20VC: a16z's Ben Horowitz on How To Create An Environment of Trust with Founders, How and Why Creating Shocking Rules Is So Impactful To Culture & What The Samurai, Shaka Senghor and Toussaint Teach Us About Company Culture Building

Ben Horowitz is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the leading and most prestigious venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, Github, Slack, Lyft, Coinbase and many more incredible companies. Ben is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and the upcoming Harper Business book, What You Do Is Who You Are, available October 29. Prior to a16z, Ben was Co-Founder and CEO of Opsware, acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications, including the widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Ben make his way into the world of venture having previously co-founded Opsware? What was the original thinking for a16z? How did seeing the booms and busts of the market as an operator, impact how Ben thinks about investing today? 2.) In the book Ben says, "If soldiers trust the general, communication will be vastly more efficient". What have been Ben's biggest lessons on how to create an environment of trust quickly? As a board member, how does Ben create an environment of trust for the founder? What is Ben's advice to Harry having just gained his first board seat last year? 3.) Ben has said before of the importance of creating "shocking rules". What are the rules for creating these shocking rules? What are the best rules composed of? Given their shocking nature, how does one instil them in the organisation? What does Ben think is the most shocking rule he has implemented at a16z? 4.) What does ben believe that founders can take away from the rituals of the Samurai? Why does Ben believe that "meditating on company downfalls will enable you to build your culture the right way". Why is the negativity so helpful in forming the right culture? How does ben advise founders when their company is struggling, the team knows it and morale is low? What happened at Okta? How did they turn the culture and business around? 5.) Ben has previously spoken about bringing in external leadership from the cultures you want to master. How does one know when is the right time to bring in this external influence? What can we learn from observing Google Cloud's strategy? How does one retain the old culture but augment it with the new? What were some of Ben's biggest hiring lessons when operating? How does Ben get employees to "feel a sense of urgency", when a change needs to occur? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Ben’s Fave Book: The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ben on Twitter here!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  So we have now recorded over 2,500 episodes of the 20 Minute VC, but when I started before the very first one, remember, I did not know one single VC when I started, but I wrote the names of four VCs I most wanted to have on the show. Brad Feld, Josh Koppelmann, Bill Gurley and Ben Horowitz. Now, I could not be more thrilled or honoured as we complete that list today with Ben joining us in the hot seat. This is one I've wanted to do for so, so long. On Ben, he's a co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the leading and most prestigious venture firms of the last decade, with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, GitHub, Slack, Lyft, Coinbase and many more incredible companies. Ben is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things,

• 0:41Harry Stebbings?

  and the upcoming Harper Business book, What You Do Is Who You Are, available on October the 29th. Prior to Andreessen, Ben was co-founder and CEO of Opsware, acquired by Hewlett Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications, including the widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. But before we dive into the show today, if you have employees and they're anything like me, you need spend management, and that's where Airbase come in. Airbase is the ideal cloud-based spend management platform for growing startups. With Airbase, you can issue virtual and physical cards for card payments, as well as checks and ACH transfers for invoice payments. They also have an incredible pre-approval system for expense requests,

• 1:23Harry Stebbings?

  so you see expenses as employees request them, instead of only learning about them when the statement comes through at the end of the month. And finally, because of all the transaction flows through the Airbase system, they can really help you automate a ton of accounting work, like coding expenses, collecting invoices and receipts and more. And that's why Gusto, Front and Segment all love Airbase. Simply head over to airbase.com to book a demo and find out how to get up to 1.5% cash back on your monthly spend. But wait a minute, to have spend management, you have to have a spend. And my word, it is five weeks, that is all the time that stands between you, your online business and the holiday season. Will you have marketing budget to boost your best ads? Can your inventory supply keep up with shopper demand on Cyber Monday? Are you starting to sweat?

• 2:06Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:47Harry Stebbings?

  Terminal is your dedicated partner in quickly building really skilled remote engineering teams. How do they deliver on both speed and quality, though? Well, Terminal does this by focusing on everything necessary to successfully source, set up, and support these teams. From really little things like managing office logistics to really big things like benefits, legal, and community, they've developed this proprietary and comprehensive remote team solution based on decades of experience building remote teams across multiple continents, so they know what works. But don't take my word for this. Take the word of Eventbrite, former 20 VC guest Hims, and DialPad, all customers and lovers of Terminal. And you can find out more today at www terminal.io. But it's now time for the show, and I could not be more honoured to welcome Ben Horowitz,

• 3:30Harry Stebbings?

  co-founder and general partner, Andreessen Horowitz.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:42Harry Stebbings?

  Well, Ben, what many do not know is that when I started this show four years ago, I wrote a list of three people that I most wanted to have on the show. Yours was absolutely one of those names, and so I couldn't be more excited for Stay's episode. And thank you so much for joining me, Stay, Ben.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Oh, no, thanks, Harry. It's exciting to finally be on the show.

• 3:58Harry Stebbings?

  Listen, trust me, I'm more excited. But I do want to start, Stay, with a little bit on you. So for those that don't know, how did you make your way into what I always call the Wonderful World Adventure? And how did you come to found Andreessen?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you know, it was an idea that came from Mark and myself. Mark, my partner in the firm. Our experience being entrepreneurs and and the big aha that we had or kind of belief that there was a hole in the market was if you were a founder, you know, kind of an inventor who was building a company, we always kind of felt you were probably the best person to build that company because, you know, the great companies of the past from kind of IBM to Hewlett Packard and then more recently, you know, Microsoft or Google or Facebook were kind of run by their founders for a very long time. And we thought there was a reason for that because it was much harder for a professional CEO to learn to be an innovator than for an innovator to learn to be a CEO. But venture capital firms kind

• 4:51Speaker 02

  of took the opposite point of view. One, there was nothing to help you become a CEO and then they were really, really super confident of replacing you. And so that combination just kind of led to a lot of exits of founders. And so we were like, you know, like if we could build a firm that helped the founder become a CEO, kind of, and we thought there were two dimensions to it. One was just the skill set itself, which is a very big and winding skill set. And it's kind of the reason I wrote the last book. It's just like, can we help people learn this job? And then the other part was the network. Professional CEOs know, like, they know every executive, they know how to raise money, they know, like, everybody in the press, they know all the kind of executives they might need to hire, all the kind of customers they might want to sell to. And like, you know, as an inventor,

• 5:35Speaker 02

  you don't know any of that. And so could we build that network on their behalf? And so that, you know, the architecture of the firm is a lot like that. And so far, so good. It's it's like mostly working.

• 5:45Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, what a what a humble beginning. I know, it's been incredible to see the journey. I do want to ask, I want to learn from you honestly here, Ben. Obviously, you love the first book. But in terms of like macro volatility, you've seen the booms and busts of many a market. I've never, I've never, I've never worked through one. Josh Kaufman said on the shirt made him more conservative. How did seeing the macro volatility impact your investing mentality today, do you think?

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, like, I think I just have a very keen awareness that macroeconomics matter, and no matter how good your business is, it can definitely be impacted by a change in macroeconomics. Now, given that, and of course, during the Dow Con Bowl, it was severely brutal. I think the Nasdaq dropped over 90% from its peak to its trough. So that's going to affect things. On the other hand, there's nothing more unpredictable than macroeconomics. It is a very, very complex system. It's path dependent. It's not analyzable. Everybody's always making predictions, and they're always wrong until they're right, like a broken clock. You don't really want to over anticipate it either. I think the best way to think of

• 6:52Speaker 02

  it is you want to build the company to be able to deal with very, very bad weather. And that generally means that if you're going to spend a lot more money than you're making, then you better have a big balance sheet. And if not, don't wait to put that balance sheet in place. Put it in place if you have to burn money to grow the business. If you don't have it, then you need to probably grow more slowly and more carefully, just because the problem with macroeconomic turns is, as an entrepreneur, you don't get to stay when they happen. And they can come very quickly without warning. And the capital markets can dry up very fast. That's certainly what happened to me. Keep that in mind. And it's tricky, because right at the exact moment when everybody capitulates and goes, oh,

• 7:36Speaker 02

  there will always be money, that's when it goes away. Kind of like in the debt crisis, right? Like, people saw that. It was like, right at the point when CDOs were priced almost like they were cash, that's when the financial crisis hit. At their riskiest point, they were cheapest.

• 7:51Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I'm thrilled to hear that it's unanalyzable from a macro perspective. I've tried for a long time and struggled intensely. But I do want to move on to the book itself, Ben. I absolutely loved the book. And so, before we kind of dive into...

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 8:05Harry Stebbings?

  Not at all. Listen, it was incredible. But before we dive into the kind of culture building in its most intense forms, I do want to start with something that you said very early on in the book. And you say, when it comes to trust and trust building, if soldiers trust the general, communication will be vastly more efficient. What have been your biggest lessons on how to create an environment of trust, maybe quickly and early on?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's a very tricky thing, trust. You want people to trust that you're the right leader, and you're going in the right direction. But you're going to make mistakes. And then if you try and kind of maintain that initial trust by covering up the mistakes, then you can lose trust when they catch you in that kind of dishonesty. And so it's a really, it's a really subtle balance between being optimistic and being able to paint a bright future and being able to be transparent about what's wrong in the company, what needs to be fixed. Because like anything that's wrong in the company, if you're the founder or CEO, it's obviously your fault. So it does get tricky that you have to admit just how flawed you are and talk about how you can go forward.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  And I'll never forget, and Okta went through a very difficult time early on and they had like, you know, very deep attrition. And so Todd asked me to go talk to the company about why, like, why people should stay in the company like it was that bad. I said, look, guys, I said, you're probably sitting here going, okay. And, and the big problem we had is we had the wrong sales strategy. I was like, okay, you know, we got to the wrong sales strategy and like now we're going to new sales strategy and you're probably going, well, like if the guys who drove us into that wall, why aren't they getting us into a new wall this time? And, you know, everybody could tell by their faces, yeah, that's, that's what we're thinking. And I said, but here's, here, here's why. Look, when Todd and Freddie started this company, they didn't know anything about the business compared to what they know now. And, you know, they pursued it hard and like, you know, some of the things they thought weren't right.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Now the decisions are better and everything that we've learned that whole way is going into this decision. And that's why you can trust that it's in the direction. But like, it gets down to that kind of thing. Like, I couldn't get up there and say, we didn't make any mistakes. We just, you know, missed eight quarters in a row because like we're geniuses. We, we had to do something.

• 10:09Harry Stebbings?

  I, I do have to ask, so kind of speaking of trust there internally from the company perspective, I'd love to, I'd love to learn from you here, Ben, as a board member. How do you create an environment of trust where the founder can come to the board with anything? And how do you look to do that as the investor?

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Well, look, I think in order to accomplish that, you really have to be the board member that controls the board. So if you're like a board member and you're the third strongest person on the board and you have a trust relationship with the CEO, that's not going to get it done for obvious reasons. And then if the CEO has the intent that all they want to do is keep their job and that kind of. Outcome and what's best for the company is secondary, then that will also never work. So you both need the CEO to be company first and you to be the strongest member of the board and the CEO and you to kind of understand each other's intents. And it's not impossible. It's certainly the way I aim to operate and work,

• 11:05Speaker 02

  but it's not entirely up to you. Like you can't make that happen in every scenario.

• 11:09Harry Stebbings?

  Totally. No, I do get you. Can I ask, I've just joined my first institutional board a couple of months ago. What advice would you have for me?

• 11:15Speaker 02

  I think you have to think about what what you say means, not just to the people that you're talking to, but the people that you're not talking to, how that information's going to get relayed. You know, things carry more weight when they're coming from the board. So you want to think about the effect of what you're saying, not what you're saying. I think the mistake board members make is they say things because they want to like, sound smart and impress the other board members as opposed to saying things because they know what the reaction might be and how it might affect how the company operates going forward. And then that's where you get a lot of destructive behavior on the board.

• 11:53Harry Stebbings?

  For sure. Listen, I'm sorry for that one. Incredibly unfair, but I had to take the chance. I do, I do, I do want to push this trust kind of down the line there into the culture building and move further into the book because the next pillars, as we discussed in the book, is the element of kind of creating these rules, so to speak. And in the book, you state the importance of creating shocking rules. Before we dive into some rules themselves, what are the rules for creating kind of shocking rules themselves, Ben?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Probably the key thing on a shocking rule is that it has to surprise people. People have to ask themselves, why in the world do we have that rule? That seems crazy. And one of my favorite rules like that, of course, is Tom Coughlin's, if you're on time, you're late. That rule even sounds crazy. And the reason it's important that it sounds that is because if people don't question the rule, then you don't get to the why. And having a rule that kind of everybody is living with, that's very counterintuitive, makes people understand the why. And every time they comply with that rule, they're reminded of why they're doing it. And that kind of thing can really set the culture. And of course, in the Coughlin's case with the, He's coaching the New York Giants football team. And the rule was if you're in, people would show up on time to a meeting and he would fine them like a thousand dollars.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  He'd be like, I'm on time. It's like, hey, you're late. If you're on time, you're late. The why behind it was like, they care so much about the details that they'll never be late because on time is means being early. That needs to ripple into everything they do, how they practice, how they study, how they work. They're always better than everybody else at every detailed aspect of the job. And that's a real kind of cultural statement. So like you, you don't have to tell people, okay, you have to take the whatever right number of steps on this route and practice. Everybody already knows that because if you're on time, you're late.

• 13:31Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, when you look back at the culture building with Andreessen, do you think you've implemented shocking rules? And if so, what do you think kind of stands out in your mind?

• 13:38Speaker 02

  I think we probably have the, it's shocking enough that like it's kind of made its way around the industry. Um, as a legendary, or maybe not legendary, but like thing that people talk about that we do is we find people. Basically, if you're on time, you're on time. But if you're late, it's $10 a minute for a meeting with an entrepreneur. We really strive to have great respect for the entrepreneurial process and what it means. And that means being, you know, if an entrepreneur comes to see us, like, we're going to be on time. You know, they can be late, but we're going to be on time and we're going to be on time every time. And if you had to go to the bathroom, like, too bad. You know, if you were on an important call, too bad. It doesn't matter. There's no excuses. There's no relief for that fine. And people ask, like, why is that? And that gives us a chance to explain the story.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  And you can't work here and not know that's part of the culture. Because every time you're in a meeting with an entrepreneur, you know, you've got to be on time. Or you're gonna, not only do you have to pay a big fine, but it's gonna be very embarrassing because it happens in front of everybody. You know, it helps us make it clear to everybody that despite the fact that people come to us and ask us for money, we're not the whatever big person talking to the little person in the relationship. Like, we're the ones who have to be on time.

• 14:46Harry Stebbings?

  And listen, I absolutely love it as a rule. I'm slightly thrilled that I haven't implemented it here. Otherwise I would be bankrupt. But I do want to move on to kind of, the element of kind of culture maintenance, but also changing. Because you say in the book, creating a great culture means adapting to circumstances. And you say about bringing in outside leadership from the culture you want to penetrate. Trade or master. So the first question here is, how does one know when's the right time to adapt? Or bring in outside leadership to maybe alter that culture?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Well, like, I think if you have elements in your culture that you're missing, or elements that you need in the culture that you don't have, then, you know, that tends to be the time. So like, I mean, I think a really good example is Google trying to build Google Cloud, right? Pretty, everybody in the industry knew that Google didn't have like enterprise DNA. Like, they just didn't, they didn't have that, none of the cultural aspects that make you good at enterprise software or enterprise kind of selling did they have? And then kind of the greatest example of that was, they had, you know, kind of whatever the G suite and the kind of Google apps that had a huge lead in being a cloud apps against Microsoft Office. But, you know, in the early days of that battle, when they had way better product, Google had a way better product.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Ballmer would, and Ballmer was still CEO at the time, would show up in companies and say, I'm here. Is Larry Page going to come visit? And of course, he never did. And like that cultural difference won the day for Microsoft. And so as Google kind of attempts to beef up their enterprise effort and their cloud offering and so forth, they knew they needed somebody who didn't have the googly culture, or at least, you know, maybe had the googly culture, but had some other aspects. And so, you know, at that point, you need to bring in outside leaders at a very senior level that have that in their DNA, and, you know, starting with Diane and then Thomas Kurian.

• 16:30Harry Stebbings?

  And when you approach that kind of culture integration, the old and the new that, do you have to disregard the old, or is it possible to augment the old with the new? How do you think about that transition?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Well, look, you do augment the old. It's not like you throw away your old culture. I have a, I think, a very kind of clear example of this in the book with Toussaint L'ouverture, where there were parts of slave culture, and particularly like the tribal military culture that he kept and that were very effective, but he incorporated kind of lieutenants from, you know, the French, the Spanish and the British to add European military culture to what he was doing, because he knew what he had was incomplete, you know, and particularly when it came to scale. The largest tribal armies just weren't that big. And of course, in the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint built the slave army up to 500,000 soldiers. So you get to that scale, you need cultural things that you wouldn't have had in a tribal army. But yet, he preserved some of the real strengths of it.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  And one of my favorite ones is probably. The European military all kind of marched in a line. The reason that they had to do that was communication. You know, they were communicating through like notes and talking. And Toussaint was able to basically adopt the singing culture of the slaves to basically send the instructions across long distances. So they, you know, they were able to surround their opponents. And then at a certain point in a song, that would indicate basically the command. And so they had this long distance kind of encrypted communication scheme that they like literally lifted right out of the culture. And that's an example of when you can do both. I think in business, you know, they may come into conflict though. And you have to decide what culture, what elements do you need more in that case?

• 18:07Harry Stebbings?

  There's one case in the book, though, Ben, that I really do love. And it's a case of kind of the cultural integration of kind of the old and the new. And it's when you hired Mark Cranny. I'd love to hear what some of your lessons from hiring Mark and what did that experience teach you?

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I learned so much. The first is just how do you hire an executive and what is that process? And it turns out it's very different than a process you might use for another position. So if you're hiring an engineer, then every engineer on that team knows how to do that job and may have something interesting to find out in the interview process. A lot of times you'll see rules in early stage companies where, okay, everybody's got to vote thumbs up in order for us to hire this person. Or everybody's got to score them eight out of 10 or better or whatever. But with an executive, that kind of policy can get destructive very fast because typically the head of HR, the head of engineering, the head of marketing don't know anything about what it means to run a global sales organization.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  And so like fake an interview, but they're just like giving you random input at that point. So one, you have to understand what the job is, you know, particularly if you haven't done it yourself. Two, you probably don't have any help on the rest of the team. Three, you kind of have to know exactly what you want for your company at that point in time. And so like all those kind of elements went into kind of hiring Mark. And, and the thing that I knew is I needed, we just had a missing part of the culture, which is, you know, we had gone from this cloud services brave new world, like this is a new thing to this very competitive enterprise software company. And I just lacked, you know, I lacked. A certain kind of urgency, military precision in the way, you know, we would go about prosecuting

• 19:45Speaker 02

  a deal, a level of competitiveness that, you know, we really needed to win. And we just did like, it just wasn't part of our culture. We had built a different company. And so I knew I was looking for all that. And then I knew he had it. But of course, he didn't have a lot of the things that we did have. And so it was a little bit tricky. But, you know, one of my favorite things from that was actually the, you know, which I learned from him years later, was the interview question that they asked at PTC where he had worked prior, which I thought was like, one of the great cultural test questions of all times, which is John McMahon, who's running sales, asked Mark when he interviewed at PTC, he's like, what would you do if I punched you in the jaw right now? That's such a great question, because one, it tells you exactly what the PTC culture was. So

• 20:27Speaker 02

  like, if you don't like that question, you shouldn't come to work here. Like, that's just like, straight up. That's the first crazy thing that you find out. But then the next thing is like, okay, in order to answer, what would you do if I hit you in the jaw? You actually have to be of that culture. Like, there's no way to answer that if you are not happy dealing with, like, confrontation, potentially violent confrontation in the workplace, right? Like, it would just be too disconcerting to hear it. And of course, Mark's answer showed that he could fit right in, which is, you know, he asked him back is, are you trying to test my courage or my intelligence? Which, like, what a perfect answer. And so, yeah, it was a very kind of educational thing for me.

• 21:06Harry Stebbings?

  I absolutely love that. I don't think I'm going to be trying that one unless I get arrested by HR, but.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think that's your culture at one of the PTC.

• 21:14Harry Stebbings?

  But I love it as a question. You said the word urgency there, though. And it is one thing that you also say in the book, and you say, employees have to feel a sense of urgency when the culture needs to change. How do you as a leader create that sense of urgency within the team?

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Well, look, I mean, I think you, and this kind of gets into another part of the book, which is, you know, you have to make decisions to demonstrate priorities. Kind of core example of that is Toussaint, when he was running the colony, made a very kind of hard to understand decision, you know, you couldn't hear that decision without knowing what the new priority, what the priority was. And the priority for him was In order to be a world-class country, you had to have like a world-class economy. So the question came up of, okay, what do we do with the plantation owners, the slave masters? Like after we win the war? His answer, of course, was like very surprising, which was, um, we're gonna let them keep their land and keep their employees, but they would have to pay them.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  And then he would lower their taxes in order to kind of facilitate that. And so if you think about that, that's just so counterintuitive in a slave revolt. But there was no way that anybody didn't understand what the country's priorities were at that point. That was like total clarity and urgency around that. And uh, kind of the example that I use, the parallel example is Reed Hastings. Um, when he switched the business from CDs to streaming, which, or DVDs to streaming, sorry. You know, he had no streaming revenue and you know, the DVD business was, not only was that entire business, they were a public company and all these things. And so, but he was terrified and he knew that the company needed to be urgent about getting to streaming before a pure streaming company did.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  And uh, so in order to do that, he kicked all the people running the DVD business out of the executive staff meeting, which is, you know, like, hey, if you've worked in a company, you know what's that's like to get dismissed, like not allowed to attend the most important meeting in the company and you've got all the revenue. Like that's a really shocking, crazy thing, but it clearly demonstrated the priority and set the urgency around that.

• 23:12Harry Stebbings?

  I do want to ask you, because that's a moment of real transition for the company itself. And you say in the book, meditating on company downfalls will enable you to build your culture the right way. Really interesting to have that perspective, but what did you mean by it? And how does that mindset help?

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it comes from the Bushido, the way of the warrior, which is kind of the code of the ancient samurai. Theirs was even stronger, which is like, the first principle of being a samurai is you must keep death in mind at all times. You know, that, that would seem to be like most miserable culture ever, right? But what they mean by it is, like, anytime you do something. Be it take a bath to chop some wood to fight in a battle, you have to keep death in mind. What if this is the last time you did it? You know, would you be proud of what you did? You know, it's such a powerful cultural concept. Like even today, if you go to Japan, you can feel that in everything that they do, you know, like the the level of pride

• 24:05Speaker 02

  that people take in any kind of work and the kind of meticulousness with which it gets done is just different than any place else. And it really is a, you know, it's kind of like a national kind of cultural strength, you know, in a company context, and it is kind of the interpreting of of all cultural things in that if you think about, okay, 30 years from now, what are people going to think about 20 minute VC? It's it's not going to be like I had this guest on or that one or like we made money or we'd lost money that quarter or whatever. It's going to be like, what was it like to work there? You know, how did that make me feel every day? Like for the people who we, you know, had on, like, what was it like for them? How did it make them feel? Because that's going to be the product of your culture. And you don't really get to that unless you think about the end.

• 24:50Harry Stebbings?

  Totally. I guess MPS is the biggest thing that that I measure and care about. So absolutely, I've said that. I do want to move into my favorite, though, Ben, which is the quick fire. So I say a short statement, and then you give me your immediate thoughts. Are you ready to roll?

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yes, let's go.

• 25:04Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so my favorite book is obviously your new book. What would you say your favorite book is and why?

• 25:09Speaker 02

  So my favorite, I think my favorite all time book might be The Black Jacobins, which is the story of the Haitian Revolution by C.L. R. James. It's the most fascinating leadership book that I've ever read. You know, it was such an impossible problem that literally no one in history before or since has ever pulled off what he pulled off a successful slavery vault. And he did it like almost entirely through a cultural transformation. I would say that that is my favorite.

• 25:33Harry Stebbings?

  Ben, on appearance, I hope this isn't too personal, but you've achieved all that you could want to achieve. You know, Andreessen is, you know, one of the incredible firms of our era and of our time. What motivates you today?

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Well, it's the same thing that kind of motivated me to start the firm, which is like, I'm a believer in business, for starters, I think, and the technology business in particular. I think it's very, very important, you know, particularly with the population growing and everything, we're not going to be able to solve the world's problems or improve things if we don't kind of invent better ways of doing things. And then the way we build those companies, I think, ends up being very important. And people are seeing that more and more now. If software is eating the world and all companies are becoming technology companies, and the way those are built ends up being, you know, maybe the most important thing for how we all live. And so, you know, any contribution I can make and, you know, helping people do that better, that's just a very worthwhile use of my time.

• 26:25Harry Stebbings?

  What's the most counterintuitive decision you've made with Andreessen, do you think?

• 26:30Speaker 02

  The most counterintuitive? Originally, it was marketing, if you can believe that. You know, it was basically known as a given that you did not market venture capital firms. Nobody had ever marketed their venture capital firm in any kind of context. And it's definitely the decision we got the most criticism for before everybody copied it. But it was almost like a sin to market your venture capital firm. But it worked, so that that ended up being a good idea.

• 26:57Harry Stebbings?

  That is incredibly funny. Tell me, what's the single biggest challenge of your role with Andreessen today, Ben?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Well, that's a good question. I, you know, it's hard to say the single biggest one. I would say, you know, one big challenge is just the way the world is reacting to tech, you know, as technology intersects with governments, which it really hadn't for a very long time, other than in, you know, fields like biology. And then you have governments with very different perspectives, you know, particularly if you're talking about, well, the US, Europe and China. But China and the Western world are very, very kind of different views on everything from privacy to CRISPR. That's added a level of complexity that we've never had to deal with before. And so, you know, it's something that is, you know, it's quite a challenge.

• 27:38Harry Stebbings?

  What do you know now that you wish you'd known at the start of your time with Andreessen in 2009?

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Oh, a lot. Well, I wish I had known that just because you've been a CEO doesn't mean you know how to teach somebody how to be a CEO. That's probably the single biggest mistake I made.

• 27:56Harry Stebbings?

  Penultimate one here. When you look back at Andreessen, what are you most proud of?

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Well, you know, and this is going to sound a little self-serving, but I'm most proud of the culture. I think that is the thing that differentiates us. When you talk to entrepreneurs about VCs, and you do a lot, I really feel the thing that, you know, like when people interact with us, it just feels different than any other venture capital firm. We have a way of doing things that I'm very proud of. That's super professional, highly respectful, and really is about the entrepreneurial process even more than the outcome. Couldn't be more proud of that. And it's a tribute to, you know, everybody who works here.

• 28:32Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely. Listen, I've interviewed pretty much probably 80% of the portfolio at Andreessen, and I continuously hear that exactly. So great to hear that. Final one. Now, I normally ask the most recent publicly announced investment. I think I'm kind of more excited to ask, almost from the founder perspective, what does the next five years hold for you and for Andreessen? And what's that exciting roadmap ahead?

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Well, a lot of it is more of the same. But, you know, one thing in venture capital is you have to, you know, the future changes, right? The future is not the past. So like when we started, the big trends were cloud computing, social networking, and mobile. And, you know, for the most part, getting to the end of their cycles, maybe not cloud computing as much. And so, you know, we always have to think about what's next. And this is, you know, like why we got at the bio fund and why we added the crypto fund. Because, you know, we have to push forward, we have to get smart about other things. And, you know, hopefully, we continue to do that.

• 29:24Harry Stebbings?

  Ben, as I said at the beginning, four years ago, I wrote those three names. I couldn't have been happier to do this. So thank you so much for joining me. Seriously, it means a lot to me.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Thanks very much, Eric. I'm glad to finally be on the podcast.

• 29:38Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, I have to say, that was just such a surreal episode for me. I've been such a fanboy of Ben's for so long. If you'd like to see more from him, you can find him on Twitter at B Horace. I do want to say to Ben, a huge thank you for taking the time to join me on the show today. Also, his new book comes out on the 29th of October. That really is a must. As you heard today, some incredible elements to that. Likewise, it'd be great to welcome you behind the scenes here at the 20 Minute VC. You can do that on Instagram at H Stebbings 1996 with two Bs. I always love to see you there. But before we leave you today, if you have employees and they're anything like me, you need spend management. And that's where Airbase come in. Airbase is the ideal cloud-based spend management platform for growing startups. With Airbase, you can issue virtual and physical cards for card payments, as well as checks and ACH transfers for invoice payments.

• 30:23Harry Stebbings?

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• 31:49Harry Stebbings?

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• 32:31Harry Stebbings?

  and I can't wait to bring you a fantastic episode this coming Friday with Vlad at Webflow.