Marc Andreessen - The Moment with Brian Koppelman
People who follow me know that I am a big fan of Marc Andreessen. He has made himself scarce in the media, so naturally, any interview/panel by him or article about him kindles my interest. Recently, he was in the podcast, The Moment with Brian Koppelman. I want to highlight a few parts, which were quite interesting for me:
Distribution is equally important as Creation. They say, content may be the king, but distribution is the kingdom, is my recent and important lesson. In Marc's quirky way he says: There are 7 billion people on planet earth who’s time is already allocated. You have to inject yourself into the world. Steve Jobs not only built a great phone, he knew how to put it out in most people's hands. This is an interesting point, as Marc's VC firm, a16z, is jokingly called as a media company that monetizes through venture capital.
Scenius. This is a new word referring to an old but important concept. A genius is not only intrinsic in one person, but is also a product of the environment. You got to be in the scene (the environment) to bring the best out of you. We may know Leonardo da Vinci, Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, Steve Jobs as geniuses but they were in the scene and knew how best to get their work out. So a genius using the network effect and being in the right scene is a scenius.
Systems Thinking. The emergent property of a system, which is more than the sum of its parts and being aware of this while building stuff and putting out is extremely crucial.
“Maybe we’re actually in the people business, as opposed to the idea business”. This is really a fun and contrarian way of looking at the VC business. Marc even quotes the paper from Arthur Rock saying: "Arthur says, he would have had better results if he never read a single business plan and only funded people based on their resumes"
