Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. Today's episode is based on a Q&A with Mark

Andreessen interviewed by Don Fall, a former U.S. Marine platoon commander who then worked at Google,

then headed up online operations at Facebook, and then most recently led operations at Pinterest,

and now is the C.O. at Athos. The conversation took place as part of the breakline education hiring program for transitioning

veterans into careers in tech, which was hosted one week recently at Andresen Horowitz.

Don and Mark cover everything in this conversation from what it means to invest in the business of

change to what it means to consider a career transition.

Over to Mark and Don.

Good morning.

Hello again.

You guys get me again.

It's nice to see you guys.

So first off, just wanted to start up by saying thank you to Mark for his time and for the time of the firm.

Mark has been an incredible supporter of that.

I think this is the third or fourth time that he's dedicated his time

to having a conversation like this. So if I got a few questions, we'll spend maybe 34 minutes on

questions, and then we'll open it up to you guys for Q&A. Sure. So I wanted to start with,

I think this industry is new for a lot of us in the audience, software. Warren Buffett once

famously said that he didn't invest in software or technology businesses because he didn't

understand or get them. What makes this industry different? So the big difference, and for those

you haven't read, Warren Buffett's, he writes this annual letter where he kind of goes through a lot

of stuff, and there have been various books written over the years that kind of sum up everything.

...