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Marc Andreessen: Most successful companies started “product first” “There are products that become companies, and then there are companies that come up with a product. One of the interesting things over the years is that many of the most successful technology franchises were products first, way before they ever... became companies.” In this talk, Marc gives a few examples: • His team at the University of Illinois worked on the research project that became Netscape for three years before it became a company • Bill Gates and Paul Allen were deep into PCs before there was a software business • Jobs and Wozniak built the first Apple computer as hobbyists • Mark Zuckerberg was running Facebook out of his dorm room before he ever thought of starting a company • Twitter was a side project at the failed podcasting app Odeo Marc believes that this “product becomes a company” template is successful because “it’s a demonstration that the product has to exist. The market needs the product so badly that somebody actually built it and deployed it and you can actually see evidence that people want it before there was an economic motivation to do so.” He contrasts this with the failure cases he often sees when entrepreneurs try to figure out the idea after starting a company. “It’s very easy in that process to fool yourself into believing that there’s a market because you want to find something and you have a very strong motivation to come up with an answer. It’s hard to go through that process for three months and then say, ‘you know what, we can’t come up with any good ideas.’” There are of course there exceptions. Marc gives Hewlett Packard as an example. But that’s more the exception than the rule. As Marc explains: “The moral of the story is it has to be a really good idea. That often will be an idea that is preexisting at the time you decide to start a company. And if it isn’t, be really careful because you’re walking on sharp rocks at that point with a high risk of falling off the cliff into the ocean.” Video source: Stanford eCorner (2010)show more

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Marc Andreessen on the 3 things he looks for when investing in a startup The first thing Marc Andreesen looks for is a big market: “Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and displace incumbents? Or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big?” The second thing he looks for is a 10x better product: “Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that justifies a new company? And the way I always think about that is: Is there a 10x change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10x faster, 10x cheaper, or 10x better? If it’s not 10x, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs have to ask ourselves if it’s really worth doing because it’s really hard to start new companies . . . Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. So for a new company to exist, it has to bring a product to market that’s so much better than what exists that it punches through the status quo.” The third is the team: “Is the team outstanding? . . . You want to have a founding team of complementary skillsets. You want to have at least one super strong technologist — quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist. And then it often helps to have someone who is a marketing or salesperson who has a really good understanding of business.” Marc believes that you need all three of these, but if you’re going to compromise on one of those as an investor, it should be the product: “A great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution. The problem with a poor or small market is that even if you do a good job on the product, there just aren’t that many customers so it’s hard to ever get big and people get demoralized . . . And then we evaluate the team of a startup by its ability to get into a big market with a good product.”

Marc Andreessen on the 3 things he looks for when investing in a startup The first thing Marc Andreesen looks for is a big market: “Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and displace incumbents? Or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big?” The second thing he looks for is a 10x better product: “Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that justifies a new company? And the way I always think about that is: Is there a 10x change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10x faster, 10x cheaper, or 10x better? If it’s not 10x, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs have to ask ourselves if it’s really worth doing because it’s really hard to start new companies . . . Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. So for a new company to exist, it has to bring a product to market that’s so much better than what exists that it punches through the status quo.” The third is the team: “Is the team outstanding? . . . You want to have a founding team of complementary skillsets. You want to have at least one super strong technologist — quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist. And then it often helps to have someone who is a marketing or salesperson who has a really good understanding of business.” Marc believes that you need all three of these, but if you’re going to compromise on one of those as an investor, it should be the product: “A great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution. The problem with a poor or small market is that even if you do a good job on the product, there just aren’t that many customers so it’s hard to ever get big and people get demoralized . . . And then we evaluate the team of a startup by its ability to get into a big market with a good product.”

Startup Archive

17,333 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten

Marc Andreessen explains the 3 Necessities for Start-up Success: "The general criteria for a successful high-tech startup, in my view, you see different sort of rules of thumb from different people. But the three big things you always come back to are, is there a big market? And by the way, that comes in two parts. Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and sort of displace incumbents or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big? So big market. Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that causes you to basically justify having a new company? And that's really important. And the way I always think about that is, is there a 10X change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10X faster or 10X cheaper or 10X better? And if it's not 10X, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs, we really have to ask ourselves like, is it really worth doing? Because it's really hard. I mean, it's really hard to start new companies. new companies generally shouldn't exist. Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. And so for a new company to exist, it not only has to like come in and go into business and bring a product to market, but it has to bring a product to market that's so much better than what already exists that it punches through the sort of status quo. And most customers in most markets are pretty happy buying from the current suppliers and so there has to be a real kind of edge on the thing and we look for that in either a technology change, usually a technology change or an economic change. which are often the same thing. And then the third is team. Is the team outstanding? And if you think about this as an entrepreneur, it becomes a question of the founding team. Some companies are solo founders and they can work, but generally most of us, like myself, we're human beings, we're mortal. You want to have a founding team of complementary skill sets. And so you want to have at least one super strong technologist, quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist and then it often helps to have somebody who's like a product or who's a market or sales person or has a sort of really good understanding of business on the team, certainly helps a lot. And so we sort of look at market, product, and team. And the reality is you need all three. I would say, interestingly, if you're going to compromise as an investor, if we're going to compromise on one of those, it would actually be the product. And the reason I say that is because a great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution than a poor market. Because the problem with a poor market, a small market, is even if you do a great job on the product, there just aren't that many customers. It's hard to ever get big."

Marc Andreessen explains the 3 Necessities for Start-up Success: "The general criteria for a successful high-tech startup, in my view, you see different sort of rules of thumb from different people. But the three big things you always come back to are, is there a big market? And by the way, that comes in two parts. Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and sort of displace incumbents or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big? So big market. Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that causes you to basically justify having a new company? And that's really important. And the way I always think about that is, is there a 10X change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10X faster or 10X cheaper or 10X better? And if it's not 10X, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs, we really have to ask ourselves like, is it really worth doing? Because it's really hard. I mean, it's really hard to start new companies. new companies generally shouldn't exist. Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. And so for a new company to exist, it not only has to like come in and go into business and bring a product to market, but it has to bring a product to market that's so much better than what already exists that it punches through the sort of status quo. And most customers in most markets are pretty happy buying from the current suppliers and so there has to be a real kind of edge on the thing and we look for that in either a technology change, usually a technology change or an economic change. which are often the same thing. And then the third is team. Is the team outstanding? And if you think about this as an entrepreneur, it becomes a question of the founding team. Some companies are solo founders and they can work, but generally most of us, like myself, we're human beings, we're mortal. You want to have a founding team of complementary skill sets. And so you want to have at least one super strong technologist, quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist and then it often helps to have somebody who's like a product or who's a market or sales person or has a sort of really good understanding of business on the team, certainly helps a lot. And so we sort of look at market, product, and team. And the reality is you need all three. I would say, interestingly, if you're going to compromise as an investor, if we're going to compromise on one of those, it would actually be the product. And the reason I say that is because a great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution than a poor market. Because the problem with a poor market, a small market, is even if you do a great job on the product, there just aren't that many customers. It's hard to ever get big."

Founder Mode

39,005 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten

Ben Horowitz explains the two things every successful technology startup must do 1. Build a product that improves how some large group of people does something by 10x. “You have to build a transformational product. There is no way to build a great new company without a great product… If you look at the great technology companies, the thing that distinguishes them is the ability to keep coming up with a better way of doing things.” 2. Taking the market. “You can come up with the best product, but if you don’t [take the market], you really don’t have a company. Most technology businesses are network effects businesses. You have to win… If you’re an engineer, what business skills do you need to build a technology company? They’re all around the skills that you need to win the market. How do you out-market, out-sell, and beat the competition?… Do you build a good enough company that you go win?” Video Source: UC Berkeley

Ben Horowitz explains the two things every successful technology startup must do 1. Build a product that improves how some large group of people does something by 10x. “You have to build a transformational product. There is no way to build a great new company without a great product… If you look at the great technology companies, the thing that distinguishes them is the ability to keep coming up with a better way of doing things.” 2. Taking the market. “You can come up with the best product, but if you don’t [take the market], you really don’t have a company. Most technology businesses are network effects businesses. You have to win… If you’re an engineer, what business skills do you need to build a technology company? They’re all around the skills that you need to win the market. How do you out-market, out-sell, and beat the competition?… Do you build a good enough company that you go win?” Video Source: UC Berkeley

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Ben Horowitz on the two things every successful technology startup must do 1. Build a product that improves how some large group of people does something by 10x. “You have to build a transformational product. There is no way to build a great new company without a great product… If you look at the great technology companies, the thing that distinguishes them is the ability to keep coming up with a better way of doing things.” 2. Taking the market. “You can come up with the best product, but if you don’t [take the market], you really don’t have a company. Most technology businesses are network effects businesses. You have to win… If you’re an engineer, what business skills do you need to build a technology company? They’re all around the skills that you need to win the market. How do you out-market, out-sell, and beat the competition?… Do you build a good enough company that you go win?” Video source: UC Berkeley (2009)

Ben Horowitz on the two things every successful technology startup must do 1. Build a product that improves how some large group of people does something by 10x. “You have to build a transformational product. There is no way to build a great new company without a great product… If you look at the great technology companies, the thing that distinguishes them is the ability to keep coming up with a better way of doing things.” 2. Taking the market. “You can come up with the best product, but if you don’t [take the market], you really don’t have a company. Most technology businesses are network effects businesses. You have to win… If you’re an engineer, what business skills do you need to build a technology company? They’re all around the skills that you need to win the market. How do you out-market, out-sell, and beat the competition?… Do you build a good enough company that you go win?” Video source: UC Berkeley (2009)

Startup Archive

36,789 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten

Marc Andreessen on the idea maze and getting a prototype working before raising money “You see people sometimes who say, ‘I want to start a company’ and then they work through the process of coming up with an idea. Generally those don’t work as well as the case where somebody has the idea first and then they realize there’s an opportunity to build a company.” This was the case for Marc himself - they had Mosaic working before they started Netscape. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had the Google search engine working at Stanford. Pierre Omidyar had eBay working before he left his job. “It’s also far easier to raise money. The ideal pitch we receive is ‘Here’s the thing that works. Would you like to invest in our company or not?’ That’s so much easier than 30 slides with a dream.” At a16z Balaji Srinivasan came up with the concept of the Idea Maze, which Marc explains: “There’s a mythology that these ideas arrive like magic or people stumble into them… The reality usually with the big successes is that the founder has been chewing on the problem for 5-10 years before they start the company… So they’re a true domain expert.” He continues: “We call it the idea maze because for any idea there’s all these different permutations. Who should the customer be? What shape should the product have? How should we take it to market?… The really smart founders have thought through all these scenarios by the time they go out to raise money. And they have detailed answers on every one of those fronts because they put so much thought into it. The more haphazard founders haven’t thought about any of that. And it’s the detailed ones who tend to do much better.” Source: Lex Fridman (Jun 2023)

Marc Andreessen on the idea maze and getting a prototype working before raising money “You see people sometimes who say, ‘I want to start a company’ and then they work through the process of coming up with an idea. Generally those don’t work as well as the case where somebody has the idea first and then they realize there’s an opportunity to build a company.” This was the case for Marc himself - they had Mosaic working before they started Netscape. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had the Google search engine working at Stanford. Pierre Omidyar had eBay working before he left his job. “It’s also far easier to raise money. The ideal pitch we receive is ‘Here’s the thing that works. Would you like to invest in our company or not?’ That’s so much easier than 30 slides with a dream.” At a16z Balaji Srinivasan came up with the concept of the Idea Maze, which Marc explains: “There’s a mythology that these ideas arrive like magic or people stumble into them… The reality usually with the big successes is that the founder has been chewing on the problem for 5-10 years before they start the company… So they’re a true domain expert.” He continues: “We call it the idea maze because for any idea there’s all these different permutations. Who should the customer be? What shape should the product have? How should we take it to market?… The really smart founders have thought through all these scenarios by the time they go out to raise money. And they have detailed answers on every one of those fronts because they put so much thought into it. The more haphazard founders haven’t thought about any of that. And it’s the detailed ones who tend to do much better.” Source: Lex Fridman (Jun 2023)

Startup Archive

21,567 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

Marc Andreessen on how to get people to join your 3-person startup Marc says founders have two tools at their disposal to win new hires: 1) Stock options, and 2) vision. He explains: “The best entrepreneurs are really good at selling people on their company precisely because they can explain how the world is going to look in a way that is so compelling.” Marc points to Steve Jobs’s “reality distortion field” as the epitome of this: “If you get within 10 feet of Steve Jobs, whatever he says in the next 20 minutes, you’re going to walk out of there believing. He can say that the sky is purple, and you’re like yep that makes total sense . . . The best entrepreneurs all tend to have that in common and tend to be really good at that. It’s essentially sales — selling to employees. It’s an incredibly valuable skill to be able to do that. That plus stock options.” The other thing Marc has observed about hiring over the years is that right employees have to self-select into your company, even though that can be incredibly frustrating at times: “If you hired all the people you interviewed, it would turn out that 2/3rds or 3/4ths of them you probably shouldn’t have hired anyway. So what the best companies do is they provide a very stark idea of what the company is and what is it isn’t: ‘We are a company where people are expected to work 18 hour days and if you don’t like that, don’t come here’ or ‘We are a company where people expect to go home at 5pm every day and if you think that’ll be frustrating’ — whatever it is.” Marc gives the humorous example of Asana where it was a requirement that the whole company did yoga together: “If you like yoga, this is the company for you. If you don’t like yoga, don’t go there. You’re going to be asked to put your feet in positions that you’re completely uncomfortable with.” He continues: “I think the very best companies tend to be polarizing. So if in your hiring process, you’re turning people off as much as you’re turning them on because they’re deciding ‘this is clearly not the right fit for me,’ I think that’s a good thing.”

Marc Andreessen on how to get people to join your 3-person startup Marc says founders have two tools at their disposal to win new hires: 1) Stock options, and 2) vision. He explains: “The best entrepreneurs are really good at selling people on their company precisely because they can explain how the world is going to look in a way that is so compelling.” Marc points to Steve Jobs’s “reality distortion field” as the epitome of this: “If you get within 10 feet of Steve Jobs, whatever he says in the next 20 minutes, you’re going to walk out of there believing. He can say that the sky is purple, and you’re like yep that makes total sense . . . The best entrepreneurs all tend to have that in common and tend to be really good at that. It’s essentially sales — selling to employees. It’s an incredibly valuable skill to be able to do that. That plus stock options.” The other thing Marc has observed about hiring over the years is that right employees have to self-select into your company, even though that can be incredibly frustrating at times: “If you hired all the people you interviewed, it would turn out that 2/3rds or 3/4ths of them you probably shouldn’t have hired anyway. So what the best companies do is they provide a very stark idea of what the company is and what is it isn’t: ‘We are a company where people are expected to work 18 hour days and if you don’t like that, don’t come here’ or ‘We are a company where people expect to go home at 5pm every day and if you think that’ll be frustrating’ — whatever it is.” Marc gives the humorous example of Asana where it was a requirement that the whole company did yoga together: “If you like yoga, this is the company for you. If you don’t like yoga, don’t go there. You’re going to be asked to put your feet in positions that you’re completely uncomfortable with.” He continues: “I think the very best companies tend to be polarizing. So if in your hiring process, you’re turning people off as much as you’re turning them on because they’re deciding ‘this is clearly not the right fit for me,’ I think that’s a good thing.”

Startup Archive

69,518 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten

Marc Andreessen on product-market fit. “You don’t have a business until you have a product that a lot of people want.” “You can tell because the market’s pulling the product.” “Until you have that, time spent building the business around the product is pointless.” “Best case it’s gonna be a zombie.” “When you have product-market fit, then you build a company around it.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Business Insider in 2009:

Marc Andreessen on product-market fit. “You don’t have a business until you have a product that a lot of people want.” “You can tell because the market’s pulling the product.” “Until you have that, time spent building the business around the product is pointless.” “Best case it’s gonna be a zombie.” “When you have product-market fit, then you build a company around it.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Business Insider in 2009:

a16z

178,174 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten

Naval Ravikant’s checklist for starting a company “The most important thing is there are no formulas. At the end of the day, you have to do what you love, and you have to do it even though people tell you it’ll never work. But that being said, if there was a formula [for starting a company], I would put it something like this.” Naval started seven companies before AngelList and this is the checklist he recommends running through before starting a startup: 1. Pick a great cofounder. This is most important: “You can do a company on your own, but it’s like you can raise a child on your own, but you probably shouldn’t. You need someone who’s going to be there with you.” This has it’s own checklist. Your cofounder should be: a. Very high intelligence (”hopefully they make you feel dumb, or they’re not smart enough”) b. Very high energy (”They should be extremely hardworking. A founder is someone who never has to be motivated. You should not have to be telling them to do their job.”) c. Very high integrity. (”a smart, hardworking crook who’s going to cheat you is the worst kind of person to be paired up with.”) 2. Pick a very large market. “Notice I don’t talk about the idea. I think ideas are almost irrelevant… The more important thing is that you pick a large space that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about. And then you will figure out what the right thing to do within that space is.” You want to be able to say to investors: “This is a space where there’s a huge market. I’m really knowledgeable and passionate about it. Here’s the great person that I have doing it with me. And here’s the minimum viable product that we have built. That will show that we can test in the marketplace… You iterate until you get to product/market fit… And then you go and you raise money from people you trust. And you use that money to scale.”

Naval Ravikant’s checklist for starting a company “The most important thing is there are no formulas. At the end of the day, you have to do what you love, and you have to do it even though people tell you it’ll never work. But that being said, if there was a formula [for starting a company], I would put it something like this.” Naval started seven companies before AngelList and this is the checklist he recommends running through before starting a startup: 1. Pick a great cofounder. This is most important: “You can do a company on your own, but it’s like you can raise a child on your own, but you probably shouldn’t. You need someone who’s going to be there with you.” This has it’s own checklist. Your cofounder should be: a. Very high intelligence (”hopefully they make you feel dumb, or they’re not smart enough”) b. Very high energy (”They should be extremely hardworking. A founder is someone who never has to be motivated. You should not have to be telling them to do their job.”) c. Very high integrity. (”a smart, hardworking crook who’s going to cheat you is the worst kind of person to be paired up with.”) 2. Pick a very large market. “Notice I don’t talk about the idea. I think ideas are almost irrelevant… The more important thing is that you pick a large space that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about. And then you will figure out what the right thing to do within that space is.” You want to be able to say to investors: “This is a space where there’s a huge market. I’m really knowledgeable and passionate about it. Here’s the great person that I have doing it with me. And here’s the minimum viable product that we have built. That will show that we can test in the marketplace… You iterate until you get to product/market fit… And then you go and you raise money from people you trust. And you use that money to scale.”

Startup Archive

36,050 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

Mark Zuckerberg’s advice to 19 year olds that want to have an impact Even though Zuckerberg was 19 when he started Facebook, he advises not turning your idea into a company until it’s working: “I always think the most important thing entrepreneurs should do is pick something they care about and work on it, but don’t actually commit to turning it into a company until it’s working. If you look at the data of the very best companies, I think a tremendous percentage of them have been built that way and not from people who decided upfront that they wanted to start a company because you just get locked into a local maxima a lot of the time.” Sam Altman agrees. Facebook didn’t become a formal company until 6 months in when Peter Thiel invested. In fact, Mark and Dustin Moskovitz even told Peter that they were still planning on going back to school for their Fall semester. Paul Graham gives similar advice in his essay “Want to start a startup?”: “So if you want to start a startup one day, what should you do in college? There are only two things you need initially: an idea and cofounders… [and] the way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas… if you make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with will not merely be bad, but bad and plausible-sounding, meaning you'll waste a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad. The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't even realize at first that they're startup ideas. This is not only possible, it's how Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all got started. None of these companies were even meant to be companies at first. They were all just side projects. The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s advice to 19 year olds that want to have an impact Even though Zuckerberg was 19 when he started Facebook, he advises not turning your idea into a company until it’s working: “I always think the most important thing entrepreneurs should do is pick something they care about and work on it, but don’t actually commit to turning it into a company until it’s working. If you look at the data of the very best companies, I think a tremendous percentage of them have been built that way and not from people who decided upfront that they wanted to start a company because you just get locked into a local maxima a lot of the time.” Sam Altman agrees. Facebook didn’t become a formal company until 6 months in when Peter Thiel invested. In fact, Mark and Dustin Moskovitz even told Peter that they were still planning on going back to school for their Fall semester. Paul Graham gives similar advice in his essay “Want to start a startup?”: “So if you want to start a startup one day, what should you do in college? There are only two things you need initially: an idea and cofounders… [and] the way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas… if you make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with will not merely be bad, but bad and plausible-sounding, meaning you'll waste a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad. The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't even realize at first that they're startup ideas. This is not only possible, it's how Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all got started. None of these companies were even meant to be companies at first. They were all just side projects. The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.”

Startup Archive

147,627 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren

Scott on why conviction in an idea is dangerous as an investor but required as a founder: "From the investor seat, I don't think you want to be in love with an idea. That's a risky thing because you'll find a way to express that by investing and make some compromises on the team because you know this idea is just so good, its time has come. But if the team isn't there, 90% of the time it doesn't work. Then there's a whole thing can you swap out the team? But the whole Founders Fund thesis was always no, you need the founder to run the company. But on the company side, you have to be in love with the idea. It's not that rational to start a company. There's a lot easier, more comfortable ways to make money if that's the goal. So it's got to be about what the company is doing specifically. If you want to actually start a company, it better be something that you're really passionate about, or you think that the problem is really important."

Scott on why conviction in an idea is dangerous as an investor but required as a founder: "From the investor seat, I don't think you want to be in love with an idea. That's a risky thing because you'll find a way to express that by investing and make some compromises on the team because you know this idea is just so good, its time has come. But if the team isn't there, 90% of the time it doesn't work. Then there's a whole thing can you swap out the team? But the whole Founders Fund thesis was always no, you need the founder to run the company. But on the company side, you have to be in love with the idea. It's not that rational to start a company. There's a lot easier, more comfortable ways to make money if that's the goal. So it's got to be about what the company is doing specifically. If you want to actually start a company, it better be something that you're really passionate about, or you think that the problem is really important."

Patrick OShaughnessy

33,016 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

Elon Musk’s real claim about Optimus isn’t that it’s the biggest product ever made. It’s that the biggest product ever made is a tenth of it. Musk: “I think it will be 10 times bigger than the next biggest product ever made.” That isn’t a claim about robots. It’s a claim about every object humans have ever sold each other, and it only holds once you notice what they all had in common. Every product ever built shipped incomplete. The drill needs a hand. The car needs a driver. The phone needs someone awake and holding it. All of it was leverage, and leverage does nothing until something pushes on it. You were the missing part in every machine ever made. That was the design, not a flaw. Optimus is the first product that arrives with the operator already inside. Which is why the company that got there first was never going to be a robotics company. Musk: “Tesla is the only company with all the required ingredients.” The mind and the body were never built by the same people. Labs that can think can’t stamp metal. Companies that can stamp metal can’t think. Tesla spent a decade mass-producing a machine that already has to see, decide, and move through a world full of people. Then priced it for a driveway instead of a defense contract. The robot is that machine with the road taken away. Musk: “You should be able to ask them to do things naturally.” A machine that has to be programmed sells to the people who can program. A machine you can talk to sells to anyone with something they’d rather not be doing. Every product in history was priced against another product. A better phone. A faster car. A cheaper tool. This one is priced against a wage. Wages are the largest line item on earth and the only cost technology has never driven down. Labor is the only thing anyone has ever sold that the seller never gets back. Every wage ever paid was a life billed by the hour. Musk: “Nothing will even be close.” Nothing else is close because everything else was capped by buyers. Demand for a product ends when everyone who wanted one has it. Demand for work doesn’t end. The ceiling was never how many people would buy it. It was how much there is to do, and there has never been a shortage of that. Only of hands. The prediction isn’t that Optimus succeeds. It’s that if it does, it enters the oldest and largest market on earth, one that has never had a competitor. Every product ever made sold you a better way to spend your hours. This one sells the hours back.

Elon Musk’s real claim about Optimus isn’t that it’s the biggest product ever made. It’s that the biggest product ever made is a tenth of it. Musk: “I think it will be 10 times bigger than the next biggest product ever made.” That isn’t a claim about robots. It’s a claim about every object humans have ever sold each other, and it only holds once you notice what they all had in common. Every product ever built shipped incomplete. The drill needs a hand. The car needs a driver. The phone needs someone awake and holding it. All of it was leverage, and leverage does nothing until something pushes on it. You were the missing part in every machine ever made. That was the design, not a flaw. Optimus is the first product that arrives with the operator already inside. Which is why the company that got there first was never going to be a robotics company. Musk: “Tesla is the only company with all the required ingredients.” The mind and the body were never built by the same people. Labs that can think can’t stamp metal. Companies that can stamp metal can’t think. Tesla spent a decade mass-producing a machine that already has to see, decide, and move through a world full of people. Then priced it for a driveway instead of a defense contract. The robot is that machine with the road taken away. Musk: “You should be able to ask them to do things naturally.” A machine that has to be programmed sells to the people who can program. A machine you can talk to sells to anyone with something they’d rather not be doing. Every product in history was priced against another product. A better phone. A faster car. A cheaper tool. This one is priced against a wage. Wages are the largest line item on earth and the only cost technology has never driven down. Labor is the only thing anyone has ever sold that the seller never gets back. Every wage ever paid was a life billed by the hour. Musk: “Nothing will even be close.” Nothing else is close because everything else was capped by buyers. Demand for a product ends when everyone who wanted one has it. Demand for work doesn’t end. The ceiling was never how many people would buy it. It was how much there is to do, and there has never been a shortage of that. Only of hands. The prediction isn’t that Optimus succeeds. It’s that if it does, it enters the oldest and largest market on earth, one that has never had a competitor. Every product ever made sold you a better way to spend your hours. This one sells the hours back.

Dustin

49,627 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

Why Elon didn't want to be CEO: "[Elon] is at core, an engineer and a product guy. He has this great line where he said: "I realized you couldn't be fully in control of the product unless you were also in control of the company." He says he made a moral error, early in Tesla, where he was trying to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to control the company without running the company. And that was the 2002 to 2008 era, where Tesla was just off to a really messy start. He was providing the funding. He was chairman of the board. But Martin Eberhard was CEO. Eventually, when Tesla was on the verge of death in 2008....Elon was pushed into the position of: "I have to be CEO. I don't want to be. It comes with a lot of chores. It comes with a lot of responsibilities. But if I want this company to be successful, I have to fully internalize and take responsibility for it." And that's what he did, even though he was also in the same position at SpaceX. The fact that these companies are improbable, iconic, and that he funded and led them both in parallel...it's like running a two minute mile twice at the same time. It is such a higher degree of difficulty than most people can conceive of, and the fact that it worked is still unbelievable."

Why Elon didn't want to be CEO: "[Elon] is at core, an engineer and a product guy. He has this great line where he said: "I realized you couldn't be fully in control of the product unless you were also in control of the company." He says he made a moral error, early in Tesla, where he was trying to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to control the company without running the company. And that was the 2002 to 2008 era, where Tesla was just off to a really messy start. He was providing the funding. He was chairman of the board. But Martin Eberhard was CEO. Eventually, when Tesla was on the verge of death in 2008....Elon was pushed into the position of: "I have to be CEO. I don't want to be. It comes with a lot of chores. It comes with a lot of responsibilities. But if I want this company to be successful, I have to fully internalize and take responsibility for it." And that's what he did, even though he was also in the same position at SpaceX. The fact that these companies are improbable, iconic, and that he funded and led them both in parallel...it's like running a two minute mile twice at the same time. It is such a higher degree of difficulty than most people can conceive of, and the fact that it worked is still unbelievable."

Ti Morse

47,497 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

Marc Andreessen explains IBM founder Thomas Watson‘s famous “Wild Ducks” program Marc believes that the organizational complexity is one reason you don’t see innovation at large companies. But that’s not the only reason: “I think there’s another deeper thing underneath that that people really don’t like to talk about, which is the sheer number of people in the world who are capable of doing new things is just a very small set of people. You’re not going to have a hundred of them in a company… You’re going to have 3, 8, or 10, maybe.” Marc learned this early in his career at IBM, which was one of the most powerful companies in the world and had over 440,000 employees at the time. “They had a system that worked really well for 50 years. Most of the employees in the company were expected to basically follow rules… But they had this category of people they called ‘Wild Ducks.’ This was an idea that the founder Thomas Watson came up with. They often had the formal title of an IBM Fellow and they were the people who could make new things.” He continues: “There were eight of them and they got to break all the rules and invent new products. They got to go off and work on something new, they didn’t have to report back, they got to pull people off of other projects to work with them, they got budget when they needed it, and they reported directly to the CEO.” Marc recalls one wild duck, Andy Heller, putting his cowboy boots on the conference room table “amongst an ocean of men in blue suits, white shirts, and red ties.” It was fine for Andy Heller to do that, but it was not fine for you to do that. “They very specifically identified almost like an aristocratic class within our company that gets to play by different rules… Their job is to invent the next breakthrough product. We, IBM management, know that the 6,000 person division is not going to invent the next product. We know it’s going to be crazy Andy Heller and his cowboy boots.” Marc believes companies like IBM and HP ultimately collapsed when venture capital emerged as a parallel funding system for these wild ducks to start their own companies. Video source: Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. (2023)

Marc Andreessen explains IBM founder Thomas Watson‘s famous “Wild Ducks” program Marc believes that the organizational complexity is one reason you don’t see innovation at large companies. But that’s not the only reason: “I think there’s another deeper thing underneath that that people really don’t like to talk about, which is the sheer number of people in the world who are capable of doing new things is just a very small set of people. You’re not going to have a hundred of them in a company… You’re going to have 3, 8, or 10, maybe.” Marc learned this early in his career at IBM, which was one of the most powerful companies in the world and had over 440,000 employees at the time. “They had a system that worked really well for 50 years. Most of the employees in the company were expected to basically follow rules… But they had this category of people they called ‘Wild Ducks.’ This was an idea that the founder Thomas Watson came up with. They often had the formal title of an IBM Fellow and they were the people who could make new things.” He continues: “There were eight of them and they got to break all the rules and invent new products. They got to go off and work on something new, they didn’t have to report back, they got to pull people off of other projects to work with them, they got budget when they needed it, and they reported directly to the CEO.” Marc recalls one wild duck, Andy Heller, putting his cowboy boots on the conference room table “amongst an ocean of men in blue suits, white shirts, and red ties.” It was fine for Andy Heller to do that, but it was not fine for you to do that. “They very specifically identified almost like an aristocratic class within our company that gets to play by different rules… Their job is to invent the next breakthrough product. We, IBM management, know that the 6,000 person division is not going to invent the next product. We know it’s going to be crazy Andy Heller and his cowboy boots.” Marc believes companies like IBM and HP ultimately collapsed when venture capital emerged as a parallel funding system for these wild ducks to start their own companies. Video source: Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. (2023)

Startup Archive

358,782 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "The person who writes down the thing has tremendous power." "There are so few people who will just like write down the thing. And so we see this at companies all the time, which is, one of the ways you find the up-and-comers at a tech company is just, okay, who wrote down the plan? And, you know, that doesn't mean they came up with everything. And that doesn't mean that they had all the ideas, but they're actually able to organize their thoughts and then actually have the energy and the motivation and the skill to be able to communicate in a written form. That actually stands out." With David Perell

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "The person who writes down the thing has tremendous power." "There are so few people who will just like write down the thing. And so we see this at companies all the time, which is, one of the ways you find the up-and-comers at a tech company is just, okay, who wrote down the plan? And, you know, that doesn't mean they came up with everything. And that doesn't mean that they had all the ideas, but they're actually able to organize their thoughts and then actually have the energy and the motivation and the skill to be able to communicate in a written form. That actually stands out." With David Perell

a16z

167,057 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

Elon Musk on building a company: “There are periods where it’s just awful” “A lot of times people think creating a company is going to be fun. I would say it’s really not that fun. There are periods of fun, and there are periods where it’s just awful. Particularly if you’re the CEO of the company. You actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There’s no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you only spend your time on things that are going wrong that other people can’t take care of… the most pernicious and painful problems.” Elon believes founders need to have a “fairly high pain threshold” and explains that starting a company is like “staring into the abyss and eating glass.” “The staring into the abyss part is that you’re going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company because most startups fail… You’re constantly saying, okay, if I don’t get this right, the company will die. It’s going to be quite stressful. And then the eating glass part is you’ve got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you’d really wish you weren’t working on… And that goes on for a long time.” Source: Khan Academy (Apr 2013)

Elon Musk on building a company: “There are periods where it’s just awful” “A lot of times people think creating a company is going to be fun. I would say it’s really not that fun. There are periods of fun, and there are periods where it’s just awful. Particularly if you’re the CEO of the company. You actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There’s no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you only spend your time on things that are going wrong that other people can’t take care of… the most pernicious and painful problems.” Elon believes founders need to have a “fairly high pain threshold” and explains that starting a company is like “staring into the abyss and eating glass.” “The staring into the abyss part is that you’re going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company because most startups fail… You’re constantly saying, okay, if I don’t get this right, the company will die. It’s going to be quite stressful. And then the eating glass part is you’ve got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you’d really wish you weren’t working on… And that goes on for a long time.” Source: Khan Academy (Apr 2013)

Startup Archive

74,661 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

Q: I’m 19 today and want to have a big impact on the world. Should I start a company? Even though Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he started Facebook, he advises not turning your idea into a company until it’s working: “I always think the most important thing entrepreneurs should do is pick something they care about and work on it, but don’t actually commit to turning it into a company until it’s working. If you look at the data of the very best companies, I think a tremendous percentage of them have been built that way and not from people who decided upfront that they wanted to start a company because you just get locked into a local maxima a lot of the time.” Sam Altman agrees. Facebook didn’t become a formal company until 6 months in when Peter Thiel invested. In fact, Mark and Dustin Moskovitz even told Peter that they were still planning on going back to school for their Fall semester. Paul Graham gives similar advice in his essay “Want to start a startup?”: “So if you want to start a startup one day, what should you do in college? There are only two things you need initially: an idea and cofounders… [and] the way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas… if you make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with will not merely be bad, but bad and plausible-sounding, meaning you'll waste a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad. The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't even realize at first that they're startup ideas. This is not only possible, it's how Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all got started. None of these companies were even meant to be companies at first. They were all just side projects. The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.”

Q: I’m 19 today and want to have a big impact on the world. Should I start a company? Even though Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he started Facebook, he advises not turning your idea into a company until it’s working: “I always think the most important thing entrepreneurs should do is pick something they care about and work on it, but don’t actually commit to turning it into a company until it’s working. If you look at the data of the very best companies, I think a tremendous percentage of them have been built that way and not from people who decided upfront that they wanted to start a company because you just get locked into a local maxima a lot of the time.” Sam Altman agrees. Facebook didn’t become a formal company until 6 months in when Peter Thiel invested. In fact, Mark and Dustin Moskovitz even told Peter that they were still planning on going back to school for their Fall semester. Paul Graham gives similar advice in his essay “Want to start a startup?”: “So if you want to start a startup one day, what should you do in college? There are only two things you need initially: an idea and cofounders… [and] the way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas… if you make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with will not merely be bad, but bad and plausible-sounding, meaning you'll waste a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad. The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't even realize at first that they're startup ideas. This is not only possible, it's how Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all got started. None of these companies were even meant to be companies at first. They were all just side projects. The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.”

Michael McGuiness

494,591 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren

Mark Zuckerberg on the importance of engineers if you’re building a technology company “We never thought about ourselves as a website or a social network or anything like that.” Mark believes many companies define themselves too narrowly: “It’s one of the things I observed as soon as I came out to [Silicon] Valley. All these companies that called themselves technology companies were not really set up that way. The CEO wasn’t technical. The board of directors had no one technical on it… And it’s like alright, if that’s your team, then you’re not a technology company.” He believes there’s a balance: “You don’t want everyone to be an engineer because there’s other things that matter too. But if you don’t have a high enough share of the company as engineers, then you’re not a technology company.” This makes sense when you view it in the context of Mark’s strategy for Meta: “I define our strategy as: If we can learn faster than every other company, we’re going to win. We’re going to build a better product than everyone else because we’re going to get it out first, we’re going to have a good feedback loop, and we’re going to learn what people like better than other people.” He concludes: “I think that’s basically the formula. Be a technology company. Build a good foundation. Learn from what other people are focused on in the world. And iterate as quickly as you can.” Video source: Acquired Podcast (2024)

Mark Zuckerberg on the importance of engineers if you’re building a technology company “We never thought about ourselves as a website or a social network or anything like that.” Mark believes many companies define themselves too narrowly: “It’s one of the things I observed as soon as I came out to [Silicon] Valley. All these companies that called themselves technology companies were not really set up that way. The CEO wasn’t technical. The board of directors had no one technical on it… And it’s like alright, if that’s your team, then you’re not a technology company.” He believes there’s a balance: “You don’t want everyone to be an engineer because there’s other things that matter too. But if you don’t have a high enough share of the company as engineers, then you’re not a technology company.” This makes sense when you view it in the context of Mark’s strategy for Meta: “I define our strategy as: If we can learn faster than every other company, we’re going to win. We’re going to build a better product than everyone else because we’re going to get it out first, we’re going to have a good feedback loop, and we’re going to learn what people like better than other people.” He concludes: “I think that’s basically the formula. Be a technology company. Build a good foundation. Learn from what other people are focused on in the world. And iterate as quickly as you can.” Video source: Acquired Podcast (2024)

Startup Archive

44,116 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten

.DHH credits Marc Andreessen Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with helping him the most during the darkest time of his professional life: "It was during that rough going where Andreessen came in. We were a small company of 60 people and 20 took the offer and left. That's almost a third of the company that decided to leave and we got to a point where we were thinking that not many more have to leave before we need to worry about whether we can keep the lights on. And it was actually Tobi who then put me in contact with Marc Andreessen because Marc had been exposed to this phenomenon at some of his portfolio companies. And Marc gave us reassurance and a bunch of contacts. Marc said, "Do you need someone to come in to help do programming or help with operations or whatever?" And I was floored by the generosity because Marc and I haven't always seen eye to eye on things. Especially in terms of venture capital. He's been one of the main faces of venture capital for decades and I've been kind of critical at times. And it was just a realization that all those grievances we might have thought to be so big once upon a time were actually minuscule. We were fighting the white walkers on the other side of the wall and all our internal squabbles were going to be for nothing if those f*ckers got inside the wall and destroyed everything. And that felt like a real threat at the time. That could've happened. They could very well have just ripped the whole thing apart. And Marc clearly saw that that this was a collective, almost existential threat to the entire industry. If these activists were able to take over these institutions in the same way that they have taken over academia we would be f*cked and not just for a little while but potentially for decades. That couldn't stand. And Marc was incredibly helpful not just in terms of these contacts and introductions and so on but it was very powerful. When you have literally 40,000 people on Twitter calling you all the worst things in the world even the strongest individual might go for a second like "Holy sh*t. The mob is coming for me and there's no one else there." And there are other people there. Tobi was there. Marc was there. And it was incredibly helpful to give us the fortitude to go like "No do you know what? We're going to stick with it. We're not going to grovel. We're not going to apologize. We're not going to revert." And then what Marc also did was he gave me a syllabus for understanding the history of wokeness going all the way back to the '60s and beyond. That this didn't just come as lightning from a blue sky. This had an institutional grounding that was set in motion particularly in the '60s and the long march through the institutions, Herbert Marcuse and a lot of The Frankfurt School and all of these groups that had designs on how to reshape society and create the revolution they so dearly wanted, but with a timeline and a roadmap that was demarcated in decades. That it wasn't just like "Well we're going to put something together and then in two years something's going to happen." No they were sitting in the fucking '60s fantasizing about how to overthrow everything in the 2000s. It's actually incredible in a Dr. Evil sense of it but when you're on the receiving end of it it seemed a little less incredible and it was just difficult not knowing where's this coming from? Why is this happening all of a sudden? Well it wasn't happening all of a sudden. There was this long history of it and when you understood that history it made a lot more sense. We weren't just making a rejection for our little corner of the world. We were chipping in in the great civilizational battle of where this country was going to go, whether the white walkers beyond the wall were going to win. And we were like "No they're not going to f*cking win. Get them out of that f*cking wall. Take your goddamn spear and fire it with maximum velocity."

.DHH credits Marc Andreessen Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with helping him the most during the darkest time of his professional life: "It was during that rough going where Andreessen came in. We were a small company of 60 people and 20 took the offer and left. That's almost a third of the company that decided to leave and we got to a point where we were thinking that not many more have to leave before we need to worry about whether we can keep the lights on. And it was actually Tobi who then put me in contact with Marc Andreessen because Marc had been exposed to this phenomenon at some of his portfolio companies. And Marc gave us reassurance and a bunch of contacts. Marc said, "Do you need someone to come in to help do programming or help with operations or whatever?" And I was floored by the generosity because Marc and I haven't always seen eye to eye on things. Especially in terms of venture capital. He's been one of the main faces of venture capital for decades and I've been kind of critical at times. And it was just a realization that all those grievances we might have thought to be so big once upon a time were actually minuscule. We were fighting the white walkers on the other side of the wall and all our internal squabbles were going to be for nothing if those fckers got inside the wall and destroyed everything. And that felt like a real threat at the time. That could've happened. They could very well have just ripped the whole thing apart. And Marc clearly saw that that this was a collective, almost existential threat to the entire industry. If these activists were able to take over these institutions in the same way that they have taken over academia we would be fcked and not just for a little while but potentially for decades. That couldn't stand. And Marc was incredibly helpful not just in terms of these contacts and introductions and so on but it was very powerful. When you have literally 40,000 people on Twitter calling you all the worst things in the world even the strongest individual might go for a second like "Holy sht. The mob is coming for me and there's no one else there." And there are other people there. Tobi was there. Marc was there. And it was incredibly helpful to give us the fortitude to go like "No do you know what? We're going to stick with it. We're not going to grovel. We're not going to apologize. We're not going to revert." And then what Marc also did was he gave me a syllabus for understanding the history of wokeness going all the way back to the '60s and beyond. That this didn't just come as lightning from a blue sky. This had an institutional grounding that was set in motion particularly in the '60s and the long march through the institutions, Herbert Marcuse and a lot of The Frankfurt School and all of these groups that had designs on how to reshape society and create the revolution they so dearly wanted, but with a timeline and a roadmap that was demarcated in decades. That it wasn't just like "Well we're going to put something together and then in two years something's going to happen." No they were sitting in the fucking '60s fantasizing about how to overthrow everything in the 2000s. It's actually incredible in a Dr. Evil sense of it but when you're on the receiving end of it it seemed a little less incredible and it was just difficult not knowing where's this coming from? Why is this happening all of a sudden? Well it wasn't happening all of a sudden. There was this long history of it and when you understood that history it made a lot more sense. We weren't just making a rejection for our little corner of the world. We were chipping in in the great civilizational battle of where this country was going to go, whether the white walkers beyond the wall were going to win. And we were like "No they're not going to fcking win. Get them out of that f*cking wall. Take your goddamn spear and fire it with maximum velocity."

David Senra

523,754 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat