INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Ben Horowitz, co-founder of venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, has a new book out titled &What You Do Is Who You Are,& which takes a look at
how to create culture at a company.
We sat down with Horowitz last month to discuss some of the lessons he aims to impart and why he felt
compelled to write about culture now — including whether it has to do with the growing tech backlash against once-small companies that
have taken over the world, and whose cultures are magnified exponentially as a result.
We published parts of our chat here, where we talked
about Uber and WeWork specifically
The rest, which dives more into practical advice for founders, follows
Our conversation has been edited lightly for length and clarity.
Extra Crunch: One of the problems we&re dealing with right now, that
driving this big tech backlash in ways, has a lot to do with just how empowered founders are
And that seemingly goes back to them having more say than other shareholders via dual-class shares
How much power should these founders have?
Ben Horowitz: I think it pretty important for tech companies to have some sort of long-term view
Now, fast forward and Eric Ries has this new idea of a Long Term Stock Exchange, which basically says, okay, founders won&t have to have
dual-class shares, but the shareholders and the founders will be in it together
So the shareholders have to vest their shares to get voting rights and if you hold the stock for years, and you can get some power, but you
don&t get it right off the bat.
I think that that probably the optimal model
But I would say that, at least in my view, dual-class is still better than activist investors going after tech companies, because you can&t
It&ll just make the company very short-term.
Also, and maybe I&m talking like an old CEO, but I think one of the things that gets lost in
the kind of conversation between founders and shareholders is employees
It very bad for employees when activist investors get control of the company and drive it toward short-term returns because often, everybody
ultimately loses their job in those scenarios.
What about phasing out those dual-class shares over time, though, maybe over five, or seven,
or 10 years, which is a decent amount of time for founders to transition their startups to publicly-traded companies?
I think that that
would make sense if the people who got power were long-term investors
I just think that if you have short-term investors, making decisions about [a] technology company, the easier way to expand profits is to
stop doing R-D because it not going to show up in the next two years
But long-term, that&ll spell doom
And I think that kind of the way these proxy battles have gone
It been like, ‘Okay, stop spending, stop investing.&
I don&t think the kind of cultural issues that companies have run into have much to
I think it just has more to do some combination of lack of skill and how fast the companies are growing.
Going back to the book, why weave
in the cultural figures that you have — Toussaint Louverture, Genghis Khan and Shaka Senghor [a contemporary who served time for murder
and today is a criminal justice reform advocate]
There are so many people you could have included, and you focused on these three individuals.
It a weird origin story, but Prince years ago
put out an album called 3121, and he opened this club in Vegas called the 3121, and he would perform there, like, every weekend
And the show would start at 10 and he would show up at midnight or 1 a.m., but during that time in between, he would show these old films
with these really interesting dancers in these elaborate clothes
And you&d just be watching these old guys, and then Prince would start to splice in [his own movies, including] &Under the Cherry Moon& and
&Purple Rain,& and you&d go, ‘well those are the dance moves from those guys [in the older films] and that a quote from those guys,& and
you realize: that was what he was trying to express
And I thought, you know, I finally really understand him
And I thought, you know, [these three] have really influenced my views on culture [for a variety of reasons] and it would be a good way to
tell this story.
It fascinating how it comes together
Were you ever a teacher?
When I was in graduate school, I was a computer science kind of TA, so I taught the freshmen computer science,
programming languages, and whatnot.
My grandfather was a teacher — he was fired actually during the McCarthy era for being a communist
teacher; he was teaching junior high.
He was a communist
So at least McCarthy got that part right
But it makes me very nervous, people wanting to remove people from their positions these days because of their points of view
My grandfather supported Stalin, and, like, Stalin was really bad
But I don&t think he should have been fired for being a teacher
I just don&t think it very good for society
Everybody got to be able to have a bad point of view
When you go, ‘You have a bad point of view and that illegal, to think that, and now we&re going to take away your job from you, make you
.&
We just saw that in the sports world, which was pretty crazy
Speaking of which, in the book you talk about the need to create shocking rules as part of establishing a company culture
As part of that section, you reference former New York Giants coach Tom Coughlan, who started meetings five minutes early and fined players
$1,000 for every minute they were late
