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Marc Andreessen on why the founder model keeps winning: "You're much more likely to build something important in the 21st century if you start with a founder and train them on management, than you are to start with the manager and try to train them on being a founder."...

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52,867 views • 5 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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Marc Andreessen (Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸) on Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg): "He started with zero. His learning curve was vertical. And by the way, it's still vertical." Still the founder. Still the innovator. Still a fountain of ideas. That's the double threat.
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Marc Andreessen (Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸) on Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg): "He started with zero. His learning curve was vertical. And by the way, it's still vertical." Still the founder. Still the innovator. Still a fountain of ideas. That's the double threat.

David Senra

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Marc Andreessen: The most memorable first founder meeting I've ever had was with Mark Zuckerberg. "Mark's like 19, and it was Mark and Sean Parker." "Sean literally talked the entire time." "Mark didn't talk, so Sean and I talked the whole time, and Mark sat and listened." "I was like—one of two things has happened here. Either he's completely unsuited for the job because he literally doesn't talk, or he's listening and absorbing everything that people are saying around him, and he's going to be on a vertical learning curve like crazy, because he doesn't have the ego need to just say things." "Of course, it turned out to be number two." "I've never told that story before, but that was memorable." "The second meeting, I got him to talk. And by the way, everything Sean said was right—and it was all genius." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Harry Stebbings
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Marc Andreessen: The most memorable first founder meeting I've ever had was with Mark Zuckerberg. "Mark's like 19, and it was Mark and Sean Parker." "Sean literally talked the entire time." "Mark didn't talk, so Sean and I talked the whole time, and Mark sat and listened." "I was like—one of two things has happened here. Either he's completely unsuited for the job because he literally doesn't talk, or he's listening and absorbing everything that people are saying around him, and he's going to be on a vertical learning curve like crazy, because he doesn't have the ego need to just say things." "Of course, it turned out to be number two." "I've never told that story before, but that was memorable." "The second meeting, I got him to talk. And by the way, everything Sean said was right—and it was all genius." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Harry Stebbings

a16z

289,080 views • 4 months ago

Marc Andreessen just revealed how Harvard Business School was built on a broken 1941 theory, and how it's now collapsing... Andreessen co-founded Netscape in 1994 and a16z in 2009. He has sat on Meta's board since 2008. He has spent 30 years backing founders and watching managerial CEOs lose to them. The pattern traces back to one book: James Burnham's *The Machiavellians* (1941). Burnham argued every great company had been founder-run. Henry Ford ran Ford. Bob Noyce ran Intel. Today, Elon Musk runs Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink. Then, he said, something broke. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, a new philosophy replaced the founder. It was called managerialism. The professional manager would now hold a portable skill, usable across any business. The consequences were: - Harvard Business School - Stanford Business School - Management as a universal skill - The 1970s conglomerate "That assumes the managers are going to do a good job," Andreessen says. For 30 years, they haven't. Managers can run something static, he says. Soup is soup. A bank is a bank. A car is a car. But when the industry changes, the manager freezes. Look at SpaceX. "Imagine being a professionally trained manager, trained at a top management school, working for a rocket launch company, competing with SpaceX." Then Elon's rockets started landing on their butt. "Your management skills ... what good are they at that point?" Andreessen's conclusion: "You're much more likely to build something important in the 21st century if you start with the founder and train them on management." What "professionally run" institution in your life has quietly stopped working? If you're new here, GeniusThinking is a gallery for the greatest minds in economics, psychology, and history. Follow along for more similar content. P.S. I made a free toolkit breaking down 100+ mental models used by history's greatest thinkers. 5,000+ downloads. 113 five-star reviews. Grab your free copy here: — Marc Andreessen ( Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 ), co-founder of a16z, on David Senra's ( David Senra ) podcast
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Marc Andreessen just revealed how Harvard Business School was built on a broken 1941 theory, and how it's now collapsing... Andreessen co-founded Netscape in 1994 and a16z in 2009. He has sat on Meta's board since 2008. He has spent 30 years backing founders and watching managerial CEOs lose to them. The pattern traces back to one book: James Burnham's *The Machiavellians* (1941). Burnham argued every great company had been founder-run. Henry Ford ran Ford. Bob Noyce ran Intel. Today, Elon Musk runs Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink. Then, he said, something broke. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, a new philosophy replaced the founder. It was called managerialism. The professional manager would now hold a portable skill, usable across any business. The consequences were: - Harvard Business School - Stanford Business School - Management as a universal skill - The 1970s conglomerate "That assumes the managers are going to do a good job," Andreessen says. For 30 years, they haven't. Managers can run something static, he says. Soup is soup. A bank is a bank. A car is a car. But when the industry changes, the manager freezes. Look at SpaceX. "Imagine being a professionally trained manager, trained at a top management school, working for a rocket launch company, competing with SpaceX." Then Elon's rockets started landing on their butt. "Your management skills ... what good are they at that point?" Andreessen's conclusion: "You're much more likely to build something important in the 21st century if you start with the founder and train them on management." What "professionally run" institution in your life has quietly stopped working? If you're new here, GeniusThinking is a gallery for the greatest minds in economics, psychology, and history. Follow along for more similar content. P.S. I made a free toolkit breaking down 100+ mental models used by history's greatest thinkers. 5,000+ downloads. 113 five-star reviews. Grab your free copy here: — Marc Andreessen ( Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 ), co-founder of a16z, on David Senra's ( David Senra ) podcast

GeniusThinking

421,582 views • 3 months ago

"It's like being dropped into a zone of shocking competence." Marc Andreessen on working at one of Elon Musk’s companies: "Everybody is like ultra competent... If they're not, Elon sniffs it out and fires them." "The best engineers in the world want to work for him because he's the one CEO like this who's able to work with them as a peer." "So he just has this incredible positive selection where the smartest people in the world want to work for him and anybody who can't cut it gets fired." "The world sees this as raw aggression." "But it's beyond that. It's a very systematic way of optimizing these companies to be able to take on these profound challenges and then being able to actually solve all the problems... at a speed that's just completely unmatched." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with David Senra
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"It's like being dropped into a zone of shocking competence." Marc Andreessen on working at one of Elon Musk’s companies: "Everybody is like ultra competent... If they're not, Elon sniffs it out and fires them." "The best engineers in the world want to work for him because he's the one CEO like this who's able to work with them as a peer." "So he just has this incredible positive selection where the smartest people in the world want to work for him and anybody who can't cut it gets fired." "The world sees this as raw aggression." "But it's beyond that. It's a very systematic way of optimizing these companies to be able to take on these profound challenges and then being able to actually solve all the problems... at a speed that's just completely unmatched." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with David Senra

a16z

210,812 views • 5 months ago

🚨Joe Rogan on Jon Jones. 🗣“And there's a few guys that they go on these long runs and just like Jon Jones is the greatest example. His run is so long. It's crazy to be relevant at his age after being the youngest UFC champion ever at 22.” 🗣“He's just a different human being. He's the guy that you look at, and you go, 'How is he still doing this?' He started at 22, he was the youngest champion ever, and he's still, he's still right there. He's still the guy. It's like, how do you do that? How do you maintain that level of excellence for that long?” 📽 Via (Joe Rogan)
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🚨Joe Rogan on Jon Jones. 🗣“And there's a few guys that they go on these long runs and just like Jon Jones is the greatest example. His run is so long. It's crazy to be relevant at his age after being the youngest UFC champion ever at 22.” 🗣“He's just a different human being. He's the guy that you look at, and you go, 'How is he still doing this?' He started at 22, he was the youngest champion ever, and he's still, he's still right there. He's still the guy. It's like, how do you do that? How do you maintain that level of excellence for that long?” 📽 Via (Joe Rogan)

FightLuck

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Adam Neumann on the call he got from Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 after stepping down from WeWork: " [Marc] heard so much noise from the media, that he knew what the story wasn't." "He didn't know what the story was." "In hindsight, now that I know him and Ben so much better... for them, getting such media coverage and hearing so many stories, means pick up the phone and call." "He calls... and he goes, oh, you're still at that stage." "What stage is that?" "The one where you believe what other people are saying about you and forgot what actually happened." "You built a brand. You created a movement." "You created a category." Flow founder Adam Neumann on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin
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Adam Neumann on the call he got from Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 after stepping down from WeWork: " [Marc] heard so much noise from the media, that he knew what the story wasn't." "He didn't know what the story was." "In hindsight, now that I know him and Ben so much better... for them, getting such media coverage and hearing so many stories, means pick up the phone and call." "He calls... and he goes, oh, you're still at that stage." "What stage is that?" "The one where you believe what other people are saying about you and forgot what actually happened." "You built a brand. You created a movement." "You created a category." Flow founder Adam Neumann on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

a16z

160,976 views • 5 months ago

"I think in a way, people are somewhat overestimating the founders of companies, and massively underestimating what you can do when the founder is still present and in charge." Tobi talked about how it's not that founders themselves are some kind of super heroes, but that the *role* of a founder is incredibly important because of what the natural moral authority allows them to do.
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"I think in a way, people are somewhat overestimating the founders of companies, and massively underestimating what you can do when the founder is still present and in charge." Tobi talked about how it's not that founders themselves are some kind of super heroes, but that the *role* of a founder is incredibly important because of what the natural moral authority allows them to do.

Jack Altman

43,403 views • 3 months ago

David Beckham reveals what most people don't see about Lionel Messi "He is more than just natural talent" "The one thing that Leo is good at is teaching. He's good at teaching the young players that are coming in from the academy." "He arrived at about 6:50am and the team wasn't training till 10am... He's in the gym, he's warming up... he’s doing all of the things that you expect a young kid to do." "If I had to describe him with one word, he's a winner. It's as simple as that." "He's still hungry for championships. He still gets angry at players for not doing the right thing. He still gets angry when he loses games."
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David Beckham reveals what most people don't see about Lionel Messi "He is more than just natural talent" "The one thing that Leo is good at is teaching. He's good at teaching the young players that are coming in from the academy." "He arrived at about 6:50am and the team wasn't training till 10am... He's in the gym, he's warming up... he’s doing all of the things that you expect a young kid to do." "If I had to describe him with one word, he's a winner. It's as simple as that." "He's still hungry for championships. He still gets angry at players for not doing the right thing. He still gets angry when he loses games."

Fibonacci 🥷

85,436 views • 2 months ago

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸's recipe for a great founder: two traits and one choice. The traits: intellect and energy. The choice: courage. Courage is pain tolerance. “A huge amount of what people have to do is just get used to getting punched. And the reason people don't understand this is because when you're a founder, you cannot let on that this is happening because it will cause people to think that you're weak, and they'll lose faith in you. So you have to pretend that you're having a great time when you're dying inside.”
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.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸's recipe for a great founder: two traits and one choice. The traits: intellect and energy. The choice: courage. Courage is pain tolerance. “A huge amount of what people have to do is just get used to getting punched. And the reason people don't understand this is because when you're a founder, you cannot let on that this is happening because it will cause people to think that you're weak, and they'll lose faith in you. So you have to pretend that you're having a great time when you're dying inside.”

a16z

274,486 views • 11 months ago

“The Zoomers are so much better than the Millennials” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on the AI-native Zoomers who learned tech from YouTube and have a burning desire to build something great: “2015 to 2024... was a very, very strange period. And a lot of just things got really weird. And the Zoomers are the generation that basically was on the receiving end of that.” “And they're not walking around feeling guilty about everything all the time. They're not feeling like they have to deny that they want to be successful.” “They've seen a thousand hours of YouTube videos from all the great people in tech talking about how to do everything. They just know so much more than previous generations of founders did.” “They're all AI native. They all basically learn AI from scratch and in college. They're coming out, and they totally understand it.” “They wear their heart on their sleeve. They're gonna build something great. And they're completely unapologetic about it.”
1:33

“The Zoomers are so much better than the Millennials” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on the AI-native Zoomers who learned tech from YouTube and have a burning desire to build something great: “2015 to 2024... was a very, very strange period. And a lot of just things got really weird. And the Zoomers are the generation that basically was on the receiving end of that.” “And they're not walking around feeling guilty about everything all the time. They're not feeling like they have to deny that they want to be successful.” “They've seen a thousand hours of YouTube videos from all the great people in tech talking about how to do everything. They just know so much more than previous generations of founders did.” “They're all AI native. They all basically learn AI from scratch and in college. They're coming out, and they totally understand it.” “They wear their heart on their sleeve. They're gonna build something great. And they're completely unapologetic about it.”

a16z

132,883 views • 7 months ago

Jalen on KAT: "The narrative was placed on him by the outside world. You never really know a person until obviously you meet them face to face and you see what he says and what his actions are. And being the teammate that he is and seeing his sacrifices and seeing what he's done his entire career puts him in a position to become a hall of famer. And honestly I wouldn't trade that for the world. And the things that he's done has been extraordinary and not really sure how he's going to respond to me saying all these nice things about him but he's one hell of a basketball player but he's honestly a better teammate"
1:03

Jalen on KAT: "The narrative was placed on him by the outside world. You never really know a person until obviously you meet them face to face and you see what he says and what his actions are. And being the teammate that he is and seeing his sacrifices and seeing what he's done his entire career puts him in a position to become a hall of famer. And honestly I wouldn't trade that for the world. And the things that he's done has been extraordinary and not really sure how he's going to respond to me saying all these nice things about him but he's one hell of a basketball player but he's honestly a better teammate"

Oh No He Didn't

320,647 views • 2 months ago

NETFLIX CO-FOUNDER REED HASTINGS: ELON IS THE BRAVEST PERSON ON THE PLANET “Elon Musk is the bravest, most creative person on the planet. What he's done in multiple areas is phenomenal. I am 100% convinced that he is trying to help the world in all of his endeavors. And he's trying to help the world on that one, because he believes in free speech and its power for democracy, and that there's an option. Now, how he goes about it again, you know, is not how I would do it. But I'm deeply respectful, and I'm amazed that people are so nitpicky on him on that. Yeah, sure, the blue check mark. He's making a mess of something or not. But it's like, give the guy a break. He just spent all this money to try to make it much better for democracy and society to have a more open platform, and I am sympathetic to that agenda.” Source: DealBook Summit, November 2022
1:06

NETFLIX CO-FOUNDER REED HASTINGS: ELON IS THE BRAVEST PERSON ON THE PLANET “Elon Musk is the bravest, most creative person on the planet. What he's done in multiple areas is phenomenal. I am 100% convinced that he is trying to help the world in all of his endeavors. And he's trying to help the world on that one, because he believes in free speech and its power for democracy, and that there's an option. Now, how he goes about it again, you know, is not how I would do it. But I'm deeply respectful, and I'm amazed that people are so nitpicky on him on that. Yeah, sure, the blue check mark. He's making a mess of something or not. But it's like, give the guy a break. He just spent all this money to try to make it much better for democracy and society to have a more open platform, and I am sympathetic to that agenda.” Source: DealBook Summit, November 2022

Mario Nawfal

815,354 views • 2 years ago

Marc Andreessen: Elon inspires incredible loyalty from his employees because they know he'll just sit all night with them to fix a problem. “Elon actually delegates almost everything. He's involved in the thing that is the biggest problem right now until that thing is fixed. And then, he doesn't have to be involved in it anymore, he can go focus on the next thing that's the biggest problem for that company right now. The job number one is to remove that bottleneck and get everything flowing again. I think Elon basically has universalized that concept and he basically looks at every company like it's some sort of conceptual assembly line. When he identifies the bottleneck, he goes and he talks to the line engineers who understand the technical nature of the bottleneck. If it's people on a manufacturing line, he's talking to people directly on the line. Or if that's people in a software development group, he's talking to the people actually writing the code. He's not asking the VP of Engineering to ask the Director of Engineering to ask the manager to ask the individual contributor to write a report that's to be reviewed in three weeks. He doesn't do that. He would throw them all out of the window. There's just no way he would do that. He goes and personally finds the engineer who actually has the knowledge about the thing, and then he sits in the room with that engineer and fixes the problem with them. This is why he inspires such incredible loyalty, especially from the technical people who he works with. They're like, wow, if I'm up against a problem I don't know how to solve, freaking Elon Musk is going to show up in his Gulfstream jet, and he's going to sit with me overnight in front of the keyboard or in front of the manufacturing line, and he's going to help me figure this out.” Interview of Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 by Chris Williamson on Youtube, December 14, 2024
1:52

Marc Andreessen: Elon inspires incredible loyalty from his employees because they know he'll just sit all night with them to fix a problem. “Elon actually delegates almost everything. He's involved in the thing that is the biggest problem right now until that thing is fixed. And then, he doesn't have to be involved in it anymore, he can go focus on the next thing that's the biggest problem for that company right now. The job number one is to remove that bottleneck and get everything flowing again. I think Elon basically has universalized that concept and he basically looks at every company like it's some sort of conceptual assembly line. When he identifies the bottleneck, he goes and he talks to the line engineers who understand the technical nature of the bottleneck. If it's people on a manufacturing line, he's talking to people directly on the line. Or if that's people in a software development group, he's talking to the people actually writing the code. He's not asking the VP of Engineering to ask the Director of Engineering to ask the manager to ask the individual contributor to write a report that's to be reviewed in three weeks. He doesn't do that. He would throw them all out of the window. There's just no way he would do that. He goes and personally finds the engineer who actually has the knowledge about the thing, and then he sits in the room with that engineer and fixes the problem with them. This is why he inspires such incredible loyalty, especially from the technical people who he works with. They're like, wow, if I'm up against a problem I don't know how to solve, freaking Elon Musk is going to show up in his Gulfstream jet, and he's going to sit with me overnight in front of the keyboard or in front of the manufacturing line, and he's going to help me figure this out.” Interview of Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 by Chris Williamson on Youtube, December 14, 2024

ELON CLIPS

193,027 views • 1 year ago

"80% of the culture of a company is defined by the personality of the founder. Facebook is Mark. Google is Larry and Sergey. Our job as leaders around founders is to help articulate the culture that they're creating, and to help extend it. Your job is to build a company that would make a decision the way the founder would when they're not in the room. That is the work of building a company around a founder. Your job is not to shape culture. I've seen and watched friends like try to shape a set of values at a company, and it just doesn't match who the founder is. You say move fast and break things, and your founder loves ambiguity and is perfectly happy with not making decisions—all that leads to is cultural dissonance." — Molly Graham
0:48

"80% of the culture of a company is defined by the personality of the founder. Facebook is Mark. Google is Larry and Sergey. Our job as leaders around founders is to help articulate the culture that they're creating, and to help extend it. Your job is to build a company that would make a decision the way the founder would when they're not in the room. That is the work of building a company around a founder. Your job is not to shape culture. I've seen and watched friends like try to shape a set of values at a company, and it just doesn't match who the founder is. You say move fast and break things, and your founder loves ambiguity and is perfectly happy with not making decisions—all that leads to is cultural dissonance." — Molly Graham

Lenny Rachitsky

19,611 views • 7 months ago

Rich Paul" "Perk, listen man. This has nothing to do with money. The teams that are at the top of (Lebron's) list, they're all gonna pay the same dollar amount. He's not asking a team to move anybody that's contradicting what they standing for. It's not about the money, it's about the fit. He's had his mind made up...and then all of a sudden he's changed his mind and he's back to the drawing board again"
0:44

Rich Paul" "Perk, listen man. This has nothing to do with money. The teams that are at the top of (Lebron's) list, they're all gonna pay the same dollar amount. He's not asking a team to move anybody that's contradicting what they standing for. It's not about the money, it's about the fit. He's had his mind made up...and then all of a sudden he's changed his mind and he's back to the drawing board again"

Oh No He Didn't

593,077 views • 1 month ago

Why going direct is about telling a story much bigger than your company's: Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "The story of you and your startup is not inherently an interesting story, but there is almost certainly an interesting story that involves your startup, and this is sort of the cheat code of it." benahorowitz.eth: "The grand wizard of this is Alex Karp. If you watch his interviews, he never talks about Palantir. The only thing he ever says about Palantir, Marc pointed this out to me, is 'ontology' and 'orchestration,' two words that nobody knows what they mean." "Nobody knows what Palantir does as a result, but it doesn't matter because it's the future of the US military, Palantir. Superintelligence, Palantir. Whatever the story is that's really good, Alex will go tell that story. Neurodivergence." "Whatever is interesting, he'll just start talking about. And then because he's this founder of Palantir, the CEO of Palantir, like that just works." "When something happens in the world, something happens involving US military, AI in the military, or this or that, geopolitics with China, he's the first phone call, right? Because he's the guy who's been out there talking about that." Erik Torenberg: "Ryan Petersen... has done a phenomenal job of that." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "The difference between talking about freight versus talking about 'the global supply chain is completely collapsing' during COVID, and 'we're all gonna starve to death.'" "And then therefore, he's the guy who literally goes on 60 Minutes to explain to the world that in fact, yes, we all are about to starve to death." Ryan Petersen
2:10

Why going direct is about telling a story much bigger than your company's: Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "The story of you and your startup is not inherently an interesting story, but there is almost certainly an interesting story that involves your startup, and this is sort of the cheat code of it." benahorowitz.eth: "The grand wizard of this is Alex Karp. If you watch his interviews, he never talks about Palantir. The only thing he ever says about Palantir, Marc pointed this out to me, is 'ontology' and 'orchestration,' two words that nobody knows what they mean." "Nobody knows what Palantir does as a result, but it doesn't matter because it's the future of the US military, Palantir. Superintelligence, Palantir. Whatever the story is that's really good, Alex will go tell that story. Neurodivergence." "Whatever is interesting, he'll just start talking about. And then because he's this founder of Palantir, the CEO of Palantir, like that just works." "When something happens in the world, something happens involving US military, AI in the military, or this or that, geopolitics with China, he's the first phone call, right? Because he's the guy who's been out there talking about that." Erik Torenberg: "Ryan Petersen... has done a phenomenal job of that." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "The difference between talking about freight versus talking about 'the global supply chain is completely collapsing' during COVID, and 'we're all gonna starve to death.'" "And then therefore, he's the guy who literally goes on 60 Minutes to explain to the world that in fact, yes, we all are about to starve to death." Ryan Petersen

a16z

110,154 views • 2 months ago

Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel offers a contrarian view on mastery: the best founders aren't specialists, they're polymaths who understand how everything connects. After 14 years on the Facebook board, Thiel has watched Mark Zuckerberg up close. And he's noticed something that cuts against conventional wisdom about what it takes to build something great. "I think that one kind of perspective for a lot of the world-class entrepreneurs is they're not specialists. They're something close to polymaths." Thiel uses Zuckerberg as his prime example: "If you have a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, he'd be able to speak with a surprising amount of understanding about a lot of things. He could talk about the details of the Facebook product, the psychology of social media, the way the culture is shifting, the management of the company, and how this fits into the bigger history of technology." This stands in stark contrast to how academia frames expertise: "Whereas the sort of academic view is often that you're like a narrow expert on one thing and that's what you do and what it is about. It's much more this polymath-like intellect who understands all these different things." Peter Thiel reflects on what this has looked like at the board level: "The kinds of board conversations we've had over the last 13, 14 years, it's just been this crazy range." The takeaway: world-class founders don't just go deep in one area. They think across product, psychology, culture, management, and technology history, and they see how it all connects.
1:06

Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel offers a contrarian view on mastery: the best founders aren't specialists, they're polymaths who understand how everything connects. After 14 years on the Facebook board, Thiel has watched Mark Zuckerberg up close. And he's noticed something that cuts against conventional wisdom about what it takes to build something great. "I think that one kind of perspective for a lot of the world-class entrepreneurs is they're not specialists. They're something close to polymaths." Thiel uses Zuckerberg as his prime example: "If you have a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, he'd be able to speak with a surprising amount of understanding about a lot of things. He could talk about the details of the Facebook product, the psychology of social media, the way the culture is shifting, the management of the company, and how this fits into the bigger history of technology." This stands in stark contrast to how academia frames expertise: "Whereas the sort of academic view is often that you're like a narrow expert on one thing and that's what you do and what it is about. It's much more this polymath-like intellect who understands all these different things." Peter Thiel reflects on what this has looked like at the board level: "The kinds of board conversations we've had over the last 13, 14 years, it's just been this crazy range." The takeaway: world-class founders don't just go deep in one area. They think across product, psychology, culture, management, and technology history, and they see how it all connects.

Big Brain Business

69,444 views • 4 months ago

Asked Nuggets coach David Adelman about the season that Jaylen Brown has had, and he gushed about Brown as both a player and a person. "The the elite shooting from mid range is such a big deal in our game, it's the late-clock ability, his overall size, his ability to play in the middle of the floor, which is really hard to come double people and not give up the three point line to a team like they have, I would just say his continued evolution in his game. "He's an elite, All-Star player, two-way player. I just watched him grow over the years, not just the championship year, but with Jayson Tatum, obviously out, more responsibility falls into his hands, and I thought they did a great job building around him for this particular season, with all the shooting that surrounds him." "He's a problem. He's not fun to watch on tape when you have to play against him. I'm a fan of his, just as a pure basketball person, not just as a coach. Actually got to spend some time in Africa, he was such an impressive person. He's good for the NBA. He's going to be a probelm for us tonight." "There was an Africa game that I coach in, that he played in. They used to do that yearly in South Africa. It's an amazing event. He came down there for that. And some of the events that we had to do -- humanitarian stuff, you go out and you see these communities, and just to see his investment in it was really impressive. And he was at a much younger age then. And I remember him in the bubble, speaking up at meetings and things like that." "Some people are born to lead. He definitely stands out as one of those people."
1:36

Asked Nuggets coach David Adelman about the season that Jaylen Brown has had, and he gushed about Brown as both a player and a person. "The the elite shooting from mid range is such a big deal in our game, it's the late-clock ability, his overall size, his ability to play in the middle of the floor, which is really hard to come double people and not give up the three point line to a team like they have, I would just say his continued evolution in his game. "He's an elite, All-Star player, two-way player. I just watched him grow over the years, not just the championship year, but with Jayson Tatum, obviously out, more responsibility falls into his hands, and I thought they did a great job building around him for this particular season, with all the shooting that surrounds him." "He's a problem. He's not fun to watch on tape when you have to play against him. I'm a fan of his, just as a pure basketball person, not just as a coach. Actually got to spend some time in Africa, he was such an impressive person. He's good for the NBA. He's going to be a probelm for us tonight." "There was an Africa game that I coach in, that he played in. They used to do that yearly in South Africa. It's an amazing event. He came down there for that. And some of the events that we had to do -- humanitarian stuff, you go out and you see these communities, and just to see his investment in it was really impressive. And he was at a much younger age then. And I remember him in the bubble, speaking up at meetings and things like that." "Some people are born to lead. He definitely stands out as one of those people."

Noa Dalzell 🏀

98,397 views • 7 months ago

Marc Andreessen’s 2 reasons for why founder-run companies are harder to disrupt “If you just look historically at many of the important technology companies of the last 50-100 years, many of them are run by their founders for decades… And a lot of it has to do with disruption.” Marc continues: “There’s this cliché of founders that a lot of people believe which is that founders are too stubborn and founders get too locked into their original idea and they can’t adapt as times change. We’ve actually found the opposite to be true. We’ve found that when a company is going to get disrupted, the person in many cases with the best odds of countering the disruption is the founder, and I think there’s a couple of different reasons for that.” The two reasons Marc shares are: 1. The founder remembers when the business was nothing, and are constantly haunted by the fact that the business could be a zero again: “The founder remembers what it was like when there was nobody else in the office with you and when you carried out your own trash can. The founder remembers this thing used to be zero.” 2. The founder carries enormous moral weight inside the company and can more easily make drastic changes: “When Steve Jobs goes into Apple and says times are changing we need to do X - and X is heresy… A Steve jobs - a founder - is going to be able to convince the company that they have to do that. Whereas if a professional CEO shows up and says that, everybody’s going to be like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know.’” Source: Startup Grind (Feb 2016)
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Marc Andreessen’s 2 reasons for why founder-run companies are harder to disrupt “If you just look historically at many of the important technology companies of the last 50-100 years, many of them are run by their founders for decades… And a lot of it has to do with disruption.” Marc continues: “There’s this cliché of founders that a lot of people believe which is that founders are too stubborn and founders get too locked into their original idea and they can’t adapt as times change. We’ve actually found the opposite to be true. We’ve found that when a company is going to get disrupted, the person in many cases with the best odds of countering the disruption is the founder, and I think there’s a couple of different reasons for that.” The two reasons Marc shares are: 1. The founder remembers when the business was nothing, and are constantly haunted by the fact that the business could be a zero again: “The founder remembers what it was like when there was nobody else in the office with you and when you carried out your own trash can. The founder remembers this thing used to be zero.” 2. The founder carries enormous moral weight inside the company and can more easily make drastic changes: “When Steve Jobs goes into Apple and says times are changing we need to do X - and X is heresy… A Steve jobs - a founder - is going to be able to convince the company that they have to do that. Whereas if a professional CEO shows up and says that, everybody’s going to be like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know.’” Source: Startup Grind (Feb 2016)

Startup Archive

19,348 views • 17 days ago