Marc Andreessen at Startup School 08
Key ideas
In a Startup School Q&A, Andreessen argues that being so good people can't ignore you outweighs startup mechanics, then covers recruiting, hiring standards, timing and recession preparation.
From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.
- 1
Get good before working the mechanics
Andreessen borrows Steve Martin's answer to young comedians: be so good they can't ignore you. Applied to startups, that means the right idea at the right time and the ability to execute, with funding, hiring and networking tactics treated as secondary. The warning example is a founder without an idea who meets a dozen or more VCs and only does damage.
- 2
Recruit from strength and outside the pond
Andreessen says the way to attract good people is to already be on track to succeed, because many recruits find being badly needed frightening. That puts weight on an engineering-centered founding team, ideally pre-assembled, as with the Mosaic group that Netscape was built around. Andreessen also says startups near Stanford chase the same few engineers and should look elsewhere, though that is hard without recruiters.
- 3
Raise the average on every hire
Andreessen relays Ben Horowitz's law of crappy people: each level of a company drifts toward its worst member, because hiring and promotion cases get argued by reference to who is already there. Andreessen's test is to ask of each hire and promotion whether it raises the average at that level, while granting that doing so continuously is very hard.
- 4
Plan for being wrong about timing
Drawing on Nassim Taleb, Andreessen says people see cause and effect in what may be randomness, and that in startups much of the luck is timing. Andreessen adds that founders tend to be too optimistic about how fast a market will move, so burn should stay low and runway long. Friendster, MySpace and Facebook are offered as roughly the same idea at different moments.
- 5
Watch long commitments going into a downturn
Andreessen, who disclaims any ability to forecast, says to bet on a serious recession by having a plan that doesn't need a good economy and by raising money now. The caution comes from LoudCloud, which Andreessen says spent over $20 million getting out of a lease on a building it hardly used, and from reasonably viable companies that leases pushed into bankruptcy.
In Marc’s words
“One of the heuristics I think you can use to beat it back is to ask yourself the question on every hire and on every promotion is are you raising the average?”
Marc Andreessen·Marc Andreessen at Startup School 08·Watch at 17:04(opens the original in a new tab)“The entrepreneur with the idea at the right time is going to look like a genius. The entrepreneur with the right idea at the wrong time is going to look like a moron.”
Marc Andreessen·Marc Andreessen at Startup School 08·Watch at 22:02(opens the original in a new tab)“You try to keep your burn rate low. You try to give yourself runway for the market to develop. You know, you try to correct for the fact that you're probably being too optimistic.”
Marc Andreessen·Marc Andreessen at Startup School 08·Watch at 21:53(opens the original in a new tab)About this entry
- Published
- Aug 31, 2009
- Channel
- startupschool
- Type
- Video
- Length
- 38:26
- Language
- English
- Added
- Nov 2, 2026
- Source last checked
- Nov 2, 2026
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Draft. Written by us with AI from a machine transcript of the video’s audio (Whisper) and checked against it. Machine transcripts can mishear; each quote links to the moment so you can hear it. Not yet rights-reviewed.
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