Patrick OShaughnessy

This conversation with @bhorowitz gets into sides of his story you don't often hear. The people who shaped Ben tell you a lot about how he sees the world. His father grew up communist and later emerged on the right after seeing the failures of that system firsthand. He taught Ben that bad government and policy can ruin even the greatest countries, which explains why Ben believes technology is far more effective than policy at changing the world. Andy Grove (former CEO of Intel) taught Ben that when you are the industry leader, expanding the entire market becomes your responsibility. Ben explains how he built @a16z around that idea and why he set out to build the firm at an unusually large and consequential scale. He sees its role as tied to whether America remains the technological, military, and cultural superpower, and is clear about what is at stake if it doesn't. Ben's story also includes his work with the Las Vegas Police Department. He explains why he is personally funding new technology there, and how its deployment has led to crime falling by more than 50% while making policing safer for everyone involved. Ben and I share a deep love of hip hop. We talk about why he thinks Nas is one of the great storytellers of all time and credits him for changing how he sees the world. Enjoy! Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:00 The US Tech Advantage 2:49 A Solution for Everything 4:21 The Fragility of Success 7:14 The New Physics of Company Building 10:48 "Alchemistic" Talent 12:57 Inequality and the Kobe Bryant Effect 17:01 Automation History & The Future of Jobs 20:06 American Leadership in the AI Era 22:42 Andy Grove & High Output Management 26:02 The Hardest Part of Being a CEO 29:56 Founding a16z 35:11 Scaling the Firm & Early Mistakes 39:19 Broken Capital Markets 41:23 Why We Don't Do Private Equity 43:29 Culture Is Action, Not Platitudes 49:54 Coding & Art 52:08 Learning from Nas 56:36 Las Vegas: The Future of Tech-Enabled Policing 1:01:03 The Kindest Thing

.@joinladder was my first angel investment, made entirely on trust in @ThomasDigan when I had no idea what I was doing in venture. What followed is one of the most unlikely and dramatic business stories I've been part of. Today, Ladder is the number one strength training app approaching $100M in ARR with over 300K members. But it should have died several times and survived through sheer force of will from Tom and CEO @GregoryFStewart. Tom left a lucrative hedge fund career and moved his family to Austin. He raised money from me, my family and his friends. Tom talks about how when you take money from people that close to you, you have to know deep down that you're willing to do whatever it takes. During the early years, they were in constantly in debt with no customers and no sign of PMF. They celebrated raising $10k checks at night while negotiating with creditors and rebuilding the product during the day. Greg describes copying thousands of App Store reviews into Word documents and color-coding them by theme to know exactly what feature to build next. He talks about going into what he calls a "cave process," disappearing to study a single problem until he masters it. He spent months cracking TikTok with no background, dissecting every minute detail -- the hook in the first three seconds, what the coach was wearing, the gym setting -- to grow from $3M to nearly $100M in ARR in four years. Ladder is becoming the operating system for health and fitness, but this conversation is about how hard it really is to build something valuable, told by two people who were willing to do absolutely anything to make it work. Enjoy! Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:07 The Genesis of Ladder 3:04 Engineering DNA vs. Content Libraries 4:31 Scaling to 300,000 Paying Members 5:36 Leaving the Safety Net 9:00 Restructuring 13:58 Survival Mode 25:48 Ruthless Prioritization 27:15 Integrating Nutrition and Listening to Members 33:53 Cracking the TikTok Growth Loop 44:25 Expanding the Brand Beyond Short-Form Video 46:54 Financing Growth 51:10 Leveraging AI 58:10 Long-Term Vision 1:05:32 Kindest Thing