Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, explains why founders must design culture tailored to their own company's strategy rather than imitating other successful leaders.
“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.”
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 Ben Horowitz
Insight
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…”
Ben HorowitzFeb 20, 2020▶ 26:45Fireside Chat Part II: Ben Horowitz (a16z) on Culture with Matt Turck (FirstMark) at Data Driven NYC
Disclosure
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.”
Ben HorowitzFeb 20, 2020▶ 23:20Fireside Chat Part II: Ben Horowitz (a16z) on Culture with Matt Turck (FirstMark) at Data Driven NYC
Insight
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…”
Ben HorowitzFeb 20, 2020▶ 29:25Fireside Chat Part II: Ben Horowitz (a16z) on Culture with Matt Turck (FirstMark) at Data Driven NYC
Disclosure
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…”
Ben HorowitzFeb 20, 2020▶ 33:36Fireside Chat Part II: Ben Horowitz (a16z) on Culture with Matt Turck (FirstMark) at Data Driven NYC
Insight
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.”
Ben HorowitzFeb 20, 2020▶ 2:17Fireside Chat Part II: Ben Horowitz (a16z) on Culture with Matt Turck (FirstMark) at Data Driven NYC
Opinion
Horowitz: Uber had a 'very compelling culture' under Travis Kalanick
“Uber had a very compelling culture under Travis with a very bad issue.”
Ben HorowitzFeb 20, 2020▶ 3:18Fireside Chat Part II: Ben Horowitz (a16z) on Culture with Matt Turck (FirstMark) at Data Driven NYC
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 400 conversations transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.