Who's Coding Now? - AI and the Future of Software Development

In this episode of the a16z AI podcast, a16z Infra partners Guido Appenzeller, Matt Bornstein, and Yoko Li explore how generative AI is reshaping software development. From its potential as a new high-level programming abstraction to its current practical impacts, they discuss whether AI coding tools will redefine what it means to be a developer. Why has coding emerged as one of AI's most powerful use cases? How much can AI truly boost developer productivity, and will it fundamentally change traditional computer science education? Guido, Yoko, and Matt dive deep into these questions, addressing the dynamics of "vibe coding," the enduring role of formal programming languages, and the critical challenge of managing non-deterministic behavior in AI-driven applications. Among other things, they discuss: - The enormous market potential of AI-generated code, projected to deliver trillions in productivity gains. - How "prompt-based programming" is evolving from Stack Overflow replacements into sophisticated development assistants. - Why formal languages like Python and Java are here to stay, even as natural language interactions become common. - The shifting landscape of programming education, and why understanding foundational abstractions remains essential. - The unique complexities of integrating AI into enterprise software, from managing uncertainty to ensuring reliability. 00:00:39 - Who’s Coding Now? / Why is coding such a big use case? 00:05:41 - How has AI already changed software development? 00:13:05 - Vibe Coding vs. ‘Serious’ Engineering 00:17:30 - Vibe Coding and the future of Computer Science Education 00:23:15 - How does Vibe Coding affect programming languages? 00:35:07 - Adjusting to non-deterministic outputs 00:38:43 - Are prompts the narrow waist of AI programming? 00:42:22 - The nexus of Vibe Coding and enterprise programming

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

• 0:00Marc Andreessen?

  You just close your eyes and just imagine two states of the world. One is which the entire world runs an American open source LLM. And the other is where the entire world, including the US, runs on all Chinese software. And I, you know, I don't know, for me, that's, you know, very straightforward.

• 0:15Erik Torenberg?

  In this episode of the A16Z Podcast, we're sharing Marc Andreessen's recent appearance on TBPN, recorded live at A16Z's 2025 LP Conference in Las Vegas. Mark joins the show for a wide ranging conversation on everything from the AI boom and open source models to the evolution of venture capital and the future of American dynamism. Along the way, he reveals the thinking behind A16Z's new branding, how startups are scaling faster than ever, and what it'll take to build enduring companies in today's market.

• 0:47Erik Torenberg?

  Let's get into it.

• 0:52Erik Torenberg?

  As a reminder, 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. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see A16Z.com/disclosures.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Welcome.

• 1:24Speaker 03

  How are you doing, Mark?

• 1:25Marc Andreessen?

  Hey, guys. What's happening?

• 1:26Speaker 03

  What's happening?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  It's been a great day.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  I'm gonna hit this real quick.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  The sound effect board. Thanks so much for joining us.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  And thanks for wearing us. Thanks for wearing a suit.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you look fantastic.

• 1:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, special occasion.

• 1:40Marc Andreessen?

  By the way, congratulations on the podcast. I just wanted to start out by saying I've been watching. It's just, it's tremendous.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I have a funny story. We, the moment that I realized that you were maybe paying a little bit of attention to what we were doing, and it gave me some conviction that we were on the right track, is we did a reply guy of the week to this guy, Baldo. And it was like this inside joke. And I was like, holy shit, Mark just followed Baldo. Very talented guy, but yeah, so it's, it's, thank you for, for following along and it's been awesome talking to your whole team today.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Fantastic.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  So let's go through some hot topics. I want to start with, we're in the AI era. You obviously lived through the dot com era. There's some comparisons. What have you learned and what, how is this time different? Companies are making more money, valuations are high, but how are you thinking about teaching the next generation? What they should learn or what they should ignore from the people that might say, this is the dot com boom 2.0.

• 2:37Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah. So look, I guess I'd say, I think as Mark Twain once said, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And so, you know, I think people looking for like a direct compare contrast. Sometimes you see people like drawing charts or the stock market's going to do the same thing or whatever. Like, I don't think that stuff ever quite happens that way, but you know, it does rhyme. And, you know, the line that John Doerr had in 1995, I remember was that the internet is a cream that you rub on investors to get them all excited.

• 3:00Marc Andreessen?

  So.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  John Doerr said that?

• 3:04Marc Andreessen?

  Yes, yes. I have many, many, many John Doerr lines.

• 3:10Marc Andreessen?

  Oh yeah, exactly. But, you know, so, you know, AI is like that now. You know, look, the AI, AI, sorry, the internet went through, you know, went through phases. People actually forget, but there was like, you know, there were like these, even the phases like on the way up from, you know, 95 to 2000. You know, there were these phases of like skepticism and panic. You know, it looked like the whole thing was going to fall apart in 98. And then, you know, in 2001, you know, after the dot com crash, you know, it's like all the big companies just like completely wrote the internet off and they just said, you know, thank God that's over. And then, and then the internet itself just kept growing, right? And then, you know, by 2005, it was back to, you know, kind of, you know, back to, back to where it had been before. And we, you know, the, the rest was, was history. And so, you know, you know, people kind of go, people are kind of bipolar on these things. They kind of get overly excited. They get overly depressed.

• 3:54Marc Andreessen?

  I you know, I just always thought then, and I think now the substance matters. You know, the substance overwhelmingly overwhelmingly matters. And so, you know, is is is is the technology great? Like, are the products great? Are people using them? And, you know, AI is like off to the races so far. It's just like unprecedented rate of growth of actual use.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:11Marc Andreessen?

  Right? Um, and you see that in in in all the numbers. And then, um, you know, look, the businesses, I, you know, I just, I talked to another conversation yesterday with like, you know, a company that's raised seed money. They're already over 10 million ARR with this incredible, you know, like, it's just, and you know, there's like, there's a lot of those. Like, you know, they're all over the place. And so, you know, the, the, the things that are working, the products are fantastic. Um, you know, the users are getting tremendous value out of them. And, and, and as you know, the base technology is moving really fast. So I feel really good about it.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it can move faster because we have the Internet. Like, the, these apps can get to hundreds of millions of daily active users because there's hundreds of millions of people. There's billions of people on the Internet. Uh, very interesting. Uh, not to linger on the dot com stuff too much, but I'd love to know, uh, a little bit of a history lesson around the way the browser wars played out. And is there anything you can learn from that that applies to the open source versus closed sourced AI debate? You've been very opinionated on that. I'd love to know kind of if, is there, are there any previous eras of tech that you're mapping to when you think about open source AI?

• 5:12Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah, so, you know, look, you know, a lot of the browser wars, you know, there was kind of a big company, little company, kind of big company thing. And, you know, I think that's repeating itself. And, you know, I think one of the ways to think about what's happening right now is OpenAI is kind of growing up to become Google. And Google's kind of, you know, reinventing itself to be OpenAI. And so, you know, there's like a similar thing there. And, you know, then, you know, like, Microsoft and Apple and Google control the operating systems, you know, for, for end user devices. And they all have, you know, AI strategies, um, and Amazon as well. So, you know, a lot, a lot of those issues are gonna, are gonna come back up. You know, two, two of these big companies are actually on federal trial right now, you know, in big FDC cases in, in, in Washington DC, actually in the same courtroom. Um, and so, you know, that many of those issues will, will, will repeat or, you know, will be intense. Um, you know, the open source thing in tech has always been the wild card. Um, I, I think it's always been an incredibly positive wild card.

• 5:56Marc Andreessen?

  I, you know, I've always been, you know, enthusiastic supporter of it. My original work was all open source. Um, and so, you know, the real thing that happened with open source is in operating systems, you know, basically Unix won. And then, and then, you know, specifically Linux won, you know, for everything on, on, on the backend. And I, you know, like, you know, I remember like in the 1990s, there was like a furious operating system war. And there were these companies that were making huge amounts of money on server operating systems, you know, companies like Sun. Many others and then, you know, Linux just like commoditized that entire thing. You know, I think it's plausible, you know, we'll see, but it look, it's plausible that open source AI may just be the standard. Like it, you know, and whether, whether that derives out of, you know, DeepSeek or Lama, you know, any of the other new things that are coming out, you know, we'll see. But like, I think that's entirely feasible and, you know, I think that would be obviously, you know, there are companies that would have to adjust to that if it happens.

• 6:41Marc Andreessen?

  But the other side is if, if kind of the world had AI for free, um, I, I think that would be a pretty magical result also.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. I mean, shifting to the geopolitics, the geopolitics of all this, is it important not just that there's an open source champion, but that there's an American open source champion or a Western open source LLM?

• 7:00Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah, I, I believe so. Uh, and I believe so for two reasons. One is just actually cultural reasons. Um, which is just, you know, the, you know, open weights is great, but like the open weights, like they're baked, right? Like the, the, the, the training is in the weights and you can't really undo that. Um, and so, and, and, and so are you being trained by, you know, a company or an organization or set of people with American or Western values? Are you being trained, you know, by, by, by, you know, a company with, with Chinese values? Um, and, and look, you know, there's issues on both sides, you know, they, they, you know, the American trained models have their, have their issues, they have their weirdnesses. You know, but the Chinese trained models, you know, look, they, they like score really well and, you know, they literally, in the Chinese benchmarks, they literally have like line items for like Marxism. Right? Right. And, you know, DeepSeek like is like a hundred out of a hundred on Marxism. And so.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  It's here for DeepSeek, really knocked it out of the park, good luck, and congratulations.

• 7:46Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah, exactly. It's fantastic, right? And so, well, it's like, all right, so these are going to be, you know, this is going to be the technology that's going to intermediate your, the legal system, right? The courts, the education system, the medical system, like, you know, how, you know, you want your, you know, if you guys have kids, like, do you want your kids to, you know, your, your kids are going to be learning from these things their whole lives. Um, and, you know, do they have, you know, do they fundamentally have Western values? Do they, or do they have, you know, sort of, you know, CCP values? I think is really critical. And then the other thing, just, I would say, just close your eyes and just imagine two states of the world. One is which the entire world runs an American open source LLM and the other, the other is where the entire world, including the US, runs on all Chinese. Software and I, you know, I don't know, for me, that's a, you know, very straightforward. It's a very important topic and a very straightforward answer.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, in, in the American dynamism context, is it kind of mission accomplished there? Or are there new territories that you're looking to expand into with the broader American dynamism thesis? We talked to DU about energy and whatnot, but what is exciting about you outside of artificial intelligence? On the national interest investing side?

• 8:52Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah, so I mean, look, we made tremendous progress. I'm super proud of that team. And then, you know, this, this, in this new political environment, the new administration has embraced it. But also a lot of Democrats are actually quite excited about it also. And our, you know, our event that we hold has, has lots of people from both parties. So I think there's a, you know, there's this unified view now, I think, in the American, at least in the political world of like, all right, it's, it's time, you know, it's time for the US to step up on a lot of these things. It's time for the US to build more. It's time for the US to, you know, reinvent energy. It's, it's time for nuclear, you know, it's, it's time for, you know, infrastructure, you know, housing, like all these things. And so, you know, I think there's a lot of momentum. I think we're at the very beginning of it. You know, like one of the ways to think about what we're doing in American dynamism is we're going after all the sectors of GDP that are like really big and not yet basically affected by tech.

• 9:36Marc Andreessen?

  And so, education, healthcare, housing, defense, law, you know, just to pick five. You know, those are giant, important slices of the economy that largely have not been transformed by technology in the last 50 years. You know, the US Defense Department spends, you know, so you're coming up on a trillion dollars. Very little of that money is going to technologies and companies that have been invented frankly in the last 20 years. You know, most military hardware in the Department of Defense is, you know, the F-16 is from the 1970s. Right? Like the, the US plane that does high altitude photography, the high altitude spy plane, it's still the U-2.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:09Marc Andreessen?

  Which is, it's just like literally a 70-year-old plane. So like, there's just like enormous changes, you know, that, that really have to happen. And I think everybody kind of in the system knows that, but it's hard to get there. And I think, you know, a big part of that is, you know, these new companies, you know, that we're, you know, that we, that we try to support. You know, they, they need to show up and make their case, but, you know, the entrepreneurs are fantastic. And then, you know, we, we see more receptivity coming from the, the system than we ever have.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Talk about the kind of position, the position that the firm is in today. In many ways, it feels like you and Ben and the team had somewhat of a crystal ball to see how the private markets were evolving, companies staying private longer, AI being this massive platform shift that's going to upend, you know, every industry. And then now the sort of political environment that enables industries to kind of get a second or third life. Did you just get lucky or did you see a lot of this coming?

• 11:03Marc Andreessen?

  I mean, I think we got a few things right and we got a bunch of stuff wrong. You know, we buried those ideas out back behind the shed. So, you know, we made a bunch of mistakes along the way or changed a bunch of things. But, you know, we got a few big things right. You know, I think the things I think we got right, you know, one is like the venture ecosystem, as you guys know, has just evolved enormously in a very positive way. And the kind of old model of having a sort of a bunch of kind of mid-sized firms, they kind of sit on San Hill Road and wait for the founders to, you know, to come in like that, that, you know, those days are kind of over. You have the rise of the high scale, you know, firms like, like us, but you also have the rise of all these seed and angel investors, you know, that are, that are really, you know, first money in and then really working closely with founders from the very beginning. And I think that, that ecosystem is healthier than ever and doing really well. And so, you know, that's been a big change.

• 11:48Marc Andreessen?

  You know, and the IPO is like, I don't know, I would say we have changed on that, which is I used to, I used to complain a lot, like I used to give these interviews years ago and, you know, like early 2010s and just complain about like the, that it was basically becoming impossible for companies to go public and, you know, the things that had, had caused that to happen and what needed to change. And then, you know, of course, nothing happened. Like, you know, there were no reforms, you know, there were no improvements. If anything, everything got worse. And so, you know, we and others adapted to that by, you know, by basically putting, you know, putting ourselves in a position to fund companies, you know, later in their lifecycle at higher, higher, you know, bigger, larger amounts of money, you know, later at growth stages.

• 12:26Marc Andreessen?

  You know, it's now much more common for companies, tenders and these kind of private, you know, private sales even for their employees, you know, so that's been a big change. Um, you know, but look, maybe the best directional bet made was just technology was going to keep becoming important. It's just like in every area of our life, the, the, that, you know, in, in sector X, tech is going to be more important. They're going to be big tech companies built. They're going to really matter. Um, that, that I think is, that's a very good bet. I think frankly, I like, I don't, I, it's hard for me to ever see that ending.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  What are you, uh, you know, you guys are with your LPs today, tomorrow. Uh, what are you hoping they, they take away from the event?

• 13:00Marc Andreessen?

  Oh, so, um, this is not a John Doerr quote, but I'll give you another quote. Uh, when we were raising money originally, we're going around, we're going to raise, we raised our first fund in 2009 and, you know, the world had, you know, completely collapsed after the financial crisis. And, um, we, you know, went around and we sort of briefed all the, all the, um, all the, you know, all the venture VCs we respected, uh, to just give them a heads up for what we're doing. Um, and, um, one of the GPs took us aside at the end and said, you know, you guys have been dealing with like these, you know, very smart public market investors. Uh, he said, you know, you're going to, that's part of the job you're going to hate the most is, is working with these LPs. You know, they're just terrible. Um, and he said, the key is you need to treat them like mushrooms. Um, you, uh, put the, you put them in a cardboard box. You put the lid on the cardboard box and you put the box under the bed and you don't open it for two years.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. They're like, what's the markup today?

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:49Marc Andreessen?

  That was somebody else. That was not John.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:51Marc Andreessen?

  And so, uh, you know, look, the, the view Ben and I always had was the exact opposite of that, you know, which is our investors are our partners, you know, and, and, you know, look, that's how we want to be treated by the companies we invest in. Um, you know, that's how we always, you know, viewed it when we were running public companies. Um, our investors are our partners, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're in it with us together. You know, we're, they're, they're making a big bet on us and trusting us. And then, you know, look, correspondingly, the promise that we made to them is like, look, we're going to try to like deliver, you know, excellent returns, but in this business, it's just going to take a long time. And you know, you guys know this, for any company that really succeeds, it takes, you know, 10, 20, 30 years, you know, to really have it succeed. And like, and along the ways, along the way, like, a lot of things happen, you know, everything from negative headlines to, you know, lawsuits, disasters, chaos, you know, all kinds of crazy, you

• 14:34Marc Andreessen?

  know, twists and turns, changes happen along the way. And so I just think it's like really important for us as a firm, like, we really always need to make sure that we're treating our LPs as full partners. And so we, what we're trying to do is be is just really like, open the kimono all the way, show them everything, kind of expose them to everything that we're doing, make sure they really understand it, go as deep as they want to go on the, on the technology and on the companies. And I, you know, this is like year 15 of this for us. And so for that, I think they would say that that's gone well.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  That's great. Last question from me, just general advice for the next generation of entrepreneurs. Are you hoping more college, less college, more coding, less coding? Like, there's a ton of technological change right now. How can the next generation of entrepreneurs set themselves up for success?

• 15:13Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah, so there's no Steve Martin, Steve Martin line, you wrote this great book on how to be a successful stand-up comedian. It's just, you know, short, short little book, really well written. And, you know, every aspiring comedian in the world opened it up and said Steve Martin's, you know, advice for being a great stand-up comedian. And it was, be so good they can't ignore you. Right? It's like, okay, thank you, Mr. Martin. You know, I'll get right on that. But like, that, that remains the best advice, I think, which is just like quality, like we said, like quality bears out, like quality shows. And so, you know, a, you know, really excellent thinking, coupled with a high degree of, you know, energy and courage, you know, team building, a great team, and then a great product, you know, and a real, you know, insight into a market with customers, figuring out how to design, you know, not just design a product, but also design a

• 15:58Marc Andreessen?

  business. Like, that's basically, like, my view, my view of that as an entrepreneur always was like, that's my job as an entrepreneur. And like, if I, you know, if I put a lot of time and effort into that, and very serious about it, I can hopefully do a good job. And I think time spent improving the quality of the thing, the product and the business is almost always better than time spent trying to You know, I don't networking or, you know, polishing a presentation or, you know, trying to get positive press coverage or kind of all the external stuff. And so it's really, it's really the quality of the thing. And then, you know, again, my, you know, my hope would be like we as a firm and others like us, like that we really, you know, that we really recognize that and see it, you know, see it, you know, kind of see it when it shows up. And I think that's the thing. And then I think the other thing would be look like AI is superpowers, right?

• 16:38Marc Andreessen?

  And like if you as a founder have access to, you know, just to, you know, to say chat GPT, deep research, it's just like, oh, you know, it's just like, oh, my God, like I have a, you know, like I have a PhD level. It used to be so hard to get information, right? And then it's been so hard, you know, even still to figure out what to do with it. And so to now have this tool, you know, these tools for thinking through everything and, you know, increasingly being able to do things like write code. You know, we ought to see a generation of founders here that are just like incredibly capable, you know, relative to, you know, to what, to what we used to be like. And, you know, and we're starting to see those, we're starting to see, you know, I'd say a handful of those, you know, that's it. I'm still waiting for like the real conceptual breakthroughs. Like I'm, I'm still waiting for the, you know, the, you know, the company where it's like, you

• 17:22Marc Andreessen?

  know, it's got a thousand employees, 999 are bots, like, you know, I haven't seen that yet. And, you know, some, somebody's going to really figure out how to use this technology to really not, not just bring a product to market, but like fundamentally change how companies operate. And I think that's probably, that's probably the next big unlock.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  How do you think about an individual's edge around their own proprietary knowledge? There'd been talk of with Warren Buffett, you know, retiring. He read something like a hundred thousand plus earnings transcripts. He had this incredible recall. You're often credited with having this incredible recall and it certainly gives, can give you an edge in thinking through, you know, net new opportunities and decisions. Do you, do you think that edge remains in a world where all human knowledge is accessible in a single query? Or what's your kind of mental model there?

• 18:12Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah, so I think it's gonna be, I mean, look, I think there's basically like two ways to really have a differentiated edge like in general, right? There's sort of, you know, it's kind of go deeper, go broad. You know, go deep has kind of become a more and more specialized expert over time. And, you know, look, there are domains in which that like really matters, you know, biotech and, and things like, or, you know, by the way, designing AI, you know, working on AI foundation models like that. That stuff really matters. The deeper you are, the better. So there's, you know, certain fields where that really matters. I think for most fields, though, now with these new tools, I would probably bet more on basically people who are able to be broad. Which is to say, basically, can you know something about a lot of different, you know, kind of aspects of life? And how the world works and then you can use the tool, you can use the AI to go deep whenever you need to.

• 18:55Marc Andreessen?

  But then your job as the human is to basically then, you know, basically cross the domains, uh, cross the disciplines. And, and look, you see this, if you talk to any of like the great CEOs, you see, you know, you kind of see this, which is like, they're really great, great tech CEOs. They're great product people and they're great salespeople and they're great marketing people and, you know, and they're great legal thinkers and they're great finance people. And they're great with investors and they're great with the press. Right? So it's, it's this, it's this, it's, you know, it's this sort of multidisciplinary, you know, kind of approach. And being able to cross domains and I, you know, I don't know, we'll see, we'll see how good, you know, we'll see how good the AI gets at that. Hopefully it gets good at that also. But, um, you know, that's, that in a lot of way, you know, the entrepreneur has always kind of had the burden. You know, for somebody who wants to do something serious, like they have to be like that, at least to some extent.

• 19:35Marc Andreessen?

  And, you know, the, the best entrepreneurs of the future, I think, will probably be like quite skilled at like six or eight things and then able to kind of cross and combine them.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  How do you think about the responsibility of the venture industry broadly to try to influence? You know, world, you know, outcomes in the world. I was sort of laughing, uh, you know, less than a month ago, a lot of investors were clearly shifting capital out of the US and just, you know, YOLOing into French bonds and things like that. Venture capitalists obviously didn't do that, right? But at the same time, there was a high profile story of a venture capital firm, you know, investing in, in a, in a Chinese AI company that, that we won't mention here. And it got me thinking around there, you know, if you're operating a hedge fund, you can go invest wherever you want without a ton of scrutiny, right?

• 20:24Speaker 03

  People don't look at that as, you know, if you, you know, move assets into some, you know,

• 20:29Speaker 02

  It's not as impactful.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  It's less of a, um, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't feel like you're, you're betting against your own team in the same way. So I'm curious how you think of the, the generalized kind of responsibility of, of venture capitalists, uh, even especially as, as the sort of AUM has scaled dramatically.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Actually bend the, the arrow of progress.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:52Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah, look, I, the big thing I think I would say is like, we always, we always thought and aspired that we were building things that mattered and that were going to have an impact on the world. And for a long time, you know, we were trying to convince people that we were doing that and they never quite took us seriously. Cause it's like, you know, it's like, all right, databases, routers, like, okay, nice, you know, nice guys. I don't even know what those things are. Um, you know, even personal computers, like a thing on my desk, I write letters on it, uh, you know, whatever, like they're just like tech was never like relevant to politics, really. Um, you know, and call this, I'm talking about like between the modern era, 1950s, call it through like the 2000s.

• 21:25Marc Andreessen?

  Um, and so, you know, and look, you know, generally speaking, like our press coverage was, you know, generally people were like, wow, startups are exciting. And, you know, when companies succeed, it's great. And then, you know, in the last 10 or 15 years, you know, like if questions like yours, you know, have started to come up and then, you know, correspondingly, just as you know, like just enormous amounts of kind of criticism attacks, you know, kind of indictments of, of, you know, people with all kinds of points of view on, on, on the industry. I would say, you know, in the beginning, that kind of irritated me because I had gotten used to the environment where either nobody cared about us or people just said nice things about us. What I came to realize is we're the dog that caught the bus. Like we actually now are building things that matter, right? And so, you know, tech now interfaces direct, you know, when, when Elon goes into the car market, like he just, you know, it's the repercussions of that, you know, to your point, like on many countries are just gigantic. And there's, you know, a thousand examples like that, that we could give and, you know,

• 22:09Marc Andreessen?

  AI probably being the biggest of all. And so, you know, look, it worked. Like, the stuff that we do now, the companies that we fund, they really matter. They really have, you know, really big implications for society and for policy and politics and geopolitics. And so mainly, I think the responsibility is on us as a firm, as well as, you know, our companies. Like, we need to go explain ourselves. You know, we need to go be present in the policy debates. As you know, like, we have a, you know, we have a huge push now into policy and politics that I never imagined we would have. By the way, it's something I got wrong. I never thought we would have that, and then it became very clear that we need that, you know, kind of for this reason. So, so like, I just think that's part and parcel of like, of it working. Like, we're gonna have to do that. And then the geopolitics, you know, the China thing, I think is probably the most intense version of that. You know, I don't know, maybe that's when we got right. We just never really did

• 22:54Marc Andreessen?

  anything in China for a bunch of reasons. You know, and, you know, look, and by the way, we'll see, you know, this is a fluid situation, and you guys, it's been publicly reported that there are, you know, talks underway with China, so the relationship with China could be better or worse, you know, in six months.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  I think that's what everyone wants, yeah. Yeah, I mean, everyone wants, like, cooperation in general.

• 23:11Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah, like, look, it's possible. Look, I, I mean, I'll give you my favorite, here's my favorite story. So, in 20, I think it was like 2011, the, at the time, the Obama administration was trying to reestablish, was trying to reestablish a relationship with Russia. And there was a famous moment where the Secretary of State, who was this, this, this woman named Hillary Clinton, I don't know whatever happened to her, I hear rumors that she then went on, I don't know, did something in politics. But she was the Secretary of State, and there's this famous photo where she was on stage with Sergei Lavrov, who was the Foreign Minister of Russia, her counterpart, and she brought like a big plastic red button, which was the reset button, right, to reset, you know, warm relations with Russia. And then, and then what happened was Medvedev-

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Showman, showman shirt.

• 23:53Marc Andreessen?

  The reset, the reset air horn. Exactly. And then Medvedev, who was the Russian, who was Putin's number two, actually came to Silicon Valley, and the Secretary of State's office called all around to Silicon Valley, saying, please, you guys, roll out the red carpet to Russia, they're our new friends, like, do everything with them, do whatever they want, you know, please go invest in Russian companies, Russia's building this new Silicon Valley, see what you can do to support them. And so it was like, you know, like it was just like a love fest. And then, you know, fast forward four years later and, you know, Putin became, you know, butler, as they say, and, you know, just, you know, and then, you know, Russia date, like everything that followed. And so, look, I would just say, part of being citizens, I think, is, you know, we're just gonna have to navigate through shifting geopolitics. Our view, and I'm quite honestly, like, our view is just, we're gonna put ourselves squarely on the side of the United States.

• 24:36Marc Andreessen?

  Our, we, we just say, our foreign policies affirm as the United States foreign policy. If they, you know, if they don't want us to do things in China, they don't. If, by the way, if they come to us and they say we should do more, like, you know, we'll, we'll look at it at that point. But, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're trying to be good citizens among everything else.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  Talk about the evolution of the A16Z brand. You guys came out with a new logo and website. And as always, you're good at getting the attention of the internet.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  I was a fan of this.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, we talked about it on the show. We liked it.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think it's something that's different and, and will age very well. But I wasn't exactly sure, like, what are you trying to say with it? What are the references? And even what was the process? Like, did you pick the color? I don't know. Or even that conversation, I wouldn't know more about the brand.

• 25:22Marc Andreessen?

  Yeah. So first of all, um, you know, I know we got some Twitter controversy on it. And I just, I just want to thank Kanye West.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  For drowning that out entirely?

• 25:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:31Marc Andreessen?

  Like, I don't think we're talking in conversations. At, at the moment. So, yeah, so that, that worked out well. Um,

• 25:38Marc Andreessen?

  so, anyway.

• 25:41Marc Andreessen?

  So, yeah, look, so we have this incredible designer, Greg Truesdale. He's got, he's got a team. They did a fantastic job. I worked, I did, I worked closely with him on it. I have no design skills, but I provided a lot of input. Um, you know, I think the big thing about it is what it's intended to sort of reflect is, is like an embrace of what I think is a broad, a broad set of cultural changes that are happening right now. You know, frankly, you guys are a part of as well. Um, which is this, what I would describe as it, I don't know, 15 year era of, I don't know, like, cultural, almost shrinkage, everything getting, you know, you see in the design world, it's like everything getting like ultra clean, minimalistic, and culturally, everybody getting like very cautious and careful about what they say. And, you know, with all this kind of censorship and speech control. And then, you know, this whole thing of everybody needs to feel bad about everything all the

• 26:25Marc Andreessen?

  time. And everybody needs to feel bad about the country and bad about their, you know, ancestors and bad about this and bad, you know, everybody's just miserable all the Like I just think like that whole thing got kind of this, you know, I don't know, you may call it like, you know, neo-Puritanism or something.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 26:39Marc Andreessen?

  Like, that thing kind of crested in, I don't know, 2021 or 2022. And, and, you know, basically in the last three years, I, I think there's this like renewed sense of energy, enthusiasm, ambition, you know, achievements, dynamism. But like, you know, and again, it's like literally, yeah, we should have nuclear energy. Yeah, we should have rockets going to Mars. You know, yeah, we should, like, we should, we should have these things. And, you know, that it's good to succeed. It's good to build businesses. It's good, it's good, it's good to make, make, make new things in the world. You know, and yeah, we should have the thousand, you know, yard tall, you know, shiny colossus on, on Alcatraz Island.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I was, I was gonna ask, my, my only request is like, make it, make it real, you know, like, like, make it the statue of liberty of the West Coast.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm imagining a massive instantiation of that coin in the office and maybe physical versions.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Not the coin, like the, the figure.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, the actual figure, true, yeah.

• 27:30Marc Andreessen?

  Yes.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, we need a monument.

• 27:30Marc Andreessen?

  You know, she has a name, she has a name.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  She has a name? Well, no, what's the name?

• 27:34Marc Andreessen?

  She has a name, Technometis.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Technometis, I love it. That's fantastic.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  All right, well, Technometis, buy a plot of land, somewhere visible from the Golden Gate, and just, you know, build it a mile high, please.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Mile high.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  Make it happen, make it happen.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for joining. This is fantastic.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  Thank you for coming on, really enjoyed it. Have fun with the, with the team and LPs. Cheers.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  We'll talk to you soon.

• 28:01Erik Torenberg?

  Thanks for listening to the A16Z Podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, let us know by leaving a review at ratethispodcast.com/a16z. We've got more great conversations coming your way. See you next time.