a16z Podcast - Ben Horowitz on How a16z Was Built

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

Erik Torenberg sits down with Ben Horowitz, Cofounder of a16z, for a candid conversation on venture capital, leadership, and the future of innovation. Recorded live at a16z’s Menlo Park offices in 2023, Ben shares practical wisdom and hard-earned lessons on navigating market cycles, building resilient companies, and why culture is a lasting competitive edge.Timecodes: 0:00 Introduction 0:49 Building a Lasting Venture Firm1:57 Product vs. Investor-Driven Firms5:17 Evolution of Andreessen Horowitz8:43 Fund Sizing & Market Opportunity11:38 Recruiting & Culture at a16z13:58 Supporting Founders & Firm Mission14:39 Governance & Firm Structure17:15 The Future of Venture Capital20:26 Riding Trends: AI, Web3, and Beyond27:06 Regulation, Open Source, and Innovation29:22 LPs, Macro, and Long-Term Strategy33:25 Advice for the Next Generation37:15 Tech Optimism & Societal Impact42:33 Closing Thoughts & Outro Resources: Find Ben on X:  https://x.com/bhorowitzSubscribe to Turpentine VC: link.chtbl.com/TurpentineVC Stay Updated: Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16zFind a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zSubscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenbergPlease note that 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. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

If you look at the firm now, what it is, is it's a collection of the original Andries and Horowitz, where every market has a platform that's appropriate to that market and an investing team that is focused on that market. And I think that that's the future venture capital. We're in this phase where it's such a profound change that anything you do will work, at least for a while. And so it's kind of hard to pass on any deal in that way, so it's exciting. What we care about is, is it a real breakthrough, and how big can we help make it? Can it win the market? Like, those are the things that drive us.

Today, you'll hear my 2023 conversation with Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz. In this episode, I sat down with Ben to discuss what makes a firm last for decades, how AI is built differently, and the future of venture in an AI-driven world. Let's get into it. Ben, thank you for being the first inaugural guest on the podcast. Yeah, no, happy to be here. Thank you. Ben, we're just talking off camera. There's some firms that are great for 10 years and then struggle.

There's some firms that are great for 30 years, multi-decade. What separates the firms you could do that and what enable them to be great? Yeah, I think it's a combination of kind of the lasting parts like the culture and then he parts of change like the leadership. And so I think that, you know, if you just have a couple of smart investors, but no culture to speak of, then you're probably not going to do a great generational handoff.

And that's probably 10 years. Is it kind of 10 years is a pretty good run for investors, you know, like maybe you stretch that out. Then, you know, if you can transition it, like, you know, Sequoia transitioned it from Don Valentine to, you know, you know, Mike Moritz and Doug Leone and Jim Gets, and that worked, you know, that transition worked well, so they were able to kind of take the original culture and build on it and kind

of grow it, you know, 20 years for the original guys, 20 years for the successors and that kind of thing. So that goes pretty well. You guys who knows bring chickens, almost 15 years? Yeah. How do you think about it for your firm? Yeah, so we're a little different in that we are organized in such a way. where it's not like Mark and I can have like very significant contributions without picking the investments because, you know, we have, I would just say, more scale and more job functions at Andrewsson Horowitz because we're kind of a product first and then a team of investors second, whereas every other firm I think is the opposite product meaning the product to entrepreneurs.

So, like, what are we offering is where we start? And then the team of investors is kind of goes with that, as opposed to we're a team of investors and then, like, we'll figure out what our product is as we go. So it's a very kind of different orientation. I've always thought of why a Combinator is another example of a product firm in the sense that you could replace a lot of the investors and they have over time, and yet it still seems to work to some degree. I think that's right.

Like, I think they're probably, you know, the closest analog to us kind of spiritually. Yeah. So they're spiritually close to you, but they're much earlier and they dominate kind of like company creation. Whereas you, you do a lot of seat, of course, too, but you play at all stages. Have you thought about going after that space, like pretty hardcore? How have you thought about where you situate in the ecosystem? Yeah, you know, it's funny because we, Paul and us started, you know, around the same time. started a little earlier, and, you know, we talked to him quite a bit during that phase when he

was running Y Combinator out of his house with Jessica. And, you know, I have to say, we never really thought about kind of being Y Combinator, and I think, like, a lot of it has to do, you know, my philosophy of business is you have to start with, okay, what can you contribute that's going to be important in the world that nobody can do better than you? And, you know, for us, A big thing that we had done is we had scaled companies built into very large size. That wasn't really kind of Paul's experience, but he had thought super deeply about, like, the very initial kind of part of it. So I think that was the right thing for him to do, and we did the right thing for us to do.

And I think the world was better with us doing our thing and him doing his thing, but, like, he's got a great business. Totally. And so you're a product, you're not. Like, he and his success is. Yes, totally. The, most venture firms are collection of investors, your collection of venture firms in some way,

where you have these distinct, you know, American dynamism and bio and crypto and games, these different practices. Should other firms think, are you guys ahead of the curve and other people, other firms will follow you? Talk about the evolution to that structure and why that made so much sense. Yeah, so it's interesting.

So when we started the firm, there's a lot of conventional wisdom in venture capital, like there are only 15 deals a year that ever going to make it to $100 million. You know, it's a cottage industry, you know, done by like you can only learn it through apprenticeship and all the, you know, a lot of concepts, which I think we're probably correct at the time, but the thing that we believed then, and Mark kind of encapsulated a PC wrote in 2011 called Software's Eating the World was the Software Industry was going to grow. a hundredfold. And so 15 companies can be 150 companies and like things were going to change. And so in order to kind of be the preeminent venture capital firm, you were going to have to be a lot bigger. So we kind of saw that from the outset. And so we set ourselves up to be able to kind of organize, reorganize, evolve. And if you look at the firm now, what it is is it's right. It's a collection

of the original Andresen Horowitz, where every market has a platform that's appropriate to that market and an investing team that is focused on that market. And I think that that's the future venture capital. Like when we think about who's really an interesting competitor, it's the pure crypto firm, the pure games firm, the pure AI firm, more than the generalist firm that's trying to cover all of that with the old structure. I think that's going to be harder for them.

Speaking of the future of venture, will venture firms consider going public or should they consider like a YC or like you guys or firms that achieve such level of scale? Yeah, so there's a real interesting alignment problem with going public if you're a venture capital firm and it's as follows. So if you look at Apollo or, you know, Blackstone

or any of these guys' private equity companies that have gone public, the public markets value them on their fee stream much more than on their investment returns. I think that's a safer kind of alignment between the investors and the firms in private equity than it is in venture capital. I think in venture capital, that can get super dangerous because even at 100x, what it used to be, the entire venture capital market is not that big. and is, you know, like the amount of capital versus the amount of great ideas, like we're already have more capital than great ideas. And as we saw, I think, with both SoftBank and Tiger Global,

if you try to change that demand supply imbalance, you just end up creating a mess. And so if you were public, you'd have a strong incentive to create a mess. So they went big and created a mess. But you guys went as big in some ways, right? Your volume was very high. Your funds raised is very high. You went big in a much better way.

We didn't go $100 billion, but then I think Tiger was raising $12 billion a year. So they were bigger than us just technically. So, yeah, look, we've scaled to basically size our funds to the market opportunities. So the way we look at it is, like, in a two-to-three-year time frame, How many great deals will we see in a category and then try to size the fund to basically cover that time period is kind of roughly how we do it? And that's certainly increased fund sizes, both fund sizes and the number of funds over the years. But it's still really contained compared to what you do if you were just scaling assets. like so we i think it's still like way smaller than like what apollo or vista or somebody would

do in that kind of business um so yeah so i think that misalignment is pretty tricky for venture capital to overcome like i haven't figured out a way where you would overcome that yet right so a firm like a firm that stay diligent like a usv or diligence on fund size um you know a benchmark or kind of stays at 500 or 250, respectively. They believe that they can get better multiples on that, you know, much smaller fund size. What do you believe that they don't believe that, in terms of justify, why it goes so much bigger? Yes, I think the market's just gotten bigger. So I think the way to think about it is, if you believe the market was fixed at 15 companies,

then that's the exact right strategy. Right. And, you know, we don't believe that. And I think that, you know, I'm not allowed to talk about our fund returns because we're an RIA, but, you know, if you look at our funds, I think our larger funds have, at times, like, we outperformed our smaller funds. And that's just kind of a function of, look, if there were 15 companies and now there's 150, then if you had a $400 million fund, then maybe you need a $4 billion fund, and to do the same

deals, if you win the same percentage of them. And, you know, like, that's just a simple math. And I think that they're, look, there are different beliefs. I think benchmark believes that they believe, we believe, but we believe. And again, look, our mission isn't to, isn't necessarily fun turns, right? We have a mission to kind of help the best entrepreneurs in the world build the best companies that they can. And so, you know, we generally come at, like, the whole structure of what we do from that perspective. I think also, look, we could all get much higher salaries

if we didn't organize the firm the way we did. But, you know, like our mission isn't to maximize the number of money per partner. Our mission is to kind of be the resource for building great technology companies. So it's just like a different point of view. And so how do you recruit such amazing partners if at other firms because they don't have these resources, maybe they can get higher salaries or, you know, there's certain perks of being at one of those firms. How do you think about recruiting the best talent?

energy isn't. Yeah, well, I think that, you know, people here, it's actually helpful that we kind of pay lower salaries to me because we get people who are on mission. And, you know, like, there's a lot lot that goes into that. You know, like there's a, for example, there's this kind of thing in venture capital that a lot of venture capital will say, well, spend all your time with your winners. Like, we don't believe in that at all. Now, like, if you look at a spreadsheet, that's the exact right thing, right, because the whatever, three winners are going to produce all the returns. But the way we look at it is, you know, several, one, we're not so confident that we know who the winners are for a long time. The other thing is that, you know, we kind of have the philosophy is, like, we knew the job was dangerous when we took it.

If we're going to, if you're going to take us as your partner, we're going to be there until the bitter end. And, like, that's, you know, having been very close to the bitter end myself from time to time. Like, you really do need kind of support or at least somebody to talk to when you're in that situation. And because, you know, just from a competitive standpoint, our whole idea is that we sell on reputation. That's fundamentally important to our competitive advantage is to have the best reputation. So all those things kind of cause us to behave differently. And if you're not into that, if you're into the spreadsheet view of venture capital, then, like, you would hate that idea. So it actually works for us in that sense.

And because you've spent the last decade plus building this brand reputation, there's lots of other things that you could do. You can get into things beyond venture, right? Different firm, you know, some firms get into sort of more public investing, get into wealth management. They get into other products that serve, you know, kind of adjacent customers or serve their customers in adjacent ways. How do you think about what makes sense to get into versus what doesn't make sense to get into? given that your brand enables these opportunities? Yeah, so the way to think about what we've done so far and what we'll do in the future is the customer is the founder for us.

So we start with the founder. And the initial promise is, you know, we're going to help you raise money. We're going to help you develop into a CEO. We're going to build you a network that's as good as Bob Igers. We're going to, like, help you train you into the job. and we're going to support you in every way that we can, you know, through our financial network

to help you kind of build this company. And, you know, in our view, we'd like to extend that through the founder's entire life from the time they found the company to the time they become a philanthropist. And so anything in that realm we feel like is, you know, kind of things that we ought to at least consider doing and, you know, which ones we do

and which order we'll see, you know, depending on where the gaps in the market are and what makes sense for us. One thing we've talked about off-camera is that one thing that enables you to take such big swings or make these changes when the market changes

is your unique approach to sort of governance for control. When you talk about that relative to other venture firms? Yeah, it's interesting. It's kind of a concept that we got from a couple of people. One was Herb Allen, who you know, I think,

and then the other was Mark's father-in-law. Hey, we'll continue our understanding interview in a moment after a word from our sponsors. Turpentine VC is brought to you by Carta. You know them as the cap table company, but did you know Carta is the world's largest venture fund administrator? It's true. Carter's software-based approach takes fund administration out of the spreadsheet and into 2023 and beyond with powerful solutions and intuitive interfaces all in one platform. Carter's suite of products and expert services helps funds at any stage with up-to-date insights and automated workflows to get them to

that next level. The future of VC is already here and it's Carta. Learn more at Carta.com and slash turpentine. That's carter.com slash turpentine. And they both kind of gave us the same idea which, so traditionally in venture capital, I think it looks a little like a law firm or kind of a lot of these partnership structures where you have shared economics and shared control. And like from a partner's standpoint, there's a lot of, you know, that makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. We have a different structure where we're shared economics, but we've kind of centralized control. And that enables us by not having shared control, we can change the structure of the firm very easily.

And if you want to grow, like so, you know, if you want to go, you know, in an integrated way, like you could have, though that's the Chinese subsidiary or whatever, and that's a whole another entity, and we talk to them, you know, once every six months. That's not what I'm talking about. But if you want to grow in an integrated way with a kind of single culture, single offering, then you have to be able to change the organizational structure, you know, as you get bigger. So, like, the structure that you had at 50 people is just not going to work at 500, and that's for any organization. But in order to do that, somebody's got to be able to make that decision with no politicking,

no arguing, no, you know, like there will be tears because whoever lose power is going to, like, be upset about it. But you have to be able to make those tough decisions to get to the structure that you need to be maximally effective, and that's just really hard to do, I think. I don't know how you would do it with shared control. Let's get back to the future of venture. Let's say we're having this conversation 10 years from now or 15 years from now. Does venture kind of look, does the trends that are happening now continue to happen where there's just this bifurcation, you know, multi-stage firms become even more multi-asset firms that just get bigger and bigger and this sort of, you know, solo GP or small specialists on, you know, kind of this barbell or do new models come

into play like venture studios really take off or do emerging technology like web three or i really change the change how venture works or say more about the future of the yeah no like all possibilities i mean like i think the kind of classical venture firm um that is just like a collection of smart you know investors like i think that's probably run its course so i think you have to be like a top end like serious brand that can marshal resources and money and considered smart money and people want to follow you know I put us in that category Sequoia

you know there's that class of thing and then there's people who are very specialized in a very kind of specific part of the market and know that network and have really great specific expertise and they'd probably be you know more early stage, I would think. And those two things seem pretty solid, at least for the next five, ten years. Everything else, a little more questionable.

I think, you know, with the studio model, to me, the big problem with that historically, and, you know, I think Bill Gross was probably the, you probably the greatest practitioner of that historically, is that it's not an idea. it's an idea maze. And so, and it's very hard to run through the idea maze if it's not your idea. And so I think that tends to be problematic. That's kind of, it's a little bit of a design

for the head of the studio's lifestyle and kind of capabilities as opposed to what's going to make a great company. And so I don't know that that's ever going to work. And I thought Paul's genius was, the ideas weren't his. and that was the difference between an incubator and an accelerator and that, I think, you know, just proved to be the right model and the reason it's the right model is because whoever's building the company, it better be their idea.

Yeah. When you identify an emerging trend, whether it's Web3, whether it's AI, whether it's companies that get big, and it's really big, really fast in a certain, you know, during the pandemic, let's say. And some people are more prudent about it. Some people are more bullish. And I put you guys more on the bullish camp. Smart bullish, but bullish. And is the logic there that, hey, not everything's going to work out,

but the things that work just work so much that it just really makes sense to be extremely bullish? I guess when you reflect on the past few years and things that you went really hard on, if you were to do versions of, again, going forward in the future, now this AI wave, of course, how do you think about writing trends and how hard to ride them?

If you look at the history of technology, almost everything eventually worked, right? All the stuff, go back to 1999, 2001, all the dot bombs. Oh, that's the dumbest, ha, ha, ha, pets.com, how stupid. You know, like all that stuff, you know, and then diapers.com sells for $800 million later. It was just a little ahead of its time. Yeah.

And I think the beauty of venture capital is you can make the bet. And if you're too early, you can make the bet again. And you learn a lot. If a clean energy craze happened again, if you guys were around during that time, do you think you would have bet big there and just a day we're 10 years earlier? Well, that one is a little different in that. That was like a politically motivated market, which is a different kind of a thing. I mean, I think so we're big believers in software.

And if there's like a massive software break, through that has new applications or new models or these kinds of things. And we'd certainly be on that, anything like AI or crypto or, you know, or like, you know, what's going on in games. Like, we'd bet that every time. I think climate was a little difference. It wasn't software, it was material sciences, which has a different market dynamic. So it's kind of like, like they're eventually.

became a small number of auto companies. There never eventually became a small number of software companies, despite what Larry Ellison and all those guys said that there were only going to be three software companies and all that thing. Because it's kind of like, it'd be like there's only going to be three novelists. It's a creative art form. It's got a very big design space. And so, you know, we think there, you know,

if there is like a big change in how you can write software, which AI is probably the biggest change we've ever had, that's going to, yes, that's going to produce things. And we bet that all day, all the time, every day. And I think, like, that's also the kind of value of being able to evolve the firm is, like, people who knew smartphone network effects may not be the ones who really get AI,

may not be the ones who really get crypto, et cetera. I know Mark has spending a bunch of time in AI right now. Talk about the AI strategy, or how you're approaching AI in terms of this is both how you think about it from investing perspective, but also does it change things at the firm more broadly? Yeah, well, like, it does change things at the firm

broadly. You know, from an investing perspective, it's kind of like, oh, my God, we have non-deterministic computing. Like, holy cow. You know, like, it's a whole, every problem we couldn't solve with deterministic computing is now for grabs. And that's

like, you know, we've never seen anything like So from a firm perspective, I think, you know, we end up needing, okay, different expertise. We need kind of access to different networks. We need kind of different kind of help for entrepreneurs. Like, it's amazing. So many of the AI entrepreneurs are actually, they're not even engineers that are like researchers. So this is a totally different type of cat to be starting a company

and, you know, what do they need to succeed and that kind of thing. So it's a very big tidal wave kind of running through the firm and running through the industry. But we can be more excited about it. I mean, the other thing is like we're in this phase where it's such a profound change that anything you do, like, will work at least for a while. Yeah.

And so it's kind of hard to pass on any deal. in that way, so it's exciting. Well, and that was true also of Web3 for a moment. When you think about Web 3, do you think, hey, it's just in a momentary lull, partly sponsored by markets and developer activities higher than ever? I've been struck just by how far ahead AI is of Web 3

just on terms of use cases and products. And yet I've been ignoring AI up until the last year or so, and I was spending more time in Web 3? Like, what did I, you know, was the financialization of distraction? Or I guess reflect on that a little bit, Or what's your perspective on that? Yeah.

So there's a few things. So one is like AI happened overnight. Like this AI model started in 1943. So it was a long time coming. And it's finally like working really well. I think with crypto, it started like in earnest in 2008. Like that was the 1943 moment. So it's a lot younger than AI.

And like I think in fact, and there have been there have been, there have been kind of a variety of use cases. Some of them have been, so there's like this what we call Web 3 and, you know, a new way to build networks, that's fair and not like doesn't tend towards these like very dangerous monopolies that control all information and all these kinds of things. But there's also kind of like a, because you can create money, there's a casino aspect, which, you know,

needs regulation. And we've been kind of working with the U.S. government to try and get the correct regulation. And so, you know, in its current state, I would say there's two things. One is we need performance to improve a lot, you know, and kind of gas fees to lower and performance to improve so usability can improve and that kind of thing. And that we're really on the verge of. I mean, like, I think we're going to see 100x improvement of the kind of base infrastructure in the next turn in the next year. So that's awesome. The other thing, though, is the kind of regulatory regime

and, like, what's possible and can we get clarity and so forth. And we're working on that both kind of domestically and internationally. But those are kind of things that in order to get very broad adoption that's going to have to overcome. Like, AI is already getting broad adoption

because, like, it works. Now, the regulators are now moving in And, you know, very ironically, oddly, bizarrely, talking about trying to ban open source, which is probably the safest thing that could possibly happen in AI because, you know, the last thing, if AI is this all-powerful thing, then the last thing you want is it in the hands of one person or one company. Like, that would be horrible and dangerous. Whereas if it's open source, universities can work on it. We can understand it.

it can be deployed. I mean, like, I often remind people, like, the last nuclear bomb that was launched was when only we had the nukes. Like, that's a dangerous world with one person having the nukes. And now everyone has nukes and a bunch of people have nukes and we haven't had.

Yeah, we haven't had any nuclear activity. And there's a very, very specific reason for that because everybody's got nukes and nobody wants to get nuked. And I think that AI is, you know, to the extent that AI is a super weapon, that will also be true there. And so if you believe that,

then I think what you want is open source. And I think if you want regulatory capture or monopoly for yourself, you want to shut that down. You mentioned earlier that you consider your peers as the best kind of specialist firms and you compete with those firms. Do you also see your peers or competitors, firms, other multi-asset firms that are not even in venture?

Like as you get bigger and bigger AUM, you know, are there firms that you see yourself as veering into their space? No, so like, you know, it's funny because I've spent some time with both kind of the folks at Black Rock and at Apollo just trying to understand their structure and why they're public and these kinds of things.

And I would say they are culturally, philosophically, operationally, the opposite of us. So, like, they're very, very price focus. They're optimizers, their, you know, efficiency experts. like we don't care about any of that what we care about is like is it a real breakthrough and how big can we help make it

can it win the market like those are the things that drive us so there's nothing about what they do that would make them good at what we do and there's nothing about what we do that would make us good at what they do so like I think you know we'll never get into that realm

yeah and when people focus so much on returns it also it's important to think about just the LP product like my understanding of the soft bank thesis was that this is a place that LP could plow a ton of capital and get some like consistent, you know, return. And there's not that many places where you could just plow all that capital into one place

and get that kind of diversification. Is that how you think, like how do you think about the LP product that you're offering? We think about LPs differently. So we think about LPs, or the way we like to think about them is the same way a company would think about it to VC. So one, so we're not,

building a product for them. We're building a product for founders. And, you know, they can invest in that product. And then there's a couple of things we think about there. One is we want to have the kind of investors that we want to be in business with for a very long time. So we choose them very carefully. And two, we want to treat them like investors. And I think, you know, sometimes venture capitalists make the mistake of not doing that, which, you know, what does that mean? means, well, like, you shouldn't have them invest if you don't respect their opinion, aren't interested in what they have to say, don't want to keep them up to date on what you're doing.

Like, then you're not treating them like investors if you don't do that. And I think what we're going to find out in this kind of particular interest rate change environment is that, like, the VCs who didn't treat their LPs like investors are going to be in for what that means in bad times. Does macro inform your firm strategy? No. No, like I think we've got to be very careful about that, in fact. So one, macro, in our view, is highly unpredictable.

Right. So that's the first thing. And so we don't try to predict it. And then secondly, we have a 10-year horizon on exits. So if we invest in a company today, we're expecting it to come out in the environment in 2033. And so in 233, the idea that we could predict

that macroeconomic environment is pretty absurd to me. Like even to talk about it, sounds weird. Hey, we'll continue our interview in a moment after a word from our sponsors. Turpentine VC is proudly sponsored by Synaptic. Are you investor looking to make better investment decisions? You'll know that the quality of your decisions

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And I think that's really, really dangerous, particularly for the early stage stuff that they did, where they're now, you know, like, knowing they're not doing the follow-ons, like, they won't even return the call. And so you get into that kind of situation, it's like, that's not even smart for you. Like, you know, it's kind of like you're a bad person for not calling back somebody you invested in. But, like, that's not even smart for you. Like, what are you doing? Like, you don't know what's going to happen in 2033. Right.

Makes sense. When you started the firm, people like Michael Ovitz and others gave you advice. on how to think about the firm in a different way based on the market at the time. I'm curious for the next Ben Horowitz and Mark Andreessen out there who are 20 years or 30 years younger or whatever, they're just starting out,

but want to build the next A16Z but they're identifying, you know, thinking of the market at, looking at the market at 2023, and let's say they're coming to you guys for advice and you wanted to give them advice. How would you think about creating next A16Z starting in 2023, given where the market is today?

There already is A16CZ. that's the uh the uberrax is uber now if they wanted to create a hollywood talent agency um then i would have plenty of advice for them maybe fair enough you've coined the term you know wartime CEO piece time CEO i'm curious if we could think about um you know wartime vc because right now it's a tough time in markets tough time to get a firm off the ground you know people are more skeptical about venture people are skeptical of tech more broadly it's an anti time of anti-tech what it's like to be a wartime vc or to be tech or to be tech optimists in a world that is increasingly pessimistic.

Yeah, so like I think the biggest kind of war kind of issue that we have is actually probably with, you know, the regulatory environment and some of the ideas of the kind of current administration where they have become anti-innovation. And look, we've already seen like a pretty large percentage of the crypto venture capital or go overseas. So like the idea that the United States would forfeit the internet of property rights and money at such an early stage in its life is just feel so absurd. It doesn't even feel like America in that way. And like that literally fake things that they're blaming it on, like, oh, crypto's funding fentanyl. I read that today. I was like, what hell are you talking about?

It's like literally the most transparent form of payment that there is in the world. like more than visa, more than dollars, more than anything. And like for somebody, you know, a senator to come out and say some just completely, something that she no doubt knows isn't true, you know, to kind of push innovation overseas is like that's a real wartime kind of situation for us in innovation land. And I think we're seeing the same thing in AI. We certainly have, you know, struggles for a different reason in bio and, you know, that kind of technology. But like, so I'd just give you, on bio, though, the FTC recently, you know, sued to break up a deal between a bio startup and a kind of big pharma company.

Like, it's pretty impossible to do drug to fund drug development if there's no M&A market. So to literally like outlaw new science for health, new financial technology, new kind of property rights in the virtual world. is like a really hard stance for us to understand. So we are, you know, working with policymakers and trying to understand, okay, you know, because it's not all like, you know, bananas. Like some of it is, you know, certainly makes sense. But to kind of shape that for like a future

that's prosperous for America is like a big effort from the firm, and we're working hard on that. But that feels like wartime. And that feels like, okay, now we have an actual threat, existential threat to innovation in America. You know, in terms of being a tech optimist, I always like to go back to a quote from Andy Grove, which I absolutely love, which he said in the 90s. And somebody asked him, they said, Andy, is the microprocessor good or bad? And he said, well, that's not even the right question.

That's like asking is steel good or bad. It is. and so it's our job to make it good. And that's, you know, a lot how I feel about kind of all these technologies is they are going to exist. Like you can't get rid of the wheel now, like it's over, like it's here. You can't get rid of AI now, it's over, it's here. Like you can't outlaw math.

You can't, like that paper's already out there. Like you're not going to stop it. Like the whole idea that you're going to stop people from doing it is just so crazy. So then the real question is like, like, okay, what do we have to do to make it good and positive for society and so forth? And by the way, without new technologies, like, how are we going to deal with pandemics or climate change or any of the real, you know, issues facing the world? Like, it's not even possible without technology.

Like it's like lockdowns didn't work. Now the policy stuff worked. You know what works? Pax loavid. That works. You have COVID. You take that. Like, you're good.

That works. So we need technological. solutions to these very, very daunting problems that we have with a, you know, more and more populist earth and all these kinds of things. So, you know, that's how we remained optimistic. Yeah. And maybe gearing towards closing here, as I mentioned to you, you guys have been very helpful to us. You know, we're seeking to create this new kind of tech media company. It's more driven by insiders that has more of a pro-tech approach. What advice would you have for us or when you look at the kind of media ecosystem, what more do you want to see?

Yeah, well, I think you're on like a really good track, which is, you know, what I want to see is, okay, I'm a young person and I want to understand where the world is going and what's happening and how I can get involved and make my contribution. What do I need to know? And I think that's, you know, like, how does AI work? What is this new computational model of the universe? How can I learn about it? how can I kind of push things forward, which is, like, largely absent, I would say.

I mean, I think you're walking into a vacuum is the good news. But, you know, that, when I was a kid, there used to be like Dr. Dobbs, you know, and Wired Magazine was that way for a long time. But, you know, now it's just like these weird politically charged, you know, whatever criticisms of how things are run or how things are built or what they're going to do. or every negative consequence of everything. You know, the Internet had so many negative consequences. But, like, I don't think, you know, if we got rid of it, then, like, if you're in Bangladesh, like,

you now have no access to any of the information that people in the rich world have. It's done amazingly great things. But, like, yes, there's cybercrime. Yes, there's porn. Yes, there's a lot of things that, you know, probably are not a general positive for a society. I think people over-obstracted from the,

Elizabeth Holmes or Theranos situation, identified, hey, I could make a career. There's, you know, finding more of these and there's got to be more of these, thinking that over abstraction. And then another over, you know, abstraction was around sort of defending democracy, you know, because Facebook somehow people's minds contributed to Trump.

Well, the funny thing was like if you go back to 2008, all the stories on how Obama got elected, but Facebook, like he mastered Facebook. He got elected on Facebook. Facebook's the greatest thing. It's making the world more democratic, Arab Spring. Wow, this is so awesome. And then Trump gets elected and it's like, this is a threat to democracy. We're all screwed. Got to shut down the social network. So, you know, it's interesting. You know, when things get political, they get very weird, very fast, I think. And what's funny now, is AI is it's now coming from within the house in terms of some of the people who are

most active are within tech in terms of maybe it's regular capture or maybe it's something else. I think it's regulatory capture. Some people are true believers. It's the Google guy. It's really early. Yeah, I agree. There are people who are genuinely worried about how powerful the technology is. And I think, like, those are good worries.

Yep. But the idea that the way you deal with the powerful technology is you put it in the hands of a few is the most craziest idea. Well, like, look, power in the hands of the few has never turned out well, right, like, with the best intentions, right? People love Karl Marx's intentions, but Stalin, Pol Pot, you know, Mao, like, everybody died. That's what happened. Everybody died. And, like, all those guys didn't start out to be, like, singularly, uniquely evil people, but they had too much power. Because you take all the power of the private sector and put it in the hands of a few guys in the government.

It doesn't matter what the political philosophy is. bad. And similarly, if you take all the power of the industry and you put it with two companies, that's going to be bad. I can guarantee you that. Like, I don't know what else is going to be bad, but I know that's bad. I think it's a great place to wrap on the uplifting note of power to the people and decentralized power. Ben, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Yeah, no, great, Eric. This is good. And great luck and the best of luck. We're all excited about what you're doing and its impact on the world. Thank you. podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, let us know by leaving a review at rate thispodcast.com

slash A16Z. You've got more great conversations coming your way. See you next time. This information is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any investment or financial product. This podcast has been produced by a third party and may include pay promotional advertisements, other company references, and individuals unaffiliated with A16Z. Such advertisements, companies, and individuals, are not endorsed by AH Capital Management LLC, A16Z, or any of its affiliates. Information is from sources deemed reliable on the date of publication, but A16Z does not guarantee its accuracy.