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.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.

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27,775 views • 7 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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a16z always intended to be a media empire. This is the story of how it was built. As one of a16z’s earliest employees, Margit Wennmachers laid the foundations for a16z’s marketing operation. In this conversation with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, she shares stories of telling Marc to write Why Software Is Eating the World, getting Ben on the cover of Fortune Magazine, and finding that no publications were willing to run Marc’s now famous It’s Time to Build. The conversation also covers why founders should have a public voice, how a16z learned from CAA and changed venture, the power of authentic personality-driven media, and how the role of traditional media has changed. 00:00 Introduction 00:43 Meeting at The Creamery: When the firm had no office 06:24 “Treat LPs like mushrooms” 11:00 “We don’t have products. We have people and ideas” 14:45 The Fortune cover that started a war 28:03 Software is Eating the World: One draft, no edits 29:45 When nobody would publish “It’s Time to Build” 33:36 Why Ben wrote a book 41:30 “You can’t market a company without a character” 50:33 The GPT test for human communication 53:30 “How many people have something to say every day?” 57:00 Every company needs a personality Margit Wennmachers Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 benahorowitz.eth
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a16z always intended to be a media empire. This is the story of how it was built. As one of a16z’s earliest employees, Margit Wennmachers laid the foundations for a16z’s marketing operation. In this conversation with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, she shares stories of telling Marc to write Why Software Is Eating the World, getting Ben on the cover of Fortune Magazine, and finding that no publications were willing to run Marc’s now famous It’s Time to Build. The conversation also covers why founders should have a public voice, how a16z learned from CAA and changed venture, the power of authentic personality-driven media, and how the role of traditional media has changed. 00:00 Introduction 00:43 Meeting at The Creamery: When the firm had no office 06:24 “Treat LPs like mushrooms” 11:00 “We don’t have products. We have people and ideas” 14:45 The Fortune cover that started a war 28:03 Software is Eating the World: One draft, no edits 29:45 When nobody would publish “It’s Time to Build” 33:36 Why Ben wrote a book 41:30 “You can’t market a company without a character” 50:33 The GPT test for human communication 53:30 “How many people have something to say every day?” 57:00 Every company needs a personality Margit Wennmachers Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 benahorowitz.eth

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39,008 views • 7 months ago

There are talented people all over the world, ready to create and build in tech. But they're being blocked — by bad policies, broken systems, and overregulation. Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on why that's happening, and why future societies might look back on this one as "primitive."
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There are talented people all over the world, ready to create and build in tech. But they're being blocked — by bad policies, broken systems, and overregulation. Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on why that's happening, and why future societies might look back on this one as "primitive."

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.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "Everywhere we go, people want to talk about tech, they want to learn about tech." "When Ben wrote his book and went on a tour, it didn't matter what country he went to, thousands of kids show up and they want to learn how to do this." "The internet had a big impact there, which is, every kid anywhere in the world now can watch Peter Thiel talks and our podcast and everything else." "Global knowledge is way up. Global enthusiasm is way up. Relevance to societies is way up." "There's human capital everywhere... The startup process is a way to especially get smart young people to kind of do ambitious things."
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.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸: "Everywhere we go, people want to talk about tech, they want to learn about tech." "When Ben wrote his book and went on a tour, it didn't matter what country he went to, thousands of kids show up and they want to learn how to do this." "The internet had a big impact there, which is, every kid anywhere in the world now can watch Peter Thiel talks and our podcast and everything else." "Global knowledge is way up. Global enthusiasm is way up. Relevance to societies is way up." "There's human capital everywhere... The startup process is a way to especially get smart young people to kind of do ambitious things."

a16z

30,833 views • 21 days 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
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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

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77,204 views • 3 months ago

Marc Andreessen: Software isn't precious anymore. In this new world, high quality software is infinitely available. "We've always lived in a world in which software is this precious thing that you have to think about very carefully." "It was really hard to generate good software, and there was only a small number of people who could do it." "Those days are just over." "If you need new software to do X, Y, or Z, you're just going to wave your hand and get it." "Things that used to be hard, or even seem like an insurmountable mountain to get through, all of a sudden, I think, become very easy." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Latent.Space
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Marc Andreessen: Software isn't precious anymore. In this new world, high quality software is infinitely available. "We've always lived in a world in which software is this precious thing that you have to think about very carefully." "It was really hard to generate good software, and there was only a small number of people who could do it." "Those days are just over." "If you need new software to do X, Y, or Z, you're just going to wave your hand and get it." "Things that used to be hard, or even seem like an insurmountable mountain to get through, all of a sudden, I think, become very easy." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Latent.Space

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832,899 views • 2 months ago

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:
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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:

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34,301 views • 6 months ago

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 basically picks up the skills to become a CEO along the way.” “This is a very difficult, challenging thing to do. Nobody ever said it would be easy.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 at Fortune Brainstorm 2009:
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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 basically picks up the skills to become a CEO along the way.” “This is a very difficult, challenging thing to do. Nobody ever said it would be easy.” Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 at Fortune Brainstorm 2009:

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Adam Neumann's new company Flow isn't just a comeback, it's a move to reshape one of the world's biggest industries. Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 and benahorowitz.eth on the power of real estate.

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73,312 views • 1 year 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

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210,747 views • 3 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 🇺🇸
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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 🇺🇸

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79,935 views • 7 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."
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.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."

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89,389 views • 2 months ago

Marc Andreessen on the question at the center of data center discourse & why it's so important: "Can you build anything in America anymore? Can you build a factory? Can you build a chip plant? Can you build a power plant? Can you build a refinery? Can you build a pipeline? Can you build housing?" "One of the common themes in American life for the last 30 years is the answer to those questions is generally, no, you can't do any of those things." "Take as an example, Silicon Valley, right? So all the chips are made in Taiwan. Well, 40 years ago, all the chips were made in California." "Can you build things in America? Can you build a factory? Can you build an energy plant? Can you build a data center? Can you build housing?" "And on every single one of those, there's this massive problem which is, right now in many cases, in many places, no you can't." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Joe Rogan
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Marc Andreessen on the question at the center of data center discourse & why it's so important: "Can you build anything in America anymore? Can you build a factory? Can you build a chip plant? Can you build a power plant? Can you build a refinery? Can you build a pipeline? Can you build housing?" "One of the common themes in American life for the last 30 years is the answer to those questions is generally, no, you can't do any of those things." "Take as an example, Silicon Valley, right? So all the chips are made in Taiwan. Well, 40 years ago, all the chips were made in California." "Can you build things in America? Can you build a factory? Can you build an energy plant? Can you build a data center? Can you build housing?" "And on every single one of those, there's this massive problem which is, right now in many cases, in many places, no you can't." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Joe Rogan

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136,719 views • 1 month ago

.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 says embodied AI is already here. From autonomous drones to self-driving cars, and it's just the beginning. " The general purpose robotics thing is going to happen, and it's going to happen in the next decade… at giant scale." The U.S. has a choice: lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or live in a world of Chinese robots.
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.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 says embodied AI is already here. From autonomous drones to self-driving cars, and it's just the beginning. " The general purpose robotics thing is going to happen, and it's going to happen in the next decade… at giant scale." The U.S. has a choice: lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or live in a world of Chinese robots.

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76,872 views • 10 months ago

Marc Andreessen on introspection and the benefits of retardmaxxing: "There's this guy on YouTube who has basically a hundred videos on retardmaxxing." "He's like my new life coach. I haven't met him, but from a distance." "It's basically just—retardmaxx. Go to work, do a good job, come home, it's fine. Start a company, it succeeds, it fails, it's fine. Have too much to eat one night at dinner, it's fine. Go to the gym, don't count your reps, it's fine. Ask a girl if she wants to go out with you, if she says no, it's fine." "It's like 100 30-minute videos about retardmaxxing. And you would think that after the first two minutes, he kind of covered it. But no." "And by the way, they're all hysterical. They're all absolutely fantastic. It's literally him on his porch in the middle of nowhere with a cigar, and it's like a half hour." "It's just absolutely spectacular." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Harry Stebbings
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Marc Andreessen on introspection and the benefits of retardmaxxing: "There's this guy on YouTube who has basically a hundred videos on retardmaxxing." "He's like my new life coach. I haven't met him, but from a distance." "It's basically just—retardmaxx. Go to work, do a good job, come home, it's fine. Start a company, it succeeds, it fails, it's fine. Have too much to eat one night at dinner, it's fine. Go to the gym, don't count your reps, it's fine. Ask a girl if she wants to go out with you, if she says no, it's fine." "It's like 100 30-minute videos about retardmaxxing. And you would think that after the first two minutes, he kind of covered it. But no." "And by the way, they're all hysterical. They're all absolutely fantastic. It's literally him on his porch in the middle of nowhere with a cigar, and it's like a half hour." "It's just absolutely spectacular." Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 with Harry Stebbings

a16z

1,165,527 views • 2 months ago

Anish Acharya: We're going to see a "YouTube moment for software": "If you think about YouTube 20 years ago—we had lots of video and lots of television, and it was high production quality, and it wasn't clear that we needed more and 20 years later, YouTube's a $550 billion enterprise that would be one of the biggest companies in the world if it was independent." "I think the same thing is going to happen for software. People want to make software, and for the first time they can—and they can distribute it and they can consume it." "Sometimes it's going to be important software. Sometimes it's going to be totally trivial. It's going to be software for a bachelor party weekend, software for a joke, software for a prompt. We have this sort of seriousness about software that we had about video and television 20 years ago." "Now it's like—I just took a video on my phone. It's going to be like—I just made an app on my phone. Same energy." Anish Acharya on BILLIONS with Guillaume Moubeche
1:30

Anish Acharya: We're going to see a "YouTube moment for software": "If you think about YouTube 20 years ago—we had lots of video and lots of television, and it was high production quality, and it wasn't clear that we needed more and 20 years later, YouTube's a $550 billion enterprise that would be one of the biggest companies in the world if it was independent." "I think the same thing is going to happen for software. People want to make software, and for the first time they can—and they can distribute it and they can consume it." "Sometimes it's going to be important software. Sometimes it's going to be totally trivial. It's going to be software for a bachelor party weekend, software for a joke, software for a prompt. We have this sort of seriousness about software that we had about video and television 20 years ago." "Now it's like—I just took a video on my phone. It's going to be like—I just made an app on my phone. Same energy." Anish Acharya on BILLIONS with Guillaume Moubeche

a16z

102,588 views • 3 months ago

Marc Andreessen says Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a fantasy of an America where the Manson murders and the downward slide that followed in the 70s never happened: Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸
1:20

Marc Andreessen says Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a fantasy of an America where the Manson murders and the downward slide that followed in the 70s never happened: Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸

a16z

73,672 views • 7 months ago

If you believe in the future, build it. “Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential.” - Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸
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If you believe in the future, build it. “Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential.” - Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸

a16z

98,069 views • 1 year 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 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

65,549 views • 2 months ago

Amazing idea. It almost happened. Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 David Perell
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Amazing idea. It almost happened. Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 David Perell

a16z

91,587 views • 2 months ago