My Conversation With Marc Andreessen, Co-Founder of a16z & Netscape

I wasn't expecting to start here. I wanted to talk about why you were consuming so much caffeine that you noticed that your heart was skipping a beat. So I love caffeine. So for for a very long time I always said that the ultimate day like the perfect day was 12 hours of caffeine followed by four hours of alcohol. Like like that's just like the ultimate. I did I did I did I did cut out at least for now. I've got to cut out the four hours of alcohol. But um yeah, caffeine is just like one

of one of nature's most most marvelous things. But it turns out you can't overdo it. And so, uh, yeah, a while ago, I was drinking, uh, so much coffee at work that, um, I was sitting in a meeting a couple years ago and I started to feel just a little bit something felt off and I just took my pulse and I was realized I was skipping about every 10th heartbeat. So, I I had like existential crisis because I'm like, "All right, you know, I need to call 911. Is this like am I about to have

a heart attack? Am I about to die?" And so, I go under the table and I Google and I'm like, "Is this a problem?" And and before Dr. Google said, "No, it's okay. It's fine. You just might want to cut back a little bit on the caffeine." You said something that I love and I never hear other entrepreneurs think about uh talk about but I think it's super important that you don't have any levels of introspection. Yes. Zero. As little as possible. Why? Move forward. Go. Yeah. I don't I don't know. I've just I found

people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past. It's it's just it's a real problem and it's it's a problem at work and it's a problem at home. So I've read obviously 4 I think now 10 biographies of fish case entrepreneurs and that was one of the most surprising things like what's the most surprising thing that you've learned from this is like oh they have little or zero introspection. Yeah, Like Sam Walton didn't wake up thinking about his internal self. He just woke up like I like building Walmart. I'm going to keep building

Walmart. I'm going to make more Walmarts and just kept doing it over and over again. And you probably know if you go back 100 years ago, it never it never would have occurred to anybody to be introspective. Like it's the whole idea of I mean just all of the modern conceptions around introspection and therapy and all the things that kind of result from that are, you know, kind of manufactured in the 1910s, 1920s. Say more about that. Great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff at any prior point. Right. It's all it's it's

it's it's all a new construct. It was it was you know well so first western civilization had to kind of invent the concept of the individual right which was like a new concept you know several hundred years ago and then and then you know for a long time it was all right the individual runs right and like does does all these things and builds things and you know builds empires and builds companies and builds technology does all these things and then you know kind of this kind of guilt-based whammy you know kind of showed up

uh from eur from Europe uh a lot of it from Vienna in the 1910s 1920s Freud and all all that that entire movement and and kind of turned all that inward and basically said okay now we need to you know, basically second guess the individual. We need to criticize the individual. The individual needs to selfcriticize, right? The individual needs needs to feel guilt needs to look backwards, needs to, you know, dwell on the past. It never resonated with me. Do you find a lot of the greatest founders that you've spent time with and backed and

partnered with or have low introspection? Yeah. Generally, although in fairness, Um, you know, the the the introspection is probably linked to the the personality trait of neur neuroticism, right? Um, so you know, a lot of a lot of the best founders are, you know, I think at like 0% neuroticism. like they they just don't get emotionally phased by things that happen which is a superpower when you're an entrepreneur. But having said that some of the great entrepreneurs are in fact very neurotic like it it you know that's also the case. It it's it's not a

you know it's not it's it's maybe it's a nice to have to be low neuroticism but but not necessary and so you know there are some that kind of get wrapped around the axle um on on kind of personal issues. Um you know as you know you know these days sometimes that then you know kind of turns into use of you know psychedelics you know of different kinds and hallucinogenic drugs you know that's like one very interesting kind of trajectory for you know kind of the culture of the country culture of the world and you

know we'll we'll see where that goes. So we've recorded I don't know like a dozen of these so far most of them with some of the greatest you know founders living for the show. I can't believe how many how many times on almost every episode psychedelics pops up and they're like you should try them. I'm like I'm not doing any drugs. So to be clear, I'm not I've never have I'm never going to like I I I have hor I have t you know the problem is I already have like tons of horror stories from

people I know or know of that you know kind of came out the other side like well I actually I had a my deepest conversation this was with actually was actually with with Huberman um and um you know and I was describing this phenomenon where we see in Silicon Valley where you know kind of there these guys get under pressure and you know they kind of feel anxious or whatever and they decide they you know somebody tells them about psychedelics and they try it and and they kind of come out the other end as a

changed person and and they kind of come out like much more at peace but then they also tend to like quit their companies. They like moved to Indonesia to become a surface director. Like they're there just like peace out, right? They're they're just done. There's been a whole bunch of examples of this. And I and I was complaining to Hubberman about this. And in in true Huberman kind of wise Yoda style, he's like, well, you know, how do you know they're not happier? Like like maybe that was the positive outcome. Like maybe the thing that

was driving them to be a great entrepreneur was a fundamental level of insecurity, right? And kind of this, you know, this kind of unsatisfied, you know, kind of neurotic impulse. Um and now they're just now they're just satisfied. now they're just, you know, whatever the serotonin levels or whatever have been recalibrated that they're just kind of satisfied sitting on the beach and being a surf instructor. Um, you know, maybe they're better off. And I'm like, yeah, but their company it's failing. Um, and so anyway, yeah, so it there's a possibility that there's a better version

of you or me on the other side of, you know, IA, but I'm not willing to find out. I'm not either. Daniel E has the greatest way to put this, like he thinks the best entrepreneurs are not optimizing for happiness, they're optimizing for impact. I think that's true. I think that's true. I think it's certainly true for Daniel. Yeah. Who's, you know, kind of a great case study of that. You know, having said that, you know, I always kind of wonder is that well, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations. Impact strikes me a little bit as an

extrinsic motivation. You know, there's like impact, money, fame, you know, and by the way, I think extrinsic motivations are fantastic and I think, you know, they can be very motivating and the people who get kind of get the great rewards for building great things, you know, deserve them. But at least what I found is it's the intrinsic motivations that actually get people up in the morning. Um, and and and and there's where you you know, you're dangerously close to straying into introspection. But, you know, it's like, okay, like what you know, what what is the

thing that causes somebody who's now, you know, extremely materially wealthy, extremely successful, you know, to get up in the morning and continue to, you know, kind of punch away at the world. I think those those tend to be interior. What's that for you? Oh, I mean that that would require introspection. I'll let other people speculate. No, you have to. It's a lot more fun to speculate about other people's other people's But I am curious about you because like what you have you have a series of quotes that I absolutely love. I save on my phone.

I reread from time to time. One of them I'll butcher it, but it's like, you know, the world is way more malleable than you think. And if you just pursue something with a lot of maximum effort, drive, and energy, the world will recalibrate around you easier than you think. And I actually reread that this morning before I came over here, and I was like, what is that for Mark like today? Like, what are you waking up trying to change in the world? Yeah, there's there's a lot that we're actually trying to do. I'm suspicious that

that's my actual underlying motivation just because like I like I don't think external impact is enough to keep people going or at least I've seen way too many people who had a high level of external impact and then at some point they just stop. Okay. Well, here's the problem with external impact. It's like okay it's 4 in the morning you're staring at the ceiling. Like is that enough? Right? Like external impact is stuff that's happening to other people, right? It's like all right, what what what is it about you? The the the story I like

to Tell myself is that I'm competing with myself, right? the the story I like to tell myself as I'm getting up in the morning because I'm trying to become a better version of myself. I'm trying to become, you know, smarter and better informed and, you know, have, you know, reach better conclusions and, you know, and, you know, be be better at what I do. Um, and continue to expand my skills, but, you know, again, to to to actually analyze that properly require a level of therapy that I'm not willing to engage in. Um, so anyway,

so yes, the much more the much more comfortable conversation is the Yeah. What what are you trying to do in the world, which I would love to talk about. I have almost no introspection either, so like I understand that. Uh, all right. So, tell me what you're trying to do in the world now. Yeah. I mean look uh we just we have had this it's actually fairly amazing that it's become a controversial you know kind of thing but we just have this like fundamental view that technology is like on balance an enormously powerful force in

the world and basically that the big problem with the world is that there's you know there's not enough technology there's not enough information there's not enough intelligence um and you know we have this opportunity we have these special sets of technologies that let us fundamentally improve things um and and then there's this very special you know kind of personality type to the entrepreneur um who's able to build the product and then and then able to build the company and build a phenomenon um and and and really make an impact on things and and so you

know when I look at the world I'm just like okay this is just like this is a very the world we live in is just a very primitive and crude place as compared to what it should be um and what it could be um and so the whole thing that we've been trying to do you know for 17 years at our firm is you know build kind of the ideal partner to the founders that are You know trying to do that based on our own experiences of having been founders that were trying to do that

overall the world especially the western world is just it's just stagnant like that you know the the overall kind of theme of things is just everything is stagnative and we we could you know We could talk a lot about about that, but you know, every once in a while you have somebody that comes along. It's just like, "All right, no, I actually have an idea how to make things like fundamentally better, and I have a way to build a build a business around that and build a company, build an empire around that." Um, and that,

you know, and and and those people, you know, include ourselves in this. But, you know, those of us that are trying to do that, um, you know, we're like a movement basically against stagnation. But like, you know, without us there's nothing but stagnation. Well, it's actually really funny. They always there's always this kind of criticism that you get from you know whatever the you know kind of the the say the corporate press or or or kind of outside critics which is like oh you know you VCs are finding the wrong things or you entrepreneurs are

building the wrong things. It's like, well, nobody like licensed us to do any of this. Like, we didn't like apply for a permit, right? Like get like judged by somebody ahead of time and told, "Yes, you get to do this. You don't get to do this." Like, many people could be trying to do do this. Anybody can do this. Anybody can anybody can, you know, start build a product, start a company, you know, start, even try to be a VC. Like, it it's these are all completely open fields. And it's just it it's shocking to

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yeah, no, the the core thesis was kind of the the startup, the entrepreneur, you know, the founder is going to be the core the core engine of progress in the world. And I think that, you know, I think that's more true than ever. In fact, when we started it was still controversial the idea that a founder would run their own company. Even in 2008, 2009, Yeah, it was still very well it was very controversial. In fact, and in fact, you know, they were high-profile companies at the time that were getting heavily criticized for, you know,

basically having these little kids running around running these companies. Okay. So, you you have this like encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Silicon Valley in your head. I probably read I don't know 30 to 40 books on it. So I have some level but not that you do. I remember reading a book on Nolan Bushnell front of Atari. He was like 27 at the time and it was excessively rare. It talks about that in his story. It's like excessively rare for him not to be replaced once Atari started growing with you know CEO like an

older CEO. Yeah. Like were there other examples that before him? Well so Christopher Columbus Alexander the Great. Right. So, so the the the throughout history, most of the, you know, Thomas Jefferson, throughout history, most of the great things that have been built have been built by this kind of super charismatic founder type, you know, will of power founder type who, you know, basically built and run something to hold on. Henry Ford, hold on. I love that you went here because you don't remember this, but we had dinner in Miami with Jared Kushner like a year

ago or something, and me and you would wrestle because I was so excited to to talk to you and I was trying to get out of you like, you know, cuz I think about history first all day. Like, this is what I do seven days a week. Like, who Who are these entrepreneurs from history that you like? These are naming country founders. True. Exactly. There's this like recency bias, right? Which is like the the world that we live in today is the normal state of the world and like everything that happened in the past is

like weird and different and those people were like dumber than we are and like all screwed up and it's like well maybe or or maybe the world worked a certain way for thousands of years and we're in the weird time like maybe we're in a time that's just like really unusual from a historical, you know, from from a historical standpoint. And I I think this this is one of those dimensions in which that's true. It just it never would have occurred to anybody 100 200 300 years ago that if somebody was going to like you

know start something that they weren't going to be the person who ran it like obviously it was just obviously the case. The book that I always recommend on this topic is called the Machavelians uh which is a sort of famous book from the 1940s uh by this guy James Burn who's like one of the great geniuses of the 20th century and he describes it basically is he said look there have been two like fundamental modes of like business organization over the course of like basically the history of capitalism. Um there's what he what he calls

bajgeoa capitalism which basically is like founder runs the company name on the door and the the classic archetype for bajgeoa capitalism was Henry Ford you know in the 1920s and today it's Elon Musk right it's just like that that's you and by the way in the old days it was Ford Motor Company you know it's not Musk motor company but you know everybody knows Tesla and SpaceX like you know these are Elon and and and again that maps to this historical thing which is that's also how countries ran and that's also how you know cities

ran and like all these things you just religions by the way like you know basically everything you founders led the That's the historical norm. And then he said, what he basically says in this book is he goes through and he says that the there there's this new basically model that basically is a artifact again it's an artifact of kind of this weird Period of time between the 1880s and 1920s where kind of the modern world you know as we know it today kind of formed. U and he said there's sort of a new philosophy of

sort of leadership and management which is called managerialism. Sort of the rise of the concept of a manager and specifically a manager as contrasted to a leader. And so therefore the manager, therefore the idea of a management school, right? Therefore Harvard and Stanford business schools, right? Therefore the idea of the manager who replaces the founder running a company. Um you know therefore the idea of management as a skill set that can be used to run many different kinds of businesses. Um in the 70s this then turned into the conglomerate which was the idea that it

doesn't matter what the company does. If you have a good manager the company should do, you know, 30 30 different things. And so managerialism is this idea that you have this kind of interchangeable management skill and that that can basically run anything. And actually what Bernham says is he says look people are going to try to draw a value judgement on this and they're going to try to say this is better or worse than the old name on the door model. But he said the reality of the modern world is everything is big like you

know for the electrical power grid to get big or the road network to get big or the car industry to get big um large scale systems need to be run by people who are training how to run large scale systems. And so he said you may or may not and same thing with countries large scale countries are need to be run by people who are good at running large scale things right and and the founding personality type is not the manager personality type. those are different and so there's going to be a handoff when things

get big and complicated and so that that's the model that Nolan Bushnell talks about and that's the model that dominated the Silicon Valley for 50 years. The problem with his argument is that assumes the managers are going to do a good job, right? And I think if there's like one dominant theme that we're seeing in the last, you know, 30 years, you know, in the west for sure is like managers generally, you know, at large are not doing a great job. Or another way to put it is the managers maybe are good at managing something

that's going to be status quo for a long time. Like if it doesn't change, maybe they, you know, maybe they can run the banks for a long time or they can run the power company for a long time or the car company. And as long as the car is the car is the car, you know, or soup soup is soup is soup, it kind of doesn't matter. But the minute things change, the manager personality type because it's not the founder personality type, it doesn't know how to deal with change. Not everything is changing. A lot

of things aren't changing. But for the things that are changing, they're changing like really, really quickly. I mean, SpaceX is like the classic example of this. Imagine being a professionally trained manager trained at like, you know, a top management school working for a rocket launch company um competing with SpaceX. And the assumption of the entire rocket industry for, you know, the last hundred years has been the rockets are used once and then, you know, that's it. And the economics of launch are dominated by having to build a new rocket every time. And then this like

crazy guy in California comes up with this thing where the rockets fly in their butt and you can't replicate it. Okay, your management like what good are your management skills at that point. And I and I think there there's like a whole bunch of interesting areas of human activity where like that shift is happening. And so I think this is where Burnham's thesis collapses where it's just like okay the managers actually can't do it. Yes, there's a need to run things at scale but no the managers actually can't do it because they can't adapt and

the founder can just learn how to run things at scale. Well, that's the theory and that's that's a big part of our theories. Yeah. The founders can actually learn how to do this and and you know and look there there you know this is still a controversial topic. This you know this still comes up like because is it controversial? Well, it is because founders aren't nec especially founders on day one are not good at doing this like okay so in tech let's talk about tech specifically like in tech the founder tends to have been in

a lab you know literally or metaphorically for 20 years before they start their company. Like they've been you know probably working by themselves or in a with a small team. They've been building technology. they haven't been running things like they haven't been you know man managing large organizations they haven't been you know running public companies and so there there is a missing skill set right and and and on day one they they don't know how to do that and so they they do need to be willing to learn how to do that and then they

and then by the way they do need to be capable of doing that because you know some some of them can and some of them can't but yeah our so this this maybe is like the core thesis behind our firm which is it's you're much more likely to build something important in the 21st century if you start with the founder and train them on management than you are to start with the manager and try to train them being a founder on creating new things and I think that this trend is intensifying and so you're because

what's happening is all the old edififices all the old incumbent institutions of the last 100 years that are run by managers they're all in some state of fundamental collapse like they're they're they're all collapsing in like trust and credibility because because they can't adapt. Um and so this issue is becoming more and more acute which is the system that we thought was necessary and sufficient actually just like does not work and if anything good is going to happen it's going to have to be somebody it's going to have to be Henry Ford Elon Musk type

who actually does it. You think it's in a vast maj minority of people agree with you look it's becoming more common I mean when you get any Elon Musk and Steve Job when you get these kind of archetypal Examples of it it's a lot easier to you know to to you know to sell it. you know Mark Bar Zuckerberg we were talking about earlier like he you know he's a now a great case study of this right he had you know when Mark started Facebook he has never he had never had a job before okay

not only had he not managed people he had not worked for anybody right so like he had he started with zero and his his learning curve which by the way was happened fully in the public eye right his learning curve was vertical and by the way it's still vertical like he spends like an enormous amount of time learning how to become better at running running this the these things at large scale he's still the founder and he's still the innovator and he's still like a fountain of ideas on what to do. So he so he's

he's he's that double, you know, he's he's like the classic example of the double thread. And then what happens is other founders look at that and they're like, "Oh, I could do that." Right. Which is exactly what Steve Jobs said when he saw Nolan Bushnell. Exactly. I can run my company. I can do that. Yeah. Exactly. And by the way, you know, it's amazing like how fast this stuff shifted because like you know, Steve famously had this, you know, short period of time where he worked for Hillet Packard and I think I don't know if

it's true. The legend is that Jobs pitched his manager at Hulip Packard. No, Waznjak pitched him. Was it Wasak? Okay. Okay. Okay. Was pitched. There was some other story where where where Jobs went into some meeting with some manager trying to pitch the thing and and and the line from the manager was absolutely not. This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Get your feet off my desk and get out of here, right? You can just imagine Steve with his, you know, and they had to be bare feet at that time. My my favorite uh

Apple lore is that the first sale in Apple uh in Apple's history was made barefoot when he walked into the bite shop. He was barefoot. What's amazing about that is, you know, yes, so for sure Packard. Everything I'm describing was Hellet Packard in the 1950s and 1960s that 1940s. That was also Dave Dave Dave Packard and Bill Hillet were were that founder type and and Dave Packard and Bill Helet ran their company for between the two of them for like 50 years. Do you think and by the way Silicon Valley was built in large part

on HP HP was the original Silicon Valley company. Okay, that's the next run by its founders for 50 years and yet people concluded the founders shouldn't run the companies, right? And so it's it's like it's one of those things where it's like it's kind of so obvious it was staring everybody in the face and so people had to construct kind of elaborate you know basically you know these these elaborate kind of lattises of like you know theories to basically get around the fundamental fact that you need somebody who knows what to do actually running the

thing. Do you think HP might have been the most influential company in Silicon Valley history? It was for sure the most influential company from 1940 to 1980. Um and then probably after that Intel. Yeah. Well, well, you go to the founders of Intel and you read biographies of them and they talk about modeling off of HP. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, that's right. And then how many founders modeled off of Bob Noise and Intel after the fact, Including Steve Jobs, who was we go to Bob Noice's house for dinner. Yeah, that's right. By the

way, that's another great example because Bob at least, you know, if you look at photos of Bob No, you're like, "Wow, this guy's like a pillar of society." like he's you know he's very very well dressed and he's kind of very adult and he's very like you know he's famously the the leader of the traitorous aid you know that you know the the group that left shockly to start Fairchild and then left to start and so Bob was 100% the Steve Jobs of his time just in the shortsleeve white dress shirt and the skinny black

tie but it was it's again it's it's like the exact same thing and so I I you know I never unfortunately never met Bob but I I could easily imagine Bob and Steve Jobs sitting down and being able to talk for three hours and completely understanding each other despite the fact that the the look and feel is like completely different. He was almost like a disciplinarian to Steve cuz Steve was, you know, wild and reckless. Like I was also wild and reckless. You need to mature. And I think Bob's wife maybe went to work at

Apple early on too. So it was he he talked about this um in his biography. Uh there's a few great biographies of Bob Noise, but he said that the reason he spent so much time after he was really successful spending time with young entrepreneurs, he said it was uh restocking the stream in which he fished from. Amazing. He thought it was really important and he's like, I learned from all the guys before me. I need to take that that knowledge I've built up over multiple decades and push it down the generation. I want to go

back to starting the firm though. This is interesting. What was occurring in your life either at that time or before that that you had this observation that this had to be done. Oh, so so you know we've got all these elaborate theories that the practical reality of it was Ben Ben my partner Ben and I had become very active angel investors. Um and and I'd been an angel investor since like the mid 90s. Um but then Ben and I started doing it kind of as a you know as a as a real thing. Put a

significant time into it probably starting in you know 2003. Well, I I did it kind of throughout the early 2000s, but in 2003, 2004, it's hard to remember now, but if you go back to like 2003, 2004, there weren't like thousands of Asian investors. There were like eight. It was like a short, you know, was like Ron Conway and you know, a handful of people and then and then Ben and I were running around doing it. And this was very significant in the evolution of the venture capital industry because this was the point at which

the traditional VCs got intermediated by angelist and seed investors who kind of inserted in before the VCs arrived, which was this, you know, fundamental change that that changed the whole industry. But, you know, we we were part of that. Um so but as a consequence like we were investing in all these new companies you know basically at the point of formation you know we're basically playing playing amateur early stage VC um and and we're getting and we always like we're not going on the board like you know you're going to raise money for a real

venture firm later they're going to go on your board and whatever and work with you and what we just found over and over and over and over again was we ended up getting pulled into these companies um either because there were issues that just like the other people that they were you know working with or they're you know either they either hadn't raised venture yet or the VCs that they had raised from couldn't couldn't help them with and so we we just kept hold and the reason was we we had been running companies at that

point for you know whatever 20 years um and so you know we we at least had some idea of what we were doing and then the other is we kept getting we kept getting brought into conflict resolution between the founders and the VCs so that because you know like especially Especially because again much more common at that time especially if the VC's fundamental point of view is the founder is not going to run the company and we need to like replace you with a professional manager as fast as possible like the founders are not necessarily

going to like that and they might resist that and by the way even if they're on board with that idea they might not like the person who who the VC wants to bring in. And so we kept ending up in these kind of basically arbitrators in this sort of you know in theory we were kind of trusted intermediaries because we knew the founders, we knew the VCs and we could kind of help help bridge between that. But literally what happened was after a while we were like spending like eight hours a day just just doing

this and and we're like all right and and it's like weird. It's like you're writing $100,000 check and you're like spending all this time doing it and then to basically arbitrate a dispute with somebody who wrote a $10 million check and it's it's just like all right like we should probably just write the $10 million check and that was that was that so it was it was I always think like the best the the founders I always one of my theories of like the great founders is they they tend to be able to operate at

kind of the strateg conceptual level and then the practical level at the same time. And so so we had we had a whole theory I could take you through for the evolution of the venture business. Yeah. But but underneath that was just this actual you know the lived experience of what was actually happening on the ground. The the big theory of the firm that we that we had at that time was linked to this idea of um was linked to this idea of founders running the show but it was also a structural observation of what

was happening in the venture industry which was basically we did was we we sort of in line with your philosophy we went back and we studied a lot of other businesses that are are have similarities to the venture business. that we study private equity, venture capital or sorry, private equity, hedge funds, investment banks, law firms, um, Management consulting firms, ad agencies, accounting firms, you know, basically anything where the the product is fundamentally a relationship, you know, a knowledge work, you know, kind of relationship as as compared to something that gets that gets manufactured. And what

we observed is basically in in Hollywood talent agencies actually is the one we we've probably talked publicly about the most. And so that was that was a great case study. The old story he was in this studio a few months ago. Fantastic. And so and and he actually and by the way he he gave us you know we make a point of crediting like he gave us a lot a lot of this theory so a lot of this comes from him but well actually I'll tell through through through through through his through his his experience.

So when he started his agency um in uh was it 80 whatever no 7575 in the 70s in the 70s like in the mid '70s it was actually a very similar it was structurally it was very similar to when we started uh A16Z in in 2009 which was the configuration of the industry at that point was basically a bunch of essentially service firms a bunch of talent agencies none of which were at very high scale and then each of them was basically a tribe of of basically solo operators kind of kind of lone wolves um

and so so the so the concept in Hollywood was you had an agent and that was your I and that agent knew whoever that agent knew and had whatever relationships that agent had, but the other agents at your agency were not available to you. And there was no collective benefit to the fact that you were at an agency that had not just your guy, but like 100 other guys. There was no collective payoff to that. They ran that in that way for a very specific reason, which is this kind of this eat what you kill

professional services mentality where everybody should have to go build build their own book of business. But but you you end up just Dealing with a guy as opposed to a firm like there there's no firm, there's no no collective thing. And that that was basically the the condition of venture capital in 2009, which is you have and at this at this point we knew all the VCs really well and we had raised venture and we had worked with all these other companies um that that had raised venture and and and basically all of the sort

of legacy venture firms at that point. They were all like that. They were all just like tri tribes of lone wolves. And then the thing that we knew that was not publicly known was generally speaking inside the firms. They didn't even like each other. Oh, I hear stories like this all the time. Right. And so it's like you know whatever there's Joe and Mary you know who are partners at a venture firm and you're working with Joe and Mary has like a key connection that that you need access to and so you ask Joe can

Mary introduce me to so and so and what you don't know is they're having like a brutal fight where you know they're like trying to destroy each other because they're they're because they're fundamentally economics they're going for you know the a greater slice of of the profit pool and so they're really going at it and so we we just we saw example after example a venture firm that was basically either two things actually one is either melting down due to just internal strife and conflict um or by the way the other was gener generational succession,

right? The other the other issue is a lot of the dominant venture firms in 2009 had been around for 30 or 40 years and they were now on their third generation of partners going to their fourth generation of partners and and and you know and again it's the same thing. They had been founded by Dynamos and then they were you know the later generation people were were not like that. So we basically said oh the this is where the the oldest thing comes in is we said look like that that's not going to last. And

so our our theory of it was what we call death of the middle or we sometimes the negative way to frame it is death of the middle. positive way is the barbell. Uh which is what's happened in all these other industries which is basically the the industry gets stretched apart like taffy. Um and and and what you what you get is you get this barbell thing and on on one side of the barbell you get early stage angel seed investor who are really like first money in like you know staying very light on their feet

writing a relatively small check but like being involved in companies extremely early on um and taking a lot of risk. And then on the other side you get basically scaled platforms right. So you you know you get large scale enterprises that that have like a lot of throwaway a lot of access very big networks and then access to a lot of money. The other comparison we always make is to retail shopping right which is there used to be department stores like Sears and J Penney which basically where the the brand promise was pretty good selection

of products and pretty good prices right and then now those are dead and what you have instead of boutiques like the Gucci store the Apple store and then you've got this super scale e-commerce companies like like Walmart and Amazon. We're to the point where it's just like there's no reason to ever go to a department store because it's got less selection than Walmart and Amazon and it but it doesn't have the quality tier and the special experience of a Gucci or Apple. Well, you had that thought in mind when you started 100%. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

It was a conceptual leap for venture capital at the time, but the exact same thing had happened in private equity. The exact same thing had happened in hedge funds. The exact same thing had happened in in you knew that by what? Just reading reading. So like investment or investment banks is a classic example. So if if you read about the sort of the original investment banks in the US between like 1880 and 1920 they were all like boutique venture capital firms in the 1970s 1980s in the US like 20 guys and these are more like

merchant bankers. Yeah. Well and so the the the classic stories which I love so much. So JP JP Morgan's one of my kind of favorite historical figures and and and JP JP Morgan was an example that the JP Morgan investment bank was like this this basically this had it was very important but it was like this tiny little operation. It was you know fit in a single office. you know, I don't know, probably 20 principles and some office staff or something. It, you know, it was not it was not large. Um, and and and actually

the the the the hidden secret to to to JP Morgan was he was the son. The the the father was Junius Morgan. Okay. I literally when you were talking I was like wait you you I I was shocking that you would say pick him because I actually found his father more formidable individual than him. He was so he was which I is almost always the case with any famous public figure as the father is almost always a more interesting story which a lot of examples of that but however yeah so Junius Morgan and then and

then JP Morgan has filled a specific economic role that's gotten lost in history which is basically Junius Morgan the Junius Morgan bank was in London the JP Morgan bank was in New York and and what the Morgan family was doing was they were funneling money from the old slow growth economy of Europe into the new high growth economy of the US but again it was exactly your point like it was this little boutique family operation The other great thing about that area of history is these these were um they were all bifrocated by religion. There

were the Protestant investment banks and there were the Jewish investment banks and they did not mix. No, not at all. Completely different worlds. And as a consequence, JP Morgan was the the Protestant banks like like JP Morgan were able to find like the railroads which were considered like the real businesses of the time. Uh but then like all the disreputable stuff like movie companies and like department stores like that those are all the Jewish investment banks by the way with Jewish almost entirely Jewish founders uh with like and then then Goldman and JP Morgan is

the big survivor of that today in the former JP Morgan Chase and then and then on the on the Jewish side it's Goldman Sachs you know is the great survivor but again if you go back there so that's you consider that the the barbell in investment banking you have the the JP Morgan kind of like family partnership and then you have the complete scale of like Goldman Sachs and so what happened was both JP both JP Morgan and Goldman sacks started out 100 years ago they were on the one side of the orund 100 years

ago they were actually in the middle they were they were kind of again this sort of you know they were boutiques but they were like of their time they were like today you call them like mid-market um you know who sometimes called bulge bracket you know kind of thing as opposed to just like a solo operator or something actually the way um uh JFK's father got started was he literally hung out a shingle in the 1920s which is Joseph P Kennedy banker you know private banker and he like just did deals and he was like

an angel investor at the time and so and then you had the big commercial banks but the big commercial banks had interest in issuing loans to these speculative crazy you know entrepreneurs and so in that time JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs and [ __ ] Lo and Drexel and all these other kind of you know mid-market banks Morgan Stanley um the bank that became Morgan Stanley um were kind of these mid things now what's happened you know sitting here 100 years later those are now the the scaled players the ones who didn't scale are kind

of long forgotten having said that there there's one firm that survives in the old model and that's Allen company and there are other boutique investment banks study but Allen company was founded in the 1920s and has you know has is uniquely the one that survived in the in the original model of boutique And deliberately being a boutique investment bank and it stayed that way for 100 years and so one way to think about it is that today that's the barbell in banking which is Allen company on the one side and then JP Morgan and Goldman

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that by going to axon.ai. That is axon.ai. So are you reading about this while you're founding the firm before you're founding the firm? Like you both Ben and I spent about a year and a half planning The firm? Um and part part of it was he was in we call industry servitude. He was working for Hillet Packard after we sold our company to HP. So he he was a he was running a big part of HP at the time. And so we couldn't literally start a new full-time thing until he got free of that. So

we had a year and a half, you know, to kind of to kind of study and think and work. because you had this this period from 2003 or 2002 when you're doing angel investing you know a lot till you start your company six seven years later you're observing all of the weaknesses in the model and that's where you have hey why don't we take the CIA I think oitz calls it like the failins where it's like if you have one agent at CIA you have all of us and they would like roll deep I think

he says in his book like they it was like oh my agents coming to the premier no it's like 20 agents are coming and I think they'd be dressed in like the same kind of suit maker and like they were uh intentionally trying to to intimidate like their competition, our mining suits, uh, Sula Shirts was a little shirt maker in, um, uh, in Beverly Hills. Um, and, uh, Sober, you know, all Sober colors, white shirts, um, and then I think he had a bulk purchase deal, I think, with the local Jaguar dealer. And the legend

at least has it is that the license plates all said CA1, CA2, CA3. And so, like, you'd go to a premiere and there would be like 20 Jags lined up and then 20 guys in identical suits coming out. And yeah, just this is exactly the thing. It's just like im now that you know that's that's the Hollywood version but like just imagine the psychological impact of that if you're just like an old school agent this is sort of the you know Michael's a very dear friend you know he he became very controversial over the years

and the reason he became so controversial I think is just cuz he smoked his competition so severely like he pouted them so hard there was no response you're just a guy you're just a guy working for an old agency and you've Got your clients and these 20 CA [ __ ] are showing up and like it's just yeah it's this force and the clients if you talk to by way you know a lot of his clients are you know still still active today, you know, from from the period of you talking to him, it's just

like, yeah, it's just a no-brainer. It's like, do you want to work with a guy or do you want to work with a firm? It's just obvious. He has I don't know if he told you all these stories. Did he tell you about this his morning schedule thing? The the getting on the bike doing the for the firm. For the firm for So, this is again something that's specific to Hollywood, but it's it's a great example of the Okay, so the agency business at at the time he started CA, the agency business is like 90

years old or something, right? It like started out doing vaudeville bookings and like music halls and like it it had been around for like decades and so the people involved in it had had decades to think about like the best way to do it and they had arrived at a set of practices and one of the practices I I think I'm getting this right. One of the practices was at every agency they would have their staff meeting in the morning at 9:00 a.m. Um, and they would basically share, you know, whatever information was going to

get shared in the agency would get shared at that point. And oh, you know, this studio head wants a script to do. He wants to do a crime thriller and here's the script and whatever. And then, you know, this is like the point where there would be minimal, you know, whatever minimal handoff existed to the other agency. And so this is where everybody would kind of get updated. And so the the staff the staff meeting would go from like 9:00 a.m. to 10 a.m. And then at 10 a.m. they would Start calling their clients and

they'd be like, "Oh, you know, we heard there's a you know, whatever. there's going to be a casting call for, you know, this great new role for this professional thief or whatever, and you should consider doing that. And so, of course, Michael's like, "All right, well, we'll have our staff meeting at 7 a.m., we'll be done at 8." Yeah. Between 8 and 9, we'll call the clients. By the way, we won't just call our clients, we'll call their clients, right? And so, imagine you're whatever, Paul Newman, and you've got some agent you've been working with

for 20 years, and he calls you at your agent calls you at 11 o'clock and is like, "I've got this great role." And you say, "Oh, the guys at CA called me about that three hours ago. and and your agent's like, "They don't represent you." And Paul's like, "Yeah, isn't it great? Isn't that fantastic?" And so you just again, you just like you rinse and repeat that a thousand times and it's just to the client, it's just like completely obvious what to do. Um and and so yeah, so the the the more the reason I

go through this, the moral of the story is again, it's sort of this this idea incumbency, you know, incumbency status quo, like you you just end up you end up with you end up in any business, you just end up with all these embedded assumptions generally and then, you know, 90 years later, right? So that the so the founders of the agencies were 90 years ago they weren't involved anymore. So the people who were running competitive agencies were managers not right same thing managers not founders right and so the and the thing a manager never

does unless they're under duress is is is reconsider fundamental assumptions like they hate that like that that like that's not the whole point of running something big is you don't have to do that. You get to run the big thing at scale. You don't have to like go in and like reinvent it from scratch. Like that sounds like a nightmare, right? And so But but anyway, as a consequence of that, you end up with like all these embedded um uh assumptions that are basically just like unspoken. Nobody's questioning it's not happening. And if you take

the time, you can kind of go in and go back, you know, first principles, you can kind of go in and you can say, okay, well, how do they arrive at that? And what what we found in just industry, I mean, this is what our founders do every day is just in industry after industry after industry, there's all these embedded assumptions that made sense in 1970 or 1930 or 1880 that just don't make sense anymore. I love that you did that. I always say it's like not what you do, it's how you do it. And

if the idea you could take I'm like I'm not running a talent agency but there's so many of these principles that I could apply to venture capital in your blog archive which I absolutely love and I told you I've read like multiple times I did episodes on it. Uh you would give advice to like young people. It's like my advice is like go work in an industry where that's still the founders of that industry are still working. When I read Oitz's book, the way I would summarize his approach because he is in this big stodgy

slowmoving, you know, very bureaucratic uh organization is like, oh, mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it. Oh, interesting. Yes. Right. And that's what he did. Yeah, that's right. He's just like, there's so many things that you guys could be doing better here. I can't do it in the And if I remember correctly, he took some of these ideas to his boss. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Cuz that guy was his mentor. I can't remember his name. He famously worked for the CEO of William Morris. Yeah. Yeah. Which was the the biggest of the

talent agencies at the time. So were you were you and Ben essentially just designing what you wish you had when you were founders. Yeah, that's right. And and and again that may be a cheat code but yeah if if you've been the customer obviously this this all becomes a lot more obvious and I don't know if you want to answer this question or not but in um Warren Buffet shareholders he has this great line where it's like really important to pick uh to to play against weak competition. Did you feel that there was going to

be we like that that point in time in venture capital history that that you you were going to be playing against weak or weaker competition? I would say not exactly. We didn't view them as weak. We we view them as basically we view them as running on a status on a status quo set of ideas. Uh and and so and and to be clear like we we and and part of why we think about this way we had raised money from at the time in in the time were probably the two best fisher firms. Client

Perkins in the '90s and I work with John Door very closely for 5 years in escape and then we we plot we raised money from from benchmark when they were like king of the hill and Andy Rackliff who was one of the founders of the firm and as a you know legendary brilliant VC and so we had worked with we just had you know accident of history we had worked with two of the whatever top five or whatever people in the field you know for a long time and and and they were and are by

the way um brilliant at running on on the model that that that they that that existed like John was brilliant at thaty's brilliant at that they're brilliantly today. It was less a competition of oh these people are soft or these people aren't smart or it was none of that. It was no they're they're really good at executing against this particular playbook. So and by the way that's why it's okay like if we're going to do this we need to be we need to be playing by by a different playbook. There was no such thing as

like scaled venture capital at the time. No at the time no because the firms all hit this they all hit this limit the all fundamentally hit this limit. they all hit this limit where they just could the The the idea of a of a part like partnership of equals or even even a hierarchical partnership like it just it break it just breaks at some point because there's just too much internal dissension. It is too hard to coordinate and then and then everybody's fighting for slices of what was viewed at the time to be a fixed

pie. Um and so they none of the none of the other firms could they they they structurally there was just no way to get to scale. Where else did you take ideas from besides the agent business in Hollywood and like the merchant bank investment banking industry? Oh, I mean it was just very obvious that it had happened to private equity like you know this this was the this was the time when like it was actually really this was around the time when like KKR and firms like it were hitting their stride with they're actually building

like a lot of operational capabilities in house um they were actually building their own actually investment banks inhouse u one of the things we've never done but has always been on the ideal list is to actually just have an in-house bank um and and Kare had had actually done that just just build a captive bank uh and so you know they had done a bunch of things like that and so we so we saw it happening which is the mid-tier um private equity firm were collapsing and you either needed a solo, you know, very light

on your feet kind of solo operator on the one side doing small deals or you needed to have a scale platform like KKR. It happened at hedge funds. Um, it happened in but I mean it had long actually actually the TV show Madmen. Uh, Madman tells the structural story of this happening in the advertising field in the 60s and 70s. Um, and and I I will ruthlessly spoil Madmen because it's been it's been it's been off the air for like 20 years at this point. But, um, you know, a big part of the arc of

Madmen is those guys are working. Sterling Sterling Cooper is a classic mid-market ad agency. Um, right. Uh and and then and then then then whatever the third third season they they sell it to Macan which was the the scale player at the time and and they show you all the pros and they clearly talk to people who had been through this because they showed you all the pros and cons of working for Macan because Macan's this giant machine and so Don Draper is used to like making all the creative decisions and now he's just in

this conference room arguing with people um until he just like gets up and walks out. But then Don Draper and Roger Sterling start their own startup. They start uh Sterling and Cooper Draper Price the that's the second one which starts out as a as a true startup as a true boutique startup and then they have this whatever year and a half just just [ __ ] hell like they can't get anywhere they can't get clients like cuz because they're too small you know they're subscale and so it kind of and then I think I think

in the end I forget it's been too long but I think in the end they end up I think they end up selling it no no no no no sorry I got it wrong they sell the first one to the British ad ad agency u that just like completely destroys it and then they sell the second one of the can so So, so they actually showed that process happening twice. Um, and so that that again to go back to history that that is what happened in the ad agencies basically between the 40s and the 70s

like basically television catalyzed that like when when television emerged advertising became a much bigger deal than it had been before and it just it had to be professionalized in a different way. The other thing happen is of course the external environment changes right so so everything we just talked about just has to do with the internal mechanics of how these things run but but the other thing happens is the external environment changes right and so part of what I think what Michael would say I think you would agree with this part of what made CA

possible is at one point basically Hollywood was just movies and then there was like whatever a lower kind of TV division and and by the 70s and 80s the you know Hollywood was becoming much bigger than just movies right it was movies and TV and advertising and music and sports and you know you know politics and culture and like all kinds of things in fairness to Kind of our competitors um you know Silicon Valley between call it 1950 to 2010 was primarily just in the tools business right primarily the companies that you know starting with

Packard the companies that we all backed and built were basically just building tools and you'd build a tool like an operating system or a disc drive or something and you'd sell it to people and they figure out what to do with it. Um it was right around the time we started our firm that the valley was going from being primarily tools businesses to actually building um uh directly competitive companies in incumbent industries right and so Airbnb going directly into the hospitality industry right so alternate universe Airbnb is just boutique booking hotel software right for Airbnbs

it's a tiny little boutique business building basically little spreadsheet software but no air Brian Chesky decided brilliantly um we're just going to like go into the hospitality business and compete with hotels directly um Uber andyft in the old world were taxi dispatch software. In the new world, they're full transportation providers. Uh Tesla in the old world would have just been software for self-driving cars. Tesla in the new world builds, you know, the entire car. By the way, Facebook, same thing. Prior to Facebook, if you built like online ad, you know, software, you were selling it

to the media companies. Mark's like, "No, we're just going to beat the media company." Like, we're just going to build the entire thing. And so, this was the other thing that happened was, you know, for us was that that was right around the pivot point when the valley's ambitions went from just building tools to going directly into incumbent industries. And and then and then this goes back to the scale thing. It's like, okay, why do you need to scale a venture firm? It's because the companies need to scale, Right? And and and then of course

AI now makes that crystal clear, right? Because right, the winning AI companies are raising, you know, billions, tens of billions, in some cases, hundreds of billions of dollars, right? The the old world of 10 million or $30 million, $50 million checks, you know, where where VCs tap out is just not a relevant a relevant thing anymore. But did you know the scale was changing at the time you founded the firm? We had pretty good idea. So, I've been I've been involved in Facebook um you know, basically, you know, informally since inception and then formally on

the board since 2007. And so, I I saw the when that thing hit the knee and the curve, it was just very clear. It was it was just like very clear that we didn't know how big it was going to get, but it was going to get much much bigger than the internet 1.0 companies had gotten. Um and so there was that. What else? It was also around the time Apple was directly entering the cell phone market, which was another great example of this. Um Silicon Valley didn't used to make cell phones. The original cell

phones weren't made by Silicon Valley. they were made by these like giant industrial companies like Sony and Nokia and whatever um and Motorola in Illinois or whatever and then Silicon Valley would make the chips that go into them or the software and of course Steve was like yeah no screw that we're just going to make the phone right there were these signals that it was happening and then the other thing was just the the internet itself was maturing right um and so you know at that point the consumer internet was 15 years in um and

and we had you know seen every part of that and so we you know we I forget what the number was but that was probably around the time the global internet penetration it was like crossing a billion users on its way to five billion yeah you have a very interesting lived experience where like you were there at the very beginning of the internet. One thing that um I'm fascinated by and that's actually was going to be the first question um for you cuz I've never heard you speak about this at least on a Podcast but

your partnership and relationship with Jim Clark. You were what 20 when you met him. How old were you? I was old fashioned. I actually graduated from college and got my degree. Very stone age concept these days. Um so that was in 1994. So I was probably 20 22 22. So, there's this great book. I don't even think you like the book by written by Michael Lewis, Silicon Valley Story. I've skipped it. I've read it twice just because I don't know if anything's in there is true, but the the the portrait he paints of this very

eccentric character is just wildly entertaining to me. But what's shocking to me is when you talk to young founders, I'm like, "This guy started three I think it was the first person in history just to found three separate billion dollar technology companies." That's right. And almost no one knows who he is. Can you just talk about how you met him, what it was like working with him? I knew exactly who he was. And the reason was because uh his company Silicon Graphics his first company they were the company in the valley between like call it

198 call it yeah 87 to94 or something they they were like whatever Google or open AI or whatever you know comp you want to make like they were like the company and by that I mean like they were the company where the smartest people in the industry all wanted to work there the they built the products that were like the coolest products you could possibly imagine. They had this incredibly young and vibrant and dynamic culture. Um and then they hit this like cultural moment that was just incredible in I think '92 which was uh yeah

which was the turning point in in the movie business when computer graphics really kicked in and the two movies back toback were Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 run on the machines they made build on the machines they was the technology they made technology Jim invented was the technology that made that possible and those movie you know those are still two of the great old time you know movies um and but but at The time I mean I still remember the chills that you get seeing dinosaurs on screen it's just like this is and then there's

this company that builds the machines that do this. By the way, there the silicon graphics computers are actually in the movie. There's a scene in Jurassic Park where the kids are navigating through Unix. Yeah. And it was actually the uh it was actually the 3D software. It was actually those those were actually the the silhou they just that was like this moment where they were just like they're just like the absolute IT company of all time. But by the way, their legacy lives on in in Nvidia. like that that Nvidia is silicon graphics basically uh

with with one ter it's like a the trader say thing it had to be a new company for reasons we could describe to to to do the GPUs instead of the work instead of the the workstations and servers Nvidia fundamentally is is based on Jim's ideas that's where that stuff all comes from and so he he was already legendary he and again he was one of these he was the full deal he was legendary as a innovator in technology because you know he's a PhD in computer science and he actually he actually he himself invented

the original forget what they call it I think it was the reality engine the the original interactive 3D graphics on a chip thing was actually him. I think it was like his PhD thesis. Um and then um and then he started the company and then he ran the company and then and then and then by the way and then the VCs brought in professional manager and by the way and the reason we know about Nvidia today and not SGI is because of this founder manager issue which we could talk about. No, let's talk about that

real quick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I don't remember this part of the story. Yeah. Yeah. So now by the way there there there's two sides to the story and and and and and I wasn't there. Um uh uh uh and so I I just reflexively side with Jim Clark, but I I'll I'll try to at least represent both sides of the story. So so so Jim I I don't even remember what's in the Louis, but like Jim's like a true Jim's like a true he's like an Elon he's like a true Elon Steve Jobs level

guy. Um and so like incredibly creative, incredibly bright, incredibly charismatic, but like he's volatile. Like he's he's he's exciting. Like he's exciting. He's like being around him is just like incredibly exciting. There's always something new. he always has new ideas and and again that was in that time where it's just like okay that's the personality type that clearly can't run the company and so the VCs brought in a guy um out of Hulip Packard um who had been trained in Hulip Packard um and because at the time what happened is he wanted to hire a

man a professional CEO he went and hired a general manager out of either Hillet Packard or IBM were the two training grounds uh for for those guys so they brought in a really really sharp guy who by I don't really know I think I met him once I don't really know by all accounts he was like very he was like a very good example of this kind of HP general manager type who became became a CEO uh he he took over it. He took over the company and and by the way like in his defense

under him the company scaled enormously like I forget when he took it over but it was like 87 or 88 or something and then you know by the time I got to the valley 94 like this company become huge and you know whoever's running the company gets at least some credit for that. So but but anyway they got in this classic fight like they got in this classic fight and and the classic fight was you know you can just it's it's the same story every time. The founder is like founder talking CEO and the founder's

like to the CEO of like we need to do things completely different And and the CEO is like no like what we're doing is working like stop [ __ ] with stop [ __ ] with everything that's working and the founder's like no it's working now but it's not going to work in the future and the manager and the the CEO is like well then we'll deal with it in the future and the founder's like you can't wait to deal with it in the future because by the time the future arrives it's going to be

too late and the manager is like why are you in my pants I'm like making you all this money the company's super successful like get out of my shorts right and and you get in this as you see this and that was exactly the deadlock that they got into and Jim Clark basically made two predictions as the founder of Silicon Graphics. So Silicon Graphics at the time was selling their computers basically started list price like $50,000 for a desktop workstation and then scaled up into the millions. And Jim was like look two things are going

to happen. U it's amazing that he and he figured this out by like 1991 or something. He said two things are going to happen. And he said, "Number one, everything that we sell today for $50,000 is going to go on a chip and that's going to go on a card and it's going to go on a PC and it's going to cost 300 bucks and either we're the company that's going to make that or we're going to get destroyed, right?" Which by the way is what happened. That's Nvidia. Like that's what actually happened, right? So

he was completely correct about that. The other thing that he had was he's like look these this idea of standalone computers is not going to be the thing. These computers are all going to getorked together and the network is going to become the important thing. At the time there were there were different terms. There was people were using terms like information superighway or video on demand or 500 channels. You had all these kind of concepts kind of coalesing around what became the internet. Um and even before the internet kind of became a mainstream thing, Jim

was just like look, it's just inevitable that this is all going to become connected. And then the function of the computer is no longer going to be Mainly what just the computer does. It's going to be the fact that it can talk to all the other computers and and and and we need to do that. And and to do that, he actually he actually went to Japan. He actually got this incredible deal. Nintendo, you know, then and now was like, you know, this giant video game company. So he actually had this deal with Nintendo um

where number one is and he actually and Silvin Graphics actually did this actually built the original 3D graphics chip for a for a consumer game player the Nintendo 64. So he did that deal and then he went to Time Warner which at the time was you know this very important media company um doing all kinds of things and and he struck a deal with them to do what was called interactive TV which was basically pre- internet basically it was like Netflix before Netflix in 1991 right like like amazing foresight right just like amazing foresight but

again he and the CEO got in this conflict and the CEO's like look I we just can't we can't we have to we have to focus on the thing that we're doing we're not going to do these things and so Jim did the classic founder thing and he left and when I met him basically that was the state that he was in which was okay like you know I Jim I'm like in the prime of my life I know I I have all these ideas I don't know exactly what to do with my next company

but I know it should be a software company not hardware company I know it needs to be a company that is able to anticipate these changes that are happening in the world um and I know that and he was very sad about this Silicon Graphics is not the company that's going to be able to do these things and so I have to build the the new company that's going to do it Brad Jacobs has started eight separate billion-dollar companies he said I've come to know a lot of extremely successful people in my life and they

all have one thing in common. They think differently than most people. All of them to a person have rearranged their brains to prevail at achieving big goals In turbulent environments where conventional thinking often fails. What Brad noticed is that great business leaders are pattern spotters. But you can't spot patterns if you can't see all of your data. Most businesses only use 20% of their data. Why? Because 80% of customer intelligence is invisible. It's hidden in emails, transcripts, and conversations. That's where HubSpot comes in. With HubSpot, all of your data comes together so you can see

the patterns that matter. This is important because when you know more, you grow more. And that is a pattern that never fails. Visit hubspot.com today. That is hubspot.com. I want to hear more about what it was like working with them. But there was a very astute observation you made in your blog archive because you were trying to, you know, essentially this post was trying to educate founders just like recruiting is the most important thing you're doing at the very beginning of the company maybe forever and you're you're underestimating how difficult it is and you tell

the story of Jim Clark in the blog archive. You're like this guy was a legend. like most famous person, best entrepreneur and he's like he tried to recruit all these other people and like I don't know it was like 100 people and you're like you were one of one of two or three that actually followed through and took the chance and jumped and started working with him. Yeah. Yeah. And and this again this is like I don't know Zuckerberg or Sergey Bren or Elon or whatever decides to start a company like that was his candle

power wattage in the community at that time. And so yeah you would think that the obvious thing people would just like say you know Jim Clark wants to start a company with you. You know just the obvious thing is you just say yes like was not was not happening. And so the the I don't know if I told the story but the the my the crystallized memory is dinner of 12 of us at this famous Italian restaurant in Palo Alto called. It's where a lot a lot of these companies were formed. Um, it was Jim's

favorite restaurant at the time. And so Jim had like a dozen of us and us being people who were like in existing companies who were like basically technical people who he knew. Well, this is the thing. He was he was constrained. He had an unsolicit agreement with Silicon Graphics. And so he couldn't just rip people out. Um, and he didn't want to violate that. And so he needed he needed to basically reach out to the technical community and find new collaborators. So there were like a dozen of us in there. And I I remember that

I remember that dinner very very um um precisely for for two reasons. Number one is I was the only one of the dozen to basic to say yes. And then the other was it's the first time in my life I drank red red wine. Um and I didn't know what to make of it. Um and so I kept sipping it. Um trying to figure out if I liked it or not. And I didn't realize that I was getting completely hammered because I had no idea how to calibrate red wine. Um and so the true version

of the story is, you know, I leave the dinner and I'm like, "Wow, this is amazing." Like, you know, I'm going to say yes to this. We're going to do this. And I I go to my car in the parking garage in PaloAlto across the street and um my my brand new car, my first, you know, new car I've ever owned, right? My brand new car. And I and I and I and I got it and I pull it and I rip the entire front end of the car off. It's like this screaming metal sound.

So like the whole front of my car is just like hanging on the ground and I'm like oh [ __ ] me. So anyway, I parked the car, get out of the car, walk home. No Uber this time. No Uber. Like no three mile walk at, you know, Whatever 11 o'clock at night with, you know, six bottles of red wine. And you're what, 22? No problem. 22. Yeah, exactly. 22. I'm like, I think I probably won't mention this to Jim. I don't know. There's some wild stories in that book. He might have admired you even

more. He might have. Yes. Yes. Yes. How many founders of the companies? Just you and him. So, originally, yeah, originally it was him and me. Yeah. We we started the company and it we had a long it was again one of these things where we had a we had long conversations about like what to do. Well, okay. So, then the the problem the problem that he had was there was the idea of doing the graphics chip, but like and again that's what Nvidia did, but Nvidia was a essentially a spin-off of SGI. But like at

that time starting a new chip company from scratch would have been tough and he didn't want to compete with SGI uh doing that and then and then the interactive what it call the interact it's lost to history but this interactive television street like it wasn't time for that yet. It wasn't actually time for Netflix yet. Um and so like the the it was going to be cost prohibitive. Uh Time Warner had rolled out this interactive television thing in Orlando, Florida to 500 people. Yeah. And Microsoft was involved. They were doing they were doing a ton

and Oracle at the at the time like all the big companies were all these Bill Gates photographies. Yeah. Exactly. He talks about that a lot. but the capex per, you know, house was like $50,000 or something cuz you had to have like a silicon graphics workstation in the house. And it just it wasn't going to work. And so he couldn't figure that out. Um, and then we we we cycled through a whole bunch of ideas. We actually went he actually went back to Nintendo and we we almost pulled the trigger on basically building what today

you'd call like Xbox Live or what is it called? Play a PlayStation Network or Xbox Live like an online gaming service for the Nintendo 64 in 1994, which might have been a good idea. Um, we thought it was too early. uh we almost did that and then what happened literally was the internet you know I I had worked on the internet in college and then and then you know this is you know fortunately only a few months later but the internet just kept growing like it just hold on Mark yes you' worked on the internet

that's a little bit modest yes well I think a lot of people listening to this will know but you should probably explain how you're working on the internet so at the time it was not so this is part of the story at the time it was not that big of a deal it's not nearly that much big of a deal at the time as as it's viewed now so so the internet I I've told the story many times so I won't go into huge detail but yeah so you know a group of us at Illinois

did this thing called Mosaic which was the the first I say the first widely used web browser then the first one with graphics and explain what was different about what you made compared to what existed before yeah so the like previous web browsers were like text based and so so there was like this nent concept of the web but it was like a tech it was like textbased terminals um and then it didn't have graphics um it wasn't point andclick um you know it didn't it didn't work in the way that you would like to

expect software to work um and then by the way it didn't also have like you know no scripting language no security you none of the actual capabilities that like make make the browser a useful thing. And so there there was this like nent idea, but it but it needed to get built into a full thing. And so we we built the original kind of full full thing full browser uh at at Illinois. Um and then we also built the first kind of mainstream web server like the f the first web server again that kind of

had everything that people needed. You know, This had been a project at at at college and and then this was a and again at the time the internet was not viewed as a consumer phenomenon. Wasn't it illegal to commercialize? Steve Casease of AOL tells a story that he had to like lobby and get a law changed. That's right. What was Yeah, the details there. So the the internet as we know it today um in the 1980s was called the NSFnet. Uh NSF stands for National Science Foundation which is a branch of the US government that

funds research. Um and uh the National Science Foundation funded funded the internet. Um the reason I was able to do the work I was able to do at Illinois is because the NSF had actually dumped a ton of money into four four universities around the country to build what were called the supercomputer centers. And then those were also the main hubs for the NSF net and and the and the function of the NSF net was fundamentally to connect the supercomputers to all the people who were going to use them. And so it was it was

this government research academic program and it was like very exciting in the technical field but there was no conception that like ordinary people are ever going to use any of this. Like it was just not not nobody ever thought that this was a thing that the normies were going to use. Um and and and and so so NSF it's it's taxpayer funding and so the the government at least is not supposed to be funding businesses directly although sometimes they do. Um but um there was there was uh there was you know formal legal restrictions on

on on on on funding things with with with with commercial applications. And so What what there was is there was something called the AUP the acceptable use policy. And the acceptable use policy said that that basically the the internet the internet the NSF net turn internet um was for academic and research use and commercial activities were strictly prohibited. Like literally not allowed and and again it's just like oh as a taxpayer that makes total sense. Like I'm I'm glad my tax money is not going to fund something you know like that. But like as a

user you're just like all right that's nuts. Like like that's clearly crazy right? And and and if you if you took the conceptual leap to say to say no this is going to escape the lab and this is going to be something that normal people are going to use. Um then it just became obvious that it would have to have commercial activities. Yeah. And then a AOL was one of the early pre- internet online services that wanted to connect to the internet. I think they famously connected to the internet in 1993. Do you know you

know about the concept of eternal September? No. Oh, okay. So, so there are two internets. There are two internets. There was the internet that existed before 1993 and the internet that existed after 1993. People who were on the internet before 1993 often describe it in utopian terms. Um because it literally was like you take the whatever million smartest people in the world and you put them on a network together with like no commercial activity, no advertising, no nothing. Just the million smartest people in the world and you just like let them talk to each other

and it's just like amazing. It was like amazing. Like the there was this the old messaging system was called Usenet and like the discussions on Usenet were just like absolutely spectacular. It was just like this it was like it was amazing. It was like the most pure clean intellectual like vibrant space since like I don't know Athens in you know 500 BC. It was just like this amazing phenomenon. And then AOL connected uh AOL AOL had I whatever Million or two million uh people at that point and they connected they connected all the AOL users

which were just normal people to the internet in September 1993. And so it became Eternal September uh which is that's the day the the internet changed. And by the way I'm I'm I'm pro that I'm glad that happened. But like the pro and the con of that is that took the internet from this like ivory tower you know kind of thing to this basically mainstream consumer ordinary people thing which of course is just a fundamentally different thing. It's you know obviously right concept of eternal September literally was it was like when when every uh new

wave of college graduates like graduated and got their first job and then went online. So so September is when September is when the new crop of like internet users showed up for a long time. So so the September effect didn't just happen once. It like happened over and over and over and over and over and over again. And every cycle of internet user would basically be like oh my god this is great but like it's all going to get ruined in September. Yeah. Right. And and so the internet that we live in today is is

the result of they could only see us now. 30 30 30 September, right? Um but yeah, and by the way, there there was cont there was controversy there was controversy at the time about whether the internet whether the acceptable use policy should be revoked. Um there was controversy over whether normal people should should be on it or not. U there was controversy over whether the kind of content normal people wanted to be on it should be allowed to be on it. Um there was controversy about whether there should be like there was controversy we got

quite a bit of flack at the time for putting images into web pages under the theory that that would like fundamentally make everything worse because you'd have like normie content. Um that would be bad. Um uh and then you know this said about like e-commerce by the way advertising. Um I remember I remember when the the there was actually a moment there was a guy there was a guy there a guy named Sanford Wallace and he became known as Spamford Spamford Wallace and and he was literally he sent out the First spam message on on

the internet in like 1992 and it was like literally it's like the first internet ad and it was like a spam for I don't know whatever legal services or something. Um, and he just dropped it on uset and it was like a thermonuclear explosion because it was like, you know, get this commercialized crap out of my out of my out of my newsfeed. Um, and so, so, so like all all of all of these things were like hotly controversial. Um, I was generally on the other side of all these arguments because I was like, look,

this thing is great. Obviously, everybody should have access to this. Obviously, we need to connect everybody to this. Obviously, to do that, we need these these need to be businesses. There needs to be commerce. There needs to be advertising. Like, all these things obviously need to happen. So is that the discussions you and Jim were having where you're like, "Okay, we're going to start an actual company around this." So yeah. So So that's how we got to the conversation Jim and I had which was basically like, "Okay, because that was right at the pivot point

is like in early '94. So this is like the AUP had just been revoked and it was just and AOL had just done the first September and it was the whole thing was just about to tip. Um and I and I knew that I knew that because um I was tech support for the browser um personally." Now explain that. Just me. Uh well so if you mosaic at the time was the browser everybody used and so if you use Mosaic there was a you know submit a bug report or whatever you have a question submit

it here and that went to an email box and that email box was me and so I became tech support for the internet for like you know three years And got all the emails. Um uh how many emails were you getting? Well there actually two that was one email box and the other email box was u mosaic was actually created under by it was also funded by the National Science Foundation. Um, so it was actually not leg the original license said it you couldn't be used for commercial use. It was for academic and research and

individual use. And so we had this thing we we did a deliberately ambiguous license and we said if you want uh to use the browser commercially you need to email us to to arrange terms. Now we had no concept at all of what those terms would be but we just said we we need to you know create this incoming flow. So I was getting bombarded with tech support requests. And by the way tech support for the internet means you're tech support for everything. So, it's like, you know, the old old PCs had um you know,

the they had CDROM trays. You press the button, the CDROM tray comes out, you put put the disc in the thing. The problem is a lot of people thought that those were cup holders, right? So, you press the button, the cup holder comes out, you put your cup of coffee down, and then, you know, 10 seconds later, the cup holder retracts back into the PC, spills your coffee all over the place. You're like, how the [ __ ] do I keep the cup holder out, right? It's like, man, let me email Mark. Yeah, let me

email Mark. You know, it's like, sir, that's a that's an EC round drive. Um, so there was a lot of that. So, so one of the funnier things you can always do in politics they call this focus groups, but you could you user testing if you you see this over and over at tech companies take whatever amazing new thing you have and just put it in a put it in a room with like normal people and let them try to use it and you just like learn so much about How much of a bubble that

you're in about the kind of things that you're familiar with that like normal people are just like I don't know what the hell any of this stuff is. So there there there was a lot of that, but then I had this other email box which was all the all the commercial licensing requests. And so so I saw the consumer take off on the one side and then I basically I think that the and then the the commercial request hit like 400 messages of people wanting to like pay money for this thing. And so I basically

took those to Jim and I was like there's a business. Yeah. Yeah. This this this is going to happen. And then we actually went to my under my my old my old um my my old boss and I at u at NCSA actually had gone to um we actually went to Washington in '93 to try to get NSF funding to staff a support desk so that it wasn't me answering all answering all the emails and the National Science Foundation people were very nice and they were like yes the National Science Foundation is not in the

business of funding customer support desk uh for your for your software and so I still have the the denied NSF grant um that would have kept the whole thing an academic project. Um, but yeah, so like at that point it was like, at least to Jim and me, it was just obvious that that was going to be a business. By the way, again, very controversial. The original press coverage on Netscape for the first like year was that these people will never make money. Like this is ridiculous. Like everybody knows the internet's free. Like everybody knows

that none of this is going to work. So, you know, even even what did you think the business model even then it was controversial was just literally licensing it? It was a combination of things. So, it was it was definitely software licensing and we we we did this thing up front where the browser was free but the server software cost money. And then we and then we out of the gate started building all these we call applications ser serverside applications. So we built like the first publishing system we we built the first like publishing system

for like running a newspaper or magazine online you know content management system. We built the first e-commerce system for selling you know this is pre Amazon. So we built the first e-commerce system for selling things online. Um so so so we we we built sold a lot of that software. Um and then um and then we we owned you know the the main website that the browser had as its default homepage. And so we built the the original internet advertising business was was basically so Netscape was the largest internet advertising company until I think 97.

That's incredible. I didn't know that. And yeah passed us. Yeah. Um and so yeah, so we we invented or people at the firm invented at the company invented I I don't know if we I don't exactly who gets credit but like the original ad formats u you know were right around that time and a lot of them rolled out on uh on our site you know first. And so it was it was literally it was advertising pre Yahoo. It was um it was uh e-commerce pre Amazon. Um it was uh yeah content pre you know

we literally sold I mean we put the Wall Street Journal online it was our you know that was our software that did that um and a lot of other newspapers magazines all all that stuff and so yeah it was a lot of that and then it was the the web operation uh and again it was again it all looks obvious in retrospect but like again it was like okay when we started this like I don't know the total number was in like so we started the company April 94 there couldn't have been more than two

million people total online right and and then almost everybody was coming in over dialup this is like free broadband, right? So, everybody's coming in at like 14.4 kilobit modems and we're like hoping that people are going to upgrade to 56 kilobit modems like you know that that would be like super Helpful. Computers at that time did not come with TCP IP installed. Um, so get your PC actually on the internet you needed to you needed to buy a TCP IP stack. Try explaining to a normal human being what a TCP IP stack is. Like it

makes no sense at all. Uh, so that they're going to ask if they could put it next to their cup holder. Exactly. Yeah. Just like it was just like it was just like talking to Martians, right? Talking to us is like talking to Martians. And then, you know, monitors were, you know, like three feet deep and just like bathing you in radiation, you know, just you're kind of hoping that the radiation stays up here and not, you know, everywhere else. In retrospect, it was it was like super early and it was all very and and

then again it was just like, okay, e-commerce like are people going to buy things online? It's like, I don't know, maybe. But like the press at that time, it was just like wall to wall like if you put your credit card number online like hackers are going to steal it. I was say if you read any books around this time, they're like there's no way in hell anybody's ever going to put their credit card on the internet. By by the way, the other thing you would never ever ever ever do is put your real name

online because it would be immediate identity theft. Your life would be ruined. So, you would never ever do that. Um, by the way, the other thing was right in the beginning, you had all the panic around, you know, kids, you know, this is going to destroy children. You know, this is a huge risk to children. So, you had all that panic. Um, and then there was med, you know, there was the beginning of the calls for censorship. You know, there's clearly all this stuff that you have to take down. The New York Times kept running

stories talking about how the whole thing was fake. Anyway, they kept saying that like all the numbers were made up and like there actually wasn't anybody online. And it was like a tiny little user base and we were all like inflating the numbers and committing fraud. And so it was just this it was just this in Retrospect it's all like quaint and cute and sweet but it was like the it was the precursor. It was all all the all the all the moral panics around technology that you could see nent versions of them back then.

You pick up on something that cuz me and you've read a bunch of the same books where it's like humans reaction to something new is just consistent throughout history. And so I heard a podcast with you. I thought it was the only one that would tell the story in private about bicycle face. Bicycle face. Exactly. Do you want to say what bicycle face is? Bicycle face. Bicycle face. Bicycle face. Yes. So it basically turns out every new technology is greeted with a what they call a moral panic. Right. So a moral panic basically is whatever

this new technology is or this new form of media is it's going to ruin everything. It's going to ruin everything. It's going to ruin specifically it's going to ruin society. It's going to ruin morality and then especially it's going to ruin the children. Um and and then and then back this bicycle was prefeminism. So it also was it's also going to ruin the women very specifically. he's going to ruin the women which clearly cannot because women clearly in 1880 you know cannot be trusted to use a bicycle without getting into real trouble. I'll explain I'll

I'll explain why. So this is this persistent theme and and basically you go all the way back and this is like you know this is like this famous thing where Plato uh and Socrates thought that like you know basically that they thought that written language was a big mistake that that all information transmission should be oral and they had this you know whole thing back in 500 BC and then it was just like every you just have to like imagine it's I I always like to hypothesize like you know the First guy brought fire you

know it's like down from the mountain they probably killed him. Yeah. They're like, "What the [ __ ] is, you know, right?" Exactly. Like, you know, this thing is horrible. This thing could burn down the village. Like, this is awful. This is going to destroy everything. Um, and so it's just been this this consistent thing and and you there's this great website called Pessimist Archive where he this these guys would go back and they find all these newspaper articles that are contemporaneous to these things, but it's it's everything. And you know, so when I was

a kid and you know, it's like heavy metal music, Dungeons and Dragons, you know, like all this stuff was awful. I remember the moral panic around the Walkman, the very first cassette portable cassette player with the headphones because it was going to it was going to destroy society because everybody's going to just be listening to their own, you know, their own music. I remember the moral panic around the calculator was going to destroy education because kids were not going to learn how to do math anymore. Um, and then you go back and it's like in

the 50s it was like comic books and it was, you know, rock and roll music obviously was going to ruin everything. In the 20s, by the way, jazz music was going to ruin everything. Playing cards were going to ruin everything. Uh, what else? Uh, novels. uh paperback novels, you know, we're take taking kids kids kids are going to sit around and just read novels all day instead of doing any any real work. So, it was just over and over and over again. It's this constant story. So, the bicycle one is the great one. So, the

bicycle rolls out in like 1870, 1880. And so, the the US still at that point was like, you know, thinly populated, you know, from today and but the west had been settled and so all these little towns and villages scattered all over the place and but, you know, to get from one town to the next was like, you know, 5 10 15 miles and so people didn't generally walk walk that. Um, and so the bicycle comes out, all of a sudden it's easy to go five miles into the next town. And then, you know, young

people discover the bicycle and they discover that there are young people who they didn't grow up with who are in the next town over and they're like, you know, they head off to do it. And and so the specific to do it to do well to do it. Yes. To do everything to do whatever it is the young people do. They're going to they're going to head to Yeah. Look, look, it's just the nature, you know, if you've known the same group of people since you were two, like you're you're going to want Yeah. It's

What's over that hill? What's over that hill? Yes. Exactly. Right. Um I grew up in a small town. I I I can identify with that. Um and so um so so and and then specifically at that point young you know young men obviously but specifically young women started to do the bicycle and so and this is a big threat. And so like if you're like a guy in a town and like all the you know attractive young women are like heading over the hill to the next jail on this bicycle thing like that's a big

problem. Um and so the press at the time created this thing called bicycle face. Uh and the idea of bicycle face was it was a it was a it was part of the moral lecture that was given to young women in the press at the time. uh which was basically young women should not use bicycles because if you go on a bicycle you have to exert yourself and if you exert yourself in the bicycle you're going to end up making like a you know an exertion you know exertion face. Um but the thing was if

you did that too much your face would freeze in the bicycle face. They literally thought it would stay that way. It would stay it would stay that way permanently and then you would never find a husband. Right. And so so yeah. So that was that moral panic. Yeah. And so these these things just like rip through every I mean it's just it's well it's incredible. Music is always a great one because it's like, you know, for I don't know this it's over now, but like in the in the in the 90s, 2000s, you know, it

was all this moral panic around hip-hop, dude. Jimmy I who's your neighbor. Yeah. He was in here two weeks ago. And he had to deal with they called him a uh Yes. like a um chemical gas or mustard gas. Like they compared him to literally like what he's doing is the same as genocide. Yes. This is funding hip-hop music and white kids are starting to listen to hip-hop music. say about music in the late ' 80s, early '90s in front of like congressional hearings on this like the media behind him. He was he was pushed

out of a conglomerate like this wasn't a joke. Yes. That's right. That's right. And and it's actually funny cuz like we we I'm not in the music business, but like I hip-hop has become so normalized at today. It would just never even occur to you. Just like feels like hip-hop is kind of, you know, is a cultural phenomenon is is even kind of fading today. But yeah, no, that was super intense at the time and then rock and roll that was like super intense in the 50s and 60s. And then the amazing thing is Jovis

Presley, they would they wouldn't shoot him. They cuz he would shake his hips. So they're like, "No, no, he can't. His waist up on TV from now on." That's right. But here's the one. Here's the one I love. Jazz. They said all the same things about jazz in the 1920s and 1930s. It was jazz music is corrupting that the and it was the exact same thing. It's cuz like kids are going to get together and they're going to dance to jazz and then who knows what happens. And then it was like there's a jazz musician

that's like smoking pot and that means all the kids are going to start. It was just so it's the same it's the same story over and over and over and over again. Um and and and also say by the way in fairness like it's not that society doesn't change like you know many of the technologies that we just described did did cause society to change like you know things are different pre- and post the bicycle they're different pre and post the car um you know they're different pre and post you know the creation of modern

Modern culture rock and roll or whatever but like this like the again this idea of the moral panic this idea of just like outright panic end of the world is just like this repeat it over and over and over again thing and then and then what's what what's happened is like this this is just this is the obvious way to sell newspapers right Like this is like the meta story of the press which is just like whatever is happening is like horrible and awful and it's going to kill everything you know you know be sure

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support, and reporting. Grounded in compliance vetted knowledge, Deal AI takes action to help Teams move faster without adding headcount. Deal is trusted by over 40,000 businesses. Learn how they can help your business today by going to deal.com. That is del.com. I want to go back to to Jim Clark real quick. Is there anything that you learned cuz Jim Clark was what like two deck probably 20 years older than you? Yeah, something about that probably. So like is there anything that you learned work what a [ __ ] education you had to be able to work

with that guy in your early 20s. That's right. So is there anything that you learned by working with him back then that you still use today? I mean yeah a lot you know said it was very formative for me. So so a lot of it but yeah I mean you mentioned that the sort of quote earlier about the world is a malleable place. Like Jim was like the ultra version of that. Um and so yeah, he would just like yeah when he had an idea and he was right. His ideas were correct almost all the

time and he would just like pound the world into adopting them into believing them like he was you know the idea being like a complete force of nature. One thing that was malleable was himself. He has this great quote in that book where he he he calls himself a self-described loser at 38 years old. I mean the guy had like two PhDs. He was a professor, but he just like I think he'd been in a second or third divorce and he just snapped one day and he's just like I had woke up one day with

the undeniable uh urge to achieve something and that's when he goes from academic to founder and just rips off company after company for like a few decades. I was like oh he's he realized that he is malleable too. He just reinvented himself over and over and over again. Yeah. And of course he does that not just by like starting a company but like inventing interactive computer graphics and like completely changing the field you know indirectly like completely changing Hollywood. Was there anything about recruiting or managing or any of the other way that he ran his

company? No. So my two mentors at that time actually they were they were in some ways polar opp they always got along but they were kind of polar opposites. They were both Jim. So Jim Clark and Jim Bartowell. So the Jim Clark side of my personality is like the like will of power like I'm just going to bludge in the world into doing what I want. um you know and and just and then the idea of just like you know try to be a fountain of creativity like just like there are many there are many

new ideas out there and like you you just you need you need to go find them. Um um and then you say also could put this like a sense of perpetual dissatisfaction like okay like what whatever look this is the other part of the story like a lot of founders would have had a success like selling selling graphics and that would have been it and they would have spent the next whatever whether they were totally happy with how it turned out or not like they would have spent 30 years just coasting on that right and

having a great time and taking credit for it and the whole thing um but Jim you know was always uh you know at least in that part of his life you know dissatisfied in the productive positive sense of like okay no there's something better there's something bigger you know there's something new that we should do So, you know, there's that side of it. And then Jim Barcstell was the other um uh was the who just literally was with yesterday uh in in in Jackson, Mississippi. Um Jim Bar's the other side which was Jim Barcel's like

the the manager of managers. So Clark is like the ultimate example of that bgeo capitalist thing I mentioned. So the Henry Ford Elon Musk type and then Jim Bartow is like the ultimate example of like the super the super manager and Jim had run you know big parts of IBM and AT&T and Federal Express. um and you know came came in you know came in to run escape and what was interesting was like that's kind of where I got a lot of this from and a lot of my skills from is I I got trained

by both of those guys and then kind of both of those guys at the same time and and then was able to like very clearly observe one is just the difference between those mentalities but then the other is of course how how those concepts converge right because just the fountain of creativity you you can't you can't build you can't