Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: Can you say more about the influence your dad had on you? You mentioned that lesson of "nothing's fair" or "life isn't fair." Tell me about your dad.
· Ben Horowitz
[00:00:00] S1: He was what's known as a red diaper baby. My grandparents were communists. They went to secret meetings. They had cards. My grandfather was fired during the McCarthy era from being a junior high school teacher for being a communist. And he grew up a communist and he started out on the left. He was editor of a very famous New Left magazine called Ramparts Magazine, which he was editor of. And he was involved in the Black Panthers with Huey Newton and, you know, in the Oakland chapter, Eldridge Cleaver. Dropped out of politics and he reemerged eight years later on the right. He really understood the ills of communism and socialism, which helped me a lot. One of the things that he said to me that always stuck with me, he's like, "Son, go to the library. Pick any book on socialism. There's hundreds of books. And in that book, I guarantee you, you will find page upon page, chapter upon chapter of how to divide the wealth. You will not find a single sentence on how to create wealth." And I was like, "Oh, wow, that's not a very good system, is it?" I learned a lot about systems thinking from that. He wasn't this new age father. In the old days, your father, they wouldn't even talk to you until you got to be like 12. And you get these little snippets of wisdom. And one of the ones I actually put in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, but I had three kids. I was young and I remember it was like 102 degrees. The air conditioner was broken. The kids were going crazy. Like one of them poured a whole bottle of apple juice, like a gallon of apple juice into the rug and apple juice is steaming out of the carpet. But I'm just sitting there, I was looking like I was going to die. And my father looks at me and he goes, "Son, you know what's cheap?" I said, "What?" He goes, "Flowers are cheap." I said, "Okay." He said, "You know what's expensive?" I said, "No, what?" He said, "Divorce." He had been married four times. So he knew what he was talking about.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: As you look out today in the world, I'm curious what things are captivating you most and maybe even most inspiring you. You have such an interesting perch. You get to see so much.
· Ben Horowitz
[00:00:00] S1: What's going on in coding now is quite phenomenal. We kind of went through this period where, "Okay, AI can write code. Cool. Okay, you can vibe code stuff. A lot of security holes. Fine." But I think over the winter break, it turned a corner where really good programmers were going, "Whoa, this helps me. I just became 100 times more productive." And I can't remember any technology where, like, just all of a sudden you wake up and everything, the whole world just changed like that. That's happening on a pretty regular basis, I would say. We spent a bunch of time with people in Hollywood who are using AI. I think AI will help you make movies both better and at much lower cost, because you can shoot a scene and then have the AI do a variation of that scene that's very, very good. So you don't have to do – if you're an actress, you have to shoot a scene like 15 or 20 times or something. Wouldn't it be nice to shoot it three times and then you just take the pieces you like and make it what you want. It's a little underestimated as a tool for creatives, I think. That's true in music, too. I was a young person when hip-hop started and the huge criticism of, like, "This is not music. They're just taking music and they're remixing it and they're rapping over it and it's a bunch of bullshit. It's a novelty." It was postmodern art. And I think we're going to get into post-postmodern art with what people will be able to do with AI and music. And that was one of the most exciting times in music. The invention of the new art form is when it gets really exciting.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: What specific people have had the largest impact on you personally and how?
· Ben Horowitz
[00:00:00] S1: Nas is a very good friend of mine. He's definitely had a big impact. Just the lens at which he sees the world is so different and interesting for me. We're both very big fans of Rakim, who is kind of like the John Coltrane of rap. So Rakim, when his first big song was a song called My Melody. Nas and I are listening to My Melody. The first line is, "Turn up the bass, pull up a chair, hand out a cigar. I'm letting knowledge be born. My name's R." And so he puts it on, "Hands out a cigar," and he pauses it. And he goes, "Ben, why is he handing out a cigar?" And I go, "I don't know." Then he plays the next line, "I'm letting knowledge be born." He's like, "It's a birth, Ben. He's passing out cigars at the birth of knowledge." And I was like, "Oh, shit, I've listened to that song a thousand times. I never heard that." But I can't tell you how many times he sees or hears something that's there that I don't see. So having somebody that I can talk to who has just a completely different perspective of all things in life. And it was interesting. We did the Coinbase deal together. And he had called me like two weeks prior to us really seeing that because he wanted to learn about Bitcoin. So, you know, I explained to him how it worked. He was very interested. When I was talking to Chris Dixon, who was working on the deal, I was like, "Tell me about the guys." And he's like, "Well, you know, one of them, Fred, is really into hip-hop." I was like, "Okay." I brought Nas over to mine, I was like, "Have him come over to my house. There's a boxing match on Saturday." You know, I had Nas come over, and that's how we got that deal. But he's a big influence on me personally. I think he's one of the great storytellers of all time. Just a super genius on that.