0:41:06 helpful and some being judgmental. You know, we don’t think you should cuss. You’re such a beautiful
0:41:11 voice and you sound so nice. Is it necessary? That would probably drive you to swear even more.
0:41:15 It did. And frankly, the reason I wanted to keep it is because I believe when women,
0:41:20 we’re asked to conform to so many things, no uptalk, no this, no that. There’s so many different
0:41:25 things. And I’m just like, you know what? I want to be me, raw and real. But here’s why I did finally
0:41:30 decide very recently to stop cussing on those shows. And no, I don’t bleep it out, but funnily
0:41:34 enough on the podcast you and I did with Nick Kwaab, a podcast about podcasting, someone on Twitter
0:41:38 totally teased me. They’re like, I think it’s hilarious that you bleeped out the name of a
0:41:44 company to protect their confidentiality, but you didn’t bleep out your F-bomb. So now I edit it out.
0:41:49 So I stop because they’re kids in the car. And in the beginning I was like, well, don’t listen.
0:41:54 But now, and we’ve talked about ear shares and new mind share, people need to listen to podcasts
0:41:57 with kids in the car. And by the way, the other trend I think is super interesting about podcasting
0:42:03 is these new wave of shows just for kids. It’s one of my favorite things. I feel like in podcasts
0:42:08 you’re taking something that’s previously just information and education and you’re forced to
0:42:12 make it entertaining. Ah, you’re right. Well, I think the job of the moderator for me is to be a
0:42:17 shepherd for the audience. And that means including stitching together statements, helping the listeners
0:42:22 follow along with the arc, summarizing and explaining. But to the entertainment part, I agree with you.
0:42:26 I do believe the future of podcasting is merging with entertainment. And that is going to be
0:42:31 interesting to see. Tell me a little bit about what software, what technology do you use?
0:42:35 Like the hardware, not just the software. Yeah. Yeah. So we use a zoom recorder and we use sure
0:42:41 mics and we use like standard. At one point we use hall mics for our clamp. Do you use a mixer?
0:42:44 Oh, no. So from the early days of the podcast, people would keep complaining on Twitter like,
0:42:48 “I listened to your podcast. It doesn’t sound good.” I thought musicians always use mixers.
0:42:52 Well, one of the negative legacies of podcasting tools is that a lot of them were grounded in the
0:42:56 music world versus made natively for podcasting, which is why you like Descript and other tools
0:43:00 came about. Basically, we got rid of the mixer and then our sound improved drastically because we
0:43:03 can manipulate more because you record separate tracks. How did you know to get rid of the mixer?
0:43:07 So this is my biggest, most invisible partner in crime who I want to give a shout out to is
0:43:13 our sound engineer, Seven Morris. I brought him in and I was like, “Please fix our sound.”
0:43:17 People keep complaining, “I cannot take no for an answer. You need to tell me what’s wrong
0:43:21 and I want it fixed.” I’m just like, “There surely is a solution.” It was the funniest thing
0:43:24 because what he did was he basically removed the mixer. He’s like, “You guys don’t need this.
0:43:28 That’s what people use for live events. You’re editing. You want individual tracks. You should
0:43:32 be plugging directly into the recorder, not having a mixer in between.” So that’s what we did. Our
0:43:36 equipment is not that expensive. I give a lot of startups advice on how to do this stuff and
0:43:42 the list of equipment is all under $1,000. We have sound panels and acoustic stuff, but not really.
0:43:46 We use really standard equipment. I think the primary thing in the tech stack is that we’re
0:43:51 now on Simplecast, which is our hosting platform. I think of them as the stripe of podcasting because
0:43:56 they have an API model. We’re getting a lot of features in that and particularly going to be
0:44:00 more important as we expand to more and more shows. The other thing is that, as everyone knows,
0:44:04 analytics for podcasts have been very, very broken and very difficult because the industry has not
0:44:09 standardized. What’s great is that Simplecast has been going through the process of IAB certification.
0:44:14 For me, the wishlist has always been completion. Where do people drop off? I want chartpeat-like
0:44:20 analytics for things. I want to know about audience overlap between shows. I want to know where people
0:44:24 are more engaged. Are there parts where they’re repeating and trying to listen again? There’s
0:44:28 so many million things I want to know. What’s also great is Amelia hired. I actually credit to Andrew
0:44:33 on this because he had suggested as part of the hiring plan. He suggested we hire a growth and
0:44:38 audience development person in addition to the editors. I’m really glad he did because Amelia
0:44:44 hired a wonderful growth and audience development person for us, Jared. He is very much thinking
0:44:49 about how to bring the promotion side. As we’re growing and thinking about, “Okay, we have our
0:44:55 main show. Now we have the 16 minutes thing. We have hustling tech. What is the future of our
0:45:00 podcast library look like?” I think, as a market has a great phrase, she describes our podcast and
0:45:07 the editorial as a platform, which I think is exactly right for the podcast. I think of us
0:45:11 as expanding into more of a network. Network meaning multiple shows. I want to try different
0:45:15 types of shows, but you also don’t want to abandon your audiences. I don’t want to arbitrarily start
0:45:20 a show. Then if we only have a few episodes, not keep that feed, which is why some of these
0:45:25 shows are starting off as series. Then we can break it out into its own show and its own feed.
0:45:29 Capsule collections in the beginning and then they break out. For some, we start from the get-go.
0:45:34 So 16 minutes, that I knew from the beginning would be its own show. But what we did was
0:45:38 we let it run on the main feed for the first 10 episodes. Someone on Twitter actually asked
0:45:41 that. I thought it was the cutest question. They said, “Why is it 16 minutes? It’s not on the main
0:45:46 feed anymore. This is the reason why.” Then we ripped off the Band-Aid and told people it’s no
0:45:50 longer on this feed. So now people only subscribe there. You see a big spike when you gave those
0:45:55 call-outs. That’s because I need to build a new show there. Let me just tell you how painful that
0:46:00 is because after building a show at this 500th episode and now starting at 15, it’s a very different
0:46:05 game. It’s like exercising new muscles all over again, but I love it because I miss that zero to
0:46:08 a second child. I guess maybe it’s very similar because you’re going back to scratch again in
0:46:14 some ways. That’s how you build that type of a network. Also, we will be verticalizing some of
0:46:19 the channels so that people can subscribe to feeds. We’re going to have a separate channel
0:46:24 initially for A6 and ZBio. That’s great because an audience can self-select. If people want to
0:46:28 talk about journal articles without people who don’t want to hear about crypto policy,
0:46:31 you don’t have to mix those. This is great because this is, to me, the future of media.
0:46:37 I’m a big believer in Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 true fans and then going from there. Initially,
0:46:40 when I started thinking of mapping out the territory of podcasts, I literally thought
0:46:44 about it as mapping sales territory. I want to conquer the open-source community. I want to
0:46:49 conquer Node.js. Let me bring someone on from there. I literally mapped it out geographically in
0:46:52 community-wise to grow and aggregate that. This is how to take over the world.
0:46:57 Software is in the world, but so is audio. I am so honored to be able to interview you today.
0:47:03 Happy 500th episode. Thank you. Thank you to everyone for listening. I also thank you to
0:47:08 our incredible, amazing team here. I want to thank especially our audio engineers,
0:47:13 Sevin Morris and Tommy Herron. The first editor I hired, Hannah Tidnam, who’s now been here for
0:47:19 three years. Now, Emilia and the rest of our team who’ve joined Das, Lauren, and Zoran,
0:47:26 who are starting to podcast. Thank you to Margaret especially. Thank you to Kim, who reached out and
0:47:31 hired me and also was funny. She actually told me she had never thought I would be into podcasting
0:47:36 and I was like, “Me neither,” but I’m so grateful to the firm. Frankly, it’s a miracle that they
0:47:41 would be so supportive of us doing this. I’m so thankful for that. Thank you, everyone,
0:47:44 and thank you, Sonal, for the A16C podcast.

0:00:02 Hi everyone, welcome to the A6NZ podcast.
0:00:07 I’m Sonal, and I’m here today with one of our special episodes for our 10-year anniversary
0:00:08 year.
0:00:15 This is also the 499th episode of the A6NZ podcast, and the 500th will come next week.
0:00:18 Both are special behind-the-scenes shows, where for the first time we answer some of
0:00:23 the frequently asked questions we often get about how things work and how they came about.
0:00:27 We also did another episode earlier this year for our 10-year anniversary in case you missed
0:00:32 it, where we had Stuart Brighterfield, CEO of Slack, turn the tables on the show by interviewing
0:00:38 A6NZ co-founders Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz on the topic of entrepreneurs then and now.
0:00:42 They covered everything from tech shifts to changes in entrepreneurship.
0:00:47 But in this episode, we go behind-the-scenes on the building of the A6NZ brand during the
0:00:53 early days up to 2014, because many technical founders, academics, and other experts often
0:01:00 believe that great products, or their great ideas, sell themselves without effort.
0:01:02 But in reality, they often need PR.
0:01:03 How does such brand-building work?
0:01:08 So A6NZ Operating Partner and Head of Marketing, Margaret Wenmacherz shares her insights using
0:01:13 the example of A6NZ, which she joined very early on, coming from a leading PR agency she
0:01:16 co-founded in Silicon Valley called Outcast.
0:01:21 Finally, in this episode, we reveal how popular pieces like Software Is Eating the World came
0:01:27 about, as well as the many small and big decisions that go into what to do and what not to do
0:01:31 when it comes to building a brand, particularly when the product is something abstract as
0:01:33 many software products are.
0:01:38 As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as investment
0:01:44 advice, nor is directed at any investors or potential investors in any A6NZ fund.
0:02:10 Please be sure to see A6NZ.com/disclosures for more details.
0:02:14 So we checked with Facebook and Facebook said, “No, thank you, please don’t represent
0:02:15 this company.”
0:02:21 So I went back to the entrepreneur, and the entrepreneur was kind of upset and knows Mark
0:02:23 and asked Mark to intervene.
0:02:28 But then Mark asked for my contact information, and I had no idea why.
0:02:30 So he reached out and he’s like, “We’d like to meet.”
0:02:35 I met Ben and Mark at this place in Palo Alto, I think it’s called the Creamery.
0:02:36 Oh, yeah.
0:02:37 That’s like their hangout.
0:02:38 Apparently, it’s like their hangout.
0:02:39 It was their hangout because they didn’t have an office.
0:02:44 So I go to the Creamery and have my little audience, and I made the mistake of bringing
0:02:46 sort of a standard capabilities presentation.
0:02:49 And anytime you put a piece of paper in front of Mark, you will just go read it.
0:02:51 He lost a draw on it, by the way, as you well know.
0:02:52 Yeah.
0:02:55 He was lost in a doodling stage at the time.
0:02:58 And then I was like, “Here’s how we, here are the kinds of clients we’d like to work
0:02:59 with, blah, blah.”
0:03:00 And I’m like, “Thank you.”
0:03:05 And at the time, Ben had just left HP, and they were both angel investing.
0:03:10 So I thought, well, maybe they’ll do potential referrals if one of their portfolio companies
0:03:12 is looking for PR representation.
0:03:13 That was the end of that.
0:03:15 I forgot about the meeting because nothing was happening.
0:03:19 And then a couple of months later, Mark got back in touch, and it’s like, “We’d like to
0:03:20 meet again.”
0:03:25 Then they said, “Well, we’re going to start this venture capital firm, and we’re going
0:03:26 to launch it next year.”
0:03:29 Why do they, so this is actually a very cutting edge idea, and I want to talk about this because
0:03:32 it’s actually very similar to a lot of our founders who don’t understand the importance
0:03:35 of PR and marketing in the early days.
0:03:39 They’re both tech founders who understood the value of, “Hey, we want PR.”
0:03:40 What was behind that?
0:03:45 My view is that if you look at the landscape of venture capital firms at the time, the
0:03:49 list of the top four or five firms was basically etched in stone.
0:03:51 It hasn’t changed in like 20 years.
0:03:55 And guess how that list marketed itself with the logos of the companies that invested it?
0:03:57 We funded Apple, you know?
0:04:00 So that was the marketing, it’s basically reference selling, if you will.
0:04:02 So we would have to do something, right?
0:04:05 And they had done a really thoughtful job of thinking about this, like, how are we going
0:04:08 to be different, and it turns out the model is actually different.
0:04:13 So there was actually something to talk about story-wise, but we decided to go like, “Okay,
0:04:16 if we’re going to win deals, we need to see deals.”
0:04:17 Exactly.
0:04:19 You need the flow to get to the actual deal itself.
0:04:20 Exactly.
0:04:24 So then the marketing job was essentially initially to go like, “Hello, we’re here.
0:04:25 The entrepreneurs come see us.”
0:04:30 And that came in flavors, which was, “We have a point of view on the market.”
0:04:33 Famously, we argued that there was no bubble, right?
0:04:35 When everybody was like, “Oh, there’s a bubble.”
0:04:40 And Ben had a debate with Steve Blank, like an Oxford-style debate, which he lost.
0:04:41 But we were right.
0:04:42 There was no bubble at the time.
0:04:44 You booked that as part of the PR engagement?
0:04:45 Yeah.
0:04:50 So initially, the way we launched the firm was we, essentially, I thought, “Look, you
0:04:55 know, Marc is famous, he co-wrote the browser, so that’s got to become for something,” right?
0:04:56 And they’re both pretty articulate.
0:05:02 So I wanted to try and get a cover story, because this sounds old-fashioned now, because
0:05:05 everybody reads their news on Twitter and so on, online, whatever, but there’s still
0:05:09 a statement that comes with a cover story that is in print that you see at the airport
0:05:10 newspaper.
0:05:13 So that’s fantastic, because I’ve heard Ben tell this story.
0:05:17 Ben basically was like, “This woman is coming to us,” and saying, “So do you want fortune
0:05:19 or do you want this cover?”
0:05:21 And they’re just like, “Oh my God, this person knows what they’re doing.”
0:05:23 Well, you do get something if you don’t ask for it.
0:05:24 So it was worth a try.
0:05:28 I didn’t know going in that it was a done deal, but it turns out it was happening.
0:05:32 Well, I’m glad you brought up the part about Marc having an existing brand and being known
0:05:35 as a co-inventor of the browser, because quite frankly, I think a lot of people kind
0:05:39 of assume this is an easy game, because it’s like, “Oh, it’s Marc Andreessen.
0:05:40 It’s like a given.”
0:05:45 So it’s someone who’s actually co-invented a core piece of what we now take for granted.
0:05:50 That’s a big deal to any engineer that’s like, “I want to meet that guy,” right?
0:05:56 The challenge of it was that there was a big imbalance between Marc’s brand and Ben’s
0:05:57 brand.
0:06:01 So the people who knew Ben were the people who were also in the struggle of building
0:06:03 a company that was having a hard time.
0:06:08 He had a really strong reputation with all those founders, but he did not have a brand,
0:06:09 if you will.
0:06:10 Right.
0:06:13 So yes, Bill Campbell, fellow CEOs, they were all like, “Oh my God, Ben has done such
0:06:18 a great job,” because he took this company from Liveglot to Opsware to the sale to HB,
0:06:21 actually making money, and Ben has written very eloquently about it.
0:06:23 That was the challenge from a brand point of view, because you don’t want entrepreneurs
0:06:28 to come in the door and say, “Well, I’ll take your money if that guy is on my board.”
0:06:32 A, that doesn’t scale, and B, it doesn’t do anybody justice.
0:06:36 Well, the big picture that I love about that, if you spin it forward 10 years, is that if
0:06:40 you think about all the new people coming in, the brand is now a brand.
0:06:41 It’s an A6 and Z.
0:06:42 It’s not just Andreessen Horowitz.
0:06:43 Exactly.
0:06:45 And in fact, we have this funny little argument.
0:06:49 I told Mark, I’m just like, “Your name is terrible, Andreessen Horowitz.”
0:06:52 And I didn’t even know that we were going to have 17 general partners.
0:06:57 However, one could argue that Andreessen and the Horowitz name, there are assets, particularly
0:06:58 in the core community, right?
0:07:02 I was thinking broadly, but the core entrepreneur community, those are fake assets.
0:07:04 What you needed in the early days.
0:07:07 So what I love telling people when people ask about the editorial operation, the brand,
0:07:11 is that much of it’s built on the strong existing culture of writing and communicating that’s
0:07:12 been here from day one.
0:07:16 Like one of the things you guys did, for instance, which is really interesting, was write blog
0:07:18 posts about each announcement, like tell me about that.
0:07:24 So my observation, having worked with many venture capital firms and with companies that
0:07:29 took their money, is that VCs don’t do any marketing and you don’t really stick their
0:07:33 neck out to support the portfolio company until there’s the IPO.
0:07:36 And then they will call every reporter and say like, “Well, you know, we’ve known one
0:07:37 thing.”
0:07:42 But at the beginning of the journey, if you were like, “Here’s why we invested.
0:07:43 Here’s what we see in the company.”
0:07:48 You can help them just very tactically with recruiting and business development and like
0:07:51 sticking your neck out for them.
0:07:55 If we’re calling it venture capital and it’s high risk, we can’t put all of the owners
0:07:57 of the risk tagging onto the portfolio company.
0:07:59 They take the lion’s share anyways, right?
0:08:03 At least, I mean, the whole point of a brand is that the portfolio companies that don’t
0:08:05 have a brand yet can kind of borrow our brand.
0:08:06 It’s an umbrella.
0:08:07 Right?
0:08:09 It’s a sort of this brand halo, hopefully.
0:08:13 But like, if you don’t actually bother to support them actively and visibly, then what’s
0:08:14 the point?
0:08:16 I love that because it’s about skin in the game.
0:08:20 And so you guys started writing these posts and what I also appreciate as an editor is
0:08:22 that they weren’t actually straight press releases.
0:08:26 Well, as you know, well, nobody reads press releases.
0:08:28 There’s no story in press release, right?
0:08:34 There’s no story about like how this founder’s idea is particularly well suited for their
0:08:37 experience, the founder idea fit that we talk about.
0:08:39 There’s just no arc and there’s no rawness to it.
0:08:45 Like anything that is worth reading has to some sort of raw element that’s real and
0:08:46 it’s also plain English.
0:08:47 I call it slippery and I agree with you.
0:08:51 It needs to have a raw, authentic, slippery feel that’s not perfectly polished with every
0:08:52 bowtide.
0:08:54 In fact, I hate things when they’re perfectly done that way.
0:08:56 And they need to sound like the person, right?
0:09:01 Like, and that’s why the editorial team, it’s their voices that you help shape, right?
0:09:02 Exactly.
0:09:04 So just one more quick note going back.
0:09:09 When they hired you, what did they ask you to do, like be their in-house PR person?
0:09:14 So the hired outcast, I basically said, and Mark was really the leader in the main pusher
0:09:15 of this.
0:09:19 Although I think Ben was very supportive, but Mark’s like, we want to properly announce
0:09:20 it.
0:09:21 We want to treat it very seriously.
0:09:23 We want to make a statement.
0:09:24 Can you help us do that?
0:09:29 I think they called my boss before outcast that I don’t know who else they call.
0:09:33 I just remember someone called me and it’s like, they asked me about you and she told
0:09:39 them, it’s like, there will be absolutely never zero BS, which they decided was a feature,
0:09:40 not a bug.
0:09:41 Yeah.
0:09:45 Anyhow, then we decided to launch the firm and we did the cover story and we did lots
0:09:46 of other interviews and whatnot.
0:09:51 And then it was sort of a regular client-partner relationship, but you were the co-founder
0:09:52 of the firm.
0:09:54 Like, how did you choose to be on this account?
0:09:56 Like, why don’t you just outsource it to all the junior people?
0:09:57 No, no, no, no.
0:09:58 That’s not how we ran outcasts.
0:10:03 You were always working on work because how can you give, quote unquote, strategic advice
0:10:06 if you have no idea what media is thinking and whatnot?
0:10:11 So at any given moment in time, I was always working on a very specific thing.
0:10:12 Spread out across all the different.
0:10:13 Yeah.
0:10:18 And then the rest of your time, you help, you know, a mentor and a power and advise the
0:10:22 rest of the agency and clients where you kind of sprinkle in, right?
0:10:26 And I mean, selfishly, I like doing those things where you go, like, can we get a cover
0:10:29 story because it’s my, it’s like running a marathon, you’re proving to yourself that
0:10:30 you can do it.
0:10:31 I love all of that.
0:10:32 So it was fun.
0:10:38 I think very shortly, Mark, basically it was the lead recruiter, if you will say, like,
0:10:40 look, this function is, turns out it’s pretty important.
0:10:41 It’s critical.
0:10:43 Like, would you ever consider?
0:10:45 And then we did this dance for a while.
0:10:50 And it turns out at the same time, Karen and I had both decided that we wanted to change
0:10:54 our roles at outcast less from running it more to, you know, if you will, like doing
0:10:56 actual work and very dusting.
0:11:02 And we had tried to recruit this fabulous woman for like four years, Alex Constantinople.
0:11:03 Who runs it today.
0:11:04 Who is amazing.
0:11:06 And she finally said, like, I’m ready to do something.
0:11:10 And so that actually allowed me to even think about leaving my non-human child like your
0:11:11 baby.
0:11:12 Yeah, it totally is.
0:11:14 But like those happen in parallel.
0:11:19 We had sold outcasts, I think three or four years prior, but it was not your sell and
0:11:21 leave sale.
0:11:22 We sold it to a holding company.
0:11:25 So the day-to-day, it actually didn’t change.
0:11:28 So I’m glad you brought this up because one of the things that I think is an undertold
0:11:32 aspect of this story is that there’s some parallels between VC and picking clients.
0:11:33 Lots of parallels.
0:11:34 What are they?
0:11:38 So the good clients you always have to compete for, same with deals, right?
0:11:43 The thing that makes an agency is the reputation, not the revenue.
0:11:46 And then the client list you keep, right?
0:11:48 Just like the portfolio company that that speaks for you.
0:11:50 That speaks like, are you smart?
0:11:52 Do you have good judgment?
0:11:53 Do you know what you’re doing, right?
0:11:56 That’s by the company you keep, right?
0:12:02 And then the thing about how to build a business at Outcast is very similar, although the money
0:12:04 is very different.
0:12:08 The way you build a business is you find a company that you think has great promise.
0:12:09 You’re hopefully right about that.
0:12:12 And you cannot afford to be as wrong as you are in venture capital.
0:12:13 Definitely not.
0:12:14 And then you grow with their success.
0:12:19 So Salesforce was a client when it was Mark and three engineers and his apartment at a
0:12:20 Coyt Tower.
0:12:21 Wow.
0:12:23 And Outcast had that business for 12 years.
0:12:24 Well, guess what happened?
0:12:26 The fees went up over time, right?
0:12:31 And that is much easier from a business point of view than adding, you know, a thousand
0:12:33 $5,000 accounts, right?
0:12:38 But what I love is you took some very early bets in making bets, like to make your choices
0:12:41 for whether to make Salesforce a client or Facebook.
0:12:42 Tell me a little bit about that.
0:12:48 So here’s my theory on this, on like picking clients is what people actually say they enjoy
0:12:54 is not really in all cases what they enjoy, what they end up enjoying is success and making
0:12:55 a difference.
0:12:57 Are you going to be able to put on your resume?
0:12:59 Like you worked on that.
0:13:04 And on the enterprise side at Outcast, in that decade, there were two enterprise softwares
0:13:07 franchises that were created Salesforce.com and VMware.
0:13:08 And we had them both.
0:13:13 And then you go like, okay, of the clients, right, do we have anything in clean tech?
0:13:16 Like we made a decision that clean tech wasn’t for us.
0:13:18 I’m very prescient, in fact, on your part.
0:13:22 Trust me, our staff would be like, I would love to run our clean tech.
0:13:26 Like it’s all felt so good, but they were all science experiments and there’s nothing
0:13:33 really to do because it takes forever to find out if there’s a product in there, right?
0:13:35 And like that’s about for venture capital as a model.
0:13:40 But for us, you’re going to do PR for five years, spend a bunch of fees, right?
0:13:44 That I have a hard time justifying because like there’s no actual business, right?
0:13:45 Where you can see an impact, right?
0:13:48 So those are some of the choices that we made.
0:13:51 It seems to me like you would have been a much better than some of the others who made
0:13:52 the bets in the clean tech space.
0:13:55 I did have a VC tell me, you know, your portfolio is better than ours.
0:13:57 It was good, but I guess it’s also sad.
0:14:02 The last parallel, which I think is underappreciated is like both are services firms, like in one
0:14:06 case you take money, in another case you give money, but both what distinguishes you is
0:14:11 like how you treat the entrepreneurs, what you do for them besides the money, right?
0:14:16 So I think the parallels are just striking in venture capital.
0:14:20 What’s slightly different is in venture capital, you make your money on the easy deals and
0:14:26 you make your reputation on the really hard deals, but both entities, it’s all about reputation.
0:14:30 In the outcast case, obviously it’s a two-sided marketplace, right?
0:14:34 You have to have a great reputation with both press and clients.
0:14:35 I love that analogy actually.
0:14:39 Tell me more about this two-sided marketplace for more context for those that are interested
0:14:43 in learning more about the mechanics of PR, how to hire an agency, how to manage crises.
0:14:46 We’ve actually done other episodes at Market and other guests.
0:14:52 You can find those on ASICsNC.com under podcasts, but in this context, tell me more about that
0:14:53 matchmaking dance.
0:14:58 So I think if you want to succeed, you need to broker what the client’s business goals
0:15:02 are with what actually makes for a good story.
0:15:07 And if the client is unreasonable or in an unethical case ask you to like lie or whatever,
0:15:08 you just can’t do that, right?
0:15:13 You want your client to be a client for 12 years or in the Amazon Kindle case, I think
0:15:17 even for longer, like I’ll just launch the Kindle and Amazon is still a client.
0:15:22 So for that, you need to have high integrity with the client and perform and actually do
0:15:23 all this stuff.
0:15:28 But you also need to be an honest broker with a reporter because if you go to the Wall Street
0:15:32 Journal three times in a row with a terrible idea that’s just off and they would never
0:15:33 run, you should know better.
0:15:34 You would ignore them.
0:15:36 I mean, frankly, this is true of your team.
0:15:40 When I was at Wired, many of them pitched me, well, there was only two of them at the
0:15:44 time, but I loved them because they were some of the very few who stood out to me as not
0:15:45 driving me nuts.
0:15:49 I love how people like dumping on PR people.
0:15:52 There’s just as many bad lawyers and lazy reporters.
0:15:53 It’s like everybody’s favorite punching bag.
0:15:58 I will say like one of the best compliments was like this guy managing editor, I think
0:16:00 of Info World Computer Weekly.
0:16:03 He basically said we would say like, well, if the pitch is from Outcast, we’ll take
0:16:04 the meeting.
0:16:05 That is the best compliment.
0:16:07 I want to ask you a hard question about this.
0:16:08 Why do you think so?
0:16:10 I love that you use the analogy of a two-sided marketplace.
0:16:14 Do you really believe that that broker will exist in the future, especially because our
0:16:18 business and technology is to disintermediate things?
0:16:19 I think about that all the time.
0:16:21 Sometimes I go like, yes, deaf.
0:16:27 And then sometimes I think like, no, because there’s such an element of translation that
0:16:32 I’m not sure AI in matchmaking that AI is still well suited like Google Translate is
0:16:35 really good, but I speak a bunch of languages and it’s just kind of off.
0:16:36 Well, you don’t mean literal translation.
0:16:37 You’re meaning translation.
0:16:41 No, like the subtlety of knowing the 10 last stories.
0:16:48 I think that the level of EQ and story weaving of those two sides together, I have a hard
0:16:52 time seeing how that’s going to get disintermediated right away.
0:16:57 Now I fully realized that a lot of people say that and I crossed my arms and was like,
0:16:58 that is such BS.
0:17:04 I don’t know, but I sort of feel like jobs that require a lot of empathy on both sides
0:17:08 are going to be pretty safe, I think, for a really long time.
0:17:12 It reminds me of this line that if you act like a robot, expect your job to be automated
0:17:13 away.
0:17:17 And so when Chris Anderson wrote this post, because he was so annoyed of all these pitches,
0:17:20 he got re-outed all the email addresses of all the people who kept pitching him as other
0:17:22 right editors.
0:17:25 And that’s a perfect example of essentially doing your job robotically where you’re just
0:17:27 sending an email, you’re not really customizing it.
0:17:31 Whereas what you’re describing is less robotic, it’s creative, empathetic, it’s understanding
0:17:32 what one side wants.
0:17:34 What is actually the story?
0:17:36 And what does a person want to hear on the other side?
0:17:37 The two-sided marketplace.
0:17:41 And of course, the positive part of the two-sided marketplace, the more good relationships you
0:17:44 have, the more it benefits your clients.
0:17:48 The more good clients you have, the more reporters will want to talk to you, right?
0:17:49 So I have a question.
0:17:52 So Cade Met’s friend of mine from Wired, he’s now at the New York Times.
0:17:53 This is before that.
0:17:54 Right.
0:17:55 Very good reporter.
0:17:56 He’s one of the best.
0:17:57 Are you kidding?
0:17:59 He’s literally, he and I used to compete for the top plots at Wired, actually, in a good
0:18:00 way.
0:18:01 We were friendly competitors because we were the unlike ones.
0:18:05 Anyway, I saw him recently and I’m going to tell this backstory.
0:18:11 He did a piece for Wired on the A6NZ library and he reached out to me to be introduced
0:18:12 to you.
0:18:14 “Hey, can you just meet a market because I’m going to do this piece?”
0:18:17 And he’s sort of annoyed because he’s like, “Why does this person tell me I can and can’t
0:18:18 do this piece A?”
0:18:22 And B, he didn’t understand the concept, which he wrote about in his piece.
0:18:26 And I explain it to him where he’s like, “What is she talking about over exposure?”
0:18:28 You basically said no to him initially.
0:18:33 So look, in the beginning, it was all about having the chance to compete for the deals,
0:18:34 right?
0:18:35 And therefore we were loud and proud.
0:18:40 But like you can overdo that where you basically at some point started doing gratuitous PR.
0:18:43 So people come to the office, right?
0:18:46 And the office is also like the entrance doubles as a library, right?
0:18:49 So Cade is at the office and he’s like, “I want to write about this.”
0:18:53 And I was getting to that stage where I put the brakes on a lot where it’s like, “We’re
0:18:56 not doing no, no, no, no.”
0:19:00 I was like, “This is another one of those pieces where like, I love Cade.
0:19:02 He does a really good job.
0:19:03 It’s wired.”
0:19:05 But like, do we need another thing about us?
0:19:07 I want it to be away from us.
0:19:12 I wanted to talk more about the technologies, the future, the entrepreneurs.
0:19:16 For me, it’s about a larger picture of like, “Are we actually spending too much time on
0:19:17 the wrong thing?”
0:19:19 That is what I think is so amazing.
0:19:23 I’m so glad we’re talking about this because that is the orchestration behind the scenes
0:19:26 that is entirely invisible that people don’t see.
0:19:30 In fact, that there’s so many decisions that go into the thing you see and so many decisions
0:19:31 that go into things you don’t see.
0:19:33 The most important decisions you will never see.
0:19:37 Well, especially in your job in particular, it’s probably the opposite in mine, in fact,
0:19:38 I would say.
0:19:40 Well, actually, no, it might be the same because I would argue just in the early days too though
0:19:44 that one of my number one philosophies as an editor is that the more you kill, the better
0:19:47 you have content because you’re actually working on the right things.
0:19:50 But that said, on the key thing, the thing that you didn’t mention is that the reason
0:19:55 you were concerned about overexposure at that point in the firm’s evolution, I think it
0:19:57 was actually six years at almost.
0:20:01 So this is about four years ago, is that you had just approved that the New Yorker could
0:20:02 do a profile on the firm.
0:20:07 So let’s talk about one of the most unique pieces I think you’ve done at A6NZ that you
0:20:12 oversaw that you had your team do, which is around the fact that we let a reporter into
0:20:18 our hallways and in our pitch room, in fact, to do a profile of the firm for the New Yorker.
0:20:22 So tell me what your rationale and logic was in greenlighting that piece.
0:20:25 So it’s not an easy decision.
0:20:28 At that point, I was at a stage where it was like, enough, we’re done talking about ourselves,
0:20:29 right?
0:20:30 So enough.
0:20:35 They came to us and the way they do these stories is they do the story about like a profession
0:20:40 or a type of business and they do it through the lens of following this one person.
0:20:41 Very classic formula.
0:20:48 So then the ask was, we would like to do this kind of story and we would like to do it with
0:20:49 Mark’s participation.
0:20:54 So the decision is then, okay, the New Yorker is the New Yorker.
0:20:59 So how often is the New Yorker going to write the definitive piece on venture capital once
0:21:01 in a decade?
0:21:02 Maybe?
0:21:04 Well, do I want that to be about whoever or do I want that to be about us?
0:21:09 At that point, I want to occupy that spot because that’s leadership and that’s the voice
0:21:11 of innovation, which is what we’re all about.
0:21:14 But when I remember you telling me, it was very eye-opening for me at the time, was you
0:21:19 said you wanted not only the firm to have that definitive spot, but you wanted the East
0:21:21 Coast audience to really understand it.
0:21:22 Yeah.
0:21:24 I mean, look, people in the other power centers, right?
0:21:30 Like primarily New York and DC, sort of feel like we don’t explain ourselves well, right?
0:21:33 Silicon Valley, there’s some bridging that needs to happen.
0:21:35 However, here’s the New Yorker, right?
0:21:41 Like it hits those audiences and it’s a chance to explain our business to those audiences
0:21:45 in a very legit, very, you know, future forward way, right?
0:21:49 And I think the headline was like the future’s frontman or Silicon Valley’s frontman.
0:21:54 Now we have never let anybody sit in on a meeting and whatnot, right?
0:21:56 But like the New Yorker comes with that.
0:22:00 In fact, I think there was a lot of compromising on both sides that needed to happen.
0:22:04 You had death permission for entrepreneurs being able to, you know, talk off the record
0:22:07 and then give the entrepreneurs some choices about what could go on the record.
0:22:09 Could they really participate in all of that?
0:22:14 And what I try to balance is, you know, again, being an honest broker, right?
0:22:19 Like you get an actual peak and an actual pitch meeting and the actual reactions.
0:22:21 But I do need to protect our entrepreneurs.
0:22:22 Like that’s our reputation, right?
0:22:26 And the other concession that the New Yorker made, which they didn’t like was that all
0:22:28 of these meetings were staffed.
0:22:29 Right.
0:22:32 This is actually a firm policy that I think people here didn’t even understand.
0:22:36 Even the general partners, I don’t think even saw the point of that until they got it.
0:22:37 Right.
0:22:38 No, they definitely get it now.
0:22:43 But the New Yorker was like, no, no, no, we’d like the familiarity that develops, blah,
0:22:44 blah, blah.
0:22:45 I’m just like, we’re not doing that.
0:22:46 That was going to be a deal breaker.
0:22:49 Scott Rubin at the time, he was staffing up a bunch, but I think Tat Friend did a really
0:22:50 good job.
0:22:52 In fact, the thing that I think is really interesting, you talk about it being the one
0:22:57 story of the decade, I think it did so well that they ended up doing that kind of a profile
0:22:59 of multiple people after that in the Silicon Valley VC world.
0:23:02 I mean, they did Sam Altman, they did a couple of others and they started with this ongoing
0:23:03 thing.
0:23:04 Occasionally they ask for suggestions like, what do you think?
0:23:05 You gave them suggestions.
0:23:06 I remember that.
0:23:10 So let’s talk about one of the most defining things that’s, again, about five years in.
0:23:14 Let’s talk about maybe two years into the firm, which is software eating the world.
0:23:18 Well, first of all, it came up completely organically, right?
0:23:22 Like I think people sometimes think PR people sit and go like, we should X.
0:23:24 It’s just not how it works, right?
0:23:29 So the way it came about was, you know, the economist writes these special reports, they’re
0:23:30 super in depth.
0:23:36 At the time, Martin Giles was the Silicon Valley person for the economist and he came
0:23:39 to meet with Ben Martin and me.
0:23:43 We’re talking about the internet and the future of the internet and Mark basically sort of
0:23:47 starts to riff and he goes, well, your way to think about it is really it’s like software
0:23:48 is eating the world.
0:23:51 And he goes through his little thesis and I’m sitting there and going like, that is a
0:23:53 fricking op-ed.
0:23:54 This needs a shelf life.
0:23:58 I basically gave the idea to the reporter and the reporter’s like, well, if Mark Andreessen
0:24:02 will write it and it’s like that big, we will run it.
0:24:08 And then I told Mark like, it’s placed, you have a deadline and then kindly he obliged.
0:24:11 That’s one of the most defining pieces, not just for the firm, but just for the industry.
0:24:15 I mean, people refer to it over and over and over again.
0:24:19 Few years later, in fact, maybe a month before I started, there was also a New York Times
0:24:22 op-ed on why Bitcoin matters.
0:24:23 What’s the backstory there?
0:24:29 So there was an opinion written about Bitcoin that was really negative about Bitcoin.
0:24:34 But more important, it didn’t fully appreciate, I think what was actually happening underneath
0:24:35 the currency.
0:24:42 So Mark wrote a response just as an email to the person who had written the op-ed and
0:24:47 basically just said, like, look, I read your op-ed and we’ve been studying this space and
0:24:50 I thought it might be helpful for me to lay out how we’re thinking about it.
0:24:55 And he just writes this whole piece on like why Bitcoin matters and he sees me and I’m
0:24:57 like, Mark, there’s an op-ed.
0:25:01 So I think I guess the lesson that I’m learning on this podcast is like, I got to just like
0:25:03 identify versus ask him to do op-eds.
0:25:04 Yeah, yeah, totally.
0:25:07 But what I love about that is that the narrative was very much about the Mount Gox and the
0:25:13 scariest, but the reality is that the co-inventor of the GUI has a perspective on Bitcoin as
0:25:14 a protocol.
0:25:15 Yeah.
0:25:17 I mean, certainly a legitimate opinion, right?
0:25:18 And we did not get an answer on our email.
0:25:20 So well, let’s run it.
0:25:22 We finally, if you had, you might not have run it.
0:25:23 Exactly.
0:25:25 So we’ve been talking about the story of the brand.
0:25:28 You’ve talked about your background in PR and communications, but you actually run
0:25:33 marketing, which at ASICS and Z has three distinct functions all under the banner.
0:25:37 There’s communications in PR, which is where it started, the team you first grew, then
0:25:38 events and then editorial.
0:25:41 Tell me about that and what they’re thinking.
0:25:42 Yeah.
0:25:45 So, I mean, like marketing for a venture capital firm looks very different from marketing for
0:25:46 a product company.
0:25:47 It’s just very different.
0:25:49 We have such a breadth of investment areas, right?
0:25:52 We’re not beholden to having to market a product.
0:25:56 The communications part is figuring out for the general partner sort of like an exact
0:25:57 comms function.
0:25:58 What is your platform?
0:26:00 What’s our point of view on X topic, right?
0:26:04 So figuring out what they want to do, what are the big things they want to do for the
0:26:10 year, whether the smaller things for the year and like how to respond to incoming opportunities
0:26:11 and whatnot.
0:26:12 Which they get a lot of because of the brand.
0:26:13 You get tons.
0:26:14 And it varies by general partner.
0:26:17 Some are very much in brand building mode, right?
0:26:19 Some are not in brand building mode.
0:26:21 I’m glad you pointed that out, by the way, because one of the things you said about the
0:26:24 evolution of the firm is that there’s a right time and a place and that these things have
0:26:25 ebbs and flows.
0:26:28 You’re not just like automatically, robotically applying some script.
0:26:29 No, no, no.
0:26:34 There are like 17 flavors of this at that sort of platform level.
0:26:36 It’s not like a cookie cutter thing.
0:26:38 So that’s the comms function, right?
0:26:42 And then the events function, if you think about our brand is we don’t have features.
0:26:43 We don’t have news.
0:26:45 There’s nothing you can touch.
0:26:46 You can’t review it, right?
0:26:48 Like, so we’re not a product company.
0:26:51 So events is really the only way to really experience the brand.
0:26:53 Like physical, I think people will be shocked.
0:26:56 I think they’re going to end up doing 200 events this year.
0:26:57 That’s huge.
0:27:01 Some of them are tiny, very important, but small, very curated things where there’s
0:27:06 a content component, but really is a way of convening people and like generating like
0:27:11 productive relationships with our core constituents, right?
0:27:15 And then we have 10 pull events like with Ben’s barbecue, which he’s now famous for.
0:27:17 And then we have our big summit every year.
0:27:20 So the events team, like there’s a broad range, right?
0:27:23 And then obviously the content operation, I’m here sitting talking to you.
0:27:27 That is really like, okay, so what is the space between the stories?
0:27:31 What is the stuff that participants in the future want to know, but like they won’t
0:27:34 necessarily find in existing outlets, right?
0:27:35 Or the most in depth.
0:27:37 We’re for builders, for participants.
0:27:40 The key verb, I think is explain, right?
0:27:43 And then there’s a whole thrust of content, sort of the how to stuff.
0:27:46 Yeah, it’s like the two pillars, tech trends and then company building.
0:27:49 We need to have a direct channel for two reasons.
0:27:54 One is to reach the entrepreneurs directly, to reach the participants in the future directly,
0:27:55 right?
0:27:59 In an unfiltered way that we want to, and then they can decide how they feel about it, right?
0:28:01 But you also defensively, right?
0:28:05 Like if stuff doesn’t go your way, you need to have other options.
0:28:10 Like how would you completely be disintermediated from contacting your customers other than
0:28:11 like a customer support mode?
0:28:12 Why would you not want to have that control?
0:28:14 I completely agree.
0:28:18 You totally, you want the ability and you also, it is a major way to express your brand.
0:28:20 You don’t want to outsource that, you know?
0:28:24 And then the way this happened is Kim had an op-ed and then she wanted to place it on
0:28:25 wire.
0:28:26 She pitched me.
0:28:27 And guess who she contacted?
0:28:28 You, right?
0:28:30 Because you were in charge of that operation.
0:28:33 And then she kept saying to me, she’s like, you know what, this woman is really good.
0:28:35 Well, by the way, the funny backstory, I don’t know if you know this.
0:28:39 I thought she hated my guts because quite frankly, I took the position because I cared very much
0:28:41 about my section where I’m sorry, you guys.
0:28:43 I know you’re used to placing things at that edit.
0:28:45 That is not happening on my platform.
0:28:49 Well, with the thing is, as you know, that sometimes when you’re dealing with an editor,
0:28:52 reporter, and a PR person, interests aren’t always aligned.
0:28:56 So the whole genius of Kim and the rest of the team is to work through that productive
0:28:57 thing, right?
0:28:58 Yeah.
0:29:00 But she ended up coming back and then we went after you.
0:29:04 So the backstory on the content operation is that we all had decided like we want to
0:29:06 build out a direct channel, right?
0:29:11 And Kim, who is not an editor, not a reporter, she took it upon herself and she found Michael,
0:29:13 who got the initial podcast off the ground.
0:29:17 And then you obviously got the podcast to where it is today.
0:29:21 I’ve given this talk a lot where people ask me, you know, you’ve given talks on editorial
0:29:22 and how it works.
0:29:26 One of the lines I always say is that I believe that you need to have a two-word lens with
0:29:28 which to distill the thing you’re looking at.
0:29:30 So for me at PARC, it was entrepreneurial scientists.
0:29:32 At Wired, it was informed optimism.
0:29:36 And when I was interviewing here, I was looking for that two-word lens and you actually gave
0:29:38 it to me in the form of innovation brand.
0:29:41 And that’s when I knew I could come here and work here because I was like, I’m not doing
0:29:42 editorial.
0:29:43 Not chilling bullshit.
0:29:46 No, I need to have like big ideas and big things to work on.
0:29:51 Like, for those who want to participate and build and understand the future, I want them
0:29:53 to go like, I wonder what Jason Horwitz thinks about that.
0:29:56 And of course that comes in all kinds of flavors, right?
0:30:01 Whether that is op-eds or podcasts or written decks or press interviews and any flavor,
0:30:02 right?
0:30:05 Like that is what the overall ambition is of the marketing function.
0:30:10 And then if you look at like the way the team is organized, we basically have four vertical
0:30:12 areas roughly of investing, right?
0:30:16 So it’s consumer, it’s enterprise, and then crypto and bio.
0:30:20 Fintech and real estate belong sort of in the consumer slash B2B bucket, if you will,
0:30:21 right?
0:30:26 So the entire team is aligned around those vertical areas so you can really develop depth
0:30:30 in bio or consumer or enterprise.
0:30:35 So to the extent that we can be useful to the portfolio, we do all kinds of advising,
0:30:36 right?
0:30:37 We call it counsel.
0:30:40 Here’s how you should think about like the agency world.
0:30:42 Here’s how you think about the funding announcement.
0:30:45 Should you disclose this X or the other?
0:30:47 And then of course we get very involved when something has gone sideways.
0:30:51 I was about to say crisis and that’s a whole topic of two multiple three podcasts if you
0:30:53 want to check them out on our website.
0:30:57 So you talked about this model of the councils and bringing all these networks together.
0:31:00 I often describe A6 and Z as a network of networks.
0:31:03 There’s all these different folks and people that come to play.
0:31:08 What I have for you is the network that you never talk about is the outcast mafia.
0:31:10 It struck me.
0:31:14 I went to like multiple events and I was like, holy, there’s an outcast mafia not just in
0:31:17 the valley but all across the United States and around the world where there are people
0:31:21 who worked at outcasts at some point and people talk about the PayPal mafia.
0:31:22 They talk about that.
0:31:23 You know, the Uber mafia.
0:31:25 There’s New York Times articles written about it.
0:31:26 Tell me about the outcast mafia.
0:31:29 Well, it’s actually it’s something I’m actually really proud of.
0:31:30 You’re making someone’s career.
0:31:36 People spend, you know, in one case, 17 years, but like there’s this woman, Jessica, who’s
0:31:39 now been at outcast longer than I have, right?
0:31:40 But you’re making someone’s career, right?
0:31:45 So the time that they’re with you ought to be meaningful and audit forward into whatever
0:31:46 they want to do next.
0:31:47 Exactly.
0:31:50 There are people who started and we did this thing where we never liked the senior talent
0:31:54 at the other agencies because we were very, you know, our way, blah, blah, blah.
0:31:58 But like, so we did this intern program and I’m telling you, there are so many people
0:32:02 who started out as an intern at outcast who now run big teams.
0:32:03 They have big budgets.
0:32:05 They have a great career, right?
0:32:08 Like, and nearest to my heart is Grace.
0:32:12 Grace is the first person I hired who came out of that intern program and she came out
0:32:13 of that run.
0:32:14 She’s so great.
0:32:16 I mean, everybody who thinks that Ben is so amazing and famous and whatnot.
0:32:17 He’s great.
0:32:18 She made him.
0:32:22 You know how the asset was, you know, Andreessen had co-invented the browser, right?
0:32:26 Like the challenge of that was, you know, Ben’s brand was just not as big, right?
0:32:31 So we did a bunch of things, like we did like little tactical things, like we would never
0:32:35 do any more press meetings with the two of them because then you’re directing questions
0:32:36 at the person you’ve already met before.
0:32:42 But like the much bigger effort was Ben, his best format is writing.
0:32:46 He’s a very good writer and he’s very specific and it’s very him, right?
0:32:50 So he’s going, you know, in all of his coachiness, right?
0:32:51 Yeah.
0:32:54 All of his advice, like we’ll just drip from the blog, right?
0:32:56 And that turned into the first book, right?
0:32:58 So Grace then went and fixed that imbalance.
0:33:02 So the first book, the media interviews, the Forbes cover, right?
0:33:03 On him.
0:33:07 And she’s at it again because she’s like working, she’s on the road with him right now, doing
0:33:08 his second book, right?
0:33:09 Yeah.
0:33:11 Because by the way, a book doesn’t sell itself, fun fact.
0:33:12 No.
0:33:15 What I also love, by the way, about that Ben and Mark thing is that people actually tend
0:33:16 to pigeonhole them.
0:33:18 Even I did before I got here and I realized this.
0:33:21 They pigeonhole Mark as a big ideas guy and Ben as a business guy.
0:33:23 They’re actually kind of also swapped.
0:33:24 Oh yeah.
0:33:27 Mark is equally as into, if not more, into the human side of the business and the sales
0:33:30 and the marketing and the business building.
0:33:32 And Ben is actually really into the big ideas and the trends.
0:33:33 Oh absolutely.
0:33:35 I think it’s really fine that people stereotype them sometimes.
0:33:38 It’s funny how, you know, people talk about superpowers and how important they are, but
0:33:43 like I think there is sort of this risk that, yes, recognize people’s superpowers and put
0:33:48 them in that role, but like don’t reduce the person to one feature.
0:33:50 Maybe just like marketing is not just PR.
0:33:51 So one last one.
0:33:55 Can you give me what you learned from building this outcast mafia?
0:33:59 What was it about the culture that let you build this kind of a mafia?
0:34:03 Well it took us like three or four years in and then we were very deliberate about like,
0:34:06 okay, what are our values and how do we define them?
0:34:07 And we were very meticulous.
0:34:12 Like, so for example, we would never hire someone who came in and interviewed and they
0:34:15 said like, I want to work on the sales force business.
0:34:18 We needed them to actually want to work at outcast because what you get is you get people
0:34:20 who didn’t get the job at sales force.
0:34:22 So good, adverse selection, fantastic.
0:34:28 Raw ambition, the pressure to hire and to compete, you know, because we don’t have stock options
0:34:29 and all that kind of stuff.
0:34:31 It was really, really difficult hiring environment.
0:34:35 So we had to have a really strong culture and we had to hold the line and Karen was very,
0:34:36 very good at that.
0:34:38 But we had a very, very high bar.
0:34:43 And then the other thing that we did very rigorously, Heather England, who was our COO, did a great
0:34:48 job, was training, consistent training, look, we’re going to roll our own, right?
0:34:53 But internship program, like people were taught how to do these things, how to do a meet,
0:34:56 how to staff a press briefing, like what is your role, all these kinds of things.
0:34:58 And we didn’t leave it up to chance.
0:34:59 That’s great.
0:35:00 Thank you for joining the A6NZ podcast.
0:35:01 Oh, thanks so much.