The a16z Show - What Makes a Great Entrepreneur? | Ben Horowitz on Vintage x Vintage

Episode Date: October 10, 2026

a16z co-founder and General Partner Ben Horowitz joins James Norman on the inaugural episode of Vintage x Vintage for a conversation spanning entrepreneurship, investing, hip-hop, and what changes when AI makes building dramatically easier.Ben reflects on going from Netscape to becoming a first-time CEO, why every founder eventually hits a “we’re fucked, it’s over” moment, and what he learned from building a16z around the needs of entrepreneurs. He explains why great investors should look for world-class strengths rather than an absence of weaknesses, and why expanding the ways we recognize talent can raise the bar rather than lower it.They also look at the current AI cycle, why Ben believes it is bigger than the internet, how AI changes who can become a builder, and why the infrastructure beneath today’s models may need to be rebuilt from the ground up.Resources:Follow Ben Horowitz on X: https://x.com/bhorowitz Follow James Norman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/motown/ Learn more about Paid in Full: https://paidinfullfoundation.org 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.

I think it was midnight, and my phone rings. Unknown caller, so I'm like, oh, it's Kanye. I go, yay, what's up? And he goes, hey, Ben, I heard you're having a barbecue tomorrow. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I am. I want to record in your studio. And I'm like, yay, I don't have a studio. Or are their strengths world class?

So are they the best in the world at something? And then you overlook everything else. That's what makes a company great, and that's what makes an entrepreneur great. Not, oh, they don't know how to do this or, Wow, they know nothing about finance. There's so many things that are wrong with every entrepreneur, every great entrepreneur has got something like horribly wrong with them, but that's okay.

You know, it's what are they truly great at what they're great at? What separates a great entrepreneur from everyone else? For Ben Horowitz, it isn't the absence of weaknesses. It's having a strength so exceptional that everything else becomes secondary. Today's episode comes from our recommended listening series, where we feature standout conversations from people across our broader network. This one comes from Vintage and Vintage,

where host James Norman sits down with A16Z co-founder Ben Horwitz for the show's inaugural episode. Ben shares what he learned going from engineer to first-time CEO, how those experiences shake the founding of A16C, and why evaluating founders means looking for world-class strengths rather than trying to find someone who checks every box. They also get into AI and why Ben's sees this moment as bigger than the internet.

As the cost and difficulty of building software collapses, creativity becomes increasingly important, opening the door for people with deep knowledge of a problem to turn that knowledge into a product. And throughout the conversation, James and Ben returned to a shared influence, hip-hop, from the lessons Ben took from Nas at his lowest point, to why he created pated full

to recognize the pioneers who shaped the culture. Welcome to the first episode of Vintage and Vintage. This is the first one? The first one. All right. Well, that's good. We're getting off with the bang. Right.

You know, step into the game. But to start the conversation is Vintage and Vintage. You are of a certain vintage of entrepreneur. We also have a certain vintage. We have a certain vintage of wine as well. And all the wines are connected to like the relationships. This is a continuum, right? But it's actually like Mondavi.

So Robert Vandavi, you know, they kind of set the tone for American. and wine. But by 93, though, there was like this like virus vineyard situation in Napa. Yeah. Just they had to go public under duress. Like, oh, we got to get this money. We'll keep going. Yeah. Didn't turn out that well because Wall Street directors came in and like abused the name. And now you have the Robert Rondavi wine that people would know today. But yeah, it kind of fell apart by 04 and the family had to pick up the pieces. But the youngest son came along

and decided to make continuum. And he wanted to shoot for the stars, take all the learnings he had inner workings of how they made great wine and make this. And so this was born out of struggle. And similar to my guest today, did the same as Silicon Valley. Set the tone for cloud computing, had to sell the heart of the company to keep the thing going. Even after going public, stock dropped as a result and had to crawl out of that. But like took the knowledge one had in the team and the inner working as how the thing

was managed, opsware, and, you know, clawed your way back from people's like, he's they counted them out. Nah, they're not going to make it. It's a dot-com boom bust. But it's like, you know, got the $1.65 billion exit. And so continuum is special and legendary. My guest, special and legendary. But it's great because of the struggle.

And so this is the hard thing about hard things in the bottle. All right. And this is my guest, Ben Horowitz. All right. That's a very nice introduction. Thank you, Halley. So. Or a psychologist.

I call you James. Most people know James. I'm talking from the new me days. Right. So, and actually, hold up. Actually, take a look at the year and a one. wine before that. 2017.

Okay. Yeah. We did something pretty funny and crazy. Was that the CEO barbecue with Kanye? It was. Oh, boy. It was a day in the studio. Yeah.

That was wild. So for you listeners, what happened was we're having the CEO barbecue, which is a big event at my house and so forth. And it's like, I think it was midnight and my phone rings. and, you know, I heard it, I guess I didn't turn off the ringer, and I look at it. Unknown caller, so I'm like, oh, it's Kanye. And so I answered the phone, and I go, yay, what's up? And he goes, hey, Ben, I heard you're having a barbecue tomorrow.

And I was like, yeah, yeah, I am. He's like, can I come? I was like, sure, you can come? He goes, oh, can Kim come? And I'm like, yeah, Kim can come. Of course you can go. Well, can Chris come. Yeah, I was like, yeah, Chris can come.

And he goes, okay, great. And I want to record in your studio. And I'm like, yay, I don't have a studio. And he goes, okay. And so they're like, okay. Then like, I wake up 6.30 in the morning, I get a call. Hey, Ben, this is Noah. I'm Kanye's engineer.

He's like, I'm just calling about the specs on your studio. And I'm like, I don't have a studio, no. He's like, what do you mean? I have a studio. What are we going to do? Kanye is expecting a studio. Like, we got to have a studio. I'm like, oh, shit.

So I call Chris and Ate. I'm like, who do we know who has a studio? And they're like, Howie? And I'm like, okay, well, let's call him because Kanye's coming over, we need a studio. And so we call you like, what are you doing? How are you like watching Netflix? And I'm like, okay.

I was like, is that studio you have portable? And he's like, yeah, it's portable. And so long story short, you drove the studio down to my house and we set it up in the room and then a lot more crazy stuff happened. Yeah, Ye was playing us the Pablo album. Yeah, we went through an album. We went through Push's album.

We went through all this stuff, yeah. Yeah, basically all of it. Yeah, so he was, that was a... It was a legendary day. That was a legendary day. No doubt. There were a lot of beefs at that barbecue, too. There was conflict, which we could get into later,

but we'd probably take up the whole podcast with that. Yeah, that would be the hip-hop for a champs situation. Hip-hop's important. Like, we're both hip-hop heads. When did hip-hop become a thing? When did it be like, oh, I can see myself in that, and it's motivating me to do things? Like, how'd that come to be?

Yeah, so it's kind of a slow thing. So I, you know, I was probably like 12 years old when Rappers Delight came out. That was kind of the first one that a lot of us heard, you know, if you weren't in New York. I think the first one where I was really like, ooh, this is going to be very different was when run DMC hard times came out. And I was like, this has a whole other feel to it than anything I've heard. So I was, like, really into it. But the thing that made me, like, locked into hip-up, so I went to school in New York,

I had this friend who I grew up with who had gotten shot in the face, like some kind of weird gun accident. And he was blind. And so, you know, I was very worried about him. We were super close. And, you know, I would call home to my mom. It's like, how Seth doing is he all right? Is he going to be okay?

She's like, you know, he hasn't spoken to anybody since he's been shot. He's just, you know, sitting in the hospital. Everybody's worried he's suicidal, this and that and the other. And so I got the idea of being like a dumb 18-year-old kid. I was like, you know, hip-hop is so great. Like, it's like the most, like, you can have nothing and you'll wrap about your shoes. And, like, my shoes are the best. And I'm like, you know, he needs that feeling.

And so I would record the DJ Red Alert and Chuck Schillard show. That's where all the good stuff was. Yeah, yeah. You know, I would sit there on Saturday night. Everybody else would be out and I'd be just like recording. And I would send him like the tapes of the show. And then I called home to see how he's doing. And they're like, well, he's talking now, but all he'll talk about is hip-hop.

You know, and DJ Red Alert and, you know, rock the bells and all that. And I was like, oh, cool. So then when I went out that summer, we started, hip-hop group called the Blind and Deaf Crew, Blind and DEF. And we rapped about being blind. I wrote most of the lyrics. I wrote things like, The Blind Deaf Crew, You Know Where Fly, Three of Us, but we got four eyes.

Oh, man. You know, just rapping about being blind. And so then I was very attached to it after that. And hip-hop is very business-oriented, as, you know, particularly in the early days. It was all about business. Strictly business. And so, you know, when I started writing on business, so many of the ideas came from those old hip-hop songs.

And so I started just, you know, putting the lyrics at the top of the post, mostly to give credit where credit was due. Because if, like, you know, I hear an idea. This is my inspiration. So I'm going to, you know. Yeah, just put it out there. So, like, you know it came from. I didn't come up with this idea.

It came from Rock Kim. It came from Rick Rawe. or whatever. And so then I got really associated with it and all that kind of thing. Okay. It was funny, though, because knowing where I'm coming from, I'm of a different vintage though, right? Yeah. So it would be impossible for you to be growing up on the West Coast and be of your vintage and actually, like, grow up in hip-hop because it just didn't travel. Yeah. There's no DSPs and stuff. So it's like, versus like, you know, I'll be six years old listening to, you know, wherever it's Hammer or whatever. Yeah. I'm nine listening to

36 chambers. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. So it's like a different walk-out experience. Actually, it's so my friend Roland Friar, the economist at Harvard, just wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal, kind of on, you know, did influence or did hip-hop had a bad influence in society? And the way he did this study, which turns out, no, it had a positive influence, was because no radio stations played it, so you could track the cohorts from the cities that had hip-hop

and see how they did versus the cities that didn't have hip-hop. and it turns out the city's with hip-hop out. The inspiration level is just like, you know, their level, like that's the drive. You're getting into college, you're doing your thing. And now, like, you're getting into entrepreneurship. How do we get into, like, I'm going to work at, and work with Mark and do all these things?

I own in position to be an entrepreneur very easily in that, you know, by the time I was 25, I was married, I had three kids. Like, so I was just trying to keep the lights on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, keep the lights on. That was my main thing. And, you know, starting a company was a much more unusual thing in those days. You know, it's kind of more systematized now.

So I started as an engineer at a company called Silicon Graphics. Was it Ken? Yeah, Ken Coleman. Yeah, yeah. Ken hired me in there. You know, I kind of learned the ropes, learned how to be an engineer, learn product management, that kind of thing. And I ended up going to Netscape.

A lot of XSCI guys were there. And that's where I met Mark. And, you know, I was still just trying to, like, I was happy to be, like, making money. And, you know, Netscape went public. I think I got a million dollars out of that, which was crazy. I couldn't even believe it. I was so rich. So you thought.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so I thought. And then, you know, once Netscape kind of got sold, Mark is like, hey, we should start another company. You know, I didn't have crossed my mind to do something like that. And I was like, well, who's going to be the CEO? He's like, you. And I'm like, all right. I'll try. You know, shit, I don't know anything about being CEO, but that's kind of how I got started.

I mean, it also actually speaks to a lot of, you know, the, the sinusoidal trajectory of, say, company that finally gets to an opportunity. So, like, the first time you really step into something, there's going to be downs, right? Always. Like, I don't know anybody who doesn't have, like, not just downs, but. existential what we call the the with you moment where fucked it's over like that like you can't build a company

without that like that happens yeah and a lot of look a lot of companies fail just because the founders can't handle that moment it's a tough moment yeah it's definitely I find it to be like this whole I'm new to the investment game we're the past five years but like

I do find it like the people or is everything I'm very good at picking a company yeah right I feel like it's probably ever-going evolution to, like, identify great people. Yeah. You know? Yeah, well, it's really hard because you only know so much about them, and it's a little, like, dating right there coming,

they're putting their best foot forward when they meet you. So you really have to get deep into their background. But then, like, it's also, it's one of those things where you're one person in life and you're another person under extreme pressure. Like, those are two different cats. Yeah, your whole chemistry starts working differently. Yeah. So, like, how people are going to perform in that situation is really, you know, if you haven't seen it, you don't know what's going to happen, to be honest with you.

And I mean, this is, like, one of the reasons, you know, Elon love him or hate him, God bless him. That guy is very good under pressure. Yeah, like, he is like there's no amount of pressure where he's not going to perform. You know, that is what you want. And that's why he's probably the greatest entrepreneur of our time. So when you're all the way down to the stream down, what? What is one bar that comes to mind? It was popping your mind, but, like, well, I got to keep going.

Well, it's probably from Ether, you know. What has it left me for dead, stiff and rotten, the Nas line? You know, like, that's the feeling like, okay. Because you remember, Ether came out when Nas was at his lowest. He was way down, and Jay-Z was like literally the biggest rapper in the world at that point. And he got hit with the takeover where Kanye did the beat. Right. Like, it was that fucking, you know, like everybody was like, wow.

And then Jay-Z rapped his ass off that great fucking song, Takeover. And Nas at the bottom, bottom, bottom that any rapper could possibly be at. And he said it, you know, you left me for dead. Right. And so that's the feeling you want, like, now I'm going to come out with Ether. Right. When you think I'm dead, I'm going to come out with ether. Because of Kendrick, we have the evolution of not like us, which is like Ether 2.0.

It is. It is. It's a little, that's a little different one to me in the way that went down. Because Kendrick's career was also on the down during that battle. But he wasn't as far down as Nas was at the time. But Drake was like Jay-Z. There's no question. But that was more your take.

taking rap in a direction I don't like. Right, right, right. You know, so I'm going to have to get out of my room. I'm going to stop talking to myself. You know, I just did a whole album of introspection. I'm going to come out of that and I'm going to deal with you right now. I don't like you. That's a little different feeling for me, but I got you.

All right, so we digress. Back to the tech thing that all you all want to hear about. So build the company, sell the company. Yeah. I don't know why, I mean, I don't know why nearly immediately after that, you decided to go build a venture firm and then mess around with Newmie. But, like, tell me about this 2008 to 2011 time where, like, you said, I'm going to build a venture capital firm.

Yeah. And when you did it, it was nothing like the other stuff, really. I mean, the way you approach people, all these people running around the building. Who's a partner? Who's not a partner? Like, what's going on in this building, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so the idea was it kind of came out of how hard it was to build the company.

And I always felt like, wow, if you're a founder and you start something, you know, you don't know how to be a CEO. You don't know how to build a company. And you kind of think, at least in those days, I thought, oh, the venture capital firm would help me with that. And they weren't really set up for that idea. They were kind of like really, really good at picking entrepreneurs. They made a lot of money for their LPs. And they were very smart guys. But, you know, to build a company,

you need to feel like you can run a company. And that means you've got to be able to call important people. You've got to be able to kind of have somebody to talk to who really knows what you're going through, who can, you know, help you with things. You need to be able to have, like, turn on a recruiting, Army, you've got to, you know, these days you've got to be able to deal with, like, policy issues and this kind of stuff. And so, you know, the idea behind Andresa and Horowitz was really, like,

wow, what if we made a better product, not for LPs, but for entrepreneurs? The first thing you have to do is, like, forego, like, a lot of your salary, because you have to take the fee monies and build this platform to, you know, help entrepreneurs kind of build their company. And that was kind of the initial idea with it. And then we always think, you know, thought the thing that we could provide entrepreneurs that they would value most would be this network. And we always thought of the firm as a network. And so how does the, you know, how can you, like if I could call anybody, if that kind of bleeds into everything you do because now, like, you feel like somebody. This was the idea behind the CEO barbecue. Oh, if I go to a

barbecue. And I'm me, just like this little entrepreneur, and then I see Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Kanye West. Okay, I must be important. Like, I feel like I have a whole other feeling about myself, and that was like a lot of the idea of the firm. Because there's a network, you know, one of the things I thought I was like, you know, like I'm looking at all these venture capital firms, and not any of them are networked like literally into any black people.

And I know that's like a crude way of saying it, but like I was like, wow, that's an opportunity for me. I'm going to fucking build that network. I'm going to build the definitive network in Silicon Valley for, like, black entrepreneurs, black entertainment people, everything. And that's going to give me a huge advantage because that's a whole, like, important part of the world. And so that brought me to Newmie, which was like, and I was looking under every rock. I mean, NUME was definitely under a rock. So this woman, Angela, ran it, and it was an accelerator for black entrepreneurs.

There was a lot of talent and NUME. So there was you. There was Chris Bennett, Chris Lyons. Brian Bertine. Nate Jones. Fred Hudson. Oh, yeah, Fred Hudson. Yeah, yeah, from Pigeonle.

Yeah. A lot of talent and a lot of ambition, I would say, you know, how to knew me. So that ended up being like a really good idea, at least for me. I think for the firm, we got a lot of value out of it. You know, we're a major investor in Wonder School. You know, we had Chris and Chris still works here. It's done a lot of things. You know, and they worked here for a while.

Yeah. All those kinds of things. So, yeah, it's been... Yeah, for the small investment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went and I spoke it to me twice. Right. Aaron and Namdi do 645.

Aaron came out to... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, Aaron popped up. They popped up to do. You were like, I'm going to be bent. I'm going to see what's going on. Like, you know, they started their thing. That I should have hired Aaron.

That's the one that Chris Lyons got, but... Being a VC is about picking winners. Tell me something about picking winners. How do you manage your motion? How do you become great at picking winners? It's a tricky thing because... really what ends up mattering is the entrepreneur. Like if you just, if you had a perfect rating system

and you could exact go, like, do you want this entrepreneur or this idea, you would take the, you'd take the entrepreneur every time. The problem is, you know, as you were saying, like it's hard to evaluate entrepreneurs. You don't know that much about them when they come in and you don't know how they're going to perform under pressure. And so then you need the,

idea to help you evaluate the entrepreneur. Like, what did they go through in their life to get to that idea? And how good an idea is it? And, like, you know, how much original work did they do to get there and that kind of thing. So, like, that ends up being the lens at which you see the entrepreneur. Now, the mistake to make is, like, there's something you don't like about the idea and you pass on a great entrepreneur. Like, that's a mistake. Or, you know, vice versa, you're like, this is a great entrepreneur, but you don't realize his idea is no good. So not as good as you think. So it is tricky in that sense.

And then, yeah, you don't know how they're going to perform under pressure. And then the other thing that, like the other trap that, you know, we'll get into from time to time is, you know, we have all these great analytical people and they'll be able to figure out everything that's wrong with any idea or any kind. company or any entrepreneur. But that's not what matters. What matters is are their strengths world class? So are they the best in the world at something? And then you overlook everything else. Like kind of going back to Elon, like he's got some personality issues. You know, like he upsets people from time to time. But like his strength is so ridiculous that you would put money on that every time, and I think you want to look at the magnitude of the strength. And I think that, like,

every entrepreneur we see who gets to us is pretty good. But are they, like, outstanding? Are they better than everybody else at this? And that's what makes a company great, and that's what makes an entrepreneur great. Not, oh, they don't know how to do this, or, well, they know nothing about finance, or they're, you know, whatever they're done with marketing. Like, there's so many things that are wrong with every entrepreneur, every great entrepreneur has got something like horribly wrong with them, but that's okay. Okay.

You know, it's what are they truly great at what they're great at? When you think about, you know, picking the person and be like, well, those things, not so good, but this person is going to make some moves. Definitely sent waves through Silicon Valley, but blowback from the culture on like, you know, the firm kind of getting behind the Trump campaign to some degree, you know? And so when you think about something like that, do you think about it as, well,

I know something that some people don't, so this person's going to, you know, arise as the winner, or this person is the winner, and so I'm going to play the game with the winner. Is the former or the latter, how do you think about the decision? Oh, with the Trump thing, you know, like we try to be, as a political as possible, but we had run into

massive problem with the Biden administration on kind of two fronts. One was crypto and then the other was AI. So on crypto, they basically, they didn't outlaw, so they did these extra legal things.

So they kicked all the crypto entrepreneurs out of the banking system. They hit them with Wells notices that were like fake lawsuits, you know, things that were just undefined. And so we were trying to get them to, like, can we just have some laws?

Can we have some regulation? And they blocked all of that, and they just kind of attacked the industry because they didn't want it. And so we were stuck there. But the bigger problem around that was we didn't have a relationship with the administration. I mean, we couldn't get one.

And it drove me crazy because, like, I mean, I called everybody I knew to try and, like, can we get a meeting with Biden? And people call me arrogant, like, for you to ask for a meeting with the president. Do you deserve a meeting with Biden? Yeah. But, you know, then I come to find out, like,

so I spoke to Sundar. At Google, I spoke to Dave Ricks and Eli Lilly. Yeah. Tim Cook, nobody got a meeting with Biden. The whole four years. And then the same thing happened to us. And AI, where they went as far as, like, the last executive order from the Biden administration

was to say it's illegal to sell a GPU without prior government approval for that sale. So like it would have literally taken us out of the AI, you know, competition at the chip level. The thing that we decide is, okay, like we've got to have a relationship

with who's ever the next president. And at the time we endorsed Trump on tech, he was clearly going to beat Biden. Like, there was no question. Then, Kamala came around. You know, Kamala came around. And so it was like, okay, well, what if she went?

Like, we knew we weren't going to have relationship with Biden, so there was nothing to lose. With Kamala, you know, I had known Kamala Kamala came to the CEO barbecue, like she'd been in my house many times, so forth. I knew her. And I called her up, and, like, I actually, I wrote a tech policy for the campaign. You know, they didn't want to take a tech policy position, which that made me nervous. I've got to be quite honest with you on. But on that, you know, we made a donation to her just so that we would have a relationship there. Anytime you're involved in politics, people are going to be mad.

They're mad at Nikki Minaj now. They're mad at Kanye. They're mad. From my position, I have to make the world work for new tech companies. Like that is, you know, our responsibility as kind of the big VC. I mean, for me, like, probably not a decision I could make, but I'm not sitting in your position either. I also don't run a big building as a money machine. You know, there's two different, two different size to that.

Let's look at it this way. From your vantage, you come from a little bit of your vintage. you come from like real hippie this is Silicon Valley people's running around the streets probably no shoes on like that Silicon Valley right yeah yeah no it used to be different

yeah yeah and so like that Silicon Valley was like let's call it performatively inclusive it was exclusive since this is why we did new me and all these things like you could be involved but kind of not

because it was a thing but now we're kind of in the space of performatively exclusive but it's quite the special It's quite a special time for it to be inclusive because AI has commoditized the ability to build. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like people who

were otherwise not in the game can now be the expert and be the best to marry people with the MIT. Okay, so I have a little different version of the history. And you got the history, so I'm not going to argue the history, so this is what we're here. Yeah, so I think in the early days, the only people who wanted to be in tech in the 80s

were like, you know, Jews, Chinese, and Indians men. Like, there were just very few women who majored in computer science who did anything like that or anybody else. And Ken was like super exceptional. Tech wasn't sexy. Yeah, it wasn't built to be exclusive. It was like these are the people who are participating.

I know what I'm good at. I value it highly. I can test for it in an interview. I'm hiring me. Like that's just generally how it goes. So like once you start that way, that's how it grows. And look, not that nobody can get in,

but the people that get in are like hyper exceptional. like can, you know, like it's not that different than hip hop, right? Yeah. M&M can get in. That's a very high level. Yeah, that's a very fucking high level to be M&M. I mean, like, Jesus Christ, like, that guy is.

But like, if you're a mediocre white guy, like, you got no chance. No. And like, some of that is because, you know, you get tuned. It's the media, it's the culture, like how things, I always tell people this. Like, I say, well, I'm explaining how people are, how people self-select and how the media is shaped our worldview, I'd be like, if I come in the room dressed like this, And the next guy comes in the room with like a pocket protector and glasses and can't talk well, who's the better developer? Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Oh, it's me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? So, like, you know. Yeah, you have to overcome that. Yeah, for sure. So I think that, what we did is we said, look, you're, you know you, but you don't know the skills you don't have. And you have no idea how to test for them. And you have no idea that they even exist. So, like, how do you, how do we get around that?

And so, you know, we created this hiring process where we have people from different backgrounds look at every job profile and go, hey, you know, like if I was hiring that, I would look at these things. You know, you need a relationship process. Actually, how we got Chris was, it was really a relationship job, but the hiring manager had been an investment banker. So he had all these investment banker criteria. And if anybody knows, Chris Lyons knows he would flunk that test. But I was like, well, but this is a relationship job. So, like, let's look for people who are, like, relationship people. And I was like, he is a, like, world-class relationship guy, like, really good. And so because we hired him on that criteria, which was the right criteria for that job, that meant once he got on board, we knew why we hired it. If we had thought that we hired him for financial modeling and he was black, he would never get to promote it.

He's been promoted like eight times. Yeah. And that's because we know what it is, right? Like we know the special thing that he has. Philosophically, I think the right answer is you really want to widen the bar, not lower the bar, raise the bar. You want to widen the bar so that you can see all the criteria that you would need that job, even if you don't have it.

You have to get hired on the same criteria. Right. I remember why I went to get a job as an engineer. So, like, there was a moment, and we got a job for engineer for like a year. Yeah. And I'm the only black person there. I was like, cool. And I was like, all these people are talking crazy here.

This person is talking sideways to me at work. Now I understand why this doesn't work because if you don't run the process properly, you end up putting, you not build a build a real culture. Like these people actually can't work together. They don't respect to each other. Yeah, yeah. They don't know why they hire you.

You know? Yeah, it's crazy. Well, there's a funny story that I had this crazy conversation with Stout. And, you know, he calls me up. He goes, Ben, I used to be president of Sony Urban Music. And I was like, yeah, Steve, you know, it's Steve. You know, he's talking loud. Yeah.

And I was like, I know. And he goes, yeah, but it wasn't urban music. It was black music. They made me call it urban music to not sound racist. And it's like, oh, shit, that was stupid. And he's like, no, no, no. The stupid part was because we called it urban music, I wasn't allowed to market in rural areas.

Like all black people live in the city. I was like, that's the dumb shit. And he's like, now I don't even think you're listening very carefully. I was president of Sony urban music. I had Michael Jackson. But white people don't like Michael Jackson. It wasn't fucking black music. It was music.

Right. But the program for it made it smaller than it was, not bigger than it was. And I was like, you know, that's what we did in Silicon Valley. We had urban HR. It's like, no, it's talent. It's not black talent. It's talent. You just have to be able to see the talent.

You've got to be able to listen to the music. And then now it's gone the other way, as you said, like, I agree with that. It's like, oh, it's a meritocracy. Well, what does that mean? Well, I'm going to hire me. And it's like, okay. And I think, like, it's been a big advantage for us in venture capital. Like, I mean, you know this.

Like, we get to people that they're never getting, to. Right. Because we've got people who can do those things that they won't hire because they can't, not because they, it's not a racist thing. It's they can't see them. They can't see them. They're blind. They're talent blind. And, you know, like, you know, and we're, like, all of us are talent blind. That's why you need like a process and a methodology to open your aperture and stuff. You know, Margaret, the legendary Margaret Wenmark is running marketing for us. And I was like, she's around forever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's here at the beginning, right? Yeah, yeah, from the very beginning. I remember I met her, I was like, oh, man, I need someone like this one day. Yeah, she had all women working for her. Yeah, yeah. I was like, Margaret, like, why can't any men like past year?

Like, what's in your profile? They can't fucking qualify for it. She's like helpfulness. It's like, she's right. And but, you know, like that, think about that as a criteria. Like, how valuable is that in venture capital? Like, everybody wants to, like, venture capitalist who's helpful. Mm-hmm.

But I, you know, I know how to interview for that and so forth. And so, like, by developing that, you know, at the time, we were, you know, predominantly men. Now I think for, like, 54% women, but we didn't have any women criteria. We just had, like, helpfulness as criteria. You know, these are the things that change that make you stronger, not like you're not compromising. You're actually getting better by being able to see. If you can see all the talent, like, we're all in a talent war. We're all competing for talent.

If you can see more talent, you're going to win. We're getting to the climax here in terms of like, all right, now we have AI. Like, I actually, I'm actually feeling a little bit of an itch. Like, I'm not building right now. Like, I literally can't make it through a day without generating some code and building something because... Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy, right? I'd be on cloud code on my phone.

And it's like, you know, now, like, for instance... By the way, I was talking to Deshaun. He became an engineer. Oh, yeah, no. No, but I told you Sean. I was like, hey, man, you don't have to hire anybody to build this stuff. He's like, all right, I'm hopping. And now he's addicted.

Yeah. addicted. He's out of his mind. Right. I got an agent here. I got an agent here. I only got four people, but maybe I can make it too. Like, you know, like he's almost like a AI fiend. He's a. I think there's like literally, I think there's going to be AI rehab at some point. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's like if you right now, if you can't force, if you're not like in your bed at night like go to sleep, go to sleep, then you're not on it. Because like there's so much that can be done. It's like, it's crazy. But I guess my point is that going back to like the larger aperture of opportunity here, like now we can.

and like open up the the stratosphere for like people who would not have been a fit before. Like if I come to you, I've never built a product in my life, I've never worked at a tech company. Oh yeah, I work to this oil and gas company. I really know this process works. I'm going to build this company. It'd be hard to accept that this might work. Oh, yeah. Right.

But now you can be like. You can go from my idea to company very fast. Right. Yeah. Without being able to hire all the barriers that were there before aren't there. I 100% agree. I mean, like, that's why I think it's like, it's more important to get people into tech because they're not even getting into tech.

They're just getting into ideas. It's like, okay, here's, and this is, by the way, it's happening in every, like, creativity is now the big thing. Creativity is the thing. Yeah, if you can use the tools, all you need to do is be creative. This opportunity is probably even bigger because, right, any idea you have, you can make. You can manifest. We both were around when the Internet began. on BBS boards and prodigy.

Dot net and all these things. You mean, like... CompuCereb, yeah. Yeah, all that. You know, a million little discs sitting around. Yeah. You know... AOL used to fucking send a disc to you.

Like, you couldn't open your mail without getting in the AOA. Cereal Box O. It's AOL. Yeah, memory was... No, I was expecting a toy. Yeah, memory was hard to come by back then. I used to go to the store. I used to get, like, a box of them and just, like, can't put tissue in that.

And I record on that. But the internet was big. I mean, that's how we both got to this conversation right here. But, like, to me, this is, like, this is bigger. This is, like, the fourth industrial revolution. Like, what's your... It's big, right? I think it's clearly bigger than the internet.

People talk about it, like, it's a sector. Like, we're talking about, oh, it's a bubble, like, crypto. I'm like, crypto is a thing. It's a conduit, but, like, it ain't AI. You know, AI is a new computer. Right. Like, it's a, it's like the reinvention of the computer. Imagine the entire computer industry got invented,

but instead of it developing over 80 years, it developed over two years. And then, like, that's AI. And then it's more powerful on top of that. Anything you think you can solve, you can solve. You know, we've already seen it. Like, people are taking it so for granted because they're so worried about, like, Skynet or whatever,

but traffic deaths, huge problem. Solved with Waymo. You know, can't. We're solving that for sure. Any idea, any, like, major problem, like, is getting figured out with AI right now. Like, it is wild. So, like, as an entrepreneur, it's, like, just find a problem. Right.

You know, and you can go, like, solve it, and people will be, like, fired up and willing to pay you. And you've got a business. I mean, it is, it is, like, that powerful. So you've been through a bubble, like a real bubble. You know, there's money going out. out here they ain't coming back to people. Like, where is the bubble-esque part of this? I don't be concerned with it, but where is, for everybody who's talking about a bubble,

where's the bubble component to this situation? You got to remember right there. Oh, the internet bubble. Well, like, the internet's here. It's kind of important. It could have made a lot of money on it. Look, where bubbles come from, and where the internet bubble came from is, like, there's technology and how that advances.

And then there's consumer adoption, and that's, like, goes more in 50s. and starts. And then there's investor sentiment. Right. And investors are like manic-depressive. They get over-excited and then they get totally depressed. He's never going to work. And they'll actually, so there's a kind of opposite of the bubble going on right now, I think, a little bit with investors. But in the internet time, what happened was investors were like, the internet, it's the biggest thing ever. I'm putting all my money on it. And it's never going to go down in price. Okay, the problem was the time they decided to do that, there was like 50 or 60 million people on the internet. Half of them were on dial-up. It was very expensive

to build these things. There wasn't a big enough market to make money and selling a lot of the ideas that people had. So, like, the thing crashed down. I mean, you know, it didn't. Right now, though, like, Chezbtee didn't make no money. These cats are like, Jimmy and I, they give me the way, they give them the way for free. How can we catch up with Anthropic? Like, just keep running this computer up. Well, kind of. Open AI went like zero to $20 billion since November 20, 22. Yeah, yeah.

So like that. And by the way, you know, the price of a token is dropping like a hundredfold a year. Yeah, wait for that crossover. Like, consumer adoption is going faster than anything we've ever seen. The technology works and is advancing as fast as everything we've seen. And are people going to get, because we're so early in the cycle, there are companies that are in a good position now that there will be a technological change

and they'll get wiped out. But that's not really a bubble to me. That's just like investing. That's just how it goes. That's part of the times. People were trying to say, oh, the demand for Nvidia chips is artificial. They're just investing in companies and that's where,

like the demand for Nvidia chips right now is just unlimited. Like, they can't make enough chips. Like, that is actually true. And so a lot of the narratives around the AI bubble, I just think, aren't correct. Will we hit a bubble at some point? Yeah, quite possibly. I mean, look, we had a bandwidth bubble.

A bandwidth bubble in 2001. We had too much bandwidth. Like, how could that even be possible? Like, we were at the beginning days of the Internet. How could you have too much bandwidth? Well, the bottleneck moved, right? Like, we had a bandwidth bottleneck, and then that became like, oh, the servers weren't good enough.

We couldn't even put the bits on fast enough to serve the video. We quite possibly could have a temporary glut in GPUs if we don't have enough power or, like, you know, or cooling or whatever. Like, that's obviously possible. So the big thing that's different about AI is in my generation and in every generation, you could not throw money out of problem. Right? Like, if I want to catch you in your company and I said, I'm going to hire a thousand engineers tomorrow.

Now, I have data and I buy enough GPUs like I can solve shit. And the greatest example to me is, right, like Open AI got to $10 billion in revenue. And Elon started a colt. Oh, yeah. And he, like, you know, he's almost at product parity with them, you know, in like a couple of years. This is an important position, though. So how does this change, how you choose what you're going to invest in? The world, to me, they've seen the change happen, but they're not changing the way they're thinking around like, this is the deal I should do.

this is the person I should back. You have to reshape how you think about investing in company. It's hard to calculate. So there's ones that you want to expect to sustain that do. So like one of my favorite examples is 11 labs. Oh, yeah, those guys. 11 labs, okay, of all the things, if you rewind back to when we made the first investment, that you would go, okay, they're probably vulnerable to the big guys is,

well, the big guys aren't going to be able to make their models talk. Really? They will be able to. Of course, they'll be able to make their models talk. But it turns out that 11 Labs, a very, very clever company, one, they got in the developer stack. They built a better product for developers. So what does that do? Well, they've got a building set of customers, and then they're in the data feedback loop.

Oh, they're getting every, you know, voice case and so forth. And they're training their model on better proprietary, like real world in use data. then they built the product kind of subtleties around it. So, oh, yours can talk, but I can talk in Spanish, exactly like I'm talking in English with the exact intonations, laughing in the right way, everything perfectly. Oh, guess what? I get the Netflix deal.

I get the Televisa deal. Now I got more. You know, like, and now I've got more feedback. So I'm kind of building up a voice product that's very, very, very special. And that, yeah, you could throw more GPUs at yours, but you may not be able to do the things I do because I've got better data. I've got, you know, like I've got a model that's really tuned to the use cases that have value,

as opposed to, like, every damn thing that everybody wants to do. And so, like, there are things like that. On the other hand, you know, like every software company, SaaS company in the world, is trading out a very low multiple right now. Because there's a real belief that, hey, even as a customer, I can rewrite sales for us. No, it's real life. I was like, you know what happened? I got in clog code, right?

This must have been a year ago. I got in clog code. I'd already been in cursor. You know, before that, I'm copying from Chesaptu. So I got in clog code and I was like, this goes crazy. I'm never going to look at code again. And then the next day, I was like, cancel HubSpot. I'm building my own CRM.

Like, this thing sucks. Like, I wanted to work for me. Yeah. I could just build my own. One week later, got my own CRM. Yeah, there you go. Affinity? Cancel. Got my own fundraising platform. Like, why, you have to build something that is very special for me to be like, I'm not going to build it myself. And right now, obviously, that's unique to engineers or like, product order of people. But like, the time may come where you're on a website.

Yeah. And you're like, I don't want it this way. Can I have it this way? So I think the world, or at least Wall Street is anticipating that a lot. Now, look, there are other things that those companies have, and you know, for your building something for you. Right. If it's at the individual level, probably a little different than, you know, American Airlines running whatever SAP or something. Like, that's a little harder to figure out what the hell that is. And then, you know, they've got data and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But still, yet and still, like, that's a real thing where you can chase you by using GPUs that you don't.

even own that Anthropocones can chase down HubSpot for your use case like that. Oh, right. Like that. You wouldn't even consider doing that. No, it wasn't even consideration. But now, I was reverse. When I look at buying some software, I'm like, is this really worth $400 a month? Or should I spend four days and just have my own?

You know, like, there's a reverse consideration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cheers, sir. All right. I'm going to actually bring out my paper for my senior question. I want to get my signature questions right. All right. This is about legacy.

When the next vintage of VCs talk about Ben Horowitz, what do you want them to say? What's your mark on the game? You know, it says something. I really don't think. Mike Tyson had a great question on Legacy. He's like, what are you talking about? I'm just going to be dust, dirt.

It's a crazy question. I don't think about that. I, you know, for me, like, I hope that people feel like I move the culture of investing to a better place, to one that's more about helping people build companies than, you know, just make money. So that would be, that would be my hope. Okay, so before we finish up that question, then I was talking about BC, think about Ben as the human. Because your name's on the firm, they made you have your name on the firm. Like, you know, just direct association all the times.

Me as a, you know, Ben as a human, when you leave, it's like, what makes you feel accomplished? What makes you feel like, oh, I did my thing? Yeah, you know, I really feel like it's the, you know, the people who work here. Like, you know, going back to the NFL analogy, you know, the coaching tree idea and that kind of Like, I mean, to me, you know, how many, you know, who are the great people who worked here and then, like, did they become better people while they were here? And, like, that's the main thing on the business front. You know, I think, you know, on the personal, personal front, like paid and full to me is really, really important. And I intimidate everybody into coming, as you know, thank you for your contributions.

You know, if we forget the people who kind of sacrifice their lives to inspire us, then, you know, you get into a very nihilistic existence. We're going to make those guys feel as important as they should feel. And then in return, like, we just get so much more meaning out of who we are. And so that's a, you know, that's, you know, that's, that's, super important to me. Yeah. I think, you know, as that can grow,

that can become, you know, the sag, the pension plan, the, you know, the base of, you know, hip hop continues. I think it's a, I think it's an important thing that probably should have been done a long time ago. People are too busy talking about urban radio. Yeah, you know, like, it's so funny how many,

like one of the things that got me to start paid and full is so many, like, podcasts and this and that thing. Somebody ought to do something about this. Someone should get into their flowers before they're gone. Yeah, yeah. It's like, well, let me go back to my back. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I was just like, well, why don't I just do it?

And, you know, like I said, I get way more out of it, I think, than everybody. So, you know, it's an easy thing to do in that sense. What's something that, you know, you think's going to happen, you know, in the next, say, eight to 12 months as a result with, you know, the current landscape in technology? So I think the infrastructure for AI is just out of date is not strong enough. It's just like Braun. And it is very reminiscent to me of the infrastructure for cloud computing being wrong. Like everybody in the beginning of cloud computing is like, oh, we'll just take, you know, our software.

We'll put it in the cloud. We'll put on the other side of the wire. And then that'll work. But, you know, it didn't work at all. And eventually we rebuilt everything from storage to networking to, you know, the way operating systems work and virtualization and containers and this and that and the other. And, like, you know, the whole thing got reconstructed. If you look at AI, I mean, just start with a workload, right? So somebody makes a database query.

You kind of know what that is. Somebody makes an AI query. Like, I think it would run for a week. I mean, who knows what? You know, so like, what is the underlying set of systems that handles those requests? that manages that correctly and so forth. Like it doesn't exist yet. If you look at, I mean,

Nvidia, God bless them, but like, you know, you want to talk about a power-hungry, low-yield, you know, chip built for something entirely different. Yeah, for playing video games. And, you know, now that we know like a fair amount about the models, is that the right answer? Probably not.

Then the models themselves. Like, I mean, these models, you literally have to suck down all the data on the Internet to get them true. Right. Like that seems like a lot of training. Is that going to be where we end? So I think that the, you know, from the model on down, everything's going to change. And there's going to be a lot of opportunity in that.

All right, man. Well, thanks for joining us. All right. Oh, no, great. Great to be here. Great to kick it off. Yeah, for sure, man. No, it's going to be a great series. Appreciate you kick it off with me. Yes, sir. All right. Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review, and share it with your friends and family.

For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcast, and Spotify. Follow us on X at A16Z and subscribe to our substack at A16Z.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. This information is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any investment or financial product. This podcast has been produced by a third party and may include pay promotional advertisements, other company references, and individuals unaffiliated with A16Z. Such advertisements, companies, and individuals are not endorsed by AH Capital Management LLC, A16Z, or any of its affiliates. Information is from sources deemed reliable on the date of publication, but A16Z does not guarantee its accuracy.