Margit Wennmachers
Partner Emeritus, Andreessen Horowitz. On 1 show, 10 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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In 1997, Margit Wennmachers co-founded The OutCast Agency, serving clients including Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix. She joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2010 as an operating partner overseeing marketing and communications, shaping the firm's media strategy.
1shows
10appearances
106statements
6resolved
4supported
1contradicted
67%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Margit Wennmachers said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Wennmachers: Silicon Valley founders go from college dorms to corporate kombucha
“We need so much of that because a lot of the folks here, they are running large companies, but like, they've never run a thing. They're out of a dorm into their new dorm with kombucha and massage tables.”
No mainstream media publisher accepted Marc Andreessen's 'It's Time to Build'
“Wrote It's Time to Build. Like, you caved for a minute and said, like, all right, we'll place it. Maybe we'll place it. Yeah. And nobody took it. Nobody.”
Diane Greene was ousted from Google over an innocent satellite contract
“Diane Greene was ousted from Google for like a very innocent contract who'd look at pictures, I mean, satellites, right?”
Wenmachers: Never trust a PR agency that promises specific press outcomes
“And don't trust an agency ever that will promise you a headline or a story or any kind of outcome.”
Wenmachers: PR agencies should never re-pitch for lost client business
“If the agency actually wants to repitch the business, you should fire them again. Because it's just a stupid ass decision. Replace the revenue, learn from why is the account gone, and then move the hell on.”
Wennmachers: When a company makes a mistake, apologize fully without nibbling
“When you eat shit, don't nibble. So if you, if you're going to own it, which if you actually screwed up, you should.”
Wennmachers: Lying to the media during a crisis permanently destroys credibility
“I actually like to know really what happened, because once you lie to the media, you're basically fucked.”
Wennmachers: A company in crisis gets only one media turnaround story
“There may be a 150 stories that are all very, very critical, rightly or wrongly, no matter what. There's one turnaround story. It's just, you only get one of those.”
Wennmachers: PR agencies should be benchmarked on network, not domain knowledge
“Well, the whole fricking point is that they can help translate this very wonky thing that you do to an audience that will then write it down, have to write it down in plain English to an even broader audience, right? So you don't want to benchmark them on how …”
Becoming a CEO is more learnable than developing product genius
“Product genius is kind of binary, you have it or you don't, right? And it's more, becoming a CEO is more learnable than developing product genius.”
Silicon Valley offers 30 times more startup opportunities than Europe
“And for everyone here, there's just 30 or more in Silicon Valley.”
a16z strategically targeted all marketing communications at founders instead of LPs
“The thing that we all decided is like, we're just going to aim all of our communications at the entrepreneurs versus the LPs. Because we have their numbers, we, we're not a column, and you guys got great introductions to people, but it all needs to be very ent…”
a16z LPs complained about a Bio/Health blog post titled 'fuck cancer'
“We got one, we did one incredibly controversial block, it turns out. Like, a few LPs really hated the headline, and it was it was in the BioNHealth team, and it said, fuck cancer”
Top software engineers prefer Elon Musk over legacy auto executives
“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 an, a talent magnet for soft…”
a16z built partner brands so founders wouldn't only demand Marc Andreessen
“I do think we needed to even out the brand a little bit because like, otherwise any entrepreneur with leverage was going to go like, well, I want him to be on my board. Right. And that was just going to get success. It'll be worse with every other GP. So that …”
Most executive business books are fancy resumes rather than practical guides
“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, that, like, it's so rough and tumble to be in a st…”
Margit Wennmachers: Media coverage falsely portrays Silicon Valley as mostly weirdos
“The weirdos, like, the weirder the better, right? Like, and it, it's gotten to an extreme where it's like, this is actually not reflecting Silicon Valley. It's just the, a slice of it.”
Wennmachers: A TED Talk is not a personal brand
“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, that's not a personal brand.”
Mainstream media now reacts at the end of social news cycles
“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, it eventually spills out, and then media is like, oh, what is this thing? But like, it's at the very end, right? And that, …”
Wenmachers: No global PR agency is equally excellent across all offices
“I have not seen an agency that is equally excellent in every office that they have.”
Wenmachers: Public relations teams should never report to quantitative CMOs
“If the CMO is a quant person, I think definitely PR should not report into the CMO because it's just a different animal.”
Wenmachers: Denying PR direct CEO access drastically reduces talent quality
“When a CEO refuses to do that, the Caliber of talent they can get just drops 10 notches.”
Wenmachers: Self-publishing lacks the credibility of independent third-party media
“You can do that, but you will never be as credible as an independent source of information.”
The other half of the tape: Margit Wennmachers's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ben Horowitz 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the a16z Podcast 1
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Margit's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a16zLEDGER | Partner Emeritus, Andreessen Horowitz | 10 +1 | 106 | 67% 4/6 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |