Hi and welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Hannah and we're here today having a conversation with Bob Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule and Professor at Stanford, and Michael Deering, founder of Harrison Meadow and Bob's former colleague at Stanford as well. And you should be aware that there are a lot of expletives in this episode. So do keep that in mind if you have little ones listening in the background.

We're here today because Bob has a brand new book out, the asshole survival guide, that takes off from where the no asshole rule left off. In other words, it really gets down to the nitty-gritty of

dealing with this kind of person and their behavior. Everything from assessing whether or not you're an

asshole yourself to coping strategies

of protecting yourself from assholes and finally tactics to actually change or put a stop

to asshole behavior. The first guest voice you'll hear is Michael Deering, who rumor has it was a champion

of Bob writing the second book on assholes. We heard that you were, I will not say that you were the inspiration behind this book.

But that you urged Bob to write this book.

Is that right?

What's the story there.

What I said to Bob after the no asshole rule was so wildly successful, what, almost 10 years ago.

And I said, Bob, this is lightning in a bottle. You got to

build the whole franchise. H-O-L-E. The whole franchise around this. You could have a version of

this for personal relationships, for work relationships, for peer relationships. Well, because it is

such an essential human problem. It's problem. It's kind of like the definition

of humanity. It is. And the main thing that happened is the no asshole rule, which at least I thought

was a book about, well, this is how you build a relatively asshole-free place. But the response was

people just sent me all these emails and all these stories that were kind of the same, which is...

They made you their therapist.

And they would say, I've got an asshole.

Help.

Help.

...