Good afternoon, Michael Malice here. Let that be your welcome for the next hour. I got to tell you, I'm kind of nervous about our next guest because he's such a big shot.

And he has so much better things to do than this podcast, but I am thrilled and honored to have Mark Andreessen here on the show. Mark is one of the most influential VCs on earth. Your resume is insane.

You were involved with mosaic, which is the first web browser, Netscape, which I used when I was a college student in the late 80s. Your firm has invested in things like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest.

I mean, the list goes on and on. You have had a major impact on our culture and the world. Do you ever, I just kind of a soft block question, but I really want to ask, do you ever just sit back and look around at like the internet and be like, holy crap, like my fingerprints are all over this thing.

Well, the most amazing thing is it worked. It actually all worked, like it actually all happened. I mean, it was, I don't know if you remember if you're called old and for remember, but like, this was not obvious in the beginning, like all the smart people, all the experts, all the big companies, executives, all the talking heads, they all said, yeah, this is not, this is not something normal people are going to do.

You know, this is not a technology. First of all, we'll never be able to get it to work. That was the first. And then people just won't want it. Like it, they won't want it. And it, you know, it turns out they do.

A few other questions of all the guests I've had, when I've told people that I'm having you on the show, their reaction has been like, oh, my, like, oh, my God, oh, my God, you would think on paper, I'm having a VC on the show, people like snoozers. Why do you think you, I know this is kind of like a weird question, ask, answer about yourself. Why do you think you have such a reputation among people who are technophiles and fans of culture in general.

I mean, you know, so I was I was raised in the American Midwest and so this first this I've now become incredibly uncomfortable.

I now feel like a witness in the amber her trial. Um, so, um, not quite sure what to say. So I think the big thing. I mean, look, I don't think I can answer the question. I guess I just say, look, I have not been lucky enough in my career, like I've been at the very least present, if not a part of, you know, a lot of the big shifts and technology over the over, you know, coming up in 30 years, you know, put a part of a part of it, I think it's just, it's just going to be great.

And then, um, you know, and then everything keeps changing, right? This is the other thing that I just, you know, I really love about what we do and about about our industry is like it, everything keeps changing, like, people keep expecting all of this stuff to just, you know, stabilize and normalize and it's, at some point, like, you know, it's like, people always come here, it's like, well, they don't have like electricity, right, like, at some point, it's just going to fade into the background and you're just going to use it, but nobody's going to talk about it anymore, and that never quite seems to happen, right?

And so the internet keeps changing, software keeps changing, technology keeps changing, and of course, you know, the impact, you know, we have a long discussion about the puts and takes on this, but like the impact that this technology is having on our world, you know, is just, is just expanding, you know, things are, things are just getting more dramatic, and so it, you know, at least from my standpoint, it still feels like we're at the beginning of a lot of this, and I think maybe other people have that, have that feeling also.

That's a really good point because it does seem that, you know, like, if you look at, like, corporate media, like news channels, right, like, you know what's going to be on certain channels, it's going to be very similar, what is 10 years ago, these people are shaking their fists at this group, these people shake this, this group.

But with the internet, there really is this sense of dynamism, and I was just that are wedding last, last week in a prominent author I was there with was telling is the agent that like, oh, there's too many podcasts out there, there's no space for another podcast, and I thought it was just so ridiculous because the internet there's always room for that next YouTuber, the next Twitter or the next son and so forth.

Let me ask this, I used to go co-authoring books for celebrities, and my editor gave me some of the best advice I ever had, he said when you're looking at books like this, the goal is to get the reader understand what it's like to be the protagonist, so let me ask you a few questions that vein, is your life basically like Shark Tank, are people constantly trying to pitch stupid ideas to you and you have to smile and nod.

No, so I would say it's the opposite, I have actually mixed feelings about Shark Tank, because I think it's great to have kind of it's great to kind of promote the idea of entrepreneurship, and it's great to kind of see, see people doing that, and I think it has cost a lot of people to think about being entrepreneurs who wouldn't have done that otherwise, but no, the dynamic is not like that, I'd say there's a bunch of things that are different.

The one is, we don't tend to get the raw pitch, it tends to be building relationships with people over a long periods of time, like usually by the time we work with somebody, usually at somebody we've known for years, or we've known a lot of people who have known them for years, and so we have some reason, a deep reason to believe that they're really good at what they do.

And then the other thing is, I don't think that I've learned over time the hard way is like at least in our industry like they're really there really aren't any bad ideas, like there are a lot of early ideas there are a lot of ideas where it's going to be like yeah they're going to pitch you the idea today it's going to happen 10 or 20 or 30 years from now, and for that entrepreneur that's the same thing is being wrong.

Right, because their company's not going to make it that if it takes 10 or 20 or 30 years or something to happen like that startup is not going to make it.

It's going to be some other company in the future that does it, but at least my experience is basically if you're talking to the smart people in the fields they're basically right all the time they're right about the things that will ultimately happen.

And I would even go so far as to argue like I think a big part of that is I think a lot of it is I think the ideas are just kind of obviously good ideas right there just like it's just it's just it's obviously a good idea for people to be able to communicate on you know communicate it's obviously good idea if people be able to broadcast you know do park like these.

People come up with reasons to argue against it it's obvious that there should be a form of digital money right that's just like.

It's just like an obvious thing in fact people have been talking about digital money for 30 40 years is one of these things that has this incredibly elaborate backstory you know it kind of took Bitcoin it took a technological breakthrough and Bitcoin had that happen but that that idea was not new nor was it crazy.

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