The a16z Show - How To Lead | Ben Horowitz on My First Million

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

A16Z co-founder Ben Horowitz joins Shaan Puri and Sam Parr on My First Million to talk about how to be a great leader. Resources:Follow Ben on X: https://x.com/bhorowitzFollow Shaan on X: https://x.com/ShaanVPFollow Sam on X: https://x.com/thesamparr Stay Updated:If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zListen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYXListen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711Follow 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 http://a16z.com/disclosures. 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.

You kind of strive to get to a point of honesty, true honesty, where you're not lying to yourself. That's hard. To show you what a great CEO he ended up being, he created this two-month boot camp for, like, everybody in product management, every engineer who entered Facebook had to go through this thing, learn everything, and so forth. He's like a phenomenal student of management. I see young people wrecked themselves so much because they have an expectation that something about life is going to be fair. like nothing about life is fair. And so the way you succeed is you don't have that expectation.

Today's episode is a bit different. A16C co-founder Ben Horowitz recently went on the My First Million podcast, and we found the conversation so valuable we wanted to share it here with you. You'll hear Ben get into how he thinks about wartime versus peacetime leadership, building culture, and making hard calls as a founder.

We hope you enjoyed the episode as much as we did. All right, today we're hanging out with Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of A16Z. These guys manage 46 billion in assets. They've invested in Stripe, CoinVase, Open AI, a bunch of the big hit tech companies. But today we're talking about stuff that you don't usually get to hear from Ben. So things like, how do you actually have a high confrontation conversation?

The advice he actually gives us founders, things like when he met Mark Zuckerberg and he was really young, what he noticed about Mark that was different and what makes him such a great CEO that you can kind of steal or copy from Mark Zuckerberg's playbook. Sam, what else do we got? Dude, we also just hug out with him, which was like the best part. And so he tells the story about how he helped catch Tupac's killer.

And we also asked him, what interests him right now? What books is he reading? What content is he consuming? What rabbit holes is he going down? And it was incredibly interesting. Awesome conversation with Ben Horwitz. Enjoy. Okay, so I have a good Tupac story for you.

Oh, my gosh. All right. I'm incredibly excited to hear it. So my wife is like the biggest Las Vegas evangelist in the world. And she was talking. to Quincy Jones' son, QD3, and said, you know, you need to move to Vegas. And he's like, fuck that. I'll never move to Vegas.

They didn't solve the Tupac murder. Yeah. You know, his sister, Kidada, was dating Tupac. I was like, let's have dinner with the Vegas PD and see what happened. And so me and QD3 and Nas sit down to dinner with the Las Vegas Police Department, and they bring the whole case file. And it turns out the LAPD really fouled the case, like almost on purpose it looks like. So at the end of the dinner, I say to the chief of police, Mike Jennero, I'm like, Mike, you ought to reopen the Tupac case.

And he goes, I'll talk to the sheriff. And it'll next say I call me. He said, what the sheriff say? He said, Ben wants us to open the case. We're opening the case. And they reopened the Tupac case, and they caught the guy. That's insane. So, Sean, like, I don't know, Sean, if you know the story, but, like, basically, like, you know,

you know, Puck and Shug got in a fight at a Mike Tyson fight. And then like 30 or 40 minutes later, he was shot right in the strip on Las Vegas. And it was a cold case for years. But everyone knew who did it. They knew is this guy named Orlando Anderson. Like, that was like the rumor. Orlando pulled the trigger. Kifidi told him to shoot him.

And like everyone knew this. But for some reason, like it didn't happen. And Orlando ended up dying a handful of years later. And the craziest thing ever is there's this guy named DJ Vlad who does these interviews. with all these gangsters. And he got him to, like, tell the story about the murder. And this idiot, like, went on a podcast. It just said, yeah, here's what happened.

So here's why he did that. He thought he had immunity because the LAPD proffered him, which means basically in exchange for testimony, we grant you immunity. But they granted him immunity in L.A. Not in Vegas. What a idiot. Because the latest BD were life, oh, that doesn't count here. And little do we know that Ben's behind the scenes getting it all done.

That's pretty awesome. Like I followed that case religiously. I thought it was riveting. I did not know that you were involved. That's pretty cool. All right. Well, I don't know where we want to start, but I just thought, you know, usually Ben, you don't know this. But we have a little tradition here.

We'd like to typically start with our intro music. But for some reason, it's not playing. I'm trying to get this cassette to play, but it's just not playing. What are we looking at here? Oh boy, that is, that's the blind and deaf crew. So my friend Seth Clark, this was back in 87 or 88, or maybe 86, got shot and was blind. So we formed a rap group called the Blind and Deaf crew, D-E-F, and, you know, we had all kinds of rhymes about being blind and being deaf. I have one here.

The Blind Def crew, you know where fly. three of us, but we got four eyes, you know, like that type of is, you know. Where did you grow? I mean, like, your dad was like a, I know who your dad is, and he was like, he was like a well-known academic, but where were you growing up where you were around guys who got shot and rapping? Well, so I grew up in Berkeley, California, which, you know, kind of is either like an academic town or part of Oakland, depending on, you know, where you are. And I was in that kind of more part of Oakland, Berkeley.

And then, you know, I went to school in New York. And so I got into rap in New York. And then Seth got shot back in the Bay Area. And he was very, very depressed because he's blind. He was only, he's a kid. You know, so I sent him these DJ Red Alert, Check Chill Out, Mix tapes. You know, were tapes that I taped off the radio show, which had the brand new hip-hop, which was, you know, really new at the time.

and that kind of cheered him up. And so that's how we got into rap when we came around. We didn't succeed, but we tried real hard. Well, we wanted to just hang out with you because you'll do, you've done 50,000 podcasts.

I think A16C now has 50,000 podcasts. And so, you know, I consider it be like, hey, is AI a bubble, right? Like, we can kind of do that. And we'll probably ask you something about AI. But I think more than anything, what we try to do on the podcast is give people a sense of what it's like

to hang out with Ben Horowitz, right? Like, what is it, if they could just be, you fly on the wall hanging out. And obviously, we come from a business and tech background. So we got a bunch of questions around that. But I think for me and Sam, the most interesting part that I feel like you've contributed to the collective wisdom of founders, right,

is your stuff on leadership. So you've written two books. I feel like that are really, I don't know, like top shelf on how to be a leader. And I think it started with a general philosophy. So tell me why most management books are terrible. Let's start with that. You know, the problem with management generally, I would say, is it's very kind of situational and emotional.

And so it's like, oh, here's a book to teach you how to play NFL quarterback. And you can read that 20 times. You go out on the field, like things are extremely different. If there's a 290-pound guy running at you extremely, very fast, I'm going to kill you. Like, what you feel, like what you think, how you process that is just different. And I think management tends to be like that in that it really has to do a lot with your situation and the feeling you have at the time it happens. And so these management books are written like at some step by step, you know, like anybody with a basic, like eighth-grade education can understand the principles of management.

They're not that complicated. Like it's a cookbook and you can just follow the recipe. Yeah, and it's like, oh, here are the five steps for building a strategy or the three steps for like, like, you know, setting up jack? It's not actually very useful at all because, you know, that stuff is so simple. So I always thought, like, well, the difficult thing, you know

you're either going to, like, run the risk of running completely out of money if you don't fire half the company. But, like, you don't want to have that conversation because you promised all these guys that the company was going to be success when you hired them. So, like, the level of inconsistency that you're going to have to go through,

the level of like, you know, I was completely wrong about everything and now I'm going to fire half of you because of the mistakes I made. It'll just cause you to hesitate in a way that could cost you the company itself and like, how do you get over that? And then like, what do you actually say

and how do these conversations work and all this kind of thing? Is the actual thing that people need to really kind of get an understanding of? Like, what are the words? You know, they get me out of this thing at least temporarily. And, you know, nobody had been writing like that.

The last guy who kind of, I thought, wrote a book like that was Andy Grove back when he wrote high output management. And, you know, that book was really old at the time. So I was like, well, somebody had to write the sequel. You know, running out. It's been 30 years. Do you think that it's, like, when it comes to leading, do you think that it's mostly just getting your mindset right?

I mean, is that what you're saying where it's like... No, no, no, it's more complicated than that. you kind of strive to get to a point of honesty, like true honesty, where you're actually being true, like you're not lying to yourself. That's hard. It's almost like, you know,

like if you're, you guys are kind of creatives on the pub, but like to be like a great creative, at some point you have to get all the way to that very vulnerable point where you've exposed yourself and all your issues and weaknesses and everything. And like leadership is, a little bit like that and that you're kind of pushing and pushing and pushing to get all the

way to what's true. So that's, you know, that's part of the process. But the other thing is just, you know, you don't really necessarily completely know what you're doing, particularly when you start and you're building a company. And so you have to kind of have like it's a confidence game or you have to talk yourself into, okay, you know, like I think I know enough, you know, to do this. And, you know, it can be very little things. Like I had a conversation with an entrepreneur. He's like, Ben, like, I need your help. And I was like, why do you need my help?

He says, my CTO is an asshole. And I said, well, okay. But, you know, like, he's a good CTO. I know that from talking to before. So you're not even asking me, said, you fire him, are you? And he's like, no, I'm not asking you that. And I said, well, tell me why he's an asshole. And maybe I can help.

And he goes, well, you know, he made, like, a young woman in our finance team cry yesterday. and I was like, okay, yeah, that's kind of mean-spirited for a CTO to do that. And I said, well, you know, so you're really kind of asking me, like, not how to fire him, but just how to have a conversation with him about his behavior without him quick. That's what you're saying. And he's like, yeah. And I said, well, look, here's what I would say to him.

I would say, hey, you know, you're a fantastic director of engineering. but you're not an effective CTO. And, you know, if you want to be a director of engineering forever, like we can just run just like this and it's no problem. You do a great job in managing your team. You get stuff done on time. You're great. But you're not effective with the rest of the organization.

And that's what a CTO is. The CTO has got to marshal the resources of the whole company to get what he needs to get the job done. And if you go to like a junior person, like five levels below you, and make her cry, you know, you're probably right, but like you're never going to go what you want out of her.

So like you can't be affected with her. Like, how are you going to be effective with like exets? So if you want to learn how to do that, like let's learn how to do that. But, you know, and if not, no problem, but just know that at some point I got to bring in the CTO. That's the way I would have the conversation with him. And that kind of got him to went,

okay, now I can talk them. And so much of like the mistakes that CEOs make are like, they just don't even know how to have the conversation. And so it's a little bit, like the mindset part is correct and that there is like a confidence part about it where you have to be able to kind of do things when you're not sure that you're right. But there's techniques and there's ideas

and there's things in there that, you know, it's just harder than it looks. And the problem is the mistakes, like not talking to him is going to multiply. Right. Like because now you're going to isolate engineering and nobody's going to like them and you're going to have politics in the company and like,

and, and, and, and then pretty soon people don't even want to work there, and you can have high attrition. And then, you know, well, why the fuck do we have high attrition and this and that and the other? And then the board's all upset in this. So it kind of snowballs on you if you can't deal with these sex. Man, this is so cool because I just read this book called The Motive. And the whole book is how to have a conversation like that.

So basically, like, someone shows it. And it's like small stuff. So it's like someone shows up to late for a meeting. They're not prepared. They made someone cry. And I remember reading this. And I was like, I don't want to talk about this on the pod maybe because I think I feel stupid that I'm having to learn like a script

on how to like find someone. And then I hear you talking about this. And I'm like, all right, I feel a little bit better because why is this conversation hard for me? I feel like this should be easy. I don't know what to say. I literally don't know what words to use for this to be the effective confrontation. And so I had to read a book.

And so it's actually really cool to hear you describe that other people. I think you even said, I saw another interview about Zuck. And I think you referenced Sam Altman. You're like, I've seen inside these companies, all face these, like, challenging situations, but they just don't know how to, like, communicate. Yeah, yeah, no, people get stuck. And, you know, like, nobody, there's no way to learn, like, how to be CEO of, like, a big company without kind of being CEO.

And so you found a company and it starts growing and you don't know what you're doing and you make mistakes and it's very scary. And, you know, it's easy to lose your confidence. And if you lose your confidence, you hesitate. And if you hesitate as CEO, then, you know, somebody's got to step into that vacuum. And then that's when it becomes very, like, political and dysfunctional. You've said before, like, having confrontation the right way is super important. And I nodded my head. And then I was like, cool. I really don't know how to do that, though. So,

okay, so what is the right way to have confrontation? And it's complicated, but, like, the first thing is, you've got to stop thinking about yourself, right? So, you know, And it could be anything. It could be like firing somebody or getting them to change their behavior or whatever. You're going to be saying something that they don't want to hear. And so I think people get caught up in, well, either I need to be a tough guy

or I need them to like me or, you know, some other thing that's about you. But really you have to go, okay, what am I going to say to them that isolates it to this thing that I'm really talking about? You know, so if I need them to change this behavior, like, how do I get them to hear that

in a way they can actually act on it without getting in their feelings? And, you know, in order to do that, you just have to be, like, very straightforward and you have to be open with how you feel about it. Like, if you think they're a shitbird, then you're probably going to have to fire them anyway. but if you think they're otherwise good,

then you kind of have to let them know that, but in a way where you're not clearly setting them up. You're not giving them a shit sandwich. You're a greatest person in the world, but this is all fucked out, and I love you. Like that, like people are onto that. Like that, it's just too simple. So you kind of have to, you know,

you have to get to a very honest place with them and say, like, you know, we're working together on this. You're doing this, it's not working, it's not effective. And, you know, like, I can help you get it to be effective, but I need you to get it to be effective. Like, you have to get that message across. And a lot of it, you know, like people will accept things from you if they feel like you're basically telling them the truth.

Like, I'm, like, completely open and honest about this shit. Like, I'm not telling you it's worse than it is, and I'm not telling you it's better than it is. I'm telling you what it is. and this is, you know, when I said earlier about, like, a lot of leadership is getting all the way to the truth. You have to sit with yourself on to say, like, what do I really think about this? Like, not what, like, motherfuckers were complaining about him or this happened or, you know, like, it hurt my feelings the way, like, this went down. Like, he's doing that in my company.

You kind of have to get beyond that and go, like, what's really true? Why do they do it? You know, can it be corrected if it can't. be corrected, what would motivate them to correct it? Like, you have to get all the way to that. Otherwise, what happens is, you know, they're just going to get upset and defensive or, like, you know, they're not going to hear it because it's too soft. And it's like, well, yeah, like Ben kind of doesn't like that, but he doesn't really care.

So, you know, how do you get into that, like, meaningful place where people can hear what you're talking about? And you've invested in and known for a long time a lot of the tech, the biggest tech CEOs. And I would say the stereotype of the most successful tech founders is this sort of like slightly autistic, very high IQ, lower EQ sort of persona. But that's not really what would be good at the thing you're talking about. And so is it that that stereotype is just wrong? And that's not what you've seen when you've kind of been. You guys, I think, invested in Facebook early on, stuff like that.

Like, is it that the stereotype is wrong? Is it that they learned these things? Is there like some, are they taking touchy-feely at Stanford? Like, what's helping them be able to do this? Yes, I think some of these guys have, like, much higher people understanding than you might think. Like, the ones who truly, like, can't read people and understand people don't get, like, they don't become Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg, like, his mom, by the way, is, like, a psychiatrist or psychologist. And, like, he's actually pretty insightful.

and you can see it like in the deals he's negotiated, the moves he's made, you know, the guys who are processing information at that rate of speed, you know, it's a little weird. Like you always feel like, okay, what the fuck is wrong on my clock? Like this guy's thinking faster than me. So my very first conversation I had was Zuck with, I think, in 2007. And, you know, at that time, if you guys recall,

you know, the Facebook traffic had flattened, and the current executive staff had he had at the time was trying to run a coup to force him to sell to Yahoo. So they were leaking all this stuff to Ballywag at the time, and Ballywag was, you know, calling for Zuck to be fired and, you know, that whole stupidness. And that was like that famous story where he, like, didn't sell, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, he didn't sell.

But, you know, right at that time, you know, his first question to me was you know, should I, if I fired my executive team for the second time, would the board be nervous? I was like, well, you know, it's not, that's not even the question, Mark, because, you know, if you're asking that question, then you know you kind of have to do it because you can't succeed with them. So, you know, whether or not you can succeed without them is, like, at least a question mark. It lets you know you're going to die with them. And I said, but like, you know, like, let's talk about, like, why. they're doing this.

You know, like, why has traffic been flat? And he said, well, it said, look, we doubled the size of the engineering team this year. We went from 400 to 800 engineers. And we had, you know, the way the product is architected, we had like a MySQL layer and then an API and then the applications are built on the API. But a lot of the new engineers just wrote straight to MySQL and they like horked up the whole thing. And now it takes like 10 seconds to log in.

And so traffic flat. and because of that. And I was like, well, how do you train these guys? And he said, train these guys. And I never forget that. And I was like, oh, shit. I said, Zach, like, when you're 10 people, there's no knowledge in the company. Like, everybody just comes on and they jump in and they start working and so forth.

But you get to, like, 800 people, 1,000 people. Like, do you have a lot of knowledge that's in your company about, like, how the product works, how you check in code, everything? You actually have to teach people that. because they don't know who to ask or how to learn that on their own. And so you have to do that. And, like, just, you know, to show you what a, like, great CEO he ended up being, he created this two-month boot camp for, like, everybody in product management,

every engineer who entered Facebook had to go through this thing, learn everything, and so forth. So he was, like, he, you know, like, he's like a phenomenal student of management. And, you know, before he became, like, you know, now he's, you know, now he's, I wouldn't call him a student, he's a great CEO, but like a lot of these guys, you know, can figure out the people part pretty fast, I would say. And like I said, the ones who truly don't understand people aren't actually turn out to be good CEOs. Like, they don't get to that level. Like, you can, you know, you can make fun to Larry Page or Elon or Zuck or so forth,

but they are actually very smart about people, all three of them. You have these great stories. That's a great story. One, I think that's in your new book, is a story that I feel like is relevant to kind of any business size. So some of these are it's like, oh, well, my company's never going to be 20,000 people. So like, I don't really, I can't really relate to this. But one, I thought it was about collections. It was about collecting money, which I think is that, you know, whether you're like an accountant and you have to do this for your clients or your 10 clients or you're a big business.

and I think it's the CEO of Nation Building. Yeah, can you tell this story? I thought this was a phenomenal story. Yeah, so, you know, and they're kind of, we're living on the edge. You know, they need every kind of thing collected possible. And, you know, she was just like, you know, cash collections would just be, you know,

and there were all this dumb stuff that would happen, like they sent out the wrong kind of email or this and that, and, you know, they even kept the thing and so forth. And I said, you know, I learned this technique actually from Andy, Andy Grove, where like if a project was off track, he would just go, okay, 8 a.m. every day, we're going to meet on it, and I'm going to be in the meeting. And I'm going to want answers. And what that meeting actually turns into is, you know, every dumb thing going on, you can just resolve very, very fast

because people don't know who to ask, how to resolve it, whether it's a problem and so forth. So he said, Leah, just like every day, 8 a.m., get everybody in the cash collection team together and start the meeting by saying, like, where's my money? Like, why haven't we collected it? And, like, make them explain to you

why they haven't collected it, and you'll be shocked at why they haven't collected it. And sure enough, you know, it's like, well, we didn't know we could edit the email. It's just like, you didn't know you could edit the email. But it's, you know, those kinds of things start popping up. I didn't know that I could do this because this is what we ought to be doing, but we're not doing it because I don't think I'm allowed to do it.

And it's like, well, no, I'm the CEO. You're allowed to do it. And then that can unstick a, like, dumb project that's way off track or a process that's off track or so forth. So it's kind of like a different idea about management where, you know, the enemy as you grow, like communication becomes your biggest challenge. And so it's just a way to go like, okay, I'm going to manually, unscalably fix communication in this organization right now. And the amazing thing about it is does tend to be very long lasting where, like, once they get that, then, you know, it sustains.

I had a experience with a founder you invested in. Do you know Sui Ali? He's one of my good buddies. And you guys invest in tiny back in the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He does this exact thing. The founder emailed us and was like, hey, you know, we're going to start raising money. You know, we really need to raise money.

So it's important. And I would just love to pick your brain on what it. It was like a very like, can I pick your brain? Would you like to go get coffee for this? My house is on fire. And we were like, wait, wait, just to clarify, is the house on fire? He's like, yeah, yeah, the house is on fire. So he said, okay, well, let's meet like now.

Why are you emailing me? Let's just talk right now. And so he jumps on the call and like, okay, what do you have so far? You know, let's raise the money. And he's like, well, here's the pitch deck. And basically in the first 30 minutes, we just gave him like, hey, here's three things. Let's go. Like, these are the three most important things you've got to change.

This is part of the story is broken. You're missing this information. And, you know, you're framing it the wrong way. You got to frame it this way. And he's like, okay, this is so helpful. Wow, thank you guys. would love to touch base again next week. And Sully was like, next week,

how long do you think it'll take you to make those three changes? He's like, well, he's like, how about we meet today at 3 p.m? And you show me, and we did two a days with that. And it kind of broke my brain a little bit because there was like this invisible wall as a business person. Like, you don't meet twice in a day. Like that would be a faux pa. You know, like it's like, bad manners.

It's like, fuck your manners when it's like, was this a big problem or not? Like, just clarify that for me. Because if it is a big problem, then I'll just keep showing up and saying, okay, now what? Okay, now what? And if you just do that for three days,

like all of the excuses get squeezed away is what I found. Like all the excuses suddenly disappear and you get to the brass tacks about what's going on. It was amazing. That's definitely right. No, no, that's a... You know, Zia, Suli and I actually had a lot of conversations about he... He went through a lot of crises in that,

so he knows. Can I ask me about confidence? You give a talk with a bunch of your portfolio companies about, I think I saw you say that, like, they don't fail due to lack of competence, but a lack of confidence. I would say the number one reason why a founder fails at the CEO job is some kind of lack of confidence, crisis of confidence, whatever it is, that causes them to hesitate, basically. Okay, I should do this. And I can see that I should do this, but I'm not sure I should do this. so I'm going to wait.

If you had to teach a class on how to improve someone's confidence, do you have like a framework or some bullet points that you would stand by? It ends up being like at the end of the day, confidence is personal, and you have to feel it yourself to have it. Like I can't, you know, it's like the Wizard of Oz. It's like, I can give you like a clock and tell you it's a heart or whatever, but like at some point you've got to believe that. And the thing that causes that crisis in confidence is, you know, okay, you invent something, you hire a bunch of people, you make a decision, it's wrong, people really suffer from it.

You feel horrible because you're like, wow, I don't know what I'm doing, and I made a mistake, and it had real consequences. Like most people in life don't have a situation like that until they become CEO. and so then, you know, it's like, well, how do I recover that? And so like a lot of the idea of the firm is like, well, you know, what if you could call anybody? Like, how would that make you feel like? What if you could call anybody, you know, in the White House and Congress in, you know, like any executive, you know, any kind of big company CEO and be able to have a conversation,

you know, like, what if we could? could build that network for you. So that was kind of the idea behind the platform. And then, you know, we would do, I used to have this event, which I should probably bring back, but I ran out of room in my backyard called the CEO Barbecue, where we would bring all the CEOs for the portfolio. And then we would just, like, put, like, very famous people around them. So we had, like, Zuck and Larry Page and Kanye all at a barbecue.

And they're at the barbecue. And there's no, like, talks. There's no business agenda. There's no nothing. There's no even toast, right? Like, it's just a barbecue. And so it was just to make them feel like, oh, shit. Like, I know Kanye.

Like, I have to be somewhat important. Like, so you're trying to, like, imbue this feeling that, like, I may not totally know what I'm doing, but I should be CEO. You know, like anything. But I've had a barbecue with Kanye. Yeah, yeah. I can't be totally. Yeah.

What about the inverse? When you look at a CEO and you're like, oh, they have just, like, hit this fork in the road. Now confidence is going to go horribly, is going to go down. And it's going to be their demise. their demise, what decisions do those people make? Like, what are the commonalities between the people who lose it that way? Sort of like the Charlie Munger, like, tell me where I'm going to die so I know not to go there, right? What would be the decisions I would make to take me off the path?

I would say the big thing is it's almost like a lack of decision, right? Like, it's a hesitation. In football, they always say, like, you have to trust your eyes, because you could be really fast. But if you don't start running when you see the thing, if you wait, then you're not fast. And that's kind of what it's like for CEOs. Like, you could be really, really smart. But if you wait too long before you pull the trigger, you're not smart anymore. It's too like.

And there's all kinds of like excuses people tell themselves to not make a decision. So, for example, like one of the biggest ones on an executive, like is, well, if, you know, we made such a big deal when we hired him, like, what is the press going to say? or what are the people in the company going to say? Or, you know, I don't have time to hire a new person to do the job that this guy's fucking up. You know, like these kinds of, there's all these reasons not to make the decision. And they're all just, if you think about him for more than like five minutes,

you go, well, that doesn't make any fucking sense because this guy's like fucking up the whole org. Like, who goes the fuck what the press says? Like, you just get rid of him, like start rebuilding. now, you know, like, it's not, if he's doing a bad job, like, no job is better than a bad job. Like, I think we all know that. And everything kind of ends up like that. I don't know enough to make the decision. Like, I didn't give him enough of a chance, this and that, the other. So it's, it's kind of that lack of confidence that generally causes a no decision where there really

needs to be a decision is the main, I would say that's the common pattern. Yeah. So in the two examples you gave, the first one, was like, ah, the CTO, blah, blah, blah. That's kind of like, avoiding the conversation would be the mistake there. And then in this one, like, avoiding the decision would be the mistake. Yeah, you have to, you know,

I wrote a post a long time ago. So I called, you know, run out the pain in darkness. You have to run at the pain in darkness. You can't run away from it. If you run away from it, it's all bad. You're pretty good at a titling blog post and books. I think, you know, the hard thing. I thought, you're like badass.

But I think you said that, I think, In the publishing industry, typically the author's title is not the winning title. And I think you were like bragging that you're like, that's my title. I came up with it. Yeah. Well, I didn't take. Well, you know, because I didn't need a book, like I didn't actually want to write the book. They asked me to write the book, the publisher.

So I felt like I did do what I wanted. So I called it what I wanted. Yeah. What excites you. So this, you know, a lot of the stuff we talked about is like the hard stuff, the pain. And but nobody gets into this for just the pain, right? Nobody gets into this to do it. The pain is just a sort of necessary that we go through to do the good stuff.

I'm just curious, what are you really excited about right now? Like, what are either rabbit holes are going down, cool stuff you've seen that you haven't been able to forget? Like, what's really cool and interesting to Ben Horowitz? Well, so one of the most exciting things that's going on now is, you know, like kind of it's well known that the United States has kind of fallen behind in defense, manufacturing, rare earth minerals, all these kinds of things. But what's been very exciting is like there are startups that are like, I'll solve that for America. And so like we have a company that we just funded recently,

Periodic Labs, which is using AI to do like novel material science to kind of enable better kind of design of everything from like rockets to missiles to, you know, all sorts of things. And then we have a company, Kobol, metals that is basically using AI. So they take a dirt sample and they use AI to analyze the dirt sample and they can tell you, oh yeah, there's going to be like

copper below that, you know, whatever, a mile down into the earth. And so, you know, these kinds of techniques where you're kind of using tech to go, no, we're going to catch up fast. It's been like very, very exciting, I would tell you. My view as a founder on the ground is just that sometimes you see something, and like I said,

it breaks like an imaginary wall you had, and sometimes things become cool. And cool, although we try to not like follow trends, sometimes you could use your psychology for you rather than against you. And so the idea, you know, seeing what Elon is done, where it's like, oh, he goes into these really hard spaces and does these like hardware, hard tech,

literal rocket science, right? And it's sort of unafraid of that. Or, you know, Anderil going in and doing, you know, weapons and defense tech and making that, to be kind of patriotic in that way? Is that what it was? Is that what it took? Or was there something else to it?

You know, there's a lot, they're very challenging companies to build in some ways. But on the other hand, you know, it's a good time to do that because people, because Elon has, I mean, God bless Elon for showing that it was possible. So now, whereas, like, only Elon could have financed Tesla.

normal people can start to finance these things now because Elon has shown that it's possible. So it's a little bit like a four-minute mile on that way, I would say. But yeah, I mean, like, you know, the things that, yeah, and even in like public safety, you look at something like, you know, flock safety. In a way, technologically, it's not nearly as complicated

as some of the other as like a, as an andrel or something like that. But it's very, very powerful. I mean, you know, they really, make both kind of policing being a citizen and even being a criminal more safe because all of a sun you're using AI to provide real intelligence. So, you know, for example, in Las Vegas where we deployed it, a huge problem, a huge problem in like police violence, police getting killed, are traffic stops. And a big reason for that is somebody reports there's a, you know,

a 1998 Honda Accura that's driving, that's brown, that kidnapped a baby. Okay, so that's a real situation.

But, like, that description is usually wrong. Like, the description of the actual car is usually wrong. So you have flex safety, you have the exact match. So the difference between a cop

going into a situation where they may have the wrong guy, and if they have the wrong guy, the guys could get very agitated, and then you have a, bad situation. Or they know 100% this guy, he is in a car that we know is the car and there's a baby in the back that's not his. Okay, you're going in with a whole, you're not sending a single person in there with a gun coming off their motorcycle. Like you've got a whole team that's going to

make sure that that person is apprehended safely and correctly and the baby is saked. I've heard, I've heard Flogs, this amazing thing. Is it drones? Is it cameras? What are they doing? Yeah, no, so it's primarily like a camera system where AI will basically, so somebody does something, you know, they grab the car on the camera, that car shows up on another camera anywhere in the city, and they're like, oh, there it is. And actually, that's how they caught, interestingly, the Tesla terrorist who set the Tesla ship on fire in Las Vegas was, he came in earlier to case the place,

Flog Safety pickup the car, they saw the car come back. at night, and they were like, oh, we know whose car that is, and they just went arrested them. Did you guys see that ad? I think it was like two weeks ago. I was trying to find it. It went viral on Twitter, but it was basically, I believe it was a solar company? Was it a solar company where they're recruiting employees, and they had a whole website just dedicated to the recruitment aspect of just they needed more staff,

and they bought an ad in the New York Times, I believe, or some newspaper, and it was like an old man sitting with like what it looked like his grandson overlooking a mountain and they were like overlooking I think it was solar panels I'm not exactly sure but it was like

do you really want to tell your grandkids that you spent your entire 30s and 40s building just B2B software? It was great and it like and there's this whole trend amongst young people on Twitter of like being more traditional and things like that

and I think that to answer your question Sean about Andrew and Elon I think that it's kind of been like a perfect spiral or a perfect mix of like people seeing Elon and Palmer do these interesting things. And also just like getting sick of just building B2B software or something, you know, that's just a stereotype for what's boring. That may or may not be true.

But like, you know, like seeing this and like there could be more out there. I think that the software had to get good enough to, of course, make these other things possible, which is, you know, and it's amazing that we're at that time where you can really imagine changing the world in all kinds of ways. You get to see a lot of pitches of the smartest people in the world telling you what the future is going to look like in five years. And so you have this like element of your job that's a little bit like a time traveler. So you probably have a better sense of what the world looks.

Nobody has a perfect sense, but you have a better sense of what the world looks like five, seven, ten years from now. You don't know exactly when, you don't know who's going to do it. What's broken your brain, either from a demo or a story pitch that you've heard, you know, sometime of the last year or so that the rest of us will experience, you know, sometime in the future. Yeah, so I think, you know, one of the things that, I mean, you know, everybody's talking about embodied AI and robots and so forth and rightly so,

but I would say, like, in the creative space, I'm starting to realize, like, this AI video and so forth, it's not like making the old thing more efficient. It's a new medium. It's an actual new thing. in the same ways that movies weren't plays. You know, AI video is not video. The stories that you can tell are completely different because you can do things that you just, you know,

without a $200 million budget, you'd had no chance of doing. And now it's like no problem. And I think that's going to be like very, very, very interesting. And then how well it's working on like existing stuff. So people, you know, the people, who are on the cutting edge of the movie industry are now they're able to do

like whole movie scenes or edit or change their movie, have the AI actor do the third cut at a level of quality that even the actor doesn't know it wasn't them doing the acting and that kind of thing.

So I think it's going to change dramatically again and there's going to be kind of white space for not only new creatives, but new entertainment entrepreneurs and so forth that nobody is really imagining now. Is there any AI content that you consume as a fan? Yeah, I don't know. Well, like, you know, I've been watching that the one with the cat was pretty good over the weekend. The cat playing all the instruments and the lady coming out.

Unfortunately, going like, you've got to get that racket out to you guys see that one. Was that on SORA? That was pretty good. Yeah, I think it's a Sauru. Ben, do you mess around on Suno at all with AI music? Yeah, Suno and 11 Labs has a model, and UDO's got a very good model. So there's a few different really good models.

Like I feel like I could have a music career again. That's going to be very, very interesting to me because it's sort of, like one thing that hip-hop showed was, so people don't really realize this, but this is something Quincy Jones pointed out to me, before he passed, he said, you know, Ben, like hip-hop started, like, exactly when they canceled all the music programs in schools.

Like, it was the same, the exact same time when people didn't learn to play instruments in schools, that's when that is exactly when hip-hop began. And hip-hop kind of freed you as somebody who was, like, a musical talent from actually having to learn to play an instrument, which, you know, and even for the producers, right, like you had a drum machine, you had samples. So you could hear what you liked and play it,

but you didn't need to be a virtuoso. And that kind of opened up a world that we'd happy for. And I think AI music is kind of that on steroids. I don't know if you guys know. The number one song in the country right now is an AI country artist. So Walk My Walk. Oh, yeah. And the first, I think the first,

AI artist that got a record deal recently. Like, you know, so this is definitely what the future looks like is people who, non-musicians, it's just like, you know, repel it and others make it so that you don't have to be a coder to make apps. And now you don't have to be a musician to make music. And I don't think people really understand how big of a deal that is. Like my personal trainer who's been in the fitness world his whole life. Yeah.

Has been in a rabbit hole making, he's probably in the top 0.1% of AI creators in the world right now creating music. and he's like got like a full band. He's like his own record label, and every day he's up until two in the morning. And he knows these programs inside it out because it wasn't really accessible to somebody who didn't have, you know,

musical talent before to be able to make music. Right, there's a big difference between taste and creativity and being a virtuoso violinist, right? Like those don't necessarily have to be the same thing. And it's great that, you know, Yeah, no, people, you know, whatever, practice violin for three hours a day and, like, get amazing out of it and all that kind of thing. But it's pretty neat to have a world where, like, okay, if you can just do this part, you can still play. Sean, can you ask, you have this really cool light about the rules of culture and making them memorable.

Well, yeah, so when I'm doing the research, one thing that stands out is like you talk about culture, you talk about like, which is normally culture is like, like I just fall asleep because it's so over-talked about in the business world. You're just like, you've got to really tell me something new. Over-talked about without anybody saying anything. Yeah, exactly. Culture, culture, culture. Right. And it's like, oh, so cool.

Tell me your values. Like, integrity. Like, all right, great. Glad to hear it. I was worried it was going to be the opposite, right? Like, it doesn't really tell you anything. And, you know, when you go walk into the company, the stuff on the wall doesn't match the stuff you see happening within the four walls.

So you get sort of disillusioned in a way. But when you see somebody doing something interesting or somebody actually pulling it off, which of course there are examples, I get interested. And so one thing that I thought was cool, a nuance that I hadn't really heard before was you were talking about how at A16 and Z you kind of take time to drive the culture. Like I think in the new onboarding you, like I do a culture session one hour. They sign something at the end. And one of the nuances, I thought that was interesting was you said, my rule for writing

the kind of like the culture rules is it has to have some shock value. Like it has to give the other person like, oh, what the hell are you talking about type of reaction if it's going to be memorable. I think that idea was, if it's not memorable, it's never going to be remembered or used. So you have to do something to make it memorable. Can you talk about your theory around this? Yeah. So, I mean, it kind of comes down to what you do every day, right? Like it's a daily habit. So, you know, this idea that you put cultural values on the wall and then, you know, once a year at a performance tree, you say, do you follow the culture? It's like, that means absolutely nothing, right? It's nothing. And so it's like, it's like,

like, well, what do you do every day? And so, like, one of the things we do every day is, like, we meet with entrepreneurs. So, like, what's a rule that sets the culture around that? So it's like, well, if you're late for that meeting, it's $10 a minute. It's like, well, $10 a minute. Like, well, what if I have to go to the bathroom? You owe me $50. I don't care. You know, what if I had an important phone call? Like, you owe me $100. Like, I don't care you had an important phone call. Well, like, why am I paying to work here? You know, well, because building a company is extremely hard and culturally we want to have

the ultimate respect for that and we don't want to waste any entrepreneur's time. And so that's your most important thing. So you have to plan to do that. You guys have a fine now. You're talking, this is a real A16D.

Yeah. So every time I have to like go to the meeting, you know, like I have to think about that because I've got to be on time. I got to fucking plan my day. So like there's not, I'm not back to back on that one. I got to be on time.

Otherwise, you know, I'm going to be embarrassed and all that kind of thing. And so, well, why am I doing that? And then that, okay, if you do that, that's a habit that makes you go, okay, like, no, I'm going to respect what this is. I know how hard it is to build a company. I may not even know how hard it is, but I know that, like, somebody here thinks it's hard enough that I have to show up on time.

So can you tell some more of those interesting, like, you know, the tardiness paying thing? That's pretty cool. What does some other? Yeah, so it's, well, second one is, like, if you, um, If you talk smack about an entrepreneur on X, you're fired. It doesn't matter if they're in the portfolio or not. You're just, that's it. And why is that?

Well, culturally, first of all, we're dream builders. We're not dream killers. If you want to do something bigger than yourself and make the world a better place, I don't care what it is. I don't care if I think it's stupid. I'm for that. I'm not against that. I am for that.

And I don't care if, like, Sequoia funded you or Benchmark funded you for that. Like, go get up. Like, we're a pro entrepreneur. And then, you know, kind of related to that, I don't want to give anybody credit for making themselves look smart by making somebody else look stupid. Like, I don't want to give anybody like a gold star for saying that guy's, you know, selling dollars for 85 cents. Oh, I'm so clever.

You know, like, fuck you. Like, no, we're not doing that here. And so it's that kind of thing where it's like, oh, that seems like a harsh punishment, but I get it. I get it because I've heard it and I understand it. And so then that's like a way to kind of show up behaviorally daily as opposed to, you know, like, here's a problem with integrity. What does that mean? Like integrity only matters when it's testing. Everybody has integrity, everybody's honest until it's tested.

And then when it's tested, very few people are. Right? Like when it costs you money, when it costs you a deal, when it costs you your marriage, are you honest then? Because that's the actual thing. And so you can't just have it in the abstract. You have to say, like, what behaviors do you have to have to work here? You know, how responsive do you have to be?

These things end up making the culture much more so than like a value or, like, one thing I really like is the, the samurai called them virtues. They didn't call them values. It's like these are the virtues. Like this is your way of being. This isn't like some fucking, it's not a set of ideas. It's a set of actions. A culture is a set of actions. Listen to this, Sean.

So if you go to A16Z.com slash about, you'll see their value. And I just want to read, like, I've never seen this before, so I'm just going to read a couple of them, but the six out of seven, it's, we play to win. Our culture only matters if we're important. And in order to be important, we must win. We are the best firm in the world, so we expect to win. It's just like, that's fantastic.

I love that. And that's, I don't know if controversial is the right word, but it's polarizing, right? Not a lot of people are into that. But that's badass. Then you say, you have another one that I really like. We only do first-class business. and only in a first-class way.

I think that's a really... I actually stole that phrasing from J.P. Morgan. He said it in court. They were accusing him with some kind of, like, crazy, like, market manipulation. You're talking about the JP. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The J.P. Morgan, yeah.

Yeah, I think that was... I think I read about that line in the... Andrew Sorka's got that, like, 1928 or 29 book, and I think he says that, but that's great. So, but, okay, so, but, like, when I go to this site and I see these, I'm like, Okay, this is kind of like, these are like the high level principles. But what you were saying just now is a little bit different.

You were like, hey, look. Well, there's got me behaviors that support the principles, yeah. Yeah. So you basically were like, what are the daily situations and actions where we have a choice? We either show up this way or we show up this way. And we're going to show up this way. And sometimes with a penalty, a punishment or a praise based on like the extreme version of that behavior with the no tolerance policy. Right.

And I think there's this great military quote that you have in your. book. Oh, yeah. Well, if you see something below standard and you don't correct it, you set a new standard. And that's very true. And that's why they have to be specific because if they're not specific, you can't enforce it.

How do you enforce, like, you don't have integrity? That just gets weaponized. It's like, that guy doesn't have he's not following the cultural value. You know, he doesn't, why doesn't have integrity? Well, he lied to me. Well, let's go talk to him. Oh, no, I didn't lie to you. Did it. Like, so it's not that. Whereas,

Oh, you just put out that tweet? Like, that's clearly against the cultural value. Like, uh-uh, there's no backing off that. So, like, you know, Facebook famously had move fast and break things, which I think is like, that was really good, by the way. Hall of Fame. Yeah, you know, that's a Hall of Famer. But, like, that's kind of the, you know, one of the few that I know.

I thought about that for months. Like, I'm like, move fast and break. Because it's so counterintuitive. It's like, well, you know, you want me to break things? I'm an engineer. I make things. I don't break things. But it was just his way.

saying, like, there is no excuse for not fucking shit, but we're going fast. But they don't have that anymore, do that? Is that something? Well, you know, they got bigger and then, you know, I think speed wasn't their main thing that they were trying to achieve. I think they literally changed it to, like, move fast, it's move fast. It's move fast. It's stability and stable, like with stable infrastructure and reliability.

Yeah, exactly. Somehow lost its edge. Yeah, yeah. So have you seen anything like that, move fast, and break things, or just a behavior when you walked into the Airbnb office or you noticed something? Yeah, I mean, so, and you know, Amazon had this thing where they used to make the desks out of, like, doors and two-by-fourths. I tried doing that, by the way. It's way cheaper to get a desk. It's way cheaper to get a desk. But, like, I think the idea back in whatever, the late 90s when they did that was, like, like, we're not wasting anyway.

Yeah. You know, and that kind of thing, which is, you know, those markers are very, very powerful. Like one of my favorite one, this was actually from the Haitian Revolution when Toussaint-Lovachar basically made a role. He's like, you can't cheat on your wife, which was like so absurd because here they are. They're in a colony, you know, a French colony. They're, you know, the British, the Spanish, the French, they're all raping and pillaging and doing all this stuff, all these armies. And these guys like can't cheat on their walks. But that little cultural idea that said, look, this is about trust.

I got to be able to trust you. And like the people have to be able to trust you ended up basically really influencing the war. So one of the things that was like very surprising, I think, to people who read about the Haitian Revolution was, you know, here's the slave army

taking on these European colonies. And the white women in the colonies supported Toussaint against, like, the French. And you go like, well, why did they do that? Because they didn't rape. they didn't pillage, like, Tucson, like, these guys were, like, half-naked soldiers or slaves, and they weren't doing any of that.

They were super polite. They behaved in a certain way. And the legend is, so he was Toussaint, Laverture, but slaves didn't have last name. So where did Loverture come from? And so the story is Napoleon, who really was pissed at him, brought his generals together, and it's like, how in the fuck can you not get this slave?

Like, how can you not defeat this slave? And they're like, well, we get them backed up. We get him surrounded. And then all of the sun, there's an opening. And he became Toussaint, LaVerture, Toussaint, the opening. And the opening, a lot of people say, was created by these townspeople, these women who were just like, oh, fuck, we're for him. We're for that army. I don't give a fuck about your army.

We're for that army. So, like, culture can be, like, super influential. That's a great story. That's really cool. You mentioned Amazon. Do you see Jeff Bezos got a new startup? Oh, I didn't see that. Did Jeff got a new start?

Yeah, you didn't see this announcement. Project Prometheus, they raised an initial seed round of $6 billion to bring a... Is that really? Is that true? They called that a seed round? Yeah, it's the first round of funding. So $6 billion raised, and they got 100 people, and they're building AI for, like, the physical world. So it's not just robots, but basically like the manufacturing of airplanes and ships and things like that. So they're basically saying, how do we use AI for the physical world?

AI in like sort of advanced manufacturing, I think is the idea, but obviously the little tidal details. But that's pretty cool. He's like back in a operational role for the first time, which is cool. Yeah, no, I think that, by the way, like, how great is it that the logistics genius of our time is back at it and going to help us, like, get back in the manufacturing game like that? Yeah. Yeah, those things are just incredible to me. And I think all of us were a little sad. when Jeff was just living his best life just because he is so talented. So this is very great news.

I loved it. I was like, ha, this guy's having fun. He's getting jacked. He's showing a different, you know, a new North Star also, which like has kind of also taken over the tech industry. And by the way, like whatever, like, you know, people always make you into cartoon when you get to that level,

he is, you know, for sure, like a top two or three best CEO in the last. last 40 years. You're a bit surprising to me because I've read all your books. I know about your background. Basically, like, you have, like, guided the people who have shaped destiny. You have also shaped destiny yourself, but, like, you're, you've done all these amazing things, and you're a shockingly fun hang. Normally, I think, and, like, you know about hip-hop and all this stuff.

Normally, the people who have outsized results typically have very strange personalities. And they're, like, a little quirky. And I'm sure you have your quirks, but you just seem sure. shockingly well-balanced for how not normal your successes. Is there anything in your day-to-day life that you think that would surprise probably like the average person or are there any tendencies that you have that you recognize probably aren't at all normal? Well, you know, I would say probably the thing that my daughter always says that is unusual

about me. And I think it came from like the beginning of my, you know, like I. had, I am different than the modern people. Like I was married when I was 22. I had three kids by the time I was 25. Like I kind of had to grow up fast. And, you know, and then I had the company. I was trying to raise the kids and the company.

And, you know, I didn't have money for nannies or anything. So, like, it was a lot of that. But what she says to me, she's like, dad, like, you're, like, at the top of Maslow's hierarchy. Like, you're very zen with all this. And, like, I take things for what they are. I don't, like I'm pretty good at not being unemotional, but not letting like my emotional reaction control my behavior. Were you always that way or did you become that?

No, no, no, no, no. No, no. It was definitely not. Like, I think it was just all the trauma that, like, forced me to learn that. What age did, what made you calm down? Was it age? Was it kids? Was it success? Was it like, look, I've made it.

Everything else is just icing on the cake. I don't care. Well, I think it was the combination of the. The kids and the company, you know, the first company I founded, LoudCloud, which then became ops where it was so difficult that I never, like in life since then, like, we've had difficulties building the firm, whatever, but like they never got like a rise out of me that could compare to, you know, what I'd already been through.

So it's almost like I feel like it's almost. Like I know guys, my friend Oliver Stone was in Vietnam. And like you could tell everything about him was, I'm not in Vietnam anymore. So much of his life is defined by not being in Namf. And like I do feel like, I don't want to compare it to war because people always criticize me for my war metaphors. But it's kind of like that feeling where it's like, okay, I've been through that. I'm just looking at the world differently now. And I bet it.

And like I'm sure you had some sense of like, all right, I've accomplished something. Like, I feel good. Maybe I'm playing with house money a little bit with everything else. Yeah, it's a little house money, and then it's a little like all you can do is deal with the thing that it is. You can't stop it from having happened. It happens, and now you have to deal with it.

Were there any other sort of wisdom accelerator? So you have these formative experiences, right? You've got three kids and three years or whatever, and you're talking about the time of 25, and then you're trying to build a startup and everything. You face kind of like the back against the wall moments. Were there any other formative things? Like, you know, for example, in my life,

I went to like a Tony Robbins seminar. It's like, you know, I sort of got five years of wisdom in a weekend type of deal. Yeah, he's very good at, like, dealing with your own psychology. Yeah, or you spend the summer doing something, or you read a book at the right time, or you get the right message with the right time and you have a moment where you just decide, like, from now on X.

I guess, like, I'm just curious. Was there any, if I just think about, like, formative moments besides the kids and besides LoudCloud, what else would there have been? Okay, so when I was a kid, I was in this relay race. And it was like it was a very big deal for me, you know, like it was whatever the track meet. And we came in second in the relay race.

My father wasn't at the race. But we came in second because, and the team that came in first dropped the baton and like didn't pick it up. The guy just ran without the baton. And they gave in first place and they didn't penalize it. And so I was, you know, my father said, how did you do in the race? And I was like, well, we came in second, but it wasn't fair. And I was going to explain to him why. And he said, stop right there.

He said, life isn't fair. And that shocked me so much at the time, but it really stuck with me. And it's the single best lesson that I ever got in my life was life isn't fair. And I see young people wrecked themselves so much because they have an expectation that something about life is going to be fair. Like, nothing about life is fair. It's not fair where you're born. It's not fair. What race you are, it's not fair. Like, what your parents did, it's not fair. Like, the job interviews aren't fair. Like, nothing, the tests aren't fair. Nothing is fair on life. And so the way you succeed is you don't have that expectation. You just deal with it as it is. And I think that

everybody who tries to or who like thinks, well, like, I wasn't treated fairly or this isn't fixed. Like that is devastating. You know, like for sure. I mean, the whole time, you know, when a lot of cloud and the dot com crashed and half our customers went out of business,

I never crossed my mind to go, this isn't fair. It was just like, okay, I have to deal with it. And that is, I would say, the single best piece of advice and way of looking at life that you can have is just, it is what it is. And now do what you can do with it being as it is. It was very important.

You've referenced a lot of really cool stuff. The Haiti story, I've heard you talk about history a lot. Outside of work, work-related stuff, what interests you right now? You know, Sean and I, we like to talk about just like just fun stuff that you were into. I'm constantly reading about World War II. I like that. What about you? Is there anything that you're kind of like being obsessed about?

Yeah, so I do have this, I'll give a plug for it. So I have this charity that I created with my wife called the Paid and Fall Foundation, which basically, you know, is kind of this idea on a whim, but we give pensions to the old hip-hop guys. So, you know, I got $100,000 a year. And then we have this award show for them. you know, where we name them Grandmasters and so forth. And, you know, so the first winners were Rakim and Scarface. And then, you know, we had Grand Master Kaz and Chantey and Cumoddy and so forth.

And then Grand Puba and Colgi Rapp. And this year, you know, we added this thing, the Quincy Jones Award to the guys who got sample the most and we gave it to George Clinton. And the event was so, I'm still. thing about it was so amazing because, so George Clinton knows all the words to follow the leader. And so he's on stage, and Quincy John says, can he rap, follow in? He's rap, follow the leader. And Rakim came out and wrapped it with him. So it got George Clinton and Rakim. And then Dr. Dre bought a table to the event. And he, like, couldn't help himself.

He goes up on stage just to say, look, I have no career without George Clinton. And it was just so amazing to have like all these guys that were so important that influenced so many people just being that appreciative of each other was I was like you know and it's kind of and you know hip-hop of course is so competitive and and you know they're always going at each other and so forth but for them to be at that point where they could just go man you guys meant so much to me and that kind of thing was, it was just very special. That's so cool.

Yeah, that idea of pensions for the OGs is so great. Did that just come on a whim? Or you're just at lunch one day and you're like, why don't they, you know, how does that idea? Because that one liner gives you the clarity, right? It gives you the clarity of where to go. So I was listening to the H-To-J-Z son where he says, I'm overcharging for what they did to the cold crush.

and it got with us like, who was the cold crush? And it turns out, right, it's Grandmaster Kaz. And Grandmaster Kaz wrote Rapp was the Light, basically, and they stole it from it. And they stole it from him so nasty that they didn't change the word. So Big Bank Hancraft, so if I'm the G-R-A-N-D, Rai-R-N-D-A-S-C-E-R, that's Grandmaster Kaz. That's his. He's rapping about his name, not Big Back. Bank Hank is

them not named Grandmaster. Why is he calling himself Grandmaster? Because he stole his fucking rhyme. And he never got paid and he never got credit for it. And everybody in hip-hop knows this. And Grandmaster Kaz, by the way, like if you meet him, he's a stoke.

Like, he's the coolest guy in the room. He dresses amazing. He's, like, super articulate. He can still rap like crazy today, 66 years old or 65, something like that. And I was like, well, like, we ought to go back. and fix that.

And then, you know, Rakim was, like, on tour at these little clubs and so forth. I was like, that's Rakim. Like, how are people treating them like that? So that was the idea. I was like, we ought to just do it. You know, I'm, like, getting it set up with the IRS and all that stuff is, like, extremely complicated. But, yeah, it's been really, really, I would say, amazing. And, like, just, like, an unbelievable epilogue.

So, Cass, at the last one, tells me he's like, Ben, I bought a house. I was like, oh, that's amazing, Cass. You've got a house. He's like, no, Ben, it's the first time of my life I haven't lived in the projects. Like, Grandmaster Cass, the guy who wrote the first great hip-hop song, has never not lived in the projects. Like, how crazy is that?

And now here he is with the house in Pennsylvania here. And he's got berries in his backyard and the whole thing. He's got berries in his backyard. It is pretty nuts. The people who are like invent the shit don't get it. Like, for example, Sean and I love UFC. And, like, we see, like, the early UFC events. Yeah, yeah.

They don't make anything, yeah. And they're getting $2,000 to show up. Yeah. And they still come to, like, the Legends Awards. Yeah. And they still are talking. And you're like, damn, dude, this guy probably is selling insurance or something like that. Like, you know, he probably got made $15,000 that year.

No doubt. No doubt. Yeah. This happens in the NBA, too. This is why, like, the culture gets kind of messed up. Because the old heads keep criticizing all the new players. Yeah. And it's like, wow, why are you doing that?

It's like, well, too much more money. They're going to make $70 million a year, and that guy didn't make seven in his whole career, and he's like, I'm better than that guy. And that guy, you know, so this resentment, and then they get on, and then they're the guys doing the halftime shows,

and it's bad for the product, right? It's bad for the lineage, right? Because everything is a creative lineage, like, on top of what it was before, right? So it's really cool to kind of almost, like, economically fix the, you know, or like try to improve that ecosystem because it's like the whole thing was first. Yeah, it's kind of, like, you know, it's funny.

it's also kind of this thought I have about capitalism, which is capitalism is definitely the system that lifted the world out of poverty and kind of created the modern world we live in. You know, it's incredibly powerful, but right over time it does get corrupted and so forth. And even if it wasn't corrupted, it's not perfect. And like certain things happen,

like, oh, you create a musical art form and are the guys who actually made it happen, and it becomes the biggest musical art form in the world, and you never got paid. Like, capitalism shit work like that, but it's just kind of the way it works, right? Like, and it's somebody's fault. And so, like, if you can go back and say,

well, we'll just correct those things. I think that, I think you are so cool. Like, you're, on one hand, you're, like, a pretty, like, hard-hitting capitalists where you're getting after it, and you're talking about making really tough decisions of having to fire people, whatever. But then you're also like,

but also we can do good by doing all this other stuff. And I think that, like, particularly in tech, I don't think that people's interests are particularly that wide. Yeah. Well, I think people get very into tech. Yeah, like tech is so deep and dust that people can get stuck in it for sure. Yeah. Well, Ben, we thank you for coming on, man.

I know you got a lot of things going on, but this is a lot of fun. I appreciate it. Yeah, no, it was a good time. Thanks, guys, definitely. All right, appreciate you. That's it. That's a pod. Thanks for listening to the A16Z podcast.

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