Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:15:39 · Marc Andreessen
[01:15:39] S0: Well, and there's two ways looking at that which is like, "Wow, that's really..." I mean, obviously that's really impressive that Claude Code was able to build Cowork in a week and a half. That's great. That's amazing. The other way to look at it is Cowork was developed in a week and a half. How much complexity could there be? How much of a barrier to entry can there be in something that was developed in a week and a half? And then again, it's this push and this pull thing where it's like, wow, it's incredibly functional, incredibly valuable, and people all over the world and every day now are like, "Wow, I can't believe what I can do with this. It's like the most magical product ever." But at the same time, it took a week and a half. And so every other model company, I'm sure, you'd have to expect, is sitting there being like, "Okay, obviously we need to build an Asian artist and then obviously we need to build a Cowork thing for regular people." I'm not even saying I know anything, but just obviously they're all going to do that. And so how defensible is that? In six months, and we've seen this happen before, is Claude Code going to get lapped the same way that GitHub Copilot got lapped? The history in the last three years has been everything that looks like it's like the fundamental breakthrough gets basically replicated and lapped very quickly. Many of the smartest people I know in the field, when I really talk to them, kind of get a couple drinks into them, they're like, "Yeah." One theory is there really aren't any secrets among the big labs. The big labs kind of all have the same information and they kind of have all the same knowledge and they lap each other on a regular basis, but there's not a lot of proprietary anything at this point. And then again, evidence of that is DeepSeek came out of left field and basically was like a re-implementation of a lot of the ideas under American big labs and had some original ideas of its own. But, wow, it wasn't that hard for some basically a hedge fund in China to do it, and so how much defensibility is there. But on the other side of it, you've got, wow, these big labs are now paying individual engineers like they're rock stars and they're incredibly bright and creative people.
01:17:33 · Marc Andreessen, Lenny Rachitsky
Maybe there's a dozen nascent ideas at any one of these labs that is actually going to be a huge breakthrough that's going to be hard to replicate. And so again, it's just like, I think we just need... I don't know, my view is I need to put a big discount on my forecasting ability on this one. For me, it's much less interesting to try to say, "Okay, as a consequence, industry structure in five years is going to be X, the big winner and the category is going to be company Y, the big product killer app is going to be Z." It's like, I don't think I can predict that. I think a much better use of my time is being very flexible and adaptable at a time like this. [01:18:07] S1: So with all this in mind, do you feel like there's something you're paying attention to more to help you decide, okay, this is where we want to place our bet, or is the answer essentially the strategy you guys have, which is place a lot of bets? You guys raised the largest fund in history. Is that the way you win in this world?
01:18:23 · Marc Andreessen
[01:18:23] S0: Yeah. I mean, for us, yeah. For us, we obviously have a very deliberate strategy. One way to think about this the Peter Thiel... You remember the Peter Thiel formulation of... he said, "There's a two by two, there's optimism and pessimism, and then there's determinant and, is it indeterminate, and indeterminate." And so he always argued that Silicon Valley is characterized by too much what he calls indeterminate optimism. What he meant by that is basically, I think the way he would describe it is an indeterminate optimist who thinks the world is going to be better but can't explain why. Some combination of things is going to happen to make the world be better even if we don't know what those things are. I think he at least historically would say that's basically... that risks at least being just wishful thinking or delusional thinking. What the world needs more is determinant optimists, which are people who are like, "No, the world is going to be better because I'm going to do this specific thing." He would classify, for example, Elon, he would sort of maybe say VCs are indeterminate optimists and then he would say Elon is the determinant optimist where it's like, no, I'm going to build the electric car, I'm going to do solar, and then I'm going to do Mars and these very concrete things. I think there's a lot to Peter's framework, but the way I would describe it is I think maybe if he and I disagree with part of that it would be I think the indeterminate optimism is a stronger phenomenon than at least I think he's historically represented it as, and I would put myself firmly in the indeterminate optimist category, and that's the strategy that we have at a16z which is... and the reason for that is hopefully it's not so much wishful thinking. It's more, no, the indeterminate optimism of venture capital or the indeterminate optimism of a16z or Silicon Valley is actually very specific which is there are these extremely bright and capable people, like Elon and many others, who are founders and kind of product creators. Each of those individual people is a determinant optimist. Each of them individually has a very strong view of what they're going to do, but the great virtue of the capitalist system, the great virtue of the American economy, the great virtue of Silicon Valley is we don't just have one of those and we don't just have 10 of those.
01:20:27 · Marc Andreessen, Lenny Rachitsky
We have 100 and a thousand and then 10,000 of those. The way to optimize the outcome is to have as many of those as possible be as good as possible, run as hard as possible. And then just the nature of the future is like we just don't know all the answers and that's okay. And then the right way to deal with that is to run as many experiments as possible and have as many smart people try to do as many interesting things as possible. And so, yeah, I would put myself firmly on the side of the indeterminate optimistic. [01:20:55] S1: I'm wondering if the answer to the question of what you look for now more and more is this determinant optimistic founder that has this massive ambition and is- ... [inaudible 01:21:00] Optimistic founder- [01:21:01] S0: Yeah. [01:21:02] S1: ... and has this massive ambition and is actually working on achieving it.
01:21:02 · Lenny Rachitsky, Marc Andreessen
[01:21:02] S1: ... and has this massive ambition and is actually working on achieving it. [01:21:06] S0: Yeah, yeah. No, that's right, that's right. I mean look, the founders need to be determinate optimists. They need to have a very specific plan. And look, the critique always... The critique from the founders is, "Oh UVCs have it easy, because you don't actually have to commit, right? You don't actually have to, like, make... You have to make the bed you lay in, you can, like, place multiple bets you can have. Whereas a portfolio, you should have a lot more sympathy for us as founders, because we only get to make the one bet." And there's truth to that. The kind of argument on that is the founders get to run their companies, we don't. So, we don't get to put our hand on the steering wheel. And so, the great virtue of being a determinant optimist is you actually get to single-mindedly execute against that goal. And look, in the long run, who does history remember? History remembers Henry Ford, right, not whoever was, whatever the seed investor who seeded Ford Motor Company, and 10 other car companies have failed. Right? And so, the determinant optimist is the founder of the company builder and the engineer, and these are the people who actually use the sign, and deserve 99.9999% of the credit. But you know, having said that, I do think there is a role for having some indeterminate optimists in the background, no, helping along the way, and helping keep the whole cycle going.
01:21:06 · Marc Andreessen, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:21:06] S0: Yeah, yeah. No, that's right, that's right. I mean look, the founders need to be determinate optimists. They need to have a very specific plan. And look, the critique always... The critique from the founders is, "Oh UVCs have it easy, because you don't actually have to commit, right? You don't actually have to, like, make... You have to make the bed you lay in, you can, like, place multiple bets you can have. Whereas a portfolio, you should have a lot more sympathy for us as founders, because we only get to make the one bet." And there's truth to that. The kind of argument on that is the founders get to run their companies, we don't. So, we don't get to put our hand on the steering wheel. And so, the great virtue of being a determinant optimist is you actually get to single-mindedly execute against that goal. And look, in the long run, who does history remember? History remembers Henry Ford, right, not whoever was, whatever the seed investor who seeded Ford Motor Company, and 10 other car companies have failed. Right? And so, the determinant optimist is the founder of the company builder and the engineer, and these are the people who actually use the sign, and deserve 99.9999% of the credit. But you know, having said that, I do think there is a role for having some indeterminate optimists in the background, no, helping along the way, and helping keep the whole cycle going. [01:22:18] S1: Do you think about AGI in shifting your investment thesis? Like, as we approach AGI and hit AGI, as an investor, how do you think about your investment thesis changing?