Why Technology Still Matters with Marc Andreessen

1. 0:00 – 2:12

   Welcome back!

   1. SSSteph Smith0:00

      Hello, everyone. The a16z Podcast is back, and this is your new host, Steph Smith. I'm so excited to explore the world of technology with you through the lens of the builders shaping it. And if you've been listening to the pod for a while, I hope you'll stick with me as I take the reins from Sonal, who by the way, is doing really wonderful work at our sister podcast, Web3 with a16z. Okay, onto the content. Today, we have a very special kickoff episode to start our launch series, where we wanted to explore the age-old question: Why is building the next generation of technologies still so important? And perhaps even more important, who is gonna build this next generation of technology, and what needs to be done to enable those founders and builders? And I'm a little biased, but who better to traverse this ground than a16z's co-founder and general partner, Marc Andreessen, someone who has not only built but also invested in the future time and time again, especially when it was not the obvious thing to do. So today, together with Marc, we explore technology through the lens of history, including the three stages of human psychology as we encounter these new technologies. And we also talk about how that process often ends in regulation, and we include a couple examples of that, which by the way, if you've never heard of red flag laws, you'll wanna listen in. We also talk about when to change your mind, the Cambrian explosion of opportunity coming from distributed work, the importance of founder-led companies, and so much more. And of course, we'll end the episode by examining why there's still so much reason for optimism. And hopefully, this episode will also get you excited about what's to come with the a16z Podcast, as we do have a lot more coming. That includes coverage of major trends like AI, space, carbon removal, and you'll soon hear from legends like Neal Stephenson, Balaji Srinivasan, and even Steve Wozniak, who shared with us his latest venture, Privateer. By the way, that episode is already live in the feed, if you wanna give it a listen. All right, let's dive in.

   2. SPSpeaker1:44

      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. For more details, please see a16z.com/disclosures.

   3. SSSteph Smith2:02

      [upbeat music]

2. 2:12 – 5:34

   The importance of tech today

   1. SSSteph Smith2:12

      So this is the first episode of our launch series, and in the launch series, we're going to cover several technologies, and we're gonna cover them with their founders and dive really deeply into how these technologies may shape our collective future. But before we do that, we're gonna address an important question, and it may sound simple, but we need to ask why these technologies even matter in the first place. Why is it so essential today that we continue to build? And today, we have Marc Andreessen talking to us about this very important topic, and who better than someone who has built the future and invested in the future many times over, especially when it wasn't the easy thing to do. So Marc, why don't we start there? And why don't we start by attacking this question with the lens of history? So how maybe do people view the importance of technology today, and how has that changed maybe relative to how they viewed it in the past?

   2. MAMarc Andreessen3:00

      Yeah. So thanks. So that, that's a, that's a great way to start. And, you know, so many of the discussions about today's technologies kind of take place in this, you know, kind of ahistorical frame where it's as if there had never been any new technologies in the past, or, or that there were new technologies in the past, but those were all the good ones, and today we just have the bad ones or something like that. And so the, the, the, the key question to kind of start out asking on all these topics i- is basically, um, is basically like, why is there something and not just nothing? Um, by, by which I mean basically like w- what was life like before technology, right? Like what was life like in like its natural state before we had all these wonderful technologies, before we had steam power, before we had, you know, tractors, before we had telephones and so forth? And, and you know, there's, you know, a lot of historians have talked about this, but, you know, the answer is life was what was known at the time, uh, you know, Thomas Hobbes famously said it was nasty, brutish, and short, right? And so you'll, you'll read these fantasies from time to time about how people kind of in, you know, older periods, uh, you know, more historical periods, like somehow they were living in this state of grace with nature, and kind of everything was wonderful, and they were just kind of hanging out and having a good time, and, and basically like that. It... Th- those are all just fantasies. Um, you know, in reality, b- basically everybody was miserable all the time. Everybody was poor. Everybody was subsistence farming just to make enough, you know, be able to harvest enough food to be able to eat that day or to be able to hunt enough meat to be able to eat that day. And, and for the most part, people died young. They died sick. You know, they never, they never got anywhere. They never did anything. You know, basically like all of recorded civilization is basically only over the course of the last 4,000 years. You know, for the, for the many millions of years of humanity before that, like there's basically nothing, and, you know, basically 'cause like people had no time to do anything other than just try to grow enough food to eat. So, so basically it's like, okay, so basically it's like what happened to cause life to no longer be nasty, brutish, and short? You know, what, what happened to cause basically the reality of human existence to go from what it used to be to what it is today? And you know, it, it's not perfect today, but it's a lot better than it was. And of course, the a- the answer is technology. And in fact, technology is the only answer to that question, right? There, there, there, there's no other answer, right? It's not like people got smarter. It's not like people got, you know, I don't know, like this, you know, human, human be- you know, DNA is the same. Human beings haven't changed. Uh, it's basically only through technology that things have gotten better, and, and, you know, th- the way to kind of think about that is what is technology? Technology is tools, right? Tech- technology basically is applied human ingenuity, uh, in building tools, and then, and then those tools basically give human beings leverage, um, on the world. Um, you know, that, that, that leverage shows up in many forms. Um, it, you know, it, it, it shows up in forms, you know, for sure in some cases that are, that are bad. It also shows up, of course, in, in, in, um, in, in the form of many cases that are, that are also, uh, are, are very good.

3. 5:34 – 10:13

   Historical negativity toward technology

   1. SSSteph Smith5:34

      So I agree with you that progress continues, and if you look at all of the important markers, we are doing better, and that has been true for a very long time. Why is it then that people seem to have this view of where we are today in history in terms of things being so bad?

   2. MAMarc Andreessen5:51

      Yeah. So, you know, look, that-- obviously, that's a complicated question. Um, the technology part of it, I think is very clear, though, um, which is, you know... And, and again, you kind of think about this historically. So, so let's, let's, let's start with the story of, like, one of the very original technologies that basically, uh, human beings kind of discovered and mastered, which was fire. [chuckles] Quite, quite literally fire. Um, you know, obviously today you take fire for granted. You just assume it's something that's always been with us. But, like, fire as a tool, like fire as a technology was something that at some point, you know, kind of early human beings had to figure out how to master and how to take control of. Um, and just to give you a sense of, like, what a big deal it was to actually master the technology of fire when that happened, you know, one, one of the sort of, you know, kind of core fundamental kind of myths of, of, of, of human existence is, is, uh, the myth of Prometheus, the god Prom-Prometheus. Um, and the god Prometheus famously is the, you know, the way the myth goes, you know, Prometheus delivered fire to humanity, basically delivered fire as a tool, uh, uh, to, to humanity. And, and, and, and Prometheus [chuckles] was not-- is not-- was not beloved as a consequence of, of, of delivering fire to people. But, but Prometheus was, was condemned, and s-specifically, he was, in the myth, he was chained to a rock, um, uh, and, uh, for-- and for all eternity. Um, and, uh, according to the myth, every day a bird comes along and pecks out his liver, um, [chuckles] very painfully. And then he, according to myth, he regenerates every night, and then the next day the bird tortures him again. And, you know, this has been happening forever. So, so, like, the fact that there's that myth with that outcome assigned to the introduction of fire as a technology to human existence-

   3. SPSpeaker7:20

      Right

   4. MAMarc Andreessen7:20

      ...and, and, and of course, the, the myth is not... One assumes the myth's not literally true, but it's symbolic, right? Which is basically it's symbolic of the fact that humanity basically experienced the rise of fire and technology and said, like, "Wow, [chuckles] th-this is a big deal and maybe not entirely positive." And then it-- And then, of course, that makes sense, because if you think about how fire was used as a technology, obviously fire was used for good, right? Which is like fire made it possible to cook, cook meat, right? Fire made it possible to, um, you know, to basically like, you know, def-defend the campsite against like, you know, wolves in the middle of the night. It made it possible to keep people warm. It could keep your baby from freezing to death. Like, you know, fire is this like miracle technology. Of course, [chuckles] fire also got used in warfare, right? Um, and, you know, even up to the modern day, like, you know, what's the, you know, kind of state-of-the-art weapon of our times? It's the nuclear bomb, of course. What, what does that bring? It brings fire. Um, and so, you know, look, it, it, it was a double-edged sword. Like, would, would we wanna live in the modern world without fire, um, because it has, you know, both the downsides as well as the, the upsides? We wouldn't. But, like, both of those are present. And, and basically, my interpretation, and if you kind of go through the history of new technologies, basically for every important new technology, there's always this argument. Basically, there's always this argument of like, okay, in theory, there are all these things that we could do with the new technology that are very positive. In fact, probably there are things the new technology will make possible that we can't even think of today, right? And that, and that's been a very common pattern, by the way, which is people don't... Th-people actually have a very hard time anticipating the upside for new technologies. Uh, but the same argument basically always applies as with fire, which is basically like, well, what about the potential downsides? And then, you know... So human beings are kind of psychologically wired to the downside. Like we're, you know, we're wi- we're wired to basically detect and try to, try to evade threats. Um, right. And so there's basically always this impulse to say, "Okay, th- you know, this is the technology that's gonna ruin everything." Um, and if you go through basically the history of every new technology like that, you know, that argument applied repeatedly. I'll give you a couple examples. So one is, uh, outdoor lighting. Uh, so electric lighting, right? Electric lighting actually was first implemented outdoors because they didn't know how to do it indoors because it [chuckles] kept, kept burning, kept burning places down. Um, it had took a while to get it, to get it to be safe. But, uh, the first electric lighting was rolled out in, you know, big cities like Paris and London, you know, something, I forget what it was, like something like two hundred years ago now. Um, and you know, big deal. Like outdoor lighting, all of a sudden the city is walkable and livable and safer right after dark. Like, you know, this, this, this, this is a pretty big deal. And the contemporary accounts are basically... I mean, one was the sense of wonderment that this was now, you know, basically the, the, the life could now be, be bas-basically lit twenty-four hours. But then there were also all of these, you know, kind of, you know, stories of like, this is gonna like completely destroy civilization. This is against the natural order of things. You know, this is gonna completely ruin... People aren't gonna be able to sleep anymore, you know, all kinds of things, all kinds of illicit, you know, social activities [chuckles] are gonna happen at night, right? Like in the past, everybody just had to go to bed at night. Now they're gonna be out on the streets at 3:00 in the morning doing all kinds of bad things. [chuckles] By the way, there are, you know, in every major city, there are criminals out on the street at 3:00 in the morning doing bad things. Like, you know, it's not like the downside was, was, was completely wrong. It's just that obviously the, the, the trade-off was worth it.

4. 10:13 – 14:01

   The invention of the bicycle

   1. MAMarc Andreessen10:13

      Um, you know, my, my favorite story on this is the invention of the bicycle. Um, and, and this one is really, is really great because, you know, there's this, there's this Netflix documentary called "The Social Dilemma" that's kind of, you know, condemns, you know, kind of social media as this kind of unique threat to civilization. And one of the things that one of the guys in, in that movie says is he's like, "You know, social media is the first, you know, technology like this that's, that's had these negative consequences." He's like, "Nobody, nobody ever complained about the invention of the bicycle." And it actually turns out that's not true.

   2. SPSpeaker10:38

      [chuckles]

   3. MAMarc Andreessen10:38

      Like, he, he just, he just didn't do enough reading. Like, it turns out people actually complained a lot about the invention of the bicycle. Um, and, and, and this story, I think, you know, is sort of very symbolic. So the... So the, the bicycle is a big deal. So the bicycle rolled out as a consumer product about a hundred and fifty years ago. Uh, you know, they kind of got it working and manufactured to the point where it got cheap enough where, where, where kind of normal people could buy it. And so the, the bicycle starts to roll out kind of across the American countryside. And, and basically, there's this immediate moral panic, um, about the bicycle, and this is chronicled in the, in the media at the time. If you read the Twitter account, Pessimist's Archive, [chuckles] um, it, uh, which maybe we can link to, he, he, he goes back and reconstructs kind of the, the, the moral panic around the bicycle. And basically, the argument against the bicycle at the time was the bicycle is the first transportation technology that young unmarried women in towns and villages across the US could actually afford to be able to buy and use, right? 'Cause cars didn't exist yet, like, you know, whatever. Horses and wagons were too expensive. They couldn't get access to them, whatever. Uh, you know, walking took too long. Um, all of a sudden... But all of a sudden, like young unmarried women have the bicycle, which means young unmarried women can go from like one town to the next town, which means all of a sudden young unmarried women can meet, you know, boys and men [chuckles] not just in the current town, but in the other town. Um, and so obviously to the kind of established social order at the time, like this was, was, was a profound threat, right? To, to kind of how things worked. The assumption was you're a young unmarried woman in a town, you marry one of the men, right? In that town. All of a sudden your, your, your world opens up. And so the media at the time, uh, at that time created completely, like out of whole cloth, they, they created a new medical condition called bicycle face. Um, and the idea of bicycle face was you're a young woman, you're on the bicycle, you're pedaling to get to the next town, and, you know, pedaling takes exertion. And so you're gonna have, like, your face is gonna contort, you know, because of the exertion, and you're gonna be like, you know, pedaling along like this. And bicycle face was the idea that your face is going to freeze into that contorted position. Um, and then, you know, then, then you would never be able to get married, right? Um, now, [chuckles] fortunately, it turned out bicycle face was not actually a real thing. It turned out civilization survived the introduction of the bicycle. Uh, but basically, like, there's just this, there's this constant blowback, right? And then, and then basically what you find... And we'll, we'll, we'll probably talk about this in some length. But basically what you find is the blowback is nominally a response to the dangers of the tech- technology. What the blowback actually is in, in, in almost every case, what the blowback actually is, it's basically a, a, a fear, a statement, an assertion, a realization, uh, that the introduction of the new technology is going to change the society, right? And, and, and then in particular, status and power within the society, right? Who's in charge, who's in power, who makes decisions, who has status, who gets money, right? All of a sudden, the ordering of society is up for grabs. And that, and that's why you get this just, like, you know, spectacular freakout when these things show up.

   4. SSSteph Smith13:21

      Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Pessimist Archive because if people are curious, we'll bring it up on the screen. But basically, anything that you can think of as a prior technology or maybe even things that you take for granted as not technologies, just things embedded in our lives, had this blowback. You mentioned the bicycle, but it's also the radio, trains, teddy bears, jazz music. I don't know if people would view teddy bears as technology. But the point is, anything that becomes embedded in society that, as you're alluding to, can impact society at scale, people start to get afraid of because they start going through all of these scenarios and thinking, "Oh, who is this gonna impact? Is this gonna impact my job? Is this gonna impact the types of people I can interact with? Is this going to impact the power I have in society?" So Marc, why don't we dive into that.

5. 14:01 – 21:57

   Innovation vs status in society

   1. SSSteph Smith14:01

      How do you see technology and its implementation or really as it's starting to be implemented within society, how do people react? And what, what specifically about the power within society is being upended?

   2. MAMarc Andreessen14:14

      Yeah. So there's this incredible book. It's, it's very short and very good. It was wr- actually written 50 years ago by a prof- professor at MIT at the time. Um, and, um, it's named Elting Morison. And, and, and what's great about this book is it was written before the internet and even before personal computers, and so it's kind of... it's, it's got this kind of timeless, you know, kind of quality to it. And it's, it's, uh, the title of the book is called Man, Machines, and Modern Times. It's this topic. It's basically, okay, what, what exactly is the process by which a new technology enters society, and then how does society react? Basically, how does, how does the sta- the sort of the powers that be or the status quo of society react? Um, and Morison tells this amazing story. He kind of hangs the whole thing on this sort of very amazing story from about 100, 120 years ago now, maybe 130 years ago, um, around this guy named Sims. And this guy named Sims at the time, um, uh, uh, worked in the area of naval warfare, right? So, you know, big, big, big, you know, battleships, seafaring battleships, uh, you know, w- firing on each other, you know, firing on, on, um, you know, on each other, firing on, on land targets and so forth. And of course, you know, the, the world 120, 100 years, 130 years ago, you know, we didn't really have, you know, airplanes, you know, sort of military airplanes yet. And so, you know, sea warfare, naval warfare was warfare. Like, it was how invasions happened, and it was, you know... and, and, and how countries got defended. So this was, you know, kind of the core kind of aspect of military technology at the time. Um, and so Sims, Sims basically worked on basically guns, like big, big guns on, on, on big military ships. Um, and then in particular, how do you aim big guns on big military ships? Um, and the, the way the story goes is basically before Sims, guns were fixed in position on a ship, right? So you'd, you'd, you'd have a big ship. You'd have, you know... It's, it's... I've seen this in movies. You'd have the gun sticking out the side of the ship, and then basically what would happen is... Y- and the gun is in, like, a fixed position, right? 'Cause it's, you know, lashed to the deck, so it doesn't roll around. Um, and so what happens is, you know, the sea is moving, right? And so the, the ship is kind of going back and forth like this in the water, which means the gun is going back and forth like this, which means that basically in naval battles up until Sims, you know, the s- the accuracy rate of, of guns being fired off these ships was, like, at best 10%. Um, and, you know, maybe, you know, quite often below that, which, you know, they, they would just miss most of the time. And why would they miss most of the time? 'Cause the gunner would be, like, you know, the gunnery officer would get, would get a, get a fix on, on the position, and he would go to order to fire. But by that point, right, the ocean had moved, the ship had moved, and then he no longer had a lock, and then the thing would fire, and the, the cannonball would miss, miss the other ship. Um, and so, you know, a lot of naval battles up till that point were these ships kind of sitting side by side firing at each other and missing all the time.

   3. SSSteph Smith16:35

      [chuckles]

   4. MAMarc Andreessen16:36

      Right? And so Sims said, "Well, you know, gee, like, there has to be a better way to do this." And basically what he designed was a mechanical mechanism that automatically basically worked in opposition, right, counterbalance, uh, to the roll of the ship. And so if, if the, if the ship is, you know, if the ship basically is going down, right, the, the, the mechanism for the gun would automatically correct. And so the gunnery officer could basically get a fix, and then as long as the ship stayed in the same position as it rolled around, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the lock, you know, the sort of lock on the target would stay intact, and all of a sudden the accuracy rate, you know, shoots up to, like, 90%. Right. And so, and so what, what's so great about this, this example is it's, like, the most obvious thing in the world, which is just, like, obviously every country in the world would instantly adopt this. Every military would adopt this. Every ship would instantly be retrofitted to do this, right? This is, like, the most obvious slam dunk thing you could do. It, it's a huge advance in warfare. You couldn't imagine living without it. Like, that's what you would assume. And if... And, and of course, that's not what happened at all. Um, what happened basically was Sims took... It took Sims, like, a full 25 years to basically convince the American and British navies to adopt this technology. It was, like, a full generational shift. And the, and the book goes through kind of in detail kind of, you know, basically what happened. He... [chuckles] The story goes Sims ultimately had to actually appeal directly to President Teddy Roosevelt at the time. The, like, the entire military command structure of that era basically just told, told him to [chuckles] basically F off. Um, you know, "We don't want your newfangled thing. We... You know, we, we, we're gonna keep doing things the old way." And he ultimately appealed to Teddy Roosevelt, and Roosevelt actually ordered the Navy to look at it, and then they, they, you know, they later ended up adopting it. Um, and so Morison basically says, "Well, okay, what..." You know, like, it's, like, the ultimate example. Like, if they wouldn't adopt even that technology, like, okay, this, this, this must be, like, some very primal kind of counterforce- That's happening. And, and, and this was, you know, and his thesis was it basically, uh, is the following, which is every new technology is a reordering of, of, of the power and the status in society, and then specifically in the form of this gun, right? It was basically like the entire training, basically methods, all of the officer promotion methods, like the entire social hierarchy of naval v-vessels and how gunnery officers were trained and how guns were, you know, built and manufactured and crewed and managed, and how military doctrine worked, right? And all the different things about how you make decisions, you know, a-about this. Like, it was all based on the old model. And, and, and, and basically, like, that skill set became obsolete when this gun came out, and so those people became obsolete, or at least they worried they'd become, they'd become obsolete. This new breed of kind of, you know, more advanced, innovative engineering, you know, kind of mentality came in and, and, and, and, and was a profound threat. And, and by the way, that's what happened, which is you had like a gen-- you ultimately had a generational turnover of, of, of, of, of all of the staff and, and officers involved in n-naval gunnery. Um, and so Morrison basically derives... He, he goes through this example, and then he derives basically this three-part process that he says applies to any new technology, basically, as it is b-as it is greeted [chuckles] and fought by the status quo, by the powers that be. And he says basically it's a three-step process. So step one is com-just to completely ignore it. Like, so just pretend it doesn't exist, refuse to acknowledge it, don't talk about it, don't even engage in conversations. Like, "We, we're just not gonna do this." Um, at some point, though, it just... You know, at some point, you know, these things become too obvious, and they have to engage. He said step two is rational counterargument, right? So, and rational counterargument is, you know, "This can't possibly work because, you know, it's gonna be too expensive. It's not gonna be fast enough. It's not gonna scale. People don't know how to use it." Right? All, all the different kind of rational arguments that you could come up with to, to, to oppose something. Uh, and then ultimately, you know, when, when those don't work anymore 'cause people... You know, people are still watching this and being like, "Okay, this still seems like a good idea." Um, then he says stage three. He says stage three is when the name-calling begins, right? And so st-stage three is basically just like a full-out power status political fight, uh, where all of a sudden basically it's like, okay, these are... You know, these people who are bringing this new te-technology, they're bad people. They have bad morals. They have bad intent. They're gonna ruin everything. Uh, right? And if you, and if you think about it, it's so funny 'cause it's like basically the internet followed this exact trajectory. [chuckles] Like, you know, crypto-cryptocurrency, blockchain, Web3 is following this exact same trajectory. Social networking followed this exact same trajectory. Like, I-I've now seen this pattern, you know, out of 50 times in the, you know, in the, in the, in the last 30 years, and it keeps playing out the same way. [chuckles] Nobody learns anything, right? And it, it's, it's... This is literally what happens with every new technology, and I, I become convinced that's basically how, how, how, how, how this unfolds.

   5. SSSteph Smith20:49

      Yeah. I think something that reminded me of is something Balaji said recently, which he was reflecting on people's response to social and how it's impacted society over time. And he, he noted that maybe 10 or 20 years ago, social was seen as, like, these silly apps being created and, like, who wants to focus on this and, you know, why are we directing smart attention into these types of fields? And then now he's saying or noting that people are framing it as a threat to democracy. So it's kind of interesting that people go from one angle or one perception, and then because technology in particular tends to be this force that's very, very hard to stop, it then turns into something much different. And the same people who framed it as a silly app are now framing it as a threat to democracy. And to your point, this isn't new, right? We had the same kind of dynamics happening with the bicycle. Or actually, I think it would actually be fun for us to go into these red flag laws that you told me about quickly, and we'll return to, to the framing that, that you brought up. But could you speak a little bit more to the red flag laws that were implemented when cars were coming to be?

   6. MAMarc Andreessen21:49

      Yeah. And I'd like to... I'd like to come back to Balaji's thing on social, by the way, 'cause I'll, I'll, I'll interpret it a little bit differently. I'll put it into this, the, the, the SIMS framework. But, um,

6. 21:57 – 26:28

   Automobile moral panic and red flag laws

   1. MAMarc Andreessen21:57

      but yeah. So cars. So this is another great one. So, like, cars, it's like, okay, [chuckles] like we all live with cars. We, we all can't live without cars. Like, you know, there's still huge fights about how, you know, cars should be used in our society, but, like, there's cars everywhere. Like, our society doesn't function without cars. We just kind of take them totally for granted. Uh, by the way, we take them so for granted that we just, like, repeatedly bail out the big car, car [chuckles] companies, right? Like, at this, at this point, like, the taxpayers have kept them in business for a long time. Um, and so, you know, the car... And, and so and then you're just, you're just like, you know, it's just like, okay, the car must have been this obvious thing. Like, of course you want the car. Who... You know, who, you know, who could, who could have fought the car at least for any kind of, you know, kind of valid reason. And so again, to your point, like, it, it turns out actually the cars were re-were actually a, a profound threat to the sort of so-social order of that time, uh, of the era. This is, like, going back 100, 120 years. Um, and, uh, and, and it was basically this exact same kind of process played out with the car. Um, and so the, the, the, the thing you mentioned, basically the thing that happened at the peak of kind of the anti-car hysteria at the time, uh, the moral panic around cars was basically... Basically what happened was cars were a threat to basically the... They were the threat to, like, the ordering of, like, everything from how cities were laid out. They were, you know, a threat to... You know, they were gonna upend, you know, the, the ability to have, like, modern transportation, modern shipping. You know, they were gonna up-upend everything from the world of local merchants. Uh, they were gonna upend... You know, there, there was an entire industry of blacksmiths. You know, uh, the, you know, the horse was, like, central to a lot of economies. A lot of people made, made, made their living off of, you know, dealing with, you know, dealing with horses. Um, you know, there were people who were, like, trained, you know, carriage drivers who all of a sudden were out of jobs. And so there, there was this, like, all of a sudden this, this huge backlash. And so what happened was, uh, a bunch of sort of state municipal level, uh, areas, um, you know, both in the US, like, at, you know, in and around Pennsylvania at the time, and then also in the UK, um, uh, implemented... The-their, their legislators implemented at the time what, what became known as the red flag laws. Um, [chuckles] so the red flag law looks, works as follows. Um, which is, okay, Mr. Car Owner, you've got your fancy new car. Congratulations. Um, you know, you're, you're very proud of yourself. You're probably, you know, a, you know, you're probably a, a pretty, uh, you know, well-off person, uh, in the community. People probably generally are probably jealous of you to start with. You've got this fancy new automobile. Um, and, and by the way, in those days, like, cars broke down all the time. And so, you know, when you would take your car out for a ride, you'd have like... You'd be driving the car, um, and then you'd, you'd, you'd often, like, have to bring a mechanic with you, um, right? [chuckles] To basically fix the car when it broke. They were st-still getting everything to work. Um, and so you and your mechanic or whatever, your family, you'd be, you'd be out, you know, motoring along in your car on, on whatever dirt road, you know, dirt road at the time. Um, and the law was that you had to employ another guy. You had to employ a guy, um, to walk, you know, 50 feet in front of the car, uh, carrying big red flags Right. Okay, so picture this. You're driving along, you're out for a nice Sunday drive, you got your kids, whatever, you got your m- mechanic, and you're, you're, you're, you're, you're going along. And you know what? Cars in those days didn't go very fast, but they did go faster than you could walk. And so you're driving along at whatever, 10, 20 miles an hour. But according to law, you have to have a guy in front of you on foot, like out in advance, and he's got these like big re- big red flags, and you have to follow this guy 'cause he has to stay in front of you. And so you can only motor along at whatever the three, four miles an hour, you know, that this guy can walk. And this guy's like waving the red flags. Why is this guy waving the red flags? To warn everybody that a car is coming, right? Um, why, why was the explanation that he needs to warn, you know, people that a car is coming? Well, because the car might scare the horses, right? So like, you know, if the car comes along, it's making noise, it scares the horses, the, you know, the horses, you know, whatever, you know, that are most of what's on the road at that time, you know, they freak out or, you know, by- bystanders freak out, people get hurt. Like this would be really bad. Um, and, and so, so literally it's like, okay, that, that was how the car got rolled out. The, the most advanced form of this law that I've been able to find, um, [chuckles] went a step further. Um, it said basically, if you're driving along and you actually see a horse coming at you, you see somebody on a horse coming at you the other direction, you have to pull over to the side of the road. You have to disassemble the car. You have to take it apart.

   2. SSSteph Smith25:54

      What?

   3. MAMarc Andreessen25:54

      Right? You and your mechanic would take the car apart, and you have to hide the parts of the car so that the horse can't see them. Right?

   4. SSSteph Smith26:00

      Oh, boy.

   5. MAMarc Andreessen26:00

      'Cause the horse might get scared, right, get scared by the appearance of the car. And then when the horse goes by, you can then reassemble your car, right, a- a- and keep going. Right? And of course you look back today and you're just like, okay, this is like incredibly comical, like how could they ever do this? And then of course you, you, exactly your point, like social networking, you think of exactly the technologies today, and you're like, oh yeah, you know, they're putting in place laws that, you know, 100 years from now, you know, the laws that are being put in place now on a lot of modern technology topics are gonna look just as silly as the red flag laws. But since nobody ever learns anything [chuckles] , you know, history will-

   6. SSSteph Smith26:27

      [laughs]

7. 26:28 – 29:28

   Balaji’s arc on social networking

   1. MAMarc Andreessen26:28

      ... history will repeat. Let me just hit real quick the, the Balaji point on social networking. So this is a really interesting one 'cause he, he described the overall arc, or you, you described him as saying the overall arc was from this harmless, you know, cat... You know, who cares what your cat had for breakfast, kind of these are silly trivial things to like this, you know, this is like the fundamental threat to democracy. It was actually a three-step process, right? It was, it was step one was ignore, right? Uh, step two in the case of social networking, actually, we went through the whole argument, but there was this other step, maybe call it step two and a half, which basically is like, this is the best thing ever for democracy, right? And you, you may remember around, uh, about 10 years ago, around 2012, basically two things happened. One was Obama got reelected, and the, the press went like... And this was like the, at the time, this was like referred to as like the first Facebook election. It was when Facebook kind of had gone really mainstream. Um, and so like there were magazine covers, newspaper stories talking about... Literally the story was Facebook saves democracy, right? And it was literally Facebook saves democracy, big data, uh, saves democracy. All of a sudden, like, you know, politicians can get out their messages to their voters. You know, the correct candidates can get elected. You know, this is like the most wonderful thing for democracy ever. By the way, that was also during the Arab Spring, right? And, and social networking, of course, got a lot of credit for the, the revolu- you know, the, the, at the time, the democratic revolutions of the, um, you know, of the, uh, of the Arab Spring. And so there was this like overwhelming sensation, like when social networking executives, you know, in, 10 years ago would go to Washington or Davos or Aspen or any of these places with fancy people, you know, with important titles, like they just get lavished with praise about how wonderful this new technology is for democracy. [chuckles] To Balaji’s point, 10, 10 years later, the story has done a complete 180, right? Now it's the absolute worst fundamental possible threat you could have to democracy because, of course, it turns out not just one side can win elections, it turns out the other side can too. Um, and it turns out the other side also uses, you know, uses, uses social networking and runs ads on social networking. And, and, and to your point, basically what's happened is if you track the people involved, the exact same people have held every single position, right? So the exact same experts, profe- you know, professors, you know, pundits, commentators, analysts, think tank people, magazine publishers, political activists. The exact same people have held every single one of these viewpoints all the way through this with no attempt at any point to reconcile their private, uh, their previous points of view. And so, you know, uh, L.T. Morrison, I think is no longer with us, but he is smiling down from heaven saying, "Yep, that's exactly what I predicted would happen."

   2. SSSteph Smith28:42

      Yeah. I mean, it is fascinating to look at history because you can see these things repeating, and I think this three-step process is something that people should, you know, apply to technologies of today and ask, like, where is that technology or the way that people are, are reacting to this technology, where are we in that cycle? And then I think another fascinating thing for people to spend time with is this idea of the way that we view red flag laws today, what will we view or what will people view in 100 years the same way, right? Like, what are the laws that we're applying to social or AI or robotics or space? That regulation has its importance, but what laws are we implementing today that will seem just as outlandish as someone literally walking in front of a car to make sure that we don't scare horses? So I would encourage people to think about that.

8. 29:28 – 36:10

   Surfacing signal from noise

   1. SSSteph Smith29:28

      But Marc, I wanna ask you, because you have had a track record of being early and right, and that's a combination that not many people can say about themselves. And I think it's important, again, taking this framing of people throughout history being scared, always looking at things from this pessimistic lens, how have you been able to kind of see through that noise? Like, what are you paying attention to when you are introduced to new technology? It's really, really easy to say, "Well, these are all the ways that this technology can go wrong." It's not that easy to say, "Oh, I see this light of how this could go right." So how have you been able to mold that more optimistic lens on technology, and how have you also maintained that over time? Because I think that's an equally hard problem to solve.

   2. MAMarc Andreessen30:10

      Yeah. Yeah. So, um, uh, I'll start by saying like, I have the same instincts as everybody else, right? So when I, when I read the Sims book, I was like, "Yep, that's also describing me." Um, so I have the same, you know, same instinct. It's like somebody brings, you know, something forward... You know, and by the way, like, right, new technologies in the earliest stages, like they're really half-baked. You know, there's sort of this concept that Nassim Taleb talks about, about tinkering- You know, it's usually somebody in, in a garage or a metaphorical garage, a dorm room or something, or a computer lab somewhere who's basically working on something. It, it doesn't quite work. You know, you, you have to, like, really squint to see why this would ever be something that a normal person could, could ever even understand, much less use, much less get value out of. Um, and so, you know, especially if you're early, you know, if you're t- if you're doing, like, early-stage investing, like we are ear- kind of early adoption new technology, it's like you do see these things when they're early, and they're just not, they're just not ready yet. And so you have to... Y- y- you basically, the natural impulse is very clear, which is the, the, the, the, the step one of the SIM cycle, which is basically just ignore. So I have the same instincts as everybody else. I think [laughs] basically what, what happened to me, um, is basically this, this kind of, this, this whole cycle kind of got beaten into me, um, which is basically, like, a, a very large number of times over the last, you know, 30 years now when I have had that reaction, and then it turns out that whatever the new technology was turns out to be a really big deal. Um, you know, it's, it's like if you, if you go through that loop enough times, like, at some point, I don't know, it's like the tenth time [laughs] or the 15th time or something, like at some point you're just like, "Okay, like, I need to stop." You know, at some point you realize that basically the cycle is a form of self-harm. Like, y- y- if you wanna be on the leading edge of new technology, you basically have to break out of this cycle. Uh, you have, you have to basically stop holding yourself back. Now, there's a couple of nuances to that, right? So one is you do have to squint. Like, you do have to look at a new unformed thing, right? And w- within it, that, and this goes to the step two of the SIM- S- SIM cycle, but it basically, like, rationally, like, has all these problems, right? And, you know, and again, these problems u- usually in our era, these problems are like it's too slow, it doesn't scale, it's too expensive, you know, whatever, it's too confusing, um, you know, it doesn't, whatever, work with existing systems, like whatever it is. Um, uh, you know, no, you know, so it's, or it's like a network effect thing, but nobody's using it yet, so it's got the cold start problem. Um, and so you've got this, like, list of reasons why these new things can't work, and you basically have to be willing to squint and kind of look through that and say, "Okay, you know, basically, like, you know, like, what if those things all get fixed?" Right? And, and, and basically, right, the way that, the, the tech industry works is, is very helpful in this. If you spend, right, a lot of time with engineers, what you notice basically is that list of kind of rational reasons why something can't work, that list is also the same list of all of the technology and business opportunities with that technology, right? So I always call that it's the punch list of all the things for founders to do. Um, so, uh, to give you an example, Crypto Web3 has been going through this for the last 10 years, right? Which is, you know, Crypto Web3, Bitcoin was, was greeted early on. Ethereum was greeted early on as like this can't possibly work, all these different reasons. And basically, you know, in- incredible engineers and entrepreneurs in the Crypto Web3 space now are basically fixing all of those things. By the way, today's actually a great day to bring that up, right? Because today's the day the, the, the sort of Ethereum merge, what they call the merge, just took place. And so Ethereum actually just today switched from the old method of proof of work to the new method of proof of stake, right? One, one of the old arguments against crypto, right, including Ethereum, was basically the proof of work burns all this energy, like unnecessarily. Um, proof of stake doesn't have that problem. And so, like, quite literally, the Ethereum developer community has basically taken one of those rational objections, like, completely off the table. And, and that's just, like, a great example of how these things actually, you know, uh, actually, uh, uh, actually do come to work. Here's the other thing, and this, this is also an important one. Like, you're not always right. Like [laughs] - Mm-hmm ... let's put it this way. Just because every successful new technology is greeted initially as a joke, [laughs] right, does not mean that every new technology that's greeted as a joke is going to be successful, right?

   3. SSSteph Smith33:50

      Yes.

   4. MAMarc Andreessen33:50

      And so you're not always right. Like s- sometimes you bet on an early... You know, we do this all the time, right, in venture capital. You bet on an early stage technology, and it actually doesn't work. It actually, it actually doesn't happen. It doesn't take. It doesn't become real, right? And I'm not even talking about, like, I'm not even talking about fraud. I'm just talking about, like, we thought we had the idea. We thought we had the, you know, the, the sort of, you know, we had the right people working on it. You know, it just, they just couldn't get the thing to work, or they just couldn't get the thing to work at the price point that the market needed. Or by the way, a lot of the times it's just it was 10 or 20 or 30 years too early, right? So vir- virtual reality is a good example of this. Like, I, I remember when there was the first VR wave. I actually worked on a, a, a bit when I was in college in the, in the late '80s. Like, there, there was this big thing around virtual reality at the time, and it just turned out that, like, you just couldn't build VR headsets that worked properly 25 years ago, 30 years ago. The, the technology wasn't ready yet, and, and, and of course, you know, today you can. Um, and so, so a lot of the times it's just being early. But of course be- being 30 years early is the same as being wrong. Like, it, it, you know, it doesn't help you any when ev- everything you're working on fails, and then you have to w- you have to wait 30 years. Um, and so you have to be will... you know, if, if you're gonna kind of think in these terms, you have to be willing to be open to the idea that you're only gonna be right part of the time, right? And so, and, and you have to be w- you have to be willing to take the chances anyway. You b- you basically, and this is kind of the way I think about it is, the answer to every new... This way. The way I think about it, like, for our firm is for every new technology that we're exposed to, right, it's like, okay, does it pass, like, the basic sniff test of like, okay, if this worked, would it be a big deal, right? And then it's like, are there really smart people working on getting it to work? And then basically, if it passes those two sniff tests, then we should probably b- be betting on it today, because we will be wrong some of the time, right? But we will also be right early some of the time. And then, you know, the way venture capital works, startups work is you, at least in theory, make more money off the winners than you, than you lose on the things that don't work. Um, so, so you have to kind of be willing to kind of tilt into the risk. By the way, s- some people shouldn't do this, right? Like, you know, there, there are people for whom, you know, ever being exposed to failure is just, like, too psychologically damaging to them, or there's, like, large companies, you know, that maybe shouldn't necessarily completely reinvent their entire business on the basis of a new unproven startup technology or something. But, like, you know, so, so, so this is, like, a, a time and place thing for some people and not for other people. But for those of us who want to be on the leading edge of new technologies, we have to be very open-minded.

   5. SSSteph Smith36:01

      It's also a function of venture capital, right? The, the business or the industry that you're in naturally requires some level of risk so that you get the reward at the end

9. 36:10 – 40:04

   The role of timing in innovation

   1. SSSteph Smith36:10

      of the table. But on that note of timing, I wanted to ask you about this because of course there are examples of specific companies. Like, I'll just use a simple one, Segway. Segway didn't work out. A bunch of people thought it would. Okay, so that was truly something that, you know, we probably won't see in the future. But when we're talking about larger industries, you used VR as an example Are there really examples of technologies that a bunch of extremely talented people are working on? Again, really foundational technologies, whether it's AI or crypto, insert other foundational technology here, that eventually doesn't work out. And I'm asking you this because actually several of us on the editorial team were trying to think of an example, and as someone who has been investing in technology for so long, I was wondering if there has been a case where so many people have been wrong.

   2. MAMarc Andreessen36:58

      Well, the big probably famous example was, uh, alchemy, um, [laughs] which is, uh, the term people haven't... It's A-L-C-H-E-M-Y. So alchemy was the technology to transmute lead into gold. Um, and, uh, there was this concept that you'd be able to bu- that you'd be able to build some form of machine or discover some material that they actually... And this is, like, you know, three hundred years ago now. Uh, they actually had this term they called the philosopher's stone, and there was... And basically all these smart people trying to figure out how to basically invent or discover the philosopher's stone. By the way, [laughs] talk about smart people, Isaac Newton spent 20 years trying to figure this out, right? So, [laughs] like maybe the smartest human being in the history of the planet spent 20 years on this. Um, so at, at the time, you know, they were serious. Um, and, uh, and you know, the, and the dream of course was, you know, transmuting lead into gold. Why do they wanna do that? Of course, lead is plentiful and, and, and, and, and worthless and gold is, you know, scarce and, and incredibly valuable. And so, you know, they, they were searching for kind of the magic formula for how to basically essentially, right, create wealth, you know, basically, uh, you know, kind of turbocharge the economy, you know, kind of make society better in one step. And, and, you know, and they never figured it out. Um, [laughs] by the way, it's an interesting question. If you happen to know any material scientists, [laughs] I don't think there are any active research programs today, um, on literally turning lead into gold, but it, it would be an interesting question for any material scientists you know, um, whether... Oh, [laughs] there is actually an example of this. Um, there are now synthetic diamonds, right? And so there's, there's now technology for actually turning carbon into diamonds. Um, and so, you know, o-one, one could argue we didn't, we didn't get gold out the other end, but maybe, maybe, maybe they got the diamond part to work. Um, you know, but, but I, but I cite that example 'cause like, you know, that was like three hundred years ago. Um, and you know, it wasn't... You look back now, and it's like that wasn't really science as we understand it even, even for Newton at that point. It was kind of... There was, like, a lot of religion involved, and, and they, they were still, you know, figuring some really basic things. I mean, [laughs] this is when Newton was still working on his, like, three laws of, like, how the universe works, and so they were, they were still trying to get the basics figured out. You know, look, more recently, um, you know, look, there, there's a lot of things people talk about today that aren't working yet. Um, and you know, we, we could have a very long discussion about those. Um, we obviously we can't see the future. Um, you, you mentioned Segway as an example. Like, I would guess that that comes back. You know, I, I would guess that there will come a time, um, when people will realize that that actually was a really good idea, um, and that there will be... You know, uh, uh, I'll, I'll actually spend a sec- spend a second on Segway, right? So the, the theory of Segway, actually it was a two-part theory. The-part the- part one was the, the device itself, and you know, it, it, it, [laughs] it greeted, it got the backlash right up front for a variety of reasons, just like the car did, and so it, it became kind of this running joke. And if you've, if you like the very funny TV show Arrested Development, you know, they, they take the goofiest, you know, kind of biggest asshole character in the show, they put him on a Segway. So, you know, it became kind of this running joke at the time. But, but the device itself was only w-part, it was only part one of the theory. Part two of the theory was that cities would get redesigned around the device, right? Uh, and, and so the theory basically was like why are cities laid out the way they are? Cities are laid out the way they are because of the car, right? Um, I'll give you an example. Like there are... I think the number is there are something on the order of two billion parking spots, uh, in the United States, right? So there's like mass... And the total amount of, for parking lots is something like there's the parking lots, I think if you put them all together in the US, it's something like they cover, they would cover

10. 40:04 – 47:51

    Today’s major unlocks

    1. MAMarc Andreessen40:04

       the entire state of Connecticut, right? It's just this like massive amount of space devoted to basically roads and then parking, uh, you know, for cars. And then plus there's all the issues. There's all the safety issues with cars. There's all the, you know, pollution issues with cars. You know, there's all the noise issues and so forth and so on. So basically what the, what the Segway guys at the time thought was, you know, really what should happen is cities should get redesigned. Cities should get redesigned assuming that there are no cars. But you, you know, you don't just want people walking around. You want people to be able to move faster than that. You probably don't wanna bring horses back, um, [laughs] 'cause they have other issues. Um, and so if you redesign, if you design a city from scratch, you could basically design it with sidewalks and paths, and then you could have like lots of different Segway-powered style, right, things, including like, you know, single passenger ones, but also maybe, you know, little, you know, carts be four people, six people. You could have cargo devices and so forth. And so, you know, it may be that just what hasn't happened yet is nobody's actually tried to build that city, right? May-may-maybe there just needs to be a new kind of city, and by the way, maybe at some point somebody will do that, and all of a sudden it'll be like, wow, those Segway guys, you know, whatever, 40 years ago were ac- were actually onto the right thing. And so if a lot of smart people are working on something, it, it, it's like virtually guaranteed that it's gonna happen. It's just a question of when. And, and like I said, the when might be 40 years out, and so it, it might not, like it might not be those people who get the benefit or who kind of harvest the gains from doing the new thing, but like it ultimately will happen. And, and if you go back across many... This is something we could spend a lot of time on, but if you go back across a lot of historical technologies, you know, it took like 50 years to get the TV to work. You know, there were, um, optical telegraph systems 50 years before the telegraph systems that we became familiar with. They had, they had like optical te-tel-telegraph systems working in Paris in like the 1820s, 1830s. Uh, the fax machine, the fax machine was invented in the 1870s. It wasn't commercialized until the 1970s. It took 100 years, right? Um, the computer, you know, the computer took like 50 years to get into consumer form and another 20 years after that to get into your pocket, right? And so the, the, the history here is these things often just do take a lo-a, a, a, a, a long amount of time. And m- my conclusion from that is basically it's all gonna happen. It, it's just this, this sort of massive question of timing.

    2. SSSteph Smith42:07

       Yeah. And on this idea of timing, sometimes all it takes is a change in regulation, a change in another technology becoming mass market that allows, you know, a follow-on effect. Something that I've heard you talk about before are kind of like these unlocks that happen throughout history that again have follow-on effects. And one of them that you've mentioned from way back is the ability for people to own land and how those incentives really spurred a wave of innovation because people had the incentive to build on top. Are there other unlocks that you're paying attention to today that you've noticed, let's say, in the last five or so years? It could be COVID that, you know, allowed a bunch of people to work online, and that's, you know, the next industrial revolution. Are there things that you think are really, really meaningful from the last, again, let's say couple years?

    3. MAMarc Andreessen42:49

       Yeah, so the, look, the, the big one, the big one is sort of the post-COVID world. So, so the big one is kind of, you know, the rise of kind of remote work, virtual work, and the reason I, I say that's the big one is because, you know, it seems, you know, it seems relatively straightforward. Well, you know, like you and I are recording this, we're in different locations. We're, you know, we're coming in across webcams. Um, so it seems like it's just like a new way to work, but it's actually deeper than that, uh, for the following reason, which is basically the economic role of cities for basically all of recorded human history, again, going back 4,000 years. The role of cities basically is what, it's what economists, they, they call it agglomeration. So the, the, the role of cities is to basically get a critical mass of people in a single place where those people are able to come together and basically do things that are greater than, than those people could do as individuals, right? Um, and, and that ultimately led to the creation of companies and led to the creation of like, you know, all the te- te- technology and science and all, all these other things that happened kind of as a consequence of ki- culture. [chuckles] Culture came out of cities. Like, uh, almost everything today that we would consider to be kind of good about kind of human existence, you know, kind of came out of the fact that people gathered in cities. Um, like all the invention basically takes place in cities. And so the role of the city was basically, okay, you, you, you want... You basically societally, you want to basically attract the sort of smartest, most ambitious, most innovative, most creative people anywhere in society, no matter where they grow up, whether it's in like a small town or on a farm or, you know, by the way, in another country, whatever, and you want to basically bring them to a city. The economists also have this term they call superstar cities, right? Um, and these are the cities that basically tu- turn out to be like ground zero for like a, you know, a fundamentally kind of revolutionary, you know, kind of thing, right? And, and become kind of a permanent hub. And so, you know, historically, the San Francisco Bay Area has been the superstar city of technology, right? The, the, the way that works is if you're a, uh, young, ambitious technologist, you want to go to the San Francisco Bay Area. You want to be a small fish in a big pond because you want to be around all the other smart people because the collective effect is gonna be so powerful. Los Angeles is a superstar city for, you know, for film and television. New York is a superstar city for finance and for fashion and, you know, arts and all kinds of things. London, you know, Paris, these, you know. So these cities, you know, these, these big cities have played this kind of outsize role in economic history, but they, they've all been based on this idea that you have to get all the smart people together in one geographic place so that they can actually meet each other and talk to each other and work together and do projects together, bounce ideas off each other, challenge each other. Um, and again, this is like a 4,000-year history of h- of how, how, of how progress has happened. All of a sudden, for the first time in 4,000 years, we now have both the technology in the form of the internet and Zoom and webcams and remote work and collaboration tools and Slack and all these, you know, amazing, you know, technologies we have now, uh, you know, the internet. Um, and we now have this like sudden proof, right? That during the very, you know, kind of bad, unpleasant, dangerous COVID lockdowns, it turns out basically the companies were basically able to just ke- keep running. Like, a- any, any company with knowledge work was able to just keep running, you know, all, all, all the way through COVID to, to, to a, to a level of success that like nobody envisioned was even possible, but you know, before COVID. And so now of course you've got this massive societal changes underway, and by the way, I think the societal changes from COVID are just starting. You've got this massive societal changes underway where all of a sudden people can say like, "Wow, I don't have to be in the San Francisco Bay Area or in New York City or in Paris or wherever it is in order to be part of the computer industry or the music industry or the movie industry or, you know, finance or like whatever it is. By the way, like my kids are not gonna have to be there," right? So even if I'm raising kids and I'm worried about their future, like they don't necessarily have to be there. So all, all of a sudden, like the potential to fundamentally disconnect where people live from where people work, um, you know, is, is basically been opened. And then of course, if you can separate the where, you can also separate the how, right? And so what kind of community, right, would be the best for, for example, for kids to grow up in? Are the communities that we built in the last 100 years, where it's been assumed that you have to kind of be part of these, you know, specific locations to fully participate in economic life, are these the actual kinds of communities you wanna raise kids in, or is there actually a completely different ki- kind of community you would build if you knew you didn't have to be, you know, in a specific place to be able to have great jobs? And so like, a- and, and you know, a lot, we all probably know people like this, like a lot of people are fundamentally reexamining like what do they wanna do with their lives. Like do they want, like do they wanna work? [chuckles] Do, do they wanna work in the industry they were working at before? Do they wanna work at the employer they were working at before, right? Do they wanna move to, you know, another country? Like, uh, they're, you know, completely rethinking, right? How many kids do they wanna have? Like whether they wanna have kids, like all these things. Um, you know, do they wanna get, you know, reconnected back, you know, to, to the extended families that they were forced to move away from. All of these like fundamental questions are, are, are, are being asked, and, and, and, and this I think, I think 50 years from now I think we'll look back and it'll be like basically the internet and then this were basically the two big things that happened.

    4. SSSteph Smith47:23

       Yeah, I, I have to agree with you. I've been working remotely for probably seven years now, so a little bit before COVID, but something that I'm finding fascinating is, uh, this idea of remote work, in my opinion, being a technology, or at least there's technologies that enable it. And similar to many other technologies, as we've talked about throughout this conversation, there is a substantial backlash. And also, you know, I have to give credit to the people who are, uh, who are pushing back on remote work because there are things

11. 47:51 – 53:08

    Remote work and society reshuffling

    1. SSSteph Smith47:51

       to be fixed, just like we talked about every technology has problems to fix, and those are business opportunities. Uh, but I wanna hear from you from the perspective that you mentioned before of this power balance being messed with with every new technology. And as more people start to work remotely and reconsider all of this, how would you frame the pushback of remote work with this idea of a power shift or society reshuffling?

    2. MAMarc Andreessen48:17

       Yeah. So this really comes up, uh... I mean, there's a bunch of, there's a, a whole bunch of angles on this, but like the one that's, the one that I hear about all the time right now is when I talk to big company CEOs, right? So you talk to CEOs of like big banks or big software companies, right? Big, big, big, big whatever, you know, companies. Um, y- you know, this basically is the conversation, right? 'Cause, 'cause what happened is basically, you know, if you're the CEO of a big company today, you know, you came up in an environment where everybody was in physical proximity, right? You, you came up where the, the whole, the whole way that you came up, the whole way that you played politics and like got yourself in position and got yourself exposed to the important people and got promoted and like all this stuff, you know, did work with your teams, right? Uh, you know, the way that you did deals, the way that you like, you know, had, had relationships with other people in the industry, like, you know, the way you dealt with customers, it was all based on in-person proximity, right? And, and which meant either in the office or by s- or by the way, it meant on the road, right? Business travel. And that's true basically of like the entire management hierarchy of like every existing big company. Like they're, they're all like that, right? And so all of a sudden now you have this like in... You have this incredible kind of, you know, phase shift happening, and so now it's like, okay- Like, a whole bunch of questions open up, like how does the company organize? Um, you know, what is the balance between local, you know, kind of r- you know, in person and, and remote? Um, you know, how... what is, what are the implications of that for the org chart, right? You know, job, job, job roles change. Um, geographically, where should companies be located, right? I'll give you an example. I talked to the head of one, one big company that has, uh, based in Manhattan, they've got about 20% of their employees are these super advanced knowledge workers, about 80% are kind of back office, white, white collar clerical workers. You know, that CEO's like, "Look, like the 80% clearly don't need to be in Manhattan anymore. Like, we can put them in like South Dakota, you know, we can pay them like half as much. Their'll be, their standard of life will be twice as high. Um, [chuckles] you know, they'll be a lot happier. Um, and, uh, and, you know, we can do that," right? Um, now, you know, he says, "I think we still need to keep the 20% of the creatives together, but like, by the way, the creatives get a vote too, and if they decide to leave, you know, the in-person job and go remote and work for another, you know, company in that industry that's willing to hire remotely, like they have the ability to do that." So, like, a lot of these companies I think are gonna like really dramatically restructure over the course of the next five years. A lot of these CEOs, basically the big company CEOs are like, "Well, we could never go full remote, like that's impossible. We can't do it." You know, you go talk to startup CEOs and they're like, "Well, maybe we can." Right? And so, like here I'll, I'll talk our book for a second. I'll kind of, you know, um, I'll, I'll, I'll get as close as I can to kind of saying that we might have something figured out. Um, you know, look, it may be that the remote work revolution is just really bad for big companies. Uh, it, right, it just may be that it takes existing systems and models for how big companies operate and it basically breaks them. Um, and it may be that remote work is the kind of thing that you need to build a new company to be able to know how to do properly, right? 'Cause you need to kind of build a culture from scratch, you need to build systems from scratch, you need to build processes from scratch. You need to build... It may, it may just be remote companies just need to get built differently. And it might actually not be possible to reconstruct a big old company that's done thing, things, things one way and just restructure it so that they can do things a completely different way. And so, you know, this may accelerate the process of the, you know, turnover where some big companies, you know, go away faster and some new companies get much bigger faster. Like, that's a possibility. [chuckles] Or [chuckles] by the way, you know, maybe I'm full of it, right? And maybe the opposite is true. Like, maybe it turns out remote work just isn't good enough, or may- maybe it turns out we actually don't have remote... Uh, maybe we don't have the technologies yet, right? Maybe we need holographs, [chuckles] right? Maybe we need, you know, big teleconferencing rooms. Maybe we need, you know, I don't know, may- I'll give you an example. Maybe every company at a certain size should own its o- it, it should own its own, like literally its own hotel resort, right? And so, right, and, and so maybe what happens is basically like, every team should be basically in residence at like a really cool like hotel or resort location for like, uh, you know, a month in the spring and a month in the fall in a resort, and maybe the company should just be running their teams through that, and unless they do that kind of thing to be able to have critical mass, the bonding, like maybe it just won't work. And like may- maybe that's a, you know, maybe that's a new kind of real estate development that has to happen, you know, to be able to have basically sort of think about as sort of corporate resorts. Like to, to be, you know, right, in other words, to be an attractive enough place to come where you're willing to actually be away from home for a month, maybe you can even bring your family with you, right, but everybody gets to work together. Like that, you know, those don't exist today. Um, and so, a- and I'm just speculating, but like maybe there are things like that that we have yet to figure out. Um, I, I just have like a very strong sense that on the other side of this, the w- the world's gonna work very differently.

    3. SSSteph Smith52:33

       I do too. And it, what you're saying reminds me of something that when I had a chat with Neil Stevenson, we, we talked about which is when electricity was invented, it was very easy to think, okay, electricity can a- can be applied to lighting. Okay, that makes sense. People can see that line. But the example he gave was electric guitars. Not many people when electricity was first being invented could think, "Oh, okay, well, we're gonna have electric guitars from this." And I think when you have these really foundational shifts, like remote work, it's very hard to think about those second, third order effects, but you do know they're gonna happen. You don't, you just don't always know exactly how they're going to manifest. But I wanted to

12. 53:08 – 57:52

    Changing your mind

    1. SSSteph Smith53:08

       ask you quickly because a16z has moved to the cloud recently, was there an aha moment or was there a specific thing that got you to change your mind? Or were you always kind of, you know, coming around to this idea? Because a lot of people say, you know, like strong opinions weakly held or something like that, but not many people actually operate that way, and so I think that it was interesting to see a16z actually make a shift of previously being in the office to, uh, moving to the cloud. So was there something that kind of unlocked that?

    2. MAMarc Andreessen53:37

       Yeah. So I was very [chuckles] people who know me will confirm this, I was very anti-remote work basically before COVID. Um, I was probably pretty far on the, on the end of like the spectrum of people thinking about this, not, not being open-minded on it. And, and, and basically, and, and by the way, it was true of us as a firm, right? And so we historically ran as a firm, we ran a actually a single office. We had a single office, excuse me, in Menlo Park. We actually even refused to open an office in San Francisco for, for 10 years 'cause we were just, we wanted like critical mass in the office. Uh, and by the way, people who actually worked or visited our office kind of between, call it 2010 and 2020, they will tell you, like it was a h- it was a hive of activity. Like it was a, it was a [chuckles] at the time it was a really cool place. Um, and there was always all this, all this amazing stuff happening and all these amazing people walking around and like it, you know, we, we, we wanted that kind of hothouse environment. Uh, and, and we got it. But, but, but that meant everybody like had to be in the office. Um, and then the other thing I always maintained was I was like, look, like there's this theory of remote work, but like it hasn't yet worked for any company at any level of scale. Like the only companies that have made it work are very small. Um, and, and then, um, I said, look, just look at the data, right? And what the data basically says is this, this superstar city thing I mentioned is basically in full effect. And what the data basically said was venture capital, uh, it, you know, ven- the funding for technology was actually concentrating more and more into the Bay Area, right? Between, between 2010 and 2020. If you look at just like the money was flowing more and more into this single place. The people were flowing more and more into this single place. I mean, the B- the B- and to be clear, like the Valley as a place was bursting at the seams, and housing became crazily expensive, and transit's a disaster, and like there cr- you know, all these issues. Our politicians hate us, [chuckles] like there's all these issues. But this hothouse environment, this, this, this agglomeration hothouse, you know, kind of thing was real, right? And it's, and it's the thing that traditionally made, you know, made, made the Valley so special, and it's why th- this was always sort of the hub for, you know, this has been the hub for 40 years, where kind of all the, you know, almost all the great breakthroughs in, in, in technology have been happening Um, and so I was very much kind of on that page. So for me, it, it was liter- it was literally going through COVID, right? And so it was literally, you know, and we-- and again, we were looking at this a couple different levels. We were look- looking at this level of like, how's our firm gonna operate, you know, under lockdown? We were also thinking about like, how are our company's going to operate under lockdown? And then we were also thinking about, okay, how is the industry as a whole, right, going to operate under lockdown? Like for example, like how will new companies get started? If a new company starts under conditions of lockdown, like how will that actually happen? Um, and then basically we, we, you know, through [chuckles] on a completely involuntary, you know, footing, we, we basically ran this experiment for two years. Uh, and, and by the way, we did-- one of the things we did is we, we did surveys the entire time. So we did, we did repeated sampling of the, of the different constituencies and kind of asked, you know, to try to get a data kinda handle on what was happening. And so it was, it was really interesting 'cause it's like six months in, like people are like super nervous and it's like, are these companies even gonna continue working? And then it's like twelve months in, people are like, well, actually it turns out remote work, at least for now, works just as well and if anything, maybe even better because people don't have anything else to do, so they're actually working more, right? So the new problem is burnout. Um, you know, eighteen months later it was, well, you know, actually we're gonna start hiring remote people. You know, now, now that we can do remote work, we can now hire people who don't live, you know, near, near the campus, so we, we can hire more broadly, right? And, and, and so forth. And so you could actually see in the data, um, you could actually see basically the, the, the, the, the, the sort of, uh, preferences and the, the sort of beliefs, um, you know, moving. And then, and then basically what, what Ben and I decided with our, you know, with our, with our colleagues at the firm basically is like: Look, the whole-- the firm is built to live in the future. The firm is built to fund the best new companies and work with the best new entrepreneurs building the future. Like, you know, we wanna be on the leading edge of the industry. Um, this is such a big change for the industry that like we have to live it. Like it doesn't make any sense to try to maintain the old model where we're basically funding the new model. Like we have to live the new model. I think it's going very well. Like having said that, like we're still figuring it out, right? And so like, you know, I'm sure you're experiencing this. It's like we're still figuring out like... So for example, at our firm, we, we, we put a big premium on having off-sites. Like we, we now take off-sites really seriously. We really take getting people together on a regular basis very seriously. We have like whole teams inside our firm now that are devoted just to like orchestrating all that and make it, make it, making all those, all those happen. But like is, you know, do we have the right balance of like remote versus like off-site? Do we need to have, you know, people have more sub time? Do we have the right tools and systems in place? Are we running the firm, you know, do we have the right management practices? And so, you know, we're, we're certainly still figuring it out, but we're, we're definitely on that path.

    3. SSSteph Smith57:48

       Yeah. And like we talked about, that comes with time. But the reason I

13. 57:52 – 1:08:58

    Retaining a lens of optimism

    1. SSSteph Smith57:52

       asked you how you made that shift or almost in, in some way changed your opinion as you got new data, is because I wonder how perhaps we might be able to do that within the framing of how people view innovation and technology. Kind of returning to what we talked about at the very beginning of this conversation, it does feel like there is this perception of technology, of course not everyone holds it, that, you know, we're in a bad place or again, the world's getting worse or, or insert negative thing about our current state of affairs. And I think it's really inspiring at, at least at a16z to see that people do hold this very optimistic view. And I wonder what you think maybe we can do as a collective, as a society, to maybe orient more around this more positive view of technology. Because from my understanding, and I'd actually love for you to go into this history, it doesn't sound like this was always the case, that technology-- I mean, specific technologies were viewed quite negatively, but a sense around innovation I think has been different in the past. Is that right?

    2. MAMarc Andreessen58:50

       Yeah. So tech- that's a good point. So technologies have always kinda gone through this cycle, and I, I would go so far as to say like the technology adoption cycle, resistance cycle, like I'm not sure it's actually gonna change. [chuckles] Um, Douglas Adams, the, the, the science fiction author Douglas Adams, who wrote "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," had a, had another take on this-

    3. SSSteph Smith59:05

       Mm-hmm

    4. MAMarc Andreessen59:05

       ... that's sort of-

    5. SSSteph Smith59:06

       Oh, yes

    6. MAMarc Andreessen59:07

       ... both very fun- very funny, very serious, right? So he said, basically it's like, uh, any technology that existed before you were like fifteen years old, um, is just like the natural order of things. Um, you know, any technology that gets invented between the time when you're like fifteen and thirty-five is like new and exciting and cool and cutting edge and like maybe you can make a career in it. And then any new technology that arrives after the age of thirty-five is unholy and against, you know, against the [chuckles] against the natural order, right? And it's gonna bring doom to civilization. You know, another way to kind of putting the, putting the sim cycle. So, so there's a, there's a... So like the, the, the, the most kinda, I don't know, the most negative thing you could say or something would be like there's just this like permanent generational psychological thing, this cycle where it... Uh, another famous quote, I think it's the great physicist Max Planck once said, um, uh, "Science advances one funeral at a time." Um, you're right. Meaning that like, you know, in science you need like the old senior scientists who have like one paradigm to like quite literally die off so that the young scientists in the new paradigm can actually like take over. You know, the, the, the, the sort of pessimistic view would be like, like this is just so deeply baked into, into, uh, the mentality of how people operate, uh, psychologically that it's, it's just like the permanent state of affairs. By the way, like you know, I don't know if that's opt- optimal for society. I will tell you that state of affairs is very good for entrepreneurs, right? Um, because if more people in positions of power were more open to new technologies, right, the ad- the opportunity, especially for the young entrepreneur with a breakthrough idea, would actually diminish, right? Because the big old companies would already be doing all the new things. Um, [chuckles] and so it, it, it may be like one, one response to me would be like, "Marc, shut up." Like, "Stop talking to people about this," 'cause we actually want everybody in position of power to just assume that all new technologies are stupid and evil because we want all the opportunity to be available to all the kids who are starting all the new companies. So, so yeah. So that side of thing- that's one side of things, and then yeah, the-- what, what you mentioned, so this broader societal thing. So then there's this broader societal thing that's happening, which is basically this, that sort of societies, different societies have sort of different ethics, um, uh, and belief systems around even just like the fundamental idea of progress, right? And so I, I won't, I won't, I won't, I won't pick on, I won't, I won't name names, but let's just say there are certain societies in global history that, you know, at different points in time have decided like, we're just not gonna do new things. Like we're not gonna talk to outside people. We're not gonna adopt new technologies. We're just like... I mean, there are societies on, on, you know, on planet Earth, you know, there, I mean, [chuckles] North, North Korea. Uh, you know, there are societies like that today. Uh, well, another example. Uh, you know, the Amish like have a entire religion and belief system right around the, the, the fact that they don't adopt new technologies. By the way, like I'm a, I'm a free markets, free minds guy. Like, I think people should live how they want. If they wanna live that way, I think that's fine. It's a choice. You can choose, right? To not like think progress is a good thing, uh, to not think that new technology should be adopted. I, you know, I would argue in the fullness of time it, you know, it's, it's... Well, put it this way, it's, it's hard to have your quality of life be at the same level as if you're, you're, you're more open to new technologies. But like, you know, societies do decide that they don't want new technologies. Um, if you kind of look historically at the US and more broadly kind of the West, um, you do basically see this pattern where there was a lot of resistance to new ideas, you know, call it from the end of the Roman Empire through to basically the Renaissance. You know, some so-called Dark Ages, right? So there, there was like a, whatever, 1,200-year stretch or something where, you know, not much happened. Um, and then, um, and then basically, you know, over the last 500 years, like in the West, there, there's sort of this ethos of progress that kind of emerged and, you know, since this whole Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, right? And so forth, and then, you know, the rise of Protestantism, which was very important 'cause it meant that people could seek out the answers to life's mysteries on their own, right? Um, and then the rise of what was called natural philosophy, that became science. And so there was sort of this system that was developed to basically go uncover basically scientific truths and then, and then build new technologies, and then basically build, you know, what we consider to be like a modern capitalist economy on top of that. Um, if you asked people in 1880 or 1900, um, or 1920, or even 1960, if you asked most people if they thought that that whole set of things was a good idea, most people would've said yes. Um, you know, they, they... This is a sort of the era known as modernity, right? So this was like basically, um, you know, this is the era of like, you know, we want progress and civilization. We want there to be like... You know, we want higher standards of living. Um, you know, we, we, we... You know, we, we, we wanna be able to look back and say like, "Yes, we... like, we advanced civilization as, as compared to, you know, what, what, what our, what our, what our forefathers had." Um, and, you know, and if you read like k- books written in, you know, kind of in those eras, they, you know, they like take great pride in, in, in all the progress that's been made. You know, in the West in the last 50 years, that's kind of gone sideways. Um, you know, there's an ethos in the West that kind of started in the '60s and extends into our era, which basically says, "Well, maybe, you know, a lot of this stuff is not so good. Maybe it's like bad for the environment. Maybe it's bad for, you know, whatever, whatever." Like there's, you know, there's a whole bunch of different arguments like this and like, maybe we've had enough progress. Maybe we've had enough science. Maybe we've had enough technology. Um, you know, the, the, the sort of classic example of this is like nuclear power, right? Like, you know, we invented a way to basically have unlimited clean energy, and then we just like decided we don't, we don't want it. You know, pe-people in 1920... If you told people in 1910 that they could have nuclear power, like there would be like 10,000 nuclear plants like in the United States [laughs] running today. You know, but you tell people in 1975 or 19, you know, '98 or, you know, whatever, 2022 they can have nuclear power and they're like, "Yeah, let's not have any of that." And so I, I think there, there has been this sort of negative cultural shift. Um, Tyler Cowen calls this the complacency. You know, Ru- Ru- Russ Dot that calls this, uh, decadence. Um, you know, there's been this kind of shift to like, eh, you know, things are good enough. We don't need more of this. Uh, you know, or, or the more extreme form, which is like all progress is bad. Like all these new technologies, like they're just flat out bad. It's all bad. It should all stop. You know, [laughs] kind of the Unabomber kind of argument, right? Uh.

    7. SSSteph Smith1:04:45

       Yeah, but people weren't born with that mentality, right? Like, people weren't born with like, "Oh, like progress is bad," right? They've, they've learnt that, and I do wonder, is it just because things have been so good, right? Like that we've, we've done so well, you mentioned specifically this mentality within the West, that people no longer have something to strive for, even though they certainly do. But is, is that just a reality that things have gone so well that people have obtained this mentality?

    8. MAMarc Andreessen1:05:11

       Yeah, so that's a theory. That's a theory some people are calling now, the so-called upper income trap. Um, so basically, it's like the theory basically is, yeah, once people hit like an upper middle-class standard of living, um, where they're kind of like, you know, they got a house, they got a car, you know, they got whatever, they got, you know, college, they got, you know, hospital nearby, and like they got, you know, Netflix. [laughs] They've got like whatever, you know, um, you know, good restaurants nearby, whatever. Like at some point they're just like, "Eh, like it's fine. You know, it's, it's good enough. Uh, you know, anything, you know, anything beyond this is probably excessive." Um, you know, some people are joking right now that this explains what's called the Fermi paradox. So the, the, the Fermi paradox is this question of like, why do we not know of other like, basically civilizations in the galaxy? Like why, why, you know, why do we not know of any like alien civilizations? Like there's, you know, billions and billions of planets like throughout the universe, and like we should be able to like pick up signals, and we should be able to get like, you know, TV broadcasts or whatever from other civilizations traveling across space. And like we should know about other... And like basically why, why aren't, you know, why is it still after all this time with all these radio telescopes, it's just still, you know, humanity on planet Earth and the... So this, this argument basically goes, it's basically this, the same thing. It's just like, yeah, other species of aliens develop the same level of upper middle-class lifestyle that we have, and then they all just kind of shrug and say, "Eh." You know, [laughs] well, you know, look, you know, here we sit. Like so mankind, you know, we went to the moon. Like we went to the freaking moon. Um, we went to the moon a lot. Um, we went to the moon a bunch of times. I think the last time we went to the moon, I think the last time humanity went to the moon was in like 1972 or '73, right? And so-

    9. SSSteph Smith1:06:40

       Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's 1972.

    10. MAMarc Andreessen1:06:41

        1972, right. So it's been 50 years since we went to the moon, and like our answer to that is eh, right? And like, you know, Elon comes out and he's like, "Let's go to Mars." And everybody's like, "Wow, like, you know, I, I guess we could." Like nobody ever really-

    11. SSSteph Smith1:06:54

        [laughs]

    12. MAMarc Andreessen1:06:54

        You know, nobody sugges- you know, [laughs] like in 1972 it was like the obvious next step is of course you go to Mars, right? 'Cause first you go to the moon, then you go to Mars, right? Then you go to Jupiter, right? And then at some point you're going other places, like you're going to other solar systems. Like of course this is like the arc that you wanna be on. And you know, we, in our advanced era just decided, eh, like let's not do it. Um, so yeah, I think there's, I think there's something to that. You know, this, this gets into, you know, theories of social, you know, change and, you know, so- societal forces, political forces, religious forces. I mean, I've got, I've got theories for hours on kind of how we, we got here and what the problem is. Um, you know, but it, it, I'd say it very rapidly gets political. Uh, you know, it's hard to talk about kind of societal structure without getting into politics, and so I try not to get kind of too kind of [laughs] tr- k- kind of, you kind of fully say what I think on some of these topics. But It is just this, like, prevailing ethos. And, and like one way to think about it is that if you think about it socially, it's like there, basically there are three eras of human existence. There was, like, pre-modern, which was basically, like, caves all the way up through, like, kings, right? And then there was modern, which is, like, science, technology, democracy, you know, capitalism, um, and then, and progress. And then now you could argue, like, we're in this post-modern phase where we're just gonna, like, sit around and argue all the time instead of actually doing anything. You know? I me-

    13. SSSteph Smith1:08:13

        Yeah

    14. MAMarc Andreessen1:08:13

        ... may, may, maybe, like, I [laughs] I, I would like to believe that this is not... You know, I would like to believe Netflix and chill is not the terminal point of humanity.

    15. SSSteph Smith1:08:21

        Well, I- I think this, this picture that you're painting of a bunch of other alien species getting so complacent that they just decided never to venture out, or maybe they discovered VR or just went into their screens the way that a lot of people are going today. But, um, I, I wanna just quickly ask you about what you're excited about because you are someone amongst... There still is a large cohort of people who are excited to go to Mars or to take things further than we ever have before. So I think that's exciting, and I think many people take inspiration from that. Um, so within that dimension, like, what are you excited about?

14. 1:08:58 – 1:13:39

    What Marc’s excited about

    1. SSSteph Smith1:08:58

       We already talked about this, like, kind of next industrial revolution through remote work, but are there other things where you're like, "Wow, this is really game-changing and this is really exciting, and I'm glad that us as a society have smart people working on this"?

    2. MAMarc Andreessen1:09:10

       Yeah, there's a bunch of things. I mean, look, there's a bunch of, like, specific technologies, and so I mean, and the easy ones to kind of bring up, you know, kind of off the cuff, it's, it's, you know, AI. Like, it's just, like, it's amazing what's happening with machine learning right now. Um, and then, uh, biotech, like the genomic revolution, is, like, a really big deal. Um, and there's all kinds of questions. I mean, we're just seeing mind-blowing concepts now on that front. Um, and then we... I, I won't reveal it, but we saw one the other day where, like, I literally had to stop in my tracks, my jaw hit the floor. I had to spend like the next hour just, like, processing what I'd just seen. Um, and so there's, um, you know, this, it's like, oh my g- like this could... You know, it's one of those literally, like, this-could-change-everything moments. Um, so, so biotech's going through a lot of really, you know, kind of profound change. And then, um, and then crypto Web3, you know, is we, you know, we've t- we've talked about at length before as a firm, but, like, is, is I think, you know, very profound. Um, so you know, th- there's a, and there's a, and then there's a bunch of others. Those are, like, three big ones, but, like, there's a whole bunch of other spaces that are like that. Um, you know, actually space, you know, yeah, Elon, God bless him, has, like, reinvigorated, you know, the, the whole idea of space. He's... What did he do the other, the other day? He tweeted his, like, he's got... I know he's, he's just talking about, like... He said, he said [laughs] the other day on Twitter, he said, um, "They have not yet discovered an upper limit on how many launches they can do with the same rocket." Um, right? And, and, and [laughs] this is like, like, rockets went from, like, disposable, which is, like, one and done, right, all the way to, like, he's not sure. You know, he just doesn't know. It's like, they go up 50 times, 500 times, 5,000 times, you know, we'll see. And so, like, you know, really, really revolutionary things happening, uh, uh, on that front, which is exciting. Um, you know, a couple other big things I would highlight. So one is just, like, the, the, the, the long-term kind of implications of the, of the internet I think are still in the early stages. And, and one that, you know, I think is kind of a... that's in the background but is, like, really important and relevant to everything we've been, been discussing is that, like, most people in most of history have not had access to the leading edge, right? No, no, you know, mo- most people throughout human history have, who have been, like, super smart and super curious and super ambitious and willing to work hard, you know, most of them have not ever gotten to one of these, you know, cities that I was talking about. Most of them never worked in an advanced field. Like, most of them were doing subsistence farming or they were working in, you know, other kinds of, you know, whatever. They were doing whatever was the local thing to do. They never got an opport... You know, most, even you said, just like music, most of the people who could have composed great music never got the chance to. You know, they never got the training, they never, they never had access to the culture, they never had the ability to produce music. Like, they just couldn't do it. And you could, you could say that's true of everything from music to art to books to, you know, to science, to, like, e- every, every field of human activity. And, you know, the internet really is, like, the great equalizer, leveler, opportunity machine, right, for, uh, basically anybody on the planet who's curious with an internet connection, uh, to be able to learn and explore and start to create and start to join and meet like-minded people. So there's a collective effect, like... Like in my, in my optimistic moments, I kind of think of it as, like, humanity as sort of a group, uh, organism, like, uh, like a s- like the true global society, like, is, is actually just waking up for the first time, um, as a conse- a consequence of being connect, you know, all c- connected online. And, [laughs] and of course there's, there's good aspects to that and maybe bad aspects to that, but it, it, it is sort of this, this, this, this fundamental thing that's happening. And so, you know, hopefully we will discover that there are, you know, I don't know what the number is, but 10 or 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 or a million more people around the world who could be doing really original creative work who just never had the chance in prior generations, and all of a sudden, you know, you could, you could imagine things progressing much faster as a result of that.

    3. SSSteph Smith1:12:24

       Yeah. I, I think even another aspect of that is more people who are coming online, you are having them get access to remote work and, you know, another second-order effect of that is that remote tends to be more asynchronous. So certain people don't always benefit from the 9:00 to 5:00, as an example, and, you know, I saw this infographic today of just, like, the schedules of all these luminaries from back in the day who had created wonderful things, and they were all over the place. So that's just, again, one example of as more people get access to this information, as more people have access to different types of schedules or different types of companies or people facilitated through the internet, I think we're gonna be really surprised by what comes out of that.

    4. MAMarc Andreessen1:13:01

       Yeah. That's right. That's right.

    5. SSSteph Smith1:13:03

       Yeah. So I think, I think one thing I really wanna ask you about is how society values certain things, and I've heard you talk about this to an extent before, but society will fluctuate throughout time and, and different people within that society will value different things. But society as a whole does seem to find virtue in, in certain things at certain times. So for example, you mentioned before, in history maybe entrepreneurs were valued more, so as people built things, society rewarded that type of achievement. How do you view that changing today? What, what do you think society is valuing today? And perhaps, if you're willing to share, what do you wish society valued

15. 1:13:39 – 1:23:12

    Bourgeois vs managerial capitalism

    1. SSSteph Smith1:13:39

       more?

    2. MAMarc Andreessen1:13:39

       So basically there's this theory, this guy James Burnham, um, uh, articulated this theory, uh, back in the, actually the 1940s, uh, that I think applies. Um- A-and he, he called it at the time, he called it the managerial revolution. Um, and, and so basically what he, what he said was there are basically two phases to capitalism. Um, there were, th-there was basically what he called the, the phase of bourgeois capitalism, which is sort of famously the sort of phase that, you know, the robber bar- you know, the robber barons, and then, you know, the phase that the communists hated, and like all, all, all, you know, the ri- the rise of the kind of bourgeois culture. Um, you know, and this, and, and, and, and this is the, you know, the bourgeois capitalism era was the era of like Henry Ford, and Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie, and, you know, kind of all, you know, all these, J.P. Morgan, and, and, and all of these kind of, you know, kind of iconic, Henry Ford, all the, all these kind of business builders, um, you know, who built the companies, oft- [chuckles] often named the companies after themselves, often ran the companies their entire lives, kind of drove the companies through j- kind of sheer force of personal kind of, uh, you know, kind of animal magnetism and force. Um, and then he said basically there's an evolution that takes place, and it kind of started in the '30s and '40s and extends into our, our period, and, and he called that the era of managerial capitalism. Um, or just more generally, he called it managerialism. Um, and basically the, the idea there is it's, it's sort of the second phase, um, and of, of capitalism, and, and it's basically the phase at which you can no longer just have a guy, you know, you can no longer just have a Henry Ford or whatever, who's just got a car company called Ford and he just like orders everybody around and tells everybody what to do. Like that basically modern business, modern technology, right, modern society, it's too complicated for that. Um, and so you're not, you basically, the, the model of capitalism goes from basically sole proprietorships in the bourgeois era, right, to basically what you'd consider to be like the modern multinational, you know, [chuckles] Delaware C Corporation with like a board of directors, and an executive management team, and a CEO, and the CEO's probably not the founder. In fact, the CEO was probably trained at a business school. You know, like [chuckles] Henry Ford never went to business school, right? Uh, but you know, w- you know, the, the guy, you know, Jim Farley is running, I haven't checked, but I'm sure Jim Farley is running Ford today. I'm sure that he did, right? So like, you know, uh, all of a sudden it's basically like you have the, and basically he said you have the rise of sort of the managerial class. So you have, you have the rise of basically these people who are sort of technocratic experts who would never start their own thing. Like they would never invent the car, or they would never, you know, start the car company. Um, but th- but they are necessary to run the large scale industrial organization that is like a modern, you know, giant car company, or a modern giant electrical grid, or a modern giant telephone network, or a modern giant whatever. You name it, chip company, like whatever it is. Um, and so, and, and it's a little bit, if you think about it, it's a little bit of like basically founder-led companies to basically prof- quote unquote professional [chuckles] CEO-led companies. You know, it's basically top-down kind of dictatorial management versus kind of bottoms-up consensus management. Um, it's basically the principal running the company, right, with his like often with his name on the line, and his entire net worth is in the company, and like his name is on the line, um, to, you know, what, what, you know, you refer to as the principal agent problem, which is, okay, these companies are run by people, but like, you know, are these people really gonna be with the company for the next 30 years? You know, they get paid annually. Are their incentives more annual as opposed to long-term? Um, and what Burnham basically said was th- this is an inevitable process to go from bourgeois capitalism to managerial capitalism. It's inevitable because of scale and complexity, right? And, and you, you can't, you know, Henry Ford today could not run Ford Motor Company, like it's too big and complicated. You n- you need a different skill set. Um, but he said, look, it, it, it is a very different, it is a very big social cultural change, and it's a change basically from valuing, right, aggre- you know, sort of individual aggression, uh, individual merit, individual achievement, individual accomplishment, individual force of will, right, to a much more collective, right, way of operating, right? Groups. Groups operating in sort of consensus collaborative form. You know, people having to come to agreement on things. Committees, bureaucracy, right? And he basically said it's sort of, you know, sta- stage one, stage two. The way I view kind of what we do, like in venture capital, what we do is we basically are, f- we're basically the throwback. So the startups that we fund are being funded, uh, uh, we, we fund startups that fit that old model. Like we're trying to find the next generation of Henry Fords, right, and, and, um, and, um, and, and Andrew Carnegies and so forth, and, you know, Leland Stanford, you know, the, the railroad guy who, you know, ultimately founded Stanford University, was a, was a robber baron in the 1880s. We're trying to basically go find those sort of modern bourgeois capitalists who are kind of throwbacks to the old model. Why are we doing that? 'Cause like that's the only way to do something new, right? That, that was the model for doing new things. All these things used to be new. Like if you wanna do anything new today, that is the model. You do need to bring back this model of bourgeois capitalism. Um, and then basically w- we work with our companies to try to basically [chuckles] keep them from basically just turning into, you know, sort of this, you know, kind of Borg-like managerial capitalism kind of outcome on the other side, becoming just like every other big company. Uh, which by the way, many of them kind of follow that path, and many of them just become like big companies, just like all the rest of the big companies end up being run by professional CEOs, and that, that's just kind of-

    3. SSSteph Smith1:18:38

       Well, I was gonna quickly ask-

    4. MAMarc Andreessen1:18:39

       Yeah

    5. SSSteph Smith1:18:39

       ... how do you stop that?

    6. MAMarc Andreessen1:18:41

       I, I don't know that you do. Well, so B- Burnham would say that you don't. Like, B- Burnham would say that it's an inevitable process. Basically it's like, what, what Burnham would say if he was talking to me is he'd be like, "Okay, look, smart guy. You're, you're just gonna keep repeating history, 'cause you're gonna start these companies, you're gonna have a Henry Ford kind of character in charge of them. At some point, they're gonna reach a level of scale and complexity where like one guy just can't like run everything, and you're gonna need to bring in the, the experts," right? The experts, the technically trained experts, the managers, right? The people with like business school degrees, the people with like, you know, the people who have grown up basically getting trained to run large scale systems. Um, and you know, these companies are naturally going to evolve kind of in, in, in, in that direction. Um, I go, I go, well, okay, so there's, there's all that, and then, and then Burnham made the, the following point is he said, "Look, the, the transition from bourgeois capitalism to managerial capitalism is not just happening in business, it's happening everywhere else in life. It, it's happening everywhere else in our society." So for example, it's also happening in the government, right? And so [chuckles] the government, right, just take the fed- US federal government as an example, like there's basically been three different forms of federal government in the, in the, in the last hundred years. There was sort of the pre FDR era, in which the federal government was just basically small and basically not very relevant. And then there was the FDR era where he basically appointed himself king. [chuckles] Like he made himself basically essentially the Henry Ford of the government or something. And then he basically just, like told everybody what to do, and that was, you know, the New Deal and World War II and, like all this stuff, and serving four terms and, and sort of this, this model of the imperial presidency. Um, and then there's sort of the model of the government we have today, which is, is just basically bureaucrats. It's politicians and bureaucrats as far as the eye can see. Well, that's not how these... This, this not structurally how anything is supposed to be run anymore. You're not supposed to just have a guy who just tells people what to do. You're supposed to have process. You're supposed to have managers. You're supposed to have experts, right? You're supposed to have professors. You're supposed to have think tanks. You're supposed to have the press. You're s- everybody's supposed to weigh in. You're supposed to have this big conversation. Everybody's supposed to get along. Everything has to be negotiated, right? And so basically what Burnham would say is, like, like, the entire society transitioned from kind of individualistic, um, to basically collectivist, or let's call it bureaucratic, or as he would call it, managerial. And like basically that, that, that's happened to basically all of society, right? And, and this is kind of the experience that you have is that if you think about this as an individual, this is the kind of experience you have because like everywhere you go in life now, you're like dealing with some bureaucracy, right? You're... It's like you've got a problem with your cable, you know, internet hookup. You know, you're gonna talk to the cable company's bureaucracy. Like the... You can't call the CEO of the cable company, and by the way, if you did, he can't do anything. Like it's gonna be somebody deep in the bowels of the organization that's gonna get your internet to work. You know, you, you, you need to get your driver's license renewed. [chuckles] You gotta go to the DMV, right? It, it, it's just like everything you do. You know, you go out to eat and like the place where you go out to eat, it's like one of 3,000, right, restaurants that that company manages that are all identical, right? Everything you do, uh, uh, mass manufacturing, everything you buy, right, has been manufactured by a company that's manufacturing for scale. Um, all of your entertainment, you watch a movie, it's the same movie 100 million other people are watching. You know, it's like, you know, the actors don't come to your house anymore and like act out a play. You're, you're watching a ma- a mass produced production, you know, built by this giant bureaucracy in Hollywood. Um, [chuckles] so... And, and you're like, "Wow, this movie, it seems like I've seen this movie like 80 times before. You know, why aren't they making like more creative movies?" Well, it's 'cause it's moviemaking is a machine now, right? It's a... You know, movies cost $300 million, and there's like a whole process and a whole bureaucracy for making these things. And so what Burnham would say basically is the whole, the whole country, the whole society has evolved into this kind of bureaucratic managerialism, which... A- and, and you know, another word for that is just stagnation, right? It's just like the whole s- the whole system is on autopilot. Like the, the, the whole society's on autopilot. The government's on autopilot. It's all on autopilot. And, and then, you know, every once in a while you get a ne- you know, you get an Elon Musk, [chuckles] right? Or you know, you get the kinds of founders that we deal with, and they, they kind of step forward and they say, "Well, actually I have a different idea." Um, and then they have the temerity to, you know, build a new piece of software or to start a new kind of company or to propose some other, you know, new creative, you know, creative idea. And so anyway, you, you just... You, you, you see kind of all these kind of, you know, perturbations in the force where these kind of creative individuals pop up. Um, and then, you know, s- like society freaks out and everybody's got an opinion on the whole thing. But like, you know, if there is to be progress, right? If there, if there are to be new ideas in the world, new concepts, new forms of art, new forms of culture, new ideas, by the way, new forms of politics, right? By the way, new, you know, new, new ways to think about how you raise kids. Like all, you know, basically anything new, it's gonna come from some unusual individual basically stepping up and saying, "I, I, I, I think that this system is wrong." Um, and so that, that, you know, that, that's kind of the fundamental battle that we'll probably spend the rest of our, you know, probably [chuckles] spend the next thousand years of our civilization trying to basically balance between.

    7. SSSteph Smith1:23:11

       Yeah,

16. 1:23:12 – 1:30:54

    Reform vs starting anew

    1. SSSteph Smith1:23:12

       I mean, I, I can see the example with a company, right? These companies stagnate, and then new startups come and replace them, and that's, that's something we've seen over and over and over. It also happens at the individual level, right? You see celebrities become popular, and then they just go and do the same movie over and over and over because they're trying to retain their following, and then people move on to the next new thing. Um, something that we talked to Balaji about because he came on to talk about the network state is the need for this kind of revolution or innovation at the government level or the state level. I'm just interested in your perspective on that because we have seen it at the individual level, the company level, but we are seeing stagnation at that higher government level. So are you also thinking that we're going to see some of these smaller nations or completely new nations come up as we see the stagnation in the Western world?

    2. MAMarc Andreessen1:23:59

       Yeah. So there's this great word that gets used, um, reform, right? Um, [chuckles] so reform is one of those words where my, my ears always perk up when I, when I see the word 'cause I kinda know the game that's being played. Um, and so I'll give you an example. I have all these friends who are very into this thing. They call it education reform, right? And so they're, you know, philanthropists. You know, they've been successful. They've got money and they're, they've got a foundation now and they wanna like make the world better. And so what do they do? They look around, they're like, "Well, what are the big problems in the world?" And they, they inevitably, you know, a lot, a lot of, a lot of times they, they end up looking at public education, and they're just like, "Wow," like public education is like this, you know, huge force in our society and all these kids... You know, legally, you like have to send your kids to basically a, you know, most, most people legally are required to send their kid to a, to a public school. And it's like, wow, like the outcomes seem like really bad. [chuckles] And like, you know, we keep injecting more money into these schools, and yet the results don't get better. And then, by the way, there's all these problems, and there's all this like, you know, child abuse, you know, that takes place, and there's all this, you know, these like teacher sex scandals. [chuckles] And then there's, you know, all these controversies over the curriculum and like, are kids being taught the right things? Um, and it's just like, wow, this thing just seems like a giant mess. Um, and so therefore we need education reform, right? We need to like go into the bureaucracy and we need to like re- you know, we need to retool it. We n- we need to improve it. We need to make it better. We need to re-engineer it. Um, and, and basically what the, you know, the story is kind of always the same, which is they go in, they do all this work, they spend all this money, and then basically nothing changes. Um, you know, there have been, there have been many famous cases of this. I, I won't pick on people. Um, I, I will say the Gates Foundation has done a lot of work in this area, and they actually, to their credit, they actually came out with a public report about four years ago where they did this retrospective of... They did a retrospective of the last 50 years of education reform efforts, um, and all of the different work that has been done, all the different ideas that people have had to like make schools better. Um, and they did this big report, and basically the result of the report was nothing has worked. Like nothing has worked for 50 years. Like there has not been a new idea in 50 years that has been like tried in large scale education that's had any impact at all. Basically the whole, the whole, the whole effort's just been like a complete, a complete zero. And, and I think that that's basically... [chuckles] Like I, I've become convinced that's basically universally true Uh, which is basically things don't get reformed. Like, it's never gon- you know, whatever. If you have a problem with XYZ existing institution, existing system, for the reasons we discussed earlier, like it's, it's just, it's not going to get better. It's not going to get reformed. You can go spend an arbitrary amount of time and money trying to reform it and improve it. It's not gonna happen. Why is it not gonna happen? Because it doesn't, you know, it doesn't have to happen. The people running it don't want it to happen. You know, this, this so-called principal-agent problem, the people in charge aren't actually responsible for it. You know, there's the incentives problem, you know, especially when you deal with large bureaucracies. People are much more focused on not getting fired than they are on improving anything, and so they'll basically... Well, a lot of presidents encounter this, right? A lot of presidents come into the White House, right, for the first time, and they're like, "Wow, I have all these ideas on how to make the government better." They issue all these orders, and then the bureaucracy just ignores them, right? [laughs] You know, 'cause, right? 'Cause the federal, the government employees, like what do they know? They know that presidents come and go, right? Like, the president's gonna be gone in four years or, worst case, eight years. Nobody's even gonna remember what that guy tried to do, right? And so all they, they, they just like, they just wait out the politicians, right? And, and, and, and then noth- and then nothing changes. And so anyway, so like, it's like, like by default, it's, it's like stagnation as far as the eye can see. I've reached the conclusion, this is kinda how I spend my time, and this is why I, I continue to do what I do, and I, I think I'll basically [laughs] do it forever, um, is like I really no longer believe in the concept of institutional reform. Like, I, I think fundamentally it, it doesn't happen. Um, or it's so rare as to like be, be basically something that you can't ever count on. I, I think basically progress happens by starting new things, right? And so, like if, if you wanna like reform the school system, the thing you need to do is build new schools, right? From scratch, like built the correct way. If you want to have like a new car company, if you're Elon Musk, and you wanna have a car company, you don't spend your time trying to go get whatever existing car company to build a better car. You just like [laughs] start the car company. And then, you know, our friend Balaji extends it, you know, one step further, which is like, okay, you don't try to reform the country. You just, like, start a new country. Now, the obvious problem, the challenge, right, is like, you know, there was an era of human history where people were starting new countries. Like, all the countries that we have today are countries at some point that somebody started. Um, you know, unfortunately, in the modern era, like, you know, the real estate on the planet's kinda been divided up. Um, and you know, the, the world's not really that amenable to, you know, [laughs] to changing, you know, which country controls which territory through conquest. Like, that's, uh, kind of frowned upon these days. Um, and so, you know, starting a new country in the modern era is probably not a process of like going and staking out a bunch of land and then, like, declaring yourself a new kingdom and then, you know, implementing a bunch of new whatever your own legal system. It's probably something else, and of course, Ba- Balaji's book kind of explores the something else with, uh, with this idea of the network state. So you know, as usual, like Balaji pushes it to a, to a level that, you know, probably be, be, you know, beyond, beyond where I would. Um, but, but I think, uh, but I think, look, I think everything he says, everything he... Like his situational analysis I think for sure is 100% correct. Overall, you could say, like this is a very depressing analysis of the state of affairs, and, like this basically means the world is gonna stagnate, and, like, not much is gonna happen. I, I, uh, and [laughs] there's a lot to that. There is always this concept, though, of arbitrage, which is like if most of the world is not doing new things, then the person who can do something new has an outsized opportunity, right? And, and this is the thing that kinda gets me up every morning, which is like, okay, because most of the world will not change, because most existing companies won't change, because most existing bureaucracies won't change, systems won't change, people won't change. Because of that, the person who has the genuinely new idea, who's willing to put themselves on the line and try to build something new, like has a really big outsized opportunity. 'Cause if they succeed, right, they'll, they'll just, they'll, they'll, they'll g- they'll get all the benefit. They'll get all the gains. Like, they'll, they'll, they'll all of a sudden be the person who's, like, building and running everything, right? Because it's not going to be the status quo that's going to adapt, right? So, so therefore, like all opportunity in the world is still a- uh, basically available to all of these tr- you know, kind of disruptive new entrants. Um, and, and so basically, the more the sort of older world stagnates, the bigger the opportunity on the entrepreneurial side. Um, and, and, and I, and honestly, like I think that's what keeps us in business basically in perpetuity, um, is, you know, the, the, the... This, the, the model of kind of entrepreneurial capitalism or, or, or more generally just entrepreneurialism, the a- you know, having new ideas and putting them in the world, like that, that model is the only source of progress.

    3. SSSteph Smith1:29:57

       Yeah. I love the way you put it, of not counting on the status quo to innovate. I think that by nature allows the really intelligent, the really creative, the really innovative people to have an opportunity, right? Because if we use companies as an example, if smart companies that became big stayed smart, then we wouldn't have opportunity for new smart people to-

    4. MAMarc Andreessen1:30:18

       Yeah

    5. SSSteph Smith1:30:18

       ... innovate, right? The, there, there wouldn't be room. So I think that's a wonderful place to end, because I think throughout this conversation you've highlighted so many opportunities for people to get involved and for new businesses to be built. And I think most importantly, as we started off this conversation, you've really highlighted why it's still important. As silly as that sounds, it's still so important for us to build, because things do stagnate, and there is so much more to be built. So thanks, Marc. Thank you so much-

    6. MAMarc Andreessen1:30:42

       Fantastic

    7. SSSteph Smith1:30:42

       ... for talking to us today.

    8. MAMarc Andreessen1:30:43

       Thank you, Steph. [upbeat music]

    9. SSSteph Smith1:30:46

       Thanks for listening to the a16z Podcast. If you liked this episode, don't forget to subscribe here on YouTube to get our exclusive video content. We'll see you next time.

Episode duration: 1:31:04