The New Rules of Media | Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz

Summary

Podcast Summary

The a16z Show: "The New Rules of Media"

Guests: Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Gabby Benimar, Eric
Date: June 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into how the landscape of media and communication has fundamentally changed for founders, creators, and leaders. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz break down the shift from “old media” with limited, centralized gatekeepers to “new media,” where anyone can communicate directly with an audience. Using real examples and candid stories, they unravel what it takes to build a brand, lead in public, and communicate authentically today. The panel also offers tactical advice for founders navigating this new environment, from establishing a public voice to assembling modern media teams.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Old Media vs. New Media

• Old Media: Characterized by limited, institutionally controlled channels (TV, newspapers, magazines) and a defensive, cautious tone. Brand building was focused on impersonal, corporate entities, with messaging shoehorned into narrow formats.
• New Media: Decentralized, unlimited channels and formats. The brand is the person. Communication is authentic, direct, and offensive (in the sense of proactive, not reactive).

Marc Andreessen:

"Old media, you have very restricted channels with very restricted formats. New media is unlimited formats, unlimited channels, and the brand is now the person." (00:11)

2. Authenticity & The Death of Media Training

• Old media training creates artificial, “plastic people”—unrealistic, heavily coached public faces.
• In new media, authenticity is prized; audiences want to feel like they’re hearing from the real person, not a construct.

Ben Horowitz:

"You see important people with important things to say on TV ... they just seem like plastic people. They just seem like it’s all very fake and staged … the result is minimum controversy, right? … ‘All news is bad news.’" (03:46–04:28)

• A pivotal media trainer (Lee Zeldin) told Ben the best approach was “just say all the things in public that you would if you were sitting having lunch with a friend.”
• The “pivot”: Never answer the adversarial question directly—always steer towards your true area of expertise and interest.

Marc Andreessen:

"The rule of new media is it has to be interesting because otherwise it’s going to get drowned out." (11:14)

3. The Decline of Traditional Gatekeepers

• In the past, respectability and influence were concentrated in legacy media.
• Now, even in politics, the most influential read and share content from new media sources (e.g., “the Mark Halperin newsletter”).

Marc Andreessen:

"The world has changed ... in Washington, what does everybody read? It’s the Mark Halperin newsletter, which is new media. ... Not even the Washington Post." (10:00)

4. “Going Direct” is Table Stakes

• Founders and leaders must communicate directly to their audiences; there is no other scalable route to building brand and narrative.
• The burden is now on the founder/leader to be the company spokesperson, not just operate behind the scenes.

Marc Andreessen:

"It’s unlimited formats, unlimited channels, and the brand is now the person ... you have to be interesting ... It has to be a person. And that person has to be interesting." (11:14)

• It’s permissible for someone other than the CEO to be the public face, but it must be a core, permanent person tied to the organization's identity.

5. Media Team & Hiring in the New Era

• Old media skills don’t translate:
  • "If you’re trained in old media, it’s very, very, very hard to do new media. It’s opposite world." (23:43)
• The most valuable team members are people who’ve actually built an audience in new media, regardless of their professional background (product manager, investor, etc.).
• Storytelling is a core skill— “can you put together a story someone wants to read or listen to?”

6. The Power of Love & Hate

• Indifference is the enemy; polarization (having strong fans and strong detractors) means you’re interesting, impactful.
• Negative attention should be welcomed and can be leveraged into stronger brand equity.

Marc Andreessen:

"You really want people to hate you and you want people to love you. You don’t want to be neutral ... you can’t be interesting and not have people both hate you and love you ... as soon as you get big, that’s what happens." (22:20)

7. Building a Modern Brand: From "Inside-Out" to "Outside-In"

• Most founders default to telling the story of their company/product (“inside-out”).
• Far more effective: Place the company within the broader, urgent stories of what’s happening in the world (“outside-in”).

Ben Horowitz:

"The story of you and your startup is not inherently an interesting story, but there is almost certainly an interesting story that involves your startup. The story is something else in the world that’s happening that is incredibly interesting that your company relates to." (34:42)

8. Tactical Communication Advice

Mistakes to Avoid:

• Focusing on distribution and tactics before perfecting the actual message.
• Overwhelming the audience with every conceivable company talking point instead of focusing on what’s most relevant and strategic.

Eric:

"Distribution is really just a multiplier on the message … if the message is wrong, now you’ve amplified something that is either irrelevant for your business or not the thing that your audience needs to hear. ... The message is the highest leverage thing to get right." (28:53)

• Always start by clarifying the outcome you want (“Who do we want to hire? Sell to? Inspire?”) and work backwards to the right message.

9. Learning the Skill: It's a Journey

• Even the best public communicators had to learn and adapt their style over time.
• Media skills are not innate – they can be learned, improved, and iterated on through practice.

Marc Andreessen:

"You look back at [leaders'] old tweets or their old interviews and they’re nowhere close to where they were ... it’s a skill set for sure." (39:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The old media rule is: don’t be interesting. That’s the worst thing you can do.”
  – Marc Andreessen (00:00, 11:14)

• “If you know it intimately, you should be able to talk about it in a viscerally interesting way … if you’re sitting across the table talking to a friend, and so [the trainer said] my training is 100% to try to get you to not do all the other stuff.”
  – Ben Horowitz (04:35)

• “I think the new approach comes in two parts. It comes in, as we all call it now, go direct ... and then the other thing is, new voices and new media ... there is just massive opportunity now.”
  – Ben Horowitz (08:46)

• “Fights are good for brand building, but you gotta pick the right fight to not just build somebody else’s brand.”
  – Ben Horowitz (19:18)

• “There’s a kind of point within that ... which is you really want people to hate you and you want people to love you, but you don’t want to be neutral, you don’t want to be lukewarm because then you’re uninteresting.”
  – Marc Andreessen (22:20)

• “If you’re trained in old media, it’s very, very, very hard to do new media. It’s opposite world.”
  – Marc Andreessen (23:43)

• “The story of you and your startup is not inherently an interesting story, but there is almost certainly an interesting story that involves your startup.”
  – Ben Horowitz (34:42)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–01:40: The new rules: Why old media rules fail in the digital era.
• 02:00–05:00: Why legacy media training makes people inauthentic; Lee Zeldin’s game-changing advice.
• 06:30–10:00: How legacy media devolved into advocacy and lost objectivity; why “going direct” matters.
• 11:14–15:00: Building brands as people, not as companies. History of brand-personality and the effect of centralized media.
• 18:58–23:18: Handling criticism, picking fights, and why polarization beats being boring.
• 23:43–26:21: Hiring for new media; storytelling as the essential skill.
• 28:53–31:31: Founders’ most common mistakes: message over tactics, “inside-out” narratives.
• 34:42–36:58: The “outside-in” approach and role models (Alex Karp, Ryan Petersen); how to become a go-to commentator.
• 39:30–40:00: You can learn this skill—growth is possible even for famous leaders.

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Additional Practical Advice

• Assemble media teams from proven storytellers in the wild, not just resume marketers.
• Prioritize clear, visceral messaging—get to the essence, not the mean-average of what the company can claim.
• Learn by doing: Your first interviews/tweets/podcasts won’t be perfect—refine over time.
• Embrace controversy if it means being authentic and memorable.

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This episode is an essential masterclass on the new communications battlefield for founders, executives, and anyone transitioning from the era of controlled messaging to the dynamic, personal, sometimes combative world of direct public engagement.

Transcript

[Marc Andreessen]

One rule of old media is don't be interested. Like, that's the worst thing you can do.

[Ben Horowitz]

There is no way to get to anything resembling a story that you're going to like through the traditional media anymore. Like, it's just basically not possible.

[Marc Andreessen]

Old media, you have very restricted channels with very restricted formats. New media is unlimited formats, unlimited channels, and the brand is now the person. The grand wizard of this is Alex Karp. If you watch his interviews, he never talks about Palantir.

[Ben Horowitz]

Everybody just nationally thinks inside out. Me and my company and my product out into the world. Don't think that way. Think in terms of, like, what are the most interesting things happening in the world? And then how do those things relate to us?

[Gabby Benimar]

Old media is defense oriented. New media is offense. Talk more about why that is.

[Ben Horowitz]

There's still this anxiety that people have, which is the legacy media somehow is like, where the respectability is at, prestige is. I don't believe that anymore. And I think it's very important for people to kind of get that out of their system.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

For decades, most public communication flowed through a small number of institutions. Television networks, newspapers, magazines, and a handful of gatekeepers determined which stories were told and who got to tell them. That world is changing. Today, founders, creators, investors and operators can communicate directly with audiences through social media platforms, newsletters, podcasts, and video. The result is a new set of rules for how ideas spread, how brands are built, and how influence works. Recorded live at the New Media Summit, this conversation explores the rise of direct communication, the decline of traditional gatekeepers, and what founders can learn from the people who have successfully built audiences in the Internet era.

[Gabby Benimar]

So first, I just want to say it's Gabby's birthday today. Welcome, Gabby. I'm so excited. The Knicks, one in five, for many reasons, but one is that Ben had floor seats to Game 6 and wasn't going to make it today. And so we're so lucky that we get to have Ben here. And Mark, not a huge basketball guy, but he did tweet about how Jalen Brunson, he had a comment where that he operates purely on instinct, not on introspection. And Mark appreciates that.

[Marc Andreessen]

Retard maxing.

[Ben Horowitz]

Obviously working.

[Gabby Benimar]

Exactly. Many people are saying across industries. And so I actually think that's a pretty interesting segue because one of the rules of new media, Mark, that we were talking about with the CEO last week in our growth portfolio is, is authenticity and sort of being able to have the same conversations on camera that you would have in person behind closed doors. Why don't you talk about that a bit more and why that's so important to really nail in terms of nailing your voice and how to build that presence. Because a lot of mistakes that founders will make is trying to be too buttoned up, trying to be too media trained, et cetera, as we uncover the new rules of new media.

[Ben Horowitz]

When you start there. Yeah. So I had this really formative experience when I was younger. So in the 90s, when Ben and I were coming up, you know, pre blogs, pre YouTube, all this stuff. And so in those days, the assumption was a hundred percent of what you did if you were running a company or doing anything was you're going to have to work through established media, legacy media, and then everybody would get, of course, media trained in how to do

[Marc Andreessen]

it and Most painful experience in the world.

[Ben Horowitz]

Oh, yeah. So for people who haven't been through

[Marc Andreessen]

media training, it's actually watch yourself on tv. It's.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. So, okay, so here's how media training works. How do they still do it? But do they still do it?

[Marc Andreessen]

You guys still do it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Okay.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Okay. So people who haven't been through it. Yeah. So it's like you get put in front of a camera in your face, and then somebody like, who you think is your friend, they do the full 60 Minutes interview with you for like an hour. And then they literally make you sit there and watch it, which is just like the meanest thing you could do

[Marc Andreessen]

to somebody and critique you. And you're looking at yourself, fuck it up. And they're going, you see how you fucked that up? And you're like, wow, I'm really uncomfortable now. I'm never going on tv.

[Ben Horowitz]

Exactly. And you're like, can we just fast? No, you can't fast forward. We're going to watch the entire thing and then maybe we'll watch it again. And so it is very revealing. And you discover all kinds of things about your personal affect, by the way, also you discover all the things you do, all the extra words.

[Marc Andreessen]

How much you hate your voice.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yes, exactly. How much you hate how you look. I mean, it's incredible. It's incredible. And so if your ego survives the beating, you go on to a successful career. And so that's what you did. But it was always so weird. Cause it's like the result, it just always struck me is just like, the result is, wow. You see important people with important things to say on TV or whatever, they just seem like plastic people. They just seem like it's all very fake and staged. And then, by the way, you know, this is the old days because all the anchor people or interviewers are all like using anchorman voice. And then you get a CEO up there who just says like the most innocuous things possible. And a lot of CEOs in those days, and by the way, still they rank their success in doing an interview or giving a speech based on minimum controversy, right? So, yeah, I've worked with lots of CEOs. They come off stage, they're very proud of themselves because they didn't make any news, right? Sort of like that. And so, yeah, that is the key, right?

[Marc Andreessen]

All news is bad news.

[Ben Horowitz]

So we hire, at the time was considered the best media trainer, who was a guy who had previously been a producer of 60 Minutes.

[Marc Andreessen]

Lee Zeldin.

[Ben Horowitz]

Lee Zeldin, who'd been a producer, it was actually quite a well known guy at the time. He had been Lowell Bergman's producer. Lowell Bergman became. No, well, I mean, Mike Wallace. It was that whole complex. He's like, we're not doing any of the classic media training that we do. He said, we're going to do the thing that everybody always underrates, which is we're going to get you to basically just say all the things in public that you would say if you were sitting having lunch with a friend, right? And I remember the back of my head like just blew open because it's just like, okay. And then immediately you're like, okay, why are we paying this guy? Then it's like, because that's like very obvious advice. And then it's like nobody else will give you that advice and what's going on? He said the following. He said, if you are on stage or in an interview and you were talking about something and you don't know that topic inside out already, what the hell are you doing there? So the only thing that you should ever be talking about is something that you know intimately. If you know it intimately, you should be able to talk about it in a viscerally interesting way that really relays your thoughts on the thing. And you ought to be able to come across as a very interesting person because, you know, it's just like if you're sitting across the table talking to a friend and so he's like, my training is 100% to try to get you to not do all the other stuff and basically be able to do that. And then the other part, because you assume the media is adversarial, the other part was then the. Forget what he called the pivot or whatever, which was basically just the thing of like, you never answer their questions. You always answer your own questions. Which is.

[Marc Andreessen]

Which, by the way, makes it a little unnatural, right?

[Ben Horowitz]

It does. It's the Jedi Knight thing that made that whole approach work, which is it's just, okay, you're talking naturally. Well, one of the ways you talk naturally is you just refuse to answer the bad questions and then you just substitute in your good questions. Anyway, so he went through the whole thing. And so then, you know, we've been watching the evolution of the whole new media landscape for 30 years, and it's just like, wow, if you watch what Palmer Leckie does, or if you watch what Alex Karp does, or if you watch what Elon does, or you watch what any of the great communicators do, that's what they're doing. You know, I'd say put Jensen in the net rank lately. It's just like, wow. And by the way, this is the rise of the long form podcast, the three hour conversation. And then just by the way, the sort of re rise of the idea of just interesting people having interesting conversations, which was very radical at one point, which is now a common thing. And so I think that remains the actual advice. And of course, Eric, to your point, what that gets across is authenticity, which is like, okay, in addition to what's being said. Do I actually, as the audience, do I actually feel like I'm meeting the real person?

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good points.

[Gabby Benimar]

We've been talking about how old media is defense oriented, new media is offense. Talk more about why that is and what that playbook looks like. One of the things we were talking about, Marvelson, that meeting, is the importance of outside in and situating sort of your story within the context of what's happening externally.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. So the press, in my view, and reporters get furious at me when I say this, which is why I know that I'm correct. The traditional press, legacy press, defined itself as having two functions, Right. Which one was impartial journalism, objective journalism, sometimes called the voice from nowhere, which meant presenting both sides of something, by the way, under the assumption that everything has two sides. And by the way, not more than two sides. And so there's always something a little bit weird about that, but at least the idea of showing an issue, explaining it, articulating it, letting different spokespeople for the different points of view actually say it. The second mission was to speak truth to power.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, that was the one that got in the way of the first.

[Ben Horowitz]

That's the one that got in the way the first One, so speak truth to power. And that became the way they ended up describing that was it was afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

[Marc Andreessen]

Right.

[Ben Horowitz]

And of course, at this point, we know what that means.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, well, it devolved into power to truth. So it's like the press's way of intimidating you into not saying what you thought. So.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, right. Because it's a line between actually objective and then activist. Right. Somebody with an agenda. And so I think my view is what happened over time is that second one just swamped the first one and it just became the thing. And then as a consequence, the very nature of the interaction changed. And I mean, the short version is I did tons of traditional media between 1994 and 2007, and every once in a while there's a hit piece or a bad faith thing or whatever, but I don't know, 90% of the time I felt like it had been a good idea to do it. And I felt I'd been given a chance to tell my thing, by the way, for almost that entire run, most people in the country and in the press thought startups were kind of cool and tech was kind of cool and kind of fun and it was kind of good for America that there were these tech companies and the products were kind of fun to use.

[Marc Andreessen]

I kind of remember those things.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Ancient myths of the past. Everything was exciting. A lot of reporters and editors and they genuinely viewed as like, oh, we need to explain this to our readers and our viewers and really, really have this come across. And then, as we like to say, like in 2017, things changed. And basically since then, my view is that sort of second mode of being, which is sort of agenda driven, you know, kind of really took over and I think probably will never, never actually unwind. And so it's just the practical reality, as we always tell our founders, like, there is no way to get to anything resembling a story that you're going to like through the traditional media anymore. Like, it's just basically not possible. Every once in a while you can

[Marc Andreessen]

land a story, but you can't run a strategy.

[Gabby Benimar]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

People point to individual success and I'll just be like, okay, that's the, that's the exception that proves the rule. There's 99 others that are not like that. And so they're needs to be a new approach then. I think the new approach comes in two parts. It comes in, you know, as we all call now go direct, which is you have to tell your own story and increasingly through your own channels. And through the channels of allies. And then the other thing is, you know, new voices and new media. And because the legacy press has gone so bananas, obviously there's this just massive opportunity that's opened up for the creation of new media. And it's just like the examples, many of whom are in this room, are just spectacular. I think with what's happening, it's actually really funny. It used to be, even in the golden age media, like, if you wanted to watch a smart person talk about something for an hour, it was Charlie Rose. And when I was a kid in the 80s, it was Charlie Rosette. Midnight. There was something called the CBS overnight. CBS News overnight. And he was literal at midnight. And I would. And this is like, you know, pre the vcr and you'd stay up until midnight to watch the smart conversation. And to go from that to what we have today in the podcast world and the substack world is just such an incredible advance and going incredibly well. So I think the new media world is just supremely, you know, just incredibly high quality, doing incredibly well. But there's still this anxiety that people have, which is legacy media somehow is like where the. I don't know. I mean, it sounds so silly to say anymore, but, like, the respectability is, the prestige is, and I don't believe that anymore. And I think it's very important for people to kind of get that out of their system, because the world has changed to your point.

[Marc Andreessen]

So we were just in Washington, and so we were with like, all the kind of Washington people, senators and whatnot. And I was asking them, you know, what does everybody in Washington read? And it's the Mark Halperin newsletter, which is new media. So it's. I fully expected Axios, the Washington Post and so forth. Because, by the way, the one holdout from, you know, kind of people in the firm on, like, old media as well, except for Washington, they all read this old, you know, stuff, and not even that is true. So. So I think Mark's right.

[Gabby Benimar]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Mark, you mentioned going direct. We're certainly in the era now of going direct. It feels like it's table stakes for founders. Um, but I've talked to a lot of founders who feel that now they have sort of a second job of being the spokesperson for their company on top of running the business day to day. And you can even think of a lot of great founders who spent their lives or careers in a lab or staring at a computer, and this is not what they've been trained in. So I'm curious both of your advice for founders who maybe are uninterested in doing this or they don't know where to start. Do they have to get good at it or are there other paths for them to get their company the attention it deserves?

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, so I think this is tricky. So if you, if you just go, okay, old media and how did that work? And new media. So old media, you had like very restricted channels with very restricted formats and the brands were the companies. So like that, that, that's basically the setup. So yes, you could talk to the New York Times or CNN or whatever if you wanted to get the word out, but then you were forced into like a quote or a very short interview or something like that. And then you were representing a brand that wasn't you. And that's just kind of how it worked. And so the whole media strategy basically was just get your name out there without tainting the company to the point where, like, it could never recover. Which is kind of how you got into this very defensive posture, because you can never take back anything that was like a big role in old media. Then you get to new media. And new media is so the opposite in that it's unlimited formats, unlimited channels, and the brand is now the person. So it's not like were people talking about, like when every Democrat came out and was mad about SpaceX, they weren't. They were mad about Elon because he's a brand new. And the same thing like, is it Palantir or is it Alex and is it Andrew or is it Palmer? And that's just over and over again. So the companies that are winning in marketing the brand is the person. And I guess like, if you had another founder or somebody who is a really permanent fixture and not the CEO, you could imagine that person kind of getting that person off to the to be the brand. But it's going to be a person. Like, I don't think there's a way around that. And then the rule of new media is it has to be interesting because otherwise it's going to get drowned out. And so you have to be, it has to be a person. And that person has to be interesting, which is why old media is so dangerous. Because the one rule of old media is don't be interesting. Like, that's the worst thing you can do. You'll f everything up. And so I don't think a company can get away without it. Now, like, if you look at like us as a firm, like, technically I'm really the CEO, but like Mark is more the brand. I would say in terms of. He just does way more media than I do and that works. But it works because it's Andreessen Horowitz and nobody knows the fucking difference. On the outside it's fine. And there are. You can set up your company that way where they don't have to know how you're run. Like, that's fine. But it's gotta be somebody who's there kind of forever with the organization. It can't be like the vice president of marketing who's here for a three year run and then is gone. Like that'll never work.

[Gabby Benimar]

Anterol is another example.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

One of my favorite things that happens about once a week is when I get somebody congratulates me on writing Ben's book,

[Marc Andreessen]

which he always takes full credit for.

[Ben Horowitz]

I do, I do. I was just like, I really poured all my blood, sweat and tears into this. I'm so glad. I'm so glad that somebody finally read it. Um, so, you know, like, so. So I think there's a. I think there's actually a technological explanation for what Ben said that that is actually, I think quite important. So, you know, up until basically, what was it, Ben? Like the 1930s or something, like companies were not. They didn't have corporate brands. You had. It was the. For you had. You had people, you know, it was the Ford Motor Company.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah. It was the Thomas Edison. Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

It was the Edison Electric Company. Right. So it was just like, you know, name on the. Is literally name on the door. It just, it never even. I mean, I'm positive it never occurred to Henry Ford to name his company anything other than the Ford Motor Company.

[Marc Andreessen]

Well, he did have a company before the Ford Motor Company. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which was like, I think, I can't remember. Somebody's got to look it up. I think it became like Cadillac or something. Like it was like actually like a car company that lasted. But he got, he was cto, he wasn't CEO. And he got in such a furious fight because he was a hothead. Henry Ford with the CEO that he quit his own company.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

A lot of those are Chrysler. Like Chrysler was there guys. Yeah, you know, a lot of those, A lot of. A lot of the car.

[Marc Andreessen]

Oh yeah. They're all named after themselves. And I, I think actually maybe it was like Ford. And then when he quit they renamed it that. That could be it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Something else. Yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

So.

[Ben Horowitz]

So it was like, it was like name on the door. Yeah. And it was just kind of. It's taken as, as a Given because like that's the guys running the company. That's, that's, that's what you do. And then I, I think what happened is in the 30s, 40s, you started getting these, you know, International Business Machines, General Electricity.

[Marc Andreessen]

General Motors.

[Ben Horowitz]

General Motors. You started getting these, these, these abstract names. And then you, and then you got the consumer brand thing, you know, with like Procter and Gamble. So you had like Tide and Colgate and you know, grass toothpaste and Coca Cola and all these things.

[Marc Andreessen]

The Nifty 50. The conglomerate era.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, which led, you're right, which led to the conglomerates which were basically just piling up as many, many brands as you could. And I think what happened was, in retrospect, I think that was because of the rise of centralized media specifically because before the 1930s, like, media was very decentralized. Like every town had like 15 newspapers. There were like tiny little radio stations everywhere. And then, you know, starting in the 30s or 40s, media centralized hard. You know, in a way that was very unprecedented historically. And probably once in a, you know, it's probably once in a thousand year thing that that happened. And then, and then the thing with centralized media was just. It's like drinking everything through an incredibly narrow straw because there's just like by definition, if there's three TV networks and there's 24 hours in the day, there's just only ever like how much time are you ever going to get? Or if there's the front page of you know, three big newspapers, how many column inches are you ever going to get? And so the message from any company had to get distilled down to the absolute minimum to be able to get through those very narrow straws. And I think that that was the corporate phenomenon which is to get the thing down to like an atomic unit of a brand to be able to get it through, to get it through that straw. But I, and then everybody became convinced that like that was just universally the way the world worked. But I think that only actually made sense. So company as abstract brand with like or corporate brand, like, I think that only made sense in the centralized media world. And I think what we're seeing as the centralized media world is now, you know, unwinding and collapsing, I think mechanically. That's why this new approach is working and is necessary because that's why, because in the new world, I mean, you know, the many examples of this, but it's just like, you know, do, do, do, do do people running for president have to go on? Joe Rogan right And, you know, up until 2024, the answer was absolutely not. After 2024, the answer is 100%. They have to. Right. Like a big part, you know, for keeping politics out of it. A big part of all the Democratic retrospectives of what happened in 24 was that. Was that Kamala didn't go. Didn't go on Rogan. 100% of the people who work in that world now think that the next person is going to have to go on Rogan. And to go on Rogan means you're going to have to be on Rogan for three hours, and you're gonna have to talk about anything. And so if you think about what that means, right, for the bar, for the person who's gonna run, you know, for whatever party or, you know, for both parties or any party like that, that's the new bar. You have to be able to do that. You have. And. Right. You have to be interesting. And then it goes right back to your question. You. You have to be the person who can do that. And if you're not the person who can do that, like, well, you're at a.

[Marc Andreessen]

It's a big marketing deficit. Let's just put it that way. Like. Like, you. You just put a ceiling on your whole opportunity.

[Ben Horowitz]

I think the line from succession, of course, I. I can't av. Not use based on your question is, as it should have said, if you can't ride two elephants at the same time, what are you doing in the circus?

[Eric]

I would love to hear how you apply this thinking to your own work. Ben, you mentioned earlier, or you've mentioned before, that you and Mark spend a lot of time discussing how and when to respond to things publicly and also when to not say anything. And so I'm curious what those discussions are like for you both. How do you decide when to fight back versus stay quiet? And maybe if there are times that you wish you did things differently.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah. So, I mean, it's interesting with that, because anytime somebody says something negative about us, we want to respond. It's just like. But you have to determine whether, like, that's going to improve your position or they're just feeding you bait to get you to basically highlight their stupid opinion.

[Ben Horowitz]

It'll always improve your situation to push back.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, he always 100% wants to go back at him. And then, you know, you have to have some discipline. Otherwise, you just will spend your whole life responding. Like, the bigger you get, the more people come at you. So, you know, it's kind of like the degenerate Version is like dealing with the people who comment in Twitter or X. Sorry, like, so if you start answering the X replies of people who have 50 followers, by the way, my father always did that, then there's just like a colossal waste of time. And you're amplifying somebody who has no audience. So what are you doing? And then those people shouldn't even be talking to you. They didn't do anything in life to have the right to talk to you, but there you are talking to them and wasting your time. So that's the extreme degenerate case. However, if somebody comes out with something and it hits and it's going after you, that's actually a real opportunity to boost the brand, to come across with your own point of view, your own position. And this could be something in the media or just, you know, something somebody does in new media that actually turns into real opportunity. So a lot of, you know, I would say a reasonable portion of the brand that we built was just responding to people attacking us. So that I always saw that every time that happened as great. Let's go. Like, one of my favorite things I ever wrote was Instagram. We got into like this kerfuffle over Instagram with the New York Times. We had a conflict, whatever. It was a thing. But then I responded and it was like the biggest, at that time, the biggest post I ever wrote. And everybody was like, yeah, fuck that New York Times. And so it kind of took us from here to here and in one shot, just because everybody loves a fight. So fights are good for brand building, but you gotta pick the right fight to not just build somebody else's brand.

[Gabby Benimar]

Well, to that end, when I, you know, picking the battles when I first joined, I would bring up these negative tweets we were getting and say, hey, you know, these anons are saying bad things about us. And you guys would be like, who cares? Like, this is in fact part of our success, means we're gonna have more and more people were saying negative things so.

[Ben Horowitz]

Well, specifically, that was. They were saying. They were. They were saying me things based on the things that we were funding. And they were like, you know, it's just the whole. The whole moment slop, you're funding slop, you're funding slop.

[Marc Andreessen]

It's like, bro, like, it's great that we're funding things. Like what? Even if you think that what is better in this world than the transfer of wealth from people who have a lot of money to people who have ideas who want to build something? Like, even if we're wrong about everything. Like, that's still good for humanity. So, like, shut up to you, hater idiots, haterade.

[Ben Horowitz]

So, yeah, and then, and then you know that my response was no. Like, that's a great thing. Great thing to get criticized for is refunding startups and supporting those startups. Like, that's fantastic.

[Marc Andreessen]

There's a kind of point within that that is also kind of an important change in new media, which is you really want people to hate you and you want people to love you, but you don't want to be neutral, you don't want to be lukewarm because then you're uninteresting. So you're only. You can't be interesting and not have people both hate you and love you just because there's too much. No matter what you do, there's too much jealousy and just hatred in the world to not have it be that. Because as soon as you get big, that's what happens. There's nobody. I used to, when people used to get upset about, like, things that were written about us, I said, like, nobody writes a puff piece on like, Rupert Murdoch or Elon Musk or like, it's never going to happen again. Like, it's over when you get to a certain size, people hate you. And that's good because that means you did it. You did something important. You made a mark on the world. People care about what you're doing and you have to take it that way. If you take it like, oh, I gotta stop doing that so people like me, you'll. You'll ruin your marketing.

[Gabby Benimar]

Yeah, the mark. You've sometimes said the term, you know, they have all the right enemies. So it's picking, you know, the right people to hate you that galvanizes the people to love you. The what about building the right marketing and media team in the age of new media? What have you guys learned or what advice do you have for CEOs in terms of making sure you get the right personnel or what's the principle about to building that team?

[Marc Andreessen]

Well, the first principle is if you're trained in old media, it's very, very, very hard to do new media. So you have to be a very exceptional person to make that transition. Because it's like if you spent 10 years doing old media, there are laws of physics, there are rules of the game. There's things that you do every single time in terms of, you know, like, you know, from vetting reporters to rude Q&As to this and that. Like, everything about it is opposite world. And so there are very few people who can go, okay, I'm getting out of opposite world and I'm going into a new media world. So you just have to be careful about for the new media side of what you're doing to hire too much experience in not new media. It looks like marketing, but it's not the same. It's a completely new skill set. So I would say, like, that's probably the thing that I'd worry about the most. And then like with Eric, what we look for when we brought you on, for example, is the best thing on new media is have you done it? Have you kind of built some brand on something and some audience? Do you know how to build an audience? Because that's the core, core thing. And if you can't do that, then, you know, it doesn't matter. If you've got this skill and that skill and the other skill, you have to be able to deliver it end to end.

[Gabby Benimar]

Yeah. And in terms of people we've brought on, you know, like Alex Danko or Henry or Brent, you know, they're product managers or founders or investors, but they were obsessed with the discourse. The, you know, they were listening to the podcast they were writing themselves. You could tell on the proof of work, even though they weren't doing the thing.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah. So story like storytelling on your new media team. That's such a good point. So the reason why Alex is so good is like he's a world class storyteller. Like, so forget, like, just take marketing out of it for a second. Like, can you put together a story that somebody wants to read or listen to or whatever? And that's a real skill. And like the elite level of that is way higher than the average level of that. And the people who can't do it, by the way, can never do it like that. And many people from kind of old marketing world don't have that skill because you always would rely on whatever the principal, the CEO, the somebody for that story. But if you can build a team that's got multiple storytellers that are good, that's a huge power boost.

[Ben Horowitz]

By the way, there's a really big disconnect that goes back to the authenticity point. There's a really big disconnect in how people in the kind of media sphere think about this. Because every reporter listening to what we're saying would be like, oh, there's only two things. There's journalism and there's propaganda and the mainstream press, traditional press, does journalism. And if you're doing any kind of direct anything. It's propaganda and it's quote unquote, it's just marketing. It's just trying to kind of sell something. And I would say that's a division distinction that we 100% don't agree with. And there's a critique aspect of it which is I don't think the press does much what even they would describe as objective journalism anymore. But the positive side of it is I think it goes right back. One of the reasons you want to be authentic is because you want to actually have people understand who you are. You want to have people actually understand what you do and you want people to actually understand the context within which you're doing what you're doing. So you want to actually explain yourself and you want to explain the world. And when we talk about storytelling, it's very much not storytelling a made up story. It's storytelling of like, here's what's actually

[Marc Andreessen]

happening in an interesting way with tension, with a beginning and an end, you know, that somebody is interested in falling the whole way.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, that's right. And so as a consequence, and we really look for, this is like when, you know, look when Ben and I get like stuff in the street, like when we're just like, we routinely get told like, wow, I watched the podcast, I saw this interview, I read that post, this or that from the firm, and 100% of the time they're like, wow, like that was great. I really understand what that topic is about. Right. And that's a very honest and legitimate and positive and worthwhile reaction to very honest, positive, legitimate action on our part. And I just think again, maybe put the other way to put this is this isn't just something people should do. This is I think, a responsibility for people in our world and people in tech now to do, which is like the changes that are happening, I mean of all times, the changes that are happening in tech right now are profound and they're really hard to understand from the outside and they're really complicated and there's huge amounts of noise in the environment. And so actually explaining honestly what's actually going on. And I'll just break on our team, we, we, we put a Space SpaceX post up today which although it has my name on it, I had nothing to do with writing. I, I cannot take any credit for it. And it, it, I, I, I mean the feedback we're already getting is it's the best thing anybody's ever written on SpaceX. And, and I think that's true. And it, and it, and it literally is. It lays out like the actual truth. And I. I'm really proud of that. It's awesome.

[Gabby Benimar]

I want to close with some going deeper on some advice for. For founders on the ongoing direct. Gabby, I'll start with you. What are some mistakes that you see CEOs making and things to avoid?

[Eric]

I would say there's two mistakes that I commonly saw working with founders and they're sort of related. The first one is it can be very easy to do this too. It's a trap to fall into because the timeline feels so addicting. But a lot of founders really over index on distribution and tactics before actually getting the message right. Distribution is really just a multiplier on the message. And so if the message is wrong now you've amplified something that is either irrelevant for your business or not the thing that your audience needs to hear. Or like, as we've talked about, maybe worst of all, it's uninteresting. And now you've told everybody that you care about that you're not very interesting. So in practice, a lot of founders would come to us and say, you know, how do we go viral? Or how do we get on Joe Rogan? And if you actually think about it, you could get on Joe Rogan and then not say the right thing. And this is maybe the worst thing ever. And this is important because it applies not just to old media, but to new media, right? Like, you could go on Bloomberg or Fox and get the message wrong. And you could also do the same thing with new media or going direct. And so the first mistake is not actually spending the time to get the message right. And that's the highest leverage, most important thing to get right. And then from there, I guess the next mistake is actually just figuring out how to do that. And the way that I saw that is you can get the message wrong if you focus too much on the inputs as opposed to the outputs or the outcomes that you want to drive towards. And this is sort of paradoxical because the companies that are very successful struggle with this the most. Because there are a lot of interesting things that you could say about your company, right? There's like so many milestones. The mission is really compelling. There's like a lot of different things that you would want to say, but depending on what you're trying to achieve, the thing that you want to say should probably be different, right? Just because everything is true doesn't mean it's all relevant or strategic for your business. And so instead of starting with the inputs of here's this huge mess of everything that we could say, let's just say it all right now and hope people remember potentially the thing that we think is most interesting, but we haven't identified that thing. Start with the outcome, right? Do we want to sell to a certain type of enterprise customer? Do we want to hire a certain type of engineer who believes a certain thing about us and our role in the market? So now you can kind of work backwards from there. We know who these people are, we know what they believe, we know what they probably believe or need to believe about us. And we know what feels in the discourse urgent and timely and personal to them. And then we can work backwards and get the message right. And so then going back to point one, you pair that with really powerful distribution and then you have a really winning strategy.

[Marc Andreessen]

And by the way, so a really important point in what Gabby said is that really determines how you have to put the team together. Because if you put together a team that you can't have a conversation with where you're listening on your message and what you're saying, then that you've kind of done yourself a disservice. You need the team to help make the story great before they go because it's real easy to go, okay, market this, you know, empty box. There are a few marketers who could probably do that, but, like, it's hard. So you really want the team to be invested in the message and then all the variations you need to distribute that message are going to be really good and on point. But if the team kind of doesn't have an opinion on message, that's very difficult.

[Gabby Benimar]

Mark, one of the things we said in the meeting with the growth portfolio company the other week was you admire about people like, you know, Alex Karp or Palmer or Elon or others is the ability to also not just focus on what they're doing, but also go outside in and talk about what's happening in the world and how do they situate their worldview, their company, their product, et cetera, within that. Why don't you talk a little bit about that principle and how do people get good at it?

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. So the most kind of common VC story, self marketing story is, oh, I met this great founder and we went on a walk and then I called him eight times and like, I thought he was great and I eventually convinced him to take money. The most common startup story is, oh, we're a brand new company, we're all fired up, we're ready to go, it's going to be Great. We're having good products. We hope you try it. And, I mean, those stories just make you want to stab yourself in the neck, right? I mean, it's just like, oh, my God, like that. Just the lamest story in the world.

[Marc Andreessen]

By the way, details. One of the keys on this is like, good storytellers have great details. Details matter a lot. And so the one thing about Mark's thing that makes it, like, so horrible is like. Like, no details. Just like, blah, blah, blah. I'm so great. You know, I talked to a founder. He really liked me. You'll probably really like me too. Like, who cares?

[Ben Horowitz]

And it's almost. Right? It's almost this thing where they come across as, like. It's like fake humble, right? Because it's just like, oh, I'm just saying.

[Marc Andreessen]

Oh, yeah. They say I'm humbled by. That's the most fake humble thing in the world. I'm humbled by.

[Ben Horowitz]

You're not even remotely humbled. And so. Yeah, and so it's just the worst. And, you know, there's a whole bunch of critiques. It's sort of. Yeah, it's fake bragging, it's boring, it's egocentric to no purpose, and it's passive aggressive. And then it's just. It's indistinguishable. Like, there's just a thousand. I mean, it's just. It's every single startup. It's every single.

[Marc Andreessen]

Everybody can gaze at their navel, right? Everybody can do that. Like, there's nobody who can't do that. So that's not a differentiated story.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. And so that's like the default kind of narrative that people fall into. And then. And then it also, like, it feels. I think it actually feels like doing anything bigger than that is, like, arrogant, because it's just like, who are we to, like, go tell some bigger thing? And I don't even know what the bigger thing would be. And, like, aren't the people who tell a bigger thing fold themselves and trying to make themselves look even bigger? And so there's just this, like, really reluctance to kind of expand the. You know, kind of expand the. Expand the. Expand the telescope out?

[Eric]

So.

[Ben Horowitz]

But what I always tell people is, like, the exact opposite of all of that is true, which is like, the story of you and your startup is not inherently an interesting story, but there is almost certainly an interesting story that involves your startup. And that story is. This is sort of the cheat code of it. The story is something else in the world that's happening that is incredibly Interesting that your company relates to.

[Marc Andreessen]

And then. Yeah. By the way, the grand wizard of this is Alex Karp. If you watch his interviews, he never talks about Palantir. The only thing he ever says about Palantir, Mark pointed this out to me, is ontology and orchestration, two words that nobody knows what they mean. And, like, nobody knows what Palantir does as a result. But it doesn't matter because it's like, you know, like, the future of the US Military. Palantir, like, super intelligence. Palantir, like, whatever the story is that's like, really good. Like, Alex will go tell that story. Neurodivergence.

[Ben Horowitz]

I mean, like,

[Marc Andreessen]

he's. He's just like, whatever is interesting, he'll just start talking about. And then, because he's the founder of Palantir, the CEO of Palantir, like, that just works. And I say it, like, kind of facet, but, like, it's really a good strategy. Now he takes it to the very extreme, but, like, that. That's the right idea to find the most interesting story that you can. That you can plug your company into and then tell that story.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, Right. Because what happens is then when something happens, right? When something happens in the world, something happens involving US Military, AI and the military, or this or that. Geopolitics of China. Like, he's like the first phone call, right? Because he's like. He's the guy who's, like, been out there talking about that.

[Gabby Benimar]

By the way, Ryan Peterson is in the audience, has done a phenomenal job of that.

[Ben Horowitz]

Incredibly good at that. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Right. The difference between talking about freight versus talking about the global supply chain is completely collapsing during COVID and we're all going to starve to death, right? And then, therefore, he's the guy who literally goes in 60 minutes to explain to the world that in fact, yes, we all are about to starve to death. From the helicopter, right? Yes, from the helicopter. Yes. Look at all those ships that are never landing. Your children are about to starve. Buy Flexport. So it works incredibly well. And then the other.

[Marc Andreessen]

And you don't even have to say, buy Flexport.

[Ben Horowitz]

It's implicit. It's implicit. And then. And then the other thing, especially. Especially for enterprise, anything involving enterprise sales, which is certainly Flexport, but also Palantir. It's just like a big part of it is, are you important enough to, like, meet with the CEO of your customer? Like, are you important enough to get in the room with the decision maker? Are you. Are you important enough to meet with the Secretary of War. Are you important enough to, like, be in the White House? Are you important enough to be with Fortune 500 CEOs? And, you know, I just. I have a. You know, I have a little startup that's doing interesting things, does not do that. But I am attached to. And you have seen me talk about, like, the big, important things that are happening in the world and how they relate and that you have, you know, potentially an answer to it. Like, that's absolute catnip. Like, every. Everybody, Everybody. Everybody wants that. And so, yeah, so the way I describe this is just, you know, the. The trick kind of is don't. Don't. Everybody just naturally thinks inside out, me and my company and my product out into the world. Don't think that way. Think in terms of, like, what are the most interesting things happening in the world? And then what. And then. And then. And then how do those things relate to us?

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, And. And by the way, this is where CEOs go off the rails, because they're so focused on what they're doing that all they want to do is tell their story, and they're not even paying attention to what's going on in the world, which is understandable because you're trying to build something. But to do the marketing exercise, investing, and understanding what's happening out there is just critically important. You can't do it without that.

[Ben Horowitz]

This, by the way, happens also to investor relations. So every company, you know, every public company, by law, does these, you know, S1K, 1Q, whatever. Q. They do all these things, and they, like, fully, every year, you know, spend all this time and all this effort and these documents, these filings, fully explain everything the company does. And they have every possible, you know, hedge and mea culpa and just, like, these incredible descriptions of people and then the annual letters and all this stuff. What percentage of the investors in Palantir have read the S1K1.

[Marc Andreessen]

Right.

[Ben Horowitz]

Like, you know, 0.0001%. What percentage of seeing Alex, you know, on YouTube doing his thing.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ben Horowitz]

100%.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the amount of time that goes into that document. Right. And so you just take that time and just understand enough about the world to put together a good story.

[Gabby Benimar]

On that note, we'll end with the. This idea that the skill set is not only something you're. You're born with, you're not. It can be developed and learned and cultivated. I mean, Mark, you were saying the other day that when you look back at Alex Karp's old interviews, they're very different. And so when you look at, you know, Alex or Palmer or Elon or Ryan or Amjad who came here earlier, you look back at their old tweets or their old interviews and they're, they're nowhere close to, you know, where they were.

[Marc Andreessen]

Oh yeah, it's a skill set for sure. And look, there are people who are gifted and then people who are less. If you look at Donald Trump's interviews in the 80s, they're very old media interviews. He's actually restrained.

[Ben Horowitz]

Sorry.

[Marc Andreessen]

And then, you know, like, he did figure out new media and he's always like, super entertaining and interesting, which is kind of the, the magic of his, of his popularity. So even, like at that level, you can develop it.

[Gabby Benimar]

Well, that note, it's a great place to wrap. Please give a round of applause for Gabby Benimar.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X1 6Z and subscribe to our substack@A16Z substack.com thanks again for listening and I'll see you in video the next next episode. 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 a16zone.com forward slash disclosures.