Feb 20, 2020 · 41m · mad
Fireside Chat Part II: Ben Horowitz (a16z) on Culture with Matt Turck (FirstMark) at Data Driven NYC
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this Data Driven NYC fireside chat, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz joins Matt Turck to discuss how company culture is defined by daily actions, enforced through shocking rules, and tailored to business strategy.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Matt holds 5.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Matt as informed peer 1.6 Guest teaching 3.6 Guest disagreement 1.3 Matt pushing back 0.2
speaking balance: gold is Matt, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 18:30 Critique of tech diversity approach
Ben forcefully criticizes Silicon Valley diversity initiatives as destructive and misaligned with real talent discovery.
Hardest push from Matt ▶ 7:38 Testing early culture premiseMatt cites Patrick Collison's view on the first 20 employees setting company culture to challenge Ben's framework.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 18:50 Sony Urban Music analogy on diversityBen reframes diversity and inclusion using the Sony Urban Music story to show how categorical labeling blinds leaders to underlying talent.
Matt holds his own ▶ 30:07 Connecting Amazon and Apple culture contrastsMatt displays deep preparation by highlighting the key thesis from Ben's book regarding Amazon's frugality versus Apple's design perfection.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Matt as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Matt pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Defining Culture vs. Values and Virtues | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Matt opens with a supportive fan comment and asks a foundational question defining culture versus values. Ben explains culture as daily actions rather than written beliefs, referencing ancient samurai principles. | |
| Identifying Cultural Failures and the Prison Gang Example | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Matt prompts with examples like Uber and WeWork to ask about failing cultures. Ben responds with a lengthier story about prison gang leader Shaka Senghor to illustrate how cultural norms get set implicitly by observed behavior. | |
| Setting Early Culture and Shocking Rules | 3 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Matt cites Patrick Collison of Stripe regarding early team culture creation. Ben politely refutes the premise and details Andreessen Horowitz's $10-per-minute lateness fine as a 'shocking rule' that reinforces cultural values. | |
| Managing High Performers, Virtues, and Subcultures | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Matt asks about the trade-off of keeping high performers who violate culture. Ben explains subcultures using the New York Times piece on Amazon and sales culture adjustments at Slack. | |
| Scaling Culture Globally across Regions | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Matt asks a custom question about global cultural scaling across international regions. Ben clarifies that core strategic alignment must be universal while regional habits can vary. | |
| Building Inclusive Cultures and Uncovering Hidden Talent | 1 | 6 | 3 | 0 | Matt asks about building inclusive cultures around gender and race. Ben delivers an extended monologue criticizing standard tech diversity programs as counterproductive and detailing a talent-first hiring approach. | |
| Evaluating Culture Pre-Investment and Board Roles | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Matt asks how Ben evaluates culture pre-investment and in board roles. Ben reframes the premise, explaining that early-stage startups rarely have established cultures to evaluate. | |
| Aligning Culture with Business Strategy | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Matt demonstrates familiarity with Ben's book by noting how Amazon and Apple built contrasting but valid cultures. Ben confirms and elaborates on aligning culture directly with business strategy. | |
| Audience Q&A: HR Analytics and Quantifying Culture | 0 | 4 | 2 | 0 | An audience member asks about HR analytics and quantifying culture. Ben argues that culture is an ongoing daily process rather than a metric to track. | |
| Audience Q&A: How City Cultures Develop | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Audience members ask about city cultures and evaluating company culture as a job seeker. Ben shares tactical interview advice focused on specific daily behaviors. | |
| Audience Q&A: Radical Honesty and Giving Continuous Feedback | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | An audience member asks about Bushido-style honesty in sensitive environments. Ben discusses normalizing bad news and giving continuous feedback before Matt wraps up the event. |
Statements from this episode (17)
Horowitz: Culture is defined by actions, not beliefs
“A culture is not a set of beliefs. It's a set of actions.”
Horowitz: Annual performance reviews fail to drive company culture
“That's not how you move culture through an annual performance review. Like, this is a daily thing. People have to face it daily.”
Horowitz: Uber had a 'very compelling culture' under Travis Kalanick
“Uber had a very compelling culture under Travis with a very bad issue.”
Horowitz: Culture is defined by who gets promoted, not posted values
“You can't say, okay, people are going to behave according to the values on the wall. They're going to go, oh, that person who just got promoted, lobbied the CEO for six months, took credit for her work, did those things. That's your culture. That's how that ge…”
Ben Horowitz fined a16z team members $10 per minute for late meetings
“So, you know, I was determined, ok, how do we set the culture so that doesn't happen, and so the, you know, one of the first rules I put in place is, if you're late to meeting with an entrepreneur, 10 dollars a minute fine.”
Ben Horowitz: Shocking rules enforce culture by forcing employees to ask why
“And I call that that type of rule a shocking rule, which is a rule that you have that everybody wants to know why do we have that rule.”
Horowitz: Enterprise sales teams must be compensated with commissions
“I was like, Stuart, we have to pay commissions. Like, we're not, like, this is sales. It's a prize fight. No prize, no fight.”
Horowitz: a16z is 52% female with seven female general partners
“We're a 180 people, we're 52% women we're, And we have like seven women general partners, something like that”
a16z operates without a head of diversity or diversity program
“But we don't have a head of diversity. We don't have program. We just have, like, criteria that's wide, where we can see talent that we ourselves might not have.”
Horowitz: Hiring through separate diversity initiatives fails at real inclusion
“So if you hire somebody on race and gender through the urban talent department, instead of through the normal talent department, through the fucking side door instead of through the front door, because you can't see the talent, then you're never going to be go…”
Horowitz invested in Databricks the day it incorporated
“When Databricks came to me, like I invested the day they incorporated the company”
Horowitz: Founders who lie in pitches also lie to employees
“If you have a founder who's, like, say, telling you, like, some pretty aggressive, not true things in the pitch, then, you know, that's gonna be a tricky founder to work for, because it's very rare to have a person who, you know, lies only to investors and not…”
Horowitz: Company culture must support strategy, not copy Jeff Bezos
“Whatever your culture is should support your business strategy. It shouldn't be what you borrowed from Jeff Bezos, because he built a different company than you're building.”
a16z surveys rejected founders to measure if they were treated respectfully
“We measure, we do a customer satisfaction survey of entrepreneurs we rejected to measure whether we treated them with, because that's kind of, to me, the litmus test of, are you treating people with respect?”
Horowitz: a16z employees who publicly trash startups on Twitter are fired
“One of the things I tell everybody at New Employee Orientation is if you get on Twitter, like some VCs, and start shitting all over somebody's company, you know, saying, oh, they'll never make any money, that's a dumb idea, I can't believe they called it bodeg…”
Quincy Jones, P Diddy, and Kevin Durant are a16z fund LPs
“One of the reasons we started the Cultural Leadership Fund is we wanted a partnership with people who knew how to move culture in the general sense. And if you look at the LPs in that fund, Quincy Jones P Diddy Kevin Durant, so forth, they're all people who ha…”
Horowitz: Evaluate startup culture by asking about specific behaviors, not general questions
“If you say, is this a good culture? Nobody's gonna say that the culture is bad if they're trying to hire you so you kind of have to get into specific behaviors that you might think are indicative, or that you have experience in a bad culture and just see if th…”