a16z Podcast - The New Rules of Media | Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Recorded live at the New Media Summit, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Erik Torenberg, and Gaby Goldberg discuss how media, communication, and influence are changing in the internet era. The conversation explores the shift from legacy media to creator-led platforms, why authenticity has become a competitive advantage, and how founders can build audiences by communicating directly with customers, employees, and the public. They discuss podcasts, social media, storytelling, corporate communications, and the changing relationship between companies, journalists, and audiences. Along the way, they examine how founders can develop a public voice, why some leaders become influential communicators, and what it means to build a brand in a world where distribution is increasingly decentralized.   Resources: Follow Marc Andreessen on X: https://x.com/pmarca Follow Ben Horowitz on X: https://x.com/bhorowitz Follow Erik Torenberg on X: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Follow Gaby Goldberg on X: https://x.com/gaby_goldberg Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One rule of old media is don't be interested. Like, that's the worst thing you can do. There is no way to get to anything resembling a story that you're going to like through the traditional media anymore. Like, it's just basically not possible. Old media, you have very restricted channels with very restricted formats. New media is unlimited formats, unlimited channels, and the brand is now the person.

The grand wizard of this is Alex Karp. If you watch his interviews, he never talks about it. about Palantir. Everybody just naturally thinks inside out, me and my company and my product out into the world. Don't think that way. Think in terms of like what are the most interesting things happening in the world and then how do those things relate to us? Old media is defense-oriented, new media is offense. Talking more about why that is. There's still this anxiety that people have, which is legacy somehow is like where the respectability is that the disease is. I don't believe that anymore and I think it's very important for people to kind of get that out of their system.

For decades, most public communication flowed through a small number of institutions. television networks, newspapers, magazines, and a handful of gatekeepers determined which stories were told and who got to tell them. That world is changing. Today, founders, creators, investors, and operators can communicate directly with audiences through social media platforms, newsletters, podcasts, and video. The result is a new set of rules for how ideas spread, how brands are built, and how influence works.

Recorded live at the New Media Summit, this conversation explains. explores the rise of direct communication, the decline of traditional gatekeepers, and what founders can learn from the people who have successfully built audiences in the internet era. So first, I just want to say it's Gabby's birthday today. Welcome to the family. I'm so excited the next one in five for many reasons,

but one is that Ben had four seats to game six and wasn't going to make it today, and so we're so lucky that we get to have been here. And Mark, not a huge basketball guy, but he did tweet about how Jalen Brunson, he had a comment that he operates purely on instinct, not on introspection. And Mark appreciates that.

Retard maxing. Obviously working. Exactly. Many people are saying across industries. And so I actually think that's a pretty interesting segue because one of the rules of new media, Mark, that we were talking about with the CEO last week in our growth portfolio is authenticity.

And sort of being able to have the same conversations on camera that you would have in person behind closed doors. Why don't you talk about that a bit more and why that's so important to really nail in terms of nailing your voice and how to build that presence. Because there's a lot of mistakes that founders will make is trying to be too buttoned up,

trying to be too media trained, et cetera, as we uncover the rules of new media when you start there. Yeah, so I had this really formative experience when I was younger. So in the 90s, when Ben and I were coming up, you know, pre-blogs, pre-Youtube, all this stuff. And so in those days, the assumption was

100% of what you did, if you were running a company or doing anything was you're going to have to work through established media, legacy media. And then everybody would get, of course, media trained in how to do it. And most painful experience in the world. Oh, yeah. So people who haven't been through media training, it's actually...

Watch yourself on TV. Yeah, so... Okay, so here's how media training work. I don't really still do it, but do they still do it? You guys still do it? Okay, yeah, so people who haven't been through it. Yeah, so it's like, you get put in front of a camera in your face, and then somebody, like, who you think is your friend,

they do the full 60 minutes interview with you for like an hour, and then they literally make you sit there and watch it, which is just like the meanest thing you can do to somebody. And critique you, and you're looking at yourself, they'll fuck it up and they're going, you see how you fuck that up? And you're like, wow, I'm really uncomfortable now. I'm never going on TV. Exactly. And you're like, can we just, no, you can't fast forward? We're going to watch the entire thing. And then maybe we'll watch it again. And so it is very revealing. And you discover all kinds of things about your personal affect, by the way, also. You discover

all the things you do, all the extra words. How much you hate your voice. Yes, exactly, how much you hate how you look. I mean, it's incredible. It's incredible. And so if your ego survives the beating, you go into a successful career. And so that's what you did. But it was always so weird because it's like the result. It just always struck me. It's just like the result is, wow, you see important people with important things to say. On TV, whatever, they just seem like plastic people. They just seem like it's all very fake and staged. And then by the way, you know, this is the old days because all the anchor people or interviewers are all like using anchorman voice. And then you get a CEO up there who just says like the most innocuous things

possible. And a lot of CEOs in those days, and by the way, still, they rank their success in doing an interviewer or giving a speech based on minimum controversy, right? So I've worked with lots of CEOs. They come off stage. They're very proud of themselves because they didn't make any news. Right, sort of like that. Yeah, that is okay. All news is bad news. So we hire that the time was considered the best media trainer who was a guy who had previously been a producer of 60 Minutes.

Lee Zeldon, who'd been a producer. It was actually quite a well-known guy at the time. He had been Lowell Bergman's producer, and Lowell Bergman became. No. Well, I mean, Mike Wallace, it was that whole complex. He's like, we're not doing any of the classic media training that we do. He said, we're going to do the thing that everybody always underrates, which is, we're going to get you to basically just say all the things in public that you would

say if you were sitting having lunch with a friend. right and I remember the back of my head like just blew open because it's just like okay and then immediately you're like okay why are we paying this guy then it's like because that's like very obvious advice and it's like nobody else will give you that advice and what's going on he said the following he said if you are on stage or in an interview and you were talking about something and you don't know that topic inside out already what the hell are you doing there so the only thing that you should ever be talking about is something you know intimately if you know it intimately you should be able to talk about it in a viscerally interesting way that really relays your

thoughts and the thing and you ought to be able to come across as a very interesting person because, you know, it's just like if you're sitting across the table talking to a friend. And so he's like, my training is 100% to try to get you to not do all the other stuff and basically be able to do that. And then the other part, because you assume the media is adversarial. The other part was then the forget what he called the pivot or whatever, which was basically just the thing of like, you never answer their questions. You always answer your own questions, which is, by the way, makes it a little unnatural, right? It does. It's the Jedi Knight thing that made that whole approach work, which is it's just, okay, you're talking nationally.

Well, one of the ways you talk nationally is you just refuse to answer the bad questions, and then you just substitute in your good question. Anyway, so he went through the whole thing. And so that, you know, we've been watching the evolution of the whole new media landscape for 30 years. And it's just like, wow, if you watch what Palmer Lucky does, or if you watch what Alice Carp does, or if you watch what any of the great communicators do, that's what they're doing. You know, I say put Jensen in that rank lately. It's just like, wow. And by the way, this is the rise to the long-form podcast, the three-hour conversation.

And then just, by the way, the sort of re-rise of the idea of just interesting people having interesting conversations, which was very radical at one point, which is now a common thing. And so I think that remains the actual advice. And, of course, to your point, what that gets across is authentic. which is like, okay, in addition to what's being said, do I actually, as the audience, do I actually feel like I'm meeting the real person? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very good points.

We've been talking about how old media is defense-oriented, new media is offense. We're talking more about why that is and what that playbook looks like. One of the things we were talking about Marvel, so that meaning is the importance of outside in and situating sort of your story within the context of what's happening externally. Yeah, so the press in my view, and a reporter is furious to me when I say this, which is why I know that I'm correct. There's a traditional press, legacy press, defined itself as having two functions, right, which one was impartial journalism, objective journalism,

sometimes called the voice from nowhere, which meant presenting both sides of something. By the way, under the assumption that everything has two sides, and by the way, not more of the two sides. And so there was always something a little bit weird about that. But at least the idea of showing an issue, explaining it, articulating it, letting different spokespeople for the different points of view actually say it.

The second mission was to speak truth to power. That was the one that got in the way of the first. That's the one that got in the way of the first. So speak truth to power. And that became, the way they ended up describing that was it was afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Right. And of course, at this point, we know what that means.

Yeah. Well, it devolved into power to truth. So it's like the press's way of intimidating you into not saying what you thought. Yeah. Right, because it's a line between actually objective and then activist, right, somebody with an agenda. And so I think my view is what happened over time is that second one just swamped the first one. And then it just became the thing. And then as a consequence, the very nature of the interaction changed.

And I mean, the short version is, I did tons of traditional media between 1994 and 2017. And every once in a while, there's a hit piece or a bad, faith thing or whatever. But I don't know, 90% of the time, I felt like it had been a good idea to do it. And I felt I'd been given a chance to tell my thing. By the way, for almost that entire run, most people in the country and in the press thought starters were kind of cool. And tech was kind of cool and kind of fun and it was kind of good for America. And there were these tech companies. And the products were kind of fun to use.

I kind of remember those things. Yeah, it's in the ancient myths of the past. Everything was exciting. A lot of reporters and editors and they genuinely viewed as like, oh, we need to explain this to our readers and our viewers and really have this come across. And then, as we like to say, like in 2017, things change. changed. And basically since then, my view, is that sort of second mode of being, which is the sort of agenda-driven, you know, kind of really took over. And I think probably will never, never actually unwind. And so it's just the practical reality, as we always tell our founders, like, there is no way

to get to anything resembling a story that you're going to like through the traditional media anymore. Like, it's just basically not possible. Every once in a while. You can land this story, but you can't run a strategy, yeah. Yeah. People point to individual success and I'll just feel like, okay, that's the, that's the exception that proves the rule. There's 99 others that are not like that. And so there just needs to be a approach. Then I think the new approach comes in two parts. It comes in, you know, as we all call now, go direct, which is you have to tell your own story and increasingly through your own channels and through the channels of allies. And then the other thing is, you know, new voices

and new media. And because the legacy press has gone so bananas, obviously there's this just massive opportunity that's opened up for the creation of new media. And it's just like the examples, many of whom are in this room are just spectacular, I think, with what's happening. It's actually really funny. It used to be, even in the Golden Age media, like if you wanted to watch a smart person talk about something for an hour, it was Charlie Rose. And when I was a kid in the 80s, it was Charlie Rose at midnight. There was something called the CBS Overnight, CBS News overnight. And he was literally at midnight.

And this was like pre the VCR, he'd stay up until midnight to watch a smart conversation. And to go from that to what we have today in the podcast world, in the substack world, is just such an incredible advance and going incredibly well. So I think the new media world is just supremely, you know, just incredibly high quality, doing incredibly well. But there's still this anxiety that people have, which is the legacy media somehow is like where the, I don't know, I mean, it sounds so silly to say anymore. but like the respectability or as a prestige is.

And I don't believe that anymore. And I think it's very important for people to kind of get that out of their system because the world has changed. To your point. So we were just in Washington and so we were with like all the kind of Washington people, senators and whatnot.

And I was asking them, you know, what does everybody in Washington read? And it's the Mark Halperin newsletter, which is new media. So it's, I fully expect Axios, Washington Post, and so forth. Because by the way, the one holdout from, you know, kind of people in the firm on, like, old media as well,

except for Washington. They all read this old, you know, stuff. And not even that is true. So I think Mark's right. Yeah. Mark, you mentioned going direct. We're certainly in the era now of going direct. It feels like it's table stakes for founders.

But I've talked to a lot of founders who feel that now they have sort of a second job of being the spokesperson for their company on top of running the business data. day. And you can even think of a lot of great founders who spent their lives or careers in a lab or staring at a computer, and this is not what they've been trained in. So I'm curious both of your advice for founders who maybe are uninterested in doing this or they don't know where to start. Do they have to get good at it or other other paths for them to get their company, the attention it serves? Yeah. So I think this is tricky. So if you just go, okay, old media and how did that work and new media? old media, you had like very restricted channels with very restricted formats,

and the brands were the companies. So like that's basically the setup. So yes, you could talk to the New York Times or CNN or whatever if you wanted to get the word out, but then you were forced into like a quote or a very short interview or something like that. And then you were representing a brand that was a brand that was. you, and that's just kind of how it worked. And so the whole media strategy, basically, was just get your name out there without tainting the company

to the point where, like, it could never recover, which is kind of how you got into this very defensive posture, because you can never take back anything. That was like a big role in old media. Then you get to new media, and new media is so the opposite in that it's unlimited formats, unlimited, and the brand is now the person. So it's not like, were people talking about,

like when every Democrat came out and was mad about SpaceX, they weren't, they were mad about Elon because he's a brand. And the same thing, like, is it Palantir or is it Alex? And is it Andrew or is it Palmer? And that's just over and over again. So the companies that are winning in marketing, the brand is the person. And I guess, like if you had another founder

or somebody who is a really permanent fixture and not the CEO, you could imagine that person, kind of getting that person off to be the brand. But it's going to be a person. Like, I don't think there's a way around that. And then the rule of new media is it has to be interesting because otherwise it's going to get drowned out. And so you have to be, it has to be a person,

person and that person has to be interesting, which is why old media is so dangerous, because the one rule of old media is don't be interesting. Like, that's the worst thing you can do. You'll F everything up. And so I don't think a company can get away without it. Now, like, if you look at, like, us as a firm, like, technically I'm really the CEO, but, like, Mark is more the brand, I would say, in terms of he just does way more media than I do. and that works, but it works because it's Andresen Horowitz

and nobody knows the fucking difference on the outside, it's fine. And you can set up your company that way where they don't have to know how you're run, like, that's fine. But it's got to be somebody who's there kind of forever with the organization. It can't be like the vice president of marketing who's here for a three-year run and then is gone. Like that'll never work. Andrew is another example.

Yeah, yeah. One of my favorite things that happens about once a week is when somebody congratulates me on writing Ben's book. Which he always takes full of credit for it. I do, I do. I was just like, I really pour a lot of my blood, sweat and tears in a bit. I'm just so glad. I'm so glad that somebody finally read it.

So, you know, so I think there's a, I think there's actually a technological explanation for what Ben said that is actually, I think, quite important. So, you know, up until basically, what was it been, like the 1930s or something, like companies were not, they didn't have corporate brands. You had, you had people. It was the Ford Motor Company. Yeah.

Thomas Edison, yeah. It was the Edison Electric Company, right? So it was just like, you know, name on the, it was literally name on the door. It just never even, I mean, I'm positive, it never occurred to Henry Ford to name his company anything other than the Ford Motor Company. Well, he did have a company before the Ford Motor Company, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, which was like, I think, I can't remember somebody's got to look it up. I think it became like Cadillac or something. Like, it was actually like a car company that lasted. But he got, he was CTO. He wasn't CEO. And he got in such a furious fight because he was a, he was a hothead, Henry.

Ford. With the CEO that he quit his own company. A lot of those are Chrysler. Like, Chrysler was a guy's, you know, a lot of the car. Oh, yeah, they're all named after themselves. And I think actually maybe it was like Ford and then when he quit, they renamed it. That could be it. Yeah.

So it was like name on the door. Yeah. And it was just kind of taken as a given because like that's the guys running the company. That's what you do. And then I think what happened is in the 30s, 40s, you started getting these, you know, international business machines, general electric. General Motors. General Motors. You started getting

these Astruck names. And then you got the consumer brand thing with like Practor and Gamble so you had like Tide and Colgate and crust toothpaste and all Coca-Cola and all these things. The Nifty 50, the conglomerate era, yeah. You're right, which led to the conglomerates

which were basically just piling up as many brands as you could. And I think what happened was in retrospect, I think that was because of the rise of centralized media specifically. Because before the 1930s, like media was very decentralized. Like every town had like 15 newspapers. There were like tiny little radio stations everywhere.

And then, you know, starting in the 30, or 40s media centralized hard. You know, in a way that was very, you know, unprecedented historically and probably once in a, you know, it's probably once in a thousand-year thing that that happened. And then the thing with centralized media was just, it's like drinking everything through an incredibly narrow straw because there's just like, by definition,

if there's three TV networks and there's 24 hours in the day, there's just only ever, like how much time are you ever going to get or if there's the front page of, you know, three big newspapers, how many column inches are you ever going to get? And so the message from any company had to get distilled down to the absolute minimum. to be able to get through those very narrow straws. And I think that was the corporate brand phenomenon, which is to get the thing down to like an atomic unit of a brand

to be able to get it through that straw. And then everybody became convinced that, like, that was just universally the way the world worked. But I think that only actually made sense. So company as abstract brand with like or corporate brand, like I think that only made sense in the centralized media world. And I think what we're seeing, as the centralized media world is now, you know,

unwinding and collapsing, I think mechanically that's why this new approach is, is working and is necessary because that's why. Because in the new world, I mean, you know, the many examples of this, but it's just like, you know, do people running for president have to go on Joe Rogan, right? And, you know, up until 2024, the answer was absolutely not. After 2024, the answer is 100% they have to, right? Like a big part, you know, for keeping politics out of it,

a big part of all the Democratic retrospectives of what happened in 24 was that, was the common didn't go on Rogan. 100% of the people who work in that world now think that the next person is going to have to go on Rogan, And to go on Rogan means you're going to have to be in Rogan for three hours, and you're going to have to talk about anything. And so if you think about what that means, right, for the bar, for the person who's going to run, you know, for whatever party, or, you know, for both parties or any party, like, that's the new bar.

You have to be able to do that. You have to be interesting. And then it goes right back to your question. You have to be the person who can do that. And if you're not the person who can do that, like, well, you got a, it's a big marketing deficit. Let's just put it that way. Like, you just put a ceiling on your whole,

opportunity, I think. The line from succession, of course, I can't avoid, can't not use based on your question, as it should have said, if you can't ride two elephants at the same time, what are you doing in the circus? I would love to hear how you apply this thinking to your own work. Ben, you mentioned earlier,

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

So, I mean, it's interesting with that because anytime somebody says something negative about us, we want to respond. It's just like it, but you have to determine whether like that's going to improve your position or they're just feeding you bait to get you to basically highlight their stupid opinion. It'll always approve your situation to punchback. Yeah, he always 100% wants to go back at a minute. You know, you have to have some discipline. Otherwise, you just will spend your whole life responding.

Like, the bigger you get, the more people come at you. So, you know, it's kind of like the degenerate version is like dealing with the people who comment in Twitter. Or X, sorry. Like, so if you start answering the X replies of people who have 50 followers, by the way, my father always did that. then there's just like a colossal waste of time and you're amplifying somebody who has no audience, so like what are you doing?

And then those people shouldn't even be talking to you. Like they didn't do anything in life to have the right to talk to you, but there you are talking to them and wasting your time. So like that's the extreme degenerate case. However, like if somebody comes out with something and it hits and it's going after you,

that's actually a real opportunity to boost the brand to come across with your own point of view, your own position, and this could be something in the media or just, you know,

something somebody does in new media, that actually turns into real opportunity. So a lot of, you know, I would say, a reasonable portion of the brand that we built was just responding to people attacking us. So that, I always saw that

every time that happened as, great, let's go. Like, one of my favorite things I ever wrote was Instagram. We got into, like, this kerfuffle over Instagram with the New York Times. We had a conflict, whatever, it was the thing. But then I responded, and it was like the biggest, at that time, the biggest post I ever wrote. And everybody was like, yeah, fuck that New York Times. And so it kind of took us from here to here in one shot, just because everybody loves a fight.

So fights are good for brand building. But you've got to pick the right fight. to not just build somebody else's brand. Well, to that end, when I, you know, picking the battles, when I first joined, I would bring up these negative tweets we were getting and say, hey, you know, these Anans are saying bad things about us, and you guys would be like, who cares? Like, this is, in fact, part of our success means we're going to have more and more people

who are saying negative things. So, well, specifically, they were saying things based on the things that we were funding. And they were like, you know, it's just the whole moment. Yeah. You're funding slop. You're funding slop. It's like, bro, like, it's great that we're funding things. Yes.

Like, what, even if you think that, what is better in this world than the transfer of wealth from people who have a lot of money to people who have ideas who want to build something? Like, even if we're wrong about everything, like, that's still good for humanity. So, like, shut up to you, hater. Yes. Idiots. Yes. Haterate. So, yeah.

And then, you know, that, you know, as, no, it knows, like, my response was no. That's a great thing to get criticized for us. We're funding startups and supporting those startups. That's fantastic. There's a kind of point within that that is also kind of an important change in new media, which is you really want people to hate you and you want people to love you,

but you don't want to be neutral. You don't want to be lukewarm because then you're uninteresting. So you can't be interesting and not have people both hate you and love you, just because there's too much, no matter what you do, there's too much jealousy and just hate-or-aid-rate in the world, to not have it beat out, because as soon as you get big, that's what happens. There's nobody, I used to, when people used to get upset about, like, things that were written

about us, I was like, nobody writes a puff piece on, like, Rupert Murdoch, or Elon Musk, or, like, it's never going to happen again. Like, it's over. When you get to a certain size, people hate you. And that's good, because that means you did it. You did something important. You made a mark on the world. People care about what you're doing.

And you have to take it that way. If you take it like, oh, I got to stop doing that so people like me, you'll ruin your marketing. Yeah. The, Mark, you've sometimes said the term, you know, they have all the right enemies. So it's picking, you know, the right people to hate you that galvanizes the people to love you. What about building the right marketing and media team in the age of new media? What have you guys learned or what advice do you have for CEOs in terms of making sure you get the right personnel? or what's a principle

who think about to building that team? Well, the first principle is if you're trained in old media, it's very, very, very hard to do new media. So you have to be a very exceptional person to make that transition because it's like if you spent 10 years doing old media, there are laws of physics, there are rules of the game. There's things that you do every single time

in terms of, you know, like, you know, from vetting reporting, to rude Q&A is to this and that. Like, everything about it is opposite world. And so there are very few people who can go, okay, I'm getting out of opposite world and I'm going into a new media world. So you just have to be careful about, for the new media side of what you're doing,

to hire too much experience in not new media. It looks like marketing, but it's not the same. It's a completely new side. skill sets. So I would say like that's that's probably the thing that I'd worry about the most. And then, you know, like with Eric, what we'd look for when we brought you on, for example, is the best thing on new media is have you done it? Have you kind of built some brand on something and some audience? Do you know how to build an audience? Because that's the core, core thing. And if you can't do that, then, you know, it doesn't matter if you've got this

skill and that skill and the other skill. You've got, you have to be able to deliver it end to end. Yeah. And in terms of people we've brought on, you know, like Alex Dinko or Henry or Brent, you know, they, they were product managers or founders or investors, but they were obsessed with the discourse, you know, they were listening to the podcast. They were writing themselves. You could tell on the proof of work even though they weren't doing the thing. Yeah, so storytelling on your new media team, that's such a good point. So the reason why Alex is so good is, like,

he's a world-class storyteller. Like, so forget, like, just take marketing out of it for a second. Like, can you put together a story that somebody wants to read or listen to or whatever? And that's a real skill. And, like, the elite level of that is way higher than the average level of that. And the people who can't do it, by the way, can never do it like that.

And many people from kind of old marketing world don't have that skill because you always would rely on whatever the principal, the CEO, somebody for that story. But if you can build a team that's got multiple storytellers that are good, that's a huge power boost. By the way, there's a really big disconnect that goes back to the authenticity point.

There's a really big disconnect in how people in the kind of media sort of think about this because every reporter listening to what we're saying would be like, oh, there's only two things. There's journalism and there's propaganda. And the mainstream press, traditional press does journalism. And if you're doing any kind of like direct anything, it's propaganda. And, you know, it's quote, it's just marketing.

It's just trying to, you know, kind of sell something. And like I would say, that's a division distinction that we 100% don't agree with. And, you know, there's a critique aspect of it, which is I don't think the press does much, you know, what even they would describe as objective journalism anymore. But the positive side of it is, I think it goes right back. One of the reasons you want to be authentic is because you want to actually have people understand who you are, you want to have people actually understand what you do, and you want people to actually understand the context within which you're doing what you're doing. So you want to

actually explain yourself and you want to explain the world. And like when we talk about storytelling, like it's very much not like storytelling like a made-up story. It's storytelling of like here's what's actually happening. In an interesting way with tension, with the beginning and an end, you know, that somebody is interested in falling the whole way. Yeah, that's right. And so as a consequence, and we really look for this, is like when, you know, When Ben and I get like stuff in the street, like when we routinely get told like, wow, I, you know, I watched the podcast. I saw this interview.

I read that post, this or that from the firm. And 100% of time they're like, wow, like that was great. I really understand what that topic is about, right? And that and that's a very honest and legitimate and, you know, positive and worthwhile reaction to very honest, positive, positive, legitimate, you know, action on our part. And I just think, again, I maybe put the other way to put this is this isn't just something people should do. This is like, I think, a responsibility for people in our world and people in tech now

to do, which is like the changes that are happening, I mean, of all times, the changes that are happening in tech right now are profound. And they're really hard to understand from the outside, and they're really complicated. And there's huge amounts of noise in the environment. And so actually explaining honestly, right, what's actually going on. And I'll just brag on our team.

We put a SpaceX post up today, which although it has my name on it, I had nothing to do with writing. I cannot take any credit for it. And And I mean, the feedback we're already getting us, it's the best thing anybody's ever written on SpaceX. And I think that's true. And it literally is it lays out like the actual truth.

And I'm really proud of that. It's awesome. I want to close with going deeper on some advice for founders on going direct. Gabby, I'll start with you. What are some mistakes that you see CEOs making things to avoid? I would say there's two mistakes that I commonly saw working with founders, and they're sort of related. The first one is it can be very easy to do this too.

It's a trap to fall into because the timeline feels so addicting. But a lot of founders really overindex on distribution and tactics before actually getting the message right. Distribution is really just a multiplier on the message. And so if the message is wrong, now you've amplified something that is either irrelevant for your business or not the thing that your audience needs to hear or like, as we've talked about, maybe worst of all, it's uninteresting. And now you've told everybody that you care about that you're not very interesting. So in practice, a lot of founders would come to us and say, you know, how do we go viral or how do we get on Joe Rogan? And if you actually think about it, you could get on Joe Rogan and then not say the right thing. And this is maybe the worst thing ever. And this is important because it applies not just to old media, but to new media, right? Like you could go on Bloomberg or Fox and get the message wrong. And you could also do the same thing with new media or going direct. And so, The first mistake is not actually spending the time to get the message right, and that's the highest leverage, most important thing to get right.

And then from there, I guess the next mistake is actually just figuring out how to do that. And the way that I saw that is you can get the message wrong if you focus too much on the inputs, as opposed to the outputs or the outcomes that you want to drive towards. And this is sort of paradoxical because the companies that are very successful struggle with this the most because there are a lot of interesting things that you could say about your company, right? There's like so many milestones, the mission is really compelling.

There's a lot of different things that you would want to say, but depending on what you're trying to achieve, the thing that you want to say should probably be different, right? Just because everything is true doesn't mean it's all relevant or strategic for your business. And so instead of starting with the inputs of here's this huge mess of everything that we could say, let's just say it all right now and hope people remember

potentially the thing that we think is most interesting, but we haven't identified that thing. Start with the outcome, right? Do we want to sell to a certain type of enterprise customer? Do we want to hire a certain type of engineer who believes a certain thing about us and our role in the market? So now you can kind of work backwards from there.

Like, we know who these people are. We know what they believe. We know what they probably believe or need to believe about us. And we know what feels in the discourse, urgent and timely and personal to them. And then we can work backwards and get the message right. And so then going back to point one, you pair that with really powerful distribution,

and then you have a really winning strategy. And by the way, so a really important point in what Gabby said is that really determines how you have to put the team together, because if you put together a team that you can't have a conversation with where you're listening on your message and what you're saying, then that you've kind of done yourself a disservice.

You need the team to help make the story great, before they go, because it's real easy to go, okay, market this, you know, empty box. There are a few marketers who could probably do that, but like it's hard. So you really want the team to be invested in the message, and then all the variations you need to distribute that message are going to be really good and on point.

But if the team doesn't have an opinion on message, that's very difficult. Mark, one of the things we said in that, meaning with the growth portfolio company the other week was what you admire about people like, you know, Alice Carp or Palmer or Elon or others is the ability to also not just focus on what they're doing but also go outside in and talk about what's happening in the world

and how do they situate their worldview, their company, their product, et cetera, within that one, you talk a little bit about that principle and how do people get good at? Yeah, so the most kind of common VC story, self-marketing story is, oh, I met this great founder and we went on a walk and then I called me times and like I thought he was great,

eventually can invest you to make money. The most common, you know, startup story is, oh, we're a brand new company, we're all fired up, we're ready to go, it's going to be great, we're going to have new products, you know, we hope you try it. And, I mean, those stories just make you want to stab yourself in the neck, right? I mean, like, in the audience, like, it's just like, oh, my God, like that's just the lamest story in the world.

And I, by the way, details, well, one of the keys on this is, like, good storytellers have great details. Details matter a lot. And so the one thing about Mark's thing that makes it, like, so horrible is, Like, no details, just like, blah, blah, blah. I'm so great. You know, I talked to a founder. He really liked me.

You'll probably really like me, too. Like, who cares? And it's almost, right, it's almost this thing where they, and they come across is like, it's like fake humble, right? Because it's just like, oh, I'm just, I'm humbly, I'm humbled by. That's the most fake humble thing in the world. I'm humbled by, you're not even remotely humbled. And so, yeah, and so it's just, it's just the worst. And, you know, there's a whole bunch of critiques.

It's sort of, yeah, it's fake bragging. It's boring. It's, you know, it's egocentric to no purpose. And, you know, it's a passive-aggressive. And then it's just, it's indistinguishable. Like, there's just a thousand. I mean, it's every single startup. It's every single.

Everybody can gaze at their navel, right? Everybody can do that. Like, there's nobody who can't do that. So that's not a differentiated story. Yeah. And so that's like the default kind of narrative that people fall into. And then it also, like, it feels, I think it actually, she feels like doing anything bigger than that is like arrogant because it's just like,

who are we to like go tell some bigger thing? And I don't even know what the bigger thing would be. And like, are the people who tell a bigger thing fold themselves and trying to make themselves like even bigger? And so there's just this like really reluctance to kind of expand the, you know, kind of expand the telescope out. But what I always tell people is like the exact opposite of all of that is true, which is like the story of you and your startup is not inherently an interesting story. But there is almost certainly an interesting story that involves your startup, and that story is, and this is sort of the cheat code of it, the story is something else in the world that's happening that is incredibly interesting that your company relates to.

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

Neurodivergence. I mean, like, he's just like, whatever is interesting, he'll just start talking about. And then because he's the founder of Palantir, the CEO of Palantir, like, that just works. And I say it, like, kind of to see, but like, it's really a good strategy. Now, he takes it to the very extreme. But, like, that's the right idea to find the most interesting story that you can,

that you can plug your company into and then tell that story. Yeah, because what happens is then when something happens, right, when something happens in the world, something happens involving U.S. military, AI in the military, or this or that, geopolitics of China. Like, he's like the first phone call, right? because he's like he's the guy who's like been out there talking about that. By the way, Ryan Peterson is in the audience. He's in a phenomenal job of that.

He's incredibly good at that. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Yes. Right. The difference between talking about freight versus talking about the global supply chain is completely collapsing during COVID and we're all going to starve to death. Right.

And then therefore, he's the guy who literally goes in 60 minutes to explain to the world that in fact, yes, we all are about to starve. From the helicopter, right? Yes. From the helicopter, yes. Look at all those shifts that are never landing. Your children are about to starve. Buy Flexport. So it works incredibly well.

And then the other thing... And you don't even have to say buy Flexport. It's implicit. It's implicit. And then the other thing, especially for enterprise, anything involving enterprise sales, which is certainly Flexport, but also Palantir, it's just like a big part of it is, are you important enough to, like,

meet with the CEO of your customer? Like, are you important enough to get in the room with a decision maker? Are you important enough to meet with the Secretary of War? Are you important enough to, like, be in the White House? Are you important enough to be with Fortune 500 CEOs? and you know I just I have a you know I have a little startup and is doing interesting things does not do that but I am attached to

and you have seen me talk about like the big important things that are happening in the world and how they relate and that you have you know potentially an answer to it like that's absolute catnip like everybody everybody everybody wants that and so yeah so the way I describe this is just you know the trick kind of is don't don't everybody just naturally thinks inside out me and my company and my product out into the world don't think that way think in terms of like what are the most interesting things happening in the world and then how do those things relate to us?

And by the way, this is where CEOs go off the rails because they're so focused on what they're doing that all they want to do is tell their story and they're not even paying attention to what's going on in the world, which is understandable because you're trying to build something. But to do the marketing exercise, investing and understanding what's happening out there is just critically important.

You can't do it without that. This, by the way, happens also in investor relations. So every company, you know, every public company by law does these, you know, S1, K1, Q, whatever, Q, they do all these things and they, like, fully have a year, you know, spend all this time and all this effort. And these, these documents, these filing fully explain everything the company does, and they have every possible, you know, hedge and meaculpa. And just like these incredible descriptions of people, and then the annual letters and all this stuff.

What percentage of the investors in, you know, Palantir have read the S1, K1, right? like 0.0001% what percentage you've seen Alex on YouTube doing his thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And the amount of time that goes into that document, right? And so you just take that time and just understand enough about the world to put together a good story. On that note, we'll end with this idea that the skill set is not only something you're born with or not. It can be developed and learned and cultivated.

I mean, Mark, you were saying the other day that when you look back at Alex Carlin, old interviews, they're very different. And so when you look at, you know, Alex or Palmer or Elon or Ryan or Amjad, who came here earlier, you look back at their old tweets or their old interviews, and they're nowhere close to, you know, where they were. Oh, yeah, it's a skill set for sure. And, like, there are people who are gifted and then people who are less good. If you like at Donald Trump's interviews in the 80s, they're very old media interviews.

He's actually restrained. Sorry. And then, you know, like, he did figure out. media and he's always like super entertaining and interesting which is kind of the the magic of his popularity um so even like at that level you can develop it well in that note it's a great place to wrap please give a round of applause for gabby ben and mart thank you thanks for listening to this episode of the a16c podcast if you like this episode be sure to like comment subscribe leave us a rating or review and share it with you

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