20VC: a16z's David George on How $BN Funds Can 5×, Do Margins & Revenue Matter in AI & the Most Controversial Bet at a16z
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
David George is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm's Growth investing team. His team has backed many of the defining companies of this era, including Databricks, Figma, Stripe, SpaceX, Anduril, and OpenAI, and is now investing behind a new generation of AI startups like Cursor, Harvey, and Abridge.
AGENDA:
03:05 – Why Everyone is Wrong: Mega Funds Does Not Reduce Returns
10:40 – Is Public Market Capital Actually Cheaper Than Private Capital?
18:55 – The Biggest Advantage of Staying Private for Longer
23:30 – The #1 Investing Rule for a16z: Always Invest in the Founder's Strength of Strengths
31:20 – Why Fear of Theoretical Competition Makes Investors Miss Great Companies
35:10 – Does Revenue Matter as Much in a World of AI?
44:10 – Does Kingmaking Still Exist in Venture Capital Today?
49:20 – Do Margins Matter Less Than Ever in an AI-First World?
53:50 – My Biggest Miss: Anthropic and What I Learn From it?
56:30 – Has OpenAI Won Consumer AI? Will Anthropic Win Enterprise?
59:45 – The Most Controversial Decision in Andreessen Horowitz History
1:01:30 – Why Did You Invest $300M into Adam Neumann and Flow?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Our best performing fund in the history of the firm is actually a $1 billion fund. |
| 0:04.8 | If you overweight the fear of future theoretical competition, you can always talk yourself |
| 0:10.4 | out of making an investment. |
| 0:11.6 | The number one way to measure a company is ultimately return on invested capital. |
| 0:17.7 | On the gross margin point today, I'll say this. |
| 0:21.4 | We give a little bit more of a pass than we used to. |
| 0:24.0 | At what point does the entry price do you think for Open AI become not a good use of dollars? |
| 0:29.9 | What I just don't understand that I would love to is flow. |
| 0:33.1 | Can you help me understand flow? |
| 0:35.0 | Because I think the world kind of scratched their head. Why did it make |
| 0:38.7 | sense to you when it didn't make sense to anyone else? This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, |
| 0:43.5 | and I'm so excited for the show today. This guest is a dear friend, a long time friend, |
| 0:48.7 | and so I was hurt even more when he did a competitive show recently with another podcast. I was so pissed off. |
| 0:57.7 | I actually said to him, listen, we'll do our show, but it's going to be spicier than normal. |
| 1:02.9 | I'm not going to go easy on you and you're going to have to put up with it. And he said, |
| 1:07.4 | fine, let's do it. And so today we welcome David George. |
| 1:15.9 | David George is a general partner at Andreessen Horace, where he leads the firm's growth investing. His team has backed some incredible defining companies of this era, including Databricks, Figma, Stripe, SpaceX, Anderil and Open AI. |
| 1:24.8 | He's now investing behind a new generation of AI startups like cursor, |
| 1:29.4 | Harvey and Abridge, to name a few. But before we dive into the show today, are you drowning in |
| 1:34.7 | AI tools, chat GPT for writing, notion for docs, Gmail for email, Slack for comms, and you're |
| 1:41.7 | constantly copy pasting between them all losing context and losing time. |
| 1:46.8 | This is the AI productivity tax, and it's killing your output. |
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