Jan 2, 2019 · 38m · a16z
a16z Podcast | Talent, Tech Trends, and Culture -- with Ben, Marc, and Tyler Cowen
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In a special live panel at the a16z Innovation Summit, Andreessen Horowitz co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz join moderator Tyler Cowen to discuss venture capital philosophy, emerging tech trends, cultural leadership, and the qualities that drive successful entrepreneurs.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 1.8 Guest teaching 3.1 Guest disagreement 2.0 The host pushing back 1.8
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 30:02 Marc's visceral rejection of non-profit sushi
Marc forcefully and humorously rejects Tyler's premise of non-profit sushi, stating that the concept makes him nauseous enough to want to throw up on stage.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 10:30 Tyler challenges Marc's claim that retail is deadTyler refuses to accept Marc's absolute claim that retail will be entirely gone in 15 years, interrupting to insist that he still wants to go to shopping malls.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 19:22 Ben reframes the Cultural Leadership Fund premiseBen immediately corrects the premise of Tyler's question, explaining that they are applying culture to the venture capital model rather than applying venture capital to culture.
The host holds their own ▶ 29:56 Tyler deploys signature economic diagnostic questionTyler demonstrates his distinct background as a market economist by using his personal signature question about non-profit sushi to test the guest's ideological commitment to free markets.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meeting at Netscape and Founding LoudCloud | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Tyler Cowen opens with conversational origin questions about how Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen met at Netscape and co-founded LoudCloud. The guests explain early internet infrastructure challenges while Cowen offers light humorous commentary. | |
| Launching Andreessen Horowitz and the Talent Network Model | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Cowen asks standard interview prompts about founding a VC firm in 2009 and identifying talent. Horowitz educates the host on borrowing CAA agent Michael Ovitz's long-term network model for Silicon Valley. | |
| Tech Trends: Blockchain, Retail, Wearables, and VR | 2 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Cowen runs through rapid-fire tech trend questions. When Andreessen predicts traditional retail will disappear completely, Cowen pushes back directly, insisting he still wants to go to shopping malls. | |
| Pop Culture, Hip-Hop, and Television Lessons for Founders | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Cowen asks about pop culture references including Martin vs Fresh Prince and TV show recommendations. Horowitz and Andreessen elaborate extensively on culture and founder lessons from shows like Halt and Catch Fire and Burn Notice. | |
| Cultural Leadership Fund and Silicon Valley Convergence | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | Horowitz immediately corrects Cowen's premise regarding the Cultural Leadership Fund, clarifying that they are applying culture to VC rather than VC to culture. Both guests discuss the cultural and geographical convergence of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. | |
| Geographic Centralization and Managerial Intelligence | 2 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Andreessen rejects Cowen's binary choice on whether location matters more or less, answering 'Yes, clearly both' and detailing a nuanced paradox. Cowen cites Ben's management book before Horowitz defines key traits of managerial intelligence. | |
| Emergent Behavior, Barbecue Mastery, and Economics | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 | Cowen deploys his signature economics trap question asking Andreessen if he prefers for-profit or non-profit sushi. Andreessen responds with visceral exaggeration, stating the idea of non-profit sushi makes him nauseous. | |
| Government Policy, Automated VC, and Book Recommendations | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Cowen prompts the guests on government policy, automated VC, and reading lists. Andreessen gives a deep historical explanation of venture capital 'carry' originating from 17th-century whaling and recommends Timur Kuran's book on preference falsification. |
Statements from this episode (23)
Andreessen: Mid-90s enterprise software assumed the internet would fail
“It basically assumed that the internet was not going to work, which was the dominant assumption at that time.”
Horowitz: Half of all 1990s internet traffic routed through AOL
“Half the traffic on the internet went through AOL.”
Horowitz: Most great tech companies are run by founders long-term
“Most of the really great companies, like forget about successful, but like great companies, companies you admire in tech were all run by their founders for a very long time.”
Horowitz: Subsequent product cycles require an innovating founder
“Getting to that next product after you get the first product, getting to the next product market fit required an innovator, and so if you wanted subsequent product cycles, you needed the founder”
Andreessen: Successful tech founders are inherently extreme people
“The kind of very special person who's going to conceive of an original idea and then be able to build a team and be able to prosecute the idea is going to be a very extreme person.”
Andreessen: Traditional retail will basically be gone in 15 years
“So I think retail will basically be gone.”
Andreessen: Wearable sensors will predict heart attacks within 5 to 10 years
“I think we'll have a full complement of medical grade sensors on, you know, on our bodies in a way that we have chosen to over the next five or 10 years. And I think we're, I think we'll get to the point where we're gonna be able to do things like predict hear…”
Andreessen: Virtual reality will be 1,000 times bigger than augmented reality
“I think VR is going to be like a thousand times bigger.”
Andreessen: Halt and Catch Fire season 1 is TV's most accurate startup portrayal
“Especially the first season of that show, I think it, it's the most accurate portrayal of what a tech startup is actually like, that's ever been aired.”
Andreessen: A great founder must master every core business discipline
“Like, a good founder has to basically have every conceivable skill. Like, you basically have to be good at product development, and at marketing, and at sales, and at finance, and at legal, and at HR, and management, and, you know, on and on and on and on. And…”
Andreessen: Succession accurately depicts the internal dysfunction of large companies
“It's inspiring for founders, because it, I think, pretty accurately shows the dysfunction at let's say, certain kinds of larger companies.”
Andreessen: Tech giants decoded media and culture between 2015 and 2018
“It really is in the last, like, three years, it feels like a bunch of the Valley companies are really starting to decode culture, A bunch of the big, I mean, Netflix being, you know, Netflix sort of, you know, sort of setting a new model, but now being, you kn…”
Andreessen: Winning tech companies in 20 years will be 100x larger than Google
“The winning companies, you know, the winning entrepreneurial companies 20 years from now that win are going to be Staggeringly large. Like, they're going to be like, I don't know, 10 or a hundred times the size of Google and Facebook.”
Andreessen: Silicon Valley will become more central despite remote work tech
“And so I think the valley is actually going to become more central, not less central, even though the technologies that we're building are making it possible for the world to distribute.”
Horowitz: Great managerial intelligence combines systems thinking with high people perceptiveness
“Somebody who's that perceptive on people plus a systems thinker is really the, those are the people who are gifted.”
Andreessen: Successful tech platforms rely on emergent user behavior
“The really successful platforms let the users surface the behaviors, right, that the creators of the platform could have never thought of, and, you know, Twitter's had all kinds of issues over the years, but, like, it always has been amazing. Most of the compe…”
Andreessen: Wall Street's tech misunderstanding creates venture opportunities
“The question assumes I want to fix it. Like, I don't think I want to fix it, because that's a big part of the opportunity.”
Horowitz: U.S. stem cell bans failed and caused preventable deaths
“Stem cells is a great one where the US government went to really hold that back. They didn't hold back stem cell, like, development or research at all. They just made it very inconvenient for people in the United States, and a lot of people died and, you know,…”
Andreessen: Early-stage project selection will be the last task software eats
“So I think it's fundamentally, the term that you used actually called it, I think, project selection. And so basically it's this question of like, okay, how do you organize a small number of people to do something new, right? ... And it's just, it's so intangi…”
Andreessen: VC term 'carried interest' originates from 17th-century whaling
“The, there's a term in venture capital in hedge funds called carry, which is basically called carried interest, which is the sort of profit participation that the VCs or hedge fund managers make. The term carry actually comes from whaling in the 1600 off, like…”
Horowitz: Genghis Khan biography is an unexpected masterclass on workplace inclusion
“One of the most interesting books I read lately is Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, and it turns out to be very unexpectedly the most interesting book on the topic of how you think about inclusion that I've ever read ... Def…”
Andreessen: Preference falsification explains both the Trump and Bernie phenomena
“This book about 20 years ago is called, ah, Private Truths, Public Lies. And it basically tells the story, the theory that he basically has, he calls preference falsification... It so happens to be, I think, highly relevant to what's happening both on the left…”