Andreessen: Professional managers fail when industries face rapid disruption
Marc Andreessen · Marc Andreessen: The World Is More Malleable Than You Think · Mar 15, 2026 · at 14:56
Marc Andreessen discusses James Burnham's theories on managerialism versus founder-led capitalism with David Senra.
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“The problem with his argument is that assumes the managers are going to do a good job. Right. And I think if there's like one dominant theme that we're seeing in the last, you know, 30 years, you know, in the West, for sure, it's like managers generally, you know, writ large are not doing a great job. Or another way to put it is the managers maybe are good at managing something that's going to be status quo for a long time. Like, if it doesn't change, maybe they, you know, maybe they can run the banks for a long time, or they can run the power company for a long time, or the car company, and as long as the car is the car is the car, you know, or soup is soup is soup, it kind of doesn't matter. But the minute things change, the manager personality type, because it's not the founder personality type, it doesn't know how to deal with change.”
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