Weird ways Ben Horowitz makes Founders more confident

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/436271cbe7fad9ac

All right, today we're hanging out with Ben Horowitz, the co founder of A sixteen Z. These guys manage forty six billion in assets. They've invested in Stripe, Coinvase, Open AI, a bunch of the big hit tech companies.
But today we're talking about stuff that you don't usually get to hear from Ben. So things like
How do you actually have a high confrontation conversation? The advice he actually gives his founders.
Things like when he met Mark Zuckerberg and he was really young, what he noticed about Mark that was different
And what makes him such a great CEO that you can kinda steal or copy from Mark Zuckerberg's playbook. Sam, what else have we got?
Dude, we also just hung out with him, which is like the best part. And so he tells a story about how he helped catch Tupac's killer.
Uh and we also asked him what interests him right now. What books is he reading, what content is he consuming, what rabbit holes is he going down, and it was incredibly interesting.
Awesome conversation with Ben Horwitz.
Enjoy. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to
I put my all in it like my day's all on the road, less travel never. Okay, so I have a good two park story for you.
Oh my gosh. All right. I'm incredibly excited to hear it.
So my wife is like a biggest Las Vegas evangelist in the world.
And she was uh
Talking to
Quincy Jones is on Q D three.
And said, You know, you need to
moved to Vegas and he's like fuck that. I'll never move to
Vegas they didn't solve the Tupac murder.
Yeah. You know, his sister Kidada.
Was uh dating Tupac.
I was like let's
Have dinner with the Vegas P D and see what happened.
And so maybe and
Q D three and Nas
Uh sit down to dinner with the Las Vegas Police Department.
And they bring the whole case file.
And it turns out
The LAPD really fouled the case, like almost on purpose, it looks like.
So the end of the dinner I say to the uh
Chief of police Mike Gennaro I'm like Mike.
You ought to reopen the two part case.
And he goes, I'll talk to the sheriff.
And uh the next day I call him and said, What did the sheriff say? He said if Ben wants us to open the case, we're opening the case. And they reopened the two part case and they caught the guy.
That's insane. So sh Sean, like
I don't know, Sean, if you know the story, but like basically like, you know, Pac and Shu got in a fight at a at a Tyson uh Mike Tyson fight, and then like thirty or forty minutes later, he was shot right in the strip on Las Vegas. And it was
uh a cold case for years, but everyone know knew who did it. They knew it was this guy named Orlando Anderson, like that was like the rumor. Orlando pulled the trigger, Kyfi D told him to shoot him. Yeah, that's and like everyone knew this, but for some reason like it didn't happen. And Orlando ended ended up dying uh a handful of years later. And the what the craziest thing ever is there's this guy named DJ Vlad.
who does these interviews with all these gangsters
And he got him to like
Tell the story of about the murder. This idiot like
Went on a podcast that just said, Yeah, here's what happened.
So here's why he did that.
He thought he had immunity because the LAPD proffered him.
Um, which means basically in exchange for testimony we grant you immunity.
But they granted him immunity in LA.
Not in Vegas.
What is it?
Oh, that doesn't count here.
And then little do we know that Ben's behind the scenes getting it all done. That's pretty awesome. I I like I filed that case religiously. I th I thought it was riveting. I did not know that uh you uh you were involved. That's pretty cool.
Alright, well I don't know where we want to start, but I just thought
M you know, usually Ben, you don't know this.
But we have a little tradition here. We we'd like
typically start with our intro music, but for some reason
Stop playing.
I'm trying to get this cassette to play, but it's just not played.
W what are we looking at here?
Oh boy, that is uh that's the blind and deaf crew. So my friend um Seth Clark, uh this was back in
eighty seven or eighty eight, uh or maybe eighty six, got got shot and uh was blind. So we
Formed a rap group.
Uh called the blind and deaf crew, D E F and you know, we had all kinds of grimes about being blind and being deaf. The blind, deaf crew, you know where fly. Three of us, but we got four eyes.
Where did you grow up I mean like I your dad was like a uh I know who your dad is and he was like a he was like a a well known academic, but where were you growing up where you uh were around
Guys that got a shot and rapping.
Well, so I grew up in Berkeley, uh
California, which you know, kind of is either like an academic town or part of Oakland, depending on
You know, where you are. And uh I was in the kind of more part of Oakland.
Berkeley.
And then you know, I went to school in New York, uh, and so I got into rap in New York and then
Seth got shot back in the Bay Area and he was very, very depressed because
He's blind. He was only he's a kid.
You know, so I sent him these um
DJ Reddillard.
Check chill out mix tapes.
Um yeah, were tapes that I taped off the radio show, which had the
Brand new hip hop, which was, you know, really new at the time.
And uh
That kinda cheered him up. And so that's how we got him to rap when we came around.
Well, we wanted to just hang out with you'cause there's you'll do uh you've done fifty thousand podcasts. I think A sixteen Z now has fifty thousand podcasts. And so Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I consider it like, hey, is AI a bubble, right? Like we can kinda do that. But and we'll probably ask you something about AI. But I think more than anything
What we try to do on the podcast is give people a sense of what it's like to hang out with Ben Horowitz, right? Like what is it if they could just be a fly on the wall.
Hanging out and obviously we come from a business and tech background, so we got a bunch of questions around that.
But I think for me and Sam the most interesting part
That I feel like you've c you've contributed to the collective wisdom
of founders, right? Is your stuff on leadership. So you've written two books, I feel like that are really
I don't know, like top shelf on
How to be a leader.
And
I think it started with a general philosophy. So so tell me why most management books are terrible. Let's start with that.
You know, the problem with management
Generally I would say is it's very
kind of situational
Um an emotional.
And so it's like
Oh, here's a book to teach you how to play NFL quarterback.
And you could read that twenty times. You go out on the field
Like
Things are extremely different. If there's a two hundred ninety pound guy running at you
Extremely read very fast, I'm gonna kill you. Like
What you feel like what you think, how you process that is just different.
And I think management tends to be like that in that
It really has to do
A lot with your situation and the feeling you have at the time it happens.
And so these management books are written like it's some step by step
You know, like you know, you y anybody with a basic like eighth grade education can understand the principles of management. They're not that complicated. Yeah, it's like oh here are the five steps for uh building a strategy or the three steps for like, you know, setting objectives it's not
Actually very useful at all because yeah, that stuff is so simple.
So I I always thought the the difficult thing.
you know you're either gonna like run the risk of running completely out of money if you don't fire half the company
But like you don't want to have that conversation because you promised all these guys that the company was gonna be success when you hired them.
So like the level of inconsistency that you're gonna have to
Go through.
The level of like
Y you know, I I was completely wrong about everything and now I'm gonna fire half of you'cause I of the mistakes I made.
Well just cause you to hesitate.
In a way that
could cost you the company itself and like how do you get over that?
And then like what do you actually say?
And how do these conversations work and all this kind of thing is is the actual thing that people need to really kind of get an understanding of, like
What are the words you know that get me out of this thing.
Uh at least temporarily.
And you know, nobody
had been writing like that. The last guy who kind of I thought wrote a book like that was Andy Grove back when he wrote High Output Management.
And yeah, that book was really old at the time. Uh, so I was like, Well, somebody I'll write the sequel, you know, we're now
Yeah.
It's been thirty years.
Do you think that it's um
Like when it comes to leading
Do you think that it's mostly just getting your mindset right? I mean, is that what you're saying where it's like No no no it's more it's more complicated than that. Um
You kind of strive to get to a point of honesty.
Like true honesty, where you're actually being
True.
Like you're not lying to yourself.
That's hard. You know, that it it's almost like um
Yeah, like if you're you guys are
kind of creatives on the pub. But like to be a like a great creative
At some point you have to get all the way to that very vulnerable point.
Where you've exposed yourself.
And all your
Issues and weaknesses and
in everything. And like leadership is a little bit like that in that you're
kind of pushing and pushing and pushing to get all the way to what's true.
So that's you know, that's part of the process.
But the other thing is just
You know, y you you don't really
necessarily completely know what you're doing, particularly when you start and you're building a company. And so you have to kind of have like it's a confidence game where you have to
talk yourself into okay, you know, like I I think I know enough
You know, to do this.
And
You know, it can be very little things. Like I had a conversation with an entrepreneur. He's like, Ben, like I need your help. And I was like, Why do you need my help? He says my CTO is an asshole.
And I said, Well
Okay, uh but you know, like he's a good CTO. I know that from talking to you before. So you're you're not even asking me, should you fire him, are you? And he's like, No, I'm not asking you that.
And I said, Well tell me why he's an asshole and may maybe I can help and he goes, Well
You know, he made uh like a young woman in our on our finance team cry yesterday.
And I was like,
Okay, yeah, that's kind of mean spirited for a CTO to do that.
And I said, Well
You know, so you're really kinda asking me like
Not how to fire him, but just how to have a conversation with him about his behavior.
Without him quick.
That's what you're saying.
And he's like, Yeah, and I said, Well look, here's what I would say to him.
I would say
Hey, you know, you're a fantastic director of engineering.
But
You're not an effective CT.
And
You know, if you want to be a director of engineering forever, like
We can just run just like this and it's no problem. You do a great job in managing your team, you get stuff done on time, you're great.
But you're not effective with the rest of the organization. And that's what a CTO is. The CTO's gotta marshal the resources of the whole company to
Get what he needs to get the job done.
And if you go
To like a junior person.
You're like five levels below you.
And make her cry.
You know, you're probably right, but like
You're never gonna get what you want out of her. So like you can't even be effective with her. Like how are you gonna be effective with like execs?
So
If you want to learn how to do that, like let's learn how to do that, but
You know, and if not, no problem. But just know at some point I gotta bring in the CTO. That's where I would have the conversation with him. And that kind of got him twent, Oh, okay, now I can talk.
And so so much of like
The mistakes that CEOs make are like they just don't even know how to have the conversation.
And so it's
It's a little bit like the mindset part is correct and that there is a like a confidence part about it.
Uh where you have to be able to kinda do things when you're not sure that you're right.
But there's techniques and there's ideas and there's
Things in there that
Yeah, you know, it's just harder than it looks. And the problem is the mistakes
Like not talking to him.
Is gonna multiply.
Right. Like because now you're gonna isolate engineering and nobody's gonna like them and you're gonna have politics in the company and like and and and and and then
Pretty soon people just don't even want to work there and you can have high attrition and then
You know.
Well, why the fuck do we have high attrition and this and that and the other? And then the board's all upset and this
So it it kind of snowballs on you if you if you can't deal with these things. This is so cool because I just read this book called The Motive, and the whole book.
It's how to have a conversation like that. So basically like someone show and it's like small stuff. So it's like someone shows up too late for a meeting, they're not prepared, they made someone cry. And I remember reading this and I was like, I don't want to talk about this on the pod, maybe, because I think I feel stupid that I'm having to learn like a script on how to like defend someone's and uh and then I hear you talking about this and I'm like.
All right. I feel a little bit better because why why is this conversation hard for me? I feel like this should just should be easy. I I don't know what to say.
I literally don't know what words to use to for this to be the effective confrontation. And so I had to read a book. And so it's actually really cool to hear you describe that other people. I think you even said I saw another interview about Zuck and I think you referenced Sam Altman. You're like, I've seen inside these companies they all face these like challenging situations, but they just don't know how to like communicate.
Yeah, yeah, no, people get like N and
Yeah, like not no but there there's no way to learn like how to be CEO of like a
big company without kind of being CEO. And so you found a company and it starts growing.
And you don't know what you're doing and you make mistakes and it's very scary.
And uh
You know, it's easy to lose your confidence, and if you lose your confidence you hesitate.
And if you hesitate.
A CEO
Then somebody's gotta step into that vacuum and then that's when it becomes very like
political and dysfunctional.
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Back to the episode.
You've said before like
having confrontation the right way.
Is
Super important.
And I nodded my head and then I was like
Cool. I really don't know how to do that though. So okay, what so what is the right way to have confrontation?
And it's complicated, but
Like the first thing is
You gotta stop thinking about yourself, right?
So
Y you know, and it could be anything. It could be like
firing somebody or getting'em to change their behavior or whatever.
You're gonna be saying something
That they don't want to hear.
And so I think people get caught up in
Well
Either I need to be a tough guy or
I need them to like me or
You know, some other thing that's about you.
But really you have to go
Okay.
What am I gonna say to them?
That isolates it to this thing that I'm really talking about.
You know, so if I need them to change this behavior
Like, how do I get them to hear that?
In a way they can actually act on it without getting in their feelings.
And you know, in order to do that
You just have to be like very straightforward and you have to be open with how you feel about it. Like if you think they're a shit bird.
Then you probably gonna have to fire'em anyway, but if you think they're otherwise good
Then
You kind of have to
Let them know that, but in a way.
Where you're not clearly setting them up, you know, you're not giving them a shit sandwich.
You're a greatest person in the world.
But this is all fucked out.
And I love you.
Like that that like people are on to that, like that it's just too simple.
So you kind of have to
You know, you have to get to a very honest place with them and say, look, you know, we're working together on this. You're doing this, it's not working, it's not effective.
Yeah.
You know, like I can help you get
T.
it to be effective, but I need you to get it to be effective. Like you have to get that message across.
And a lot of it.
You know, like people will accept things from you.
If they feel like
You're basically telling them the truth.
Like you're
I I'm like completely open and honest about this shit. Like I'm not I'm not telling you it's worse than it is and I'm not telling you it's better than it is.
I'm telling you what it is.
Uh.
And and this is, you know, when I said earlier about like a lot of leadership is getting all the way to the truth.
You have to sit with your cell phone to say, like, what do I really think about this? Like not what
Like motherfuckers were complaining about him.
Or this happened.
Or you know, like
It hurt my feelings the way like this went down, like he's doing that in my company. You you kinda have to get beyond that and go like what's really true?
Why did they do it?
You know
Can it be corrected?
If it can be corrected.
What would motivate them to correct it?
Like you you have to get all the way to
To that. Otherwise.
What happens is
You know, they're just gonna get upset and defensive or life
You know, they're not gonna hear it'cause it's too soft and it's like, Well, yeah, like Ben kinda doesn't like that, but he doesn't really care.
Um, so you know, how do you get into that?
like meaningful place where people can hear what you're talking about.
And you've
Invested in and known for a long time a lot of the tech the biggest tech CEOs. And I would say the stereotype of the
most successful tech founders is this sort of like
Slightly autistic, very high IQ, lower EQ
sort of persona, but that's not really what would be good at the thing you're talking about. And so
Wh i is it that that stereotype is just wrong and that's not what you've seen when you've kind of been you guys, I think invested in Facebook early on, stuff like that. Like is it that the stereotype is wrong? Is it that they learned these things? Is there like some
Are they taking touchy feely at Stanford? Like what what's helping them be able to do this?
Yeah, so I think some of these guys have like
Much higher.
People understanding than you might think.
Like the ones too who truly like
can't read people and understand people don't get like they don't become Mark Zuckerberg.
Uh Mark Zuckerberg, like his mom, by the way, is like a psychiatrist or psychologist.
Um
Like he's actually pretty insightful and
And you can see it like in the d deals he's negotiated, the the moves he's made.
You know.
Guys who are processing information at that rate of speed, you know, it's a little weird.
Like you always feel like okay, what the fuck is wrong with my clock?

Thinking faster than me, but
So the my very first
Conversation I had with Zacquis, I think in two thousand and seven.
And
You know, at that time, if you guys recall.
You know the
Facebook traffic had flattened
And
The current the executive staff that he had at the time was trying to run a coup to force him to sell it to Yahoo.
So they they were linking all this stuff to Ballywag at the time, and Ballywag was, you know, calling for Zuck to be fired and the you know, that whole stupidness.
That was like that famous story where you like didn't sell, right?
Yeah, yeah, and he didn't sell uh
But you know, right at that time
You know, his first question to me was, you know, should I if I fired my ex
Executive team.
For the second time.
Would the board be nervous? I was like, Well, you know, it's not that's not even the question.
Mark because
You know, if you're asking that question then you know you kind of have to do it because
You you can't succeed with them, so
You know, whether or not you can see succeed without them is like at least a question mark.
Let you know you're gonna die with them.
Uh
And I said, but like you know, like let's talk about like why they're they're doing this.
You know, like why has traffic been flat?
And he said, Well
It said look, we doubled the size of the engineering team this year. We went from four hundred to eight hundred engineers. Um, and we had, you know, the way the product is architected, we have like
A MySQL layer and then an API and then the applications are built on the API.
But a lot of the new engineers just wrote straight to my SQL and they like hoarked up the whole thing and now it takes like ten seconds to log in and so
Traffic flattened because of that.
And I was like, Well, how do you train these guys?
And he said, Train these guys.
And I never forget that and I was like, Oh shit.
I said
Zach, like when when you're ten people, there's no knowledge in the company, like everybody just comes on and they jump in and they start working and it's so forth, but you get to like eight hundred people, a thousand people.
Like you have a lot of knowledge that's in your company.
about like how the product works, how you check in code, everything.
Do you actually have to teach people that?
'Cause they don't know who to ask.
Or how to learn that on their own. Um, and so you have to do that. And like
Just you know, to show you what a like great CEO he ended up being.
He created this two month boot camp for like everybody in product management, every engineer who entered Facebook had to go through this thing, learn everything, and so forth.
So he was like he
Yeah, like he's like a phenomenal
student of management. Uh
And you know, before he became like now you know now he's uh one call him a student, he's a great CEO, but
Like a lot of
These guys
You know, can figure out the people part.
Pretty fast.
I would say
And like I said, the the ones who truly
Don't understand people.
are don't actually turn out to be good CEOs. Like they they they don't get to that level.
Like you can you know, you can make fun of Larry Page or Elon or Zuck or so forth, but they are actually very smart about people, all three of them.
Yeah.
You you have these great stories. That's a great story. Uh one, I think that's in your new book.
Is
A story that
I feel like is
relevant to but kinda any business size. So some of these are it's like, Oh well I'm my company's never gonna be twenty thousand people. So like I don't really
I can't really relate to this, but one I thought this was it was about collection. It was about collecting money, which I think is a you know, whether you're like an accountant and you have to do this for your clients or your 10 clients or you're a big business.
And I think it's the CEO of Nation uh Nation Bill. Yeah. Can you tell this story? I thought this was a phenomenal story.
Yeah, so it's y you know, then they're and they're they're kind of we're living on the edge. You know, they need every kind of

Uh possible
And
You know, she was just like
You know, cash collections would just be
Yeah, and there were all this dumb stuff that would happen, like they sent out the wrong kinda email or this and that, and you know, they didn't get the thing and so forth.
And I said, you know, I learned this technique actually from Andy. Um
Andy Grove.
Where like if a project was off track
He would just go
Okay, eight A. M. every day, we're gonna meet on it and I'm gonna be in the meeting.
And I'm gonna want answers. Uh
And what that meeting actually turns into is
You know, every dumb thing going on.
You can just resolve very, very fast because
People don't know.
Who to ask, how to resolve it, you know, whether it's a problem and so forth.
So I said Leah, just like every day, eight A. M
Get everybody on the cash collection team together.
And start the meeting by saying, Like, where's my money?
Like why haven't we collected it?
And like make'em explain to you why they haven't collected it.
And
You'll be shocked why they haven't collected it.
And sure enough, you know, it's like
Well, we didn't know we could edit the email.
She's like,
But you didn't know you could edit the email. Like, but but it's you know, those kinds of things start popping up. Oh, I didn't know.
that I could do this. Um,'cause this is what we ought to be doing, but we're not doing it'cause
I don't think I'm allowed to do it. And it's like, Well, no, I'm the CEO, you're allowed to do it. And then
Так и на стик.
A like dumb pro you know, project that's way off track or or a process that's off track or so forth.
So it's kind of like a different idea about management where
You know, the the enemy as as you grow like
Communication becomes your biggest challenge.
And so it's just a way to go like okay, I'm gonna
manually unscalably fix communication in this organization right now.
And the the amazing thing about it is does tend to be very long lasting, where like once they get that
Um then
You know, it sustained.
I had a g experience with uh a founder you invested in uh do you do you know uh Sui Ali?
He's one of my good buddies and you guys invest in uh tiny uh course, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he does the ex this exact thing. The founder emailed us and was like, Hey, um, would you know, we're gonna start raising money.
Uh you know, we really need to raise money, so um it's important and I would just love to pick your brain on what it was like a very like Can I pick your brain? Would you like to go get coffee for this my house is on fire.
And we were like, Wait, wait, just to clarify, is the house on fire? He's like, Yeah, yeah, the house is on fire.
So we said, Okay, well let's meet like
Now, why are you emailing me? Let's just talk right now. And so he jumps on the call and
Like, okay, what do you have so far?
You know, let's raise the money. And he's like, Uh here's the pitch deck.
And basically in the first thirty minutes we just gave him like, Hey, here's three things. Let's go like these are the three most important things you gotta change.
This this this st part of the story's broken and you're missing this information and you know, you're not you're framing it the wrong way. You got to frame it this way.
And he's like, Okay, this is so helpful. Wow, thank you guys.
Um, would love to touch base again next week. And Sully was like, Next week.
How long do you think it'll take you to make those three changes? He's like, Well
He's like, How about we meet today at three PM?
And you show me and we did two a days with that. And I I it kinda broke my brain a little bit because I there was like this invisible wall as a
business person like you don't meet twice in a day like that would be a faux pas. It's like fuck your manners when it's like
Was this a big problem or not? Like just clarify that for me, because if it is a big problem
Then I'll just keep showing up and saying, Okay, now what?
Okay, now what? And okay now and if you just do that for three days
Yeah.
Like all of the excuses get squeezed away is what I found. Like all the excuses suddenly disappear and you get to the brass tacks about what's going on.
It was amazing.
That's definitely right. No, no, that's uh you know, see yeah, Sully and I actually had a lot of conversations but he
Yeah.
He went through a lot of crises in that, so he he he knows.
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Can I ask you about confidence? Um you give a talk with a bunch of your uh portfolio companies about
I think I saw you say that like they don't fail due to lack of competence, but a lack of confidence. I would say the number one reason
Why?
a founder fails at the CEO job is
Some kind of
Lack of confidence, crisis of confidence.
Whatever it is.
That causes them to hesitate, basically.
Okay, I should do this.
And I can see that I should do this.
I'm not sure I should do this, so I'm gonna wait.
If you had to teach a class uh on
how to improve someone's confidence is do you have like a framework or uh some bullet points that you would that you would
Stand by.
It ends up being like at the end of the day
Confidence is personal.
Um and you have to feel it yourself.
To have it.
Like I can't
Um you know, it's like the wizard of oz.
Yeah.
It's like I you know, I can give you
like a clock and tell you it's a heart or whatever, but like at some point you've got to believe that.
And
The thing that causes
The crisis is in confidence is
Yeah, okay, you invent something, you hire a bunch of people.
You make a decision, it's wrong.
People really suffer from it.
You feel horrible'cause you're like, Wow, I don't know what I'm doing.
And I made a mistake and it had real consequences. Like most people in life
Don't have a situation like that until they become CEO.
And so then, you know, it's like well how do I
How do I recover that?
And so like a lot of
the idea of the firm is like well
You know, what if you could call anybody.
Like how would that make you feel like what if you could call anybody, you know
in the White House in Congress, in, you know, like any executive
You know, any
kind of big company CEO.
And
be able to have a conversation. You know, like what if we could build that network for you? So that was kind of the idea behind the platform.
And then you know, we would do
I used to have this event.
Which
I should probably bring back, but I I ran out of room in my back yard called the CEO Barbecue where
We would bring all the CEOs for the portfolio and then we would just like put
Like very famous people around them. So we had like Zach and Larry Page and Kanye
All at a barbecue and they're at the barbecue. And there's no like talks, there's no
business agenda, there's no nothing. There's no even toast, right? Like it's just a barbecue.
And so it was just to make'em feel like oh shit.
Like I know Kanye. Like I'm I I have to be somewhat important. Like so so you're trying to like imbue this feeling that like I may not totally know what I'm doing, but I should be CEO, you know. But about a barbecue with Kanye. Yeah. What about what about the inverse? When you look at a CEO and you're like, Oh, they have just like
hit this fork in the road and now confidence is gonna go horribly uh is gonna go down and it's gonna be the their demise.
What decisions do those people make? Like what are the commonalities between the people who lose it that way? Sort of like the Charlie Munger, like
Tell me where I'm gonna die so I know not to go there, right? Wha what would be the decisions I would make to to take me off the path?
I would say the big thing is
It's almost like a lack of
Decision.
Right, like it's a hesitation.
And
the football there I say like trust you have to trust your eyes'cause you could be really fast.
But if you don't start running when you see the thing
If you wait, then you're not fast.
Um, and that's kind of what it's like for CEOs. Like you could be really, really smart, but if you wait too long before you pull the trigger,
You're not smart anymore.
It's too late.
And
There there's all kinds of like excuses people tell themselves to not make a decision. So for example, like the
One of the um
biggest ones on an executive like is
Well,
If you know, we made such a big deal when we hired him, like what is the press gonna say, or what are the people in the company gonna say? Or
You know.
I don't have time to hire a new person to do the job that this guy's fucking up with.
Yeah, like these kinds of
There's all these reasons.
Not to make the decision.
Um
And they're all just
If you think about'em for more than like
five minutes you go, Well that doesn't make any fucking sense'cause this guy's like fucking up the whole org.
Like who gives a fuck what the press says? Like it just
Get rid of him.
Like start rebuilding now. You know, like
If he's
Doing a bad job, like no job is better than a bad job. Like I think we all know that.
And everything kind of
ends up like that. I don't know enough to make the decision, like I didn't give them enough of a chance, this and that and the other.
So it's it's kind of that lack of confidence that generally causes a no decision
Where there really needs to be a decision.
Uh is is the main I I would say that's the common pattern.
Yeah, so in the two examples you gave, the first one was like ah, the CTO, blah blah blah, and that's kind of like avoiding the conversation.
Would be the the b the mistake there.
And then in this one, like avoiding the decision would be the mistake.
Yeah, you have to
Yeah, I wrote a post a long time ago.
called you know, run out the pain and darkness. You have to run at the pain and darkness.
You can't run away from it. If you run away from it
It's all bad.
You're pretty good at um titling blog posts and books. I think uh you know, the hard things about the hard things are like badass but I think you said that
I think in the p in the publishing industry, typically the authors
W title is not the winning title. And I think you were like bragging that you're like, That's my title. I came up with it. Well, yeah, because I didn't need a book, like I I didn't actually want to write the book. They asked me to write the book, the the publisher.
So I felt like I didn't do what I wanted. So I I called it what I wanted, yeah.
What um what do you what excites you? So this, you know, a lot of the stuff we talked about is like the hard stuff, the pain.
And uh but nobody gets into this for just the pain, right? Nobody gets into this to do the the pain is just a sort of necessary that we we go through to get to do the good stuff.
Uh, I'm just curious, what are you really excited about right now? Like what are either, you know, rabbit holes you're going down, cool stuff you've seen that you can't haven't been able to forget? Like what's really cool and interesting to Ben Horowitz?
Well, so uh one of the most exciting things that's going on now, um
Is he you know I kind of it's well known that

fallen behind in
Defense manufacturing, rare earth minerals, all these kinds of uh
Things, but what's been very exciting is like there are startups that are like, Oh, I'll solve that for America.
And so like we have a company uh that we just funded recently, Periodic Labs, which is using AI to do
Like novel material science to kind of
Enable
Better
kind of design of everything from like rockets to missiles to you know all sorts of things.
And then we have a company
Cobalt
uh metals that is basically using
AI. So they take a dirt sample and they use AI to analyze the dirt sample and they can tell you, Oh yeah, there's gonna be like
You know, copper below that.
Um you know, w whatever a mile down into the earth. Uh and so
Y you know, these kinds of techniques where you're kinda using tech to go, Oh no, we're gonna catch up fast.
Is been like very, very exciting, I would say.
My my view is of
Founder on the ground is just that
Sometimes you see something and like I said, it it breaks like a imaginary wall you had.
And um
And s sometimes things become cool and cool although we try to not like follow trends, sometimes you could use your psychology for you rather than against you. And so the idea you know, seeing what Elon has done.
Where it's like, oh, he goes into these really hard spaces and does these like like hardware, hard tech, literal literal rocket science.
Right. And sort of unafraid of that. Or, you know.
And Rill going in and doing
You know, weapons and defense tech and making that cool to be kind of patriotic in that way.
Is that what it was? Is that what it took or was there something else to it?
You know, th there's a lot they're very
Challenging.
Companies to build in some ways.
Um
But on the other hand.
You know, it's a good time to do them because people
Because Elon has I mean, you know, God bless Elon for
Showing that it was possible.
So now whereas like
Only Elon could have financed Tesla.
Normal people can start to finance these things now because Elon has shown that it's possible. So it's a little bit like the four minute mile mile in that way, I would say.
But yeah, I mean like you know, the things that
Yeah, and even in like public safety, you look at something like, you know, flock safety.
In a way, technologically it's not nearly as
complicated as some of the other as like a uh as an Andril or something like that.
But it's very, very powerful.
I mean you know, they really make
Uh
Both kind of policing
being a citizen and even being a criminal more safe because all of a sudden
You're using AI to provide real intelligence. So
Yeah, for example in Las Vegas where we deployed it.
A huge problem.
A huge problem in like police violence.
Um police getting killed.
Our traffic stops.
And a big reason for that
Is
Somebody reports there's a
You know, a nineteen
Ninety eight
Honda Acura.
That's driving, that's brown, um, that kidnapped a baby.
Okay.
So that's a real situation.
But like that description is usually wrong.
Like the description of the actual car is usually wrong. So you you have flock safety, you have the exact match.
So the difference between a cop
going into a situation where they may have the wrong guy, and if they have the wrong guy, the guys could get very agitated.
And then you have a s bad situation.
Or
They know a hundred percent.
This guy
Is then a car that we know is the car.
And there's a baby in the back that's not his.
Okay, you're going in with a whole you're not sending a single person in there.
with a gun coming off their motorcycle, like you've got a whole team that's gonna make sure that that person is
apprehended safely.
And correctly and the baby.
I've heard pro I've heard Flocks this amazing thing. Is it drones? Is it cameras? What are they doing? Yeah, and uh so so it's uh it's primarily like a camera system uh where AI will basically so somebody does something, you know, they grab the car on the camera
That car shows up on another camera anywhere in the city and they're like, Oh, there it is.
And actually that's how they caught
Interestingly the
the the uh Tesla terrorists who

Tesla ship on fire in Las Vegas.
Was
He came in earlier to case the place.
Fox Safety pick up the car, they saw the car come back.
Um
At night and they were like, Oh, we know whose car that is and they just went and arrested him.
Did you guys um see that ad? I think it was like two weeks ago. I I was trying to find it.
It was went viral on Twitter, but it was basically, I believe it was a solar company. Was it a solar company where they're recruiting employees and they had a whole website just dedicated to the recruitment. Uh
aspect of just they needed more staff. And they bought an ad in the New York Times, I believe, or some newspaper. And it was like um
uh an old man sitting with like what it looked like his grandson overlooking a mountain or and and they're like overlooking I think it was solar panels. I'm not exactly sure, but it was like
Do you really want to tell your grandkids that you spent your entire thirties and forties building just B2B software?
It was great. And it like and there's this whole trend amongst uh young people on Twitter of like being more traditional and things like that. And I think that to answer your question, Sean, about Andril and and Elon, I think that it's kinda been like a perfect spiral or a perfect mix of like
people seeing Elon and and Palmer do these interesting things. And also just like getting sick of
Just
building B2B software or something, you know, for that's just a stereotype for what's boring. That's may or may not be true. But like uh, you know, like seeing this and like
There could be more out there.
I think that the the software had to get good enough to, of course, make um
Make these other things possible.
You know, and it's amazing that we're at that time where you can really imagine changing the world.
In all kinds of ways.
You uh you get to see a lot of pitches of the smartest people in the world telling you what the future's gonna look like in five years. And so you have this like
element of your job that's a little bit like a time traveler. So you you probably have a better sense of
what the world look nobody has a perfect sense, but you have a better sense of what the world looks like.
You know, five, seven, ten years from now. You don't know exactly when. You don't know who's gonna do it. What's broken your brain, either from a demo or a a story pitch that you've heard uh, you know, sometime in the last uh year or so that that the rest of us will experience, you know, sometime in the future.
Yeah, so I think, you know, one of the things that um
Yeah, I mean yeah, and everybody's talking about uh embodied AI and robots and so forth, and rightly so, but I I would say like in the creative space.
I I'm starting to realize like there's AI
Video and so forth.
It's not like making the old thing more efficient. It's a new medium.
It's an actual new thing.
In the same way as that like movies weren't plays.
Uh
You know, AI
Video is not
Video.
The stories that you can tell are completely different'cause you can do things that you just
You know, without a two hundred
million dollar budget you had had no chance of doing and now it's like no problem.
And I think that's gonna be like very, very, very interesting. And then
The
How well it's working on like existing stuff. So people
Yeah, the people who are on the cutting edge of the movie industry are now
You know, they're able to do like
Whole movie scenes
Or edit or change their movie have the AI
actor do the
Uh
Do the do the third cut.
At at a level of quality that even the the actor doesn't know it wasn't them doing the acting and and that kind of thing. So it's
I think it's gonna
change dramatically again. And and there's gonna be kind of white space for
Not only new creatives, but new entertainment entrepreneurs and so forth that
Nobody is really imagining now.
Is there any AI content that you consume as a fan?
Y yeah, no. Well like you know I I we've been watching that uh the one with the cat.
Um
Well.
Pretty good over the over the weekend, the cat playing all the instruments and the lady coming out on the fort, going like you gotta cut that racket out. Do you guys see that one?
Yeah. That was pretty good. Yeah. I think it's a sore goodie.
Ben, do you mess around on uh Sunno at all with AI music?
Yeah, Sunu um and uh
Well, you know, Eleven Labs has a model and uh UDO's got a very good model. So there there's there's a few
different really good models. Like I feel like I could have a music career again.
That's gonna be very, very interesting to me because it
It's sort of
Like one thing that hip hop showed was
So
People don't really realize this, but this is something Quincy Jones pointed out to me before he passed. He said, You know, Ben
Like hip hop started like exactly when they canceled all the music programs in schools.
Like it was the same the the exact same time when people couldn't didn't learn to play instruments in schools.
That's when
That is exactly when hip hop began.
And hip hop kind of freed you.
As uh somebody who was
Like a musical talent.
from actually having to learn to play an instrument.
Uh
Which
You know, and and even for
The producers, right? Like you had a drum machine.
You had samples.
So you could hear what you liked.
And play it, but you didn't need to be a virtuoso.
And that kind of opened up
A world that we're happy for.
And I think AI music is kind of that on steroids.
I don't know if you guys know the number one song in the country right now is an AI country artist. It's a walk my walk. Oh yeah. And um the first I think the first AI artist that got a record deal recently. Like you know, so this is definitely what the future looks like is
People who p non musicians can it's just like you know, replet and others make it so that you don't have to be a
Coder to make apps.
Yeah. And now you don't have to be a musician to make music. And I don't think people really understand how big of a deal that is. Like my
My personal trainer who's been in the fitness world his whole life.
Yeah.
has been in a rabbit hole making he's probably in the top point one percent of AI creators in the world right now. Oh that's creating music. And he's like got
Like a full band. He's like his own record label and every day he's up till two in the morning.
And he knows these programs inside and out and because it wasn't really accessible to somebody who didn't have
uh you know musical talent before to be able to make music. Right. There's a big difference between
Taste
And
creativity and
being a virtuoso violinist, right? Like those
Those
Don't necessarily have to be the same thing.
And
It's great that
Yeah, no people
You know, whatever, uh practice violin for three hours a day and like get get amazing at it and all that kinda thing.
But
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Sean, uh, can you ask you have this really cool line about the rules of culture and making them uh memorable.
Well, yeah, so when I'm doing the research, one thing that stands out is like you talk about culture, you talk about like
And which is normally culture is like I just fall asleep because it it's so over talked about in the business world. You're just like, You gotta really tell me something new. Over talked about without anybody saying anything.
Exactly. Culture, culture.
Right. Oh so cool, tell me your values and like integrity. Like, all right, great. Glad to hear it. I'm uh uh I was worried it was gonna be the opposite, right? Like it doesn't really tell you anything. And you know
when you go walk into the company, the stuff on the wall doesn't match the stuff you see happening within the four walls. So it's just you you get sort of disillusioned in a way. But when you see somebody doing something interesting or you or somebody actually pulling it off, which of course there are examples
I get interested. And so one thing that I thought was cool, a nuance that I hadn't really heard before was
You were talking about how at A sixteen Z you kind of
Take time to drive the culture. Like I think in the new
onboarding you like I do a culture session, one hour, they sign something at the end and one of the
Nuances I thought that was interesting because you said
My rule for writing the kind of like the culture rules is it has to have some shock value.
Like it has to give s per per the other person like a what the hell are you talking about type of reaction, if it's gonna be memorable. I think the idea was
If it's not memorable, it's never gonna be remembered or used. So you have to do something to make it memorable. Can you talk about it?
About your

Yeah, so I mean it it kind of comes down to
What you do every day.
Right, like it's a daily habit. So
Yeah.
This idea that you put cultural values on the wall and then in the once a year in a performance review you say, do you follow the culture?
It's like w that that means absolutely nothing, right? It's nothing.
And so it's like well, what do you do every day? And so like one of the things we do every day is like we meet with entrepreneurs.
So like what's a rule
that sets the culture around that. So it's like well, if you're late for that meeting it's
Ten dollars a minute.
It's like well, ten dollars a minute, like well, what if I have to go to the bathroom? Yeah, you owe me fifty dollars, I don't care.
Um, you know, what what if I had an important phone call? Okay, you owe me a hundred dollars. Uh like I don't care you had an important phone call. Well, like why am I paying to work here?
You know, well because
Building a company is extremely hard and culturally we want to have the ultimate respect for that and we don't want to waste any entrepreneurs' time.
And so that's your most important thing. So you have to plan to do that.
You guys have a fine now. You're talking this is a real A sixteen Z Yeah.
So every time I have to like
Go to the meeting.
You know, like I have to think about that because I've gotta be on time. I gotta fucking plan my day. So like there's not I'm not back to back on that one.
I gotta be on time. Otherwise
You know, I'm gonna be embarrassed and all that kind of thing.
And
So well why and why am I doing that? And then that
Okay, if you do that, that's a habit.
That makes you go, Okay, like no, I'm gonna respect what this is. I know how hard it is to build a company. I may not even know how hard it is, but I know that like somebody here thinks it's hard enough that I have to show up on time.
So can you keep can you tell some more of those um interesting like you know the
the tartiness paying thing. That's pretty cool. If you um
If you talk smack about an entrepreneur
Um
Ex
You're fired.
It doesn't matter if they're in the portfolio or not.
You're just that's it.
Uh and why is that, you know.
Well
Culturally
First of all, we're dream builders, we're not dream killers. If you want to do something bigger than yourself,
And make the world a better place. I don't care.
What it is.
I don't care if I think it's stupid. I'm for that.
I'm not against that. I am for that.
And I don't care if like Sequoia funded you or Benchmark funded you, I'm for that.
Like
Go get it.
Like we're a pro entrepreneur.
And then
You know, kind of related to that.
I don't wanna give anybody credit.
from making themselves look smart by making somebody else look stupid.
Like I don't want to give anybody like a gold star for saying that guy's, you know, making selling dollars for eighty five cents.
You know, like
Fuck you.
Like no, we're not doing that here.
And so it's it's that kind of thing where it's like
Oh, that seems like a harsh punishment.
But I get it.
I get it because I've heard it and and I understand it. And so
The nuts
Like a way to kind of show up.
Behaviourally
Daily as opposed to
Um
Yeah, like look, here's the problem with integrity.
What does that mean? Right, like integrity only matters when it's tested.
Everybody has integrity, everybody's honest.
Until it's tested.
And then when it's tested
Very few people are.
Right, like when it costs you money.
When it cost you a deal.
When it costs you your marriage.
Are you honest then?
Um because that's the actual thing.
And so you can't just
have it in the abstract, you have to say like
What behaviors do I do you have to have to work here?
You know, how responsive do you have to be?
These things
end up making the culture much more so than
Like a value.
Or like I one thing I really like is the um
The the Samurai
call them virtues. They didn't call them values. It's like these are the virtues.
Like this this is your way of being. This isn't like some fucking it's not
A set of ideas, it's a set of actions.
A culture is a set of actions.
Listen to this Sean. So if you go to A sixteen Z dot com slash about
You'll see their values.
And I just want to read like I've I've never seen this before, so I'm just gonna read a couple of them, but the six one the six out of seven, it's we play to win.
Our culture only matters if we're important.
And in order to be important, we must win.
We are the best firm in the world, so we expect to win.
It's just like that's fantastic. I love that.
I don't know if controversial is the right word, but it's polarizing, right? Not a lot of people are are into that. But that's
That's badass. And then you say, uh, you have another one that I really like. We only do we only do first class business.
And only in a first class way.
I think that's a really good idea.
Oh so cool. He said it in court. They were accusing him of some kind of like
uh crazy like market manipulation and the job. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. No JP Morgan. Yeah. Yeah I think that was I think I read about that line in the uh Andrew Sorkhead's got that like nineteen twenty eight or twenty nine book. And it and I think it says that but that's great. So but okay, so but like when I go to this
Site.
And I see these, I'm like, Okay, this is kind of like these are like the high level principles, but you what you were saying just now is a little bit different. You were like, Hey, look Well, there's gotta be behaviors that support the principles, yeah.
Yeah. So you you you basically were like, What are the daily situations and actions
Where
We have a choice.
We either show up this way or we show up this way.
And we're gonna show up this way and sometimes with a
A penalty, a punishment, or appraise ba based on like the extreme behav version of that behavior with a no tolerance policy, right? Like
And I think there's this great uh military quote that you have in your book. Oh yeah, well if you um
If you see something below standard
Uh and you don't correct it, you set a new standard.
And that's a that that's very true.
And that's why they have to be specific, because if they're not specific, you can't enforce it.
How do you enforce
Like
You don't have integrity. That just gets weaponized. It's like that guy doesn't have integ he's not following the cultural value.
You know, he doesn't have why does he have integrity? Well, he lied to me. Well, let's go talk to him. Oh no, I didn't lie to you. Like so it's not that. Whereas
Oh, you just put out that tweet.
Like that's clearly against the cultural value.
Like
Uh uh there's no backing off that.
So like you know, Facebook famously had Move Fast and Break Things, which I think by the way. Hall of Fame. Yeah, you know that's a Hall of Famer, but like that's kinda the you know, one of the few that I know. I thought about that for months. Like I'm like Move Fast and Bre because it's so counterintuitive. It's like well
You know, z you want me to break things? I'm an engineer. I make things. I don't break things. Um, but it it was just his way of saying like
There is no excuse for not fucking shipping. Like we're going fast.
But they don't have that anymore, do they? Is that so Well, you know, they got bigger and then
You know, I think speed wasn't their main thing that they were trying to achieve. I think they literally changed it to like move fast, move stability and stable like with stable infrastructure and reliability.
Yeah, exactly. So have you seen anything like that move fast and break things, or just a behavior when you walked into the Airbnb office and you noticed something.
A Amazon had this thing where they used to make the desks out of like doors and

Um and so I tried doing that, by the way. It's it's way cheaper to get a desk. It's way cheaper to get a desk. But like I think the idea back in whatever the late nineties when they did that was like like we're not wasting anyway.
Yeah. And that kind of thing. Which is you know, those markers are
are very, very powerful. Like one of my favorite ones is actually from the
Haitian revolution when uh two Sam Overture
Basically made a role. He's like y you can't cheat on your wife.
Um, which was like so absurd'cause here they are, they're in a colony, you know, a French colony.
Their um
You know, the British, the Spanish, the French, they're all raping and pillaging and doing all this stuff, all these armies.
And these guys like can't cheat on their walks.
But that
Little cultural idea that said like
This is about trust. I gotta be able to trust you.
And like the people have to be able to trust you ended up
Basically.
really influencing the war. So one of the things that
Um
was like very surprising I think to people who read about the Hittan Revolution was
Th you know, here's the slave army taking on these European colonies.
And the white women in the colony supported Toussaint.
Against
Like
The French.
Um and you go like well why'd they do that?
Because they didn't rape.
They even pillage like to some like these guys were like half naked soldiers or slaves.
And they weren't doing any of that. They were super polite. They were they they behaved in a certain way.
And the legend is so he was two cent
Loverture.
But slaves didn't have last names. So where did Loverture come from?
And so the story is
Uh Napoleon, who really was pissed at him.
brought his generals together and it's like how in the fuck can you not get this slate?
Like
W how can you not defeat this slave?
And they're like
Get'em backed up. We get'em surrounded.
And then all of a sudden there's an opening.
And he became two cent.
Loves her to stand the opening.
Um, and the opening uh a lot of people say was created by these townspeople, these you know, these women.
Who were just like no fuck, we're for him.
We're for that army. I don't give a fuck about your army. We're for that army. So like the culture can be like super influential.
That's a great story.
That's really cool.
You mentioned Amazon. Do you see Jeff Bezos got a new startup?
Oh, you to Jeff got a new startup.
Yeah, you didn't see this announcement. They uh Prometheus they raised an initial seed round of six billion.
Yeah.
Two brilliant, is that true?
They call that a feed round.
Well yeah, that's the f first round of funding. So six billion dollars raised and they got a hundred people and they're building AI for
Like m the the physical world. So it's not just robots, but basically like the manufacturing of airplanes and ships and
Thing things like that. So they're basically saying how do we use AI
Yeah. And like sort of advanced manufacturing, I think is the I think is the idea, but obviously there are little title details, but that's pretty cool. He's like back in uh
operational role for the first time, which is cool.
Yeah, no, I I think that uh
By the way, like
How great.
Is it that the
Logistics genius of our time.
Is
back at it and gonna help us
Like get back in the manufacturing game. Like that y you know, those things are just incredible to me.
And I think all of us were a little sad.
when Jeff was just living his best life just because he's is so talented.
Um so this is very great news.
I loved it. I was like huh, this guy's having fun, he's getting jacked, he's showing a a different uh you know, a a new North Star also, which like has has kind of also taken over the technical. And by the way, like wha whatever like
You know, people always make you into a cartoon when you get to that level.
He is
You know.
For sure, like a top.
Two or three.
Best CEO in the last.
Forty years. So
You're you're you're a bit surprising to me because I've read all your books. I know about your background.
basically like you have like guided the people who have shaped destiny. You have also shaped destiny yourself, but like you're
You've done all these amazing things.
And you're a shockingly fun hang.
Normally I think and like you know about hip hop and all this stuff. Normally the people who have outsized results typically have very strange personalities.
And they're like a little quirky, and I'm sure you ha have your quirks, but you just seem shockingly
well balanced for how
Not
normal your successes. Is there anything in your day to day life you that you think that is um
would would surprise probably like the average person, or are there any tendencies that you have that you recognize probably aren't
At all normal.
Well, y you know, I I would say probably the thing the thing that my daughter always says
that is unusual about me.
Um and I think it came from like the beginning of my you know, like I had um
I I am different than the modern people. Like I was married when I was twenty two. I had three kids by the time I was twenty five. Like I I kind of had to
Grow up fast.
And you know, and then I I had the company again, was trying to raise the kids and the company and you know, I didn't have money for nannies or anything.
So like it it w it was a lot of that. But what she says to me is she's like, Dad, like you're like at the top of Maslow's hierarchy, like you're very zen with all this.
And like I take things for what they are. I I don't
Well like I'm pretty good at
Not being unemotional, but not letting
like my emotional reaction control my behavior.
Were you always that way or did you become No, no, no, no, no? Definitely not. Like I think it was just all the trauma that like
Forced me to learn that.
What age do d d what what made you calm down? Was it age? Was it kids? Was it success? Was it like look, I've made it. Everything else is just icing on the cake. I don't care. Well, eh, I think it was
The combination of
The kids
Um
The company, you know, the the the first company I founded
Love Cloud at which NBK Maps were was so
Difficult.
Um
That
I never
Like in life since then, like we like we've had difficulties building the firm, whatever, but like
They never got like a rise out of me that could compare
Uh
You know, what I'd already been through. So it's almost like I I feel like it's almost
Like I know guys my friend Oliver Stone, um
Was in Vietnam.
And like you could tell everything about him was
I'm not in Vietnam anymore.
So much of his life is defined by not being a nom.
And like I I do feel like I don't want to compare it to war'cause people always criticize me for my war metaphors, but
It it's kinda like that feeling where it's like
Okay, I've been through that.
I I'm just looking at the world differently now.
And I bet it. And it and and like I'm sure you had some sense of like
All right, I've accomplished something.
Like I feel good.
Maybe I'm playing with house money a little bit with with everything else. Um Yeah, it's a little house money and then it's a little like
All you can do is deal with the thing that it is. You can't stop it from having happened. It happens. And that now you have to deal with it.
Were there any other?
Sort of uh wisdom accelerator. So you have these formative experiences, right? You got three kids in three years or whatever, and you're twenty time or twenty five, and then you're trying to build a startup and everything.
You face kind of like the back against the wall.
Moments. Were there any other formative things like you know
For example, um
In my life I went to like a Tony Robbins seminar. It's like, you know, I I sort of got five years of wisdom in a weekend type of type. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's very good at like dealing with your own psychology. He's spend a summer doing something, or you read a book at the right time, or you get the right message at the right time, and you have a moment where you just decide like from now on, X.
I guess like I'm just curious, was there any if I just think about like formative moments besides the kids and besides
Cloud Cloud. What what else would there have been?
Okay, so when I was a kid
Um
I was in this uh relay race.
Yeah, and it was like it was a very big deal for me, you know, like it was whatever the track me.
And we came in second in the relay race. My father uh wasn't
at the race. Um, but we came in second because
And the team that came in first dropped the baton and like didn't pick it up. The guy just ran up the baton and they gave him first place and they didn't penalize him.
Yeah.
Uh you know, my father said, How'd you do in the race? And I was like, Well, we came in second
But it wasn't fair.
And I was gonna explain to him why.
And he said, Stop right there.
He said life isn't fair.
And
That shocked me so much at the time.
But it really stuck with me.
And
It's the single best lesson that I ever got in my life was life isn't fair. And
I see young people wreck themselves so much because they have an expectation.
That something about life is gonna be fair.
Like nothing about life is fair.
It's not fair where you're born, it's not fair.
what race you are, it's not fair like what your parents did. It's not fair like uh the job interviews aren't fair, like uh nothing
The tests aren't fair. Nothing is fair unless
And so the way you succeed is you don't have that expectation. You just deal with it as it is.
And I think that
Everybody who tries to
Or who like thinks well life
I wasn't treated fairly, or this is infected.
Like that is devastating.
You know like for sure.
I mean the whole time uh y you know when Loud Cloud and the dot com crash and half our customers went out of business, I never crossed my mind to go.
This isn't fair. It was just like okay, I have to deal with it.
And
That
Is
I would say the single best
piece of advice and way of looking at life that you can have is just
It is what it is, and
No
Do what you can do with it being as it is.
It was very important.
You've referenced a lot of really cool stuff. Um, the the Haiti story. Um, I've heard you talk about history a lot.
W outside of work.
Work related stuff. What
interests you right now. You know, Sean and I we like to talk about just like just fun stuff that you're into. I'm
I'm constantly reading about World War Two, I like that.
What about you? Is there anything that you're kind of like being obsessed about?
Yeah, so I do have this um
I'll give a plug for it. So I I have this uh charity that I created
With my wife called the Paid and Fall Foundation.
Um which
Basically, you know, it's kind of a
Idea on a win, but we give
pensions to the old hip hop guys. So you know they got a hundred thousand dollars a year and and then we have this
A board so for them, you know, where we name them Grandmasters and so forth.
And
Yeah, that's so the first w winners were Rakham and Scarface, and then, you know, we had Grandmaster Caz and Shantae and
Um Kumo D and so forth, and then uh Grand Puba and
And uh Cole G Rap.
And this year, you know, we added this thing, the uh Crincy Jones Award, um, to the guys who got sample the most, and we gave it to George Clinton.
And the event was so
I'm still thinking about it. It was so amazing because
So George Clinton knows all the words to follow the leader.
And so he's on stage and Christie John says, Can you rap follow and he's raps follow the leader? And Rakim came out and rapped it with him. So we've got George Clinton and Rakim, and then
Doctor Dre bought a table to the event.
And he like couldn't help himself. He goes up on stage just to say
Look, I have no career without George Clinton. And it was just so amazing to have like
All these guys
That were so important that influenced so many people.
Um, just being that appreciative of each other.
Uh was
I was like, you know, and it's kind of and you know, hip hop of course is so competitive and
And uh, you know, they're always going at each other and so forth. But to for them to be at that point where they could just go
Man, you guys meant so much to me.
And
And that kind of thing was um
It it was just very special.
That's so cool. Yeah.
Pensions for for for the OGs is is so great. What did that just come on a whim or you're just at lunch one day and you're like why don't they you know, how does that I'cause that one liner gives you the clarity, right? Gives you the clarity of where to go.
So so I was listening to the um
The H to the I Z O J Z sum where he says I'm overcharging for what they did to the cold crush.
And it kind of has like
Who was the Cold Crush? And it turns out, right, it's Grandmaster Kaz and Grandmaster Kaz
Rogue.
Um
Rap was the light, basically.
Uh and they stole it from it.
And they stole it from him so
Nasty.
That they didn't change the word. So big bank handcraft I'm the GRA A and D
Right, right, and D M the A S C E R that's Grandmaster Kaz. That's his he's rapping about his name, not Big Bang Hank. Big Bang Hank is the not named Grandmaster.
Why is he calling himself Grandmas?'Cause he stole his fucking rhyme.
And he never got paid and he never got credit for it.
And everybody in hip hop knows this.
Uh
And Grandmaster Caz, by the way
Like if you meet him, he's a stock.
Like he's the coolest guy in the room. He dresses amazing.
He's
Like super articulate.
Like crazy today, sixty six years old or sixty five, something like that.
And I was like, Well, like we oughta go back and fix that, and then you know
Uh Rakim was like
on tour at these little clubs and so forth, I was like, that's where I kim, like
How are people treating him like that? So
That was the idea. Most likely we ought to just do it.
Um you know, and like getting it set up with the IRS and all that stuff is like extremely complicated. Um
But yeah, it's been it's been really, really
Uh I I would say amazing. And like just uh like a an unbelievable epilogue. So Caz
At the last one, um
Tells me he's like, Ben, I bought a house. I was like, Oh, that's amazing, Cas. You've got a house. He's like, No, Ben
It's the first time in my life I haven't lived in the projects.
Like
Grandmaster Cas the guy who wrote the first great hip hop song.
Has never not lived in the projects. Like, how crazy is that? And
Yeah. Now here he is with the house in Pennsylvania.
And see that he's got berries in his back yard and the whole thing, yeah.
It's got berries in his back.
It is pretty nuts. The people who are like invent the shit don't get it. Like for example, Sean and I love UFC and like we see like the early UFC events and these guys are badass, yeah. And they're getting two thousand dollars to show up and they still come to like the legends awards and they still are talking and you're like
Damn dude, this guy probably is selling insurance or something like that. Like he like you know, he probably got
Made fifteen thousand dollars that year. No doubt.
No doubt. Yeah. This happens in the NBA too. This is why like the culture gets kind of messed up, though'cause the old heads keep criticizing all the new players.
Yeah. And it's like, Well, why are you doing that? It's like they make too much more money in it. 70 million dollars a year, and that guy didn't make seven in his whole career, and he's like, I'm better than that guy. And that guy, you know, so
The this resentment and then they get on and then they're the
The guys doing the half time ships and it's bad for the bad for the product, right? Like it's bad for the lineage, right?'Cause
Everything is a creative lineage like on top of what was yeah before, right? So you i i it's really cool to kind of almost like
economically fix the
You know, or like try to improve that ecosystem because the whole thing is like y you know, it's funny, it's um
It's also kinda this thought I have about capitalism, which is capitalism is
It's definitely
the system that lifted the world out of poverty and like kind of created the modern world we live in.
Yeah, you know, it's incredibly powerful, but
Right, over time it does get
Um corrupted and so forth. And even if it wasn't corrupted.
It's not perfect.
And like certain things happen like oh you create a musical art form.
And or the guys who
Actually made it happen.
And it becomes the biggest musical art form in the world.
And you never got paid. Like capitalism shouldn't work like that, but it's just kinda the way it works, right? Like
And it's nobody's fault. And so like if you can go back and say
Well we'll just correct those things.
I think that I think you are so cool.
Like you're on one hand you're like a pretty like hard hitting capitalist where you're getting after it and you're you're talking about making really tough
decisions of having to fire people, whatever, but then you're also like, but also we can we could do good by doing all this other stuff. And I think that like particularly in tech, I don't think that people's interests are are
Particularly that wide. Yeah. Well, I think people get very into
Tech, yeah. Like tech is so deep and vast that like people can get stuck in it for sure. Yeah.
Well, Ben, we thank you for coming on, man. I know uh you uh you got a lot of things going on, but th this was this was a lot of fun. I appreciate it.
Yeah, no, it's a good time. Thanks, guys, definitely.
Alright, appreciate ya. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
I put my law in it like a day
So on the road less travel, never looking back
Hey, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about a podcast that you could check out. It is called The Science of Scaling by Mark Robers. He was the founding CRO of HubSpot, and he's a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School. The guy smart. And he sits down every week with
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I think a podcast like this could be great for you. Listen to the science of scaling wherever you get your podcast.