The Exchanges

Q And when you approach that kind of culture integration, the old and the new there, do you have to disregard the old, or is it possible to augment the old with the new? How do you think about that transition?

A Well, look, you do augment the old. It's not like you throw away your old culture. I have a, I think, a very kind of clear example of this in the book with Toussaint Louverture, where there were parts of slave culture, and particularly, like, the tribal military culture that he kept, and that were very effective, but he incorporated kind of lieutenants from, you know, the French, the Spanish, and the British to add European military culture to what he was doing, because he knew what he had was incomplete, you know, and particularly when it came to scale, the largest tribal armies just weren't that big, and of course, in the Haitian Revolution. Toussaint built the slave army up to 500,000 soldiers, so you get to that scale, you need cultural things that you wouldn't have had in a tribal army. But yet, he preserved some of the real strengths of it. You know, one of, my favorite one is probably, um, the, uh, European military all kind of marching the line. The reason that they had to do that was communication. You know, they were communicating through, like, notes and talking, and Toussaint was able to basically adopt the singing culture of the slaves. To basically send the instructions across long distances, so they, you know, they were able to surround their opponents, and then at a certain point in a song, that would indicate basically the command, and so they had this long dis…

AI assessment note: “you do augment the old. It's not like you throw away your old culture.”

Q Can I ask, when you look back at the culture building with Andreessen, do you think you've implemented shocking rules? And if so, what do you think kind of stands out in your mind?

A I think we probably have the, it's shocking enough that like, it's kind of made its way around the industry, um, as a legendary or maybe not legendary, but like thing that people talk about that we do is we find people basically, if you're on time, you're on time, but if you're late, it's 10 dollars a minute for a meeting with an entrepreneur. We really strive to have great respect. For the entrepreneurial process and what it means, and that means being, you know, if an entrepreneur comes to see us, like, we're going to be on time. You know, they can be late, but we're going to be on time, and we're going to be on time every time, and if you had to go to the bathroom, like, too bad. You know, if you were on an important call, too bad. It doesn't matter. There's no excuses. There's no relief for that. Fine, and people ask, like, why is that, and that gives us a chance to explain the story, and you can't work here and not know that's part of the Culture. Because every time you're in a meeting with an entrepreneur, you know, you've got to be on time, or you're going to not only have to pay a big fine, but it's going to be very embarrassing, because it happens in front of everybody. You know, it helps us make it clear to everybody that despite the fact that people come to us and ask us for money, we're not the whatever big person talking to the little person in the relationship. Li…

AI assessment note: “if you're late, it's 10 dollars a minute for a meeting with an entrepreneur.”

Q And when you approach that kind of culture integration, the old and the new there, do you have to disregard the old, or is it possible to augment the old with the new? How do you think about that transition?

A Well, look, you do augment the old. It's not like you throw away your old culture. I have a, I think, a very kind of clear example of this in the book with Toussaint Louverture, where there were parts of slave culture, and particularly, like, the tribal military culture that he kept, and that were very effective, but he incorporated kind of lieutenants from, you know, the French, the Spanish, and the British to add European military culture to what he was doing, because he knew what he had was incomplete, you know, and particularly when it came to scale, the largest tribal armies just weren't that big, and of course, in the Haitian Revolution. Toussaint built the slave army up to 500,000 soldiers, so you get to that scale, you need cultural things that you wouldn't have had in a tribal army. But yet, he preserved some of the real strengths of it. You know, one of, my favorite one is probably, um, the, uh, European military all kind of marching the line. The reason that they had to do that was communication. You know, they were communicating through, like, notes and talking, and Toussaint was able to basically adopt the singing culture of the slaves. To basically send the instructions across long distances, so they, you know, they were able to surround their opponents, and then at a certain point in a song, that would indicate basically the command, and so they had this long dis…

AI assessment note: “Well, look, you do augment the old. It's not like you throw away”

Q But I love it as a question. You said the word urgency there, though, and it is one thing that you also say in the book, and you say employees have to Feel a sense of urgency when the culture needs to change. How do you, as the leader, create that sense of urgency within the team?

A Well, look, I mean, I think you, and this kind of gets into another part of the, um, book, which is, you know, you have to make decisions that demonstrate priorities. Kind of core example of that is Toussaint, when he was running the colony, made a very kind of hard-to-understand decision. You know, you couldn't hear that decision without knowing what the new, what the priority was, and the priority for him was In order to be a world-class country, you had to have, like, a world-class economy. So the question came up of, okay, what do we do with the plantation owners, the slave masters, like, after we win the war? His answer, of course, was, like, very surprising, which was, um, we're gonna let them keep their land and keep their employees, but they would have to pay them, and then he would lower their taxes in order to kind of facilitate that. And so if you think about that, that's just so counterintuitive in a slave revolt, but there was no way that anybody Didn't understand what the country's priorities were at that point. That was, like, total clarity and urgency around that, and, uh, kind of the example that I use, the parallel example, is Reed Hastings, um, when he switched the business from CDs to streaming, which, or DVDs to streaming, sorry. You know, he had no streaming revenue, and, you know, the DVD business was, not only was the entire business, they were a public …

AI assessment note: “you have to make decisions that demonstrate priorities.”

Q trust kind of down the line there into the culture building, and move further into the book, because the next pillars, as we discussed in the book, is the element of kind of creating these rules, so to speak, and in the book, you state the importance of Creating shocking rules. Before we dive into some rules themselves, what are the rules for creating kind of shocking rules themselves, Ben?

A Probably the key thing on a shocking rule is that it has to surprise people. People have to ask themselves, why in the world do we have that rule? That seems crazy. And one of my favorite rules like that, of course, is Tom Coughlin's, if you're on time, you're late. That rule even sounds crazy. And the reason it's important that it sounds that is because if people don't question the rule, then you don't get to the why. And having a rule that kind of everybody is living with, that's very counterintuitive, makes people understand the why, and every time they comply with that rule, they're reminded of why they're doing it, and that kind of thing can really set the culture, and of course, in Coughlin's case with the, you know, he's coaching the New York Giants football team, and the rule was, if you're, if people show on time to a meeting, and he would fine them like a thousand dollars, he'd be like, I'm on time. He's like, hey, you're late. If you're on time, you're late. The why behind it was like, They care so much about the details that they'll never be late because on time is means being early. That needs to ripple into everything they do, how they practice, how they study, um, how they work. They're always better than everybody else at every detailed aspect of the job. And that's a real kind of cultural statement. So like, you don't have to tell people, okay, you have to take…

AI assessment note: “Probably the key thing on a shocking rule is that it has to surprise people.”

Q to kind of the element of kind of culture maintenance, but also changing, because you say in the book, creating a great culture means adapting to circumstances, and you say about bringing in outside leadership from the culture you want to penetrate or master. So the first question here is, how does one know when's the right time to adapt or bring in outside leadership to maybe alter that culture?

A Well, like, I think if you have elements in your culture that you're missing, or elements that you need in the culture that you don't have, Then, you know, that tends to be the time. So, like, I mean, I think a really good example is Google trying to build Google Cloud, right? Pretty, everybody in the industry knew that Google didn't have, like, enterprise DNA. Um, like, they just didn't, they didn't have that, none of the cultural aspects that make you good at enterprise software or enterprise, kind of, selling did they have. And, and, kind of, the greatest example of that was they had, you know, kind of, whatever the G Suite and the, kind of, uh, Google Apps that had a huge lead in being a cloud apps Uh, against Microsoft Office. But, you know, in the early days of that battle, when they had way better product, Google had a way better product, Balmer would, and Balmer's still CEO at the time, would show up in companies and say, I'm here. Is Larry Page going to come visit? And of course, he never did. And like that cultural difference won the day for Microsoft. And so as Google kind of attempts to beef up their enterprise effort and their cloud offering and so forth, they knew they needed somebody who didn't have the googly Culture, or at least, you know, maybe had the googly culture, but had some other aspects, and so, you know, at that point, you need to bring in outside lea…

AI assessment note: “if you have elements in your culture that you're missing... that tends to be the time”

Q There's one case in the book, though, Ben, that I really do love, and it's a case of kind of the cultural integration of kind of the old and the new, and it's when you, uh, hired Mark Cranny. I'd love to hear what were some of your lessons from hiring Mark, and what did that experience teach you?

A Well, you know, I learned so much. The first is just, how do you hire an executive, and what is that process? And it turns out it's very different than a process you might use for another position. So, if you're hiring an engineer, if Then every engineer on that team knows how to do that job and may have something interesting to find out in the interview process. A lot of times you'll see rules in early stage companies where, okay, everybody's got to vote thumbs up in order for us to hire this person, or everybody's got to score them eight out of 10 or better or whatever. Um, but with an executive, that kind of policy can get destructive very fast because typically the head of HR, the head of engineering, the head of marketing, Don't know anything about what it means to run a global sales organization. And so, like, they can interview, but they're just, like, giving you random input at that point. So, one, you have to understand what the job is, you know, particularly if you haven't done it yourself. Two, you probably don't have any help on the rest of the team. Three, you kind of have to know exactly what you want for your company at that point in time. And so, like, all those kind of elements went into kind of hiring Mark. And, and the thing that I knew is I needed, we just had a missing part of the Culture, which is, you know, we had gone from this cloud services, brave new …

AI assessment note: “The first is just, how do you hire an executive, and what is that process?”

Q Listen, I, trust me, I'm more excited, but I do want to start today with a little bit on you. So for those that don't know, how did you make your way into what I always call the wonderful world of venture, and how did you come to found Andreessen?

A Yeah, well, you know, it was an idea that came from Mark and myself, Mark, my partner in the firm, Our experience being entrepreneurs and, and the big aha that we had or kind of belief that there was a hole in the market was if you were a founder, you know, kind of an inventor who was building a company, we always kind of felt you were probably the best person to build that company because, you know, the great companies of the past from kind of IBM to Hewlett Packard, and then more recently, you know, Microsoft or Google or Facebook were kind of run by their founders for a very long time. And we thought there was a reason for that because it was much harder for a professional CEO to learn to be an innovator than for an innovator to learn to be a CEO. But venture capital firms kind of took the opposite point of view. One, there was nothing to help you become a CEO. And then they were really, really super confident of replacing you. And so that combination just kind of led to a lot of exits of founders. And so we were like, you know, like if we could build a firm that helped the founder become a CEO, uh, Kind of, and we thought there were two dimensions to it. One was just the skill set itself, which is a very big and winding skill set, and it's kind of the reason I wrote the last book. It was just like, can we help people learn this job? And then the other part was the network. …

AI assessment note: “if we could build a firm that helped the founder become a CEO”

Q Can I ask, when you look back at the culture building with Andreessen, do you think you've implemented shocking rules? And if so, what do you think kind of stands out in your mind?

A I think we probably have the, it's shocking enough that like, it's kind of made its way around the industry, um, as a legendary or maybe not legendary, but like thing that people talk about that we do is we find people basically, if you're on time, you're on time, but if you're late, it's 10 dollars a minute for a meeting with an entrepreneur. We really strive to have great respect. For the entrepreneurial process and what it means, and that means being, you know, if an entrepreneur comes to see us, like, we're going to be on time. You know, they can be late, but we're going to be on time, and we're going to be on time every time, and if you had to go to the bathroom, like, too bad. You know, if you were on an important call, too bad. It doesn't matter. There's no excuses. There's no relief for that. Fine, and people ask, like, why is that, and that gives us a chance to explain the story, and you can't work here and not know that's part of the Culture. Because every time you're in a meeting with an entrepreneur, you know, you've got to be on time, or you're going to not only have to pay a big fine, but it's going to be very embarrassing, because it happens in front of everybody. You know, it helps us make it clear to everybody that despite the fact that people come to us and ask us for money, we're not the whatever big person talking to the little person in the relationship. Li…

AI assessment note: “if you're late, it's 10 dollars a minute for a meeting with an entrepreneur”

Q I do want to ask you, because that's a moment of real transition for the company itself, and you say in the book, meditating on company downfalls will enable you to build your culture the right way. Really interesting to have that perspective, but what did you mean by it, and how does that mindset help?

A Yeah, so it comes from the Bushido, the way of the warrior, which is kind of the code of the ancient samurai. Theirs was even stronger, which is, like, the first principle of being a samurai is you must keep death in mind at all times. You know, that, that would seem to be, like, most miserable culture ever, right? But what they mean by it is, look, anytime you do something, be it take a bath to chop some wood to fight in a battle, you have to keep death in mind and What if this is the last time you did it? You know, would you be proud of what you did? You know, it's such a powerful cultural concept. Like even today, if you go to Japan, you can feel that in everything that they do, you know, like the, the level of pride that people take in any kind of work and the kind of meticulousness with which it gets done is just different than any place else. And it really is a, you know, it's kind of like a national kind of cultural strength, you know, in a company context, And, and it is kind of the underpinning of, of all cultural things, in that if you think about, okay, 30 years from now, what are people going to think about 20 minute VC? It's, it's not going to be like, I had this guest on, or that one, or like, we made money, or we lost money that quarter, or whatever. It's going to be like, what was it like to work there? You know, how did that make me feel every day? Like, for th…

AI assessment note: “if you think about, okay, 30 years from now, what are people going to think”

Q There's one case in the book, though, Ben, that I really do love, and it's a case of kind of the cultural integration of kind of the old and the new, and it's when you, uh, hired Mark Cranny. I'd love to hear what were some of your lessons from hiring Mark, and what did that experience teach you?

A Well, you know, I learned so much. The first is just, how do you hire an executive, and what is that process? And it turns out it's very different than a process you might use for another position. So, if you're hiring an engineer, if Then every engineer on that team knows how to do that job and may have something interesting to find out in the interview process. A lot of times you'll see rules in early stage companies where, okay, everybody's got to vote thumbs up in order for us to hire this person, or everybody's got to score them eight out of 10 or better or whatever. Um, but with an executive, that kind of policy can get destructive very fast because typically the head of HR, the head of engineering, the head of marketing, Don't know anything about what it means to run a global sales organization. And so, like, they can interview, but they're just, like, giving you random input at that point. So, one, you have to understand what the job is, you know, particularly if you haven't done it yourself. Two, you probably don't have any help on the rest of the team. Three, you kind of have to know exactly what you want for your company at that point in time. And so, like, all those kind of elements went into kind of hiring Mark. And, and the thing that I knew is I needed, we just had a missing part of the Culture, which is, you know, we had gone from this cloud services, brave new …

AI assessment note: “Well, you know, I learned so much. The first is just, how do you hire an executive”

Q Totally. No, I do get you. Can I ask, I've just joined my first institutional board a couple of months ago. What advice would you have for me?

A I think you have to think about what what you say means, not just to the people that you're talking to, but the people that you're not talking to, how that information is going to get relayed. You know, things carry more weight when they're coming from the board, so you want to think about the effect of what you're saying, not what you're saying. I think the mistake board members make is they say things because they want to, like, sound smart and impress the other board members as opposed to saying things because they They know what the reaction might be, and how it might affect how the company operates going forward, and, and, and that's where you get a lot of, uh, destructive behavior on the board, I would say.

AI assessment note: “think about the effect of what you're saying”

Q trust kind of down the line there into the culture building, and move further into the book, because the next pillars, as we discussed in the book, is the element of kind of creating these rules, so to speak, and in the book, you state the importance of Creating shocking rules. Before we dive into some rules themselves, what are the rules for creating kind of shocking rules themselves, Ben?

A Probably the key thing on a shocking rule is that it has to surprise people. People have to ask themselves, why in the world do we have that rule? That seems crazy. And one of my favorite rules like that, of course, is Tom Coughlin's, if you're on time, you're late. That rule even sounds crazy. And the reason it's important that it sounds that is because if people don't question the rule, then you don't get to the why. And having a rule that kind of everybody is living with, that's very counterintuitive, makes people understand the why, and every time they comply with that rule, they're reminded of why they're doing it, and that kind of thing can really set the culture, and of course, in Coughlin's case with the, you know, he's coaching the New York Giants football team, and the rule was, if you're, if people show on time to a meeting, and he would fine them like a thousand dollars, he'd be like, I'm on time. He's like, hey, you're late. If you're on time, you're late. The why behind it was like, They care so much about the details that they'll never be late because on time is means being early. That needs to ripple into everything they do, how they practice, how they study, um, how they work. They're always better than everybody else at every detailed aspect of the job. And that's a real kind of cultural statement. So like, you don't have to tell people, okay, you have to take…

AI assessment note: “Probably the key thing on a shocking rule is that it has to surprise people.”

Q And on appearance, I hope this isn't too personal, but you've achieved all that you could want to achieve. You know, Andreessen is, you know, one of the incredible firms of our era and of our time. What motivates you today?

A Well, it's the same thing that kind of motivated me to start the firm, which is, like, I'm a believer in business, um, for starters, I think, and in the technology business in particular, I think it's very, very important, you know, particularly with the population growing and everything, we're not going to be able to solve the world's problems or improve things if we don't kind of invent better ways of doing things. And then the way we build those companies, I think, ends up being very important, and people are seeing that more and more now. If software is eating the world and all companies are becoming technology companies, and the way those are built Ends up being, you know, maybe the most important thing for how we all live, and so, you know, any contribution I can make and, you know, helping people do that better, that's just a very worthwhile use of my time.

AI assessment note: “Well, it's the same thing that kind of motivated me to start the firm”

Q to ask that. I want to learn from you honestly here, Ben. Obviously, you love the first book, but in terms of like macro volatility, you've seen the booms and busts of many a market. I've never, I've never, I've never worked through one. Uh, Josh Koppelman said on the show it made him more conservative. How did seeing the macro volatility impact your investing mentality today, do you think?

A Yeah, well, like, I think I just have, like, a very keen awareness that, you know, macroeconomics matter, um, and no matter how good your business is, like, it can definitely be impacted by kind of a change in macroeconomics. Now, given that, and, of course, during the dot-com poll, like, it was severely brutal. I think the NASDAQ dropped over 90% from its peak to its trough, so, like, that's going to affect things. On the other hand, there's nothing more unpredictable than macroeconomics. Like, it is a very, very complex Complex system. You know, it's path dependent. It's not analyzable. You know, everybody's always making predictions, and they're always wrong until they're right, like a broken clock. You know, you don't really want to over anticipate it either. I think the best way to think of it is you kind of want to build the company to be able to deal with very, very bad weather. And that generally means that if you're going to spend a lot more money than you're making, and you better have a big balance sheet, And if not, like, you know, don't wait to put that balance sheet in place, put it in place if you have to burn money to grow the business. If you don't have it, then, you know, you need to kind of probably grow more slowly and more carefully just because you, the problem with macroeconomic turns is as a, an entrepreneur, you know, you don't get to stay when they hap…

AI assessment note: “you kind of want to build the company to be able to deal with very, very bad weather”

Q Totally. No, I do get you. Can I ask, I've just joined my first institutional board a couple of months ago. What advice would you have for me?

A I think you have to think about what what you say means, not just to the people that you're talking to, but the people that you're not talking to, how that information is going to get relayed. You know, things carry more weight when they're coming from the board, so you want to think about the effect of what you're saying, not what you're saying. I think the mistake board members make is they say things because they want to, like, sound smart and impress the other board members as opposed to saying things because they They know what the reaction might be, and how it might affect how the company operates going forward, and, and, and that's where you get a lot of, uh, destructive behavior on the board, I would say.

AI assessment note: “you have to think about what what you say means”

Q I do want to ask you, because that's a moment of real transition for the company itself, and you say in the book, meditating on company downfalls will enable you to build your culture the right way. Really interesting to have that perspective, but what did you mean by it, and how does that mindset help?

A Yeah, so it comes from the Bushido, the way of the warrior, which is kind of the code of the ancient samurai. Theirs was even stronger, which is, like, the first principle of being a samurai is you must keep death in mind at all times. You know, that, that would seem to be, like, most miserable culture ever, right? But what they mean by it is, look, anytime you do something, be it take a bath to chop some wood to fight in a battle, you have to keep death in mind and What if this is the last time you did it? You know, would you be proud of what you did? You know, it's such a powerful cultural concept. Like even today, if you go to Japan, you can feel that in everything that they do, you know, like the, the level of pride that people take in any kind of work and the kind of meticulousness with which it gets done is just different than any place else. And it really is a, you know, it's kind of like a national kind of cultural strength, you know, in a company context, And, and it is kind of the underpinning of, of all cultural things, in that if you think about, okay, 30 years from now, what are people going to think about 20 minute VC? It's, it's not going to be like, I had this guest on, or that one, or like, we made money, or we lost money that quarter, or whatever. It's going to be like, what was it like to work there? You know, how did that make me feel every day? Like, for th…

AI assessment note: “it comes from the Bushido... the first principle of being a samurai is you must keep death in mind”

Q Listen, I, trust me, I'm more excited, but I do want to start today with a little bit on you. So for those that don't know, how did you make your way into what I always call the wonderful world of venture, and how did you come to found Andreessen?

A Yeah, well, you know, it was an idea that came from Mark and myself, Mark, my partner in the firm, Our experience being entrepreneurs and, and the big aha that we had or kind of belief that there was a hole in the market was if you were a founder, you know, kind of an inventor who was building a company, we always kind of felt you were probably the best person to build that company because, you know, the great companies of the past from kind of IBM to Hewlett Packard, and then more recently, you know, Microsoft or Google or Facebook were kind of run by their founders for a very long time. And we thought there was a reason for that because it was much harder for a professional CEO to learn to be an innovator than for an innovator to learn to be a CEO. But venture capital firms kind of took the opposite point of view. One, there was nothing to help you become a CEO. And then they were really, really super confident of replacing you. And so that combination just kind of led to a lot of exits of founders. And so we were like, you know, like if we could build a firm that helped the founder become a CEO, uh, Kind of, and we thought there were two dimensions to it. One was just the skill set itself, which is a very big and winding skill set, and it's kind of the reason I wrote the last book. It was just like, can we help people learn this job? And then the other part was the network. …

AI assessment note: “it was an idea that came from Mark and myself... Our experience being entrepreneurs”

Q we dive into the kind of culture building in its most intense forms, I do want to start with something that you said very early on in the book, and you say when it comes to trust and trust building, if soldiers trust the general, communication will be vastly more efficient. What have been your biggest lessons on how to create an environment of trust, maybe quickly and early on?

A Yeah, no, so it's very, it's a very tricky thing, trust. You want people to trust That you're the right leader, and you're going in the right direction, but you're going to make mistakes, and then if you try and kind of maintain that initial trust by covering up the mistakes, then you can lose trust when they catch you in that kind of dishonesty, and so it's a really, it's a really subtle balance between being optimistic and being able to paint a bright future, and being able to be transparent about what's wrong in the company, what needs to be fixed, because like anything that's wrong in the company, if You're the founder, CEO is obviously your fault. So it does get tricky that you have to admit just how flawed you are and talk about how you can go forward. And I'll never forget, um, and Okta went through a very difficult time early on and they had like, you know, very deep attrition. And so Todd asked me to go talk to the company about why, uh, like why people should stay in the company. Like it was that bad. I said, look guys, I said, you're probably sitting here going, Okay, and, and the big problem we had is we had the wrong sales strategy. I was like, okay, you know, we got to the wrong sales strategy, and like, now we're going to a new sales strategy, and you're probably going, well, like, if the guys who drove us into that wall, why aren't they getting us into a new wal…

AI assessment note: “being able to be transparent about what's wrong in the company”

Q And on appearance, I hope this isn't too personal, but you've achieved all that you could want to achieve. You know, Andreessen is, you know, one of the incredible firms of our era and of our time. What motivates you today?

A Well, it's the same thing that kind of motivated me to start the firm, which is, like, I'm a believer in business, um, for starters, I think, and in the technology business in particular, I think it's very, very important, you know, particularly with the population growing and everything, we're not going to be able to solve the world's problems or improve things if we don't kind of invent better ways of doing things. And then the way we build those companies, I think, ends up being very important, and people are seeing that more and more now. If software is eating the world and all companies are becoming technology companies, and the way those are built Ends up being, you know, maybe the most important thing for how we all live, and so, you know, any contribution I can make and, you know, helping people do that better, that's just a very worthwhile use of my time.

AI assessment note: “any contribution I can make and, you know, helping people do that better”

Q But I love it as a question. You said the word urgency there, though, and it is one thing that you also say in the book, and you say employees have to Feel a sense of urgency when the culture needs to change. How do you, as the leader, create that sense of urgency within the team?

A Well, look, I mean, I think you, and this kind of gets into another part of the, um, book, which is, you know, you have to make decisions that demonstrate priorities. Kind of core example of that is Toussaint, when he was running the colony, made a very kind of hard-to-understand decision. You know, you couldn't hear that decision without knowing what the new, what the priority was, and the priority for him was In order to be a world-class country, you had to have, like, a world-class economy. So the question came up of, okay, what do we do with the plantation owners, the slave masters, like, after we win the war? His answer, of course, was, like, very surprising, which was, um, we're gonna let them keep their land and keep their employees, but they would have to pay them, and then he would lower their taxes in order to kind of facilitate that. And so if you think about that, that's just so counterintuitive in a slave revolt, but there was no way that anybody Didn't understand what the country's priorities were at that point. That was, like, total clarity and urgency around that, and, uh, kind of the example that I use, the parallel example, is Reed Hastings, um, when he switched the business from CDs to streaming, which, or DVDs to streaming, sorry. You know, he had no streaming revenue, and, you know, the DVD business was, not only was the entire business, they were a public …

AI assessment note: “you have to make decisions that demonstrate priorities”

Q we dive into the kind of culture building in its most intense forms, I do want to start with something that you said very early on in the book, and you say when it comes to trust and trust building, if soldiers trust the general, communication will be vastly more efficient. What have been your biggest lessons on how to create an environment of trust, maybe quickly and early on?

A Yeah, no, so it's very, it's a very tricky thing, trust. You want people to trust That you're the right leader, and you're going in the right direction, but you're going to make mistakes, and then if you try and kind of maintain that initial trust by covering up the mistakes, then you can lose trust when they catch you in that kind of dishonesty, and so it's a really, it's a really subtle balance between being optimistic and being able to paint a bright future, and being able to be transparent about what's wrong in the company, what needs to be fixed, because like anything that's wrong in the company, if You're the founder, CEO is obviously your fault. So it does get tricky that you have to admit just how flawed you are and talk about how you can go forward. And I'll never forget, um, and Okta went through a very difficult time early on and they had like, you know, very deep attrition. And so Todd asked me to go talk to the company about why, uh, like why people should stay in the company. Like it was that bad. I said, look guys, I said, you're probably sitting here going, Okay, and, and the big problem we had is we had the wrong sales strategy. I was like, okay, you know, we got to the wrong sales strategy, and like, now we're going to a new sales strategy, and you're probably going, well, like, if the guys who drove us into that wall, why aren't they getting us into a new wal…

AI assessment note: “a really subtle balance between being optimistic and being able to be transparent”

Q to ask that. I want to learn from you honestly here, Ben. Obviously, you love the first book, but in terms of like macro volatility, you've seen the booms and busts of many a market. I've never, I've never, I've never worked through one. Uh, Josh Koppelman said on the show it made him more conservative. How did seeing the macro volatility impact your investing mentality today, do you think?

A Yeah, well, like, I think I just have, like, a very keen awareness that, you know, macroeconomics matter, um, and no matter how good your business is, like, it can definitely be impacted by kind of a change in macroeconomics. Now, given that, and, of course, during the dot-com poll, like, it was severely brutal. I think the NASDAQ dropped over 90% from its peak to its trough, so, like, that's going to affect things. On the other hand, there's nothing more unpredictable than macroeconomics. Like, it is a very, very complex Complex system. You know, it's path dependent. It's not analyzable. You know, everybody's always making predictions, and they're always wrong until they're right, like a broken clock. You know, you don't really want to over anticipate it either. I think the best way to think of it is you kind of want to build the company to be able to deal with very, very bad weather. And that generally means that if you're going to spend a lot more money than you're making, and you better have a big balance sheet, And if not, like, you know, don't wait to put that balance sheet in place, put it in place if you have to burn money to grow the business. If you don't have it, then, you know, you need to kind of probably grow more slowly and more carefully just because you, the problem with macroeconomic turns is as a, an entrepreneur, you know, you don't get to stay when they hap…

AI assessment note: “I think I just have, like, a very keen awareness that, you know, macroeconomics matter”

Q Absolutely. Listen, I've interviewed, uh, pretty much probably 80% of the portfolio at Andreessen, and, uh, I continuously hear that exactly. So great to hear that. Final one. Now, I normally ask the most recent publicly announced investment. I think I'm kind of more excited to ask, almost from the founder perspective, what does the next five years hold for you and for Andreessen, and what's that exciting roadmap ahead?

A Well, a lot of it is more of the same, but, you know, one thing in venture capital is you have to, you know, the future changes, right? The future is not the past. So, like, when we started, the big trends were cloud computing, social networking, and mobile. And, you know, for the most part, um, getting to the end of their cycles, maybe not cloud computing as much. And so, you know, we always have to think about what's next. And this is, you know, like why we've added the bio fund and why we added the crypto fund because we, you know, we, we have to push forward. We have to get smart about other things and, um, and, you know, hopefully we continue to do that.

AI assessment note: “Well, a lot of it is more of the same”