The New Media Playbook with Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz

Old media vs. new media

00:00Today's going to be a fun one. We're going to dive into all things new media. What is new media? What the new media team is doing here at A16Z, what we're focused on, where we're going in 2026. Really stoked to be making this happen. Ben had this quote which I think summarizes some of the some of the one of the main principles of of new media. I just want to, you know, read a small small part of it and then have you elaborate. Uh old media is defense-oriented and in new media offense is always better than defense. We've spent many years fretting about our results being leaked. Old media tries to please every audience. Old media is terrified of upsetting people and new media only cares about being

00:42interesting. When in doubt, flood the zone. >> Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like something I said. >> W- Why don't you share some of the tenets behind that idea and how you came to it? >> Yeah, so I actually it's interesting um it it's a really weird adjustment going from you know, I mean, I spent my whole career in old media or dealing with old media and now we're in new media. You know, kind of in the history of the firm we've been the the one thing that we really really really really defended against was basically leaked results. And uh the reason and it goes back to in the pretty early days of the firm, uh the New York Times got a leak of our results. And they they were very I mean, we were like a young

The leaked results crisis

01:34firm, so most of the funds were like a year old. Um and you know, venture capital firms don't have high returns in the first year cuz like nothing happens in the first year. It's not like a stock market type thing. And so, you know, that they missed or maybe it's the Wall Street Journal. I mean, one of the two, but they misinterpreted the results. Um you know, so they kind of said, "Well, the early funds were good cuz those had enough years to get kind of returns in them, but like fund three was terrible and like da da da da da and so forth." And there was no, um, you know, because old media was still powerful, it was very hard to combat it. You know, we put out statements and this and that and the other and blog posts

02:18but explaining like why they were wrong, um, but it didn't land and it was such a like a inside the firm it was such a big crisis that actually I'm pretty sure Balaji quit because he thought we were dead cuz the New York Times had just like ruined the whole firm with that uh article. Um, so it was like that kind of existential a threat. And so, you know, we were very oriented around like, "Okay, don't let anything out that could be misinterpreted or this or that cuz you can never correct it. It goes out there and you're never going to kind of come back from it." >> And and and say more about the the flood the zone concept in terms of of of why it works or or or you know, why and and why it's so different than uh than you

Flood the zone

03:04know, what happened in the past. >> Yeah, well, so in the past the traditionally it didn't count if it wasn't in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or like the Economist or CNN or like there were maybe eight channels that could say something and then whatever they said was permanent and that like once it was out there, it was very hard to deal with. And it would be top of Google results like the whole thing. Um, but now you know, like we can go on, Mark and I, if it we really had a problem could go on 30 podcasts, uh, all of which get a much bigger audience than any of the publications I talked about. Um, and just basically And we wouldn't have to talk about that. We could go talk about something else

03:57more interesting. Um, and erase that from everybody's memory very quickly. So, it's just you know, without commenting on what's a better world like the laws of physics are completely different in this world than the other world. And I I think to be effective uh, as a organization in marketing and media you have to like you you have to embrace the new world because you can't be half and half. The because the whole motion of the old world will kill you in the new world. And and vice versa. And so, you have to kind of commit to we're going to really care about what goes down through the old channels or we're not going to give a Um, sorry to use language and we're just going to you know, say interesting

04:44things and flood the zone. And uh, we're doing the latter by the way. >> There's a whole uh, history to this. But but basically like the the the whole idea that there's like a quote unquote corporate brand. Like the whole idea that there's like a corporate like trademark. And then the whole idea that there you like as a business you basically load everything into that into that into that thing. And that that thing you know, whether it's General Electric or International Business Machines or whatever. The you know, the idea that that thing is somehow abstracted away from the people involved. Um, and then that the people involved, you know, their main job is to try to kind of buff that thing. Which

Corporate brands vs. people

05:16kind of you know, led to this you know, you know, when we look at it is like it led to this like maybe your kind of reign of like everything being synthetic and plastic and boring, right? Where like the you know, we we Ben and I have had this experience for many many decades at this point. Um, it's just like you know, the the the job of a corporate CEO for a very long time was to get up on stage and just say absolutely nothing in any sort of public public event. Um, I I actually was on a board of the CEO who very firmly uh, believed this. Um, and uh, he literally would come off stage having having very deliberately said absolutely nothing and would have been thrilled. Um, because like he he had made no news of like mission mission

05:48accomplished, right? And anyway, so Eric, to your question, like basically I think the retrospective view on this what happened was basically in the past your communication channels were just like super narrow, right? And so and so how could you get a message through to the mass market or to your audience your to your customer base? Um, you could only do it by kind of sending in a message that was encoded into as few bits as possible, right? Cuz that was kind of your only shot because it was always limited by you know, TV broadcast airtime or it was limited by newspaper column inches or whatever. And so you just you had to kind of crystallize everything down to this kind of min minimal and sort of least

06:20offensive, you know, kind of possible position. But but it's always been a natural because as human beings like that it does like it it never felt right. Like, you know, it always felt like weird cuz it's like this, you know, corporation is like this weird other kind of alien thing. You know, it it always felt weird and uncomfortable and we and we just kind of got used to it and it just, you know, it turns out as as as our friend Mitt Romney famously said, corporations are people, too. Um, and right? And like poor Mitt. Yeah, he was using it in a different context. Uh, he he was not he was not calling to change in PR, but um but uh you know, for our purposes, um you know, like this is it's all about people. Like it's all

06:57about the decisions that people make. Like when when you know, when a when a big company or a government agency or a nonprofit or a venture firm or a startup is like making decisions and acting in the world, that's people. Like that you know, there's there there there are you know, there there are some set of people um who are sitting around making that decision. And I and I just think like and and then it's kind of you know, it's kind of this almost I don't know, like shock therapy or something where it's just like if the people who are actually making the calls actually like show up and talk on their own behalf and explain themselves and actually say what they think it like blows everybody's minds,

07:25right? It's just it's just, you know, it's it's the you know, it's the response people have to, you know, Elon and the response people have to, you know, certain other, you know, people who are now, you know, kind of very notable in the environment who are running large large things who are very public and vocal. It's just kind of this thing of like and it's just it's almost like this thing where it's like, well, you know, they can't say that. And it's like, well, wait a minute. Number one, they can say that, like, you know, they're allowed to. They're like an adult in the United States of America. Like, they're allowed to say, you know, whatever they want. Number one. Number two, like, how about they actually tell us what

07:50they think? Like, how about we hear directly from them so that we can actually understand what they're thinking and who they are, you know, and how they're processing reality and what the what their assumptions are. Um and and of course the the technological cost for this is just that, you know, that that narrow media funnel just got like completely blown to smithereens, right? In large part as a consequence of all the work that, you know, that we that, you know, all of us have done uh on this call over the last 30 years. And so, like, it it's just, you know, and you could kind of maybe say, you know, love it or hate it, like, the the the the the days of kind of this narrow channel narrowcasting and then what I would

08:19argue is just this like inherently deceptive practice um of abstracting things away from people. I you know, that that world is just clearly fading. Um and in the new world we're we're just going to hear direct from people. And I, you know, and look, I'm not a utopian and it's not going to be like 100% better, but I I think there's no question it's a big net improvement. >> Yeah, and by the way, you know, the other um thing that's really interesting in retrospect is the things that people got in trouble for, uh canceled for, fired for, etc. in the past that they said in the press were all just misinterpretations. So, they, you know, was somebody saying something and because it was so narrow and because you could never erase it and

Long form beats the sound bite

09:02because you could never come back and defend it because the audience would be, you know, a thousandth of the size on the defense. You know, people just it was all it wasn't I said what I thought and people thought I was a horrible person. It was I said something, it got misinterpreted, and people thought I was a horrible person. So, now in this world where like, you know, people say much more like aggressive things, I would just say in terms of, you know, not being mainstream thinking, but have room to explain it. Um they that that rarely happens anymore. So, like, I mean, everything from like Howard Dean to you know, you name it. Like, in today's world, that that would be nothing. Um, but in that world, because there was no

09:48chance to say, "Well, like, this is what happened." Um, you know, like, there there were just thousands of times when people have gotten to incredible trouble for things that they said that were misinterpreted uh that they could not correct. >> Yeah. And and Eric, you know, Ben Ben gave me good advice, you know, actually before you came on board, which I I'm trying my best to stick to, although I will tell you it is a significant personal challenge. >> Yeah. >> Um, again, was not eating an entire box of Oreos and drinking an entire bottle of scotch every night, both of which I'm also trying not to do. Um, so, cuz we live in a healthy world now. So, um, uh less self-destructive world. So, um, you know, Ben Ben Ben pointed out that

10:29like the see the what Ben just said basically applies into the new world actually just as much as the old world in in the sense of like when every time I've gotten myself in a like serious trouble like in public over the last decade, it's because I tweeted something. Um, and I mean, you know, everybody on here probably knows how much I love Twitter and like it's great to be able to rip off the 100, you know, and I was really good at like compressing something super controversial in 140 characters and then really letting it rip with 280 characters. But Ben pointed out like, "Look, every time every time somebody gets mad at you, you know, every just gets like completely ripped at you over over that, basically what's

10:55happened is it's out of context." Um, and so what what Ben said is, "Look, just say everything that you think, but say it on a podcast. Right? Say say it in the context of an hour and a half discussion so that you can whatever it is, you've surrounded it with the full explanation, or say it in the form of an essay where you've like fully articulated your argument and and it's fully in context." Um, and and just observationally, like, it in in not just playing to myself, but just more broadly, it's actually interesting if you watch this to this day, when when public figures get blown to smithereens, it's almost always because of something that's basically too short. Um, when people actually do the full

11:25long long-form explanation of what they think, even if it's on a highly controver you know, even if it's imputed to be highly controversial, whatever, if it's the full explanation, it is actually harder to blow people up. And again and again, you could kind of say it's actually really funny. You know, when I was a kid, like, you know, the moral panic was around television, right? Kind of pre pre the internet. And the moral panic in tele- a lot of moral panic in television always was around the concept of sound bites, which is you only ever get to hear like 5 seconds of what anybody's thoughts are. Right? And somehow television is now the gold standard, you know, for information transmission. The internet's

11:52evil. Like somehow it all flipped. But anyway, the point being is like the internet gives us the chance to not only express ourselves like in short form. The internet specifically gives us the chance to express ourselves in long form. Right? And fully explain things. And that's that's just so different. Like the the the the hour hour and a half two hour discussion with somebody who's like deeply into something and is really involved in something. Like yeah, I mean we all experience this as consumers. Like it's just so much better than the than the 30-second bit that, you know, might have been on the NBC Nightly News 30 years ago. >> And by the way, you know, the long form of almost anything that's

12:26interesting, complex, a systems problem, um which is most everything in politics and in technology, you need the long form. There is no sound bite that gives you any information. Um and so you have to have uh a long conversation. So it is actually much better. Or is it really? As far as thing But there's always that thing with sugar, you know, using bones or whatever to be whiter, that kind of thing. >> I'm going to eat a I'm going to eat a gigantic package of Oreos tonight. Deborah's on her. I really appreciate it. >> The Oh yeah, it's We've also talked about, you know, media training in the past. Used to be around sort of, you know, how to stay out of trouble, this kind of thing. And that now you you

The Joe Rogan CEO

13:11know, if you're a CEO, you want to be, you know, something uh you know, Jordi from TV personality's concept of a Joe Rogan CEO. I mean someone interesting enough to go on Joe Rogan for three hours, you know, someone like an Alex Karp, someone like a Palmer Lucky, right? And um is in And the flip side of that is that uh you know, if you're interesting, you know, if you're powerful, you're you're it's because you're interesting. Uh cuz that's what that's what people That's what people want to work for. It's you know, people want to be customers of. It's people want to invest in. Um and if you're powerful and interesting, you're going to be controversial. And and and that's something that you guys have also

13:42helped me get more more more accustomed to is like, "Hey, we we you know, this is the big leagues. You know, and there are people like who are going to be mad at what we're doing. And and that is that that's a In some ways, that's a good thing. That's That's evidence of our of our power and and our interestingness." >> Yeah, no, I think that's right. And I think it you know, it's hard th- th- this is another kind of crossover between the old world and the new world cuz if you're a corporate brand, then you know, you try and keep all the dust off the brand and and, you know, try and be uh something that nobody hates. Uh I guess for lack of a better word. And then, you know, I think in today's world,

14:21to be good at marketing, you've got to be interesting. To be interesting If you're interesting and powerful, there are going to be a lot of people who don't like you. Um and that's like that's a good thing. Um and I was very happy to see by the way the infrared piece cuz we can get like a nice piece on like a subsection of the firm, but nobody's ever going to write like a really nice thing about the law firm. Um I think that you know, also uh it's a This whole new world is much better for founder CEOs because to be a founder, you have to have an original idea. And original ideas are interesting by nature. I think that professional CEOs um often get to that position through very careful politicking, which uh kind of is

15:08the opposite where you want to be uncontroversial. Like nobody can ding you right as you get to them thing. And you know, Mark and I have uh been on, you know, Mark much more than me, but been on large boards. Where on the large boards, you know, when it comes to picking the professional CEO they're all about what's not wrong with him. Not what's right with him. Or what's right with her. And so, you get these very vanilla characters who definitely could not go on Joe Rogan. And that, you know, is all to our advantage cuz we basically deal almost entirely with founder CEOs. >> I want to uh transition to one more structural mechanic cuz it's a segue into how we've built our team a little bit. And it's um this uh market system

15:51of McLuhan quote, you know, if it's on TV, it's a TV show. Um and just talk about how the different formats yield different different types of content. Um Do you want to talk about it? >> Okay. You you want you you want me to do it? You want me to do it? >> Yeah, yeah. >> Okay. All right. Okay. This is the thing. Okay. So, yeah, Marshall McLuhan was the great media theorist of the of the TV era. And actually, his his work is actually held up really well. And it's it's it's it's worth reading. Um but uh he he had the he had this this thing that Eric just said. He said, "If if it's on TV, it's a television show." Um In other words, like basically the the the you know, as he as he said, as he said, "The medium is the message." Um

McLuhan and the viral post

16:24basically, what he said is like, "Look, like TV TV is a specific kind of technology. It's a specific kind of media technology." Um and basically, like all of the questions around TV are like, you know, is it a is you know, it's it's all basically just like the only real parameter is length. Like, is it a 3-minute news segment? Is it a 20-minute sitcom? Is it a 40-minute drama? Like, there there there's very little kind of variation like what you can do cuz it's just a linear you know, it's just a straight you know, just you know, broadcast video. You know, broadcast video. And so, he said, you know, basically, the medium in its first you know, 10 or 20 years evolved you know, basically, the concept of what we

16:54now know to be a television show, which is basically either a comedy or a drama or or combination of the both. And it's basically a little story. And it's a little story that plays out over 20 to 40 minutes. And it kind of has to be a self-contained story cuz you don't know when people are going to watch it. And you know, now they're doing you know, now they're doing you know, streaming. They're doing serial stories. But you know, television shows properly generally were you know, where everything was a one-off. You can watch episodes out of order. And so, there's like there the there these very like self-contained little basically, you know, plays, little stage plays broadcast on video and then there there

17:21there are these self-contained little stories and then and then they need to kind of appeal to emotion cuz it's like an emotional medium. Uh right, it's not like an information dense medium. It's a, you know, it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a medium that literally put somebody in your living room. Um and so the basically it's it's like these little morality plays, right? Where there's and there's got to be like good guys and bad guys and kind of a very simplistic story and there's like a few, you know, a few mild plot twists and then everything kind of wraps up at the end. And he And he said sort of the consequence to that is like everything on television has to be a television show and that includes everything in the

17:48real world that gets talked about on television has to be turned into a television show. Right? And and and this is kind of, you know, the running joke of like following, you know, I don't know whatever current events or politics on TV right now, which is you you kind of a running joke, which is you know, on on either party, which is just kind of like, "Oh, you know, that you know, you know, oh, it's you know, it's time for the next season. Oh, you know, this is the new, you know, main plot that's happening and then this is the new secondary plot that's happening." And if you watch CNN every night, you know, they're just kind of, you know, they're kind of just playing with these stories you know, kind of

18:14over time the way that a the way that a soap opera might or that a, you know, that a that a that a that a that a drama might or occasionally, you know, how comedy might. And so so basically we we've just like lived in a world where it just seems like everything's a TV show. Um and it's and it's a world where like all the edges are sanded off and everything is kind of very smooth and professional and everything is kind of within this very narrow band of what can be put into these kind of little little morality plays. Okay, so Marshall McLuhan unfortunately is long dead, but I I assert that if he were alive today, he would say, "If it's if it's on the internet, it's a viral internet post." Right? So like what's the native medium

18:45of the internet? Like what's the thing that what's the form of media on the internet that like rips and dominates? And it's clearly the viral post, right? It's it's the viral you know, tweet, it's the viral Tik Tok, it's the viral Instagram, right? It's the it's the it's the viral Facebook post, it's the viral Substack, it's the viral YouTube video. Like it's very clearly the post and specifically it's the viral post. Like it's it it's the one that really rips. And so so basically, you're right, right. So my theory is, if it's on on internet, everything is a viral post. And then you just ask yourself two questions, which is like, okay, what's the characteristic of a viral post? And and like nine times

19:17out of 10 it's something that like really gets people cranked up, right? Like on whatever topic, right? It might be on whatever your favorite pop star said yesterday or it might be on whatever, you know, a politician said or it might be on whatever, you know, a business leader said or whatever, but like it's something that like causes people to like flip out, right? You know, you know, and maybe some people flip out positively, some people flip out negatively. Something caused people to flip out. And then the other thing with viral posts that's really interesting is you can actually observe this in the data. They have this really rapid rise. Like they tend to if if they're going to take off, they tend to

19:46take off within like 12 hours. And then they spike like crazy as everybody retweets or reposts and you know, emails it around and talks about it. And then there's basically this like half-life fall off where like within 24 it's like 12 hours up and then it's like 20 24 hours down. And then 36 hours later it's like gone from our collective memory. And the reason is because another one has popped up and has taken off instead. And if you kind of take a step back and kind of chart the media landscape that we've all been living in for the last whatever, you know, for sure 5 years, but you know, you could even say probably 10 years. What what we've learned through is just literally just like thousands of cycles

20:18of viral posts. Um okay, is you know, is this good or bad or something in the middle? You can have a big debate about that. Um you know, I would argue it's it's its own form of emotionality, right? It's it's basically things that spike the cortisol and so that, you know, it's sort of things that are controversial. And so it leans into that. But you know, the other side is it's things that are interesting, right? And then the other part is, you know, the the people get a vote of what goes viral, right? It's not just up to a news producer what what shows up on TV. So there there there's that aspect to it. Um another aspect to it, by the way, is that stories come and go much more quickly now, right? And so

20:47there will be some thing that pops and it's like the world's biggest crisis in whatever sector it's talking about and it's just like everybody in the world has an opinion. This is where I I was using a while back the the the meme of the current thing. Like it's the current thing. Everybody has to have an opinion on the current thing. It's the most important thing in the world. And then 24 hours later it's like it never happened because something else, right, has become the current thing. And then that leads to, you know, the new the new version of the old time on a strategy of getting through media crisis, which is like just like basically make sure something else, you know, becomes the new viral post.

21:17You know, gets get something else elevated into that thing. So there you know, there's there's there's there's this way to kind of kind of deal with these things. But But anyway, I just think like as long as the internet is the medium of choice, we're going to live in a world in which this is what it you know, this is the cycle now. It's like a 24-36 hour cycle. By the way, the traditional media in the former newspapers and television, like at least the way I read them, is they're basically covering whatever was the viral post like yesterday or a week ago. Right? And so right and so they're being driven by the internet viral post, which is which is you know, which is why I think that you know, that the internet

21:47viral post is is the higher order thing. And and I also think like that that's not going to change. Like they the whole long thing I could do on that, but like they literally if you're a television if you're a television producer or if you're a news editor or whatever, like you you can't possibly move your organization fast enough to stay ahead of these cycles. And so what you end up doing is you end up chasing them. And and that's basically the role of mainstream media for the rest of our life is just going to be to follow the internet viral post. >> Yeah, I never saw a funny joke on the Daily Show years ago where they were talking to the newspaper guy and he said, "Why do you call it news? You

22:15should call it olds." >> That's good. Um >> He It was he was interviewing at the time the managing editor of the New York Times. And he was in his office. And the New York Times, you know, was expecting to get this glowing coverage on the Daily Show. And whoever it was shows up in the office and says says what Benja said. And the guy and the editor is just like completely confused. Like he clearly has no idea what the Daily Show guy is talking about. And and he's like, "Well, like what do you mean?" And he's like he points to there's like a pile of literally physical newspapers on the guy's desk. And he says like, "Look, it's it's all old news." And he says like, "No, no, it's today's paper." And

22:45he's like, "No, no, it's yesterday's paper. Like I already know everything that's in that." Like you know, and so yeah, and and like it's just basically like again, what do they have they're very proud of this. They have their editorial process, they have their publication process. Like they they multi-layer you know, bureaucratic mechanism for you know, all all the news that's fit to print. Like, you know, it's at least a 24-hour cycle to figure that out. And I mean, and you know, 24 hours later the internet has already moved on from whatever the last thing was. And so, it's just it's it's a it's a it's another example of the dog chasing the car, except now they have to chase it like every single day, which

Platform strategy and X

23:15might be why they're so upset all the time. >> Yeah, they are pissed. >> You know, we really made sure to hire people who really understand the platform, not just how the platform works technically, but also the the vibe and the taste and the and the spirit of of of the platform. And and we've gone all in to start um on on X because that those are just where the most interesting conversations are happening and where where people are the most plugged in. >> And and and the way I think of it first >> Almost of tech world is on X, you know, like it or not. Like our world lives on X um just because that's also where all the both the kind of AI researchers and the AI influencers and the crypto influence

23:55and like like everybody in our world lives there uh you know, at least in part. So, we can't avoid it even if we didn't like it. But we love it. >> Were you about to say something, Mark? >> Oh, yeah. No, I was just going to say yeah, I know like what Ben said is yeah, so like this is a I posted a link to a book called The True Believer that kind of talk talks about this is, you know, the the old characterization is elites and masses, which is a little bit 20th century, but yeah, like the the like people who are spending 24 hours a day trying to understand, you know, basically in these domains like AI or you know, politics or whatever, like they they're on X. Like that and that and that's the that that that's not the

24:29mass market. Like that's not most of humanity, but like that's most of the people who are like basically in the what you might I don't know what you want to call like knowledge synthesis business or whatever where they're trying to like understand and formulate policies on things and and so forth. Um obvious obviously it's also true that TikTok and Instagram, you know, have just like much more reach. Like they're you know, they're just much bigger um you know, they they reach the mass kind of global audience um more. And so, they you know, they certainly they certainly play a role. But if if you're on the leading edge of a field like I, you know, it's it's very rare that the whatever is kind of the

24:56lead, you know, kind of the edge of that process of kind of idea formation, propagation, people, you know, in positions of of authority kind of figuring out what they think. It's That's almost all entirely on us. >> By the way, this is another huge difference between old media and new media. So, if you come from old media world, there's just reach. >> Yeah. >> Right. Like the targets, you know, if you were going for a target audience, um there was no real easy way to do it on I mean, you know, like maybe like if you were sports, you'd be in Sports Illustrated whatever, but like there wasn't really a way to do it. Um but now with podcasts and and blogs and X and so forth, you can go to an exact audience.

25:39You can really get down to an extremely narrow target in new media world. And, you know, for us that's great cuz the audience our audience is founders, um not the world, uh and so, you know, having a way to talk to 90% of founders as opposed to 4% of the world is just a much better thing for us. >> Yeah. The the two two more structural things that Mark I want you to explain and then I want to you present some some some slides, you know, give some detail about what we're doing that that that relate to what I'm about to say. One is I want you to explain the the Boyd um loop and and why, you know, that that makes Twitter and and social media so much more powerful in terms of, you know, forming consensus. Um and then the

The OODA loop

26:24other is the difference between written and oral culture and and and what's prioritized um in you know, as we transition to oral. >> Yeah. Okay, so these are both long topics and so I'll try to do the the CliffNotes version. Um yeah, so um I'll I'll I'll link to the book on this, but in in in in military theory there there's this concept called maneuver warfare, which basically just says like speed speed wins. Like speed speed wins as compared to map map mass winning. Uh speed wins. And so, if if you if you believe that, then there's basically this frame there's this framework called called the OODA loop, uh OODA loop, uh which originally was developed for uh fighter pilots and then later for for

26:57broader military strategy. Um and the OODA loop what what OODA stands for is an acronym um it stands for observe, orient, decide, act. Um and so it's basically the decision-making cycle, right? And so and observe is like view the outside world, orient is like figure out where you are in respect to the outside world. Um decide, of course, decide what to do, act uh act and and basically what this guy Boyd who came up with this idea said was like any military opera- any fighter pilot, any military operation, any, you know, basketball player, any um you know, company, any government um um basically goes through a a decision-making cycle that's like that in order to make decisions. We just talked about the New

27:36York Times has their own OODA loop. It's like 24 hours to go through their process. Um uh right? And so um and so um basically what he said is like if if speed is the thing that matters, then the person who gets through that cycle the fastest is the one who's going to win. But he said, "There's a second-order thing that happens." So one is just like is your OODA loop faster than the than the other guys? So so that's one question. But he said the other thing that can happen is if if you if you can have a sustainably faster OODA loop processing cycle than the next guy, um then if you think about what happens like let's say it takes, you know, you whatever, you know, an hour to figure something out, it takes the other

28:09guy 2 hours to figure something out. Uh think about what happens is like okay, you start out on even playing field. Um you both start your your your your decision-making cycles. Um you operate you you make your decision within an hour. The other guy is still let's say is inside his own OODA loop when you make your decision, right? And so you make your decision, you act within an hour. He's only halfway through his process. He now has to start his process over, right? Cuz cuz you've changed the landscape, you've changed the parameters of what's going on. So he now has to go back and re-observe and reorient and start over, right? And then and then of course project forward. It's like okay, then you decide again within an hour and

28:41then by the time he gets And again, he gets halfway through his process, he gets interrupted. Um he has to go back. And so what he says is if you if you can be sustainably faster at running your decision loop, you can get inside the other guy's loop in a in a systematic and perpetual way and and basically the result of that is psychological breakdown. Uh basically you you destroy the psychology of the side because they just simply they they just can no longer operate or function at all. They just like basically go into complete panic. Nothing seems to make sense. They can never get oriented. They can never make decisions. They can never They become completely defensive, completely responsive. You completely dominate, you

29:11know, basically the playing field. Um and he you know, he was he was a famous fighter pilot. He was a famous fighter pilot called 15-second Boyd because he his claim was which was true is he could beat any other fighter pilot in a dogfight within 15 seconds using this method. And so it's basically this this this premium on speed and quality of execution such that you are actually causing the other side to have a have a psychological break. Um by the way, like again, going back to the like I think this is also a big explanation for what's happened to traditional media. The The fact that the internet moves events so much faster and the sort of internet collective crowd decides what's important so much faster

29:44causes all the people who were television producers or news editors who thought that they were in charge of the narrative to just basically have a psychological breakdown. Like how how how can you even function when the internet is just basically cycling much faster than you could. And I think this by the way, the same is true of companies. You know, this is what Elon does, you know, to his competitors like in the defense, you know, in the aerospace industry. This is what Anduril's now doing in companies in the defense industry. You know, this quite frankly is what we try to do, you know, to our competitors in the venture industry. Um so yeah, so that now to do that you have to be willing to commit to being

30:11fast, right? Um and so you you can't you can't have long bureaucratic processes. You can't have, you know, a you know, a risk-averse posture. You can't, you know, stress, you know, you you need enough time to make the decision properly. Um you know, but you you can't you can't run the fully deliberate, um you know, strategy that a lot of companies used to have in the past where it was days to weeks to months to figure out, you know, what they were going to say about something. Um by the way, in in politics they adapted to this probably 30 years ago uh with the concept of the war room. Um and there's a famous documentary in the Clinton campaign in I think in '88 uh or the called the war room where they

30:42they show this and now now they call it rapid response and if you if you if you go to basically any any political operation on the internet right now, um, you know, they'll have an X account that's literally they call it like rapid response. So it's like the actually Department of War has one just as example. Department of War rapid response and it's literally like they're responding in real time to stuff that's happening cuz they want to stay inside, um, you know, everybody else's Udal Loop. Um, yeah, okay. So there's that and then yeah, the the the oral versus written thing is it's it it would probably take an hour to kind of go through the whole thing, but yeah, the the longest short of it is there's basically

Oral vs. written culture

31:12in sort of human culture there's kind of two ways to communicate. There's two fundamental modes. There's oral communication, there's written communication. You know, oral communication, you know, is the original form and you can think about it literally as like people around a campfire telling stories, singing songs, you know, reciting poetry. Um, you can think about written communication would be, you know, kind of famously the book, um, or the scientific journal article, right, or the math equation, um, or the business plan, right? Um, you know, you know, a a written artifact. Um, and then basically the characteristic of a a reality or oral communication is it's it's sort of inherently emotion first,

31:45um, right? Cuz it's it's, you know, literally, you know, live interactions with another person. Um, the characteristic of written communication is sort of abstraction, you know, and you know, hopefully logic, the scientific method, you know, intellectual rigor, analytical rigor. Um, it it it used to be the case that you could kind of really divide these, you know, like in traditional mass media it used to be the case you could say that like newspapers and magazines were written and so they would be like more calmer and more dispassionate. You could say, you know, television was oral, right? It was people literally people talking and so it was going to be much more emotional and hot-headed. You know,

32:16basically like, you know, that that that's all broken down cuz of everything we've talked about. Um, but the modern version of that is like the internet. Like, okay, is the internet an oral culture or written culture? And it turns out the answer is the internet's both cuz the internet is everything, right? It it supports every kind of media. Um, and so a YouTube video, I will say for sure a short form Tik Tok or Instagram reel for sure is oral culture. Like it's it's something short and bursty and emotional and and and interpersonal and it's experience. Um a long-form Substack post is for sure written culture. Uh but then things get more complicated because a short tweet, even though it's written, is actually an oral culture

32:51thing, right? Because the fact that it's short means it has to be like this again this sort of this burst of of of of of sort of say triggering emotionality uh in order to go viral. So so actually tweets, I would say are oral culture even though they look written. And then long-form podcasts are actually written culture even though they look oral, right? Cuz if you're going to talk about something for 3 hours, like that's necessarily something where you're kind of getting into abstractions in depth, you know, beyond just kind of a flash moment of emotion. Um and so the internet lets you kind of play with these formats and and and the kind of impact that you want to have um in a way that, you know, in in the past was kind

33:22of determined by exactly fixed which fixed media you were in. Uh and and and look, we we all live this. Like if you want to have the internet experience of like doomscrolling and getting really pissed off at the world, like you go on TikTok and X and you can do that. If you want to have like learn a lot of stuff, you can go on Substack and long-form YouTube podcasts and you can live in that world and like you can like, you know, raise your IQ a point a day like it you know, it's absolutely amazing. And so there is a choose your own adventure aspect to it. Um and um and then of course, you know, we you know, firms like ours you know, need to think hard about how we communicate because of of the differences.

33:52>> I I love that as a segue cuz it just emphasizes how different every platform is and it's not, you know, a lot of people or companies will just, you know, have one idea and then cross-post it, you know, across every platform, but it doesn't fully appreciate um you know, what that platform is built for and what that platform rewards. And so for every platform that we have, we have a, you know, with Substack, podcast, Instagram, you know, uh X, YouTube, etc., we have expert running it who is obsessed with with that with that medium. Uh you know, on Instagram we're up 35% you know, month over month right now. We have this guy Hero who's uh who's 18 years old and has been, you know, grew up on on Instagram and and

a16z new media products

34:34knows it like the the back of his hand um and and and that really matters. That makes a difference. And and so with with that as a segue, I want to do a share just a few slides that just show um a little bit about what we've what we've done so far. Second. So, what we're you know, really trying to do is is is king make our companies, right? Is is is give them such a a superpower in terms of getting their message out, in terms of reaching their customers, in terms of reaching their their talent. You know, the superpower that companies like Anduril have to punch way above their their weight class and and and other brands you know, wish that they they had that level of of of resonance, that level of reach. We're we're we're you

35:18know, trying to give them those superpowers and we do that by by building our own channels, our own you know, media empire across platforms. We do that by making sure that we know everybody else who's got those My screen paused for some reason. Okay, screen share. But everybody else who's got those powers of distribution and and having great relationships with them. Um And then also by just you know, making sure that we have the expertise to be able to deploy to our companies as well. You know, Lulu put this put this well, you know, that people don't really invest enough in in in people running these these platforms and you know, we've really spent a lot of time recruiting the the right expert talent to to do it. So, I'm

36:03I'm I'm stoked because now that we've had them build our platforms, we're going to deploy them to to work on behalf of our companies. And so, we're we're you know, Kaster from Applied Intuition, you know, he's he's always been I was an angel in Kaster's world so known for a while and he's always been complaining of like, "Hey, you know, why are we not valued more? Or why do we not have more resonance? Why do people you know, why why is everyone when about other companies not not our company given how good we are. And I've I'm Is it Kasser, you know, you've never tweeted in your life. How do you expect to have tremendous tremendous mind share? And he he finally, you know, thanks to a lot of pushing that that we did, bit the

36:38bullet. And his first tweet got like 4,000 likes. And you know, the first product we have, I'll get to it in a second, was this launch as a service. Um the second one is going to be this this founder go-direct motion. You know, we're working with Kasser, we're working with Garrett from Flock Safety. You know, that that's a heroic company that should be at the stature of a Anduril as well. And and I really helped them build that machine. So, speaking of the launch as a service offering, this was, you know, inspired early on I was asking, you know, some of the GPs, "Hey, what would Where could we make the biggest difference? Like, what what new product should should we have?" And you know, Cyrus said, "If we could

37:11get guarantee a viral announcement, you know, I I I I think that'd be a super power for us." So, so we built out this this launch as a service. Um you know, everything soup to nuts from from, you know, all the all the social media copy, the messaging, the um you know, the the the rollout. We we created these custom videos. You know, we we hired Richard, another 18-year-old who uh you know, we convinced him to go straight from high school to the MBA, i.e., not go to college, or at least not right now. And um he uh he had previously done the Cruelty video. Uh and um and uh the browser-based video. And he's just got this, you know, phenomenal um taste for for what really does well. And so, we we built this

37:51video team, Richard, Ben, you know, Henry, you know, has really led this led this product. And and you could see the the views here. It's it's it's just done phenomenally well. Um you know, millions and millions of views for for our companies. We've now scaled up this offering to be to to offer it to to all of our companies. And um that that's our first product. After working with companies, companies were saying, "Hey, you know, how do I hire people like that?" And and thus the new media fellowship was born to to help us hire them, but also help help our companies hire them. And so, uh because, you know, there's this sweet spot where you need to be online enough to really know the the the have taste

38:29and and have sensibility and understand these new platforms, but um you need also need to be functioning enough and professional enough to work at one of these companies. And and there's not many people can can can do both. And so, we've really um you know, tried to create this this uh this program to be able to identify these people and then just give them a little bit more sort of technical know-how. And so, our first fellowship uh we you know, 2,000 applications, we picked 65 people. We think we think they're incredible. Um we two hires from us came came from that so so far. Um and we think this is going to be a franchise um to come. And and and the other part of it I'll just leave is um you know, I think we were really

39:15popularizing this term new media. Seeing a number of people with, you know, new media JDs. They they want a head of new media. They they're they're they're looking for that. And I think we're uh sort of in in the way that we popularized American Dynamism and other people have American Dynamism practices, um we're starting to see that with with with Newbie. And so, it's cool to to see our thought leadership there. Um and uh you know, more to uh more more to come. So so yeah, those are the things I'll I'll leave you with in our our our presentation. The um you know, our our channels are are up um tremendously and we're going to continue to to invest in them. We um we've got this portfolio offering launch as a

39:54service. We're we're, you know, now launching our go direct motion and really helping our our CEOs and and companies do that. It has to come from the CEO. So, every engagement we do, the CEO is is tremendously engaged. Um and then we're really building out this this new media category creation, this new media talent base for for us cuz we're continuing to hire, um but then also our our our our our our >> Yeah, so Ben, any closing thoughts? >> I'm I would just say that I you know, particularly if you've spent time in uh the prior media regime, um you know, of old media. You know, you really have to rethink every instinct that you have cuz it's it's one of the weirdest things where all your instincts

Closing thoughts and comments

40:41are wrong. I mean, we're actually experiencing a little bit of this in AI, too, which you know, Martin wrote a great post on, which is like in the old world of software, the one thing you knew is you couldn't throw money at a problem. And now you can throw money at a problem. And so like you don't even realize how much of your thinking is affected by that old rule. Um and you know, I would say this is that in spades where like every single instinct you have is incorrect if you're in this world, and you just have to let it all go. And this is why you know, this is people lament, "Oh, like the right wing built this big podcast network and blah blah." That's not what happened. What happened is Trump just understood new media. For

41:27whatever I don't know why he did cuz he's so old and he's been in old media the whole time. But like he just rolled right into it and you know, not at a technological level, but as a media. Uh as a medium. And I think that you know, we've got to do that. We have to understand uh and and we have to kind of play by the new rules. >> Uh all my favorite comedians, podcasters, etc. always tell their guests, "Don't read the comments." Uh what do you guys think? Do the manic Reddit posters drive you nuts? I have not dived into our podcast comment section, but I have seen A16Z rage on Reddit. Not surprising. Uh for what it's worth, every tiny little conference I've been at while at A16Z has always had an A16Z fanboy

42:09raving about our podcast. Um yeah, so Eric, read the contents or read the comments, don't read the comments. >> Uh, don't read the comments if they're going to affect what you say. Um, it's it's kind of like the Yelp problem, you know, people who care enough to post either either absolutely love it or absolutely hate it, and we we've definitely got at this point I I I it doesn't affect me, so I I read the comments. But, uh, you know, I um I well, you know, and Mark and Ben have helped me not not get too concerned about some of the some of the commentary on Twitter by, you know, certain anonymous, uh, Twitter posters who who, you know, raging in their basements, et cetera. But, yeah, in short, don't read the

42:50comments. >> Yeah, so I'll just I'll I'll just maybe close on on on on two things. So, one is um Uh, there's a long history of this, and so, if you read any sort of biography or autobiography of any sort of professional author, you know, um Uh, you know, who writes writes books for a living, like 100% of the time at some point they will tell you, "Oh, the one thing I never do is read read read the read the critics, right? I never read the reviews." Um, and then and then they'll say, "Well, actually, no, that's not true. I always read the reviews." Cuz I know I shouldn't, right? Like, I know I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't because like critics, like by definition, are like, you know, basically bitter, you know, bitter

43:26people, um, you know, who aren't who aren't writing novels or whatever. And so, of course they're going to be mad. Um, and and I know I shouldn't read. I know it's very bad for me. I know it's going to really screw me up. Um, and then I I try, and then it's like a magnetic pull. I I always end up reading them, you know, cuz it's like 3:00 in the morning, and I can't resist, and then I always end up getting mad. Um, and so there there, you know, there is this push. And and it used to be, right, only professional authors or professional filmmakers or whatever had critics. Right? Reviews. And now, basically, right, the entire the entire world is a critic. And so, I I think we all we all we all we all kind of have

43:55that. It's it's a little bit of a it's a little bit of a push and a pull. Um, and so, um, that is a that is a little bit a little bit difficult. Um You know, I will say I I think maybe a thing to kind of bear in mind, Um, I couldn't resist. I posted a link to it another book on this topic with it has a great title called Kill All Normies. Um, and it's this this book actually from like a decade ago that talked about like this kind of very angry internet culture, you know, the kind of developed after the 2000s. Um, and um, because by the way, the internet was not always like this. Like in the in the very very early days the internet was so hard to get on to that the only people who were on the internet were like basically

44:30super basically like smart super successful people. >> Yeah, newsgroups were really good then. >> Yeah, yeah, like the pre-1993 newsgroups were like utopian. Um, and then and then and then sort of post-1993 things started going sideways and then things start that the modern kind of caustic internet culture really developed in the in the 2000s and 2010s. Um, but but basically like it it actually turns out there's like a a genealogy to it and it actually turns out like a lot of it is literally literally it's it's like Call of Duty lobbies um, for online gaming. So it's like literally like online gaming lobbies cuz like when the Xbox and the PlayStation, you know, kind of rolled out voice you know, voice

45:07interaction for the first time, you know, they're like it'd be great for players to be able to talk to each other and it turns out you just get like, you know, 12-year-old boys in these lobbies just like torching the you know, out of everybody and and and literally trying to get under their opponent's skin and then being willing to, you know, anonymously say absolutely anything to do it. Um, right? And so that led to, you know, you know, very very coarse, very vulgar, very offensive, you know, kind of thing and then that you know, kind of flipped, you know, that kind of culture kind of expanded into early internet forums like Something Awful. And then it started metastasizing into things like you know,

45:36like YouTube comments um, and then you know, and then obviously social media kind of blew that open. And so um, there is this you know, there is this kind of you know, I don't know like rage undercurrent to everything. Um, and I guess it just say you know, it just got you you do kind of literally have to think about it. These are people literally in their in their in their parents' basement. >> And by the way, the you know, the other thing is generally when we get attacked on the comments are or like that, it's somebody with like four followers or like a bot or something like that. So, it's a >> And by the way, that that includes when it's hey Montra Venod. >> Yeah. And that includes when it's hey

46:11Montra Venod. >> Yeah. Yes. Yes.