The Secret Marketing Strategy That Built a16z: From Zero to Legendary VC Firm

Summary

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a16z Podcast

The Secret Marketing Strategy That Built a16z: From Zero to Legendary VC Firm

Date: November 26, 2025
Host: Ben Horowitz
Guests: Marc Andreessen, Margit Wenmachers (Head of Marketing, Andreessen Horowitz)

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Overview

This episode offers an inside look at the bold marketing strategies that helped Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) rise from two founders with no VC experience to a legendary Silicon Valley firm. The conversation features co-founders Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen joined by Margit Wenmachers, the architect of a16z's marketing platform. Together, they revisit the early, controversial days of a16z: disrupting a secretive VC industry, choosing an “entrepreneur-first” communications strategy, leveraging media covers and thought leadership, and shaping a platform where people and ideas—not products—became the differentiator. The episode also explores how founder personalities and authentic communication are essential for startups and firms alike in the modern tech and media landscape.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Breaking into a Secretive and Elite VC Landscape

• Early Silicon Valley VC was a “closed cartel”—with the same top five firms always on top, operating with secrecy and minimal marketing.
• a16z’s founders were viewed as outsiders: “You hadn't peeled off from a VC firm and you hadn’t seen it professionally.” (Margit, 15:39)
• Margit’s recruitment was unconventional, starting at a makeshift “office” in The Creamery cafe, reflecting the firm’s scrappy beginnings. (02:37-04:41)

Memorable Quote

"VC was like a big secret. And then actually building companies was a big secret. And so just kind of talking about it was a big differentiator."
— Ben Horowitz (22:09)

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2. The a16z Marketing Playbook: Entrepreneur-First Strategy

• The firm’s communications and marketing aimed squarely at entrepreneurs, not the traditional LP audience or industry insiders.
• They were the first VC firm to market aggressively, putting themselves on magazine covers and investing heavily in content.
• The platform concept drew from the CAA (Creative Artists Agency) model, focusing on “people and ideas,” not products. (07:41, 41:44)

Notable Moment

Ben recounts an anecdote highlighting the firm’s motivation to break industry norms:

“They said, 'Treat your LPs like mushrooms.' You put them in a cardboard box under your bed, forget about them until you need money.”
— Marc Andreessen (16:11)

Key Quote

“We don’t have products... We have people and ideas. That’s it.”
— Margit Wenmachers (41:44)

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3. Aggressive Media and Public Positioning: Building the a16z Brand

• Early press outreach included putting Marc Andreessen on the cover of Fortune — a move that shocked (and angered) the VC establishment.
• This deliberate self-promotion was seen as “beneath” most VCs at the time but proved effective in establishing a16z.
• The media strategy helped form a personal connection with entrepreneurs and reinforced the firm’s “platform” narrative. (18:53-21:40)

Memorable Quote

"Look at him on the cover of the magazine. That's not supposed to be him. Not supposed to be the entrepreneur. What the hell?"
— Ben Horowitz (20:13)

• Content as a magnet: The team’s blog posts and guides (e.g., “Good Product Manager”) were lauded as timeless, practical, and founder-focused (22:52-23:44).

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4. Thought Leadership and Content: From Blog to Book

• Ben’s blog—and later his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things—set a high bar internally, inspiring other GPs to develop original frameworks and stories.
• Margit saw the book as crucial to “even out the brand” and raise ambition among partners, reinforcing the expectation that everyone at the firm contribute thought leadership.
• Authentic, substantive, long-form content distinguished a16z from short-lived or purely promotional efforts. (33:13-39:14)

Notable Quote

“You have to actually believe that you have an idea that's worth putting in a book. A book has to stand the test of time.”
— Margit Wenmachers (38:29)

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5. “Software is Eating the World”: Shaping Discourse and Industry

• The iconic “Software is Eating the World” essay was born from an offhand comment Marc made to a reporter, then published as a one-draft WSJ op-ed—a testament to a16z’s authentic, timely messaging. (28:01-29:25)
• The follow-up essay, “It’s Time to Build,” was (surprisingly) rejected by media outlets despite its eventual huge influence, especially in policy and entrepreneurship.

Quote

“Time to Build is more influential... With Time to Build, the number of people in, like, Washington and entrepreneurial community and so forth are like, yeah, we're taking this. This is the blueprint.”
— Ben Horowitz (30:21)

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6. The Power (and Limitations) of Personality in Modern Marketing

• The Silicon Valley paradigm shift: Today, “you’re really now marketing a person” — the founder’s character and voice are core to company brands (41:22-43:19).
• Press and audiences gravitate to “characters with authentic, interesting things to say.” Standardized, manicured public personas or “plastic” TED-Talk styles are less effective in today’s chaos of social media. (43:56-47:52)
• The risks: Over-indexing on celebrity and persona can be unhealthy, but a lack of authentic leadership hamstrings company growth.

Notable Quotes

"It's a much less sanitized world... if you're used to Disneyland, entering the real world is traumatic, very traumatic. But like we do live in the real world."
— Marc Andreessen (58:13)

"The nature of leadership is changing. The leaders who have a large number of interesting things to say and know how to communicate it are going to do disproportionately well in the years ahead."
— Marc Andreessen (53:03)

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7. The Industry Shift: From Secrets and Cartels to Openness and Authenticity

• The conversation closes on the idea that truly lasting companies—and VC firms—must continually evolve, communicate authentically, and have visible, interesting personalities at the helm.
• The old guard’s irritation at these changes (from magazine covers to gold chains) marks the discomfort of a transitional era. “Transition is the tough part. We’re in a really big transition, and it’s strange,” Margit observes. (58:29)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00-04:41: Anecdotes from the firm’s origin—scrappy meetings at The Creamery and why Margit was recruited.
• 05:19-07:56: Early skepticism, platform concept, and CAA/Ovitz inspiration.
• 09:39-12:05: Margit on pitching the a16z narrative for media; entrepreneur-first messaging.
• 13:01-16:34: LP meetings and “mushroom” analogies—a contrast between a16z and old-school VC attitudes.
• 18:14-22:09: Marketing a16z via press coverage; impact of magazine covers.
• 22:52-23:44: The value of “timeless” blog posts and actionable content for entrepreneurs.
• 28:01-30:53: The genesis and impact of “Software is Eating the World” and “It’s Time to Build.”
• 33:13-39:39: Why Ben wrote his book, the internal expectation for GP thought leadership.
• 41:22-47:52: The new world of personality-centric company branding; authenticity vs. performative communications.
• 50:33-55:46: How even icons like Mark Zuckerberg shifted from controlled messaging to authenticity.
• 57:04-58:43: Will every successful company need an “interesting” founder-CEO? The future of entrepreneurial marketing.

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Selected Memorable Quotes

• Ben Horowitz: “Don't be Mr. Smarty Pants, like, sitting in your Sand Hill Road office waiting for the sushi boat to come by. Like, don't do that.” (14:55)
• Marc Andreessen: “If what somebody says is indistinguishable from chat GPT output—like, not going to make it.” (50:33)
• Margit Wenmachers: “You do have to test the actual idea… is that a snack, is that a book, is it just a conversation? They need to be calibrated properly.” (40:55)
• Ben Horowitz: “You can be an extremely accomplished person who is not interesting. Like, those don't necessarily go together.” (42:06)
• Marc Andreessen: “I think every successful company in the future is going to need this kind of personality. It's a different leadership profile.” (57:02)

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Conclusion

The episode provides a rare, candid window into the counterintuitive moves—and marketing brilliance—that propelled a16z to Silicon Valley fame. The hosts and Margit Wenmachers unpack not only the origin story but also broader shifts in tech, media, and leadership: from secrecy to maximum openness, and from buttoned-up brands to authentic, personality-led narratives. As the conversation closes, the team cautions that the “big transition” is still underway, but the take-home is clear: in a world where software—and authenticity—eat everything, the only way forward is to lean in and stand out.

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Transcript

[Ben Horowitz]

I caused a lot of antagonism between us and the other firms.

[Margit Wenmachers]

In those days, your filter is like, you're going to get the deal or I'm going to get the deal. You die or I die.

[Marc Andreessen]

And they're not exactly shrinking ballots themselves.

[Ben Horowitz]

They hated that cover story. Look at him on the COVID of the magazine. That's not supposed to be him. Not supposed to be the entrepreneur. What the hell? Da da, da. I mean, they just like, oh, we.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Didn'T have any entrepreneurs at the time.

[Ben Horowitz]

VC was like a big secret. And then actually building companies was a big secret. And so just kind of talking about was a big differentiator.

[Margit Wenmachers]

We don't have products.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, and we didn't have products.

[Margit Wenmachers]

We have people and ideas. That's it.

[Podcast Narrator]

In 2009, at the bottom of the financial crisis, two entrepreneurs decided to raise 300 million for a venture capital firm. They had never been VCs before, and they planned to do everything differently. Marketing aggressively, building a platform, putting themselves on magazine covers. Every established VC told them it was a terrible idea. Sixteen years later, Andreessen Horowitz has fundamentally changed how venture capital works. Today, Ben and Mark talk to the person who architected that transformation from behind the scenes, Margit Wenmachers, who joined as head of marketing when the firm was literally operating out of a restaurant booth. This is a conversation about breaking cartels, about why secrecy stopped working as a business strategy. And the moment when Marc Andreessen wrote Software is Eating the World and a single draft after an offhand comment to a reporter. And about a profound shift happening right now about where companies without authentic, interesting founders at the helm are starting to lose. There's a reason other VCs called their LPs in a panic. When Ben Horowitz appeared on the COVID of Fortune, they understood what was coming. We cover how they did it, what worked, what they do differently, and why the transition we're living through is far from over.

[Ben Horowitz]

All right, welcome to the A16C. What are we on the Mark and Ben Show. Welcome to the Mark and Ben Show. Today we've got Margaret Wenmacher, the legendary head of marketing for a 16Z for the last 16 years. And she is going to tell us the story of all that. You've heard snippets of it from me and Mark over the years, but now we're going to hear the real thing from the real person. Margot, welcome.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Thank you so much for having me, guys. I'm thrilled to be here, but between the legendary and the 15 or 16, I feel kind of ancient.

[Marc Andreessen]

Wise, wise, wise, wise, wise.

[Ben Horowitz]

It's getting us all. It's very rough.

[Margit Wenmachers]

I know. It's just a bitch that way.

[Ben Horowitz]

So maybe we could start with when we met. I'd love to hear it from your perspective. Where were we? At Hobee's, or I think it was the Creamery. The creamery.

[Margit Wenmachers]

The creamery, which at that point was your office.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, I forgot yet. The firm started at the creamery. That's right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Right, exactly. So a certain someone who shall go nameless tried to hire Outkast and Facebook, invoked a conflict of interest. You know exactly who that is. Right. And so that certain someone called Mark and call Mark Zuckerberg. And I think you have better things that pull a favor for Mark Zuckerberg to go, like, why don't you like this? Whatever. Anyhow. But I think you asked for my email address, and so that's how we were introduced. And then I was told to go to the creamery. The waiter at the creamery, he's like, go, wait here. They're meeting with some democratic functionaries or something like that. So I wait there with my little capabilities presentation. And I had met you, like, years before, but no recollection I had not met you. I'd heard about you a little bit. So I go there with my capabilities presentation. I sit down. The Democrats left the booth and sit down. You basically were just looking straight ahead. You were just like, I don't know what you were thinking about, but it was not that much.

[Ben Horowitz]

Probably how we get the firm off, how we raise the money, and then.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Mark grabs the capabilities position, which was generic because I had no idea why I was there. Right, so. And you go, okay, so how do you pick the clients? And here are the clients and why those clients are not these clients? And we're like teams, whatever, like, detailed questions. So I got a little grilling, and then you both said, thank you, and I left. And I concluded that it was probably because you were angel investing at the time and you had just left hp. I was like, maybe they just want to have somebody they can recommend to their angel portfolio.

[Ben Horowitz]

Whatever. Yeah, right, right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And then a few months later, we met at the Rosewood, I think. No, it was not the. Was it the Rosewood.

[Marc Andreessen]

We were there a lot anyhow.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And then you guys went, okay, so we're going to start this firm, and top secret, blah, blah, blah, I'm going to start this fir, and it's going to be the two of us, $300 million. And this was at a certain time where money was Kind of tight.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yes. 2009. Yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

The end of the world, right?

[Margit Wenmachers]

There was no liquidity.

[Ben Horowitz]

The last end of the world.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And I looked a little quizzical and I said, you know, it's not a great time. And you said, Mark said, let's assume success, Shelby. And then you had already had the idea of. Well, we wanted to say something, but we couldn't be out talking to press or be on Twitter at the time or whatever else and raise be soliciting money. Right. So Mark then went, he had a standing invitation, I think on Charlie Rose. And you went on Charlie Rose and you had very nice chat. And at the very end he was like, well, by the way, we're going to start a VC firm. And then we all went quiet. So that was that. That's my recollection. I don't know what you guys thought.

[Ben Horowitz]

I remember thinking, yeah, like I was just so distracted with how do we raise money? Like we had never met LPs till then and every VC that we had been meeting with and we at the same time we were meeting with lots and lots of VCs trying to understand the industry. And they all said that's a dumb ass idea for a fund. You should definitely not do it.

[Margit Wenmachers]

They just wanted to give you jobs, I'm assuming.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, well one of them said that we'd never raise it from the LP so we should just raise the money from VCs and give the VCs who invested half the carry. That was interesting plan. Yeah, that was a strategy. And then the whole platform thing, that was really dumb because it had been tried before and proven, you know, QED that it could never work actually.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Who tried it for real?

[Ben Horowitz]

I don't know.

[Marc Andreessen]

So I think the main thing that they were thinking about was the incubators. So I think it was the sort.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Of the build Bros.

[Marc Andreessen]

It was the late 90s. Exactly. And you actually, in retrospect, like it's actually very, very like idea. So there's this Bill Gross Idealab, which is Gibater, created I think a lot of companies. I mean among the companies you created turned out to be the company that created basically the Google search model as well as like a bunch of other like super interesting companies. So I think the good ones work better than people remember. But yeah, and the incubators in those days went for like a 50% equity split.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Marc Andreessen]

As contrasted to like Y Combinator, which is famously like 7%. And so to justify the 50% they provided your office space and your county, we had to legal Services. And so. Right, exactly. And we had been entrepreneurs, and so we just had a very different perspective on what we actually needed from our venture firms. And so we just had a very different view than the incubators had. And then the existing VCs just.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

For whatever reason, couldn't put themselves in that, I think because they hadn't been.

[Ben Horowitz]

Entrepreneurs, they had have been customers of the VC product. So they weren't looking at it through that lens. They were looking at it from the provider. By the way, those businesses were all great businesses. So they sort of earned the right to be arrogant in that sense.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah. And I remember the Bill Gross, when he was talking and I met him, it was all like, okay, I have all these ideas. No, that was also that there was.

[Marc Andreessen]

That, go hire an entrepreneur.

[Margit Wenmachers]

You guys had come from a completely different lens where you had the ideas and believed that Larry Ellison. Those people had the ideas, not the financial machinery. Right. Yeah. And then obviously you had absorbed the Ovitz playbook. Right. So it's a very different version of a platform from an incubator.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

I mean, that's basically what we did when we had to find a historical model for what we're doing. It turned out to be caa because that just mapped much more to what we had in mind because there hadn't been a precedent like that applied in the Valley.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. And at that time there was before Ovitz's book came out. So that whole strategy was basically a secret. Nobody knew it. Like, you had to know Ovitz to know it. And Ovitz was very secretive.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yes.

[Ben Horowitz]

We had like several conversations before we could actually get it out of him. Even though he was out of CAA for many years. You know, it was like a very secret formula he had come up with. And it was an amazing thing, but.

[Margit Wenmachers]

It ended up being a genius thing to have him on your board. Like, it was a very unorthodox pick, looking in from the outside. And it led to all kinds of useful connections and useful thinking, Right?

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It was controversial at the time, even amongst our own board. I won't name names, but it was different to have him. We actually met him through Ron Conway.

[Marc Andreessen]

Right. Years ago.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

The human router of all time.

[Ben Horowitz]

The human router, yeah. Great. That was a great intro from Ron. What an interesting friendship that's been. So the next thing that happened, we're going to raise the money and we decide that we're going to talk to the press, which was very different for VCs to actually be aggressive about that.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Usually the VCs would want to talk to the press. And some of them had been clients and at the IPO time.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

So they wanted to basically have no risk. But then when the company goes public, it's like, hey, I did that. Right. So we did it backwards, if you will.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, you're right. With nothing in hand, we just went for it. So as soon as we raised the fund. Yeah, we must have had to raise the fund to do the press tour, because the gun jumping. Yeah. And so how did you think about it? I guess it was very kind of magical from our point of view, other than when Wired slammed the door in my face, but.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Well, that was a useful signal. We realized, oh, we have to even the playing field here a little bit.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, that was a little bit of a problem. So tell us about that.

[Margit Wenmachers]

The way I used to think about this when this was all working so magically is that, okay, so if you read any article and you just dissect the headline, the paragraphs, like how it unfolds and then so you take a client like you guys, or a product company. Okay, how do I fill that? How do I write that story from a reporter's point of view? And do you actually have it right? And so if the story is, oh, $300 million and two people who have never actually done this before, that's not a great story. But we did have the column inches to fill, if you will, because you had the idea for the platform, right. You had been proven successful entrepreneurs. You had credibility with the core audience. Right. And taking a step back, the thing that we all decided is we're just going to aim all of our communications at the entrepreneurs, at the entrepreneurs versus the LPs, because we have their numbers, we know how to call them, and you guys got great introductions to people. But it all needs to be very entrepreneur friendly. And so we sort of set out like we have this platform and it's all in service of the entrepreneur who is the genius. If, if the. And then hopefully the idea works, right. And then how do can. How can we add value? And that was different enough to me having met like most of all the other VCs and then, you know, the tall guy over here had co created the browser. So that was not a VC credential. Yeah, but it was an incredible entrepreneur credential. Like so, you know, and then, and then you. The turnaround, like the save of all time. I mean, I'm not so good with sports analogies, but there's there's got to be 17 in there, right? Like having turned that around and it sold it to HP and like for like money. Money was just spectacular. So I think the two people who were behind it were very entrepreneur friendly. They had really good credentials, both on the tech side and a category creation side and on the sort of like, how does one execute one of those? And then you had the money and you had the money at a time when there was no money.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Like there was nobody really raising and like the other people that you could just sit and wait Right. Until times got better.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And then I think if I remember correctly, you had done it in three months, which at the time seemed very spectacular because there was no money. So I could then pitch. And it's like, okay, like it's those two guys needed in three months and have you read the news? And then they have all these ideas.

[Ben Horowitz]

Well, actually, one of the funny things that happened while we were raising money that upset Mark much more than it upset me because I just thought it was weird. But we went to see an LP who, who we knew, and the LP walks into the meeting, you know, and here we are like, you know, and it really kind of brought us back to raising money in general, which is a good kind of thing to go through if you're going to be investing in companies, because you need to know what that feels like. So, you know, we're, yeah, we're like practicing the pitch where you got it lined up. We're like, okay, this is a big meeting. It's a, it's a big lp. And we go in and the guy comes in and he goes, oh, yeah, you know, yeah, this, I, I, I, I, you know, I hear what you guys are doing. I think, you know, at best you could raise it in 18 months, but it'll be very hard. But I gotta go. I'm gonna go talk to some ex NFL players.

[Marc Andreessen]

I have to go over to Stanford to talk to a roomful of NFL players on how to manage their money. And then now that they're good, now that their NFL careers are over. Yeah, like, that was the thing that was more important than talking to us, which was a very. Yeah, that was a level setting experience.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, we were like, that was extremely motivating.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, as you can tell, it was.

[Ben Horowitz]

Mark was like super pissed. And I just remember going, wow, like, that's so disrespectful. It's just like so crazy that he would do that.

[Margit Wenmachers]

I just made a little angel investment and like, this entrepreneur is trying to raise money. And like, literally she's been told by an investor, I think people like you just basically shouldn't exist. Guess how motivated she is. So that motherfucker.

[Marc Andreessen]

This is the thing, the nuclear fire that you get on the other side of that is. Yes.

[Margit Wenmachers]

It's like, I can't believe people actually say that out loud. And they're not like they're 95 and they don't have a filter anymore.

[Marc Andreessen]

No, we want to. I mean, there was all these stories from this time, but, I mean, there have been obviously many great VCs before us, but I mean, we went out and we basically met all the top VCs, you know, kind of. Because one of them knew we were doing it and, you know, a different guy, One of the VCs at the time, I remember him saying, he's like, oh, yeah, venture is a great business. Venture is like running. It's like. It's like going to a sushi Sushi boat restaurant. It's like, it's fantastic.

[Ben Horowitz]

You just.

[Marc Andreessen]

A sushi boat restaurant. He's like, it's fantastic. You just sit at the counter and, like, the startups just, like, come drifting by and you're just like, oh. He's like, every once in a while, you know, whenever you want, you just reach out and you just, like, pluck a piece of sushi. I remember thinking, you know what? I'm not sure that this is going to be as hard as we thought.

[Ben Horowitz]

It was going to be.

[Margit Wenmachers]

You mean the competing part?

[Marc Andreessen]

Competing part?

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, it was very formative in how we thought about competing. We were like. And still to this day, when we think about the culture of the firm, it's like, don't be that.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yes, yes.

[Ben Horowitz]

You know, don't. Don't be Mr. Smarty Pants, like, sitting in your Sandhill Road office waiting for the sushi boat to come by. Like, don't do that.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And yet, I mean, look, yeah, maybe the competition isn't that hard, but it felt like to me, when I was on the Outkast side, it felt like to me, the top five firm never changed. Yeah, like, never ever changed. Right. And you guys didn't have. You guys hadn't peeled off from a VC firm and therefore you didn't have a track. I mean, you had made some angel investments, but, like, basically, not so much, not to be insulting, we hadn't seen it professionally.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, the angel fund was what, like $2 million?

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, we had. Yeah, we had no training. We had no training.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And then, you know, there are exceptions, but all the important companies, they're just like the top five firms invest. So the conundrum was like, okay, how do you break into that list without the substance? Right. Just with the ideas.

[Marc Andreessen]

One more story from the. This is one I love to tell the LPs. Another guy said, oh, he's like, LPs. He's like, LPs. You guys are going to hate. You guys are going to hate dealing with LPs. They're just the worst.

[Margit Wenmachers]

It's a good thing to tell the competitor.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he said. And he said, the key is. He said, I realized, after a long career, I realized the key is you want to treat the LPs like mushrooms.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, like mushrooms.

[Marc Andreessen]

Like mushrooms.

[Ben Horowitz]

And we were like, magic mushrooms.

[Marc Andreessen]

What the fuck are you talking about? So they treat mushrooms is you put. You put them in a cardboard box. You put the lid of the cardboard box and you put it under your bed for two years and then you don't take the box out until the next time you need to raise money.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Wow.

[Ben Horowitz]

And it was so, that's, it was so funny because the whole time we're thinking, wow, you know, we're coming out of running a public company.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yes.

[Ben Horowitz]

We've got like, we're meeting with investors who are shorting our stock. And like, these guys have, like, very nice universities. They were just like, super pleasant to talk to. When we went out there, they had interesting things to say. It's just. So I was like, wow, you guys are living in, like a weird, perceptible.

[Margit Wenmachers]

One of the surprising things to me, I had not ever met LPs, because I wasn't on that side of the business. But, like, it's a really great community and a lot of them are super, super mission driven. Right. Like, if you talk to Russ, like, how, how they. What they do with their proceeds. Right. Like, they're, they're not financiers. They're just. They're very cool people.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah. Very long time horizons.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yes.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And very patient.

[Marc Andreessen]

Very devoted to their institutions. Very smart. I mean, they spend all their time thinking about, About.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Marc Andreessen]

All these topics. They're, you know, incredible.

[Ben Horowitz]

We have incredible discussions, great investors and very patient and, you know, want to understand the strategy, care about the strategy, plan to be in it a long time with us, all that kind of thing. It's. Yeah, it was just very interesting.

[Marc Andreessen]

That was stories because it is so indicative of so many of these things. It just. There are certain industries at certain times where they just get, they get wedged, they get, you know, they get. They get locked into patterns and, you know, the most uncomfortable thing in the world is to, like, break the pattern.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Marc Andreessen]

And if you don't have to, you know, if you don't have to, you don't.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And if you think of it as a sushi situation or a mushroom situation, why would you ever do marketing?

[Marc Andreessen]

Right, exactly right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Why would you ever. Black Box Cartel, Some Mystique, some, like, mystical fairy, whatever you. Is way better.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, that's right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

If there's no pressures on it.

[Marc Andreessen]

Right.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. No, it was a very good strategy, which is why, you know, we went out with the marketing and then of course, so. So we do the press tour and you get Mark on the COVID of Fortune, which was that. That was amazing to me because, you know, we had been running a company all these years, and I remember you saying, do you want to be on the COVID of Fortune, Forbes or Business Week? And I was like.

[Marc Andreessen]

And this is when you get a choice.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

This is like. Yeah. Being, you know, I don't know, being in the, I don't know, Vatican Museum or something. It's just like the most important thing you can possibly.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. At the time in those days, those magazines, particularly the covers were like, incre. Incredibly important, tough to get. And then the thing that really blew my mind was I said Fortune, and then you got Mark on the COVID of Fortune.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Were you thought I was lying or something?

[Ben Horowitz]

Nobody was gonna put me on the COVID of anything in those days.

[Margit Wenmachers]

No, but you got to be on the COVID of Fortune when you did your book.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I did, I did, but with that glam first.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Look, the thing is, you never get what you don't ask for. Right. And then it's a. Like, at the time, the publications mattered really. Now it's just the writer who matters. And also now they're downstream from the entire Internet.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Like, they come in at the end, basically. But Kevin Maney was a really good writer. He had had a really strong track record like you, you know, followed him forever. And he would write substantive, curiosity driven stories. Right. And he was great. The worst part about that whole thing was the damn photo shoot, because Marc hates st. And I know. Remember when you did that finger thing? I want you. It's like, that's gonna be it. Like, it's just not even a question. But that was the worst part about it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, it was good. It was a scary picture. It was good. It was some fun. But that kind of set off, kind of really positioning us at that point. We knew we weren't gonna be friendly with the industry. So we were not only not gonna be in the cartel, we were going to be against the cartel. Because they hated that cover story. Oh, my God. I mean, they went bananas. They called every lp. They're like, these guys, they're egomaniacs. Look at him on the COVID of the magazine. That's not supposed to be him. Not supposed to be the entrepreneur. What the hell? I mean, they just like, we didn't.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Have any entrepreneurs at the time. No, it's like, that's. That's bananas. I think. I think that comes from them viewing having to do any of those kinds of outbound activities as beneath. Beneath them and kind of unseemly. And here we were like, like, unashamed about, like, advertising ourselves and our wares, if you will. Right. So I was kind of like, what? We're doing what now? And it worked, I think, and I think it got sort of. I think that. But, like, mostly, I think the writing got us in with the entrepreneurs because, like, I remember, I think it was you. Mark told me that an entrepreneur said, like, I kind of feel like I know you guys a little bit. Right.

[Marc Andreessen]

Having not even met you yet.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah. So they hadn't been our offices. They hadn't met anybody, but they had some idea of, like, who are these people and what do they care about? Like, and then from then on, every time a GP would come on board, we're like, okay, what do you want to invest in? Therefore, we're going to write about these things, because that becomes the magnet for the entrepreneurs in that corner of the Internet or AI infrastructure, whatever it is. Right. And I think that was really powerful, particularly with the entrepreneurs.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, it was kind of one. In those days, VC was like a big secret. Secret. And then actually building companies was a big secret. And so just kind of talking about it was a big differentiator.

[Marc Andreessen]

What you would learn, right? Because you'd hear, as entrepreneur, you'd hear all these horror stories, you know, from other entrepreneurs of, like, things that have gone wrong in the relationship with the VC and all the problems. But you didn't know, like, if you didn't know who any of the people were when you walk in the door, like, who do you trust? How are they going to behave under pressure? You know, what. What are they going to do? Right. And so, I mean, yeah, like, it's a great. If you can get away with having nobody know who you are and still, you know, be on top of the industry, it's great. But, like, if Somebody actually does, you know, does it the other way. It causes a permanent change, which is, I think, what we catalyst.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah, it does. And to me, like, I don't know the latest numbers, but, like, the. The blog posts that. That you would write or the other GPS would write that are sort of, like, timeless. Like, I remember the good product manager by, like, that is one of the most successful blog posts. And you know how many blog posts the firm has put out, like a gajillion. Right. But like, the ones that have depth, that the entrepreneurs can, like, take something from. Yeah. And that is somewhat timeless. Way more important than, are we in a bubble or are we not in a bubble? And that was kind of fun. And that was like. Like chatter.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

But like, the substantive pieces on, like, how do I construct a company, how do I manage a person, how do I think about promotions? Like, all that kind of stuff. Like, I think that that was really valuable to the entrepreneurs. And I think it also showed our LPs, like, okay, they actually are very passionate about all the details of the stuff that they invest in.

[Ben Horowitz]

Well, that was one of the interesting things is the LPs were like, reading all the content, I mean, which is so different than public market investor just say, you know, they. And not only did they read the content, but we have many LPs that Reddit would call up, say, hey, in managing my little organization, you know, this is what I'm running into, and so forth. So they really. They're real partners.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Right.

[Ben Horowitz]

In a way that. Yeah, it's just been, you know, that's been probably one of the best parts of the firm is to get to have investors like that.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah, we got one. We did one incredibly controversial blog. Was. Turns out, like, a few LPs really hated the headline. And it was in the Bion Health team, and it said, fuck cancer, which I thought wasn't very controversial, but these are so nice. They were like. Did you have to put it that way? I mean, there are better ways to put this. I'm like, all right.

[Ben Horowitz]

Screw cancer.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Right?

[Marc Andreessen]

For the record, we're very anti cancer.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, we're very.

[Marc Andreessen]

We are, and we're willing to say so.

[Margit Wenmachers]

But they. They deeply care about, like, everything that we put out, which I think is quite flattering, even even though they may hate some of it.

[Ben Horowitz]

So one of the things in the early days that I wanted to ask you about is, like, because we came out and because they kind kind of. We caused that reaction with the other VCs, I. I kind of felt like we you know, maybe I, I took it too far in terms of just the VC competitiveness and the anti VC stuff. Like we really went hard in the early days since you brought this up over the line.

[Marc Andreessen]

So since you brought this up, you have to. Your thing with. Was it the Sarah Lacey. Oh, the peak of this was your peak moment of this was in the Sarah Lacey thing.

[Margit Wenmachers]

You have to refresh my memory.

[Ben Horowitz]

Okay, so remember Sarah Lacey at her peak, by the way. She was a great, great, great journalist. And then she had this thing Pando Daily that she started and then she had this, these big events and I spoke at the event and she's, she said to me and it just like it popped out. She said, you know, you kind of like have a lot of conflict with the other VCs. And I said, well I said I come from enterprise software. And so like when I see another VC coming at me and I quoted Little Wayne with the peace sign, all I see is the trigger and the middle finger.

[Margit Wenmachers]

So my answer was going to be that like you have an inner enterprise sales dude in, you can't get it out. If there, if there's ever like, I think like when it comes to other firms it's like, which is horseshit because we co invest, we don't actually compete all that much, right?

[Ben Horowitz]

No, no, no. We should be partnering.

[Margit Wenmachers]

But basically your filter is like, you're gonna get the deal or I'm gonna get the deal. You die or I die. It's like that's sort of the thing that happens to you in any sort of competitive situation and God help you if you're in the way of that. So yeah, I think we overdid it because like I said like you guys have joined board seats, you know, you, you will, we will, our teams will call people and it's like, hey, we've got this company. Would you like to do follow on investment, all that stuff. Here you are pissing them off and.

[Ben Horowitz]

We cause a lot of, I cause a lot of antagonism between us and the other firms in those days, which I think we've, you know, at this point like we're look at this friendly.

[Marc Andreessen]

I think more friendlier and they're not exactly shrinking balance themselves.

[Ben Horowitz]

So you know, also, also, also true.

[Marc Andreessen]

Big reason to the occasion.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I think we're past that. Maybe, maybe now.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, I think we're much more user friendly now for sure in terms of our many VC partners that we have. So then tell us. One of the big pieces that came out was when Mark wrote Software is eating the World. And how that came about was very interesting because it was a really busy time for us. It's like, what, 2011? So it was very. I think we had just raised a second fund, maybe.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And the way it came about was entirely random, if you will. So at the time, there was a guy, you know, the Economist has these reporters, and they sent them to new regions and new beats, like, for 25 years. And they go from Hong Kong to Silicon Valley, whatever. At the time, there was a guy called Martin Giles, and he was covering.

[Ben Horowitz]

Very nice guy.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yes, very nice guy. Great guy. And he would cover Silicon Valley. He was British. And every so often, I forget what the cadence is. They do a special report. And they were doing a special report on the state of tech and where it was going. And we were sitting. Remember, my first office was at this office. I think it was next door.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, that's right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

It was like the three of us are sitting there and Martin is visiting, and he's asking all these questions. And Marco's like, well, it's basically like software's eating the world. And then he explains the whole thing. And I'm like, this is really interesting. And I was like, we should write this down. And Mark's like, sure, maybe later. And then I placed it with this guy Ryan. I forget his last name at the Wall Street Journal. And he's like, if I had an op ed like that, would you run it? And he's like, yeah, sure, I would run it. And then Mark wrote it. When you could schedule things like that. And Mark wrote exactly one draft, and it's still that same draft. And I'm sure you're torturing yourself because you would change all kinds of things, this and that and the other. And then just for kicks, to bookend that story. When you wrote, was it it's time to build?

[Marc Andreessen]

It's time to build.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah, wrote, it's time to build. Like you caved for a minute. So, like, all right, we'll place it. Maybe we'll place it. And nobody took it. Nobody.

[Ben Horowitz]

Oh, yeah, that's right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

That's right. I called Ryan, who has since gone on to bigger and better things. I'm like, ryan, can I ask you hypothetical that thing, like, if I. Like, you've been at the Journal, and it's like, of course. Like, it's a joke. That's not even a question. But times had changed, so nobody ran it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Good thing. We had big piece.

[Margit Wenmachers]

We had a good audience at the time. No, and I. I think I Forget. I don't want to malign people. But somebody said, I think it was a bread. It may have been the ft. Somebody said, it's angry. And I'm like, you know, we're in a pandemic.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

So this is.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And we don't. We are wearing 2020.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, that was the. Yeah. The whole point of it was just that what was actually happening in the pandemic with literally the inability to get, like, surgical gowns.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Exactly.

[Marc Andreessen]

For first responders was like the catalyst for it. Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

It read angry. And I was like, really?

[Ben Horowitz]

Software is Eating the World is probably more famous, but I'd say Time to Build is more influential in that people read Software Is Eating the World. And then they didn't do anything. They were like, wow, that's very interesting. And then that was it. But with Time to Build, like, the number of people in, like, Washington and entrepreneurial community and so forth that are like, yeah, we're taking this. This is the blueprint. We're moving on it. I mean, in a way, like, the whole, like, abundance movement on Democratic Party came off of it, which is a.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Great development, I think.

[Ben Horowitz]

Great development. Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

But I think the. I have a theory on why that is. Software's Eating the world. It's like to our people, our community. Hello, that's happening. And they were all building against it. They didn't need to read the thing. And the people who needed to do something were going to get flattened by the software Eating the World movement. And they didn't know what to do. Like, how do you retool into, like, remember all the car companies that came to visit us? Right. And you take them through autonomous and does the brand even matter? And whatever. It just did not. Not register. They weren't going to become a software company. Therefore nobody who needed to do something with it did because it's just rather difficult.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. One of the very interesting things that we've learned as a firm is how unusual it is for a company that's been around a long time and where the founders are no longer there to change anything.

[Marc Andreessen]

Anything.

[Ben Horowitz]

Even in, like. I mean, it's been a huge blessing for us in venture capital and that many of the firms that were extremely powerful when we started just never changed. They're exactly as they were. Like, it's almost like frozen in time. It reminds me of if you've ever been to Havana in Cuba, it's frozen in time. It's all 1959, like, cars and everything. It's like just frozen. Frozen and, you know, whole Industries freeze like that. The auto industry for sure did. And you know, it was, you know, Elon was. Came along for what? How long? When did he start Tesla? Early 2000s. And you know, had been going and going and going. And then like when the car comes out and is awesome, everybody is just like sitting there going, what do we do here?

[Margit Wenmachers]

I mean, look, I just saw this on X. I think like the layoff numbers from the German car companies, my home country, like every sixth job in Germany is somehow related to the auto industry.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

It's a disaster. Yeah, but they're not going like the. A genius software engineer is not going to. They're going to want to work for Elon Musk. Like you can say about Elon Musk whatever you want, but like a suave, well manicured executive from the car industry is like not really like a talent magnet for software engineers. Right. So.

[Ben Horowitz]

And then, you know, one of the things that happened early was I got a note from HarperCollins saying that I should write a book. Yeah. And I did not have time to write a book. But you made it. Yeah. You thought. Well, you thought it was a good idea to write the book. Why'd you think it was a guy? I guess it seemed one. It seemed crazy because the blog was doing so well. So like, aren't books passe? At least to us? I mean, and then. Yeah, and then we didn't have to. I didn't have time. So, like, why did you think that made sense? I guess it wasn't something that VCs did either. Right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Like, I do think we needed to even out the brand a little bit because, like, otherwise any entrepreneur with leverage was going to go like, well, I want him to be on my board. Right. And that was just going to get successively worse with every other gp. So that was like we needed a plan for everybody. Right. And then you were the other at the time.

[Marc Andreessen]

The other.

[Margit Wenmachers]

I thought the book was good because Andreessen Other there is. Exactly. Which is why you wanted to call it Horowitz Andreessen. I remember which.

[Ben Horowitz]

It does sound. Horowitz Andreessen is a cool sounding name. It sounds a little law firm ish, though. And then you could never. A16Z would like. Well and more. H16N is not nearly as good.

[Margit Wenmachers]

No, it is good the way it is. I do still think there is value in a book of like having a definitive theory on something. I think with all the blog post and all the expos? And all that, I think there is value. People, people read books, consume Consume books. Long form podcasts is sort of a different version of the same flavor. But more importantly, I thought you had something to say, like the actual theory of like how one builds a company and like all the stuff that goes sideways. And as you always said, most books, like whoever the guy was from this and that, ge, whatever, they were all kind of fancy resumes and victory labs. They weren't really where you could learn something, particularly for our audience that like, it's so rough and tumble to be in a startup and to be in the trenches and to lose the deal and like not be able to raise the money and you have this magical person walk out the door and all that kind of stuff. So having an honest book that I think you. I was expecting you to write, I thought was really valuable. And then, you know, the little hack that we had is you had written all the blog posts. Right. And so then it was.

[Ben Horowitz]

I have a little built in audience.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Right. And then it was. It's telling the dramatic story of like what went down, you know, including with Felicia being sick and all of that. Right. That then made the book. But you kind of had the lessons in your head. And I actually think that book. I like the title. I've been living by what you do is who you are forever. I like that title better. But I think this is a more important book and it's way more kind of usable for people.

[Ben Horowitz]

It's much more broad based. I think the what you do is who you are. It's more useful for me. And when I talk to Ted Sarandos or somebody like that, they're like, oh yeah, that's a book I like. But you have to write a very large organization and you, you have to have gotten beyond the things that. Hard thing about hard things to start to think about. Okay. How do you program the culture of the whole organization and this kind of thing? But I remember the Navy too abstract.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Wanting to. Wanting to buy the book. The hard thing about hard things.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

I think people actually think it's much more applicable than you might think.

[Ben Horowitz]

Well, oh, no, no. So it's very. The hard thing about hard things, I would say in retrospect was very broadly applicable. Like pastors bought it and you know, people, you'd never think. But you know, like to me everything. The hard thing about hard things is like easy. Whereas I had to think a lot more about what you do is who you are. It's just like a. But, you know, it's one of those things. It's like, you know, how Many people need to learn algebra versus quantum physics. It's, it's a, it's a thing like that.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah, that's a, that's a good point. No, I actually thought the book was valuable to your brand and a good equalizer. And also I think it raised the ambition. Like when we then hired new gps, it was just understood that they were going to be out in the world. And then it was a matter for me for my team to go like, okay, so what are your thoughts? Hopefully you have some.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And then what are you good at? And then matching the format. Not everybody should write a book. Right. And not everybody should, should do podcasts. Some people are good with decks and all of that. But like it was a given that the bar is high.

[Ben Horowitz]

Well, that's, you know, that's such a good point because one of the things that we always get asked because Grace did such a nice job of, of marketing the book is, well, like, how do you market your book? And I'm like, well look, you can do, there's like well known marketing ideas and so forth and you can do a lot of things and you can get yourself even on like the bestseller like this. But then the book's going to disappear unless it's a great book. Like, it has to be good.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Right.

[Ben Horowitz]

Like that's the fundamental thing. And so like if you don't write something that's good, if you're completely focused on like how you promote it before you've written it, like, that's probably.

[Margit Wenmachers]

That's backwards. Yeah, that is back. You have to actually believe that you have an idea that that's worth putting a book. Like a book has to stand the test of time. You know what I mean? It has to be an actual thing versus a tweet.

[Ben Horowitz]

Well, so many people in business take a blog post idea, a blog post length idea, and they try and turn it into a book. And some things are just a snack.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

They're snacks. And snacks should be snacks. Yeah, exactly.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah. No, I thought the book served you well and I think it made everybody in the firm go like, oh, I don't know that Andrew, would he have thought automatically walking in here, it's like, well, maybe I should write a book. And it just made it open up the thinking, I think for everybody else.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, a good thing about, you also learn a lot when you write a book. So I think everybody's. It set the standard of you can't just have an idea here. You have to be able to really think it through be able to articulate it, be able to write it, be able to publish and otherwise, like your idea didn't count. And that, that I think has helped us a lot as a. Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

I mean, look at Kathryn Boyle. I mean, she came in with the pitch of like, if I work here, I'm gonna do American dynamism. And here's what that is. And like, she also happens to be a gifted communicator. And now it's, you know, it was a deck, now it's a movement and a fund. And like it's helping really change the way people think about defense tax. That's all of a sudden allowed. Remember back in the day, Diane Green was outset from Google for like a very innocent contract to look at pictures. Right. And that like. And Kathleen is playing a really big role in turning that around. Right. And that's an idea.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, for sure. I. It is a. You know, I hadn't actually thought about it that much, but it's a very important part. Part. It's how like marketing, our original marketing ideas turned into kind of a very important cultural point of the firm, which is, you know, like, this is how we work, this is how we think.

[Margit Wenmachers]

I mean, sometimes it was so overdone. Like a new person comes in, first thing they want to do is meet with marketing. I'm like, do you know where you're sitting? And then I was like, I literally have had people say, like, you should really think about me. Like, you should think about Marc Andreessen. And I was like, what are your thoughts?

[Ben Horowitz]

I know exactly who that was. But I'm not gonna say that.

[Margit Wenmachers]

No, no, no, no. And it's all well intentioned. But like, you do, you do have to test the actual idea. Right. Like, is that a snack? Is that a book? Is it just a conversation? Like they need to be calibrated properly. Right. And. And sometimes young people who are incredibly ambitious. That was me still is like, you just want to go right for the win, but you need to, to make sure you have the goods to do it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Well, this, this kind of gets into a conversation Mark and I have been having, which is, you know, the marketing of companies has changed so much because you're really now marketing a person. And that's a lot what we did at the firm now because the firm had our name. It was a natural.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Also, we don't have product.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. And we didn't have product.

[Margit Wenmachers]

We have people and ideas. That's it.

[Ben Horowitz]

We could all. But that's extensive now to oh, yeah. You know, is it. Is it Tesla or is it Elon? Is it Palantir? Is it Alex? You know, like, and the. In order to be able to do that, like, you can be an extremely accomplished person who is not interesting. Like, those don't necessarily go together.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And I think that's a little bit unfair from the press. Or, like, it creates this perception that Silicon Valley is staffed entirely with weirdos.

[Podcast Narrator]

Right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah, they're more interesting directors. Somebody who goes to work every day and drives an Audi and is a good father and drops kid off at school. That's all nice. Like, I'll pick on someone, right? Like Dylan Field.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Most amazing guy. Built an incredible company. I hosted dinners with him. He's just normal, well adjusted. The weirdest thing about him is he did the Thiel Fellowship.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

But, like, those don't get written up as much, the weirdos. Like, the weirder the better. Right. Like, and it's gotten to an extreme where, like, this is actually not reflecting Silicon Valley, it's just a slice of it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Well, it's an interesting marketing conundrum, though, because you can't market a company if you don't have a character. Right? Like.

[Margit Wenmachers]

No, you used to. Look, there used to be companies and it was fine. Where all you do is you report your financial results, you announce your new product. And that kind of started to end with Steve Jobs. Because it was a show.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And he made you want a product. And, like, it became. It's almost like politics adjacent. Like, you can't vote for a party, you're voting for a person. And if you have the company, but not a character or a sense of character, it just doesn't work. And then, you know, the corporate ex accounts and all of that, those are all fine. And like, but like, at the end of the day, it's the identity of the person. And do they actually sound like, does the tweet sound like Mark? Right. Like, does the LinkedIn post sound like DG or whatever it is? Right. Like, you cannot disconnect it anymore.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And that places a premium on people who are willing to play character or be character. I'm not sure that's always the healthiest thing for a company at every. In. At every stage. Right. Or in every situation. Like, there are some downsides to it, but the upside beats the downside side, like 10 to 1 or whatever.

[Ben Horowitz]

The right number, well, requires a lot of discipline, I think, from the founder, because you. It turns you into like this mini celebrity. And so as a Mini celebrity. Can you, like, be out there and not act like an actual celebrity? Because those aren't great organizational dynamics.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Just having been around, you know, many celebrities. Although. And the thing is, Nas notwithstanding, he's a very regular person and that kind of thing.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah, he's surprising, but he.

[Ben Horowitz]

He's. He's very surprising. He's very unusual, but he also.

[Margit Wenmachers]

He has an amazing product.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

It's hard to argue.

[Ben Horowitz]

So, like, being able to be like this interesting character on the outside and then come in and, you know, be. Well, just be somebody who you can have an actual conversation with, with where you can get information and not be this thing that you put yourself on a pedestal to the point where people won't tell you anything. And that kind of stuff is very destructive in a company.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah. I think there's some downside along those lines. And the other part is, like, you can't really fake that stuff if you have a public Persona and it's not real and it's all manicured. Does not work. It won't work over time. Right. So you kind of have to lean. Like. This is what I always try to do is lean into, like, who is this person and what are they good at that they can sustain over time? Like, you make anybody do a TED Talk if you really, really are hell bent on doing it. But, like, that's not an actual marketing campaign. That's not a personal brand. You have to really figure out, okay, who is this person? What are their dynamics? What are their talents that they can actually be, not act, but. But, like, actually be. Right.

[Ben Horowitz]

I think it's hard to actually be a character and a TED Talk. You know, like the people who do TED Talks aren't characters and vice versa.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah. I mean, a TED Talk.

[Ben Horowitz]

You've never done a TED Talk. I've never done a TED Talk. I think it's hard to do both. Yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

I've never watched a TED Talk.

[Ben Horowitz]

You've never watched a TED Talk?

[Marc Andreessen]

I've never watched a TED Talk.

[Ben Horowitz]

Oh, man, you're missing out on a very beautifully packaged. It's almost like.

[Marc Andreessen]

But that was my point.

[Margit Wenmachers]

My point is. That is exactly my point. TED Talks are these very manicured things that, like, work for a minute. But like, anybody who's seen so many TED Talks is like, this is all the same.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, that's right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

It's all the exact same plastic. Right. Or maybe you think it's platinum, but it's the exact same formulaic thing. That's not an actual brand. That's maybe an event that if you really care about it, some people really care about that shit. But, like, that's not actually who you are.

[Marc Andreessen]

They read to me as religious sermons, and I have an aversion to fake religions. They're all little morality. They're all morality stories. They've all got a message.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And there's.

[Marc Andreessen]

It's like the very special episodes of TV shows in the 1970s. They're the very special episodes where you.

[Ben Horowitz]

Like, learn about very special happy days.

[Marc Andreessen]

You learn about drug addiction or. Yeah, exactly.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And the thing is, I'm in marketing, and I find them saccharine. Like, they're just too. They're just too perfect in a way. Right. And they train you like crazy. And then, you know, they're the teams that peel off of ted, and then they help executives be great. And you can just. I've talked to them and I'm like, Like, you know, you've been invited to. To podcasts that are produced that way, and they literally are trying to script what you're going to say, and I'm like, we don't do that.

[Marc Andreessen]

Package it in the scary specific format. And that's why that, by the way, that's why I'm saying that's why I'm. I'm riffing on a little bit, is because, like, my, My. My instincts are all to the exact opposite of that.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

As you know, which is like the authenticity and rawness.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Well, you could do a TED Talk. I think you'd be fine at it. But, like, it's actually an not you. And like, therefore it wouldn't. It wouldn't accrue to the brand.

[Ben Horowitz]

He could not do a TED Talk because in order to do a TED Talk, they have to review what you're going to say and they have to edit it. And there's no chance.

[Margit Wenmachers]

No, what I'm saying is, if he decided he wanted to.

[Ben Horowitz]

Is it something Mark writes? Like, I take one sentence and I give one word, and like. And then that's. As much as he likes to be edited.

[Margit Wenmachers]

This is why I find it so hilarious when you send around, like when you used to do that, when you send around the blog posts, and then everybody is so eager to edit them, and I'm like, this is such a waste of fucking time. This is like not you. It's like not you.

[Ben Horowitz]

So that actually reminds me of my favorite thing that Larry David said. The rule on Seinfeld was no hugs and no lessons.

[Marc Andreessen]

No lessons.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Exactly.

[Marc Andreessen]

That's right. That's right. That's right.

[Ben Horowitz]

Very special episode.

[Marc Andreessen]

And that's what made that, that's what made that show so distinctive is they never did that. They never, they never. There was never, it was never maudlin or saccharine.

[Ben Horowitz]

Never.

[Marc Andreessen]

It was like almost unique in that way.

[Margit Wenmachers]

It's a very, very good show.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of the opposite.

[Margit Wenmachers]

10. Yeah. And look, that is great. Like, I'm not trying to malign it, but it's.

[Marc Andreessen]

A lot of people like it.

[Margit Wenmachers]

It's, it's very manufactured. And I don't think that's an actual brand as a person. You can't be that brand.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, the thing that works as well and you know, a lot of this just has to do with the shifting technological environment, media environment. But the thing that works in this media environment is much more, much more authenticity, interest.

[Margit Wenmachers]

You think about, if you look at.

[Ben Horowitz]

Like it used to be authenticity and originality. Right.

[Marc Andreessen]

So interestingness. Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Which is interesting because the old world, like our media training in the old world was all, like much is the opposite of conformist, Stan. Message discipline, discipline.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And that's just out the window. And the thing that I think what's interesting to media and that's what media has to figure out, is they used to set the tone and now they're at the very end, at the very end of all the stuff that's been said on Twitter or on Reddit or podcasts, Tumblr, all like, it eventually spills out and then media as like, oh, what is this thing?

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, we'll comment on the Rogan show.

[Margit Wenmachers]

But like it's, it's at the very end. And that, like, for me, that must be total out of body experience where it's like, wait, like I was the, I was the beginning, right? When you, when you were, when you were unveiling something, that's where you would go, right? And now you can go any freaking place that like you have 50,000 choices, right? And then it gets enough steam and then it gets reviewed by media almost, right? It's just like the order has flip completely.

[Ben Horowitz]

It makes it very tricky to speak to the media because when they're on that end and they have to turn you into news, anything you use, you say canon will be used against you. You know, it's a very Miranda type world.

[Marc Andreessen]

My new version, my new version of this, my, the new test I think is happening is what we might call the GPT test, which is okay, if, if what somebody says is indistinguishable from chat GPT output, like not going to make it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, right.

[Marc Andreessen]

And. And then the more advanced version of the test is like, is it indistinguishable from like, chat GPT 3.5. Right. Which is like nothing. Which is like the earlier version that's not as good. And the number of public figures in various domains who continue to speak in public or put out, crafted, you know, whatever. And literally you're just like, this is indistinguishable from what the LLM could do. Or, by the way, columnists, people write columns for a living. Like, there's a lot of people who don't pass that test. And so. And I just say that of, like, there's going to be a big turnover there. And then it begs the important question, like, okay, what does it take to pass that test.

[Margit Wenmachers]

While it's changing all the time?

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, also true. Right, exactly. But who is actually a version of this conversation with Tyler Cohen one time. So Tyler Cohen and his partner Alex have been blogging daily for over 20 years, martial revolution, which is amazing.

[Margit Wenmachers]

They do a great job.

[Marc Andreessen]

And they're leaders of these intellectual movements, incredibly important, influential and all these things. And they're in all these rooms that they will say this. Like, it's put them in all these incredibly important rooms and all these things. And I was like, wow, it's worked so great for you guys. It's like, why don't, you know, why don't more people do this? And Tyler just laughs and he's like, mark, how many people have something to say every day? Yeah, that's a lot of talking, right? Well, genuinely, how many people have that? And then every day for 20 years is like, maybe the highest bar, but how many people have three interesting things to say or one interesting thing to say?

[Margit Wenmachers]

But this is my beef with some of these platforms. Or actually, it's the humans. It's not the platforms, it's always the humans. Does every thought that you have need to go on X or wherever it needs to go? I would beg to differ. But like, a lot of people now, a lot of people go like, okay, it's a new day. I gotta say something.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And I'm like, I don't know.

[Marc Andreessen]

Well, to me, the test. Let me ask you this, though. Would you agree that the difference is if they have an interesting thought every day? That's one thing.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Fantastic.

[Marc Andreessen]

Right, right, right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

The more the merrier.

[Marc Andreessen]

But, yeah, most people don't.

[Margit Wenmachers]

But, like, most people don't. And I sort of feel like even.

[Ben Horowitz]

The people, they don't always. Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Better served to like pop up when, when they have a thought or, or contribute something to the conversation. Yeah, that's. I, I don't know. I just don't think that everybody has interesting things to say every day. I mean, if I look at X, I see proof.

[Marc Andreessen]

Well, the reason I go through this is because my, my theory at least is the nature of leadership has changed because of everything you guys have discussed. The nature of leadership is changing and the, the, the leader that. The people who, the leaders who have very. A large number of interesting things to say and know how to communicate it are going to do disproportionately well in the years ahead. And the leaders who don't, even if they Professionally skilled, I think are going to have a harder and harder time and their companies are going to have a harder and harder time because it's just the old, the old methods are just not working as well anymore.

[Margit Wenmachers]

No.

[Ben Horowitz]

Particularly on the, on the marketing front. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, like, but people are changing. Like, it's been interesting to watch our friend Mark Zuckerberg kind of change his public Persona so much so fast.

[Margit Wenmachers]

So great.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. I mean, so he's kind of, I mean, running a gigantic social media company. You would think he would figure it out, but I guess. But it's still very difficult to do.

[Marc Andreessen]

And it actually mapped to an internal change.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Marc Andreessen]

Like he himself changed.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yes.

[Marc Andreessen]

It wasn't like a synthetically generated message. Everything of like Mark Zuckerberg in public now is 100% wholly authentic.

[Ben Horowitz]

He used to try to calculate what he was going to say through the lens of all his many, many constituents and now he's saying what he thinks. Yeah. And people.

[Marc Andreessen]

He was trained and as you know, he was trained to do that. Oh, he received the A plus grade version of that training from people who were world class at that. And it worked for a. And then the environment.

[Margit Wenmachers]

But I also think he, whoever was advised, like overdid it. I remember being in your office and was like, that man has the wrong beer somewhere. It's a scandal because it was so perfected and it's like, chill out.

[Ben Horowitz]

It was so tight.

[Marc Andreessen]

Well, you know what it was.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And then he did. Now that he's doing the, like, this is me deal with it. It's working great.

[Marc Andreessen]

And again, the people who trained. People who trained him are like super geniuses and they were fantastic. But they themselves were trained in what I would describe as like 1980s, 1990s style politics. They came out.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Oh, politics.

[Marc Andreessen]

They came out of a political background.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Marc Andreessen]

Which is Even intense version of everything that we're talking about.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

So they got trained.

[Margit Wenmachers]

They.

[Marc Andreessen]

They got trained the way politicians got trained in the 1990s, which was extremely scripted and controlled.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Marc Andreessen]

Maximally so and so. And then just the, the, as we've discussed, like, just this massive shift in the environment since then has basically rendered. I mean. I mean, you see this playing out.

[Margit Wenmachers]

I think he's done a great job.

[Marc Andreessen]

All over the world. Right. Which is. This is also. Everything we're talking about is also playing out politically.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yes.

[Marc Andreessen]

And maybe even more so politically.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

And it's even like. Like the subtle things. Things have been the most interesting to me. So he used to be known for, like, he's always wearing a hoodie, which was the most conformist thing in the world in Silicon Valley. Right. And now, like, he's got, like, the gold chains and this hair all over the. You know, and. And it's kind of like he's. He's expressing himself, you know, on all.

[Marc Andreessen]

Fronts, but it's exactly what he looks like in private. Like, it's now, now it all matches.

[Ben Horowitz]

But I still.

[Marc Andreessen]

It's been great to kind of see him flower like that and be able to, like, fully express himself.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

I think it's great.

[Ben Horowitz]

Spectacular.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Still, people are like, well, what's with the gold chains?

[Ben Horowitz]

I'm like, he likes them. Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Well, here's an executive, the main one.

[Marc Andreessen]

That he wears has a real. It's important with his faith.

[Ben Horowitz]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

There's a guy who runs a ginormous company that's in the spotlight all the time. And, like, this is what you're picking on.

[Marc Andreessen]

Also true.

[Margit Wenmachers]

I'm like, hello.

[Marc Andreessen]

Also true.

[Ben Horowitz]

But it's. I, I think when people from the old world see that, it makes them very uncomfortable. Comfortable. Right. One of. Okay. One of the guys who was doing what we wanted him to is no longer. He's off the leash.

[Marc Andreessen]

He's not on the program. That's right.

[Ben Horowitz]

That's right. Yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

Well, he's liberated.

[Margit Wenmachers]

We go all the way back to when. When. What's his name, the found Dennis from Foursquare. He got yelled at because he went to a press meeting with a hoodie on, like, all the Way at the beginning. That was controversial.

[Ben Horowitz]

I remember that. Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

He was like, I think. And he had a banana or something like that. It was like, apparently entirely unacceptable. It almost makes it nostalgic.

[Ben Horowitz]

Very interesting.

[Marc Andreessen]

So I think companies. I mean, look, I think all this stuff. My view is all this stuff's going to Intensify. I think every successful company in the, I think every successful company in the future is going to need this kind of personality. They're going to need somebody who can do this and it's a different leadership profile.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Do you think it has to be the CEO?

[Marc Andreessen]

I think it's really hard for it not to be.

[Ben Horowitz]

I mean, maybe, maybe it could be another founder. I think.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, yeah. Co founder can do it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. Co founder. Founder for sure. If you're a consumer brand, I think it's very difficult to not have a, a person like that. I think, you know, if you're less marketing, like, like, if you are, like, if the, I mean, there are historically businesses that are all.

[Margit Wenmachers]

I think, I think if you're in a competitive situation and on the other side there's somebody who's really good at it. Yeah, it still sucks if you sell security stuff.

[Marc Andreessen]

Palantir is as enterprise, you know, government as it gets.

[Ben Horowitz]

Oh, yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

No, he's like, he's killing it.

[Margit Wenmachers]

He's perfect.

[Marc Andreessen]

Im being a competitor to Palantir and not having an Alex. Right.

[Ben Horowitz]

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Marc Andreessen]

Even just the stock market valuation alone, like how can you possibly keep up?

[Margit Wenmachers]

Yeah, it's basically, can you sell? And the way you're selling today is entirely different. Yeah, right. Like it's not, you know, having features and a Gartner report. It's just like, I think it's great.

[Marc Andreessen]

I think it's, I, I, I think it's great. I think it's leading to a more honest world, like more transparent, more authentic, more honest, more interesting things being discussed, more interesting issues getting surfaced, people actually getting know each other.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, it's a much less sanitized world.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah, that's right.

[Ben Horowitz]

That's right.

[Marc Andreessen]

And of course that, that it's uncomfort. It's uncomfortable because if you're used to, if you're used to the, the wall, you know, the walls, they say the walled garden. If you're used to sanitized environment, if you're used to Disneyland, entering the real world is traumatic, very traumatic. But like we do live in the real world.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right.

[Margit Wenmachers]

And, and as always, it's the transition that's the toughest part. It's going like, oh, this is all different now. Right. And, and, and I think we're in a really big transition and the transition is strange. Just sort of like.

[Marc Andreessen]

That's right. And we're still in the middle of it. Like it's not over yet.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, it's kind of, it's definitely going to keep moving.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah.

[Margit Wenmachers]

All right, well, we're going to keep going.

[Ben Horowitz]

Awesome.

[Marc Andreessen]

Fantastic.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Thank you.

[Ben Horowitz]

Thank you for joining us on the Mark Adventure. This has been a lot of fun.

[Margit Wenmachers]

Thanks. You too.

[Ben Horowitz]

Hope you enjoyed it.

[Podcast Narrator]

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 X16Z and subscribe to our [e-mail] thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the 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 a16z.com disclosures.