Ben & Marc: Why Everything Is About to Get 10x Bigger

22:02Like you've changed one of the major variables and you can't do that. And, you know, and then you can call that the leap of faith or whatever, but it's like, okay, if you make the change in the supply side, then all of a sudden the market gets 10 or 100 or 1 ,000 times larger. Like you can almost never validate that with math at the time of the investment, but that's the thing that makes the outperformers, you know, really go. And I just think like, as Ben and I kind of go through our careers, we just see more and more examples where the mistakes that we or others make is, oh, this must be, you know, the market for Uber and Lyft must be the market for taxi cabs, right?

22:32Or, you know, the market, yeah. Or the market for cloud software must be the same as the market for on-prem software, right? Or the market, by the way. Or the market for GPUs must be the market for people who like to play games. Yes, exactly. And we just keep seeing example after example after example where the significant enough technology change, product change on the supply side unlocks much larger markets. And I think that's going to be, I mean, I think frankly, that's going to be like the single dominant trend in investing for like the next 30 years. I think that's just going to like telescope way out.

23:01The AI thing is so interesting, right? Because from a technology perspective, it feels like you can build products pretty immediately that are going to win. And then A16Z starts to make a lot more sense in that context where it's like all of these other things. It's how do you do go to market? How do you do policy? Like, how do you set the conditions for the actual best technology to win as quickly as possible? Like, how do you think about all the different things that you do there? And is that the right way to think about it? Like, the best technology should win and the platform is there to make sure that that happens.

23:29You know, the way we always thought about the firm was what can a partner do for an entrepreneur that will not only help them ensure their success, but help them kind of build the company they want to build and the way they want to build it with the people they want to build it with and the culture that they are proud of. And to do that, there's many, many pieces. And a lot of it, you know, some of it is just like very fundamental. Like, can you do your business in the United States of America? Can you do it in the world? And so that's where the policy comes in. It's just like a very basic question.

24:07And look, governments have a huge interest in technology these days. So like it's a necessary one. A lot of the other things come down to, you know, how do you go from being an inventor to being a competent CEO? And that really is a confidence game, for lack of a better word. And that, you know, it's very difficult to run an organization when you don't know what you're doing, which nobody does when they're an inventor. and you get tremendous amount of advice, and advice that's often extremely bad and almost the opposite of what you should be doing. And there are very few, like the people who've actually built things don't have time to talk to.

24:49They're often away building things. So you get these like advisors and Silicon Valley people who tell you how to run your company, who to hire, this and that and the other. And then those things turn out to be wrong and you get to this confidence spiral. And so we, you know, the whole firm is built to put you in a kind of a virtuous confidence cycle as opposed to a vicious confidence cycle. And that means like, oh, I need to call somebody who's hard to get to, like an important CEO, or like, you know, I've got to recruit a top-end engineer, or I have to figure out how to market my product, or I have to get to somebody important in the government.

25:29If I can do that, my confidence builds. If I can't do that, my confidence sinks. And so then, you know, once you're confident, you can make decisions faster. You can, you know, build the company more effectively. You can go for what you actually want. You can have confidence that, okay, what I want is the right thing as opposed to what somebody's whispering in my ear, you know, who is whatever, a CEO coach or a VC or this or that or the other. And so the whole firm is designed to kind of enable that inventor to become a CEO and run their own company and put their mark not just, you know, locally, but in the world by being able to kind of network to anyone.

26:12And so that's a lot of what we're about. Yeah. Yeah, and I just add the sort of macro, you know, kind of outside in-lens on that is it's just like, you know, we get to work with these, you know, super geniuses, but they're specifically, they are super geniuses at building products, building technologies. You know, to be a super genius at building technologies generally requires you to have been sitting in a lab or, you know, in front of a screen for, you know, 10 or 20 years. You know, they just, they have, they're, you know, these folks are fully capable of understanding everything about the world at large.

26:41They just haven't, they just haven't done it yet. They just haven't been out. And they haven't met all the people. They haven't dealt with all the issues in the real world. And so that leads to this kind of recurring, you know, kind of, I would say, misimpression sometimes that people have. It's just like, well, if you build the right product, you know, if you build the breakthrough, whatever XYZ widget, like it's just the world is obviously going to adopt it. Everybody's going to use it. It's just obviously going to, you know, kind of suit things. And, you know, and basically if it doesn't, the answer is the product's not good enough.

27:06And, you know, there's a little bit of truth to that. Like, obviously the better, the more breakthrough the product, you know, the more there will just be organic traction. But what virtually everybody finds, you know, up to and including Elon Musk, right? What everybody finds is the real world is just like really, really big and really, really messy, right? And there are, you know, 8 billion people out there with like opinions that are not necessarily, you know, your opinions. And, you know, many of them have a real vote as to what is going to happen with your product and with your company, you know, including whether anybody buys, you know, your thing or, you know, all of the X factors that kick in, all the different ways that people are going to come and try to cripple what you're doing.

27:43Or maybe even worse than that, just ignore you. And so there is this really big world out there. It's really complicated. It's really messy. It's not necessarily in favor of new ideas. In many cases, it really, really doesn't like them and wants to reject them. And there's real art and science, to Ben's point, to building the company around the product and the founder to be able to take the breakthrough and be able to take it successfully into the world. And as far as we can tell, as far as I can tell, like that process is getting, you know, hairier and more complicated over time. Right. It's not getting easier.

28:18It seems like it's actually getting significantly harder. And so, yeah, that's a big part of what the firm is built to do is really help founders work through that. And one of the things that Mark said in the past, which is really true, is like, look, as an inventor, you're looking for power, like a power boost. So how do I go from little old me with my invention to, like, I'm the important company in the space and the world. I can build momentum. I can get the best engineers. I can get the, you know, customers faster. And that turns into a snowball and I'm rolling downhill. and so the whole firm is designed as like a very powerful entity that you can just tap into and you know take our brand take our connections take our expertise and become extremely powerful very fast yeah and by the way this this this you know this this is the solution to the puzzle that people have had about us for a long time which is wow it seems like those guys are like you know awfully promotional you know they're they're you know they're you know they do all this marketing stuff they you know they're doing all this politics stuff you know they must be doing this for ego reasons they must really fall themselves you know this must be about you know so much shit like the whole thing and at least you know and maybe maybe maybe it's possible possible we talk too much from time to time maybe however however from the beginning the goal was to build the the purpose of building the dominant venture brand was precisely to be able to have the companies be able to borrow that at the most critical points in their development so that the companies can can kind of use our force in the world as a slingshot to basically build their own force.

29:48And I think that's worked really well. And that's why we don't, you know, shrink back on a lot of these things. Yeah, I wanted like just squeeze something in and then get right back on this conversation. Talking too much shit is so interesting, but I really love, I think the thing that impressed me the most when I started working with the crypto team was seeing never take the negative in person and like never talk shit on a technology, never talk shit on a founder, never talk shit on a company. Like, how do you even train for that? Because that really, really impressed me. Well, we train for that.

30:15We train for that. So we have a culture that is written culture that you cannot join the firm unless you sign a document, the culture document, and says you will adhere to this culture. and then you must sit through one hour with me understanding the culture. And fundamentally on that, you know, our whole point is if you want to do something larger than yourselves and make the world a better place, we are 100 % for it. And we do not care. You know, like if in the moment we think you're making a mistake or like the idea isn't good. And it doesn't matter if we invest in you or don't invest in you.

31:01We're for that. We are dream builders. We're not dream killers. We're not here to be like the analytical smarty pants who makes ourselves look smart by making somebody else look stupid. And that's just, that's fundamental to how we think about the world. So, like, anybody who's trying to push the world forward and make it better, like, whether we agree with their method or not, like, we're for it. And so we just ask you to sign up to that idea before you ever join. Catherine said that, you know, we believe in the future and bet the firm that way should actually be the number one kind of value in the culture doc.

31:42By the way, that was Mark's. You know, I did the wording, so I give myself a little credit, but that was Mark's idea. Do you think that should be number one? Do you think that is number one in practice? Do you think first class business in a first class way is? Like if you were to rewrite the doc today, what is the most important thing in the firm? Well, look, I mean, the culture document is seven things that, you know, and the culture is more than that. Every culture is more than seven ideas and kind of seven sets of behaviors. But those are the ones that all seven of them that we really expect everybody to live to.

32:19So I don't know if I rank them in that sense because they all go together. They're part of a single thing. So, you know, we believe in the future means that we believe in the people who build the future, which means we're not going to criticize them, which means, you know, we're not going to we're not going to be on the attack side of that. We're never going to attack the future. We're going to try and make, you know, there are going to be problems with how we build the future, but we're going to try and make it the best future we can. We're not going to try and live in the past. And so that you can't do that if you're attacking entrepreneurs all the time.

32:55You can't do that if you show up, you know, an hour late to meet with somebody who's trying to build a company. You can't do those kinds of things. And so every part of the culture, I think, is in support of we want to build a better future. Like that is that's why we're here. Haber, in his piece, Firm, Kind of Greater Than Fund, talks about, you know, a firm is something that tries to build a compounding competitive advantage. And he points to one thing for Apollo, one thing for Goldman. If you had to pick a thing, what are you compounding? What is the competitive advantage that you're building over time, do you think, Eric?

33:30Reputation. Mark and I talked about that from the day we started the firm. And by the way, there were times when it was like, well, we're investing an awful lot in reputation. And, you know, it's taken a while. But it is, that's what we compete on. Like when we talk to an entrepreneur and they're comparing us to another firm, we say, find an entrepreneur that's taken investment from both firms, see what they say. Like that's our answer to everything. We build reputation. Every relationship matters. Everybody who we touch, we try and touch as many people as we can, and we try and represent in the very, very best way possible to build reputation over time.

34:13And that compounds and compounds and compounds across entrepreneurs, across industries, across sectors, across, you know, everybody from, you know, people in the government to, you know, people in companies that we don't invest in. anybody who is anywhere in the world of technology, we want them to know us and we want them to think of us as the best firm to do business with. Yeah, and then that transfers, of course, that transfers from us, that transfers to the portfolio companies, right? So, which is the goal of it, which is that then as a consequence, when a company takes investment from us, now they're basically able to use our reputation to get themselves through those, you know, kind of key growth phases with potential customers and with recruits and with downstream investors and with regulators and with all these different forces in the external society.

35:06So the reputation pays off, not just for us, but it pays off in the form of what our portfolio companies are able to do as a result. So having done this for 16, 17 years, are there things about building and transferring reputation that you've learned that are not obvious? Because to me, it would almost seem that it's a battery. And if you give it to one company that messes it up, then the whole thing kind of falls apart. But actually, maybe it's like love to be super cheap. Like it just grows the more you give it. Are there other things like that that you've learned? Well, look, I do think that that's a correct insight in that, you know, one mistake is much more powerful than, you know, one good deed.

35:45And so, you know, one person being obnoxious who's in the firm or lying to an entrepreneur or doing something like that causes much more damage than you can do by doing that correctly, you know, five or ten times. Which is why you have to be so vigilant about it. Like you cannot tolerate that kind of behavior. but I think that the thing, the biggest thing that I've learned is it takes a long time to build a reputation but once you do, it's the most powerful thing. It really does compound. And just to give you an example, look, when Mark and I raised Fund One, it was a$300 million fund. I think it took about six months to raise.

36:38we had a lot of meetings. I can't count how many meetings. Some people did not treat us very well, as Trump might say. They didn't treat me well at all. Very badly. And, you know, this raise, which was$15 billion, when we actually raised the fund, I think Mark did one AMA and I did one AMA. And I don't know that I took another meeting on this fundraise. And it was done on the reputation. And so that's a heck of a change, you know. And look, a lot of – not that we don't – we talk to our investors all the time. I mean, I've been all around the world building relationships and so forth. But when we came to ask for money, it was raised entirely on the reputation.

37:30I think, Paki, I think the external environment has changed enormously. And so, you know, we've lived this, you know, as you have and many others, you know, this incredible transformation where tech both is like much, much, much larger and more central now than it was in 2009 when we started. But also, you know, the level of, let's just say, engagement on the part of the world. Tech is, you know, the level of intensity on everything from, you know, attacks, you know, criticism, you know, by the way, you know, completely justifiable questions, you know, impact on society. You know, the intensity level is, you know, I don't know, it's like a, I don't know, it's like a thousand X of what it was.

38:0316 years ago. And so I think, yeah, I think to your question, I think we've really tried to kind of rise to that on both sides. Like we're really trying to help these, you know, these companies get to levels of scale that nobody ever thought was possible before. But at the same time, we're trying to help them deal with pressures that previous generations of founders, you know, generally didn't have to deal with. Yeah. You seem like you uniquely, maybe of anybody that I know, have fun taking, you know, like engaging in these conversations. And I wrote about it a little bit in the piece, but like kind of stepping outside the situation and viewing it, I don't like, What goes on in your head in these situations?

38:33Are you having as much fun as it looks like? Does it take a toll? Every kind of taking the arrows? What does it feel like in these? Yeah, Ben, yeah. Ben will give the rational response. I would say it's, I mean, it gets emotional from time to time, right? Because you know what goes into building these things. And you know the intentions of the people building them. and you know, like, the kind of impact they have on the world. And then to just get, like, you know, and a lot of the attacks tend to be in the form of character assassinations and so forth. And now everybody thinks Mark's Jewish. You know, just so they can attack him more, it turns out people love to attack Jewish people.

39:20So I welcome him into that. But my new name, Paki, is in certain political circles as Andy Horowitz, because people think that, people think Andrew, and as swamp French as the internet, people think Andrew Horowitz is a Jewish person. Yeah. And so I now introduce myself as, I didn't have that in my Twitter bio. I did have it in my Twitter bio. My real name is Andy Horowitz, and I am Jewish, but I took it down. Yeah, but I would say mostly it's just like,

39:54It's just like an amazing thing, an amazing privilege to kind of be in the center of it all. And, you know, look, and then the responsibility that goes with it, that you have to kind of try and help drive the world to the right answer.

40:13But, like, it's—I don't know if fun is the right word, but, like, it's special. It's like we've gotten to a very special position. And I think, you know, both of us try and take it as seriously as we can. And, you know, like things happen. And we have very, very long discussions about how we should react to certain things, how we should not react to certain things, what we can take a position on, what we shouldn't take a position on. And, you know, just to have, just to be, you know, at this stage of life, to be able to be talking about that as opposed to the things that we had to talk about when we were building Netscape or Opsware, like, it's amazing.

40:56And, you know, I definitely went traded. And look, we've been criticized so much at this point that it really, it bothers, interestingly, which I never thought I'd see, it kind of bothers people inside the firm much more than it bothers Mark or me. Sure. And I am, just for the record, studying for my bar mitzvahs. Yeah. Yeah. The Hav Torah. You need to learn your Hav Torah tropes. Yeah. How do you avoid at this point becoming a big company? Like, this is becoming a big organization. How do you avoid being a big company? Google wanted to avoid that. Like, everyone wants to avoid that. How do you actually do that?

41:36Yeah, so I think a lot of that is organizational design. I mean, so if you look at the companies that didn't feel like big companies for a long time, they had very, very, very thoughtful design to the organization. And if you look at the firm, you know, the crypto group or the infra group or the, you know, the apps group or the American Dynamism group, they all feel like small companies. And they're small companies with a kind of very specific kind of support, you know, in terms of the brand, in terms of fundraising and other kinds of things. But, you know, the fundraising team is a small group.

42:18And every group is very autonomous from every other group. Like there's integration points, but they're very simple. And so, you know, for the most part, there's some that are more complicated than others. And so, you know, that's what makes it, you know, the beauty of a small place is you can just get shit done. The beauty of a big place is you're very powerful. And so we try and kind of blend those two. We took a lot. Mark and I borrowed a lot. Early on, we really studied Hewlett-Packard, which the original Hewlett-Packard, before the computer business kind of swallowed the company was very much like this.

43:00They were like a series of companies inside a company. And that's a lot how we are. How do you vet GPs? Or like, it seems like you have to put a lot of trust in the people that are running the different teams if the whole thing is reputation, reputation, but you need to be able to scale by having these kind of decentralized teams. Is there anything that you do there that's unique or weird that ensures that kind of like no one group can infect the whole? I think, look, first of all, in order to lead one of those groups, you just have to have been here and performed for a long time. So that's kind of the first thing.

43:37So we just know you extremely well. We're not interviewing people for that job from the outside. Like, you can't get that job from the outside. And then, you know, I would say because our culture is so different than other venture firms, you know, for better or worse, we're just different, that we don't hire a lot of outside GPs anymore. We generally try to hire people at an earlier stage of their career and kind of grow them into what we do. And that's where much, much better for us, I would say, in general. Although we have, like, all of us came from the outside at one point of the original cast.

44:18That makes sense. Kind of winding down here, but Mark, you said that I think you got shit at one point for saying that VC was going to be the last job in the world. You know, if the vision of the future that you believe is true, and this is going to be an institution that lasts for a century, Like, what does A16Z look like and do a century to now? Right. Yeah, so I'll start with, I believe I was misquoted. I believe it was one of these hypothetical thought experiment things that kind of got overly extrapolated, but I guess I shouldn't just defend myself. So the point of what I was trying to get across in that discussion, which I think if you pulled the original, it's a longer-form discussion on it, it goes back to what Ben said early on, which is there is this repeating pattern in history.

45:06I mean, we can find examples of it for sure going back 500 years. It's this repeating pattern, which is basically a person with a dream, a person with a deep level of domain knowledge and a dream operating in a domain with asymmetric payoff, right, with risk and reward where, you know, by the way, the dream may be wrong. Like they may not be able to do the thing, but if they can do the thing, it will have disproportionately high returns. And, you know, the traditional institutional, you know, places people go to get support and funding, you know, for the dream, you know, for new projects, just turn it down because, you know, a bank can't finance, you know, a bank can't issue a loan against something with a 50%, you know, 50 % chance of a 10x and 50 % chance of failure.

45:50Like a bank just can't underwrite that. So a bank won't do that. Big companies, you know, for the most part won't do that. You know, almost nobody will do that. but somebody has a dream. And then, you know, when the dream works, and especially if you can construct a portfolio of those dreams and of those people, you know, then the expected, you know, value on that is going to be very high. Like, that's a very special thing. I've had long conversations with Tyler Cohen, who's very, particularly is very thoughtful on this. And he has a term, forget the exact term that he is, but it's like some combination, talent picker, project picker.

46:21And it's this thing, you know, it's like we were talking about earlier about market size. It's this thing where like, Like there is an analytical scientific component to it, but there's also like an art to it. And there's some intangible because you're dealing with human beings at a very kind of primordial level, you know, kind of, you know, kind of very early in the process of doing something that hasn't been done before. And, you know, quite honestly, like, you know, an early example of this was, you know, Queen Isabella with Christopher Columbus. Right. And I was just like, I was just, I was trying to picture the pitch.

46:48Right. You know, Christopher Columbus rolls in. Right. And he's like, you know, all right, you know, here's, you know, I'm going to find a new route, you know, route to India, by the way. you know, there's like a, I don't know, whatever, 50, 60 % chance that, you know, you'll never hear from me again. And, you know, you know, maybe, maybe I, you know, died 2000 miles away from Spain. Maybe I, maybe, by the way, maybe I just like ran away with the money. It's not like they had Interpol in those days. And I'm going to go do that. And then, by the way, the fact that that that paid off, but like that, like the whole idea was wrong.

47:17But the whole, the whole idea was wrong. I mean, the whole idea was wrong. He discovered a completely different continent and he himself did not believe that he had discovered a completely different continent. Right? And I don't even know this thing was the main beneficiary of that in the long run. Right? Like, and so, like, but, like, you know, like, she funded it, and, like, wow. Right? And then there's a lot of gold. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes, they did find some gold. They're a very similar story, by the way. The Puritans have a, you know, the Plymouth Rock, that whole thing, the Mayflower, they have a very similar story to that.

47:45It took, I think, 20 years to raise the financing to be able to make the Mayflower expedition. and they needed, you know, backers like that. You know, we always talk now about, you know, venture industry, you know, the whaling industry 400 years ago, you know, operated in a very similar way. The movie industry has always worked this way. The book publishing industry has always worked this way. By the way, politics has always, you know, political campaigns work this way that, you know, any new, you know, future president starts out as a long shot, somebody bets on them. And so there's this intangible that has to do with making these long dated bets with very uncertain outcomes and with high failure rates.

48:16And I mean, like if, yes, like, I think what I said in the original interview is like, look, if we're going to have AI do that, like, God bless. Like, I'm going to hit the beach and like, it's all good. But, you know, like, I guess maybe make the following claim. See, Ben, what you think of this. The intangibles seem to be becoming more important, not less important over time. It seems to be becoming more like an art and less like a science as we go. Would you agree with that? I definitely think that's right because history is a bad guide. So you can't, like, the interesting thing about VC for me, probably the biggest lesson is you got to be very careful about a highly trained neural net because that's when you make mistakes because things change.

48:59And I would say things have changed more rapidly. Like, the thing that we never thought would ever, ever, ever go away is the mythical man month. You know, nine women can't have a baby in a month. Well, with AI, you can. Software. Yes, it's something. It's a metaphor for software. It's a metaphor for software. Yes, exactly. Sorry, sorry, sorry. So in the old days, right, like no matter how many engineers you put on a team, you still, you know, more engineers would actually slow down the project as opposed to speed it up. But now, so you couldn't throw money at a problem. You couldn't throw money at somebody's technological lead.

49:37You'd have to do something different. Now you can throw money at it. But, you know, Elon did an amazing job of throwing money at the foundation model problem, and he caught up very, very fast. And that's something that in the whole history of our industry could never have happened before. So if you had asked an AI if Elon had any prayer of catching open AI or Anthropic, they would have said, no way. And so that's where you're getting into. I mean, maybe if the AI was smart enough, I suppose. But like there are these, a lot of it has to do with like how much do you believe in the person? Yeah. And then the other part is what we talked about already, but it's the long and twisting path.

50:18You know, the investment is just the beginning, right? And it's the long and twisting path that that person and that company take over time and all the different ways that we, you know, we try to help them succeed. And so I think that, yeah, yeah, yes. I don't know how to have AI do all that, but maybe we'll figure it out. Yeah. You could imagine an AI who could do it all, of course. If an AI was smarter than a human about every single thing, including human psychology, then certainly. Could be. You're tasked with training this AI. Like, what are the things that you've learned on this art that you can put into words?

50:47Like, if it is, and this is the most optimistic view of the future I can think of, the tools are getting better, but the human piece really, really matters. What have you learned about the art that you can describe? Like, what do you look for in a Christopher Columbus? us? Well, I mean, I think that the first thing, and I, you know, I hesitate to name things in some sense because they're all so different, right? Like Elon is really not at all like Mark Zuckerberg, who's not at all like Ali Goetze, who's not like at all like Brian Chesky. So like they're all different. And the, but the things that they all do, I would say is they all think for themselves.

51:28They're not people who read the room and try and like figure out what people want them to do. They have original ideas. So original idea is probably the thing that every great entrepreneur has their original thinkers. And then, you know, they all also have some combination of enough charisma, they're interesting enough that people want to follow them. Because, you know, ultimately, you kind of need people to go, okay, that is the leader and that's somebody who I want to work with, work for, and so forth. So those are the things that I would say almost all of them have. And I think all of them have those to be great.

52:16But everything else, you know, like Steve Jobs is a very different kind of guy. They're all different, I would say. Like Steve Jobs is nothing like Andy Grove, like nothing. But, you know, they're both great. To close this out, I guess, from each of you, what is the thing that you're personally most excited about in the next kind of couple of years of A16Z, but just tech more broadly? Well, I mean, you know, Mark had a great line like, Like, well, this is on the order of like the steam engine or electricity. Like, this is such a big invention that we're going to end up in a different world. And the thing that's most exciting to me about it is, you know, I want to live in the pre-electricity world.

53:02Like, I like this world way, way, way better. And so I think that like odds are we're going to get to a world that's just way, way better than we can even. Like, we can't even get our heads around it, which is why it freaks people out. Like, all these stuff that we have to do and so forth that we've just learned to live with that sucks isn't going to be required anymore. And so, like, you know, what does that mean? What do we think of then? Like, what has life become? It could be, you know, super exciting. Now, the one thing with humans that's a little messed up is, you know, if that takes us too far away, like one of the, you know, too far away from some grounded purpose about, you know, and beliefs and spirituality, then, you know, you can attach on to some dumb stuff.

53:55so that would be actually my only worry but I think life just the quality of life for everybody is about to get like way way better than it's ever been I'm excited about the Zoomers I am I am psyched for the Zoomers I was with a founder team the other day and I was explaining to them why the Zoomers are so much better than the millennials and why they're going to save us and like the whole thing is going to be great this is so great And of course, they're just like staring at me like I'm speaking Greek because like they, you know, they're, you know, they just think like millennials are like old farts that are like completely out of touch.

54:31And of course, you know, us, Ben and I are Gen Xers. We might as well be, you know, Stone Age. And I was like, but I was like, but I was like, this is what's so great about the Zoomers. Like they just like they're, it's the post that I would describe it as 2015 to 2024 was just, it was a very, very strange period. And a lot of just things got really weird. and the Zoomers are the generation that basically was on the receiving end of that. And at least for the Zoomers, we get to deal with like, they're just not having it and they're not walking around feeling guilty about everything all the time.

55:02They're not feeling like they have to like deny that they want to be successful. You know, they don't have any of the moral, you know, kind of hair shirt stuff. They're just like, if anything, they were told by it all. By the way, Gen X was like that too. Gen X kind of let go of all the craziness of the 60s and early 70s. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You're right, exactly. The GenX was the reaction to the boomers in the same way the Zoomers are a reaction to the millennials. And so the Zoomer founders that we get to deal with, my view is like it's the best, most competent, most capable. By the way, they're just like incredibly well, they come in all just incredibly well trained and educated because they grew up online.

55:36You know, they've seen, you know, a thousand hours of YouTube videos from all the great, you know, people in tech talking about how to do everything. You know, they just know so much more than previous generations of founders did. And, you know, by the way, now they're all AI native. You know, they all, you know, basically learn AI from scratch and, you know, in college and, you know, they're coming out and they totally understand it. And so and they're just like tremendously fired up and like completely, you know, completely, you know, they wear their, you know, they wear the heart on their sleeve.

56:01They're like they're going to build something. They're going to build something great. And they're completely unapologetic about it. They're very forceful. They're very determined. Yeah, I just think it's fantastic. I've been waiting this bit. Eric and Ben will tell you I've been waiting for this for a long time. We may have to edit this out, but one of the things I do really like about the Zoomers, I haven't ever heard anybody say anything like, I'm going to do well by doing good. Like, they never fucking say that bullshit. No, no. None of that stuff. And they have a good sense of humor, too.

56:30They're funny. Yes, yes, they're extremely funny. Well, they're extremely funny. They get it. They live through it. They were on the receiving end of just a tremendous amount of bullshit. And they're just like, they're just not having it. And so it's just, I find it just like tremendously exciting to be able to work with them. And if I had total control over my time, it would be 100 % spent with Zoomers. Well, I appreciate you spending an hour with a millennial. This was a ton of fun. Thank you for letting me write about A16Z and thanks for the conversation. We're talking about all your future guests.

56:59Exactly. Backy, this was an excellent piece. Thank you so much for writing. Yeah, 100%. Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you liked this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review, and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X at A16Z and subscribe to our Substack at a16z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. As a reminder, 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 investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund.

57:47Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com forward slash disclosures.

58:06Thank you.