Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz of Netscape, Andreessen Horowitz

I came out here in ’94, and Silicon Valley was in hibernation. In high school, I actually thought I was going to have to learn Japanese to work in technology. My big feeling was I just missed it, I missed the whole thing. It had happened in the ’80s, and I got here too late. But then, I’m maybe the most optimistic person I know. I mean, I’m incredibly optimistic. I’m optimistic arguably to a fault, especially in terms of new ideas. My presumptive tendency, when I’m presented with a new idea, is not to ask, “Is it going to work?” It’s, “Well, what if it does work?”

That stance is something I work very hard to maintain, because it’s very easy to slip into the other mode. I remember when eBay came along,3 and I thought, No fucking way. A fucking flea market? How much crap is there in people’s garages? And who would want all that crap? But that was not the relevant question. The eBay guys and the people who invested early, they said, “Let’s forget whether it’ll work or not. What if it does work?” If it does work, then you’ve got a global trading platform for the first time in the world, you’ve got liquidity for products of all kinds, you’re going to have true price discovery.

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In terms of cultural critique, it seems we’re in a moment of peak Silicon Valley—with the eponymous HBO show8 especially.

I thought that show was incredible. [Nathan: So it may be worth checking out.]

But it was mocking people like you.

It’s amazing. Accurate satire—we’ve never had anything like that here. I know every single person in that show.

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You believe in the meritocratic ideal of Silicon Valley.

Yes. But I believe the ideal is compromised by two things right now: One is educational skills development, and the other is access. This is the critique that I think is actually the most interesting, which is, yeah, the meritocracy works if you know the right people, if you have access to the networks. How do venture capitalists make investment decisions? Well, we get referrals based on people we already know. [Nathan: This is very important.] Well, what if you’re somebody who doesn’t already know anybody, right? What if you don’t know the recruiter at Facebook so you can’t get the job? What if you don’t know the venture capitalist so you can’t raise funding? We think access is broadening out the network so that everybody who could contribute can get access to the network. And that’s the one that we’re working on.

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The one other thing that people are really underestimating is the impact of entertainment-industry economics applied to education. Right now, with MOOCS,11 the production values are pretty low: You’ll film the professor in the classroom. But let’s just project forward. In ten years, what if we had Math 101 online, and what if it was well regarded and you got fully accredited and certified? What if we knew that we were going to have a million students per semester? And what if we knew that they were going to be paying $100 per student, right? What if we knew that we’d have $100 million of revenue from that course per semester? What production budget would we be willing to field in order to have that course?

You could hire James Cameron to do it.

You could literally hire James Cameron to make Math 101. Or how about, let’s study the wars of the Roman Empire by actually having a VR [virtual reality] experience walking around the battlefield, and then like flying above the battlefield. And actually the whole course is looking and saying, “Here’s all the maneuvering that took place.” Or how about re-creating original Shakespeare plays in the Globe Theatre?

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Let’s talk about politics for a second. Politicians like Rand Paul12 are seizing on young people’s embrace of companies like Uber and Lyft and Airbnb that are disrupting heavily regulated industries and saying, “You know, if you’re frustrated about Uber, let me tell you about these other regulations that are terrible.” Are these companies breeding a new generation of libertarians?

I guess I would say the following: If you have been in an Uber car and gotten pulled over and had the car seized out from under the driver when you were like in the middle of a trip that you were otherwise having a good time on, you might be a little bit radicalized. You might all of a sudden think, Wait a minute, what just happened, and why did it happen? And then you might discover what the taxi companies did over the last 50 years to wire up city governments and all the corruption that’s taken place. And you might say, “Wait a minute.” There’s this myth that government regulation is well intentioned and benign, and implemented properly. That’s the myth. And then when people actually run into this in the real world, they’re, “Oh, fuck, I didn’t realize.”

One of my favorite things of all time is George McGovern, who ran for president in ’72 as a hyperliberal. Of course Nixon kicked his ass. And in 1992 he wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal13 which told the story of his life after he left politics, when he bought an inn in Connecticut. And he said, “Oh my God, I didn’t realize.” And the “Oh my God, I didn’t realize” was: I did not realize what a layered impact 50 or 100 years of regulations and laws applied on small-­business owners actually meant. [Nathan: This is an amazing anecdote.]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 3545022704

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So if you’re designing a country from scratch, a government from scratch, to ensure rapid change and maximum gains—

I think basically the same as the U.S. is set up now. I would set up a system designed for gridlock. Three branches, two parties, representation, Electoral College, all good. Love it, fantastic, let’s do that again.

You see no problems with the American political system?

There are two biases that I would probably try to figure out how to tweak. One is there’s a bias toward more spending as opposed to less spending because the way politicians cut deals is they fund each other’s projects. And then on the regulatory stuff, the bias in government is just to keep creating laws and regulations.

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So how do you, Marc Andreessen, make sure that you are hearing honest feedback?

Every morning, I wake up and several dozen people have explained to me in detail how I’m an idiot on Twitter, which is actually fairly helpful.

Do they ever convince you?

They definitely keep me on my toes, and we’ll see if they’re able to convince me. I mean, part of it is, I love arguing. [Nathan: So don't take that as a bad thing.]

No, really?

The big thing about Twitter for me is it’s just more people to argue with.

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Where I see the frontier spirit now is in a lot of the stuff about life extension. I think it annoys a lot of technologists that we haven’t conquered death.

One of the fascinating things on that is, if you just survey Americans and you ask people would they like to live longer, it’s actually surprising how many people say no. It’s, like, something like 70 or 80 percent of people say that they wouldn’t. [Nathan: I wish he would talk more about Aubrey de Grey...]

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One of the themes that I picked up in reading about you is that you don’t have necessarily the warmest bedside manner. I think you said at one point, “I don’t like people.”

I like people in the abstract. [Nathan: So don't take that as a bad thing.]