The Secret Marketing Strategy That Built a16z: From Zero to Legendary VC Firm

0:00:03 I caused a lot of antagonism between us and the other firms in those days.
0:00:07 Your filter is like, you’re going to get the deal or I’m going to get the deal.
0:00:08 You die or I die.
0:00:10 And they’re not exactly shrinking ballots themselves.
0:00:12 They hated that cover story.
0:00:14 Look at him on the cover of the magazine.
0:00:16 That’s not supposed to be him.
0:00:17 That’s supposed to be the entrepreneur.
0:00:19 What the hell?
0:00:21 I mean, they just like lost it on that.
0:00:24 We didn’t have any entrepreneurs at the time.
0:00:27 DC was like a big secret.
0:00:29 And then actually building companies was a big secret.
0:00:33 And so just kind of talking about it was a big differentiator.
0:00:34 We don’t have products.
0:00:36 Yeah, and we have products.
0:00:37 We have people and ideas.
0:00:37 That’s it.
0:00:45 In 2009, at the bottom of the financial crisis, two entrepreneurs decided to raise $300 million for a venture capital firm.
0:00:49 They had never been VCs before, and they planned to do everything differently.
0:00:54 Marketing aggressively, building a platform, putting themselves on magazine covers.
0:00:57 Every established VC told them it was a terrible idea.
0:01:02 Sixteen years later, Andreessen Horowitz has fundamentally changed how venture capital works.
0:01:08 Today, Ben and Mark talked to the person who architected that transformation from behind the scenes.
0:01:13 Margaret Wenmockers, who joined as head of marketing when the firm was literally operating out of a restaurant booth.
0:01:26 This is a conversation about breaking cartels, about why secrecy stopped working as a business strategy, and the moment when Marc Andreessen wrote, software is eating the world, in a single draft after an off-ham comment to a reporter.
0:01:33 And about a profound shift happening right now, where companies without authentic, interesting founders at the helm are starting to lose.
0:01:38 There’s a reason other VCs called their LPs in a panic when Ben Horowitz appeared on the cover of Fortune.
0:01:39 They understood what was coming.
0:01:46 We cover how they did it, what worked, what they do differently, and why the transition we’re living through is far from over.
0:01:52 All right, welcome to the A16Z, what are we on?
0:01:53 The Mark and Ben show.
0:01:54 Welcome to the Mark and Ben show.
0:02:03 Today, we’ve got Margaret Wenmockers, the legendary head of marketing for A16Z for the last 16 years.
0:02:07 And she is going to tell us the story of all that.
0:02:13 You’ve heard snippets of it from me and Mark over the years, but now we’re going to hear the real thing from the real person.
0:02:14 Mark, welcome.
0:02:16 Thank you so much for having me, guys.
0:02:17 I’m thrilled to be here.
0:02:20 But between the legendary and the 15 or 16, I feel kind of anxious.
0:02:22 Wise.
0:02:23 Wise.
0:02:23 Wise.
0:02:23 Wise, yeah.
0:02:24 Wise, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:02:26 No, it’s getting us all.
0:02:26 It’s very rough.
0:02:27 I know.
0:02:28 Age is a bitch that way.
0:02:31 So maybe we could start with when we met.
0:02:33 I’d love to hear it from your perspective.
0:02:35 Were we at Hobie’s or?
0:02:36 I think it was the Creamery, right?
0:02:37 The Creamery, the Creamery.
0:02:38 The Creamery.
0:02:40 Which at that point was your office.
0:02:41 Yeah.
0:02:41 I forget.
0:02:43 Yeah, the firm started at the Creamery.
0:02:44 That’s right.
0:02:44 Right, exactly.
0:02:48 So a certain someone who shall go nameless tried to hire outcast.
0:02:52 And Facebook invoked a conflict of interest.
0:02:53 You know exactly who that is, right?
0:02:57 And so that certain someone called Mark Zuckerberg.
0:03:02 And I think you have better things to do than pull a favor for Mark Zuckerberg to go like, why don’t you like this?
0:03:02 Whatever.
0:03:05 Anyhow, but I think you asked for my email address.
0:03:08 And so that’s how we were introduced.
0:03:09 Ah-ha.
0:03:13 And then I was told to go to the Creamery, the waiter at the Creamery.
0:03:14 He’s like, go meet here.
0:03:17 They’re meeting with some Democratic functionaries or something like that.
0:03:22 So I wait there with my little capabilities presentation.
0:03:26 And I had met you like years before, but I had no recollection.
0:03:27 I had not met you.
0:03:28 I had heard about you a little bit.
0:03:30 So I go there with my capabilities presentation.
0:03:31 I sat down.
0:03:31 I sat down.
0:03:34 The Democrats left the booth and I sat down.
0:03:37 You basically were just looking straight ahead.
0:03:41 You were just like, I don’t know what you were thinking about, but it was not that.
0:03:43 Probably how we get the firm off.
0:03:44 How we raise the money.
0:03:50 And then Mark grabs the capabilities presentation, which was generic because I had no idea why
0:03:51 I was there, right?
0:03:55 So, and you go, okay, so how do you pick the clients and here are the clients and why those
0:03:59 clients are not these clients and teams, whatever, like detailed questions.
0:04:02 So I got a little grinning and then you both said thank you and I left.
0:04:07 And I concluded that it was probably because you were angel investing at the time and you
0:04:08 had just left HP.
0:04:13 I was like, maybe they just want to have somebody they can recommend to their angel portfolio.
0:04:14 Right, right.
0:04:18 And then a few months later, we met at the Rosewood, I think.
0:04:20 No, it was not.
0:04:20 Was it the Rosewood?
0:04:21 We were there a lot.
0:04:28 So anyhow, and then you guys went, okay, so we’re going to start this firm and top secret,
0:04:28 blah, blah, blah.
0:04:32 I’m going to start this firm and it’s going to be the two of us, $300 million.
0:04:35 And this was at a certain time where money was kind of tight.
0:04:36 Yeah, 2009.
0:04:38 The end of the world.
0:04:39 Right, there was no liquidity.
0:04:40 The last end of the world.
0:04:44 And I looked a little quizzical and I said, you know, it’s not a great time.
0:04:48 And you said, Mark said, let’s assume success, shall we?
0:04:53 And then you had already had the idea of, well, we wanted to say something,
0:04:59 but we couldn’t be out talking to press or be on Twitter at the time or whatever else
0:05:03 and raise money, be viewed as soliciting money, right?
0:05:08 So Mark then went, he had a standing invitation, I think, on Charlie Rose.
0:05:10 And you went on Charlie Rose and you had a very nice chat.
0:05:13 And at the very end, he was like, well, by the way, we’re going to start a VC firm.
0:05:16 And then we all went quiet.
0:05:17 So that was that.
0:05:18 That’s my recollection.
0:05:19 I don’t know what you guys thought.
0:05:25 I remember thinking, yeah, like I was just so distracted with how do we raise money?
0:05:28 Like we had never met LPs till then.
0:05:31 Every VC that we had been meeting with.
0:05:36 And we, at the same time, we were meeting with lots and lots of VCs trying to understand the industry.
0:05:41 And they all said, that’s a dumbass idea for a fund.
0:05:43 You should definitely not do it.
0:05:46 They just wanted to give you jobs, I’m assuming.
0:05:46 Yeah.
0:05:49 Well, one of them said that we’d never raise it from the LPs,
0:05:54 so we should just raise the money from VCs and give the VCs who invested half the carry.
0:05:58 That was one strategy.
0:06:03 And then the whole platform thing, that was really dumb because it had been tried before
0:06:06 and proven, you know, QED, that it could never work.
0:06:08 Actually, who tried it for real?
0:06:09 I don’t know.
0:06:12 So I think the main thing that they were thinking about was the incubators.
0:06:13 Oh, yeah.
0:06:14 So I think it was the…
0:06:15 Sort of the Bill Gross.
0:06:16 It was the late 90s, exactly.
0:06:20 And, you know, actually, in retrospect, like, it’s actually very, very, like, so there’s this…
0:06:21 Ideal Lab.
0:06:22 Bill Gross, Ideal Lab.
0:06:22 Yeah.
0:06:24 So the incubator created, I think, a lot of companies.
0:06:26 I mean, among the companies you created turned out to be the company that created,
0:06:31 basically, the Google search model, as well as, like, a bunch of other, like, super-interesting
0:06:31 companies.
0:06:33 So I think the good ones work better than people remember.
0:06:37 But, yeah, and the incubators in those days went for, like, a 50% equity split, right?
0:06:40 As contrasted to, like, Y Combinator, which is famously, like, 7%.
0:06:45 And so to justify the 50%, they provided your office space and your accounting services and
0:06:47 your legal services and so, right, exactly.
0:06:51 And we had been entrepreneurs, and so we just had a very different perspective on what we actually
0:06:52 needed from our venture firms.
0:06:54 And so we just had a very different view than the incubators had.
0:06:58 And then the existing VCs just, yeah, for whatever reason, couldn’t put themselves in that,
0:07:00 I think, because they hadn’t been entrepreneurs.
0:07:05 They hadn’t been customers of the VC product, so they weren’t looking at it through that lens.
0:07:06 They were looking at it from the provider.
0:07:13 By the way, those businesses were all great businesses, so they sort of earned the right to be arrogant in that sense.
0:07:14 Yeah.
0:07:21 And I remember the Bill Gross, when he was talking, and I met him, it was all like, okay, I have all these ideas.
0:07:22 Well, it was also that, right.
0:07:23 And there was that.
0:07:24 Go hire an entrepreneur.
0:07:29 And you guys had come from a completely different lens, where you had the ideas and belief that Larry Ellis and those
0:07:33 people had the ideas, not the financial machinery, right?
0:07:33 Yeah.
0:07:37 And then, obviously, you had absorbed the Ovid’s playbook, right?
0:07:41 So it’s a very different version of a platform from an incubator.
0:07:44 Yeah, I mean, that’s basically what we did when we had to find a historical model of what we were doing.
0:07:48 It turned out to be CAA, because that just mapped much more to what we had in mind,
0:07:50 because there hadn’t been a precedent like that applied in the Valley.
0:07:57 Yeah, and at that time, it was before Ovid’s book came out, so that whole strategy was basically a secret.
0:07:58 Nobody knew it.
0:08:00 Like, you had to know Ovid’s to know it.
0:08:04 And Ovid’s was very secretive.
0:08:08 We had, like, several conversations before we could actually get it out of him,
0:08:11 even though he was out of CAA for many years.
0:08:15 You know, it was like a very secret formula he had come up with, and it was an amazing thing.
0:08:18 But it ended up being a genius thing to have him on your board.
0:08:22 Like, it was a very unorthodox pick, looking in from the outside,
0:08:26 and it led to all kinds of useful connections and useful thinking, right?
0:08:26 Yeah, that’s right.
0:08:30 Yeah, it was controversial at the time, even amongst our own board.
0:08:32 I won’t name names, but it was different to have him.
0:08:34 We actually met him through Ron Conway, right?
0:08:35 Yeah, years ago.
0:08:37 The human router of all time.
0:08:38 The human router, yeah.
0:08:40 That was a great intro from Ron.
0:08:42 What an interesting friendship that’s been.
0:08:47 So the next thing that happened, we’re going to raise the money,
0:08:51 and we decide that we’re going to talk to the press,
0:08:55 which was very different for VCs to actually be aggressive about that.
0:08:58 Usually the VCs would want to talk to the press,
0:09:01 and some of them had been clients, at the IPO time.
0:09:02 Right.
0:09:04 So they wanted to basically have no risk.
0:09:05 Yeah.
0:09:07 But then when the company goes public, it’s like, hey, I did that, right?
0:09:08 Right.
0:09:09 So we did it backwards, if you will.
0:09:10 Yeah, you’re right.
0:09:13 With nothing in hand, we just went for it.
0:09:18 So as soon as we raised the fund, yeah, we must have had to raise the fund to do the press tour.
0:09:19 Yeah.
0:09:20 Because of the gun-chomping, yeah.
0:09:23 And so how did you think about it?
0:09:26 I guess it was very kind of magical from our point of view,
0:09:28 other than when Wired slammed the door in my face.
0:09:32 Well, that was a useful signal.
0:09:35 We realized, oh, we have to even the plague field here a little bit.
0:09:36 Yeah, that was a little bit of a problem.
0:09:39 So tell us about that.
0:09:44 So the way I used to think about this when this was all working so magically is that,
0:09:48 okay, so if you read any article and you just dissect the headline,
0:09:52 the paragraphs, like how it unfolds,
0:09:55 and then so you take a client, like you guys or a product company,
0:09:57 you go, okay, how do I fill that?
0:10:00 How do I write that story from a reporter’s point of view?
0:10:02 And do you actually have it, right?
0:10:08 And so if the story is $300 million and two people who have never actually done this before,
0:10:09 that’s not a great story.
0:10:13 But we did have the column inches to fill, if you will,
0:10:16 because you had the idea for the platform, right?
0:10:19 You had been proven successful entrepreneurs.
0:10:21 You had credibility with the core audience, right?
0:10:24 And taking a step back, the thing that we all decided is
0:10:28 we’re just going to aim all of our communications at the entrepreneurs,
0:10:30 at the entrepreneurs versus the LPs.
0:10:31 Because we have their numbers.
0:10:35 We know how to call them, and you guys got great introductions to people,
0:10:36 but it all needs to be very entrepreneur-friendly.
0:10:39 And so we sort of set out, like, we have this platform,
0:10:43 and it’s all in service of the entrepreneur who is the genius,
0:10:47 and then hopefully the idea works, right?
0:10:49 And then how can we add value?
0:10:51 And that was different enough to me,
0:10:54 having met, like, most of all the other VCs.
0:10:59 And then, you know, the tall guy over here had co-created the browser.
0:11:05 So that was not a VC credential, but it was an incredible entrepreneur credential, right?
0:11:12 Like, so, you know, and then you, the turnaround, like, the save of all time.
0:11:14 I mean, I’m not so good with sports analogies,
0:11:17 but there’s got to be 17 in there, right?
0:11:19 Like, having turned that around and it sold it to HP,
0:11:23 and for, like, money, money, it was just spectacular.
0:11:29 So I think the two people who were behind it were very entrepreneur-friendly.
0:11:32 They had really good credentials, both on the tech side
0:11:34 and a category creation side,
0:11:37 and on the sort of, like, how does one execute one of those companies?
0:11:39 And then you had the money.
0:11:43 And you had the money at a time when there was no money, right?
0:11:45 Like, there was nobody really raising,
0:11:47 and, like, the other people, they could just sit and wait, right,
0:11:48 until times got better.
0:11:52 And then I think, if I remember correctly,
0:11:53 you had done it in three months,
0:11:56 which at the time seemed very spectacular
0:11:58 because there was no money.
0:11:59 So I could then pitch, and it’s like,
0:12:02 okay, like, it’s those two guys and they did it in three months
0:12:03 and have you read the news.
0:12:05 And then they have all these ideas.
0:12:07 Well, actually, one of the funny things that happened
0:12:11 while we were raising money that upset Mark much more than upset me
0:12:12 because I just thought it was weird,
0:12:17 but we went to see an LP who we knew,
0:12:21 and the LP walks into the meeting, you know,
0:12:22 and here we are, like, you know,
0:12:26 and it really kind of brought us back to raising money in general,
0:12:28 which is a good kind of thing to go through
0:12:31 if you’re going to be investing in companies
0:12:33 because you need to know what that feels like.
0:12:36 So, you know, we’re, like, practicing the pitch
0:12:38 where you got it all lined up.
0:12:39 We’re like, okay, this is a big meeting.
0:12:40 It’s a big LP.
0:12:43 And we go in, and the guy comes in, and he goes,
0:12:49 oh, yeah, you know, yeah, this, I, you know,
0:12:50 I hear what you guys are doing.
0:12:54 I think, you know, at best, you could raise it in 18 months,
0:12:55 but it’ll be very hard.
0:12:56 But I got to go.
0:12:58 I’m going to go talk to some ex-NFL players.
0:13:01 Quote, quote.
0:13:02 I have to go over to Stanford.
0:13:04 I have to talk to a room full of NFL players
0:13:05 on how to manage their money,
0:13:07 and now that their NFL careers are over.
0:13:08 Yeah.
0:13:10 Like, that was the thing that was more important
0:13:12 than talking to us, which was a very, yeah,
0:13:14 that was a level-setting experience.
0:13:15 Yeah, we were, like…
0:13:16 That was extremely motivating.
0:13:18 Yeah.
0:13:19 As you can tell.
0:13:20 It was.
0:13:23 Mark was, like, super pissed.
0:13:25 And I just remember going, wow.
0:13:28 Like, that’s so disrespectful.
0:13:31 It’s just, like, so crazy that he would do that.
0:13:33 I just made a little angel investment,
0:13:37 and, like, this entrepreneur is trying to raise money,
0:13:39 and, like, literally she’s been told by an investor,
0:13:42 I think people like you just basically shouldn’t exist.
0:13:45 Guess how motivated she is.
0:13:48 She’s going to show that motherfucker.
0:13:49 This is the thing.
0:13:51 The nuclear fire that you’re getting inside of that is, yes.
0:13:54 It’s like, I can’t believe people actually say that out loud.
0:13:56 And they’re not, like, they’re 95,
0:13:57 and they don’t have a filter anymore.
0:14:00 I mean, there was all these stories from this time,
0:14:02 but, I mean, there were obviously many great VCs before us,
0:14:05 but, I mean, we went out and we basically met all the top VCs,
0:14:08 you know, because one of them knew we were doing it.
0:14:12 And, you know, a different guy, one of the VCs at the time,
0:14:13 I remember him saying, he’s like,
0:14:14 oh, yeah, venture’s a great business.
0:14:18 Venture’s like running, it’s like going to a sushi boat restaurant.
0:14:20 It’s like, it’s fantastic.
0:14:23 You just, a sushi boat restaurant, it’s like, it’s fantastic.
0:14:24 You could just sit at the counter,
0:14:26 and, like, the startups just, like, come drifting by,
0:14:28 and you’re just like, hmm, oh.
0:14:31 He’s like, every once in a while, you know, whenever you want,
0:14:33 you just reach out and you just, like, pluck a piece of sushi.
0:14:37 And I remember thinking, you know what?
0:14:41 I’m not sure that this is going to be as hard as we thought it was going to be.
0:14:43 You mean the competing part?
0:14:44 Competing part, exactly.
0:14:48 Yeah, it was very formative in how we thought about competing.
0:14:51 We were like, and still, to this day,
0:14:54 when we think about the culture of the firm,
0:14:55 it’s like, don’t be that.
0:14:56 Yes, yes, yes.
0:14:59 You know, don’t be Mr. Smarty Pants,
0:15:02 like, sitting in your Sand Hill Road office
0:15:05 waiting for the sushi boat to come by.
0:15:06 Like, don’t do that.
0:15:09 And yet, I mean, look, yeah, maybe the competition isn’t that hard,
0:15:13 but it felt like, to me, when I was on the OutKast side,
0:15:17 it felt like, to me, the top five firms never changed.
0:15:17 Yeah.
0:15:20 Like, never, ever changed, right?
0:15:24 And you guys didn’t, you guys hadn’t peeled off from a VC firm,
0:15:26 and therefore, you didn’t have a track.
0:15:27 I mean, you had made some angel investments,
0:15:31 but, like, basically, not so much, not to be insulting.
0:15:33 We hadn’t been out of professional, yeah.
0:15:36 Yeah, it was a, the angel fund was, what, like, $2 million?
0:15:38 Yeah, we hadn’t, yeah, we hadn’t, we hadn’t had a training.
0:15:43 Right, and then, you know, the, all, like, there are exceptions,
0:15:46 but all the important companies, they’re just, like,
0:15:48 the top five firms invest.
0:15:50 So, like, the conundrum was, like, okay,
0:15:52 how did you break into that list
0:15:55 without the substance, right?
0:15:57 Just with the ideas.
0:15:57 One more story, one more story.
0:15:58 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:16:00 This is one I love to tell the LPs.
0:16:04 Another guy said, oh, he’s like LPs, he’s like LPs,
0:16:06 you guys are gonna hate, you guys are gonna hate dealing with LPs.
0:16:07 They’re just the worst.
0:16:10 It’s a good thing to tell the competitor.
0:16:11 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:16:13 And he said, and he said, the key is,
0:16:14 he said, I realized after a long career,
0:16:16 I realized the key is you want to treat the LPs like mushrooms.
0:16:18 Yeah, like mushrooms.
0:16:19 Like mushrooms.
0:16:20 And we were like magic mushrooms?
0:16:23 What the, what are you talking about?
0:16:26 So, they treat mushrooms as you put them in a cardboard box,
0:16:27 you put the lid of the cardboard box,
0:16:28 and you put it under your bed for two years.
0:16:30 And then you don’t take the box out
0:16:31 until the next time you need to raise money.
0:16:34 Wow.
0:16:35 That’s rich.
0:16:40 It was so funny, because the whole time we were thinking,
0:16:44 wow, you know, we’re coming out of running a public company.
0:16:44 Yes.
0:16:46 We’ve got like, we’re meeting with investors
0:16:47 who are shorting our stock.
0:16:47 Yeah.
0:16:49 And like, these guys have like,
0:16:50 very nice universities.
0:16:51 These patients, yes.
0:16:54 They were just like super pleasant to talk to
0:16:55 when we went out there.
0:16:57 They had interesting things to say.
0:17:00 It’s just so, I was like, wow,
0:17:03 you guys are living in like a weird, perceptive world.
0:17:06 I think one of the surprising things to me,
0:17:08 I had not ever met LPs,
0:17:10 because I wasn’t on that side of the business.
0:17:13 But like, it’s a really great community.
0:17:16 And a lot of them are super, super mission driven, right?
0:17:17 Like, if you talk to Russ,
0:17:20 like how they, what they do with their proceeds, right?
0:17:22 Like, they’re not financiers.
0:17:25 They’re just, they’re very cool people.
0:17:27 They have a very long time presence.
0:17:27 Yes.
0:17:29 Very patient, yes.
0:17:30 And very devoted to their institutions, very smart.
0:17:32 I mean, they spend all their time thinking about, right,
0:17:33 all these topics.
0:17:34 You know, incredible,
0:17:35 we have incredible discussions.
0:17:36 Great investors.
0:17:39 And very patient and, you know,
0:17:41 want to understand the strategy,
0:17:42 care about the strategy,
0:17:45 plan to be in it a long time with us,
0:17:45 all that kind of thing.
0:17:49 It’s, yeah, it was just very interesting.
0:17:51 Well, I go through the stories,
0:17:53 because it is so indicative of so many of these things.
0:17:55 It just, there are certain industries at certain times
0:17:57 where they just get, they get wedged.
0:17:58 They get, you know, they get,
0:17:59 they get locked into patterns.
0:18:01 And, you know,
0:18:02 the most uncomfortable thing in the world
0:18:03 is to like break the pattern.
0:18:03 Right.
0:18:04 Right.
0:18:05 And if you don’t have to, you know,
0:18:06 if you don’t have to, you don’t.
0:18:08 And if you think of it as a sushi situation
0:18:10 or a mushroom situation,
0:18:12 why would you ever do marketing?
0:18:13 Right, exactly right.
0:18:14 Why would you ever?
0:18:16 Black box, cartel.
0:18:23 Some mystique, some, like, mystical, fairy feature is way better.
0:18:24 Yeah, that’s right.
0:18:25 If there’s no pressures on it, right?
0:18:25 Yeah, that’s right.
0:18:27 Yeah, no, it was a very good strategy,
0:18:30 which is why, you know, we went out with the marketing.
0:18:33 And then, of course, so we do the press tour,
0:18:39 and you get Mark on the cover of Fortune,
0:18:42 which was, that was amazing to me
0:18:43 because, you know,
0:18:45 we had been running a company all these years.
0:18:46 And I remember you saying,
0:18:48 do you want to be on the cover of Fortune,
0:18:49 Forbes, or Business Week?
0:18:50 And I was like,
0:18:52 who will you get a choice?
0:18:55 Yeah, this is like, yeah, being in the,
0:18:56 I don’t know, Vatican Museum or something.
0:18:57 It’s just like the most important thing
0:18:59 you can possibly have to happen.
0:19:00 Yeah, at the time, that was…
0:19:01 In those days, those magazines,
0:19:02 particularly the covers,
0:19:04 were like incredibly important, tough to get.
0:19:07 And then the thing that, like,
0:19:08 really blew my mind was,
0:19:09 I said Fortune,
0:19:12 and then you got Mark on the cover of Fortune.
0:19:12 Yeah.
0:19:15 Were you like, I was lying or something?
0:19:16 Nobody was going to put me on the cover
0:19:17 or anything in those days.
0:19:19 No, but you get to be on the cover.
0:19:20 You got to be on the cover of Fortune
0:19:21 when you did your book.
0:19:22 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:19:23 No, I did, I did.
0:19:26 But we had to make me famous first, yeah.
0:19:27 Look, the thing is,
0:19:30 you never get what you don’t ask for, right?
0:19:33 And then it’s a…
0:19:34 Like, at the time,
0:19:36 the publications mattered, really.
0:19:39 Now it’s just the writer who matters.
0:19:41 And also now they’re downstream
0:19:43 from the entire internet, right?
0:19:45 Like, they come in at the end, basically.
0:19:49 But Kevin Maney was a really good writer.
0:19:52 He had a really strong track record.
0:19:54 Like, you know, followed him forever.
0:19:57 And he would write substantive curiosity
0:19:58 with different stories, right?
0:19:59 And he was great.
0:20:01 The worst part about that whole thing
0:20:02 was the damn photo shoot.
0:20:03 Because Mark hates stuff.
0:20:09 And I know, remember when you did that finger thing,
0:20:09 I want you.
0:20:10 I was like, that’s going to be it.
0:20:12 Like, it’s just not even a question.
0:20:13 But that was the worst part about it.
0:20:16 Yeah, it was good.
0:20:17 It was a scary picture.
0:20:18 It was good.
0:20:20 It was some fun.
0:20:23 But that kind of set off
0:20:27 kind of really positioning us.
0:20:28 At that point,
0:20:30 we knew we weren’t going to be friendly
0:20:31 with the industry.
0:20:33 So we were not only not going to be in the cartel,
0:20:36 we were going to be against the cartel
0:20:39 because they hated that cover story.
0:20:40 Oh, my God.
0:20:42 I mean, they went bananas.
0:20:44 They called every LP.
0:20:44 They’re like,
0:20:45 these guys,
0:20:46 they’re egomaniacs.
0:20:48 Look at him on the cover of the magazine.
0:20:50 That’s not supposed to be him.
0:20:51 That’s supposed to be the entrepreneur.
0:20:53 What the hell?
0:20:55 I mean, they just like lost it on that.
0:20:58 We didn’t have any entrepreneurs at the time.
0:20:59 That has to be us.
0:21:02 No, that’s bananas.
0:21:04 I think that comes from
0:21:06 them viewing having to do
0:21:08 any of those kinds of outbound activities
0:21:10 as beneath them,
0:21:11 kind of unseemly.
0:21:13 And here we were like,
0:21:17 unashamed about advertising ourselves
0:21:18 and our wares, if you will.
0:21:19 So I was kind of like,
0:21:20 what?
0:21:21 We’re doing what now?
0:21:24 It worked, I think.
0:21:25 And I think it got sort of,
0:21:27 I think that,
0:21:29 but like mostly I think the writing
0:21:31 got us in with the entrepreneurs
0:21:33 because like I remember,
0:21:34 I think it was you, Mark,
0:21:36 told me that an entrepreneur said like,
0:21:38 I kind of feel like I know you guys a little bit.
0:21:38 That’s right.
0:21:40 Having not even met you yet.
0:21:41 Yeah, so they hadn’t been in our offices.
0:21:43 They hadn’t met anybody,
0:21:45 but they had some idea of like,
0:21:46 who are these people
0:21:47 and what do they care about?
0:21:49 And then from then on,
0:21:52 every time a GP would come on board,
0:21:53 we’re like, okay,
0:21:54 what do you want to invest in?
0:21:57 Therefore, we’re going to write about these things.
0:21:59 Because that becomes the magnet
0:22:00 for the entrepreneurs
0:22:02 in that corner of the internet
0:22:04 or AI infrastructure,
0:22:05 whatever it is, right?
0:22:06 And I think that was really powerful,
0:22:08 particularly with the entrepreneurs.
0:22:10 Yeah, it was kind of one of,
0:22:11 in those days,
0:22:15 VC was like a big secret.
0:22:17 And then actually building companies
0:22:17 was a big secret.
0:22:20 And so just kind of talking about it
0:22:21 was a big differentiator.
0:22:23 What you would learn, right?
0:22:24 Because you’d hear,
0:22:24 as an entrepreneur,
0:22:25 you’d hear all these horror stories
0:22:27 from other entrepreneurs
0:22:28 of like things that had gone wrong
0:22:29 in the relationship with the VC
0:22:30 and all the problems.
0:22:30 But you didn’t know,
0:22:31 like if you didn’t know
0:22:32 who any of the people were
0:22:33 when you walk in the door,
0:22:33 like who do you trust?
0:22:35 How are they going to behave
0:22:35 under pressure?
0:22:37 You know, what are they going to do?
0:22:39 And so, I mean, yeah,
0:22:40 like it’s a great,
0:22:41 if you can get away with
0:22:42 having nobody know who you are
0:22:43 and still, you know,
0:22:44 be on top of the industry,
0:22:45 it’s great.
0:22:47 But like if somebody actually does,
0:22:49 you know, does it the other way,
0:22:50 it causes a permanent change,
0:22:51 which is I think what we catalyzed.
0:22:52 Yeah.
0:22:52 It does.
0:22:53 And to me,
0:22:55 like I don’t know the latest numbers,
0:22:57 but like the blog posts
0:22:59 that you would write
0:23:01 or the other GPs would write
0:23:03 that are sort of like timeless,
0:23:04 like I remember,
0:23:05 the good product manager,
0:23:06 like that is one
0:23:08 of the most successful blog posts.
0:23:09 And you know how many blog posts
0:23:10 the firm has put out?
0:23:11 Like a gajillion, right?
0:23:13 But like the ones that have depth
0:23:14 that the entrepreneurs
0:23:15 can like take something from
0:23:17 and that is somewhat timeless,
0:23:19 way more important than
0:23:20 are we in a bubble
0:23:22 or are we not in a bubble?
0:23:23 And that was kind of fun
0:23:25 and that was like chatter.
0:23:27 But like the substantive pieces
0:23:29 on like how do I construct a company?
0:23:31 How do I manage a person?
0:23:33 How do I think about promotions?
0:23:34 Like all that kind of stuff.
0:23:37 Like I think that that was really valuable
0:23:37 to the entrepreneurs.
0:23:39 And I think it also showed our LPs
0:23:39 like, okay,
0:23:40 they actually are very passionate
0:23:42 about all the details
0:23:44 of the stuff that they invest in.
0:23:44 Well, that was one
0:23:45 of the interesting things
0:23:47 is the LPs were like reading
0:23:47 all the content.
0:23:49 I mean, which is so different
0:23:52 than a public market investor,
0:23:53 just say.
0:23:54 You know, they,
0:23:56 and not only did they read the content,
0:23:58 but we have many LPs
0:24:01 that Reddit would call up,
0:24:01 say, hey,
0:24:05 in managing my little organization,
0:24:06 you know,
0:24:08 this is what I’m running into
0:24:08 and so forth.
0:24:09 So they really,
0:24:10 they’re real partners.
0:24:12 in a way that,
0:24:14 yeah,
0:24:14 it’s just been,
0:24:15 that’s been probably
0:24:16 one of the best parts
0:24:17 of the firm
0:24:18 is to get to have
0:24:20 investors like that.
0:24:20 Yeah.
0:24:21 We got one,
0:24:23 we did one incredibly
0:24:23 controversial block,
0:24:24 which turns out,
0:24:25 like a few LPs
0:24:26 really hated the headline.
0:24:28 and it was,
0:24:29 it was in the
0:24:30 BioNHealth team
0:24:31 and it said,
0:24:31 fuck cancer,
0:24:32 which I thought
0:24:33 wasn’t very controversial.
0:24:35 These are so nice.
0:24:36 They were like,
0:24:38 did you have to put it that way?
0:24:38 I mean,
0:24:39 there are better ways
0:24:39 to put this.
0:24:40 I’m like,
0:24:40 all right, fuck.
0:24:43 Screw cancer.
0:24:44 Right.
0:24:44 Yes.
0:24:45 For the record,
0:24:46 we’re very anti-cancer.
0:24:48 Yeah, we’re very anti-cancer.
0:24:49 And we’re willing to say so.
0:24:51 But they deeply care
0:24:52 about like everything
0:24:53 that we put out,
0:24:55 which I think is quite flattering,
0:24:56 even though they may
0:24:56 hate some of it.
0:24:58 So one of the things
0:24:58 in the early days
0:25:00 that I wanted to ask you about
0:25:00 is like,
0:25:02 because we came out
0:25:04 and because they kind of,
0:25:06 we caused that reaction
0:25:08 with the other VCs,
0:25:10 I kind of felt like we,
0:25:11 you know,
0:25:13 maybe I took it too far
0:25:17 in terms of just the VC competitiveness
0:25:19 and the anti-VC stuff.
0:25:21 Like, we really went hard
0:25:22 in the early days.
0:25:24 Since you brought this up.
0:25:24 Over the line, yeah.
0:25:25 So since you brought this up,
0:25:26 you have to,
0:25:27 your thing with,
0:25:28 was it the Sarah Lacey?
0:25:29 Oh, yeah.
0:25:30 The peak of this was,
0:25:32 your peak moment of this
0:25:32 was in the Sarah Lacey thing.
0:25:34 Okay, so you have to refresh my memory.
0:25:36 Okay, so remember Sarah Lacey
0:25:38 at her peak.
0:25:38 By the way,
0:25:39 she was a great,
0:25:41 great journalist.
0:25:43 And then she had this thing,
0:25:44 Pando Daily,
0:25:45 that she started.
0:25:46 And then she had this,
0:25:48 these big events.
0:25:49 And I spoke at the event.
0:25:52 And she said to me,
0:25:54 and it just like,
0:25:55 it popped out.
0:25:56 She said,
0:25:57 you know,
0:25:59 you kind of like,
0:26:00 have a lot of conflict
0:26:01 with the other VCs.
0:26:02 And I said,
0:26:02 well,
0:26:03 I said,
0:26:05 I come from
0:26:07 enterprise software.
0:26:08 And so like,
0:26:09 when I see another VC
0:26:10 coming at me,
0:26:11 and I quoted
0:26:12 Little Wayne
0:26:14 with the peace sign,
0:26:15 all I see is a trigger
0:26:16 and the middle finger.
0:26:21 So my answer
0:26:22 was going to be that.
0:26:22 Like,
0:26:24 you have an inner
0:26:25 enterprise sales dude
0:26:26 in you.
0:26:28 I can’t get it out.
0:26:29 If there’s ever,
0:26:30 like,
0:26:30 I think like,
0:26:32 when it comes to other firms,
0:26:33 it’s like,
0:26:34 which is horseshit.
0:26:35 Because we co-invest,
0:26:37 we don’t actually compete
0:26:38 all that much.
0:26:39 No, no, no, no.
0:26:41 We should be partnering.
0:26:41 But basically,
0:26:43 your filter is like,
0:26:44 you’re going to get the deal
0:26:46 or I’m going to get the deal.
0:26:47 You die or I die.
0:26:48 It’s like,
0:26:50 that’s sort of the thing
0:26:51 that happens to you
0:26:52 in any sort of
0:26:53 competitive situation.
0:26:55 And God help you
0:26:56 if you’re in the way of that.
0:26:57 Yeah, yeah.
0:26:58 Yeah, I think we overdid it
0:26:59 because like I said,
0:27:00 like you guys have
0:27:01 joined board seats.
0:27:02 You know,
0:27:05 our teams will call people
0:27:05 and it’s like,
0:27:06 hey, we’ve got this company.
0:27:07 Would you like to do
0:27:08 follow-on investment?
0:27:09 All that stuff.
0:27:10 Here you are pissing them off.
0:27:11 And we cause a lot of,
0:27:12 I cause a lot of
0:27:14 antagonism between us
0:27:15 and the other firms
0:27:15 in those days,
0:27:16 which I think we’ve,
0:27:17 you know,
0:27:17 at this point,
0:27:18 like we’re more friendly.
0:27:19 More friendly.
0:27:20 And they’re not exactly
0:27:21 shrinking ballots themselves.
0:27:22 So, you know,
0:27:23 they’re yes, yes.
0:27:25 Also, also, also true.
0:27:26 Also true.
0:27:27 They’ve risen to the occasion.
0:27:27 Yes.
0:27:28 Yes.
0:27:29 Yes.
0:27:29 Yeah.
0:27:31 I think we’re past that.
0:27:32 Maybe.
0:27:33 Maybe now.
0:27:35 I think we’re a bunch more
0:27:36 user-friendly now,
0:27:37 for sure,
0:27:39 in terms of our VC,
0:27:40 our many VC partners
0:27:42 that we have.
0:27:44 So, then,
0:27:45 tell us,
0:27:45 you know,
0:27:46 one of the big pieces
0:27:47 that came out
0:27:49 was when Mark wrote
0:27:50 Software is Eating the World.
0:27:53 And how that came about
0:27:55 was very interesting
0:27:55 because it was a really
0:27:56 busy time for us.
0:27:57 It was like, what,
0:27:57 2011?
0:27:59 So, it was very,
0:27:59 I think we had just raised
0:28:00 a second fund, maybe.
0:28:02 And the way it came about
0:28:03 was entirely random,
0:28:04 if you will.
0:28:05 So, at the time,
0:28:06 there was a guy,
0:28:07 you know,
0:28:08 The Economist
0:28:09 has these reporters
0:28:10 and they send them
0:28:10 to new regions
0:28:11 and new beats,
0:28:13 like, for 25 years
0:28:13 and they go from Hong Kong
0:28:14 to Silicon Valley,
0:28:14 whatever.
0:28:15 At the time,
0:28:16 there was a guy
0:28:17 called Martin Giles
0:28:20 and he was covering…
0:28:20 Very nice guy.
0:28:21 Yes.
0:28:22 Very nice guy.
0:28:23 Great guy.
0:28:25 And he would cover
0:28:26 Silicon Valley,
0:28:27 who’s British,
0:28:29 and every so often,
0:28:30 I forget what the cadence is,
0:28:31 they do a special report.
0:28:32 And they were doing
0:28:33 a special report
0:28:34 on the state of tech
0:28:35 and where it was going.
0:28:37 And we were sitting…
0:28:39 Remember my first office?
0:28:39 Was it this office?
0:28:41 I think it was next door.
0:28:41 Yeah, that’s right.
0:28:42 It was like,
0:28:43 the three of us
0:28:44 were sitting there
0:28:45 and Martin is visiting
0:28:46 and he’s asking
0:28:46 all these questions
0:28:47 and Mark was like,
0:28:47 well, it’s basically
0:28:49 like software’s eating the world
0:28:49 and then he explains
0:28:50 the whole thing
0:28:50 and I’m like,
0:28:52 this is really interesting.
0:28:54 And I was like,
0:28:55 we should write this down.
0:28:56 And Mark’s like,
0:28:56 sure, maybe later.
0:28:58 And then I placed it
0:28:59 with this guy,
0:29:00 Ryan, I forget his last name,
0:29:01 at the Wall Street Journal.
0:29:02 And he’s like,
0:29:03 if I had an op-ed like that,
0:29:04 would you run it?
0:29:04 And he’s like,
0:29:05 yeah, sure,
0:29:06 I would run it.
0:29:08 And then Mark wrote it
0:29:10 when you could schedule things.
0:29:10 Yeah.
0:29:14 and Mark wrote exactly one draft
0:29:15 and it’s still that same draft.
0:29:16 I’m sure you’re torturing yourself
0:29:17 because you would change
0:29:18 all kinds of things,
0:29:18 this and that and the other.
0:29:20 And then just for kicks,
0:29:22 to bookend that story,
0:29:23 when you wrote,
0:29:25 was it It’s Time to Build?
0:29:26 It’s Time to Build.
0:29:26 Yeah.
0:29:27 Wrote It’s Time to Build.
0:29:29 Like, you caved for a minute
0:29:29 and said,
0:29:29 like, all right,
0:29:30 we’ll place it.
0:29:31 Maybe we’ll place it.
0:29:32 Yeah.
0:29:34 And nobody took it.
0:29:34 Nobody.
0:29:35 Oh, yeah, that’s right.
0:29:36 I called Ryan,
0:29:38 who has since gone on
0:29:39 to bigger and better things.
0:29:39 I’m like,
0:29:40 Ryan,
0:29:41 can I ask you a hypothetical,
0:29:42 that thing?
0:29:44 Like, you’ve been at the journal
0:29:45 and he’s like,
0:29:45 of course,
0:29:46 like, it’s a joke.
0:29:47 That’s not even a question.
0:29:49 But times have changed.
0:29:50 So, nobody ran it.
0:29:51 Wow.
0:29:53 Good thing we had a good audience
0:29:54 at the time.
0:29:56 No, and I think,
0:29:56 I forget,
0:29:57 I don’t want to malign people,
0:29:59 but somebody said,
0:30:00 I think it was a,
0:30:01 it may have been the FT,
0:30:02 somebody said,
0:30:03 it’s angry.
0:30:03 I’m like,
0:30:04 you know,
0:30:05 we’re in a pandemic.
0:30:05 Yeah, yeah.
0:30:06 And we don’t,
0:30:07 we’re wearing conchos.
0:30:07 It was 20, 20.
0:30:09 Yeah, the whole point of it
0:30:10 was just what was actually
0:30:11 happening in the pandemic
0:30:12 with literally the inability
0:30:13 to get, like,
0:30:14 surgical gowns
0:30:15 for first responders
0:30:16 was, like,
0:30:17 the catalyst for it.
0:30:17 Yeah.
0:30:18 It’s interesting.
0:30:19 It read angry
0:30:20 and I was like,
0:30:20 really?
0:30:22 Software is eating the world
0:30:23 is probably more famous,
0:30:24 but I’d say time to build
0:30:25 is more influential
0:30:26 in that
0:30:29 people read software
0:30:30 is eating the world
0:30:31 and then they didn’t
0:30:31 do anything.
0:30:32 They were like,
0:30:33 wow, that’s very interesting
0:30:34 and then that was it.
0:30:35 But with time to build,
0:30:36 like the number
0:30:37 of people
0:30:38 in, like,
0:30:39 Washington
0:30:39 and the entrepreneurial
0:30:41 community and so forth
0:30:41 that are like,
0:30:43 yeah, we’re taking this,
0:30:44 this is the blueprint,
0:30:45 we’re moving on it.
0:30:46 I mean, in a way,
0:30:47 like, the whole, like,
0:30:48 abundance movement
0:30:49 on the Democratic Party
0:30:50 came off of that.
0:30:52 which is a great development,
0:30:52 I think.
0:30:53 A great development, yeah.
0:30:53 But I think the,
0:30:54 I have a theory
0:30:55 on why that is.
0:30:56 Software is eating the world.
0:30:56 It’s like,
0:30:58 to our people,
0:30:59 our community,
0:30:59 duh,
0:31:01 hello, that’s happening
0:31:02 and they were all
0:31:03 building against it.
0:31:04 They didn’t need
0:31:04 to read the thing
0:31:05 and the people
0:31:07 who needed to do something
0:31:08 were going to get flattened
0:31:09 by the software
0:31:10 eating the world movement
0:31:11 and they didn’t know
0:31:11 what to do.
0:31:13 Like, how do you retool
0:31:14 into, like,
0:31:15 remember all the car companies
0:31:16 that came to visit us, right?
0:31:17 And you take them
0:31:18 through Autonomous
0:31:18 and does the brand
0:31:19 even matter and whatever?
0:31:21 it just did not register.
0:31:22 They weren’t going
0:31:24 to become a software company.
0:31:24 Therefore, nobody,
0:31:25 nobody who needed
0:31:26 to do something with it
0:31:27 did.
0:31:27 Right.
0:31:28 Because it’s just
0:31:28 rather difficult.
0:31:30 Yeah, it sounds like,
0:31:30 you know,
0:31:31 one of the very
0:31:33 interesting things
0:31:35 that we’ve learned
0:31:35 as a firm
0:31:37 is how unusual
0:31:38 it is
0:31:39 for a company
0:31:40 that’s been around
0:31:41 a long time
0:31:43 and where the founders
0:31:44 are no longer there
0:31:46 to change anything.
0:31:47 Anything, yeah.
0:31:47 Yeah.
0:31:48 Even in, like,
0:31:49 I mean,
0:31:49 this has been
0:31:50 a huge blessing
0:31:52 for us in venture capital
0:31:53 in that many of the firms
0:31:56 that were extremely powerful
0:31:57 when we started
0:31:59 just never changed.
0:32:00 They’re exactly
0:32:01 as they were.
0:32:02 Like, it’s almost
0:32:03 like frozen in time.
0:32:04 It reminds me of,
0:32:05 if you’ve ever been
0:32:07 to Havana in Cuba.
0:32:07 Right.
0:32:09 It’s frozen in time.
0:32:09 Yes.
0:32:10 It’s all 1959.
0:32:11 With the cars
0:32:12 and everything,
0:32:12 it’s amazing.
0:32:13 The buildings,
0:32:13 everything.
0:32:14 It’s, like,
0:32:14 just frozen.
0:32:16 And, you know,
0:32:17 whole industries freeze
0:32:18 like that.
0:32:18 The auto industry
0:32:19 for sure did.
0:32:21 And, you know,
0:32:21 it was,
0:32:24 you know,
0:32:26 Elon came along
0:32:26 for what,
0:32:27 how long,
0:32:28 when did he start Tesla?
0:32:29 Early 2000s.
0:32:30 And, you know,
0:32:30 it had been going
0:32:31 and going and going.
0:32:32 And then, like,
0:32:34 when the car comes out
0:32:35 and it’s awesome,
0:32:36 everybody is just, like,
0:32:37 sitting there going,
0:32:38 what do we do?
0:32:39 I mean, look,
0:32:40 I just saw this on X,
0:32:41 I think,
0:32:41 like,
0:32:42 the layoff numbers
0:32:44 from the German car companies,
0:32:45 my home country.
0:32:45 Oh, yeah.
0:32:46 Like,
0:32:47 every sixth job in Germany
0:32:49 is somehow related
0:32:50 to the auto industry.
0:32:51 Yeah.
0:32:52 It’s a disaster.
0:32:53 Yeah.
0:32:54 But they’re not going,
0:32:54 like,
0:32:57 the genius software engineer
0:32:57 is not going to,
0:32:58 they’re going to want
0:32:59 to work for Elon Musk.
0:33:00 Like,
0:33:01 you can say about Elon Musk
0:33:02 whatever you want,
0:33:02 but, like,
0:33:04 a suave,
0:33:06 well-manicured executive
0:33:07 from the car industry
0:33:08 is, like,
0:33:08 not really,
0:33:09 like,
0:33:10 a talent magnet
0:33:11 for software engineers,
0:33:12 right?
0:33:12 So.
0:33:13 And then,
0:33:14 you know,
0:33:15 one of the things
0:33:17 that happened early
0:33:21 was I got a note
0:33:22 from HarperCollins
0:33:23 saying that I should
0:33:24 write a book.
0:33:24 Yeah.
0:33:27 And, you know,
0:33:28 I did not have time
0:33:28 to write a book.
0:33:30 You made it.
0:33:30 Yeah.
0:33:30 You thought,
0:33:30 well,
0:33:31 you thought it was
0:33:31 a good idea
0:33:32 to write the book.
0:33:32 Why did you think
0:33:33 it was a guy?
0:33:34 I guess I,
0:33:35 it seemed,
0:33:36 one,
0:33:37 it seemed crazy
0:33:38 because the blog
0:33:39 was doing so well.
0:33:40 So, like,
0:33:41 aren’t books passe?
0:33:42 At least us.
0:33:42 I mean,
0:33:43 and then,
0:33:46 yeah,
0:33:46 and then we didn’t have to,
0:33:47 I didn’t have time.
0:33:48 So, like,
0:33:51 why did you think
0:33:51 that made sense?
0:33:52 I guess it wasn’t something
0:33:54 that VCs did either,
0:33:54 right?
0:33:54 Like,
0:33:55 VCs never wrote books.
0:33:57 I do think we needed
0:33:58 to even out the brand
0:33:58 a little bit
0:33:59 because, like,
0:33:59 otherwise,
0:34:00 any entrepreneur
0:34:01 with leverage
0:34:01 was going to go,
0:34:01 like,
0:34:01 well,
0:34:02 I want him
0:34:03 to be on my board,
0:34:03 right?
0:34:04 And that was just
0:34:05 going to get successively
0:34:06 worse with every other GP.
0:34:07 So,
0:34:07 that was like,
0:34:08 we needed a plan
0:34:08 for everybody,
0:34:09 right?
0:34:11 And you were the other
0:34:12 at the time.
0:34:13 I thought the book
0:34:14 was good because
0:34:15 Andresen Other.
0:34:16 There is,
0:34:17 exactly.
0:34:18 Which is why you wanted
0:34:19 to call it Horowitz Andresen,
0:34:20 I remember,
0:34:21 which,
0:34:23 it does sound,
0:34:24 Horowitz Andresen
0:34:25 is a cool sounding name.
0:34:26 It sounds a little
0:34:27 law firm-ish.
0:34:28 And then you could never,
0:34:29 A16Z would,
0:34:30 like,
0:34:33 H16N is not nearly
0:34:33 as good.
0:34:35 It is good
0:34:35 the way it is.
0:34:36 I do still think
0:34:37 there is value
0:34:37 in a book
0:34:37 of,
0:34:37 like,
0:34:38 having a definitive
0:34:40 theory on something.
0:34:41 I think with all
0:34:42 the bloggers
0:34:43 and all the expos
0:34:43 and all that,
0:34:44 I think there is value.
0:34:46 People read books,
0:34:47 people consume books,
0:34:49 long-form podcasts,
0:34:50 sort of a different version
0:34:51 of the same flavor.
0:34:53 But more importantly,
0:34:53 I thought you had
0:34:54 something to say.
0:34:55 Like,
0:34:57 the actual theory
0:34:58 of, like,
0:34:59 how one builds
0:35:00 a company
0:35:00 and, like,
0:35:01 all the stuff
0:35:02 that goes sideways.
0:35:03 And as you always said,
0:35:05 most books,
0:35:05 like,
0:35:06 whoever the guy
0:35:07 was from this
0:35:07 and that,
0:35:08 GE,
0:35:08 whatever,
0:35:10 they were all kind
0:35:11 of fancy resumes
0:35:12 and victory labs.
0:35:13 They weren’t really
0:35:15 where you could learn something.
0:35:16 Particularly for our audience,
0:35:17 that, like,
0:35:18 it’s so rough and tumble
0:35:19 to be in a startup
0:35:21 and to be in the trenches
0:35:22 and to lose the deal
0:35:23 and, like,
0:35:24 not be able to raise the money
0:35:25 and you have this magical person
0:35:25 walk out the door
0:35:26 and all that kind of stuff.
0:35:28 So having an honest book
0:35:28 that I think you,
0:35:30 I was expecting you to write,
0:35:31 I thought was really valuable.
0:35:32 And then,
0:35:33 you know,
0:35:34 the little hack that we had
0:35:36 is you had written
0:35:37 all the blog posts,
0:35:37 right?
0:35:39 And so then it was…
0:35:40 I had a little built-in audience.
0:35:40 Right.
0:35:41 And then it was,
0:35:43 it’s telling the dramatic story
0:35:43 of, like,
0:35:44 what went down,
0:35:45 you know,
0:35:46 including with Felicia being sick
0:35:47 and all of that,
0:35:47 right?
0:35:48 Like,
0:35:49 that then made the book.
0:35:50 But, like,
0:35:51 you kind of had the lessons
0:35:52 in your head.
0:35:53 And, like,
0:35:55 I actually think that book,
0:35:55 like,
0:35:56 I like the title.
0:35:57 I’ve been living by
0:35:59 What You Do Is Who You Are
0:35:59 forever.
0:36:00 I like that title better,
0:36:01 but I think this is
0:36:02 a more important book
0:36:03 and it’s way more
0:36:04 kind of usable
0:36:05 for people.
0:36:06 It’s much more broad-based.
0:36:07 I think the
0:36:09 What You Do Is Who You Are
0:36:10 is,
0:36:11 it’s actually,
0:36:12 it’s more useful for me.
0:36:14 And, you know,
0:36:15 when I talk to, like,
0:36:16 Ted Sarandos
0:36:17 or somebody like that,
0:36:17 they’re like,
0:36:17 oh, yeah,
0:36:18 that’s a book I like.
0:36:19 But you have to run
0:36:21 a very large organization.
0:36:21 Right.
0:36:23 and you have to have
0:36:24 gotten beyond
0:36:25 the things
0:36:26 and the hard thing
0:36:27 about hard things
0:36:28 to start to think about,
0:36:29 okay,
0:36:31 how do you program
0:36:31 the culture
0:36:32 of the whole organization
0:36:33 and this kind of thing?
0:36:34 I remember the Navy
0:36:37 wanting to buy the book
0:36:38 The Hard Thing
0:36:38 About Hard Things.
0:36:39 Yeah.
0:36:41 I think people actually think
0:36:42 it’s much more applicable
0:36:42 than you might think.
0:36:43 Well,
0:36:44 oh, no, no.
0:36:46 So, it’s very,
0:36:47 the hard thing
0:36:47 about hard things,
0:36:49 I would say,
0:36:49 in retrospect,
0:36:51 was very broadly applicable.
0:36:51 Like,
0:36:52 pastors bought it
0:36:53 and, you know,
0:36:55 people you’d never think.
0:36:57 But, you know,
0:36:57 like, to me,
0:36:58 everything in The Hard Thing
0:36:59 About Hard Things
0:36:59 is, like,
0:37:01 easy,
0:37:02 whereas I had to think
0:37:03 a lot more about
0:37:05 what you do
0:37:05 is who you are.
0:37:06 It’s just like a,
0:37:07 but, you know,
0:37:07 it’s one of those things.
0:37:08 It’s like, you know,
0:37:09 how many people
0:37:10 need to learn
0:37:13 algebra versus
0:37:14 quantum physics?
0:37:16 It’s a thing like that.
0:37:16 Yeah.
0:37:17 That’s a good point.
0:37:18 No, I actually thought
0:37:19 the book was valuable
0:37:20 to your brand
0:37:23 and a good equalizer.
0:37:23 And also,
0:37:25 I think it raised
0:37:25 the ambition.
0:37:27 Like, when we then
0:37:28 hired new GPs,
0:37:30 it was just understood
0:37:31 that they were going
0:37:32 to be out in the world.
0:37:34 and then it was a matter
0:37:35 for me,
0:37:36 for my team
0:37:36 to go, like,
0:37:38 okay, so what are your thoughts?
0:37:39 Hopefully you have some, right?
0:37:40 And then what are you good at?
0:37:41 And then matching
0:37:42 the format.
0:37:43 Not everybody
0:37:44 should write a book, right?
0:37:45 And not everybody
0:37:47 should do podcasts.
0:37:48 Some people are good
0:37:48 with decks
0:37:48 and all of that.
0:37:49 But, like,
0:37:49 it was a given
0:37:50 that the bar is high.
0:37:51 Well, that’s, you know,
0:37:52 that’s such a good point
0:37:54 because one of the things
0:37:56 that we always get asked
0:37:57 because Grace did
0:37:58 such a nice job
0:37:59 of marketing the book
0:38:00 is, well, like,
0:38:01 how do you market your book?
0:38:03 And I’m like, well,
0:38:04 look, you can do,
0:38:05 there’s, like,
0:38:07 well-known marketing ideas
0:38:07 and so forth
0:38:08 and you can do
0:38:09 a lot of things
0:38:10 and you can get yourself
0:38:11 even on, like,
0:38:12 the bestseller list,
0:38:14 but then the book’s
0:38:15 going to disappear
0:38:16 unless it’s a great book.
0:38:18 Like, it has to be good.
0:38:18 Right.
0:38:20 Like, that’s the fundamental thing
0:38:21 and so, like,
0:38:22 if you don’t write
0:38:23 something that’s good,
0:38:25 if you’re completely focused
0:38:25 on, like,
0:38:26 how you promote it
0:38:27 before you’ve written it,
0:38:28 like, that’s probably
0:38:29 a bad sign.
0:38:29 That’s backwards.
0:38:30 Yeah, that is backwards.
0:38:32 You have to actually believe
0:38:33 that you have an idea
0:38:34 that that’s worth
0:38:36 putting a book,
0:38:37 like, a book
0:38:38 has to stand the test
0:38:38 of time.
0:38:39 You know what I mean?
0:38:40 It has to be an actual thing
0:38:42 versus a tweet.
0:38:43 Well, so many people
0:38:43 in business
0:38:45 take a blog post idea,
0:38:47 a blog post length idea
0:38:48 and they try
0:38:49 and turn it into a book
0:38:51 and, um…
0:38:52 Some things are just a snack.
0:38:53 Yeah, they’re snacks.
0:38:54 And snacks should be snacks,
0:38:55 yeah.
0:38:56 Exactly.
0:38:57 Yeah, I know.
0:38:58 I thought the book
0:38:59 served you well
0:39:00 and I think it made
0:39:02 everybody in the firm
0:39:02 go like, oh.
0:39:03 Yeah.
0:39:04 Like, I don’t know
0:39:05 that Andrew,
0:39:06 would he have thought
0:39:08 automatically walking in here
0:39:08 is like, well,
0:39:09 maybe I should write a book.
0:39:09 Yeah.
0:39:11 Like, and it just made
0:39:13 it open up the thinking,
0:39:14 I think, for everybody else.
0:39:15 Yeah, yeah.
0:39:15 And, you know,
0:39:16 a good thing about
0:39:18 you also learn a lot
0:39:18 when you write a book,
0:39:21 so I think everybody’s…
0:39:23 It set the standard of
0:39:25 you can’t just have
0:39:26 an idea here,
0:39:27 you have to be able
0:39:29 to really think it through,
0:39:30 be able to articulate it,
0:39:31 be able to write it,
0:39:32 be able to publish it,
0:39:34 and otherwise, like,
0:39:35 your idea didn’t count.
0:39:37 And that, I think,
0:39:39 has helped us a lot
0:39:39 as an organization.
0:39:40 Yeah, I mean, look at
0:39:41 Catherine Boyle.
0:39:42 I mean, she came in
0:39:44 with the pitch of, like,
0:39:45 if I work here,
0:39:45 I’m going to do
0:39:46 American Dynamism,
0:39:47 and here’s what that is.
0:39:49 And, like, she also happens
0:39:51 to be a gifted communicator.
0:39:53 And now it’s, you know,
0:39:54 it was a deck,
0:39:56 now it’s a movement
0:39:57 and a fund,
0:39:58 and, like,
0:40:00 it’s helping really change
0:40:00 the way people think
0:40:01 about defense tech.
0:40:03 It’s all of a sudden allowed.
0:40:04 Remember, back in the day,
0:40:06 Diane Greene
0:40:07 was outside from Google
0:40:07 for, like,
0:40:08 a very innocent contract
0:40:09 to look at pictures,
0:40:10 I mean,
0:40:11 satellites, right?
0:40:12 And that, like,
0:40:14 and Catherine is playing
0:40:15 a really big role
0:40:16 in turning that around, right?
0:40:17 And that’s an idea.
0:40:18 Yeah.
0:40:19 Yeah, yeah.
0:40:20 No, for sure.
0:40:21 It is a, you know,
0:40:23 I hadn’t actually thought
0:40:25 about it that much,
0:40:27 but it’s a very important part.
0:40:28 It’s how, like,
0:40:28 marketing,
0:40:30 our original marketing ideas
0:40:31 turned into kind of
0:40:33 a very important cultural point
0:40:35 of the firm,
0:40:36 which is, you know,
0:40:37 like, this is how we work,
0:40:38 this is how we think.
0:40:39 I mean, sometimes
0:40:41 it was so overdone,
0:40:42 like, a new person comes in.
0:40:43 First thing they want to do
0:40:44 is meet with marketing.
0:40:45 I’m like,
0:40:46 do you know where you’re sitting?
0:40:47 And then,
0:40:48 and then I was like,
0:40:49 I literally have had people say,
0:40:51 like, you should really think about me
0:40:52 like you should think
0:40:52 about Mark Andreessen.
0:40:54 And I was like,
0:40:55 what are your thoughts?
0:40:56 I know exactly who that was,
0:40:57 but I’m not going to say my name.
0:40:58 No, no, no, no.
0:41:00 And it’s all well-intentioned,
0:41:00 but, like,
0:41:02 you do have to test
0:41:04 the actual idea, right?
0:41:05 Like, is that a snack?
0:41:06 Is that a book?
0:41:08 Is it just a conversation?
0:41:11 Like, they need to be calibrated,
0:41:11 properly, right?
0:41:13 And sometimes young people
0:41:15 who are incredibly ambitious,
0:41:15 that was me,
0:41:16 still is.
0:41:18 Like, you just want to go
0:41:19 right for the win,
0:41:21 but you need to make sure
0:41:22 you have the goods to do it.
0:41:23 Yeah, well,
0:41:24 this kind of gets into
0:41:25 a conversation Mark
0:41:26 and I have been having,
0:41:27 which is,
0:41:28 you know,
0:41:30 the marketing of companies
0:41:31 has changed so much
0:41:33 because you’re really
0:41:35 now marketing a person.
0:41:36 And that’s a lot
0:41:37 what we did at the firm now
0:41:39 because the firm had our name.
0:41:40 It was a natural.
0:41:42 Also, we don’t have products.
0:41:44 Yeah, and we don’t have products.
0:41:45 We have people and ideas.
0:41:45 That’s it.
0:41:45 We could,
0:41:48 but that’s extended now to,
0:41:49 you know,
0:41:51 is it Tesla or is it Elon?
0:41:53 Is it Palantir?
0:41:53 Is it Alex?
0:41:54 You know, like,
0:41:57 and in order to be able
0:41:58 to do that,
0:41:59 like, you can be
0:42:01 an extremely accomplished person
0:42:03 who is not interesting.
0:42:05 Like, those don’t necessarily
0:42:06 go together.
0:42:08 And I think that’s a little bit
0:42:10 unfair from the press
0:42:11 or, like,
0:42:12 it creates this perception
0:42:13 that Silicon Valley
0:42:14 is staffed entirely
0:42:15 with weirdos.
0:42:16 Right, yeah.
0:42:17 They’re more interesting
0:42:17 to write about.
0:42:19 Somebody who goes to work
0:42:20 every day and drives an Audi
0:42:22 and is a good father
0:42:24 and drops kid off at school,
0:42:25 that’s all nice.
0:42:28 Like, I’ll pick on someone, right?
0:42:29 Like, Dylan Field.
0:42:29 Yeah.
0:42:30 Most amazing guy.
0:42:32 built an incredible company.
0:42:34 I hosted dinners with him.
0:42:36 He’s just normal.
0:42:38 Well-adjusted.
0:42:39 The weirdest thing about him
0:42:40 is he did the Teal Fellowship.
0:42:40 Yeah.
0:42:41 But, like,
0:42:43 those don’t get written up as much.
0:42:44 The weirdos,
0:42:46 like, the weirder the better, right?
0:42:48 Like, and it’s gotten
0:42:49 to an extreme where it’s like,
0:42:50 this is actually not
0:42:51 reflecting Silicon Valley.
0:42:54 It’s just a slice of it.
0:42:55 Well, it’s an interesting
0:42:57 marketing conundrum, though.
0:42:57 It is.
0:42:59 Because you can’t
0:43:01 market a company
0:43:03 if you don’t have a character.
0:43:03 Right.
0:43:07 No, you used to,
0:43:09 look, there used to be companies
0:43:10 and it was fine
0:43:11 where all you do is
0:43:13 you report your financial results,
0:43:15 you announce your new products,
0:43:17 and that kind of started to end
0:43:18 with Steve Jobs
0:43:20 because it was a show.
0:43:20 Yeah, that’s right.
0:43:20 Yeah.
0:43:22 And he made you want a product.
0:43:23 That’s right.
0:43:25 And, like, it became,
0:43:27 it’s almost like politics adjacent.
0:43:29 Like, you can’t vote for a party,
0:43:30 you’re voting for a person.
0:43:30 Right.
0:43:31 Yeah.
0:43:32 And if you have the company
0:43:33 but not a character
0:43:35 or a sense of character,
0:43:37 it just doesn’t work.
0:43:38 And then, you know,
0:43:41 the corporate X accounts
0:43:41 and all of that,
0:43:42 those are all fine.
0:43:42 And, like,
0:43:43 but, like,
0:43:44 at the end of the day,
0:43:45 it’s the identity of the person
0:43:47 and do they actually sound,
0:43:50 like, does the tweet sound like Mark, right?
0:43:52 Like, does the LinkedIn post
0:43:53 sound like DG
0:43:54 or whatever it is, right?
0:43:56 Like, you cannot disconnect it anymore.
0:43:56 Right.
0:43:58 And that places a premium
0:43:59 on people who are willing
0:44:00 to play character
0:44:02 or be character.
0:44:04 I’m not sure that’s always
0:44:05 the healthiest thing
0:44:06 for a company
0:44:07 at every,
0:44:09 at every stage, right?
0:44:10 Or in every situation.
0:44:13 Like, there are some downsides to it,
0:44:15 but the upside beats the downside,
0:44:16 like, 10 to 1
0:44:17 or whatever the right number is.
0:44:19 Well, it requires
0:44:20 a lot of discipline, I think,
0:44:21 from the founder
0:44:22 because you,
0:44:24 it turns you into,
0:44:26 like, this mini-celebrity.
0:44:29 And so, as a mini-celebrity,
0:44:33 can you, like,
0:44:33 be out there
0:44:34 and not act like
0:44:35 an actual celebrity
0:44:37 because those aren’t
0:44:39 great organizational dynamics.
0:44:40 Yeah.
0:44:41 Just having been around,
0:44:42 you know,
0:44:43 many celebrities,
0:44:44 although…
0:44:45 And the thing is…
0:44:46 Nas notwithstanding,
0:44:48 he’s a very regular person
0:44:50 and that kind of thing.
0:44:51 Yeah, he’s surprising.
0:44:52 But he’s very surprising.
0:44:53 He’s very unusual in that sense.
0:44:53 But also,
0:44:54 he has an amazing product.
0:44:55 Yeah.
0:44:56 It’s hard to argue with.
0:44:57 So, like,
0:44:59 being able to be, like,
0:45:00 this interesting character
0:45:01 on the outside
0:45:02 and then come in
0:45:04 and, you know, be…
0:45:04 Be normal.
0:45:05 Well,
0:45:07 just be somebody
0:45:07 who you can have
0:45:09 an actual conversation with
0:45:11 where you can get information
0:45:12 and not be this thing
0:45:13 that you put yourself
0:45:14 on a pedestal
0:45:15 to the point
0:45:15 where people
0:45:16 won’t tell you anything
0:45:17 and that kind of stuff
0:45:18 is very destructive
0:45:18 in a company.
0:45:21 Yeah, I think there’s some downside
0:45:22 along those lines.
0:45:23 And the other part is, like,
0:45:26 you can’t really fake that stuff.
0:45:28 If you have a public persona
0:45:30 and it’s not real
0:45:32 and it’s all manicured,
0:45:33 it just does not work.
0:45:36 It won’t work over time, right?
0:45:38 So, you kind of have to lean…
0:45:40 Like, this is what I always try to do
0:45:41 is lean into, like,
0:45:42 who is this person
0:45:44 and what are they good at
0:45:46 that they can sustain over time?
0:45:47 Like, you can make anybody
0:45:48 do a TED Talk
0:45:49 if you really, really
0:45:50 are hell-bent on doing it.
0:45:51 But, like,
0:45:53 that’s not an actual marketing campaign.
0:45:55 That’s not a personal brand.
0:45:56 You have to really figure out,
0:45:58 okay, who is this person?
0:45:59 What are their dynamics?
0:46:00 What are their talents
0:46:01 that they can actually be?
0:46:03 Not act,
0:46:04 but, like, actually be, right?
0:46:05 I think it’s hard
0:46:06 to actually be a character
0:46:07 and a TED Talk.
0:46:08 You know, like,
0:46:10 the people who do TED Talks
0:46:10 aren’t characters
0:46:11 and vice versa.
0:46:12 Yeah, I mean, a TED Talk thing.
0:46:13 You’ve never done a TED Talk.
0:46:15 Like, I’ve never done a TED Talk.
0:46:16 I think it’s hard to do both.
0:46:17 I’ve never watched a TED Talk.
0:46:19 You’ve never watched a TED Talk?
0:46:19 I’ve never watched a TED Talk.
0:46:20 Oh, man.
0:46:21 You’re missing out
0:46:23 on a very beautifully packaged.
0:46:24 It’s almost like a Pop-Tart.
0:46:25 But that is my point.
0:46:26 My point is…
0:46:28 That is exactly my point.
0:46:29 TED Talks are
0:46:33 these very manicured things
0:46:36 that, like, work for a minute.
0:46:37 But, like, anybody who’s seen
0:46:38 so many TED Talks
0:46:39 is like, this is all the same.
0:46:40 Yeah, that’s right.
0:46:42 It’s all the exact same plastic, right?
0:46:44 Or maybe you think it’s platinum,
0:46:46 but it’s the exact same formulaic thing.
0:46:48 That’s not an actual brand.
0:46:49 That’s maybe an event
0:46:50 that if you really care about it,
0:46:51 because some people
0:46:52 really care about that shit,
0:46:53 but, like, that’s not
0:46:54 actually who you are.
0:46:55 They read to me
0:46:56 as religious sermons.
0:46:58 And I have an aversion
0:46:59 to fake religions.
0:47:02 They’re all a little morality place.
0:47:03 They’re all little morality stories.
0:47:04 They’ve all got a message.
0:47:06 It’s like the very special episodes
0:47:08 of TV shows in the 1970s.
0:47:09 They’re the very special episodes
0:47:10 where you, like, learn about…
0:47:11 Very special happy days.
0:47:12 You learn about drug addiction.
0:47:14 And the thing is,
0:47:15 I’m in marketing,
0:47:17 and I find them saccharine.
0:47:18 Like, they’re just too…
0:47:20 They’re just too perfect in a way, right?
0:47:22 And they train you like crazy,
0:47:23 and then, you know,
0:47:26 they’re the teams that peel off of TED,
0:47:28 and then they help executives be great.
0:47:30 And you can just…
0:47:31 I’ve talked to them,
0:47:31 and I’m like,
0:47:33 you know, you’ve been invited
0:47:37 to podcasts that are produced that way,
0:47:39 and they literally are trying to script
0:47:40 what you’re going to say,
0:47:42 and I’m like, we don’t do that.
0:47:43 package it in this very specific form.
0:47:44 And that’s why, by the way,
0:47:45 that’s why I’m saying,
0:47:46 that’s why I’m riffing on it a little bit,
0:47:46 is because, like,
0:47:47 my instincts are all
0:47:49 to the exact opposite of that,
0:47:50 as you know,
0:47:50 which is, like,
0:47:52 authenticity and rawness.
0:47:53 Well, you could do a TED Talk.
0:47:54 I think you’d be fine at it,
0:47:56 but, like, it’s actually not you.
0:47:56 And, like, therefore,
0:47:58 it wouldn’t accrue to the brand.
0:48:00 He could not do a TED Talk
0:48:01 because in order to do a TED Talk,
0:48:02 they have to review
0:48:03 what you’re going to say.
0:48:05 And they have to edit it,
0:48:07 and there’s no chance.
0:48:08 No, what I’m saying is,
0:48:09 if he decided he wanted to…
0:48:11 Like, if I edit something Mark writes,
0:48:13 like, I take one sound
0:48:15 and I give him one word,
0:48:17 and then that’s as much
0:48:18 as he likes to be edited.
0:48:20 This is why I find it so hilarious
0:48:21 when you send around,
0:48:22 like, when you used to do that,
0:48:23 when you send around the blog post
0:48:24 and then everybody is so eager
0:48:25 to edit them,
0:48:25 and I’m like,
0:48:27 this is such a waste of fucking time.
0:48:29 because it’s not you.
0:48:31 It’s, like, not you, so.
0:48:32 That actually reminds me
0:48:33 of my favorite thing
0:48:34 that Larry David said.
0:48:35 The rule on Seinfeld
0:48:37 was no hugs and no lessons.
0:48:37 No hugs and no lessons.
0:48:38 Exactly, that’s right.
0:48:38 That’s right.
0:48:39 That’s right.
0:48:40 And a very special episode.
0:48:41 And that’s what made that show
0:48:42 so distinctive
0:48:43 is they never did that.
0:48:43 They never, they never,
0:48:44 it was never,
0:48:45 it was never Marlin or Sackra.
0:48:46 Never.
0:48:47 Right.
0:48:47 It was, like,
0:48:48 almost unique in that way.
0:48:49 Yeah.
0:48:50 It’s a very, very good show.
0:48:51 Yeah.
0:48:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:48:53 Yeah, it’s kind of
0:48:53 the opposite of TED.
0:48:54 Yeah.
0:48:55 And look, that is great.
0:48:56 Like, I’m not trying to malign it,
0:48:59 but it’s, it’s, it’s very manufactured.
0:49:00 And I don’t think
0:49:01 that’s an actual brand.
0:49:02 As a person,
0:49:03 you can’t be that brand.
0:49:04 Yeah, the thing that works,
0:49:05 and, you know,
0:49:05 a lot of this just has to do
0:49:06 with the shifting
0:49:07 technological environment,
0:49:07 media environment.
0:49:08 But the thing that works
0:49:09 in this media environment
0:49:10 is much more, much more
0:49:12 authenticity and transparency.
0:49:12 If you think about it,
0:49:13 if you look at, like,
0:49:14 it used to be.
0:49:14 Well, authenticity
0:49:15 and originality, right?
0:49:17 Interestingness.
0:49:17 Yeah.
0:49:18 Which is interesting
0:49:19 because the old world,
0:49:20 like, our media training
0:49:21 in the old world
0:49:22 was all, like,
0:49:23 much, is the opposite.
0:49:24 It’s conformist,
0:49:25 stay on message.
0:49:26 Discipline.
0:49:27 Discipline.
0:49:28 Yeah, and not to
0:49:29 start the window.
0:49:30 And the thing that,
0:49:31 I think what’s interesting
0:49:31 to media,
0:49:32 and that’s what media
0:49:33 has to figure out,
0:49:35 is they used to set the tone,
0:49:37 and now they’re
0:49:37 at the very end.
0:49:38 Right.
0:49:39 At the very end
0:49:39 of all the stuff
0:49:40 that’s been said
0:49:42 on Twitter or Reddit
0:49:44 or Tumblr or all,
0:49:45 like, it eventually
0:49:46 spills out,
0:49:47 and then media is like,
0:49:48 oh, what is this thing?
0:49:49 Yeah, we’ll comment
0:49:50 on the Rogan show.
0:49:51 But, like, it’s at the
0:49:52 very end, right?
0:49:52 It’s at the very end of the process.
0:49:53 And that, like, for media,
0:49:54 it must be a total
0:49:55 out-of-body experience
0:49:56 where it’s like, wait,
0:49:58 like, I was the beginning,
0:49:58 right?
0:50:01 When you were unveiling something,
0:50:03 that’s where you would go,
0:50:03 right?
0:50:03 Yeah.
0:50:05 And now you can go
0:50:06 any frickin’ place
0:50:07 that, like,
0:50:08 you have 50,000 choices,
0:50:09 right?
0:50:11 And then it gets enough steam,
0:50:12 and then it gets reviewed
0:50:13 by media almost, right?
0:50:13 It’s just that
0:50:15 the order has flipped
0:50:16 completely.
0:50:18 It makes it very tricky
0:50:19 to speak to the media
0:50:22 because when they’re
0:50:22 on that end
0:50:24 and they have to
0:50:25 turn you into news,
0:50:28 anything you say
0:50:29 can and will be used
0:50:30 against you.
0:50:31 It’s a very
0:50:32 Miranda-type world.
0:50:34 My new version of this,
0:50:35 the new test, I think,
0:50:36 is happening
0:50:36 is what we might call
0:50:37 the GPT test,
0:50:38 which is, okay,
0:50:39 if what somebody says
0:50:40 is indistinguishable
0:50:42 from chat GPT output,
0:50:44 like, not going to make it,
0:50:44 right?
0:50:46 And then the more
0:50:47 advanced version of the test
0:50:48 is, like,
0:50:49 is it indistinguishable
0:50:49 from, like,
0:50:50 chat GPT 3.5?
0:50:53 Right, which is, like,
0:50:55 nothing, which is, like,
0:50:56 the earlier version
0:50:56 that’s not as good.
0:50:58 And the number
0:50:58 of public figures
0:50:59 in various domains
0:51:01 who continue to speak
0:51:02 in public or put out
0:51:03 crafted, you know,
0:51:03 whatever,
0:51:05 and literally,
0:51:05 you’re just like,
0:51:06 this is indistinguishable
0:51:08 from what the LLM
0:51:08 could do.
0:51:09 Or, by the way,
0:51:10 columnists,
0:51:11 you know,
0:51:11 columns for a living.
0:51:13 Like, there’s a lot
0:51:13 of people
0:51:15 who don’t pass that test.
0:51:16 And so,
0:51:17 and I just say that
0:51:17 of, like,
0:51:18 there’s going to be
0:51:19 a big turnover there.
0:51:22 And then it begs
0:51:22 the important question,
0:51:23 like, okay,
0:51:23 what does it take
0:51:24 to pass that test?
0:51:24 Right.
0:51:24 Right.
0:51:26 Like, how many people…
0:51:27 While it’s changing
0:51:27 all the time.
0:51:28 Yeah, also true.
0:51:29 Right, exactly.
0:51:29 But, like,
0:51:31 who is actually…
0:51:32 I had a version
0:51:32 of this conversation
0:51:33 with Tyler Cohen
0:51:33 one time.
0:51:34 So, Tyler Cohen
0:51:34 and his partner,
0:51:35 Alex,
0:51:36 have been blogging daily
0:51:36 for over 20 years
0:51:38 on Marshall Revolution.
0:51:39 Which is amazing.
0:51:40 They do a great job.
0:51:40 And they’re leaders
0:51:41 of, like,
0:51:41 these, you know,
0:51:42 the intellectual movement
0:51:43 and they’re incredibly
0:51:43 important and influential
0:51:44 and, like,
0:51:45 all these things.
0:51:45 And they’re in all
0:51:46 these rooms that they,
0:51:46 you know,
0:51:47 they will say this.
0:51:47 Like, it’s put them
0:51:48 in all these
0:51:49 incredibly important rooms
0:51:50 and all these things.
0:51:50 And I was like,
0:51:51 wow, this works
0:51:51 so great for you guys.
0:51:51 It’s like,
0:51:52 why don’t, you know,
0:51:53 why don’t more people
0:51:54 do this?
0:51:55 And Tyler just,
0:51:55 like, laughs and he’s like,
0:51:56 Mark, how many people
0:51:57 have something to say
0:51:57 every day?
0:51:59 Yeah, that’s a lot of talking.
0:52:00 Right, like,
0:52:01 genuinely,
0:52:02 like, how many people
0:52:02 have that?
0:52:02 And then, you know,
0:52:03 every day for 20 years
0:52:04 is, like,
0:52:04 maybe the highest bar.
0:52:05 But how many people
0:52:06 have, you know,
0:52:07 three interesting things
0:52:07 to say?
0:52:08 Or one interesting thing
0:52:09 to say?
0:52:11 This is my beef
0:52:11 with some of these
0:52:12 platforms.
0:52:13 Or, actually,
0:52:13 it’s the humans.
0:52:14 It’s not the platforms.
0:52:15 It’s always the humans,
0:52:16 right?
0:52:16 We’re like,
0:52:18 does every thought
0:52:19 that you have
0:52:21 need to go on X
0:52:22 or wherever
0:52:22 it needs to go?
0:52:23 I would beg
0:52:24 to differ.
0:52:24 But, like,
0:52:25 a lot of people,
0:52:27 no, a lot of people
0:52:27 were like,
0:52:28 okay, it’s a new day.
0:52:29 I gotta say something.
0:52:30 Yeah, yeah.
0:52:30 And I’m like,
0:52:31 I don’t know.
0:52:31 Well, to me,
0:52:33 let me ask you this,
0:52:33 though.
0:52:34 Would you agree
0:52:35 that the difference is
0:52:36 if they have an interesting
0:52:37 thought every day,
0:52:37 that’s one thing?
0:52:38 Fantastic.
0:52:38 Right, right, right.
0:52:39 The more the merrier.
0:52:40 Right, right, right.
0:52:40 Right?
0:52:41 But, yeah,
0:52:41 most people don’t.
0:52:42 But, like,
0:52:43 most people don’t.
0:52:44 And I sort of feel like
0:52:44 they would be better.
0:52:44 Even the people
0:52:45 who are writing every day
0:52:46 don’t always, yeah.
0:52:49 They would better serve
0:52:49 to, like,
0:52:51 pop up when
0:52:52 they have a thought
0:52:53 or contribute something
0:52:54 to the conversation
0:52:55 that’s,
0:52:57 I don’t know.
0:52:58 I just don’t think
0:52:58 that everybody has
0:52:59 interesting things
0:53:00 to say every day.
0:53:00 Oh, 100%.
0:53:02 If I look at X,
0:53:03 I see proof.
0:53:03 Well, the reason
0:53:04 I go through this
0:53:05 is because my theory,
0:53:05 at least,
0:53:06 is the nature of leadership
0:53:06 has changed.
0:53:07 Because of everything
0:53:08 you guys have discussed,
0:53:09 the nature of leadership
0:53:09 is changing.
0:53:11 And the people,
0:53:13 the leaders who have
0:53:14 a large number
0:53:15 of interesting things
0:53:15 to say and know
0:53:16 how to communicate
0:53:16 are going to do
0:53:17 disproportionately well
0:53:17 in the years ahead.
0:53:19 And the leaders who don’t,
0:53:19 even if they’re
0:53:20 professionally skilled,
0:53:21 I think,
0:53:21 are going to have
0:53:22 a harder and harder time
0:53:22 and their companies
0:53:22 are going to have
0:53:23 a harder and harder time
0:53:24 because it’s just
0:53:25 the old methods
0:53:25 are just not working
0:53:26 as well anymore.
0:53:26 No.
0:53:26 Well, particularly
0:53:29 on the marketing front.
0:53:32 And, you know,
0:53:33 but people are changing.
0:53:35 Like, it’s been interesting
0:53:37 to watch our friend
0:53:39 Mark Zuckerberg
0:53:41 kind of change
0:53:42 his public persona
0:53:43 so much so fast.
0:53:43 So great.
0:53:43 Yeah.
0:53:44 I mean…
0:53:46 So he’s kind of,
0:53:46 I mean,
0:53:47 running a gigantic
0:53:49 social media company.
0:53:50 You would think
0:53:51 he would figure it out,
0:53:51 but I guess,
0:53:52 but it’s still
0:53:53 very difficult to do.
0:53:54 Well, and it actually
0:53:55 mapped to internal change.
0:53:56 Like, he himself changed.
0:53:57 Yes.
0:53:58 It wasn’t like
0:53:59 a synthetically generated
0:53:59 message.
0:54:01 Like, everything of,
0:54:02 like, Mark Zuckerberg
0:54:02 in public now
0:54:04 is 100% wholly authentic.
0:54:05 He used to try
0:54:06 to calculate
0:54:10 what he was going to say
0:54:11 through the lens
0:54:12 of all his many,
0:54:12 many constituents.
0:54:14 And now he’s saying
0:54:14 what he thinks.
0:54:16 And as you know,
0:54:17 he was trained to do that.
0:54:17 Oh, yeah.
0:54:19 He received the A-plus
0:54:20 grade version of that
0:54:21 training from people
0:54:22 who were world-class
0:54:22 at that.
0:54:23 Right.
0:54:24 And it worked for a while
0:54:25 and then the environment
0:54:25 changed it.
0:54:26 But I also think
0:54:27 he, whoever,
0:54:28 was advised,
0:54:29 like, overdid it.
0:54:30 I remember being in your office
0:54:30 and I was like,
0:54:32 that man has the wrong beer
0:54:32 somewhere.
0:54:33 It’s a scandal.
0:54:35 Because it was so perfected.
0:54:36 and it’s like,
0:54:38 chill out a little bit.
0:54:38 It was so tight.
0:54:38 Well, you know what it was.
0:54:39 And then he did,
0:54:40 now that he’s doing the,
0:54:41 like, this is me,
0:54:42 deal with it.
0:54:43 It’s working great.
0:54:43 And again,
0:54:44 the people who trained him
0:54:45 are like super geniuses
0:54:46 and they were fantastic.
0:54:47 But they themselves
0:54:48 were trained in what I would
0:54:49 describe as, like,
0:54:50 1980s, 1990s-style politics.
0:54:54 They came out of a political background,
0:54:56 which is an even more intense
0:54:56 version of everything
0:54:57 that we’re talking about.
0:54:58 Yeah, that’s true.
0:55:00 And so they got trained
0:55:00 the way politicians
0:55:01 got trained in the 1990s,
0:55:02 which was extremely
0:55:03 scripted and controlled.
0:55:05 Maximally so.
0:55:06 And so,
0:55:07 and then just the,
0:55:08 as we’ve just,
0:55:09 like, just this massive shift
0:55:10 in the environment since then
0:55:11 has basically rendered,
0:55:13 I mean, you see this playing out.
0:55:14 I think he’s done a great job.
0:55:15 All over the world, right?
0:55:16 Which is, this is also,
0:55:17 everything we’re talking about
0:55:18 is also playing out politically.
0:55:18 Yes.
0:55:19 And maybe even more so politically.
0:55:20 Yeah.
0:55:21 Yeah, and it’s even,
0:55:23 like, the subtle things
0:55:24 have been the most interesting to me.
0:55:26 So he used to be known for,
0:55:28 like, he’s always wearing a hoodie,
0:55:30 which was the most conformist thing
0:55:30 in the world
0:55:31 in Silicon Valley, right?
0:55:33 And now, like,
0:55:33 he’s got, like,
0:55:34 the gold chains
0:55:35 and this hair all over.
0:55:36 You know,
0:55:37 and it’s kind of like
0:55:40 he’s expressing himself
0:55:41 on all fronts.
0:55:43 It’s really awesome.
0:55:44 It’s exactly what he looks like
0:55:44 in private.
0:55:46 Like, now it all matches.
0:55:46 But I still…
0:55:48 It’s been great to kind of
0:55:48 see him flower like that
0:55:49 and be able to, like,
0:55:50 fully express himself.
0:55:50 Yeah.
0:55:51 Yeah, I think it’s great.
0:55:52 It’s something spectacular.
0:55:53 still people are like,
0:55:55 well, what’s with the gold chains?
0:55:56 I’m like…
0:55:57 He likes them, yeah.
0:55:58 Well, here’s an executive.
0:55:59 I don’t know.
0:56:00 The main one that he wears
0:56:00 has a role.
0:56:01 It’s important.
0:56:02 Yeah.
0:56:02 With his faith.
0:56:03 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:56:06 There’s a guy who runs
0:56:07 a ginormous company
0:56:08 that’s in the spotlight
0:56:09 all the time
0:56:09 and, like,
0:56:10 this is what you’re picking on?
0:56:10 Also true.
0:56:11 I’m just like, hello.
0:56:12 Also true.
0:56:14 But I think when people
0:56:15 from the old world
0:56:16 see that,
0:56:17 it makes them
0:56:18 very uncomfortable.
0:56:18 Yeah.
0:56:19 Right?
0:56:20 Okay, one of the guys
0:56:22 who was doing
0:56:23 what we wanted him to
0:56:24 is no longer…
0:56:25 He’s off the leash.
0:56:26 He’s not on the program.
0:56:26 That’s right.
0:56:26 That’s right.
0:56:28 He’s liberated.
0:56:29 We go all the way back
0:56:30 to when…
0:56:31 What’s his name?
0:56:31 The founder…
0:56:33 Dennis from Foursquare.
0:56:34 He got yelled at
0:56:35 because he went
0:56:36 to a press meeting
0:56:37 with a hoodie on.
0:56:38 Like, all the way
0:56:39 at the beginning.
0:56:41 I remember that was controversial.
0:56:41 Oh, I remember that.
0:56:42 I remember that.
0:56:42 Yeah.
0:56:43 He was like,
0:56:44 I think…
0:56:44 And he had a banana
0:56:45 or something like that.
0:56:46 It was, like,
0:56:48 apparently entirely unacceptable.
0:56:49 Right, right.
0:56:49 Yeah.
0:56:51 It almost makes it nostalgic.
0:56:52 Very interesting.
0:56:53 So, I think company…
0:56:53 I mean, look,
0:56:54 I think all this stuff…
0:56:55 My view is all this stuff
0:56:56 is going to intensify.
0:56:57 I think every successful company
0:56:58 in the future…
0:56:59 I think every successful company
0:56:59 in the future
0:56:59 is going to need
0:57:00 this kind of personality.
0:57:02 They’re going to need
0:57:02 somebody who can do this.
0:57:03 And it’s a different
0:57:04 leadership profile.
0:57:04 Do you think
0:57:05 it has to be the CEO?
0:57:07 I think it’s really hard
0:57:07 for it not to be.
0:57:09 I mean, maybe, maybe.
0:57:11 It could be another founder,
0:57:11 I think.
0:57:12 Yeah, a co-founder can do it.
0:57:13 Yeah, a co-founder.
0:57:14 For sure,
0:57:16 if you’re a consumer brand,
0:57:18 I think it’s very difficult
0:57:21 to not have a person like that.
0:57:23 I think, you know,
0:57:24 if you’re less marketing,
0:57:26 like if you are,
0:57:26 like if the…
0:57:27 I mean, there are historically
0:57:29 businesses that are all sales…
0:57:30 I think if you’re
0:57:32 in a competitive situation
0:57:33 and on the other side
0:57:34 there’s somebody
0:57:35 who’s really good at it,
0:57:36 it still sucks.
0:57:38 If you sell security stuff.
0:57:39 Palantir is his enterprise,
0:57:40 you know, government as it gets.
0:57:41 Oh, yeah, no.
0:57:43 Alex is killing it.
0:57:44 He’s perfect for that company.
0:57:46 Imagine being a competitor
0:57:46 to Palantir
0:57:47 and not having an Alex, right?
0:57:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:57:50 Even just the stock market
0:57:51 valuation alone,
0:57:52 like how can you possibly keep up?
0:57:53 Yeah, it’s basically
0:57:54 can you sell
0:57:56 and the way you’re selling today
0:57:58 is entirely different.
0:57:58 Yeah.
0:57:59 Right?
0:58:00 Like it’s not, you know,
0:58:01 having features
0:58:02 and a Gartner report
0:58:02 is just like…
0:58:03 I think it’s great.
0:58:05 I think it’s leading
0:58:05 to a more honest world,
0:58:07 like more transparent,
0:58:07 more authentic,
0:58:08 more honest,
0:58:10 more interesting things
0:58:10 being discussed,
0:58:11 more interesting issues
0:58:11 getting surfaced,
0:58:12 people actually getting
0:58:13 to know each other.
0:58:14 Yeah, it’s a much
0:58:15 less sanitized world.
0:58:15 Yeah, that’s right.
0:58:16 That’s right.
0:58:16 And of course,
0:58:17 it’s uncomfortable
0:58:19 because if you’re used to
0:58:21 the walled garden,
0:58:22 if you’re used
0:58:22 to the sanitized environment,
0:58:24 if you’re used to Disneyland,
0:58:25 entering the real world
0:58:25 is traumatic.
0:58:26 Very traumatic.
0:58:27 But like we do live
0:58:28 in the real world, right?
0:58:29 Yeah.
0:58:30 And as always,
0:58:31 it’s the transition
0:58:32 that’s the toughest part.
0:58:33 It’s going like,
0:58:34 oh, this is all different now, right?
0:58:36 And I think we’re
0:58:37 in a really big transition
0:58:39 and the transition
0:58:39 is transitioning.
0:58:41 And we’re still in the middle
0:58:42 of it, like it’s not over yet.
0:58:43 It’s like,
0:58:44 yeah, no, it’s kind of,
0:58:45 it’s definitely
0:58:45 going to keep moving.
0:58:46 Yeah.
0:58:47 All right.
0:58:48 But we’re going to keep going.
0:58:49 Yeah.
0:58:49 Awesome.
0:58:49 Fantastic.
0:58:50 Thank you.
0:58:51 Thank you for joining us
0:58:52 on the Market Ben show.
0:58:53 This has been a lot of fun.
0:58:54 Thanks, you too.
0:58:58 Thanks for listening
0:58:59 to this episode
0:59:00 of the A16Z podcast.
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