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- [00:01]
Marc Andreessen
You just close your eyes and just imagine two states of the world. One is which the entire world runs an American open source LLM and the other is where the entire world, including the US runs on all Chinese software. And I, you know, I don't know. For me, that's, you know, very straightforward.
- [00:15]
Podcast Host / Narrator
In this episode of the A16Z podcast, we're sharing Marc Andreessen's recent appearance on TVPN, recorded live at A16Z's 2025 LP conference in Las Vegas. Mark joins the show for a wide ranging conversation on everything from the AI boom and open source models to the evolution of venture capital and the future of American dynamism. Along the way, he reveals the thinking behind A16Z's new branding, how startups are scaling faster than ever, and what it'll take to build enduring companies in today's market. Let's get into it. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com disclosures.
- [01:24]
Podcast Host 1
Welcome.
- [01:24]
Podcast Host 2
How are you doing, Mark?
- [01:25]
Marc Andreessen
Hey guys. What's happening?
- [01:27]
Podcast Host 2
What's happening?
- [01:28]
Podcast Host 1
It's been a great.
- [01:28]
Podcast Host 2
I'm going to hit this real quick.
- [01:30]
Podcast Host 1
The sound effect board. Thanks so much for joining us and.
- [01:34]
Podcast Host 2
Thanks for wearing us. Thanks for wearing a suit.
- [01:36]
Podcast Host 1
Yeah, exactly.
- [01:37]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah.
- [01:37]
Podcast Host 1
You look forward to it.
- [01:38]
Marc Andreessen
Special occasion.
- [01:38]
Podcast Host 2
Yeah, special occasion.
- [01:41]
Marc Andreessen
Congratulations on the podcast. I just want to start out by saying I've been watching. It was tremendous.
- [01:45]
Podcast Host 1
Thank you so much.
- [01:46]
Podcast Host 2
Well, you know, I have a funny story. The moment that I realized that you were maybe paying a little bit of attention to what we were doing and it gave me some conviction that we were on the right track. Is we. We did a reply guy of the week to this guy Baldo and it was like this inside joke and I was like holy shit.
- [02:02]
Marc Andreessen
Mark just followed Baldo.
- [02:04]
Podcast Host 2
Very talented guy. But.
- [02:05]
Marc Andreessen
But yeah.
- [02:06]
Podcast Host 2
So it's, it's thank you for, for following along and it's been awesome talking to your whole team today. Fantastic.
- [02:12]
Podcast Host 1
So let's go through some hot topics. I want to start with we're in the AI era. You obviously live through the dot com era. There's some comparisons. What have you learned and what how is this time different companies are making more money valuations are high. But how are you thinking about teaching the next generation what they should learn or what they should ignore from the people that might say this is the dotcom boom 2.0.
- [02:37]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah. So look, I guess I'd say, I think as Mark Twain who once said, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And so I think people looking for like a direct compare contrast, sometimes you see people like drawing charts where the stock market's gonna do the same thing or whatever. Like, I don't think that stuff ever quite happens that way. But, you know, it does rhyme. And you know, the line that John Doar had in 1995, I remember, was that the Internet is a cream that you rub on investors to get them all excited. So.
- [03:03]
Podcast Host 1
John Doerr said that. That's hilarious.
- [03:05]
Marc Andreessen
Yes, yes, I have many, many, many, John. Oh, yeah, exactly. But, you know, so, you know, as like that now, you know, look, the AI, Sorry, the Internet went through, you know, went through phases. People actually forget. But there was like, you know, there were like these, even the phases, like on the way up from, you know, 95 to 2000, you know, there were these phases of like, skepticism and panic. You know, it looked like the whole thing was going to fall apart in 98. And then, you know, in 2001, after the dot com crash, all the big companies just like completely wrote the Internet off and they just said, you know, thank God that's over. And then the Internet itself just kept growing, right? And then, you know, by 2005, it was back to, you know, kind of back to where it had been before and the rest was. Was history. And so, you know, people kind of go, people are kind of bipolar on these things. They kind of get overly excited, they get overly depressed. You know, I just always thought then, and I think now the substance matters. You know, the substance overwhelmingly matters. And so, you know, is the technology great? Like, are the products great? Are people using them? And you know, AI is like off to the races so far. It's just like unprecedented rate of growth of actual use. Yeah, right. You know, you see that in all the numbers. And then, you know, look, the businesses, you know, I just, I talked to another conversation yesterday with like a company that's raised seed money. They're already over 10 million ARR. With this incredible, you know, like, it's just. And you know, there's like, there's a lot of those. Like, you know, they're all over the place. And so, you know, the things that are working, the products are fantastic. You know, the users are getting tremendous value out of them. And as you know, the base technology is moving really fast. So I feel really good about it.
- [04:37]
Podcast Host 1
Yeah, I mean it can move faster because we have the Internet. Like these apps can get to hundreds of millions of daily active users because there's hundreds of millions of people, there's billions of people on the Internet. Very interesting not to linger on the dot com stuff too much, but I'd love to know a little bit of a history lesson around the way the browser wars played out. And is there anything you can learn from that that applies to the open source versus closed sourced AI debate? You've been very opinionated on that. I'd love to know, kind of are there any previous eras of tech that you're mapping to when you think about open source AI?
- [05:12]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah. So, you know, look, you know, a lot of the browser wars, you know, there was kind of a big little company, kind of big company thing. And you know, I think that's repeating itself. And you know, I think one of the ways to think about what's happening right now is OpenAI is kind of growing up become Google and Google's kind of reinventing itself to be OpenAI. And so there's like a similar thing there. And then Microsoft and Apple and Google control the operating systems for end user devices and they all have AI strategies and Amazon as well. So a lot of those issues are going to come back up. Two of these big companies are actually on federal trial right now in big FTC cases in Washington D.C. actually in the same courtroom. And so many of those issues will repeat or will be intense. You know, the open source thing in tech has always been the wild card. I think it's always been an incredibly positive wildcard. You know, I've always been, you know, enthusiastic supporter of it. My original work was all open source. And so, you know, the real thing that happened with open source is in operating systems. You know, basically Unix 1 and then, and then, you know, specifically Linux 1, you know, for everything on the back end. And I, you know, like, you know, I remember like in the 1990s there was like a furious operating system war and there were these companies that were making huge amounts of money on server operating systems, you know, companies like sun and many others. And then, you know, Linux just like commoditized that entire thing. Yeah, you know, I think it's plausible. You know, we'll see. But it, look, it's plausible that open source AI may just be the standard like it, you know, and whether, whether that derives out of, you know, Deepseak Or Llama or, you know, any of the other new things are coming out, you know, we'll see. But like, I think that's entirely feasible. And you know, I think that would be, obviously, you know, there are companies that would have to adjust to that if it happens. But the other side is if kind of the world had AI for free, I think that would be a pretty magical result also.
- [06:47]
Podcast Host 1
Yeah, totally. I mean, shifting to the geopolitics, the geopolitics of all this, is it important not just that there's an open source champion, but that there's an American open source champion or a Western open source LLM?
- [07:00]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, I believe so. And I believe so for two reasons. One is just actually cultural reasons, which is just, you know, open weights is great, but like the open weights, like they're baked, right? Like the training is in the weights and you can't really undo that. And so are you being trained by, you know, a company or an organization or set of people with American or Western values? Are you being trained, you know, by, you know, company with Chinese values? And look, you know, there's issues on both sides. You know, the American trained models have their, have their issues, they have their weirdnesses, you know, but the Chinese trained models, you know, look, they like score really well. You know, they literally, in the Chinese benchmarks, they literally have like line items for like Marxism, right? And you know, deep seq is like 100 out of 100 on Marxism, right?
- [07:43]
Podcast Host 1
And so for deep seat really knocked it out of the park with that one. Congratulations.
- [07:47]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, exactly. It's fantastic. Right? And so it's like, all right, so these are going to be, you know, this is going to be the technology that's going to intermediate your, the legal system, right? The courts, the education system, the medical system. Like, you know, how, you know, you want your, you know, if you guys have kids, like, do you want your kids to, you know, your kids are going to be learning from these things their whole lives. And you know, do they have, you know, do they fundamentally have Western values or do they have, you know, sort of, you know, CCP values? I think is really critical. And then the other thing just, I would say just close your eyes and just imagine two states of the world. One is which the entire world runs an American open source LLM and the other is where the entire world, including the US runs on all Chinese software. And I don't know, for me that's a very straightforward, it's a very important topic and a very straightforward answer.
- [08:29]
Podcast Host 1
Yeah, I mean, in the American dynamism context, is it kind of mission accomplished there or are there new territories that you're looking to expand into with the broader American dynamism thesis? We talked to DU about energy and whatnot, but what is exciting about you outside of artificial intelligence on the national interest investing side?
- [08:52]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, so I mean, look, we made tremendous progress. I'm super proud of that team. And then, you know, this, this, in this new political environment, the new administration has embraced it, but also a lot of Democrats are actually quite excited about it also. And our, you know, our event that we hold has lots of people from both parties. So I think there's a, you know, there's this unified view now. I think in the American, at least in the political world of like, all right, it's time, you know, it's time for the US to step up on a lot of these things. It's time for the US to build more. It's time for the US to, you know, reinvent energy. It's time for nuclear, you know, it's time for infrastructure, housing, like all these things. And so I think there's a lot of momentum. I think we're at the very beginning of it. One of the ways to think about what we're doing, American dynamism, is we're going after all the sectors of GDP that are like really big and not yet basically affected by tech. And so education, healthcare, housing, defense, law, just to pick five. Those are giant important slices of the economy that largely have not been transformed by technology in the last 50 years. The U.S. defense Department spends coming up on a trillion dollars. Very little of that money is going to technologies and companies that have been invented, frankly in the last 20 years. Most military hardware in the Department of defense is the F16 is from the 1970s. The US plane that does high altitude photography, the high altitude spy plane, it's still the U2, which is literally a 70 year old plane. So there's just enormous changes that really have to happen. And I think everybody kind of in the system knows that, but it's hard to get think a big part of that is these new companies that we try to support. They need to show up and make their case. But the entrepreneurs are fantastic. And then we see more receptivity coming from the system than we ever have.
- [10:34]
Podcast Host 2
Talk about the position that the firm is in today. In many ways it feels like you and Ben and the team had somewhat of a crystal ball to see how the private markets were evolving, companies staying private longer. AI being this massive platform shift that's Going to upend every industry. And then now the sort of political environment that enables industries to kind of get a second or third life. Did you just get lucky or did you see a lot of this coming?
- [11:04]
Marc Andreessen
I mean, I think we got a few things right. We got a bunch of stuff wrong. We buried those ideas out back behind the shed. So we made a bunch of mistakes along the way or changed a bunch of things, but we got a few big things right. I think the things I think we got right, one is, look, the venture ecosystem as you guys know, has just evolved enormously in a very positive way. And the kind of old model of having a bunch of mid sized firms that kind of sit on Sand Hill Road and wait for the founders to come in, those days are kind of over. You have the rise of the high scale firms like us, but you also have the rise of all these seed and angel investors that are really first money in and then really working closely with founders from the very beginning. And I think that ecosystem is healthier than ever and doing really well. So that's been a big change on the IPOs. I don't know, I would say we have changed on that, which is. I used to complain a lot. I used to give these interviews years ago and early 2010s and just complain about that it was basically becoming impossible for companies to go public and the things that had caused that to happen and what needed to change. And then of course, nothing happened. There were no reforms, there were no improvements. If anything, everything got worse. And so we and others adapted to that by basically putting ourselves in a position to fund companies later in their life cycle at higher, larger amounts of money, later growth stages. It's now much more common for companies tenders and these kind of private sales, even for their employees. So that's been a big change. But look, maybe the best directional bet we had was just technology was going to keep becoming important. It's just like in every area of our life. The bet that in sector X tech is going to be more important, there are going to be big tech companies built, they're gonna really matter. That I think is, I think that's a very good bet. I think frankly it's hard for me to ever see that ending.
- [12:51]
Podcast Host 2
Yeah, what are you, you know, you guys are with your LPs today, tomorrow, what are you hoping they take away from the event?
- [13:01]
Marc Andreessen
Oh, so this is not a John Doer quote, but I'll give you another quote. When we were raising money originally, we're going around, we're going to we raised our first fund in 2009, and, you know, the world had completely collapsed after the financial crisis. And we went around and we sort of brief all the VCs we respected to just give them a heads up what we're doing. And one of the GPS took us aside at the end and said, you guys have been dealing with these very smart public market investors. He said, part of the job you're going to hate the most is working with these LPs. They're just terrible. And he said, the key is you need to treat them like mushrooms. You put them in a cardboard box. You put the lid on the cardboard box and you put the box under the bed and you don't open it for two years.
- [13:46]
Podcast Host 1
It makes a ton of sense. They're like, what's the markup today?
- [13:50]
Marc Andreessen
That was not John. Yeah. And so, you know, look, the view Ben and I always had was the exact opposite of that, you know, which is our investors are our partners, you know, and, you know, look, that's how we want to be treated by the companies we invest in. You know, that's how we always, you know, viewed it when we were running public companies. Our investors are our partners. You know, they're in it with us together. You know, they're making a big bet on us and trusting us. And then, you know, look, correspondingly, the promise that we made to them is like, look, we're going to try to, like, deliver, you know, excellent returns, but in this business, it's just going to take a long time. And, you know, you guys know this. For any company that really succeeds, it takes, you know, 10, 20, 30 years, you know, to really have it succeed. And like, and along the ways, along the way, like, a lot of things happen, you know, everything from negative headlines to, you know, lawsuits, disasters, chaos, you know, all kinds of crazy, you know, twists and turns, changes happen along the way. And so I just think it's really important for us as a firm. We really always need to make sure that we're treating our LPs as full partners. And so what we're trying to do is be. Is just really like, open the kimono all the way, show them everything, kind of expose them to everything that we're doing, make sure they really understand it, go as deep as they want to go on the technology and on the companies. And this is like year 15 of this for us. And so far, I think they would say that that's gone well. That's great.
- [15:00]
Podcast Host 1
Last question from me. Just general advice for the next generation of entrepreneurs. Are you hoping more college? Less college. More coding. Less coding. Like, there's a ton of technological change right now. How can the next generation of entrepreneurs set themselves up for success?
- [15:14]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, so there's an old Steve Martin, Steve Martin line. He wrote this great book on how to be a successful stand up comedian. It's just a short, short little book, really well written. And, you know, every aspiring comedian in the world opened it up and says, Steve Martin's advice for being a great stand up comedian. And it was be so good they can't ignore you. Right? It's like, okay, thank you, Mr. Martin. You know, I'll get right on that. But like, that, that remains the best advice, I think, which is just like quality, like we said, like quality bears out, like quality shows. And so really excellent thinking coupled with a high degree of, you know, energy and courage, you know, team building a great team and then a great product, you know, and a real insight into a market with customers figuring out how to design, you know, not just design a product, but also design a business. Like, that's basically like my view, my view of as an entrepreneur always, like, that's my job as an entrepreneur. And like, if I, you know, if I put a lot of time and effort into that, I'm very serious about it, I can hopefully do a good job. And I think time spent improving the quality of the thing, the product and the business is almost always better than time spent trying to, you know, I don't know, networking or, you know, publishing a presentation or, you know, trying to get positive press coverage or kind of all the external stuff. And so it's really, it's really the quality of the thing. And then, you know, again, you know, my hope would be that, like, we as a firm and others like us like, that we really, you know, that we really recognize that and see it, you know, see it, you know, kind of see it when it shows up. I think that's the thing. And then I think the other thing would be, look like AI is superpowers, right? And like, if you as a founder have access to, you know, just to, you know, say ChatGPT, deep research, it's just like, oh, you know, it's just like, oh my God, like I have a, you know, like I have a PhD level. It used to be so hard to get information, right? And then it's been so hard, you know, even still to figure out what to do with it. And so to now have these tools for thinking through everything and increasingly being able to do things like write code, we Ought to see a generation of founders here that are just incredibly capable relative to what we used to be like. And we're starting to see those. We're starting to see a handful of those. That said, I'm still waiting for the real conceptual breakthroughs. I'm still waiting for the company where it's like, it's got 1,000 employees, 999 are bots. I haven't seen that yet. And somebody's going to really figure out how to use this technology to really not just bring a product to market, but fundamentally change how companies operate. And I think that's probably the next big unlock.
- [17:38]
Podcast Host 2
How do you think about an individual's edge around their own proprietary knowledge? There had been talk of, with Warren Buffett retiring, he read something like 100,000 plus earnings transcripts. He had this incredible recall. You're often credited with having this incredible recall. And it certainly gives. Can give you an edge in thinking through, you know, net new opportunities and decisions. Do you, do you think that edge remains in a world where all human knowledge is accessible in a single query? Or what's your kind of mental model there?
- [18:12]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, so I think it's going to be, I mean, look, I think there's basically like two ways to really have a differentiated edge. Like in general, right? There's sort of, you know, there's kind of go deeper, go broad, you know, go deep has kind of become a more and more specialized expert over time. And you know, look, there are domains in which that like, really matters. You know, biotech and things like that. Or by the way, designing AI, working on AI foundation models. That stuff really matters. The deeper you are, the better. So there's certain fields where that really matters. I think for most fields, though, now with these new tools, I would probably bet more on basically people who are able to be broad, which is to say basically can, you know something about a lot of different kind of aspects of life and how the world works. And then you can use the tool, you can use the AI to go deep whenever you need to. But then your job as the human is to basically, then, you know, basically across the domains, across the disciplines. And look, you see this. If you talk to any of like the great CEOs, you, you know, you kind of see this, which is like, they're really great, great tech CEOs, they're great product people and they're great salespeople and they're great marketing people and, you know, and they're great legal thinkers and they're great finance people and they're great with investors and they're great with the press. Right. So it's, it's this, it's this, it's, you know, this sort of multidisciplinary, you know, kind of approach and being able to cross domains. And I, you know, I don't know, we'll see, we'll see how good, you know, we'll see how good the AI gets at that. Hopefully it gets good at that also. But, but that in a lot of ways the entrepreneur has always kind of had the burden for somebody who wants to do something serious. They have to be like that, at least to some extent. And the best entrepreneurs of the future, I think, will probably be quite skilled at six or eight things and then able to kind of cross and combine them.
- [19:43]
Podcast Host 2
How do you think about the responsibility of the venture industry broadly to try to influence outcomes in the world? I was sort of laughing less than a month ago. A lot of investors were clearly shifting capital out of the US and just yoloing into French bonds and things like that. Venture capitalists obviously didn't do that. Right. But at the same time, there was a high profile story of a venture capital firm investing in a Chinese AI company that we won't mention here. And it got me thinking around. If you're operating a, a hedge fund, you can go invest wherever you want without a ton of scrutiny. Right. People don't look at that as, you know, find it. If you, you know, move assets into some, you know, not as impactful. It's less of a. Yeah, it does. It doesn't feel like you're, you're betting against your own team in the same way. So I'm curious how you think of the generalized kind of responsibility of, of venture capitalists, even, especially as a, as the sort of AUM has scaled dramatically.
- [20:48]
Podcast Host 1
It's actually been the arrow of progress.
- [20:51]
Podcast Host 2
Yeah, yeah.
- [20:52]
Marc Andreessen
Look, the big thing I think I would say is like we always thought and aspired that we were building things that mattered and that were going to have an impact on the world. And for a long time we were trying to convince people that we were doing that. And they never quite took us seriously because it's like, all right, databases, routers, okay, nice guys. I don't even know what those things are. Even personal computers, I think on my desk. I write letters on it. Whatever. Tech was never relevant to policy politics really. And call this, I'm talking about between the modern era, 1950s, call it, through the 2000s. And look, generally speaking, our press coverage was generally, people were like, wow, startups are exciting and when companies succeed, it's great. And then in the last 10 or 15 years, questions like yours have started to come up. And then correspondingly, just as, you know, just enormous amounts of criticism, attacks, kind of indictments of people with all kinds of points of view on the industry. I would say in the beginning that kind of irritated me because I had gotten used to the environment where either nobody cared about us or people just said nice things about us. What I came to realize is we're the dog that caught the bus. We actually now are building things that matter. Right. And so tech now interfaces direct. When Elon goes into the car market, it's the repercussions of that, to your point, on many countries are just gigantic. And there's a thousand examples like that that we could give. And AI probably being the biggest of all. And so look, it works. The stuff that we do now, the companies that we fund, they really matter. They really have really big implications for society and for policy and politics and geopolitics. And so mainly, I think the responsibility is on us as a firm as well as our companies. We need to go explain ourselves. We need to go be present in the policy debates. As you know, we have a huge push now into policy and politics that I never imagined we would have. By the way, something I got wrong, I never thought we would have that. And then it became very clear that we need that, you know, kind of for this reason. So. So look, I just think that's part and parcel of like, of it working. Like we're going to have to do that. And then the geopolitics, you know, the China thing I think is probably the most intense version of that. You know, I don't know, maybe that's one we got right. We just never really did anything in China for a bunch of reasons, you know, and you know, look, and by the way, we'll see. You know, this is a fluid situation. And you guys, it's been publicly reported that there are, you know, talks underway with China. So the relationship with China could be better or worse, you know, in six months. I think that's what everyone wants.
- [23:07]
Podcast Host 1
Yeah, yeah, everyone wants cooperation in general.
- [23:12]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, look, it's possible. Look, I mean, I'll give you my favorite, here's my favorite story. So in 20, I think it was like 2011 at the time the Obama administration was trying to reestablish, was trying to re establish a relationship with Russia. And there was a famous moment where the Secretary of State, who was this woman named Hillary Clinton, I Don't know whatever happened to her. I hear rumors that she then went on to, I don't know, did something in politics. But she was the Secretary of State. And there's this famous photo where she was on stage with Sergei Lavrov, who was the Foreign Minister of Russia, her counterpart. And she brought, like, a big plastic red button, which was the reset button. Right. To reset warm relations with Russia. And then what happened was Medvedev, who would.
- [23:53]
Podcast Host 2
The reset air horn.
- [23:55]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah, exactly. And then Medvedev, who was the Russian, who was Putin's number two, actually came to Silicon Valley, and the Secretary of State's office called all around to Silicon Valley, saying, please, you guys, roll off the red carpet to Russia. They're our new friends. Do everything with them. Do whatever they want. Please go invest in Russian companies. Russia's building this new Silicon Valley. See what you can do to support them. And so it was like. It was just like a love fest. And then fast forward four years later, and Putin became butler, as they say, and then Russia gate, everything that followed. And so, look, I would just say part of being citizens, I think, is we're just going to have to navigate through shifting geopolitics. Our view, and quite honestly, like, our view is just we're going to put ourselves squarely on the side of the United States. I should say our foreign policy as a firm is the United States foreign policy. If they, you know, if they don't want us to do things in China, they don't. If, by the way, if they come to us and they say we should do more, like, we, you know, we'll look at it at that point. But, you know, we're trying to be good citizens among everything else.
- [24:51]
Podcast Host 1
Yeah, makes sense.
- [24:52]
Podcast Host 2
Talk about the evolution of the A16Z brand. You guys came out with a new logo and a website, and as always, you're good at getting the attention of the Internet.
- [25:03]
Podcast Host 1
I was talking about this.
- [25:04]
Podcast Host 2
Yeah, we talked about it on the show. We liked it.
- [25:07]
Podcast Host 1
Yeah. I think it's something that's different and will age very well, but I wasn't exactly sure. Like, what are you trying to say with it? What are the references? And even. What was the process? Like, did you pick the color? I don't know. Or even that conversation. I want to know more about the brand.
- [25:22]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah. So, first of all, I know we got some Twitter controversy on it, and I just want to thank Kanye west for.
- [25:29]
Podcast Host 1
For drowning that outcome entirely.
- [25:31]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah. Like, I don't steamroll at the moment, so. Yeah, so that worked out well. So Anyway, yeah, look. So we have this incredible designer, Greg Truesdell. He's got a team. They did a fantastic job. I did. I worked closely with them on it. I have no design skills, but I provided a lot of input. You know, I think the big thing about it is what it's intended to sort of reflect is like an embrace of what I think is a broad set of cultural changes that are happening right now. Now, you know, that frankly, you guys are a part of as well, which is this what I would describe as, I don't know, 15 year era of, I don't know, like cultural almost shrinkage. Everything get, you know, you see, in the design world, it's like everything getting like ultra clean, minimalistic. And culturally, everybody getting like very cautious and careful about what they say and, you know, with all this kind of censorship and speech control and then, you know, this whole thing of everybody needs to feel bad about everything all the time, and everybody needs to feel bad about the country and bad about their, you know, ancestors and bad about this and bad. You know, everybody's just miserable all the time. I just think that whole thing got kind of, as, I don't know, you may call it neopuritinism or something. Totally. That thing kind of crested in, I don't know, 2021 or 2022. And basically in the last three years, I think there's this renewed sense of energy, enthusiasm, ambition, achievement, dynamism. But again, it's like, literally, yeah, we should have nuclear energy. Yeah, we should have rockets going to Mars. Yeah, we should have these things and that, you know, that it's good to succeed, it's good to build businesses, it's good to make new things in the world. And yeah, we should have the thousand yard tall shining colossus on Alcatraz Island.
- [27:14]
Podcast Host 2
Yeah, yeah, I was going to ask. My only request is like, make it real. Make it the Statue of Liberty of the West Coast.
- [27:22]
Podcast Host 1
Yeah, I'm imagining a massive instantiation of that coin in the office. And maybe physical.
- [27:27]
Podcast Host 2
Not the coin like the, the.
- [27:28]
Marc Andreessen
Oh, yeah, the actual figure.
- [27:29]
Podcast Host 1
True.
- [27:30]
Marc Andreessen
Yeah. Yes.
- [27:30]
Podcast Host 1
Yeah.
- [27:31]
Marc Andreessen
You know, she has a name. She has a name.
- [27:32]
Podcast Host 1
She has a name. Well, no, what's the name?
- [27:34]
Marc Andreessen
She has a name. Techno meetings.
- [27:36]
Podcast Host 2
Techno Technomies.
- [27:38]
Marc Andreessen
Fantastic.
- [27:38]
Podcast Host 2
Amazing.
- [27:39]
Podcast Host 1
That's great.
- [27:40]
Marc Andreessen
All right, well.
- [27:40]
Podcast Host 2
Techno meetings. Buy a plot of land somewhere visible from the Golden Gate and just, you know, build it a mile high. Please.
- [27:49]
Podcast Host 1
Mile high.
- [27:49]
Podcast Host 2
Make it happen. Make it happen.
- [27:51]
Podcast Host 1
Thank you so much for joining. This is.
- [27:53]
Podcast Host 2
Thank you for coming on. Really enjoyed it. Have fun with the team. And the LPs. Cheers.
- [27:58]
Marc Andreessen
We'll talk to you soon.
- [28:01]
Podcast Host / Narrator
Thanks for listening to the A16Z podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, let us know by leaving a review at Rate this Podcast.com a16z. We've got more great conversations coming your way. See you next time.