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

20:11What the hell? I mean, they just like lost it on that. We didn't have any entrepreneurs at the time.

20:20No, that's bananas. I think that comes from them viewing having to do any of those kinds of outbound activities as beneath them, kind of unseemly. And here we were like unashamed about like advertising ourselves and our wares, if you will. So I was kind of like, what? We're doing what now? And it worked, I think. And I think it got sort of... I think that, but mostly I think the writing got us in with the entrepreneurs. Because I remember, I think it was you, Mark, told me that an entrepreneur said, I kind of feel like I know you guys a little bit. That's right.

20:58Marc Andreessen:Having not even met you yet. Yeah, so 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 want to invest in? Therefore, we're going to write about these things. Because that becomes the magnet for the entrepreneurs in that corner of the internet or AI infrastructure, whatever it is. And I think that was really powerful, particularly with the entrepreneurs. Yeah, it was kind of one of, in those days, VC was like a big secret.

21:34And then actually building companies was a big secret. And so just kind of talking about it was a big differentiator. Yeah.

21:42Marc Andreessen:What you would learn, right, because you'd hear as an entrepreneur, you'd hear all these horror stories from other entrepreneurs of things that have gone wrong in the relationship with the VC and all the problems. But if you didn't know who any of the people were when you walk in the door, who do you trust? How are they going to behave under pressure? What are they going to do? And so, I mean, yeah, it's great. If you can get away with having nobody know who you are and still be on top of the industry, it's great, but if somebody actually does it the other way, it causes a permanent change, which is, I think, what we catalyzed.

22:11It does. And to me, I don't know the latest numbers, but the blog posts that you would write or the other GPs would write that are sort of timeless. I remember the good product manager, bad partner. That is one of the most successful blog posts. And you know how many blog posts the firm has put out? Like a gajillion, right? But 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, like, the substantive pieces on, like, how do I construct a company?

22:49How do I manage a person? How do I think about promotions? Like, all that kind of stuff. Like, I think that that was really valuable to the entrepreneurs. And I think it also showed our LPs, like, okay, they actually are very passionate about all the details of the stuff that they invest in. Well, that was one of the interesting things is the LPs were like reading all the content. I mean, which is so different than a public market investor, just say. You know, they, and not only did they read the content, but we have many LPs that Reddit would call up, say, hey, in managing my little organization, you know, this is what I'm running into and so forth.

23:28So they really, they're real partners. Right. in a way that, yeah, it's just been, that's been probably one of the best parts of the firm is to get to have investors like that. Yeah. We got one, we did one incredibly controversial block, it turns out, like a few LPs really hated the headline. And it was in the BioNHealth 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, all right, fuck.

24:01Marc Andreessen:Screw cancer. Right. Yes. For the record, we're very anti-cancer. Yeah, we're very anti-cancer. And we're willing to say so. But they deeply care about everything that we put out, which I think is quite flattering, even though they may hate some of it. 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 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. So, since you brought this up, you have to, your thing with, was it the Sarah Lacey?

24:48Marc Andreessen: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. And 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 little Wayne with the peace sign, all I see is a trigger and the middle finger.

25:38And that was... So, my answer was going to be that. Like, you have an inner enterprise sales dude in you. Oh, yeah. I couldn't get it out. 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.

26:15Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think we overdid it because, like I said, you guys have joined board seats. Our teams will call people and say, hey, we've got this company. Would you like to do follow-on investment? All that stuff. Here you are pissing them off. And I caused a lot of antagonism between us and the other firms in those days, which I think at this point, we're more friendly.

26:39Marc Andreessen:And they're not exactly shrinking ballots themselves. Also true. They've risen to the occasion. Yes. Yes. 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.

27:24So 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. At 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.

28:00Yeah, 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. And 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.

28:31And 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? It's Time to Build.

28:45Marc Andreessen: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. Yeah. And nobody took it. Nobody. Oh, yeah, that's right. 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 was a big piece of it. We had a good audience at the time. And I think, 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.

29:22I'm like, you know, we're in a pandemic.

29:24Marc Andreessen:Yeah, yeah. And we don't, we're wearing conscious. It was 2020, 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, the number of people in Washington and the entrepreneurial community and so forth that are like, yeah, we're taking this.

30:03This is a blueprint. We're moving on it. I mean, in a way, the whole abundance movement on the Democratic Party came off of that. Which is a great development, I think. 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, 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, like, remember all the car companies that came to visit us, right?

30:36And 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, especially, 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.

31:06Marc Andreessen: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. 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 the 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?

31:49And, 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? 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. 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?

32:32And then, you know, one of the things that happened early was I got a note from HarperCollins saying that I should write a book. Yeah, and, 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. But why did you think it was a guy? I guess 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.

33:22And 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. I thought the book was good because... Andresen Other. There is exactly... Which is why you wanted to call it Horowitz Andresen, I remember. It does sound... Horowitz Andresen is a cool sounding name. It sounds a little law firm-ish. And then you could never... A16Z would like... Learn more. 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 like having a definitive theory on something.

34:00I 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 like 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 labs. 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.

34:46So 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. I like that title better, but I think this is a more important book, and it's way more kind of usable for people.

35:25It's much more broad-based. I think the What You Do Is Who You Are is... It's 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, the hard thing about hard things to start to think about, okay, how do you program the culture of the whole organization and that kind of thing. But I remember the Navy wanting to buy the book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Yeah. I think people actually think it's much more applicable than you might think.

36:02Well, 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 in 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 a, 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. No, I actually thought the book was valuable to your brand and a good equalizer.

36:42And 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?

37:21And 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. 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.

37:55Like, 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. 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.

38:33Yeah, 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 Catherine 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, like, she also happens to be a gifted communicator.

39:10And now it's, you know, it was a deck, now it's a movement and a fund, and, like, 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 ousted from Google for like a very innocent contract to look at pictures. 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. But 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.

39:57This 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 Marc Andreessen. And I was like, what are your thoughts? I know exactly who that was, but I'm not going to say the 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?

40:31And 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 product. We have people and ideas. That's it. But that's extended now to, you know, is it Tesla or is it Elon?

41:11Is 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, or, 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. Yeah. Most amazing guy. Built an incredible company.

41:52I hosted dinners with him. He's just normal.

41:56Marc Andreessen:Well adjusted. The weirdest thing about him is he did the Teal Fellowship. Yeah. 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.

42:39Marc Andreessen:Yeah, 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. Right, yeah. 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.

43:16And 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...

44:03And the thing is... Now, it's 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 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.

44:38Yeah, 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. And 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 can 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?

45:17What 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 you've never done a TED Talk I've never done a TED Talk I think it's hard to do both

45:35Marc Andreessen:I've never watched a TED Talk you've never watched a TED Talk you're missing out on a very beautifully packaged it's almost like a Pop Tart my point is that is exactly my point TED Talks are these very manicured things that like work for a minute, but like anybody who's seen so many TED Talks is 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 like that's not actually who you are.

46:13Marc Andreessen:They read to me as religious sermons. And I have an aversion to fake religions. They're all a little morality stories. They've all got a It's like the very special episodes of TV shows in the 1970s. 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 and that's why by the way that's why I'm saying that's why I'm riffing on it a little bit because like my instincts are all to the exact opposite of that 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.

47:23And 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 him one word. And then that's as much as he likes to be edited. This 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, so. That actually reminds me of my favorite thing that Larry David said. The rule on Seinfeld was no hugs and no lessons.

47:56No hugs and no lessons, exactly. That's right. That's right. That's right. Very special episode.

48:00Marc Andreessen:That's what made that show so distinctive, is they never did that. They never, it was never, it was never Marlin or Sackron. Never. It 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 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 a lot of this just has to do with the shifting technological environment, media environment, but the thing that works in this media environment is much more authenticity and transparency.

48:32If you think about it, if you look at, like, it used to be... Authenticity 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 that's just out 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. At the very end of all the stuff that's been said on Twitter or Reddit or Tumblr or all that. Like, it eventually spills out, and then media is like, oh, what is this thing?

49:07Yeah, well, comment on the Rogan show. But, like, it's at the very end, right? And that, like, for media, it must be a total out-of-body experience where it's like, wait. Like, I was the beginning, right? When you were unveiling something, that's where you would go, right? And now you can go any frickin' place, 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, anything you say can and will be used against you.

49:50Marc Andreessen: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. Yeah. Right? And then the more advanced version of the 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's not as good. And the number of public figures in various domains who continue to speak in public or put out crafted, you know, whatever, and literally you're just like, this is indistinguishable from what the LLM could do.

50:28Marc Andreessen:Or, by the way, columnists, you know, columns for a living. Yeah. Like, there's a lot of people who don't pass that test. And so, and I just say that of like, there's going to be a big, big turnover there. And then it begs the important question, like, okay, what does it take to pass that test? Right. Like, how many people... While it's changing all the time. Also true, right, exactly. But like, who is actually... I had this version of 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.

50:58They do a great job.

50:59Marc Andreessen:And they're leaders of like these, you know, influential movements, 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. And I was like, wow, this works so great for you guys. It's like, why don't, you know, 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.

51:24Marc Andreessen: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. Or actually, it's the humans. It's not the platforms. It's always the humans, right? We're like, does every thought that you have need to go on X or wherever it needs to go? So I 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, the test, 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.

51:57Fantastic.

51:57Marc Andreessen:Right, right, right. The more the merrier. 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, no, it's interesting. They would be better served to like pop up when they have a thought 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. I mean, if I look at X, I see proof. Well, the reason I go through this is because my theory, at least, is the nature of leadership has changed.

52:26Marc Andreessen: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 they're 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. Well, particularly on the marketing front. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like, but people are changing.

52:53Like, it's been interesting to watch our friend, Mark Zuckerberg, kind of change his public persona so much so fast. So great. 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 it's still very difficult to do. And it actually mapped to internal change, like he himself changed.

53:16Marc Andreessen:It wasn't like a synthetically generated message. Everything of Mark Zuckerberg in public now is 100 % wholly authentic. He used to try to calculate

53:28what he was going to say through the lens of all his many, many constituents, and now he's just saying what he thinks.

53:34Marc Andreessen:Yeah, and people went, he was trained, 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. 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. It 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.

54:02Marc Andreessen:And again, the people who trained him 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. And 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?

54:35Marc Andreessen:Yeah. Which is, this is also, everything we're talking about is also playing out politically. Yes. And maybe even more so politically. Yeah. Yeah, and it's even, 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, you know, and it's kind of like, he's expressing himself on all fronts. It's really awesome. 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 fully express himself.

55:09Marc Andreessen:Yeah, I think it's great. It's something. It's 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. 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? Also true. I'm just like, hello? Also true. But I think when people from the old world see that, it makes them very uncomfortable. Okay, one of the guys who was doing what we wanted him to is no longer, he's off the leash.

55:45He's not on the program, 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, I remember that.

56:01Marc Andreessen:Yeah. He was like, I think, and he had a banana or something like that. It was like apparently entirely unacceptable. Right, right. Yeah. It almost makes it nostalgic. Very interesting. So I think company, I mean, look, I think all this stuff, my view is all this stuff's going to intensify. I think every successful company in the future, 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.

56:29Marc Andreessen: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, 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 killing it. He's perfect for that.

57:04Marc Andreessen:Imagine being a competitor to Palantir and not having an Alex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even just the stock market valuation alone, how can you possibly keep up? Yeah, it's basically, can you sell? And the way you're selling today is entirely different. It's not having features and a Gartner report. 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. That's right.

57:35Marc Andreessen: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. Very traumatic. But we do live in the real world, right? Yeah. 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. Yes, that's right. We're still in the middle of it. Like, it's not over yet. Yeah, it's definitely going to keep moving. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to keep going.

58:08Awesome. Fantastic. Thank you for joining us on the Market Ben show. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks, you too. Hope you enjoyed it.