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

25:05we caused that reaction with the other VCs, I kind of felt like we, you know, maybe I took it too far in terms of just the VC competitiveness and the anti-VC stuff. Like, we really went hard in the early days. Since you brought this up. Over the line, yeah. So since you brought this up, you have to, your thing with, was it the Sarah Lacey? Oh, yeah. The peak of this was, your peak moment of this was in the Sarah Lacey thing. Okay, so you have to refresh my memory. Okay, so remember Sarah Lacey at her peak. By the way, she was a great, great journalist. And then she had this thing, Pando Daily, that she started.

25:45And then she had these big events. And I spoke at the event. And she said to me, and it just like popped out, she said, you know, you 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 a little Wayne with the peace sign, all I see is the trigger and the middle finger.

26:20So, my answer was going to be that. Like, you have an inner enterprise sales dude in you. Oh, yeah. I can't get it out. But if there's ever, like, I think, like, when it comes to other firms, it's like, which is horseshit. Because we co-invest, like, we don't actually compete all that much. No, no, no, no, no. We should be partnering. But basically, your filter is like, you're going to get the deal or I'm going to get the deal. You die or I die. It's like, that's sort of the thing that happens to you in any sort of competitive situation. And God help me if you're in the way of that. Yeah, yeah.

26:57Yeah, I think we overdid it because, like I said, like you guys have joined board seats. You know, 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. And we 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. More friendly. And they're not exactly shrinking ballots themselves. So, you know, they're yes, yes. Also, also, also true. Also true. They've risen to the occasion. Yes.

27:28Yes. Yes. Yeah. 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, you know, 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, for 25 years, and they go from Hong Kong to Silicon Valley, whatever.

28:15At the time, there was a guy called Martin Giles, and he was covering... Very nice guy. Yes, very nice guy. Great guy. and he would cover Silicon Valley, who's 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 it this office? I think it was next door. Yeah, that's right. It was like the three of us were sitting there and Martin is visiting and he's asking all these questions and Mark was like, well, it's basically like software's eating the world and then he explains the whole thing.

28:50And I'm like, this is really interesting. And I was like, we should write this down. And Mark's like, sure, maybe later. 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 you could schedule things like that. 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?

29:25It's Time to Build, yeah. Wrote It's Time to Build. Like, you caved for a minute. So, like, all right, we'll place it. Maybe we'll place it. And nobody took it. Nobody. Oh, yeah, that's right. I called Ryan, who has since gone on to bigger and better things. I'm like, Ryan, can I ask you a hypothetical, that thing? 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 have changed. So, nobody ran it. Wow. Good thing we had. It's a big piece of it. We had a good audience at the time. And I think, I forget, I don't want to malign people, but somebody said, I think it was a, it may have been the FT, somebody said, it's angry.

30:03And I'm like, you know, we're in a pandemic. Yeah, yeah. And we don't, we're in conscience. Yeah, the whole point of it was just what was actually happening in the pandemic with literally the inability to get like surgical gowns for first responders was like the catalyst for it. Yeah. It's interesting. It read angry. And I was like, really? 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, like, the number of people in, like, Washington and entrepreneurial community and so forth that are like, yeah, we're taking this.

30:43This is the blueprint. We're moving on it. I mean, in a way, like, the whole, like, abundance movement on the Democratic Party came off of that. It's a great development, I think. It's a great development, yeah. But I think I have a theory on why that is. Software is eating the world. It's like to our people, our community, 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, like, remember all the car companies that came to visit us, right?

31:16And 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, you know, 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.

31:59They're exactly as they were. Like, it's almost like frozen in time. It reminds me of, if you've ever been to Havana in Cuba. It's frozen in time. It's all 1959. Like, cars are 1959, the buildings, everything. It's like just frozen. And, you know, whole industries freeze like that. The auto industry for sure did. And, you know, it was... Did you see... You know, Elon came along for what, how long, when did he start Tesla, early 2000s? Yeah. And, you know, it had been going and going and going, and then, like, when the car comes out and is awesome, everybody is just, like, sitting there going, what do we do?

32:38I 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. It's a disaster. But they're not going, like a genius software engineer is not going to, they're going to want to 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 like not really like a talent magnet for software engineers, right? And then, you know, one of the things that happened early was I got a note from HarperCollins saying that I should write a book.

33:26And, you know, 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, like, aren't books passe? At least us. I mean, and then, yeah, and then I didn't have time. So, like, why did you think that made sense? I guess it wasn't something that VCs did either, right? Like, VCs never wrote books. I do think we needed to even out the brand a little bit because, like, otherwise any entrepreneur with leverage was going to go like, well, I want him to be on my board, right?

34:03And that was just going to get successively worse with every other GP. So that was like, we needed a plan for everybody, right? And you were the other at the time. The other. I thought the book was good because it— Andreessen Other. There is, exactly. Which is why you wanted to call it Horowitz Andreessen, I remember, which— It does sound—Horowitz Andreessen is a cool-sounding name. It sounds a little law firm-ish. And then you could never—A16Z would like— Learn work. H16N is not nearly as good. No, it is good the way it is. I do still think there is value in a book of having a definitive theory on something.

34:40I 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. Like the actual theory of how one builds a company and, like, 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 laps. They weren't really where you could learn something, particularly for our audience. 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 and all that kind of stuff.

35:26So having an honest book that I think I was expecting you to write, I thought was really valuable. And then, you know, the little hack that we had is you had written all the blog posts, right? And so then it was... I had a little built-in audience. Right, and then it was, it's telling the dramatic story of, like, what went down, you know, including with Felicia being sick and all of that, right? Like, that then made the book. But, like, you kind of had the lessons in your head. And, like, I actually think that book, like, I like the title. I've been living by What You Do Is Who You Are forever.

35:59I like that title better, but I think this is a more important book, and it's way more kind of 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, you know, when I talk to, like, 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 are hard things 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 wanting to buy the book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

36:38Yeah. I think people actually think it's much more applicable than you might think. Well, oh, no, no. So it's very, the hard thing about hard things, I would say in retrospect, was very broadly applicable, like pastors bought it and, you know, people you'd never think. But, you know, like to me, everything, the hard thing about hard things is like easy, whereas I had to think a lot more about what you do is who you are. It's just like, but, you know, it's one of those things. It's like, you know, how many people need to learn algebra versus quantum physics? It's a thing like that. Yeah, that's a good point.

37:17No, I actually thought the book was valuable to your brand and a good equalizer. And also, I think it raised the ambition. Like when 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 like, 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, like, how do you market your book?

38:02And I'm like, well, look, you can do, there's like well-known marketing ideas and so forth, and you can do a lot of things, and you can get yourself even on like the bestseller list, but then the book's going to disappear unless it's a great book. Like, it has to be good. Right. Like, that's the fundamental thing. And so, like, if you don't write something that's good, if you're completely focused on, like, how you promote it before you've written it, like, that's probably a bad sign. That's backwards. Yeah, that is backwards. You have to actually believe that you have an idea that's worth putting a book.

38:36Like, a book has to stand the test of time. You know what I mean? It has to be an actual thing versus a tweet. Well, 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 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, it's like, well, maybe I should write a book. Yeah. And it just made it open up the thinking, I think, for everybody else.

39:14Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you know, a good thing about, you also learn a lot when you write a book, so I think everybody's... It 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, like, your idea didn't count. And that, I think, has helped us a lot as an organization. Yeah, I mean, look at Katherine Boyle. I mean, she came in with the pitch of like, if I work here, I'm going to do American Dynamism, and here's what that is. And she also happens to be a gifted communicator.

39:51And now it's, you know, it was a deck, now it's a movement and a fund, and it's helping really change the way people think about defense tech. It's all of a sudden allowed. Remember back in the day, Diane Greene was out there from Google for a very innocent contract to look at pictures, I mean, as an allies, right? And that, like, and Catherine is playing a really big role in turning that around, right? And that's an idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for sure. It 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, you know, like, this is how we work.

40:37This is how we think. I mean, sometimes it was so overdone. Like, a new person comes in. First thing they want to 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 Mark Andreessen. And I was like, what are your thoughts? I know exactly who that was, but I'm not going to say my name. No, no, no. And it's all well-intentioned. But, like, you do have to test the actual idea, right? Like, is that a snack? Is that a book? Is it just a conversation? Like, they need to be calibrated properly, right?

41:12And sometimes young people who are incredibly ambitious, that was me, still is, like, you just want to go right for the win, but you need to make sure you have the goods to do it. Yeah, well, this kind of 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. Yeah, and we don't have products. We have people and ideas. That's it. But that's extended now to, you know, is it Tesla or is it Elon?

41:52Is it Palantir or is it Alex? You know, like, and in order to be able to do that, like, 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. Like, it creates this perception that Silicon Valley is staffed entirely with weirdos. They're more interesting to write about. 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 pick on someone, right? Like, Dylan Field. Most amazing guy. Built an incredible company.

42:32I hosted dinners with him. He's just normal, well-adjusted. The weirdest thing about him is he did the Teal Fellowship. But, like, those don't get written up as much. The weirdos, like, the weirder the better, right? And it's gotten to an extreme where it's like, this is actually not reflecting Silicon Valley. It's just 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. Right. Like, yeah. No, you used to, 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 kind of started to end with Steve Jobs because it was a show.

43:20Yeah, that's right. And he made you want a product. That's right. And it became, it's almost like politics adjacent. Like you can't vote for a party, you're voting for a person. And if you have the company, but not a character or a sense of character, it just doesn't work. And then, you know, the corporate X accounts and all of that, those are all fine. 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.

43:56Right. 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 stage, right? Or in every situation. Like, there are some downsides to it, but the upside beats the downside, like, 10 to 1 or whatever the right number is. Well, it requires a lot of discipline, I think, from the founder, because it turns you into, like, this mini-celebrity. And so, as a mini-celebrity, can you, like, be out there and not act like an actual celebrity? Because those aren't great organizational dynamics. Just having been around, you know, many celebrities, although...

44:44And the thing is... Naz 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 in that sense. But 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, you know, be... Be normal. 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.

45:18Yeah, I think there's some downside along those lines. And the other part is like, you can't really fake that stuff. If you have a public persona, and it's not real, and it's all manicured, it does not work. It won't work over time, right? So you kind of have to lean, like, this is what I always try 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. That's not a personal brand. You have to really figure out, okay, who is this person?

45:58What are their dynamics? What are their talents that they can actually be? Not act, but like actually be. 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, I mean a TED Talk thing. You've never done a TED Talk. I've never done a TED Talk. I think it's hard to do both. I've never watched a TED Talk. You've never watched a TED Talk? I've never watched a TED Talk. Oh, man. You're missing out on a very beautifully packaged. It's almost like a Pop-Tart. But that is my point. My point is, that is exactly my point.

46:28TED Talks are these very manicured things that work for a minute. But anybody who's seen so many TED Talks, it's like, this is all the same. It's all the exact same plastic, right? Or maybe you think it's platinum, but it's the exact same formulaic thing. That's not an actual brand. That's maybe an event that if you really care about it, because some people really care about that shit, but that's not actually who you are. They read to me as religious sermons. And I have an aversion to fake religions. They're all little morality stories. They've all got a message. It's like the very special episodes of TV shows in the 1970s.

47:08They're the very special episodes where you learn about... Very special happy days. You learn about drug addiction. And the thing is, I'm in marketing, and I find them saccharine. Like, they're just too perfect in a way, right? 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. And you can just, I've talked to them, and I'm like, you know, you've been invited 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 in this very specific form.

47:43And that's why, by the way, that's why I'm saying, that's why I'm riffing on it a little bit is because like my instincts are all to the exact opposite of that. Yeah. As you know, which is like authenticity and rawness. Well, you could do a TED Talk. I think you'd be fine at it, but like it's actually not you. And like therefore, it wouldn't accrue to the brand. He could not do a TED Talk because in order to do a TED Talk, they have to review what you're going to say. And they have to edit it. And there's no chance. No, what I'm saying is if he decided he wanted to. Like if I edit something Mark writes, like I take one sentence and I give one word and that's as much as he likes to be edited.

48:18This is why I find it so hilarious when you send around, like when you used to do that, when you send around the blog post and then everybody is so eager to edit them and I'm like, this is such a waste of time. This is like, it's not you. It's like not you. 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 no lessons. Exactly, that's right. That's right. That's right. Very special episode. That's what made that show so distinctive, is they never did that. They never, they never, it was never Marlin or Sackra. Never.

48:47It was like almost unique in that way. Yeah. It's a very, very good show. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of the opposite of Ted. Yeah. And look, that is great. Like, I'm not trying to malign it, but it's a... A lot of people like it. 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, and you know, a lot of this just has to do with the shift in technological environment, media environment. But the thing that works in this media environment and it's much more authenticity and transparency. If you think about it, if you look at, like, it used to be...

49:14Authenticity and originality, right? Interestingness. Which is interesting because the old world, like our media training in the old world was all like much, is the opposite, it's conformist, stand, message. Discipline. Discipline. Yeah, and not to shut the window. And the thing that I think what's interesting to media, and that's what media has to figure out, is they used to set the tone, and now they're at the very end. And at the very end of all the stuff that's been said on Twitter or Reddit or Tumblr or all that, it eventually spills out. And then media is like, oh, what is this thing? Yeah, well, comment on the Rogan show.

49:50But it's at the very end. And that for media, it must be a 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. And now you can go any freaking place. You have 50 ,000 choices. And then it gets enough steam, and then it gets reviewed by media almost. 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, anything you say can and will be used against you. It's a very Miranda-type world. My new version of this, the new test I think is happening is what we might call the GPT test, which is, okay, if what somebody says is indistinguishable from chat GPT output, like, not going to make it.

50:44Yeah. Right? And then the more advanced version of the test is, like, is it indistinguishable from, like, chat GPT 3.5? Yeah. Right. Right, which is like the earlier version that's not as good. And the number of public figures in various domains who continue to speak in public or put out crafted whatever, and literally you're just like, this is indistinguishable from what the LLM could do. Or by the way, columnists for a living. There's a lot of people who don't pass that test. And I just say that there's going to be a big turnover there, and then it begs the important question like, okay, what does it take to pass that test?

51:24Right. Like, how many people... While it's changing all the time. Also true, right, exactly. But like, who is actually... I had this conversation with Tyler Cohen one time. So Tyler Cohen and his partner Alex have been blogging daily for over 20 years on Marshall Revolution, which is amazing. They do a great job. And they're leaders of like these, you know, the influential movement, and they're incredibly important, influential, and like all these things. And they're in all these rooms that they, you know, they will say this, like it's put them in all these incredibly important rooms and all these things.

51:50And I was like, wow, this works so great for you guys. It's like, why don't more people do this? And Tyler just like laughs and he's like, Mark, how many people have something to say every day? Yeah, that's a lot of talking. Genuinely, like how many people have that? And then, you know, every day for 20 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? This is my beef with some of these platforms. Actually, it's the humans. It's not the platforms. It's always the humans, right? They were like, does every thought that you have need to go on X or wherever it needs to go?

52:22I would beg to differ. But like a lot of people, no, a lot of people were like, okay, it's a new day. I got to say something. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, I don't know. Well, to me, let me ask you this, though. Would you agree that the difference is if they have an interesting thought every day, that's one thing. Fantastic. Right, right, right. The more the merrier. Right, right, right. Right? But yeah, most people don't. But like most people don't. And I sort of feel like they would be better. Even the people who are writing every day don't. Always, yeah. They would better serve to like pop up when they have a thought or contribute something to the conversation.

52:54Yeah. That's, I don't know. I just don't think that everybody has interesting things to say every day. Oh, 100%. I mean, if I look at X, I see proof all the time. Well, the reason I go through this is because my theory, at least, is the nature of leadership has changed. Because of everything you guys have discussed, the nature of leadership is changing. And the leaders who have a large number of interesting things to say and know how to communicate it are going to do disproportionately well in the years ahead. And the leaders who don't, even if they're professionally skilled, I think are going to have a harder and harder time and their companies are going to have a harder and harder time because it's just the old methods are just not working as well anymore.

53:26No. Well, particularly on the marketing front. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, but people are changing. Like, it's been interesting to watch our friend, Mark Zuckerberg, kind of change his public persona so much so fast. So great. Yeah. I mean... So he's kind of, I mean, running a gigantic social media company. You would think he would figure it out, but I guess, but it's still very difficult to do. And it actually mapped to internal change, right? Like he himself changed. Yes. It wasn't like a synthetically generated message. Everything of like Mark Zuckerberg in public now is 100 % wholly authentic.

54:04He used to try to calculate... Yeah. ...what he was going to say through the lens of all his many, many constituents. And now he's just saying what he thinks. Yeah, and people went, he was trained, and as you know, he was trained to do that. Oh, yeah. He received the A-plus grade version of that training from people who were world-class at that. Right. And it worked for a while, and then the environment changed it. 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 perfected.

54:36It was like, chill 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 train, People who trained them are like super geniuses, and they were fantastic, but they themselves were trained in what I would describe as like 1980s, 1990s style politics. They came out of a political background, which is an even more intense version of everything that we're talking about. So they got trained the way politicians got trained in the 1990s, which was extremely scripted and controlled, maximally so.

55:06And then just this massive shift in the environment since then has basically rendered—I mean, you see this playing out. I think he's done a great job. All over the world, right? Yeah. Everything we're talking about is also playing out politically. Yes. And maybe even more so politically. Yeah. Even the subtle things have been the most interesting to me. 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 he's got the gold chains and this hair all over. And it's kind of like he's expressing himself on all fronts.

55:42Yeah, by the way, which is exactly what he looks like in private. Like, now it all matches. But I still... It's been great to kind of see him flower like that and be able to, like, fully express himself. Yeah, I think it's great. It's something spectacular. And still, people are like, well, what's with the gold chains? I'm like... He likes them, yeah. Well, here's an executive... I don't know. The main one that he wears has a real... It's important. Yeah. With his faith. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, 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?

56:10Also true, yes. It's like, hello. Also true. But I think when people from the old world see that, it makes them very uncomfortable. Yeah. Right? Okay, one of the guys who was doing what we wanted him to is no longer, he's off the leash. He's not on the program. That's right. That's right. He's liberated. We go all the way back to when, what's his name? The founder, 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 controversial. I remember that. He was like, I think, and he had a banana or something like that.

56:45It was like apparently entirely unacceptable. It almost makes it nostalgic. Very interesting. I think all this stuff, my view is all this stuff is going to intensify. I think every successful company in the future is going to need this kind of personality. They're going to need somebody who can do this. And it's a different leadership profile. Do you think it has to be the CEO? I think it's really hard for it not to be. I mean, maybe, maybe. It could be another founder, I think. 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.

57:21I think, you know, if you're less marketing, like if you are, like if the, I mean, there are historically businesses that are all sales. I think if you're in a competitive situation and on the other side, there's somebody who's really good at it. Yeah. It still sucks. if you sell security stuff. Palantir is his enterprise, you know, government as it gets. Oh, yeah, no. Alex is like fucking, he's killing it. He's perfect for that company. Imagine being a competitor to Palantir and not having an Alex, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even just the stock market valuation alone, like how can you possibly keep up?

57:53Yeah, it's basically, can you sell? And the way you're selling today is entirely different. Yeah. Right? Like it's not, you know, having features and a Gartner report. It's just like... I think it's great. I think it's leading to a more honest world. 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. And of course, it's uncomfortable because if you're used to the walled garden, if you're used to the sanitized environment, if you're used to Disneyland, entering the real world is traumatic.

58:26Very traumatic. But we do live in the real world, right? And as always, it's the transition that's the toughest part. It's going like, oh, this is all different now, right? And I think we're in a really big transition and the transition is transitioning. It's sort of like... That's right. And we're still in the middle of it. Like, it's not over yet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, it's kind of, it's definitely going to keep moving. Yeah. All right. But we're going to keep going. Awesome. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on the Market Bench show. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks, you too.

58:54Hope you enjoyed it. 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. It 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.

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