Marc Andreessen

If you show up and you're a professional and you're great to deal with and you're very productive and you add value in every engagement that you do, and if that's true for you as a VC and you're working with a founder and you're never friends and you just have a great working relationship and the company in the later years whatever sells or whatever and you never talk to each other again, I've seen that work many times and I think it's totally fine.

If you show up and you're a professional and you're great to deal with and you're very productive and you add value in every engagement that you do, and if that's true for you as a VC and you're working with a founder and you're never friends and you just have a great working relationship and the company in the later years whatever sells or whatever and you never talk to each other again, I've seen that work many times and I think it's totally fine.

There's nothing that we're missing today that we could solve by going public.

There's nothing that we're missing today that we could solve by going public.

By the way, it's also increasingly true of a lot of the companies that we both invest in.

By the way, it's also increasingly true of a lot of the companies that we both invest in.

And so I don't think so.

And so I don't think so.

I mean, I would never rule anything out.

I mean, I would never rule anything out.

Ben and I have run public companies before.

Ben and I have run public companies before.

Ben's been the CEO of a public company before.

Ben's been the CEO of a public company before.

and so you know we know what that entails my funny version of the story so when we first started a16z we went around we met with a lot of the top vcs at the time this is in 2009 2008 2009 and kind of pitched them on what we were doing and got a variety of very interesting feedback and some of them became very you know very helpful to us and and really helped us but um we got some very interesting feedback and one legendary vc told us at the time he said the thing you're going to hate the most about being a vc is you're going to hate you're going to hate the lps

and so you know we know what that entails my funny version of the story so when we first started a16z we went around we met with a lot of the top vcs at the time this is in 2009 2008 2009 and kind of pitched them on what we were doing and got a variety of very interesting feedback and some of them became very you know very helpful to us and and really helped us but um we got some very interesting feedback and one legendary vc told us at the time he said the thing you're going to hate the most about being a vc is you're going to hate you're going to hate the lps

They are just like the worst people in the world.

They are just like the worst people in the world.

And he gave us what we call the mushroom talk, which is he said, you need to treat LPs like mushrooms, which is you put them in a cardboard box, you put the lid on the cardboard box, you put the box under the bed, and you don't open it for two years.

And he gave us what we call the mushroom talk, which is he said, you need to treat LPs like mushrooms, which is you put them in a cardboard box, you put the lid on the cardboard box, you put the box under the bed, and you don't open it for two years.