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

I caused a lot of antagonism between us and the other firms in those days.

Your filter is like, you're gonna get the deal or I'm gonna get the deal. You die or I die.

And they're not exactly shrinking violets themselves.

They hated that cover story. Like, I'm on the cover of the magazine. That's not supposed to be him. That's supposed to be the entrepreneur. What the hell?

I mean, they just like lost

the money. We didn't have any entrepreneurs for the time.

DC was like a big Secret. And then actually building companies was a big secret. Yes. And so just kind of talking about it was a big differentiator.

We don't have products.

Yeah. And we didn't have products.

We have people and ideas. That's it.

The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investor or potential investors in any a sixteen z fund. Please note that a sixteen z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Alright. Welcome to the a sixteen z what are we on? The Mark and Ben show. Welcome to the Mark and Ben show. Today, we've got Margaret Wendmacher, the legendary

Oh, Jesus.

Head of marketing for A16z for the last sixteen years. And she is going to tell us the story of all that. You've heard snippets of it from me and Mark over the years, but now we're gonna hear the real thing from the real person. Mark, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me, guys. I'm thrilled to be here. But between the legendary and the 15 or 16, I feel kinda ancient. Wise.

Wise. Wise. Wise. Wise. Wise.

Getting

us all. It's very rough.

I know. It just a bitch

that way. So maybe we could start with when we met. I'd love to hear it from your perspective.

I know.

Were we at? Hobie's or

I think it was the Creamery.

The The Creamery. All my Which

I favorite point was your off

Yeah. I forgot yet. The firm started at the Creamery. That's right.

Right. Exactly. So a certain someone who shall go nameless tried to hire outcast. And Facebook invoked a conflict of interest. You know exactly who that is.

And so that certain someone called Mark and said, Just call Mark Zuckerberg, and I think you have better things to do than pull a favor from Mark Zuckerberg to go like, Why don't you just whatever. Anyhow but I think you asked for my email address. And so that's how we were introduced.

Uh-huh.

And then I was told to go to the creamery the waiter at the creamery. He's like, go be it here. They're meeting with some democratic functionaries or something like that. So I wait there with my little capabilities And I had met you years before, but no recollection I had not met you. I'd heard about you a little bit.

So I go there with my capabilities presentation. I sit down. The Democrats left the booth. And I sit down. You basically were just looking straight ahead.

You were just like I don't know what you were thinking about, but it was not that much.

Probably how how we get the firm off. We raise some money.

And then Mark grabs the capabilities business, which was generic because I had no idea why it was there. And you go, Okay, so how do you pick the clients and here are the clients and why those clients are not these clients and teams, whatever, detailed questions. So, I got a little grueling. And then you both said thank you, and I left. And I concluded that it was probably because you were angel investing at the time and you had just left HP.

I was like, they just wanna have somebody they can recommend to their angel portfolio, whatever.

Right. Right.

And then a few months later, we met at the Rosewood, I think. No. It was not the was it the Rosewood?

We were there a lot.

Anyhow, and then you guys went, okay. So we're gonna start this firm and top secret blah blah blah. I'm gonna start this firm, and it's gonna be the two of us, 300,000,000. And this was at a certain time where money was kinda tight.

Yeah. Thousand and nine.

Yeah. The end of the

world. Right. There was no liquidity.

The last end of the world.

Yeah. And I looked a little quizzical, and I said, you know, it's not a great time. And you said Mark said, let's assume success, shall we? And then you had already had the idea of, well, we wanted to say something, but we couldn't be out talking to press or be on Twitter at the time or whatever else and raise money. Be viewed as So soliciting money.

Mark then went. He had a standing invitation, I think, on Charlie Rose. And you went on Charlie Rose, and you had a very nice chat. And at the very end, he was like, well, by the way, we're gonna start a VC firm. And then we all went quiet.

So that was that. That's my recollection. I don't know what you guys thought.

I remember thinking, yeah, like, was just so distracted with how do we raise money? Like, we had never met LPs till then. And every VC that we had been meeting with, and we at the same time we were meeting with lots and lots of VCs trying to understand the industry. And they all said, that's a dumbass idea for a fund. You should definitely not do it.

They just wanted to give you jobs, I'm assuming.

Yeah. Well, one of them said that we'd never raise it from the LPs, so we should just raise the money from VCs and give the VCs who invested half the carry. That was

Interesting plan.

Yeah. Was one strategy. And then the whole platform thing, that was really dumb because it had been tried before and proven,

you know,

QED, that it could never work.

Actually, who tried it for real?

I don't know. So I think the main thing that they were thinking about was the incubators.

Oh, yeah. Being So I think it was the

Sort of the Bill Gross.

It was the late nineties. Exactly. And you know, actually in retrospect, like, it's actually very, very like, idea so there's this Idealab. Yeah. This incubator created, I think, a lot of companies.

I mean, among the companies you created turned

out to be

the company that created basically the Google search model. Yeah. And this is small. As well as,

like, a

bunch of other, like, super interesting companies. So I think the good ones work better than people remember. But, yeah, and the incubators in those days went for, a 50% equity split. Right? As contrast to the Y Combinator, which is famously, like, 7%.

And so to justify the 50%, they provided your office space and

your accounting services and

your legal services and so right. Exactly. And we had been entrepreneurs, and so we just had a very different perspective on what we actually needed from our venture firms. And so we just had a very different view than the incubators And then the existing VCs just, yeah, for whatever reason, couldn't put themselves in that that hotel. I think because they hadn't been entrepreneurs.

They hadn't been customers of the VC product, so they weren't looking at it through that lens. They were looking at it from the provider. By the way, those businesses were all great businesses. So, they sort of earned the right to be arrogant in that sense.

Yeah. And I remember Bill Gross, when he was talking and I met him, it was all like, okay, I have all these ideas.

Mhmm. No. It was also that.

Right. There was that.

Go an And

you guys had come from a completely different lens you had the ideas and believed that Larry Ellison, those people had the ideas, not the financial machinery. Right? Yeah. And then, obviously, you had absorbed Ovid's playbook. Right?

So it's a very different version of a platform from an incubator.

Yeah. I mean, that's basically what we did. When we had to find a historical model for what we're doing, it turned out to be CAA, because that just mapped much more to what we had in mind because there hadn't been a precedent like that applied in the valley.

Yeah. And at that time, it was before Ovets' book came out. So that whole strategy was basically a secret. Nobody knew it. Like, you had to know Ovets to know it.

And Ovitz was very secretive. We had several conversations before we could actually get it out of him, even though he was out of CAA for many years. Was like a very secret formula he had come up with, and it was an amazing thing.

But it ended up being a genius thing to have him on your board. Like, it was a very unorthodox pick looking in from the outside, and it led to all kinds of useful connections and useful thinking. Right?

Yeah. True.

Yeah. It was controversial at the time, even amongst our own board. Won't say names, it was different to have them. We actually met him through Ron Conway, right?

Yeah, years ago.

The human router of all time.

The human router, yeah. That was a great intro from Ron. What an interesting friendship that's been. So the next thing that happened, we're gonna raise the money and we decide that we're gonna talk to the press, which was very different for VCs to actually be aggressive about that.

Usually the VCs would wanna talk to the press, and some of them had been clients, at the IPO time. So they wanted to basically have no risk. But then when the company goes public, it's like, hey, I did that. So we did it backwards, if you will.

Yeah. You're right. With nothing in hand, we just went for it. So as soon as we raised the fund, yeah, we must have had to raise the fund to do the press tour because of the Yeah. Gun so how did you think about it?

I guess it was very kinda magical from our point of view other than when Wired slammed the door in my face. But

Well, that was a useless signal. We realized, oh, we have to even the plague field here a little bit.

Yeah. That was a little bit of a problem. So tell us about that.

Yeah. The way I used to think about this when this was all working so magically is that okay. So if you read any article and you just dissect the headline, the paragraphs, like how it unfolds. And then so you take a client like you guys or a product company, go, okay, how do I fill that? How do I write that story from a reporter's point of view?

And do you actually have it? Right? And so if the story is, oh, dollars 300,000,000 and two people who have never actually done this before, that's not a great story. But we did have the column inches to fill, if you will, because you had the idea for the platform. Right?

You had been proven successful entrepreneurs. You had credibility with the core audience. Right? And taking a step back, the thing that we all decided is we're just going to aim all of our communications at the entrepreneurs, at the entrepreneurs versus the LPs. Because we have their numbers, we know how call them, and you guys got great introductions to people.

But it all needs to be very entrepreneur friendly. And so we sort of set out, we have this platform, and it's all in service of the entrepreneur who is the genius, and then hopefully the idea works. Right? And then how can we add value? And that was different enough to me, having met, like, most of all the other VCs.

And then, you know, the tall guy over here had co created the browser. So that was not a VC credential

Yeah.

But it was an incredible entrepreneur credential. Right? Like, so Yeah. Right. You know?

And then and then you the the turnaround, like, the save of all time. I mean, I I'm not so good with sports analogies, but there's there's gotta be 17 in there. Right? Like, having turned that around and then sold it to HP and like, for, like, money money Yeah. It was just spectacular.

So I think the the two people who were behind it were very entrepreneur friendly. They had really good credentials both on the tech side and a category creation side and on the sort of, like, how does one execute one of those companies? And then you had the money. And you had the money at a time

At time. Right.

When there was no money. Yeah. Right? Like, there was nobody really raising. And, like, the other people, they could just sit and wait, right, until times got better.

Yeah. And then I think, if I remember correctly, you had done it in three months, which at the time seemed very spectacular because there was no money. So I could then pitch in, like, okay, it's those two guys and edit it in three months and have you read the news? And then they have all these ideas.

Well, actually, one of the funny things that happened while we were raising money that upset Mark much more than upset me because I just thought it was weird. But we went to see an LP who we knew, and the LP walks into the meeting. And here we are, and it really kind of brought us back to raising money in general, which is a good kind of thing to go through if you're gonna be investing in companies, because you need to know what that feels like. So, we're practicing the pitch where you got it all lined up. We're like, Okay, this is a big meeting.

It's a big LP. And we go in, and the guy comes in, and he goes, Oh, I hear what you guys are doing. I think at best you could raise it in eighteen months, but it'll be very hard. But I gotta go. I'm gonna go talk to some ex NFL players.

Quote quote

To cut her ass.

To go over to Stanford. I have to talk to a roomful of NFL players on how to manage their money, and then now that their now that their NFL careers are over. Yeah. Like, that was the Wow. That was the thing that was more important than talking to us, which was a very, yeah.

That was a level setting experience.

Yeah. We were like

That was extremely motivating. Yeah. As you can tell.

It was. Mark was, like, super pissed. And I just remember going, wow. Like, that's so disrespectful. It's just like so crazy that that he would do that.

I just made a little angel investment, and, like, this entrepreneur is trying to raise money. And, like, literally, she's been told by an investor, like, they're 95, and they don't have a filter anymore. Yeah. No.

Wanna I mean, there's there's all these stories from this time, I mean, there were obviously many great VCs before us, but there we all we I mean, we went out and we basically met all the all the top VCs, you know, kind of because one of them knew what we were doing. And and, you know, I'm and a different guy, one of the VCs at the time, I remember him saying he's like, oh, yeah. Venture's a great business. Venture's like running it's like it's like going to a sushi sushi boat restaurant. It's like it's fantastic.

You just like you just in a sushi boat restaurant restaurant, is it's like like, it's it's fantastic. Fantastic. You You just sit at the counter and, like, the startups just, like, come drifting by, and you're just like, oh.

He's like, every once in

a while, you know, whenever you want, you just reach out and you just, like, pluck a piece of sushi. Remember thinking, you know what? I'm not sure that this is gonna be as hard as we thought it was gonna be.

You mean the competing part?

Competing part.

Exactly. Yeah.

It was

very formative in how we thought about competing. We were like and still to this day, when we think about the culture of the firm, it's like, don't be that.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Don't be Mr. Smarty Pants sitting in your Sandhill Road office waiting for the sushi boat to come by.

Like, can do that. And yet I mean, look. Yeah. Maybe the competition isn't hard, but it felt like to me when I was at the out on the Outcast side, it felt like to me the top five firms never changed.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Like, ever changed. Right? Yep. And you guys didn't you guys hadn't peeled off from a VC firm, and therefore, didn't have a track. I mean, had made some angel investments, but, like, basically, not so much, not to be insulting.

But, We hadn't been professionally. Yeah.

So The angel fund was, what, like, $2,000,000?

Yeah. We hadn't yeah. And we had we had no training. We did.

And and then, you know, the the all like, there are exceptions, but all the important companies, they're just like the top five firms invest. So, like, the conundrum was like, okay. How did you break into that list without the substance? Right? Just just with the ideas.

One more story from the Yeah. Yeah. Period. And this this is one I love to tell the LPs. Another guy said, oh, he's like LPs.

It's a good thing to tell the competitor.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like and he said and he said the key is I he said, realized after a long career, realized the key is you wanna treat the LPs like mushrooms. Yeah.

Like mushrooms. Like mushrooms. And they were like magic mushrooms? What the

fuck are you talking about?

So they treat mushrooms as you put you put them in a cardboard box, you put the lid of the cardboard box, and you put it under your bed for two years. And then you don't take the box out until the next time you need to raise money.

Wow.

That's so much.

It was so funny because the whole time we're thinking, wow, we're coming out of running a public company. We're meeting with investors who are shorting our stock. And these guys have very nice universities. They're just super pleasant to talk to when we went out there. They always work.

Interesting things to say. Was just so I was like, wow, you guys are living in a weird perceptive One

of the surprising things I to me had not ever met LPs because I wasn't on that side of the business. But like, it's a really great community. And a lot of them are super, super mission driven. Like, you talk to Russ, like, how how they what they do with their proceeds. Right?

Like, they're they're not financiers. They're they're just they're very cool people.

Yeah. Yeah. They're very long time horizons.

Yes. And very patient.

Very devoted to their institutions. Very smart. I mean, they they spend all their time thinking about, right, all these topics. Have incredible discussions. Great investors.

And very patient and want to understand the strategy, care about the strategy, plan to be in it a long time with us, all that kind of thing. But yeah, it was just very interesting.

Was Well, goes by the stories because it is so indicative of so many of these things. Are certain industries at certain times where they just get wedged. They get locked into Mhmm. And and and, you know, the most uncomfortable thing in the world is to, like, break the pattern. Right.

Right? And if you don't have to, know, if you don't have to, you don't.

And if you think of it as a sushi situation nor a mushroom situation Nice. Why would you ever do marketing?

Right. Exactly. They're the whole

would you ever

box cartel.

Some mystique. Right. Some, like, mystical Yeah. Yeah.

Fairy Yeah. Whatever you tell is

is way better Yeah.

That's right.

If there's no pressures on it. Right?

Yeah, no, it was a very good strategy, which is why we went out with the marketing. Then of course, so we do the press tour and you get Mark on the cover of Fortune, which was, was amazing to me because we had been running a company all these years, and I remember you saying, do you wanna be on the cover of Fortune, Forbes, or Businessweek? And I was like And this is what

my question

was like. Where you

get a choice.

Yeah, this is like, yeah, in the, I don't know, Vatican Museum or something. It's just like the most important thing you can possibly

Yeah, those In those days, those magazines, particularly the covers, were incredibly important and tough to get. And then the thing that really blew my mind was I said Fortune, and then you got Mark on the cover of Fortune.

Were you lying or something?

Nobody was gonna put

me on the cover of anything in those days.

No, but you got to be on the cover of Fortune when you did your book.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No.

I did. I did. That that we had to make me famous first. Yeah.

Look. The thing is you you never get what you don't ask for. Right? And then it it's it's a comp like, at the time, the publications mattered, really. Now it's just the writer who matters.

And then also now they're downstream from the entire Internet. Like, they come in at the end, basically. But Kevin Maney was a really good writer. He had had a really strong track record. Like, you you know, followed him forever, and he he would write substantive curiosity driven stories.

Right? He was great. The worst part about that whole thing was the damn photo shoot. That was Marc Haidt's. And and I I know I remember when you when you did that finger thing, I want you.

Was like, that's gonna be it. Like, this is just not even a question, but that was the worst part about it.

Yeah. Yeah. It was good. It was a scary picture. So it was good.

It was some fun. But that kind of set off kind of really positioning us. At that point, we knew we weren't going to be friendly with industry. So we were not only not gonna be in the cartel, we were gonna be against the cartel because they hated that cover story. Oh my God.

I mean, they went bananas. They called every LP. They're like, these guys, they're egomaniacs. Look at them on the cover of the magazine. That's not supposed to be him.

That's supposed to be the entrepreneur. What the hell? I mean, they just lost

We a didn't have any entrepreneurs at the time, to be honest. No. That's bananas. I think that comes from them viewing having to do any of those kinds of outbound activities as beneath them and kind of unseemly. And here we were like, unashamed about, like, advertising ourselves and our wares, if you will.

Right? So I was kinda like, what? We're doing what now?

And it

worked, I think. And I think it got sort of I think that but, like, mostly, I think the writing got us in with the entrepreneurs. Mhmm. Because, like, I I remember I think it was you, Mark, told me that an entrepreneur said, like, I kinda feel like I know you guys a little bit. Yeah.

Right?

We have not even met you yet.

Yeah. They hadn't been in our offices. They hadn't met anybody, but they had some idea of, like, who are these people and what do they care about. And then from then on, every time a GP would come on board, we're like, okay. What do you wanna invest in?

Therefore, we're going to write about these things. Yeah. Because that that is becomes the magnet for the entrepreneurs in that corner of the Internet or AI infrastructure, whatever it is. Right? Yeah.

And I think that was really powerful, particularly with the entrepreneurs. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of one in those days, VC was like a big secret.

Secret.

And then actually building companies was a big secret. Yes. And so just kind of talking about it was a big differentiator.

What you would learn, right, when you would because you'd hear those entrepreneurs, you'd hear all these horror stories, you know, from other entrepreneurs of like things that have gone wrong in the relationship with the VC and all the problems. But you didn't know, like, if you didn't know who many people were when you walk in the door, like who do you trust? How are they gonna behave under pressure? You know, what they gonna do? And so, I mean, yeah, like, it's a great so if you can get away with having nobody know who you are and still, you know, be be on top of the industry, it's great.

But, like, if somebody actually does, you know, does it the other way, it's it causes a permanent change, which is I think what we catalyzed.

Yeah. It does. And to me, I don't know the latest numbers, the blog posts that you would write or the other GPs would write that are sort of timeless. I remember the good product manager, bio founder, like, is one of the most successful blog posts. You know how many blog posts the firm has put out?

Like, a gajillion. Right? Yeah. But, like, the ones that have depth that the entrepreneurs can, like, take something from and that is somewhat timeless, way more important than are we in a bubble or are we not in a bubble? And that was kind of fun, and that was like chatter.

But the substantive pieces on how do I construct a company? How do I manage a person? How do I think about promotions? All that kind of stuff. I think that was really valuable to the entrepreneurs.

And I think it also showed our LPs, okay, they actually are very passionate about all the details of the stuff that they invest in.

That was one of the interesting things is the LPs were reading all

the content.

I mean, is so different than a public market investor, just say. Not only did they read the content, but we have many LPs that Reddit would call up, say, hey, in managing my little organization, this is what I'm running into and so forth. So, they're real partners in a way that, yeah, that's been probably one of the best parts of the firm is to get to have investors like that.

Yeah. We did one incredibly controversial blog, as it turns out. A few LPs really hated the headline. It it was in the BioHealth team, and it said fuck cancer, which I thought wasn't very controversial. LPs are so nice.

They were like, did you have to put it that way? I mean, there are better ways to put this. I'm like, alright. Fuck. Screw cancer.

Right.

Yes. For the record, we're very anticancer.

Yeah. We're very anticancer. We are. Yes.

And we're we're and we're willing to say so.

But they're they deeply care about, like, that we put out, which I think is quite flattering even even though they may hate some of

So one of the things in the early days that I wanted to ask you about is because we came out and because we caused that reaction with the other VCs, I kind of felt like maybe I took it too far in terms of just the VC competitiveness and the anti VC stuff. Like, we really went hard in in the early days.

Like, we

were Since you brought this up. Over the line. Yeah. So since you brought this up, you have to you have to your your thing with, was it the Sara Lacey? Oh, yeah.

The peak of this was your your peak moment of this was in the Sara Lacey thing. Okay.

Have to refresh my memory.

Okay. So remember Sara Lacey, at her peak by by the way, she was a great great journalist. And then she had this thing, Panda Daily, that she started, and then she had these big events. And I spoke at the event. And she said to me, and it just popped out, she said, kind of like have a lot of conflict with the other VCs.

And I said, Well, I said, I come from enterprise software. And so like when I see another VC coming at me, and I quoted little Wayne with the peace sign, all I see is the trigger and the middle finger.

So my answer was going to be that. Like, you have an inner enterprise sales dude in you. And like think when it comes to other firms, is horseshit because we co invest we don't actually compete all that much.

No. No. No. No. We should be partnering.

But, basically, your filter is like, you're gonna get the deal or I'm gonna get the deal. You die or I die. It's like that's that's sort of the the thing that happens to you in any sort of competitive situation. And Yep. You got help if you're in the way of that.

So Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think we overdid it because, like I said, like, you guys have joined board seats.

Oh, yeah.

You know? You you will we will our teams will call people and it's like, hey. We've got this company. Would you like to do follow on investment? All that stuff.

Here you are pissing them off. Emily caused a lot of

I caused a lot of antagonism between us and the other firms in those days, which I think we've you know, at this point, like, we're more friendly. Think more friendlier.

And they're not exactly shrinking ballots themselves. You know, they're

Also, also,

also true. Also true.

The reason of the occasion.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I think I think we're past that.

Maybe. Maybe now.

Yeah. I think we're a bunch more user friendly now for sure in terms of our many VC partners that we have. So then tell us, one of the big pieces that came out was when Mark wrote Software is Eating the World. And how that came about was very interesting because it was a really busy time for us. It was like, what, 2011?

So it was very I think we had just raised a second fund maybe.

And the way it came about was entirely random, if you will. So at the time, there was a guy you know, The Economist has these reporters and they send them to new regions and new beats like, twenty five years, and they go from Hong Kong to Silicon Valley, whatever. At the time, there was a guy called Martin Giles. Very And she was covering

nice guy.

Yes. Very nice guy. Great guy. And he would cover Silicon Valley. He was British.

And every so often, I forget what the cadence is, they do a special report. And they were doing a special report on the state of tech and where it was going. And we were sitting, remember my first office was at this office? It was I think it was next door.

Yeah. That's right.

It was like we the three of us were sitting there, and Martin is visiting, and he's asking all these questions. And Michael's like, well, it's basically like software's eating the world. And then he explains the whole thing. And I'm like, this is really interesting. And I was like, we should write this down.

And Mark's like, sure. Maybe later. No. No. No.

And then I placed it with this guy, Ryan, I forget his last name, at The Wall Street Journal. And he's like, if I had an op ed like that, would you run it? And he's like, yeah. Sure. I would run it.

And then Mark wrote it when when you could schedule things. Yeah. And Mark wrote exactly one draft, and it's still that same draft. I'm sure you're torturing yourself because you would change all kinds of things, this and that and the other. And then just for kicks, to bookend that story, when you wrote was it It's Time to Build?

To Build.

Yeah. Wrote It's Time to Build. Like, you caved for a minute. So I'm like, alright. We'll place it.

Maybe we'll place it. Yeah. And nobody took it. Nobody. Oh, yeah.

That's right. That's true. Ryan, who has since gone on to bigger and better things. I'm like, Ryan, can I ask you hypothetical, that thing? Like, if I like, you've been at the journal, and it's like, of course.

Like, it's a joke. That's not even a question. But times had changed, so nobody ran it.

Well, good thing we We had

a good audience at the time. I think forget. Don't wanna malign people, but somebody said, I think it was a it may have been the Feet. Somebody said, it's angry. And I'm like, you know, we're in a pandemic.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is And we don't we're wearing Yeah.

That was the yeah. The the the whole point of it was just that what was actually happening in the pandemic with literally inability to get, like, surgical gowns for first responders, was the catalyst for it.

Yeah. Interesting. They read angry, and I was like,

Software is eating the world is probably more famous, but I'd say time to build is more influential, in that people read software is eating the world, and then they didn't do anything. They were like, wow, that's very interesting, and then that was it. But with Time to Build, the number of people in Washington and the entrepreneurial community and so forth that are like, yeah, we're taking this. This is the blueprint. We're moving on it.

I mean, in a way, the whole abundance movement on the Democratic Party came off

Which of is a great development, I think.

A great development. Yeah.

But I think the I have a theory on why that is. Software's eating the world to our people, our community, duh. Hello that's happening. And they were all building against it. They didn't need to read the thing.

And the people who needed to do something were going to get flattened by the software eating the world movement. And they didn't know what to do. Like, how do you retool into Remember all the car companies that came to visit us, right? And you take them through autonomous, and does the brand even matter and whatever? It just did not register.

They weren't going to become a software company. Therefore, nobody who needed to do something with it did. Because it's just rather difficult.

Yeah, it sounds like one of the very interesting things that we've learned as a firm is how unusual it is for a company that's been around a long time and where the founders are no longer there to change anything. Anything, yeah. Yeah. Even in like, I mean, it's been a huge blessing for us in venture capital in that many of the firms that were extremely powerful when we started just never changed. They're exactly as they were.

It's almost like frozen in time. It reminds me if you've ever been to Havana in Cuba, it's frozen in time. It's all 1959. With cars cars and everything, everything, it's it's It's like just frozen. Whole industries freeze like that.

The auto industry for sure did.

Did

And you see You know, Elon was came along for what? How how long when did he start Tesla? Early two thousands and, you know, had been going and going and going. And then, like, when the car comes out and is awesome, everybody is just, sitting there going, what do we do?

Who do do? I mean, look. I just saw this on X, I think. Like, the layoff numbers from the German car companies, my home country. Like, every sixth job in Germany is somehow related to the auto industry.

Yeah.

It's a disaster. Yeah. But they're not going like, the a genius software engineer is not going to they're gonna wanna work for Elon Musk. Like, you can say about Elon Musk whatever you want. But, like, a suave, well manicured executive from the car industry is not really a talent magnet for software engineers.

Right? And

then one of the things that happened early was I got a note from Harper Collins saying that

I And should write a

I did not have time to write a book.

You made it.

Yeah. You thought, well, you thought it was a good idea to write the book. Why did you think it was a guy? I guess it seemed, one, it seemed crazy because the blog was doing so well. So aren't books passe?

At least to us. And then, and then I didn't have time. So, why did you think that made sense? Guess it wasn't something that VCs did either, right?

Well, VCs I do never wrote think we needed to even out the brand a little bit because otherwise, any entrepreneur with leverage was gonna go like, well, I want him to be on my board. Right? And that was just going to get successively worse with every other GP. So that was like, we needed a plan for everybody. Right?

And then you were the other at the time.

The

other. I thought the book was good because it

And Andreessen Other.

There is exactly which is why you wanted to call it Horowitz and Drissen,

I remember, which It does sound Horowitz and Drissen is a cool sounding name. It sounds a little law firm ish, though. And then you could never A16z would like H16n is not nearly as

good to No. Be as It quick is good the way it is. I do still think there is value in a book of like having a definitive theory on something. I think with all the bloggers and all the expos and all that, I think there is value. People read books.

People consume books. Long form podcasts is sort of a different version of the same flavor. But more importantly, I thought you had something to say. The actual theory of how one builds a company and all the stuff that goes sideways. And as you always said, most books, like whoever the guy was from this and that, GE, whatever, they were all kind of fancy resumes and victory labs.

They weren't really where you could learn something, particularly for our audience that like, it's so rough and tumble to be in a startup and to be in the trenches and to lose the deal and, like, not be able to raise the money, and you have this magical person walk out the door, all that kind of stuff. So having an honest book that I think I was expecting you to write, I thought was really valuable. And then the little hack that we had is you had written all the blog posts. And so then it was

I have a little built in audience.

And then it's telling the dramatic story of what went down, including with Felicia being sick and all of that. That then made the book. But you kind of had the lessons in your head. And I actually think that book I like the title. I've been living by What You Do Is Who You Are forever.

I like that title better, but I think this is a more important book, and it's way more usable for people.

It's much more broad based. I think the What You Do Is Who You Are is actually more useful for me. And when I talk to Ted Sarandos or somebody like that, they're like, Oh yeah, that's a book I like. But you have to run a very large organization. And you have to have gotten beyond the things that The hard thing about hard things to start to think about, okay, how do you program the culture of the whole organization and this kind

of thing. But I remember the Navy

Too abstract.

Wanting to wanting to buy the book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think people actually think it's much more applicable than you might think.

Well oh, no. No. It it so it's very the hard thing about hard things, I would say, in retrospect, was very broadly applicable. Like, pastors bought it and, people you'd never think. To me, everything, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is easy, whereas I had to think a lot more about what you do is who you are.

But it's one of those things. It's like how many people need to learn algebra versus quantum physics? It's a thing like that.

Yeah. That's a good point. No, I actually thought the book was valuable to your brand and a good equalizer. And also, I think it raised the ambition. We then hired new GPs, it was just understood that they were going to be out in the world.

And then it was a matter for me, for my team to go, okay, so what are your thoughts? Hopefully you have some. Right? And then what are you good at? And then matching the format.

Not everybody should write a book, right? And not everybody should do podcasts. Some people are good with decks and all of that. But like it was a given that the bar is high.

Well, that's such a good point because one of the things that we always get asked because Grace did such a nice job of marketing the book is, well, how do you market your book? And I'm like, well, look, you can do There's well known marketing ideas and so forth, and you can do a lot of things, and you can get yourself even on the bestseller list, but then the book's gonna disappear unless it's a great book. It has to be good. That's the fundamental thing. And so if you don't write something that's good, if you're completely focused on how you promote it before you've written it, that's probably what

I'd That's backwards. You have to actually believe that you have an idea that's worth putting a book like, a book has to stand the test of time. You know what mean? It has to be an actual

thing Well, versus a so many people in business take a blog post idea, a blog post length idea, and they try and turn it into a book.

Some And things are just a snack.

Yeah, they're snacks. And snacks should be snacks, yeah.

Exactly. Yeah, I know. I thought the book served you well, and I think it made everybody in the firm go like, oh. Like, I don't know that Andrew would he have thought automatically walking in here as like, well, maybe I should write a book.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Like and it just made it open up the thinking, I think, for everybody else.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, a good thing about You also learn a lot when you write a book. I think everybody's set the standard of, you can't just have an idea here. You have to be able to really think it through, be able to articulate it, be able to write it, be able to publish it.

And otherwise, your idea didn't count. And that, I think, has helped us a lot as a negotiation.

Yeah, mean, at Katherine Boyle. I mean, she came in with the pitch of, If I work here, I'm gonna do American dynamism, and here's what that is. And she also happens to be a gifted communicator. Mhmm. And now it's you know, it was a deck.

Now it's a movement and a fund. Yeah. And, like, it's helping really change the way people think about defense tech. It's all of a sudden allowed. Yep.

Remember back in the day Yep. Diane Green was outset from Google for, like, a very innocent contract to look at pictures. I mean, Right? Yep. And that, like and Catherine played a re is playing a really big role in turning that around.

Right? And that's an idea.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. No.

For sure. I is you know, I hadn't actually thought about it that much, but it's a very important part. It's how, like, marketing our original marketing ideas turned into kind of a very important cultural point

of

the firm, which is like this is how we work, this is how we think.

Mean, it was so overdone. Like, a new person comes in. First thing they wanna do is meet with marketing. I'm like, do you know where you're sitting? And then I was like, I literally have had people say, like, you should really think about me.

Like, you should think about Marc Andreessen. And I was like, okay. What are your thoughts?

I I know exactly who that was, but I'm not

gonna say my name. No. No. And it's all well intentioned. But, like, you do you do have to test the actual idea.

Right? Like Yeah. Is that a snack? Is that a book? Is it just a conversation?

Like, they need to be calibrated properly. Right? And and sometimes young people who are incredibly ambitious, that was me, still is. Like, you just wanna go right for the win, but you need to make sure you have the goods to do it.

Yeah. Well, kinda gets into a conversation Mark and I have been having, which is, you know, the marketing of companies has changed so much because you're really now marketing a person. And that's a lot what we did at the firm now because the firm had our name. It was a natural.

Also, we don't have product.

No.

Yeah. And we didn't have product.

We have people and ideas.

That's extended now to, is it Tesla or is it Elon? Is it Palantir or is it Alex? And in order to be able to do that, you can be an extremely accomplished person who is not interesting. Like, those don't necessarily go together.

And I think that's a little bit unfair from the press, or, like, it creates this perception that Silicon Valley is staffed entirely with weirdos.

Right. Yeah.

They're more interesting to write about.

Yep.

Somebody who goes to work every day and drives an Audi and is a good father and drops kid off at school, that's all nice. Like, I'll I'll pick on someone. Right? Like Dylan Field. Yeah.

Most amazing guy. Built an incredible company. Mhmm. I hosted dinners with him. He's just normal.

Yep. Well adjusted. The weirdest thing about him is he did the Thiel fellowship.

Mhmm. Yeah.

But, like, those don't get written up as much. Yep. The weirdos like, the weirder, the better. Right? Like and and it it's gotten to an extreme where it's like, this is actually not reflecting Silicon Valley.

It's just the the a slice of it.

Well, it's an interesting marketing conundrum, though

It is.

Because you can't market a company if you don't have a character.

No. Look, there used to be companies and it was fine where all you do is you report your financial results, you announce your new products. And that kinda started to end with Steve Jobs because it was a show.

Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

That's right. He made you want a product. That's right. And it became it's almost like politics adjacent. Like, you you can't vote for a party.

You're voting for a person.

Right.

Yeah. And if you have the company but not a character or or a sense of character, it just doesn't work. And then, you know, the the corporate x accounts and all of that, those are all fine. And like but, like, at the end of the day, it's the identity of the person. And do they actually sound like, does the tweet sound like Mark?

Right? Like, does the LinkedIn post sound like DG or whatever it is? Right? Like, you cannot disconnect it anymore.

Right.

And that places a premium on people who are willing to play character or be character. I'm not sure that's always the healthiest thing for a company at every in at every stage, right, or in every situation. Like, there are some downsides to it, but the upside beats the downside, like, 10 to one or whatever the right number.

Well, it it requires a lot of discipline, I think, from the founder because you it turns you into this mini celebrity. And so as a mini celebrity, can you be out there and not act like an actual celebrity? Because those aren't great organizational dynamics, just having been around many celebrities.

Although And the thing is

Nas notwithstanding, he's a very regular person

and

that kind

of thing. Yeah. He's surprising.

But he's very surprising. He's very unusual. But he also

he has an amazing product. Yeah. It's hard to argue with.

So, like, being able to be like this interesting character on the outside and then come in and, be Well, just be somebody who you can have an actual conversation with where you can get information and not be this thing that you put yourself on a pedestal to the point where people won't tell you anything, and that kind of stuff is very destructive in a company.

Yeah, I think there's some there's some downside along those lines. And then the other part is, like, you can't really fake that stuff. If if you have a public persona and it's not real and it's all manicured, like, does does not work. It it won't work over time. Right?

So you kinda have to lean like, this is what I was trying to do is lean into, like, who is this person? And what are they good at that they can sustain over time? Like, you make anybody do a TED Talk if you really, really are hell bent on doing it. But, like, that's not an actual marketing campaign. Yeah.

That that's not a personal brand. You have to really figure out, okay, who is this person? What are their dynamics? What are their talents that they can actually be? Not act, but, like, actually be.

Right? I think it's hard to actually be a character and a TED Talk. You know, like, the people who do TED Talks aren't characters and vice versa. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, TED Talk

thing never done a TED Talk. Like, I've I've never done a TED Talk either. Think it's hard to do both. Yeah.

I've never watched a TED Talk.

You've never watched a TED Talk?

I've never watched

a TED Talk. Oh, man.

Not my

life. You're missing out on a very beautifully packaged it's almost That half

is exactly my point. TED Talks are these very manicured things that work for a minute. But anybody who's seen so many TED Talks is like, this is all the same. It's all the exact same plastic. Or maybe you think it's platinum, but it's exact same formulaic thing.

That's not an actual brand. That's maybe an event that if you really care about it, like, some people really care about that shit, but, like, that's not actually who you are.

They they read they read to me as religious sermons, and I I have an aversion to fake religions. They're all morale they're all my little morality. Yeah. They've they've all they've all got a message.

And there's

It's like the very special episodes of TV shows in the nineteen seventies. They're the very special episodes where you, like, learn about,

you know

Very special happy days.

You learn about drug addiction or yeah.

Exactly. Right? But I'm in marketing, and I find them saccharine. Like, they're just too they're just too perfect in a way. Right?

And and and they train you like crazy, and then, you know, they're the teams that peel off of Ted, and then they help executives be great.

Yeah.

And you can just I've talked to them, and I'm like, like, you know, you've been invited to to podcasts that are produced that way, and they literally are trying to script what you're going to say. And I'm like, we don't do that.

Package it the same person specifically for me. And that's why that by the way, that's why I'm saying that's why I'm I'm riffing it a little bit is because, like, my my instincts are all to the exact opposite of

Yeah. That

as you know, which is like of the authenticity and rawness.

Well, you could do a TED Talk. I think you'd be fine at it, but it's actually not you. And therefore, it wouldn't accrue to He the

could not do a TED Talk because in order to do a TED Talk, they have to review what you're gonna say. Yeah. That's true. They have to edit it. And there's no chance.

No. What I'm saying is if he decided he wanted to If

I had something Mark writes, I take one sentence and I give one word out. And then that's as much as he likes to be edited.

This is why I find it so hilarious when send around when you used to do that. When you send around the blog posts and then everybody is so eager to edit them, and I'm like, this is such a waste of time. This is like a business. Not you. It's it's like not you.

So

That actually reminds me of my favorite thing that Larry David said. The rule on Seinfeld was no hugs and no lessons.

No hugs and Exactly. That's right. That's That's right. And they're very special out this way. And that's that show what so distinctive is they never did that.

They never they never there was never it was never Maudlin or Sacra. Never.

Right. It was like almost

an easy in

that way. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a very good show.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's kinda the opposite of 10. Yeah. And look.

That is great. Like, I'm I'm not trying to malign it, but it's A lot

of people like it.

It's it's very manufactured, and I don't think that's an actual brand as a person, you can't be that brand.

Yeah. The thing that works is well, then, you know, a lot of this has to do with the shifting technological environment, media environment, but the thing that works in this media environment, much more much more authenticity and transparency.

Think about it if you look at, like, used

to be Authenticity and originality.

Right? The Interestingness. Yeah.

Which is interesting because the old world, like, our media training in the old world was all, like, much is the opposite of conformist stand message.

Discipline discipline discipline. Discipline. Yeah.

Careful And that's out the window. And and the thing that I think what's interesting to media, and that's what what media has to figure out is they used to set the tone Right. Mhmm. And now they're at the very end.

Right.

At the very end of all the stuff that's been said on Twitter or on Yeah. Reddit or Tumblr or all like, it eventually spills out, and then media is like, oh, what is this thing?

Yeah. Well, comment on the Rogan show.

But it's at the very end. And for media, it must be total out of body experience where it's like, wait. I was the beginning. When you were unveiling something, that's where you would go. Yeah.

Right? And now you can go any freaking place that, like, you have 50,000 choices. Right? And then it gets enough steam, and then it gets reviewed by media almost. Right?

It's just that the order has flipped completely.

It makes it very tricky to speak to the media because when they're on that end and they have to turn you into news Mhmm. Anything you use you say can and will be used against you. Yep. You know?

It's a

very Miranda type world.

My new my new version my new version of this, my the new test I think is happening is what we might call the GPT test, which is, okay, if if what somebody says is indistinguishable from chat GPT output, like, not gonna make it.

Yep. Yeah.

Right? And and and then the more advanced version of test is, like, is it indistinguishable from, like, chat GPT 3.5? Yeah. Right. Which is, like, nothing which is, like, the earlier version that sounds good.

And the number of public figures in various domains who continue to speak in public or put out crafted, you know, whatever. Mhmm. And literally, you're just like, this is indistinguishable from what the LLM could do. Or or by the way, columnists, people write column, you columns for a living. Yeah.

Like, there's a lot of people who don't pass that test. And and so and and I just say that of, like, there there's gonna be a big big turnover there. And then and then and then it begs the important question, like, okay. What does it take to pass that test? Right.

Right? Like, how many

people It's changing all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. Also true. Right. Exactly.

But, like, who who is actually I had this a version of this conversation with Tyler Cohen one time. So Tyler Cohen and his and his partner Alex have been blogging daily for over twenty years on martial revolution, which is amazing. They don't

do a great job.

And then they're leaders of, like, these, you know, intellectual movement, and they're incredibly important, influential, and, like, all these things. And they're in all these rooms that they you know, he they they will say this. Like, it's put them in all these incredibly important rooms and and all these things. And I was like, wow. It's worked so great for you guys.

It's like, why don't, you know, why don't more people do this? And and Tyler just, like, laughs. He's like, Mark, how many people have something to say every day?

Yeah. That's a lot of talking. Right. Like Well

Genuinely, like, how many people have that? And then, you know, every day for twenty years is, like, maybe the highest bar. But how many people have, you know, three interesting things to say or one interesting thing to say?

But this is where this is my beef with some of these platforms. Or actually, it's the humans. It's not the platforms. It's it's always the humans. Right?

We're like, does every thought that you have Right. Need to go on x or wherever it needs to go? I would beg to differ. But, like, a lot of people

Right. But but, yeah, most people don't.

But, like, most most people don't, and I sort of feel like they would be better

every day don't always. Yeah.

No. They

would be better served to, like, pop up when Yeah. When they have a thought or or contribute something to the conversation that's I don't know. I just don't think that everybody has interesting things to say every day.

Oh,

100%. Yes. If I look at x, I see proof. Well, the reason

I go through this is because my my theory at least is the nature of leadership has changed. Because of everything you you guys have discussed, the nature of leadership is changing, and people who the the leaders who have very a large number of interesting things to say and know how to communicate it are gonna do disproportionately well in the years ahead. And the leaders who don't, even if they're professionally skilled, I think are gonna have a harder and harder time, and their companies are gonna have a harder and harder time because it's just the old the old methods are just not working as well anymore.

No. Particularly on the marketing front. Yeah. Yeah. Know, but people are changing.

It's been interesting to watch our friend Mark Zuckerberg kind of changed his public persona so So much, so

great.

Yeah. He's kind of, I mean running a gigantic social media company. You would think he would figure it out, it's still very difficult to do.

And it actually mapped to an internal Like he himself changed. It wasn't like a synthetically generated presence. Everything of like Mark Zuckerberg in public now is 100% wholly authentic.

He used to try to calculate what he was gonna say through the lens of all his many, many constituents. And now he's just saying what he thinks.

Yeah. People, and as you know, he was trained to do that.

He received

the A plus grade version of that training from people who were world class at that. Right. Yeah. And it worked for a while, and then the environment

But I also think he whoever was advised like, overdid it. I remember being in your office, and I was like, that man has the wrong beer somewhere. It's a scandal. Because it was so perfect.

It's great deal. Yeah.

And it was like, shell out a little bit.

Well, you know what

it was. And then he did now that he's doing the like, this is me. Deal with it. It's working great.

And, again, the people who trained yeah. People who trained him are like super geniuses, and they're they're fantastic. But they they themselves were trained in what I would describe as, like, nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties style politics. They came out of they there's

Oh, politics and political.

They came out of a political background, right, which is an even more intense version of everything that we're talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. That's true.

So they got trained they they got trained the way politicians got trained in the nineteen nineties, which was extremely scripted and controlled. Right. Maximally so. Yeah. And so and then just the the yep.

As we've just like, just this massive shift in the environment since then has basically rendered I mean, you I mean, you see this playing out.

I think he's done a great job.

All over the world. Right? Which is this is also everything we're talking about is also playing out politically. Yes. And maybe even more so politically.

Yeah. And it's even, like like, the subtle things have been the most interesting to me. So he used to be known for, like he's always wearing a hoodie, which was the most conformist thing in the world in Silicon Valley. Right? And now, like, he's got, like, the gold chains and this hair all over the you know?

And and it's kind of like he's he's expressing himself, you know, on all fronts. Yep. It's

now now it all matches. But I still It's great to kinda see him flower like that and be able to, like, fully express himself. Yeah.

I think it's great. And spectacular.

Still, people are like, well, what's with the gold chains? I'm like

He likes them.

Yeah. Well, here's an executive. I think

the the main one that he wears has a real it's important just with his faith.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a guy who runs a ginormous company that's in the spotlight all the time and like, this is what you're picking on?

Yeah. Also true.

I was like, hello?

Also true.

But it's I I think when people from the old world see that, it makes them very uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Right? One of, okay, one of the guys who was doing what we wanted him to is no longer he's off the lead.

He's not on the program. That's right.

That's right.

Yeah. And he's liberated.

We go all the way back to when when what's his name? The found Dennis from Foursquare? He got yelled at because he went to a press meeting with a hoodie on, like, all the way at the beginning. That was

Beltran's remember that. I remember that.

Yeah. He was like, I think and he had a banana or something like that. It was, like, apparently Right. Right. Entirely unacceptable.

Right.

Right. Yeah. It's almost makes it nostalgic.

Very interesting. So I

think company I mean, look, think all this stuff my view is all this stuff's gonna intensify. I I think every successful company in the I I think every successful company in the future is gonna need this kind of personality. They need somebody who can do this, and it's a it's a different leadership profile.

Do you think it has to be the CEO?

I I think it's really hard for it not to be. I I mean, maybe maybe.

It could be another founder,

I think.

Yeah. Yeah.

Co founder can do it.

Yeah. Co founder. For sure, if you're a consumer brand, I think it's very difficult to not have a person like that. I think if you're less marketing, if you are, like if the I mean, are historically businesses that are

all I think if you're in a competitive situation, and on the other side, there's somebody who's really good at it Yeah. Yeah. It's probably if he sells security stuff.

Palantir is as enterprise, you know, government as it gets.

Oh, yeah. No. Alex is, like, fucking

is killing He's perfect for that. I imagine being a competitor to Palantir and not having an Alex. Right? Like

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even just

the stock market valuation alone, like, how can you possibly keep up?

Yeah. It's basically, can you sell? And the way you're selling today is entirely different.

Yep. Uh-huh.

Right? Like, it's not, you know, having features and Gartner reports. It's just like I

think it's great. I think it's I I I think it's I think it's leading to a more honest world. Like, more transparent, more authentic, more honest, more interesting things being discussed, more interesting issues getting surfaced, people actually getting to know each other.

Yeah. It's a much less sanitized world.

Yeah. That's right. That's right. And, of course, that that it's it's uncomfortable because if you're used to Yeah. If you're used to the the wall you know, the wall, as I say, walled garden, if you're used to a sanitized environment, if you're used to Disneyland, entering the real world is traumatic.

Very traumatic. But, like, we do live in the real world. Right? Yeah.

And And as always, it's the transition that's the toughest part. Right. It's like, this is all different now. Right? And and and I think we're in a really big transition.

Yep. And the transition is transitioning. Yes. It's sort of like That's right.

And we're still in middle of it. Like, it's not over Yeah.

Yeah. No. It's kinda it's definitely gonna keep moving. Yeah.

Alright. Yeah. Well, we're gonna keep going. Yep.

Yeah. Awesome. Fantastic. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us on the Market Ben Show. This has been a lot of fun.

Thanks. You too.

Hope you enjoyed it.