Hi and welcome to the A16Z podcast. In this episode, Dick Costello, former CEO of Twitter,

and A16Z general partner Peter Levine, talk about all things leadership, how to do what you love,

why a background and comedy improv might be more useful than you think, and the importance of resilience.

The conversation was recorded as part of the Breakline Tech Program for Military Veterans

hosted at Andreessen Horowitz.

Last time we met, you were still CEO at Twitter, and we haven't met since.

So what have you been up to?

And what was the departure like?

When I told the company, I was leaving, and one of the employees asked me what I was going to do next.

I was like, first thing I'm going to do is sleep until 10 a.m. So I didn't do anything for six months

except travel around. It went to Cuba, went to Africa, sort of all over the place. And then I had a

strange background in comedy. And I always wanted to go into comedy. So I contacted the HBO folks who were doing the TV show Silicon Valley and said,

hey, I want to come work on Silicon Valley.

And the CEO of HBO, Richard Pepler, said, well, we need a technical consultant,

but we can't, like, pay you to do it.

And I said, I'll just do it for free.

He was like, oh, okay, great. That works for us.

Anyway, so I went and worked on season three of Silicon Valley for that year.

So I was in the writer's room the whole summer, which was awesome.

And it's just funny to see the perspective that the people in Hollywood have about, like, Silicon Valley

and the way they view it differently than the people here view it.

You did improv early on in your career, and then you did tech. about like Silicon Valley and the way they view it differently than the people here view it.

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