When Ben Horowitiz and his partner Mark

Andre came into the venture capital

industry, it was very different than it

is today. You can argue that it is them

more than almost anyone else that has

reshaped this industry and matured it so

much ever since. Andre Horowitz has

become one of the most important

institutions, not just investors, but

institutions in the private investing

landscape, having achieved a scale that

no one thought was possible in venture,

which was always supposed to be this

small, tiny niche corner of the world.

This conversation is a bit unique

relative to some of the other ones that

Ben has had more recently. I tried to

understand the shaping forces and

influences in his life and the ways that

he thinks America most needs to change.

He's taken this as his life's mission to

build a firm that affects outcomes in

the country, not just in a small niche

part of the market, but very broadly,

even having discussions in this

conversation about his work with, say,

the Las Vegas Police Department, which

he's tried to infuse with technology to

lower crime rates across the system. I

hope you enjoyed this great and

wide-ranging conversation with Ben

Horowitz.

I think a fun place to begin, Ben, would

be your take on the state of the

country. Like what does it feel like to

you in 2026? I know part of your mission

is to like directly impact the

trajectory of the country. We'll talk

about that a lot. Yeah.

>> Uh but but begin with what does the

landscape, the playing field like to you

today? I think the tech sector is very

very healthy. America's competitiveness

is very very good. The entrepreneurship

culture is outstanding. Uh which you

know and that's the main thing I look at

from my lens. If you look at and I go

kind of all over the world and everybody

wants Silicon Valley like how can we

have Silicon Valley in the UK? How can

we have it in France? the thing that's I

would say lacking so they have a lot of

the ingredients right they have um great

uh talent um they've got great

universities they have like a definitely

a worse regulatory environment um in EU

increasingly bad regulatory environment

for entrepreneurship but there there's a

cultural challenge where

you know succeeding doing something

larger than yourself making the world a

better place like those aren't things

that

uh young people feel like society

values. And so the likelihood if you're

building a company of getting people to

kind of work for you and dedicate their

life to a mission like that is just not

that great. Whereas in the US, it's

amazing. I think the economy is in much

better shape than

>> people realize uh and start to see that.

Well, we're getting, you know, we've

done a lot of kind of things to

stimulate it. You know, we've got lower

energy prices. We've got much less

regulation. We've got kind of a more

user-friendly tax code. Um, and that's

all starting to kick in now. And then,

you know, from our perspective, I think

the bigger thing is AI is, um,

you know, it's going to impact

everything. There's almost no problem

you can think of that you can't go,

well, we have a real shot at solving

that with AI. It's from, you know, what

were the big problems in the US? Auto

deaths. Well, we got an AI solution for

that. Cancer, we have an AI solution for

that. So, you know, the fact that we've

got a technology where we can address

everything uh is a real new phenomenon

>> and and all that's I think going to kick

in like in a fairly major way over the

next 12 to 24 months. Why do you think

12 24 months is is a time frame worth

mentioning that some of this stuff will

start to be felt more broadly?

>> It's all kind of starting to take effect

now and you know it's got to roll out

get deployed. Now you know deployments

of technology in particular in the past

have taken a long time. Um but you know

you had to build out the infrastructure

to do it. So like for cars you needed

things like roads and traffic lights and

all that kind of thing. And for the

internet, you needed, you know, fiber in

the ground and, you know, people to have

smartphones and you needed to do a lot

just to get going. Um, the internet is

here. So, if you want to use AI, if you

want to apply it to your business, you

just do it. Like there is no

infrastructure that needs to be built to

adopt the thing.

>> What could most interrupt this good

trajectory that America is on where we

are building solutions using technology?

Like what are the biggest risks?

>> I think policy. One of the things my

father said to me was a bad government,

no matter how many smart people you

have, no matter how great a culture you

have, no matter how great the country

is, can ruin the whole thing. Venezuela

was the fourth richest country in the

world. Crazy, you know, and

>> then like, you know, communism and and

that's that. And

you know if you look at

how little comes out of so many of these

countries in Europe that have so many

smart people and then you know and then

the ones that went into communism and

there's so many like genius Romanian

entrepreneurs John vonman and the number

of great genius scientists that came out

of Hungary like this little country and

then like it was just gone once the

communists took over is like completely

like nothing from from inventing

everything to nothing overnight. And I

think that that can absolutely happen

here. We could outlaw AI. Like I think

there there were like pretty aggressive

proposals. The last Biden administration

executive order said that you could not

sell a GPU without federal government

approval. Like that was a real executive

order and it got reversed. But like we

were that close to being basically out

of the uh global chip game. So it's it

is fragile. By the way, like technology

solutions

work much better than policy solutions.

That's the that's the other thing. Like

policy solutions is very hard to make

anything work. Uh so if you think about

um you know co we could tell everybody

to stay in their house. Well that's got

some like extremely bad side effects.

you know, turned out not to work that

well or like, you know, we could invent

a drug that cures it or like a vaccine

that works. It's just hard to have or a

policy solution like, you know, all the

policy stuff on climate change, you

know, and Europe actually, you know,

reduced emissions and all that, but it

didn't do anything because like China

didn't reduce emissions. But if you

build a technology a really safe nuclear

efficient or nuclear fusion facility

then like that that would have a big

effect and I think in general that's

true that uh you know and police like

defund the police did not make anybody

safer technology does and so you know if

you really want to change the world if

you really want to make it a better

place I think you can build a solution

for darn near anything. If you want to

change the world for the better, it's

never been a better time to be an

entrepreneur.

>> I was with a uh local restaurant tour

yesterday here in New York, one of the

best, for a couple hours having him

describe to us how he is planning on

using AI tooling to improve everything

about his restaurant business. How do

you think about the way all of this is

changing the sort of potentially large

attractive businesses that you want to

invest in? Because there's been stick

with the restaurant example. Toast is a

great there's many great companies that

have been built in and around restaurant

software businesses. It seems like this

restaurant owner is going to be able to

have his own spun up operating system

specific to him not going to need any of

that stuff. How how is this changing the

way in which you view investment

opportunities

>> on the positive? Uh one everything is up

for grabs, right? I I think people are

kind of over uh reacting to that in the

stock market and so forth and that if

you look at um existing software

companies like people think, oh, they're

all dead. Well, some of these guys are

extremely hard targets. Like it's not

that easy to take out Salesforce or SAP.

You you you would be surprised um even

with AI like how much uh heavy lifting

that is. Having said that, it is true

that you know a lot of these things,

yeah, you can just make your own, you

can do it yourself. Uh it's going to be

a lot easier. That's a just like the

number of possible interesting companies

I think went up a lot. I think the other

thing we're seeing is the products work

so much better than any technology

products we've seen in the past that

revenue growth is so much faster for

these AI companies and there's many such

cases of companies coming out you know

cursor which is ostensibly an IDE like

what's the biggest ID before cursor like

I don't know but it wasn't big uh and it

took probably 12 or 15 years to get to

that revenue level and you know they

went over a billion dollars in revenue

like in no time. So that's super

interesting. I would say though from an

investing standpoint,

the laws of physics of company building

changed which is going to in affect

investing in what's currently I would

say an unknown way. So if you look at

the one thing you knew if you'd ever

built a software company is you cannot

throw money at the problem.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Like you know what's a man year? you

know, 700 IBMmers before lunch. Like

that uh you know, that phenomenon kind

of everything was built on because you

knew if somebody built a great product

and it took them three years and they

did it with a small team, Google's not

going to hire 2,000 engineers and catch

them. It's just not going to happen.

That was a law of physics. Now,

if you have uh the data and you have

enough GPUs, you can solve damn near

anything. and kind of we've seen that

with uh Elon catching the big models in

no time. I mean, he just took a lot of

money and a really good data center

design and some smart engineers. He's in

the game, you know, like he got in the

game very fast.

>> That would have never happened in the

past. The markets are also seem to be

much much much bigger than anything

we've ever seen. So it would cause you

to think about valuations and kind of

long-term value and other sorts of

things in a different way than we have

in the past. On the one hand, it's like,

well, when you calculate the long-term

value, what if this market wasn't, you

know, $50 billion? What if it was $5

trillion? And then on the other end,

well, what if somebody could catch you?

These are just concepts we've not dealt

with. So how would the conversations

feel different to me if I came in you've

got all these great investors working at

Andre and Horovitz the the the nature of

the conversation amongst your teammates

as they're debating this sort of stuff

versus four years ago or something where

where does it feel most materially

different internally

>> I would say one of the most different

things is when you look at AI

researchers it is really

a different kind of thing if you haven't

been at like Google or Facebook or open

AI or anthropic and like somebody gave

you hundreds of millions of dollars to

try and build a giant model and you

weren't like one of the main people,

then you probably don't know how to do

it because you can't learn it in school.

Um, and you can't learn it in school

because it's it's a little bit

alchemistic in nature. You know, you are

it's it's a little bit of an art. And so

if you've never done it before, the

chance of on your very first try of

building some kind of large model that

it's going to work well isn't that

great. Now that's,

you know, people are coming up to speed

more. There's more companies. Um, people

are learning it. But that's kind of why

you got to this, which from the outside

world probably looked absolutely bananas

that, well, why is somebody paying a

hundred million dollars for an AI

researcher or a billion dollars for an

AI researcher? Like, that's the craziest

thing I've ever heard.

Well, what if there were only 40 of them

like in the world?

>> And you have a$4 trillion dollar

company. Yeah, then it kind of changes

the math on it a little bit. And I think

that's sort of where we were because

it's kind of the first time we've had a

need for a technologist that academia

could produce. That um is kind of

probably one of the bigger things that

changed in the conversation is like who

are all these people? Like we track all

of them and you know know what they're

doing but uh it's very different.

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focus on your product. Everyone talks in

venture about the power law. The thing

underneath the power law is a sort of

inequality. It seems like so many of the

things that are happening are just

massive multipliers on the trend of

inequality in every way. the billion

dollar researcher, the size of the

biggest companies, the wealth of the

people creating those companies. I would

argue that inequality is a feature, not

a bug of the American system. But yeah,

>> I'm curious for you to riff on like the

nature of growing inequality and the the

good and the bad associated with that.

what's happening in AI is sort of, you

know, I I would just say an extension of

the Kobe Bryant effect, which is um, you

know, a basketball player in uh,

whenever James J. Nay Smith invented the

game, you know, like there was a limited

amount of money you could make because

you basically played the game in front

of the people who could show up for the

game and that was it. That's the whole

market. Um whereas once you add

television and the global audience and

these kinds of things, you can get to

you know a much bigger you can be LeBron

James, you can become a billionaire and

that that just was not at all possible

before. And I think that uh you know we

kind of first saw that with the internet

where okay now I can build a product and

I can get to global distribution very

fast then all of a sudden I can become

like extremely rich and then AI is

another layer on top of that and that

okay now take that same product and make

it just more a valuable thing and so

whoever invents that is whatever the

internet company was plus+ and so that's

going to make them even richer. That's

the kind of bad part of it. I think the

good part of it is it starting out day

one like completely democratized like

the AI

anybody gets access to like very

powerful AI uh you know anybody who has

a phone and now everybody

most people in the world uh at this

point have smartphones and now you've

got like super intelligence uh in your

phone. So that's a big it's an equalizer

of the opportunity in a lot of ways that

I don't think we've ever seen a bigger

opportunity equalizer than AI. Um in

that every child can have like a super

advanced amazing tutor teacher. Um so

like education

great education is accessible to all

now. So I think it's an equalizing

technology and uh you know there's some

drive in inequality and this is another

thing I I learned from my father. He

said look son life isn't fair and that's

extremely good advice because it's just

not going to be fair. Like no matter

what government or anything tries to do

it's not going to be fair. And the

problem is if you create a system that

tries to correct that it doesn't make

things more fair. It just transfers all

the power to the person running the

system. And that's what happened with

Stalin. That's what happened with

Chescu. That's what happened with Pulp

Pot. That's what happened with Mao. You

know, not an accident that every single

system like that went bad because it

really ends up just being a power

transfer. When you think about, well,

what do you want? You'd like everybody

to have a chance, you know, like don't

give me no chance. Give me some chance.

Now, it may not be as big a chance as

the other guy. It may not be, you know,

like a perfect chance. Um, but if I have

the desire, if I've got some capability,

give me a chance to be something like to

make my imprint on the world. And

a system like that is going to end up

with a lot of inequality. All, by the

way, all systems end up with a lot of

inequality.

But you can try systematically to give

everybody an opportunity. And I think AI

does a really good job of that. One of

the memes that's very popular today is

that you have a couple years to get some

capital or you're going to be a part of

the permanent underclass is like the is

the phrase that is used on Twitter. And

I certainly agree that um now everyone

has the best lawyer, accountant, you

know, adviser in their pocket and that's

amazing. Um but what do you think about

this notion that we're just going

because of that we need less labor. We

need it's going to be harder if you

don't have some capital to begin with to

accumulate capital and break in. I don't

I don't necessarily believe that. I'm

just curious what you think about

challenges we'll face because of AI

society.

>> Yeah, I don't really think that's right.

I think that I don't think like the the

door is going to close behind you. I

think like the opportunities tend to

multiply

>> um when you kind of open up a new door

and open up like a new way of doing

things. We saw that with crypto. So many

people who made money on crypto were

like people who,

you know, literally didn't have much to

start with. they just got into the

technology early um and then they kind

of parlayed it up. And so if you have

something that grows really fast, that's

actually the opportunity for somebody

with a little bit of capital to make a

lot of money because it doesn't take

much. You know, if you bought Bitcoin

for a nickel, you did really well. Uh

and all you needed was a nickel. And

that's uh you know, I think that's the

nature of these things that go

hyperbolic. And you know particularly if

you create something I also think uh

the the labor market stuff

I think people are acting as though it's

very predictable and when it's not at

all predictable. So

if you look at kind of the history of

the of the world um and automation and

this is what it is. It's a kind of like

an automation technology. We've been

automating things since the agricultural

days. And in in those days, I think 95

or 96% of all jobs in the US were

agriculture. Almost all those jobs have

been eliminated. Um and the jobs we have

now the people doing agriculture

wouldn't even consider jobs. And so like

the idea that we could imagine all the

jobs that are going to come, you know,

sitting here, you know, that AI is going

to enable, I think is low. I think the

need for like more creativity jobs um is

going to go way up and the kind of need

for kind of jobs to process work for the

creatives will probably uh go down in

some ways but um I'm not even sure about

that. You know, we've had AI going right

imageet was what 2012 and then natural

language stuff and Burton and all that

was like 2015 and then you know chatbt

was 2022 and like where's where's all

the job destruction?

You know why hasn't it happened yet? And

why are you so [ __ ] sure it's going

to happen next? And why are you so sure

no jobs are going to be created? I don't

think it's nearly as predictable as

people are are saying. How would you

describe the nature and scope of your

ambition over the next 10 20 years?

>> One of the things that I learned um so I

had a mentor who's a a great great CEO

by the name of Andy Grove. Um and he was

uh the CEO of Intel and he kind of

famously did the the major pivot of them

out of the memory business into the

microprocessor business. Maybe the

greatest tech CEO we've had. Uh and one

of the things that he he said that you

know in a way is very obvious but I

think is um also profound is if you're

the leader in the industry then the

growth of the industry is dependent on

you. Um like you it's up to you to

expand the market like nobody else is

going to do it. Uh and so when I think

about the firm I think of it a lot in

those terms. The reason America is

America and and there's many narratives

on this, but like I think the factual

one is like we won the industrial

revolution. We really did. We had Henry

Ford and we had Thomas Edison. We had

like great entrepreneurs. They built

great technology. The technology lead to

a military lead, led to an economic

lead, led to cultural dominance. None of

that was by accident. And had we not had

all those inventions, had all those

companies, um, which led to, you know,

everything from like winning World War

II, we just won't be, we'd be some other

thing. We won't be America. So, we're

there again. Like, this is the

equivalent change of the industrial

revolution in terms of how everything

works, governments, societies,

businesses. And you know, we're either

going to be uh the leader of that

technology, the provider of that

technology, or we're not. And if we're

not, we're not going to be um the

economic superpower, the military

superpower, the cultural influence, the

kind of standard of the world that we

are now. At least I think that would be

bad. I think you know uh America's been

kind of good for the world and good for

giving people a chance like we talked

about before and so our role in that you

know you know taking it try try and be

humble with the role but our role is

like from a policy standpoint from a

funding standpoint from a helping people

build standpoint to make sure that that

next set of great companies comes out of

uh America or allied nations a core

ambition is to do our part in kind of

helping that

>> I want to ask about some of the

ingredients to do that. Well, but just

as a quick sidebar on Andy Grove, uh his

book is incredible. Like everyone should

read High Output Management. Um what was

it about what what very specifically did

you learn from him? Like what did you

see him do that impacted the way that

you think or behave?

>> Well, like I'm so overly influenced by

him, it's hard to even pin it down. But

so high output management, you know, I I

actually wrote the new forward um for

it. Uh which I actually think that's the

best thing I ever wrote was a forward

high output management. Um, but the hard

thing about the reason I wrote that

forward was um I, you know, it was my

favorite book and I wrote uh the hard

thing about hard things was basically

intended to be um the updated version of

it. But the the thing in high output

management that um he did so well that I

I tried to you know kind of do my own

version of is

you know the the the concepts of

management are easy like

they you need an eighth grade education

maybe to kind of understand management.

It's not like physics. It's it's pretty

simple. Uh but the psychological part of

it is extremely difficult particularly

for a young person to be able to do. Uh

you know it's it's super

confrontational. You're having to kind

of look through the conversation you're

having to the entire organization. You

really have to be confusion at times.

The the good of the of the whole

supersedes the good of the individual.

uh and all these things are are really

complicated to do. His big influence on

me was me trying to not only absorb that

but then kind of tell it in a more

up-to-date kind of modern way. I went to

visit him. He had this award on the wall

which was it was literally like um

manager of the year from for the Santa

Clara facility of Intel and it was from

I don't know 1992. I'm like Andy we're

like the biggest CEO in the world like

why did they give you the manager of the

year award for the Santa Clara facility?

And he goes, "Oh man." He's like, "You

know, Santa Clara was like the always

scored like it was the lowest quality

scores, the lowest [ __ ] score on

everything at Intel." And so I was just

like, "I'm going over there and talk to

them." So I go over there

and he said, "I brought a roll of toilet

paper and I put it under my desk, under

my chair." And you know, I said like,

"When are you going to get this facility

up to code?"

And they just started in with all this

[ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ]

[ __ ] And I [ __ ] reached under my

chair and put all the toilet paper up. I

said, "Clean up your [ __ ]

and tell me when the [ __ ] you're going

to be up to code." And in two months,

they were up to code. and they were

always the highest rated facility

thereafter you know just on that. Uh so

they gave them manager of the year for

that.

>> When did you first experience the

lessons that drove his success this

confrontational psychologically

difficult aspect of management yourself?

How would you encourage other people to

like get a get a taste of it? You can't

just read about it. Obviously

>> what happens uh to founders is you

invent something right now. I've got to

build a company. you don't know what

you're doing and you make mistakes and

then those mistakes really cost the

company and you lose confidence and that

leads you to hesitate and that

hesitation is what kind of causes the

failure mode. So then either like the

company's indecisive or they get very

open. All these guys got so open to

input from their team and their

executives and like but you know the

team doesn't have the full context. Only

the leaders got the context. So even if

they're smarter than you, you still

likely can have better judgment because

you have all the knowledge. Um, but you

know, they defer and then if you defer

to people who work for you, then that

kind of creates a weird political

situation because people jump into the

vacuum of like, you're not making the

decision, I'll make the decision. And

then that feels political to everybody

else. And so that's the pattern people

run into. And so, you know, you really

kind of have to build up enough

confidence in them to have that

confrontation. The hardest version of

this, by the way, is the reorg. Uh

because reorg is basically you're

redistributing power to make the company

work better, to like have communication

be better, to not have as much conflict.

But what's going to happen is somebody

who's really good, who you've had for a

long time, is going to lose power and

they're going to be [ __ ] pissed. Um

and so then if you compromise the

organization so they can maintain their

power then you've just kind of

redistributed power from the people

doing all the work to the executives and

that's a catastrophe. So it's always

that kind of thing where people don't

want to have that conver confrontation.

They don't want to tell that person look

the organization's here. you you helped

us tell here, but like you either have

to be happy in this new role or it's

going to be a rap. When you're young and

inexperienced, you know, it's going to

hurt to like tell him that, but I don't

know it's going to help me to do this

reorg because I don't I'm not

experienced enough to know that. I've

never done that before. And so I'm going

to go with the known avoid hurt to the

to the theoretical avoid hurt. Um, and

that's when you wreck your company. And

and and so that's the pattern. And I,

you know, I always do my best to like

lend them my experience on that.

>> You you were lucky that when you started

Andre and Horwitz, you and Mark had both

had tons of operating experience both

together.

>> Yeah. I still didn't know what I was

doing as CEO.

>> Fair enough.

>> And he didn't know what he was doing

either. Like his ideas now, like if you

ask Mark about management now, like he's

so different than how he actually did

it. Um, and it actually makes him mad if

you talk about it too much because he's

like, "I got such bad [ __ ] advice.

They told me to hire all these guys."

How do you think he's most different?

Like what would he say is or what do you

observe to him to be the most different?

>> I just think he's like way more um

in control of his own. Like Mark is

super emotional person. Um and he's just

way more in control of it than he was

then. Uh just in terms of just like the

personality. He used to be like zero or

100, right? Like so he would be like

full of emotion like what the [ __ ] are

we doing? or like I'm just not gonna say

anything like but nothing in between.

>> Something I know the least about about

your firm is like the first I don't know

what period of time three days, three

months, three years.

>> And I'd love to hear about how you

thought about the business right as it

was getting started. Of course, we're

I'm going to come back to what it is now

and and those ingredients you mentioned

for having the impact you want to have.

But uh lots of this is an incredible

part of the world. Silicon Valley, Wall

Street, you know, these are institutions

that make America great. Lots of people

listening have ambitions to do this sort

of thing. And I'd love to hear like the

very very ear early primordial case

study. Yeah.

>> Of what it was like and what kinds of

conversations you were having and what

your initial ideas were.

>> So venture capital, first of all, you

kind of have to understand the the

context of it was um there hadn't really

been new top tier venture capital firms.

So like the the last one before we

started that you would say is top tier

was probably Benchmark which ostensibly

started in 1995 but it didn't really

because all those guys came from another

firm called Merryill Pickard

>> and that firm was like from the 80s and

there there hadn't really been a new one

from the 80s and if you looked at why

every VC was kind of reputationbased and

so to be top tier you had to have

invested in Apple and Cisco and Google

and you know Yahoo and all the great

companies and you can't from a standing

start get to that and then if you're not

top tier in VC you're not going to last

because yeah in a super hot period

everybody makes money but the best

entrepreneurs will only work with the

top tier firms because that's how you're

going to recruit great engineers that's

how you're going to get follow-on money

like everything comes out of that so

you'd never take money from a tier two

if you could get it from tier one and so

That's why the tier ones always have

better returns. Um, so we knew we had to

be tier one, but we had that problem.

And the idea that we had was, well,

venture capital is a great product for

LPs, um, but it's not a great product

for entrepreneurs. And so, if we could

build a better product for

entrepreneurs, then we could win. And

that was like the the original kind of

framework. And the idea that we had for

the product for entrepreneurs was you

know because we had been entrepreneurs

was around what you and I had been

talking about which is well

if you're like a founder who wants to

run their own company you're not getting

much like you need so much you don't

have the confidence you don't have the

knowledge you don't have the knowhow you

don't have the network. Um what if we

built a firm that like was designed to

give you enough confidence, power,

network reach, advice that you could

actually be a CEO. And so that was the

whole idea behind the firm originally.

And then the second idea we had, which

was the other thing, like VCs didn't

ever market themselves at all because if

you're all based on your investing track

record, it's best that it's just magic.

Like why say anything? Like keep that a

secret. And so they weren't talking. And

so when we went out and talked, like

everybody covered it. So we instantly

everybody knew we had this product.

>> Where did that where did the germ of

that specific idea come from? like let's

be fairly loud relative to what others

do from the very beginning.

>> Well, it's funny because you know Mark

and I were talking about it. He said to

me, he's like why don't VCs market and

actually it the original thing went all

the way back to kind of the first uh

class of VCs which were the investor

revolution VCs were JP Morgan,

Rothschild, Goldman Sachs etc. right

like they were the ones financing these

things. Um, and it turned out that

these guys were financing both sides of

World War II. Um, and so they really

didn't want any publicity because that

would have been like an extremely

[ __ ] bad uh thing. To a large extent

that just carried over all the way

through Arthur Rock and

>> and all these things and then, you know,

the reputation thing clicked in and it

was working, so there was no need to do

it. Um, and we got a lot of criticism

when we did it. our LPs would say, you

know, like the other VCs say, you guys

are egoomaniacs. You name the firm after

yourself. You're marketing it like this.

And it was so funny because the reason

we named the firm after ourselves is

when we try we raised money in 2009,

which is right on the, you know, edge of

the financial crisis. And the big

objection from LPS was, well, like you

guys are like really good entrepreneurs.

You're just going to leave this thing

and go build another company and then

we're going to be stuck with the fund.

And we couldn't get them off of that.

And so then I had the idea. I was like,

"Well, why don't we just name it with

our names and then they know we're

safe."

>> Yeah.

>> And and that worked.

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>> Um, if you think about the the period of

takeoff of the firm in 2009 up until you

reach, let's call it like cruising

altitude, like when was cruising

altitude and and and what was the most

difficult part about getting it from

takeoff to that point?

>> Well, I mean, the first thing is we

really didn't know that much about

investing. Mark and I had done some

angel investing, but we not neither of

us had any venture capital experience.

And like you know, credit to Sequoia,

credit to, you know, Greylock and and

and Kleiner and all the guys who were

around at that time, you know, they just

had years and years of of doing it. We

made more than our fair share of

investing,

mistakes, you know, missing things we

should have done and and then, you know,

doing things that we shouldn't have

done. Um, but missing things that we

should have done was probably the bigger

one. And

you know and then the other thing is is

that kind of how we thought about the

profile of the investor was wrong. So we

so overindexed on our idea that we had

to help the founder uh become a CEO that

we made it a requirement that you

couldn't be an investor at Andre and

Horowitz if you hadn't like founded and

or run a company. And that, you know,

was a very good attitude and and set the

culture of the firm in a lot of ways and

had good uh things that came from it.

But I would just say that like most CEOs

aren't as interested in investing as

they think they are. Uh and then also

most CEOs aren't as good at helping

somebody else learn the job. Uh and so

those two things ended up being, you

know, not quite correct. Uh, so we made

some adjustments, you know, fund one

just went really well because we, you

know, we hit the scene hard. It was a

small fund. We did Skype, we did Slack,

we did Octa. I mean, like, there was

Stripe was in there. Like, so like there

were just too many good things in a $300

million fund for that thing not to blow

the doors off. Fund two wasn't as good

as one. Um, and then by the time we got

to three, that's when we had uh the

contention among like, oh, we really

don't have the right profile for GP

here. Uh, and there was a while where we

thought that was going to be a terrible

fund. It ended up being a great fund

because we had, you know, Coinbase and

Data Bricks and Lyft and GitHub, but

that that one was scary for a while, but

coming out of that, we kind of knew

what the firm needed to be. Uh, and so I

think it was settled down after that,

you know, it wasn't such a like startup.

It was like, okay, we got across that

chasm. But then the bigger thing was we

always had this idea about software is

eating the world. um and you know which

is Mark articulated really well in his

uh 2011 piece. And so we always felt

like venture capital firms

needed to be able to scale uh and that

the other firms would have trouble

scaling because of uh the way they

worked, the way they shared control. Um

so that could be an opportunity for us.

Um but we hadn't figured out how to do

it yet. And then I'd say um starting

with like the bio and the crypto fund I

started to get to the kind of

organizational picture of how we would

become um be able to address every

market of technology. Uh and but with

investing teams that weren't 20 people

like that doesn't work. So you need an

investing team of like four or five

people but you you have to you can't

address the whole technology market with

five people. So you have to have

multiple teams. Having multiple teams in

a venture capital firm, it was a little

bit of a novel idea particularly when

each team has like a platform that helps

the founder build the company. And so we

began it really in earnest with the

crypto fund I think like around 2018 and

then uh and you know now the whole firm

is kind of organized that way. If you

think if we zoom now to today and back

to what you said which is that the scope

of your ambition is big as the leader be

the one to help be the ones that are

expanding the market. What are the

components of doing that? Like what is

the system need that it doesn't

currently have that you might be able to

provide? One is um the the capital

markets are have changed you know

dramatically with

not much um

help. So I went public at 18 months old

with $2 million in trailing revenue.

That wasn't a good idea. But companies

used to go public routinely with $50

million in revenue. It was fine. Um you

know now nobody's going public

>> a billion, right? like you you get to go

public or something like that and if and

you're kind of small if you don't have

that and so you kind of need a lot more

out of the private markets than VCs are

built to do and so you know that's one

of the kind of things we have to think

about. Another one is the companies in

the portfolio

you know they'd leave you at 100 million

in revenue. They're going public.

They're out to the races. Well that's

not true anymore. And so what do you

need when you get to be 200 million 300

million in revenue? Well, you need to be

multi-product, you need to be multi-

channelannel, you need to be multi-

geography. Um, so as a venture firm, you

know, we need to help them and as a

venture industry, we need to help them

do that. Like how do I get to Japan? How

do I uh get to South America? Like

most venture firms don't provide much

along those lines. So we kind of have to

step up to those ideas if we're going to

have companies in the portfolio at that

stage.

>> Do you hope that over time your firm and

maybe some others like it that have

become these big institutions and

venture go on to be sort of like the

Blackstone you know Apollo type

companies that are big publicly traded

you know enduring businesses.

>> A big huge wave in among venture

capitalists is uh private equity AI

rollups. It's a good business idea like

a really good business idea which is

okay

you know just like the spreadsheet kind

of created the original private equity

business AI is kind of creating a new

private equity business where you can

buy any existing company optimize it

with AI and it'll be more valuable.

That's a good idea. It's a good thing to

invest in. It's not something we're

going to do for two reasons. Um, one,

it's like the cultural opposite of who

we are. So, we're about building new

things, um, growth,

believing in the entrepreneur, price

doesn't even matter. As long as the

thing succeeds, you're going to do well.

Private equity is like entry price is

key. like the I mean know I I had a

great dinner with Mark Rowan who's a

super genius uh runs Apollo and he was

like entry price entry price entry price

you know we never even think about that

we think about it but it's not like

first and foremost at all like thinking

about containing cost and this and that

and the other that's just not like what

a good venture capital frame of mind is

so like culturally I didn't want to mix

those two things but more than that like

I just didn't want to be in a business

where the way you make money is you

figure out how to optimize an existing

thing and you know lay off people and

that kind of thing. We're about like new

technology companies building the future

um taking things forward and I'll leave

that to the other smart guys in the

industry.

>> What if any trade-offs ex feel like they

might exist at this scale as you

continue to scale as you consider all

these different people you're trying to

serve? Well, the investors internally,

the LPs, the founders, so many people

need to nothing's perfect. like what

what are the trade-offs to the path that

you've chosen?

>> I think you know with any scale of

organization you really have to over pay

attention to culture um or the culture

will drift. We probably spend um more

work on that than than any venture

capital firm. I'm like you're not

allowed to join unless you sign the

culture document. I I spend an hour with

every single employee teaching them the

culture. Like it's like that level of

investment. Um, and then you know we

really try to enforce it uh hard when we

can and you know we have pretty good

consistency but like that's that is hard

to maintain as you grow.

>> Can you teach me more about culture? The

the you've written a book about it.

You've you've built them. You've studied

some very interesting cultures that you

wrote about in the book. if you had to

teach a seminar or something on like

what a culture is in the first place and

then how to design one given what you do

and who you are and then how to you know

make sure it it people live by it.

>> Let me give you kind of like the

a small but like the probably the most

important insight which is from Bashidto

the way of the warrior from the samurai.

Uh a culture is not a set of ideas. It's

a set of actions. Um, and so if you

define your culture as a kind of set of

ideas, integrity, do the right thing, we

have each other's backs or any kind of

like these ideas, they call them

corporate values, it's actually just a

bunch of [ __ ] platitudes, it doesn't

mean anything. The culture has to be

defined in terms of the exact behavior

that you want that support that idea.

What do you have to do to actually be

that thing that you want to be? And so,

and it's the little things, you know,

how responsive are you to your

colleagues? What's the SLA on returning

a Slack message or an email? Do you show

up to meetings on time? Um,

and and this is like not everybody has

those ideas, but if you want that idea,

it's got you've got to manifest it

through something else. So, like we have

an idea about like you have to respect

the entrepreneur. Well, what is that

behavior? Like one, you can't ever be

[ __ ] late to a meeting with an

entrepreneur. I used to find people $10

a minute in the beginning of the firm to

reinforce it. And then uh you know, you

have to get back to an entrepreneur. If

you say no, like you have to say no. You

have to explain why you're not

investing. Um and you know, it has to be

clear. And we're going to survey that

entrepreneur after you um say no to make

sure that you said no and that they had

a good experience. So like that that's a

behavior. If you uh try to make yourself

look good by making an entrepreneur look

bad, you're fired. So like you get on X

and say, "Oh, he's selling dollars for

85 cents." No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We're dream builders. We're not dream

killers. [ __ ] that. We're Somebody wants

to do something larger than themselves.

Build a company, you know, make the

world a better place. We're for that. we

don't give a [ __ ] what the idea is, you

know, and or if Sequoia funded them or

whatever. We'd love that. That that's

who we are. And so the behavior

is the culture is the actual thing and

that gets you the idea as opposed to the

idea and then figure out how you're

going to behave. And so that's probably

the main thing on culture.

>> Can you say more about the influence

your dad had on you? You mentioned that

lesson of nothing's fair or life isn't

fair.

>> Yeah.

>> Tell me about your dad. He was what's

known as a red diaper baby. Uh he uh my

grandparents were communists. Like they

went to secret meetings. They had cards.

My grandfather was fired during the uh

McCarthy era from being a a junior high

school teacher um you know for being a

communist. And he grew up a communist.

And he started out um on the left. He

was uh editor of a there's very famous

new left magazine called Ramparts

magazine which he was editor of and he

uh

you know was involved in the the Black

Panthers with Huey Newton and um you

know the Oakland chapter Eldrich Clever

and he sort of dropped out of politics

and he reemerged

um I guess probably eight years later on

the right. He really understood kind of

the ills of communism and socialism

which which helped me a lot. Like one of

the things that he said to me that uh

always stuck with me. He's like, "Son,

go to the library,

pick any book on socialism. There's

hundreds of books. And in that book, I

guarantee you, you will find page upon

page, chapter upon chapter of how to

divide the wealth. You will not find a

single sentence on how to create how to

make it." And I was like, "Oh, wow.

That's not like a very good system, is

it?" I learned a lot about systems

thinking from that uh which I you know

ended up being I'd say very helpful to

me as uh CEO. He wasn't like uh you know

this this this new age father he wasn't

like that you know in the old days your

father like they wouldn't even talk to

you till he got to be like 12 and uh you

know and then you get these little

snippets of wisdom and like one of the

ones I actually put in the hard thing

about hard things but I had uh you know

I had three kids I was young um and I

remember there's like 102 degrees the

air condition was broken the kids were

going crazy like one of them poured a

whole bottle of apple juice like a

gallon of apple juice into the rug

Apple juice is steaming out of the car.

But I'm just sitting there looking like

I was going to die. And my father looks

at me and he goes,

"Son,

you know what's cheap?" I said, "What?"

He goes, "Flowers.

Flowers are cheap." I said, "Okay." He

said, "You know what's expensive?" I

said, "No, what?" He said, "Divorce."

And, you know, he had been uh married

four times, so he knew what he was

talking about.

>> Yeah. As you look out today in the

world, I'm curious what things are

captivating you most and maybe even like

most inspiring you. You get you have

such an interesting perch. You get to

see

>> so much at the frontier.

>> What's going on in coding now is like

quite phenomenal. You know, like we kind

of went through this period where like,

okay, AI can write code, cool. Okay, you

can vibe code stuff with a lot of

security holes, fine. Um, but I think

over the break, over the kind of winter

break,

it turned a corner where like really

really good programmers were going,

"Whoa,

>> oh god,

>> this is this helps me."

>> Like I just became a hundred times more

productive and I can't remember any kind

of

>> technology where like just all of a

sudden you wake up and everything the

whole world just changed like that. And

that's happening on a

pretty regular basis I would say. And

then you know you know we spent a bunch

of time with uh people in Hollywood who

are using AI. I think AI will help you

make movies both better and at much

lower cost because you can do you know

you can shoot a scene and then have the

AI do a variation of that scene. That's

very very good. Um, and so you don't

have to do, you know, the really like if

you're an actress, you have to shoot a

scene like 15 or 20 times or something.

Uh, wouldn't it be nice to shoot it

three times and then you just like take

the pieces you like and make it what you

want? Uh, so it's I I think it's a

little underestimated as a tool for

creatives. I think um, and I think

that's true in music, too. You know, I

was uh kind of a young person when

hip-hop started and

the the huge criticism like this is not

music. They're just taking music and

they're like remixing it um and they're

rapping over it and it's a bunch of

[ __ ] like it's a novelty. But it was

postmodern art and I think we're going

to get into uh kind of postmodern art

with like what people will be able to do

with AI and music. And that was like one

of the most exciting

times in music. Like the invention of

the new art form is when it gets really

exciting.

>> What people in hiphop specific people

have had the largest impact on you

personally and and how? Nas is a very

good friend of mine and um he uh

he's definitely had a big impact. Just

the the lens at which

he sees the world is so

different um and interesting for me. So

we're both like very big fans of Rock

Kim who is kind of like the John Cold

Train of rap. So, Rak Kim had one of his

first big song was a song called My

Melody. And uh Nas and I are listening

to My Melody and the the first line is

turn up the bass, pull up a chair, hand

out a cigar, I'm letting knowledge be

born. I'm my name. And so he puts it on,

hands out a cigar. Uh and he pauses it

and he goes, "Ben,

why is he handing out a cigar?" And I

go, "I don't know why." Then he plays an

line. I'm letting knowledge be born. and

he's like, "It's a birth bin. He's

passing out cigars at the birth of

knowledge." And I was like, "Oh [ __ ] I

listen that song a thousand times. I

never heard that." Um, and

I can't tell you how many times like he

sees or hears something uh that's there

that I don't see. So having, you know,

somebody that I can talk to who has just

like a completely different perspective

of all things in life. Um, and it was

interesting, you know, uh, we did the

Coinbase deal together, uh, and he had

called me like two weeks prior to us

really kind of, um, seeing that, uh,

because he wanted to learn about

Bitcoin. So, you know, I explained to

him how it worked and, you know, he was

very interested. And then, uh,

you know, when I was talking to Chris

Dixon, who was working on the deal, I

was like, "Tell me about the guys." And

he's like, "Well, you know, one of them,

Fred, is like really into hip-hop." I

was like, "Okay." And so, you know, I

brought Nas over over to my it's like

have him come over to my house. There's

a boxing match on Saturday. You know, I

had Nas come over and like that's how we

got that deal. Um,

>> wow.

>> But, uh, yeah, he he's just like a I

would say a big influence on me

personally. And then he's such a you

know I um you know I as a whatever as a

leader and so forth like storytelling is

and a writer um is important to me and

he I I think he's one of the great

storytellers of all times you know like

just a super genius on that.

>> Is there a CEO comparable to Nas where

you know there's this class of guys in

the 90s where Jay-Z you know I'm not

just a businessman I'm a businessman.

Um, and there were these just massive

franchises that got born. These guys all

became incredibly successful in the

business world. And it it felt more um

like industrialized almost like the

whole process whereas not like even just

his album that just came out is it it

feels just like Ilmatic feels like it

could have come out then or now. It's

like this weird timeless quality. He

still has that somehow. And like

Premiere, same thing.

>> Yeah.

>> Do you know anyone else like that in

another domain? He seems like such a

unique

>> person relative to his peers.

>> Maybe Jensen Jensen has like this like

very defined, you know, agree with it or

not, but it's like this view of

who he is, what the company is, and so

forth that's kind of gone

across

eras. Um,

but it's still the same thing, right?

Like it's not that like it played in

gaming, it played in Bitcoin, it plays

in AI, but it it's still Nvidia. Like

it's not he never thought he had to

change the name of the company. He's

gotten better over the years, but in a

weird sense, it it never felt like he's

trying to be current,

which like Nas never kind of feels like

he's trying to write a hit.

>> Can you tell the story of the work

you're doing with the Vegas Police

Department? And I'm asking about this

one because it's super interesting, but

also because it feels like uh an

interesting different kind of example of

what the application of this

constellation of new technologies might

allow for in terms of improvement

efficiencies. You know, it's just such

an interesting case study.

>> A couple things about the Las Vegas

Police Force were intriguing to me. The

biggest one was uh they they're kind of

they were different than other police

forces in the country because they're a

big metropolitan area that's not run by

the chief of police, but run by the

sheriff. And the reason that's important

is the sheriff uh is an elected official

and does not report to the mayor. So

they never got caught in the big

political movement and defund the police

and they were the one of the only cities

that didn't reduce the police budget or

anything like that. So they kind of

stayed intact and they're also

interestingly the one or the one that I

knew that never militarized and they do

community policing and you can see it in

the numbers. So the murder clearance

rate in Las Vegas is the highest murder

clearance rate meaning they they uh

solve the murder 94%.

>> And you know I think San Francisco is

like 75% and then Chicago's like in the

30s and the national average is below

60. And I asked him, I said, you know,

why why is your murder clearance rate so

high? And the sheriff, Kevin McMahill,

said, "Ben,

you know, when somebody is murdered,

there's always somebody who knows who

did it. They just don't talk to the

police." So, but they talk to us because

we're part of the community. Like, they

know us. And so, I was like, "Wow,

that's a great kind of environment to

see if this new technology worked." And

I knew about all the public safety

technology because we invested in

through American dynamism. So I I was

like, look, we're going to become the

highest tech police force in America,

hopefully the world, and I'm just going

to fund it. And so I bought, you know,

we've got a drone program and we've got

u, you know, prepared 911 and we've got

flag safety, you know, AI cameras. If a

an emergency call, if a 911 call comes

in or if a gunshot goes off, there will

be a drone deployed in there within 90

seconds. And then that drone uh video

feed will be in every police officer's

phone in the vicinity like instantly.

Since we started the program, I think

crime is down over 50%. Um and then uh

you know shooting of suspects by police

is down like close to 75%. But

everybody's safer. And I think this is

the thing that that was the most

surprising to me on the technology

deployment um is that so when you talk

to the police they go look the problem

is the descriptions cause like half the

violent confrontations. I'm like well

what do you mean? So somebody jacks a

car. There's a baby in the back seat. We

get a description of the car. It's a

2004 Hyundai that's blue. Well, it's

really a 2008 Hyundai that's green. But

we pull a guy over in a 2004 Hyundai

that's blue and you know that person has

had bad experiences with the police and

you know now he's got a gun in the car

and all of a sudden we've got an

incident and like an innocent citizen

gets harmed or police gets shot with AI

camera. We know that's the car. That's

it. Uh, and we know there's a baby in

the car. And so we're not sending one

guy with a gun to see if that's the guy.

We're sending a whole squad. Um, and

we're apprehending them safely. And so

everything um about like policing is

inherently dangerous, but intelligence

makes it dramatically safer. And so I'm

a huge believer in this technology for

making everybody safer. You know,

suspects, criminals, citizens, police,

everybody. The other kind of uh knock on

effect is it's kind of put the pride

back into policing. We used to have a

big problem in Vegas where uh you know

because nobody wanted to be a police

officer, we were lowering the standard,

but now the standard is really high. So

between the drone center, which is like

super state-of-the-art, and then you

have these um cyber trucks that look so

like amazingly futuristic and cool

driving around like everybody wants to

be a police now. And Las Vegas happens

to have the highest concentration of

veterans uh in the country. So plenty of

like super qualified people to choose

from. They all want to be police. Uh

it's so that's all gone really well.

>> The last question I ask everyone is the

same. What is the kindest thing that

anyone's ever done for you?

>> A mentor of mine, a fellow by the name

of Ken Coleman, who uh was a big

executive at Silicon Graphics. And when

I was um

uh I guess a sophomore in college, uh I

got an introduction into him and uh he

gave me a job as a summer intern. And

without that job,

I don't know that I ever get to Silicon

Valley or or that whole thing. So I

would say that's probably that that was

the highest impact. Just he didn't have

to do that thing that anybody did for

me.

>> It may interest you that that is the

most common form of answer. uh across

500 of these someone that like took a

bet when they didn't need to. Ben,

pleasure to finally do this with you

after a couple years of uh of watching

you and and learning from you. So, thank

you so much for your time.

>> Thank you, Patrick. It was fun.

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