Casado: VCs who skip evenings and weekends do not deserve to invest
Martin Casado · a16z GP Martin Casado: How I Went from Engineer to VC; Lessons from Chris Dixon | 20VC #956 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Dec 6, 2022 · at 6:07
Martin Casado, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), argues that venture capitalists must put in extensive work hours to support founders.
0:00 / 0:06exact quote · 6.7s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And you should work in the evenings, and you should work on weekends. And if you don't, like, I, like, I just don't think you deserve to be investing in these companies. You just don't.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Martin Casado
Casado: OpenAI Lost Its Early Leads In Code, Image, And Video Generation
“OpenAI was the first to code, right? With GitHub Copilot. I mean, they provided the weights. As far as I know, and they lost that. And they were first to image with Dali, and they lost that. And they were the first to video with Sora. And as far as I can tell,…”
Casado: Vertical SaaS Tech Is Simple CRUD Where The Team Doesn't Matter
“Every time I look at vertical SAS, I'm like, why do we even care about the technical team? It's fucking crud, man. It's like, crud is like create, you know, read, update, delete. It's like, they all do the same thing. They all just kind of look like a web app.…”
Casado: Open-Source AI Is Dangerous Because China Is Better At It
“I think that right now open source is most dangerous because China is better at it than we are, and as a result of that.”
Casado: Operating background likely hurts venture capitalists more than it helps
“I don't know if operating helps or not. Like, I don't know if it helps you pick. I don't know if it helps you close. I don't know. Like, I don't know how to answer that. Probably not. It probably hurts more than helps.”
Casado: Thesis investing is flawed because market narratives are usually retrofitted
“A lot of investors talk about actually in the, a lot of investors talk about thesis. I don't think that's the right way to think about investing at all. I think it's just so crazy to come up with some story, which to your point is more retrofit. So I'm definit…”
Casado: Zero-Sum AI Investing Is A Mistake; Every Layer Captures Value
“Observationally, there's only been one sin, and that one sin is zero sum thinking. We always worry about like, oh, is this defensible? Oh, will this layer get margin? Will this layer get value? And the answer has kind of been unilaterally yes. The answer has b…”