David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…I've got a few just to bring it back. The timing, luck, and right place, right time are so strong here. I mean, especially in the N64 slipping one year part of the story, Netscape wouldn't have existed if N64 had shipped on time. As crucial as it is to be brilliant, you have to be brilliant in the right place at the right time and get lucky also. People always talk about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates being born at the right time and the right place to be able to start Apple and Microsoft. Kind of the same thing with Marc being around right for the start of the internet and being able to really jump on the emerging web and create a huge part of it. I also think a big playbook theme is knowing what good feels like because you've experienced it yourself. In launching Mosaic and getting a million users in the first year on a very nascent web, for Marc's whole rest of his career, that's the bar. If you've never experienced something like that viscerally where you've operated, founded, or worked at a high level at a company that was undergoing that, because you don't know what the benchmark is, you don't quite know what you're chasing. I think it meaningfully shaped all of his future experiences, Ben's experiences, and Andreessen Horowitz’s experience when they knew what true product-market fit and crazy growth felt like from the very first experience. I got one I really want to add to that. I totally agree. Yes, everything you said. And what makes it really powerful is the contrast. They also know what total failure looks like. I think you see a lot. People think, like what you said, knowing the benchmark, knowing success, that's what you need. I think you need both because if you only know success, you don't know the difference between success and failure. You don't really know what made for success and what was skill and what was luck. But I think what's really unique here in this story is they have absolutely both the highest of the highs, lowest of the lows. I think that can really help one triangulate where you are at any given point in time and why. I totally agree. I think it's a great point. Well, listeners, we're going to hold on grading until the end of our next episode. We'll have that conversation about actually the firm, Andreessen Horowitz, rather than trying to create something about Marc and Ben’s past. David, do you want to do some carve-outs before we bring it home?…

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