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Marc Andreessen on why the product is the most important thing for a tech CEO to understand: “You better have somebody running the company who really understands those products.” “In the technology industry, that’s usually a technologist.” “The alternate model seems to work better, which is the technologist who...

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55,444 views • 7 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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Marc Andreessen on why startups need to scale to have impact: “Startups are where a lot of the innovation happens.” “The thing that startups can’t do until they become big companies is have a big impact on the world.” “You have to get big to have a big impact.” “Otherwise the opportunity to make an impact with what you’ve invented... is going to be cut off and somebody else is going to step in and do it.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 at Fortune Brainstorm 2009:
0:59

Marc Andreessen on why startups need to scale to have impact: “Startups are where a lot of the innovation happens.” “The thing that startups can’t do until they become big companies is have a big impact on the world.” “You have to get big to have a big impact.” “Otherwise the opportunity to make an impact with what you’ve invented... is going to be cut off and somebody else is going to step in and do it.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 at Fortune Brainstorm 2009:

a16z

34,315 views • 8 months ago

Marc Andreessen: "Overall, the world, especially the western world, it's just stagnant." "Every once in a while you have somebody that comes along... I actually have an idea how to make things like fundamentally better." "Nobody licensed us to do any of this." "Anybody can start, build a product, start a company." "It's shocking to me how few people actually give it a shot." "The fate of the world over the next 1500 years is riding on the people who actually want to give it a shot." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with David Senra
1:12

Marc Andreessen: "Overall, the world, especially the western world, it's just stagnant." "Every once in a while you have somebody that comes along... I actually have an idea how to make things like fundamentally better." "Nobody licensed us to do any of this." "Anybody can start, build a product, start a company." "It's shocking to me how few people actually give it a shot." "The fate of the world over the next 1500 years is riding on the people who actually want to give it a shot." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with David Senra

a16z

77,244 views • 5 months ago

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:
0:49

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

178,155 views • 7 months ago

Marc Andreessen says don’t ever do diamonds in the rough. Only do diamonds. "This is actually an investor ego thing, I think, which is you basically say, 'Wow, I'm the investor that's gonna go find the thing that nobody else knows about... I'm going to go do the thing nobody else can think of.'" "The general pattern is... if it's got merit to be investable for venture, there are a lot of really smart and hungry VCs out there, and they are working extremely hard to sniff these things out, and it's their full-time job, and it's all they do." "I think it's really unusual to have the diamond in the rough, and usually if it's the diamond in the rough, it usually means two things... a company that's offside in some fundamental reason, it's in the wrong place, or it's structured wrong." "There's a reason why it's a diamond in the rough that actually ends up becoming a big problem." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Harry Stebbings
1:09

Marc Andreessen says don’t ever do diamonds in the rough. Only do diamonds. "This is actually an investor ego thing, I think, which is you basically say, 'Wow, I'm the investor that's gonna go find the thing that nobody else knows about... I'm going to go do the thing nobody else can think of.'" "The general pattern is... if it's got merit to be investable for venture, there are a lot of really smart and hungry VCs out there, and they are working extremely hard to sniff these things out, and it's their full-time job, and it's all they do." "I think it's really unusual to have the diamond in the rough, and usually if it's the diamond in the rough, it usually means two things... a company that's offside in some fundamental reason, it's in the wrong place, or it's structured wrong." "There's a reason why it's a diamond in the rough that actually ends up becoming a big problem." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Harry Stebbings

a16z

101,534 views • 4 months ago

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on the Current Thing: "Everybody has to have an opinion on the Current Thing. It's the most important thing in the world. And then 24 hours later it's like it never happened because something else has become the Current Thing." "As long as the internet is the medium of choice, we're going to live in a world in which this is the cycle now. It's like a 24, 36-hour news cycle." "The role of mainstream media for the rest of our life is just going to be to follow the internet viral posts."
1:23

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on the Current Thing: "Everybody has to have an opinion on the Current Thing. It's the most important thing in the world. And then 24 hours later it's like it never happened because something else has become the Current Thing." "As long as the internet is the medium of choice, we're going to live in a world in which this is the cycle now. It's like a 24, 36-hour news cycle." "The role of mainstream media for the rest of our life is just going to be to follow the internet viral posts."

a16z

89,656 views • 4 months ago

Marc Andreessen says in the future, we may not have programming languages or even user interfaces: "I kind of think that in 10 years, I'm not sure there will even be a salient concept of a programming language in the way that we understand it today." "If you project forward, you have to think forward to a world in which it's just—I'm going to tell the thing what I need, and it's going to do it in whatever way is most optimal." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Latent.Space
2:40

Marc Andreessen says in the future, we may not have programming languages or even user interfaces: "I kind of think that in 10 years, I'm not sure there will even be a salient concept of a programming language in the way that we understand it today." "If you project forward, you have to think forward to a world in which it's just—I'm going to tell the thing what I need, and it's going to do it in whatever way is most optimal." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Latent.Space

a16z

65,734 views • 4 months ago

Marc Andreessen: “I think Substack could be 1000 times the size of the existing content industry.” “Nobody ever asked for a Macintosh. Nobody ever asked for an iPhone. These things had to be designed and built, provided on the supply side before the demand materialized. And then the demand of course turned out to be far higher than anybody expected. And I think that that same thing is exactly true of media.” “You have this massive untapped market for high quality content in basically every domain.” “The existing structure of the media company was a structure that was designed for a world of centralized media. You need a new structure today.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸
1:39

Marc Andreessen: “I think Substack could be 1000 times the size of the existing content industry.” “Nobody ever asked for a Macintosh. Nobody ever asked for an iPhone. These things had to be designed and built, provided on the supply side before the demand materialized. And then the demand of course turned out to be far higher than anybody expected. And I think that that same thing is exactly true of media.” “You have this massive untapped market for high quality content in basically every domain.” “The existing structure of the media company was a structure that was designed for a world of centralized media. You need a new structure today.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸

a16z

461,081 views • 7 months ago

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.”
2:43

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 views • 6 months ago

Marc Andreessen on the inversion of technology adoption of AI. “It took 40 years for basically technology to cascade down from the largest organizations in the world to small businesses and to the individual.” “This technology, AI, is going the opposite.” “Consumers are adapting the fastest... Small businesses are then adopting right after that... Government is the late adopter.” Source: Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on Next Up with Mark Halperin Full episode:
1:25

Marc Andreessen on the inversion of technology adoption of AI. “It took 40 years for basically technology to cascade down from the largest organizations in the world to small businesses and to the individual.” “This technology, AI, is going the opposite.” “Consumers are adapting the fastest... Small businesses are then adopting right after that... Government is the late adopter.” Source: Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on Next Up with Mark Halperin Full episode:

a16z

49,008 views • 9 months ago

Marc Andreessen says AI is hyper democratizing. “Is the future of the world going to be one or a small number of companies, or for that matter, governments or super AIs that kind of own and control everything?” “Or is this a technology that's going to diffuse out and be in everybody's hands?” “This is the time in which AI is actually hyper democratizing. It has spread to more individuals, both in the country and around the world in the shortest period of time of any new technology I think in history.” “The best AIs in the world are in the consumer products.” “This technology is going to be in everybody's hands. And everybody is going to be able to use it to optimize the things that they do, have it be a thought partner, assistant for building companies.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸
1:34

Marc Andreessen says AI is hyper democratizing. “Is the future of the world going to be one or a small number of companies, or for that matter, governments or super AIs that kind of own and control everything?” “Or is this a technology that's going to diffuse out and be in everybody's hands?” “This is the time in which AI is actually hyper democratizing. It has spread to more individuals, both in the country and around the world in the shortest period of time of any new technology I think in history.” “The best AIs in the world are in the consumer products.” “This technology is going to be in everybody's hands. And everybody is going to be able to use it to optimize the things that they do, have it be a thought partner, assistant for building companies.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸

a16z

79,935 views • 9 months ago

“We literally, with AI, have a technology that transfers sand into thought.” Marc Andreessen on why AI is the philosopher’s stone: “The early scientists, including Isaac Newton, were super obsessed with this concept of alchemy.” “Alchemy was the transmutation of lead into gold. Which meant the transmutation of something that was very common, which was lead, into something that was very rare and valuable, which was gold.” “The most common thing in the world, which is sand, converted into the most rare thing in the world, which is thought.” “And so AI is the philosopher’s stone.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on Lenny's Podcast with Lenny Rachitsky
1:14

“We literally, with AI, have a technology that transfers sand into thought.” Marc Andreessen on why AI is the philosopher’s stone: “The early scientists, including Isaac Newton, were super obsessed with this concept of alchemy.” “Alchemy was the transmutation of lead into gold. Which meant the transmutation of something that was very common, which was lead, into something that was very rare and valuable, which was gold.” “The most common thing in the world, which is sand, converted into the most rare thing in the world, which is thought.” “And so AI is the philosopher’s stone.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on Lenny's Podcast with Lenny Rachitsky

a16z

185,398 views • 6 months ago

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 and Jack Altman on the old VC world and why it was bound to break. “It was this very clubby, cartel, you know, basically kind of thing… It was fine, as long as the ambitions of the industry were constrained.”
0:30

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 and Jack Altman on the old VC world and why it was bound to break. “It was this very clubby, cartel, you know, basically kind of thing… It was fine, as long as the ambitions of the industry were constrained.”

a16z

39,928 views • 1 year ago

Marc Andreessen: "The job is not actually the atomic unit of what happens in the workplace. The atomic unit of what happens in the workplace is the task." "A job is a bundle of tasks." “Everybody wants to talk about job loss, but really what you want to look at is task loss.” "As the tasks change enough, then that’s when the jobs change." "Ten years from now, is your job title coder, or coder-designer-product manager, or is it just, ‘I build products,’ or is it just, ‘I tell the AI how to build products.’ Whatever that job is called, it’s going to be incredibly important, because the people doing that job are going to be orchestrating the AI." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on Lenny's Podcast with Lenny Rachitsky
2:46

Marc Andreessen: "The job is not actually the atomic unit of what happens in the workplace. The atomic unit of what happens in the workplace is the task." "A job is a bundle of tasks." “Everybody wants to talk about job loss, but really what you want to look at is task loss.” "As the tasks change enough, then that’s when the jobs change." "Ten years from now, is your job title coder, or coder-designer-product manager, or is it just, ‘I build products,’ or is it just, ‘I tell the AI how to build products.’ Whatever that job is called, it’s going to be incredibly important, because the people doing that job are going to be orchestrating the AI." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on Lenny's Podcast with Lenny Rachitsky

a16z

292,928 views • 6 months ago

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke: It’s impossible to make great products if you don’t give a sh*t “Every product in the world, at the end of the day, is simply a reflection of how much the people who created it gave a sh*t… It is not possible to make great products if the people who work on it do not give a sh*t about the product.” Tobi continues: “I actually think this is a very important role for product leaders: To make sure that the team gives a sh*it… The product leader has to give a sh*t. Do not engage in work on a product that you don’t care about.” Tobi believes anyone who wants to build great products has two roles: 1. “You have to understand the thing that’s being done better than everyone else.” 2. “You’ve got to be exothermically infectious with actually caring about this thing because just that one thing alone will make a 10x better product. It’s crazy how much of a change this makes.” Video source: Lenny Rachitsky (2025)
1:33

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke: It’s impossible to make great products if you don’t give a sh*t “Every product in the world, at the end of the day, is simply a reflection of how much the people who created it gave a sh*t… It is not possible to make great products if the people who work on it do not give a sh*t about the product.” Tobi continues: “I actually think this is a very important role for product leaders: To make sure that the team gives a sh*it… The product leader has to give a sh*t. Do not engage in work on a product that you don’t care about.” Tobi believes anyone who wants to build great products has two roles: 1. “You have to understand the thing that’s being done better than everyone else.” 2. “You’ve got to be exothermically infectious with actually caring about this thing because just that one thing alone will make a 10x better product. It’s crazy how much of a change this makes.” Video source: Lenny Rachitsky (2025)

Startup Archive

185,096 views • 1 year ago

Marc Andreessen on Elon Musk: “The best engineers in the world want to work for him because he’s the one CEO who’s able to work with them as a peer on whatever the technology is. What would be better, as an engineer, than being able to design a rocket engine with Elon Musk as your engineering partner?”
0:32

Marc Andreessen on Elon Musk: “The best engineers in the world want to work for him because he’s the one CEO who’s able to work with them as a peer on whatever the technology is. What would be better, as an engineer, than being able to design a rocket engine with Elon Musk as your engineering partner?”

Nic Cruz Patane

17,804 views • 5 months ago

We need AI to work. Marc Andreessen on why AI is arriving at a moment of economic and demographic pressure: "Productivity growth for the last 50 years has actually been very low, not very high." "So statistically, in the US, in the west, technology progress in the economy ... has actually slowed way down." "Many countries around the world ... are actually going to depopulate over the next century." "We actually need AI to work in order to get productivity growth up... We actually need AI to work because we’re going to need machines to do all the jobs that we’re not going to have people to do." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on Lenny's Podcast with Lenny Rachitsky
2:13

We need AI to work. Marc Andreessen on why AI is arriving at a moment of economic and demographic pressure: "Productivity growth for the last 50 years has actually been very low, not very high." "So statistically, in the US, in the west, technology progress in the economy ... has actually slowed way down." "Many countries around the world ... are actually going to depopulate over the next century." "We actually need AI to work in order to get productivity growth up... We actually need AI to work because we’re going to need machines to do all the jobs that we’re not going to have people to do." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on Lenny's Podcast with Lenny Rachitsky

a16z

31,348 views • 6 months ago

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 wrote Why Software Is Eating the World in one draft, and it went on to become a canonical piece of tech writing. Almost a decade later, when he wrote It's Time to Build, no one would publish it.
2:15

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 wrote Why Software Is Eating the World in one draft, and it went on to become a canonical piece of tech writing. Almost a decade later, when he wrote It's Time to Build, no one would publish it.

a16z

27,775 views • 8 months ago

.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
0:50

.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 views • 4 months ago