How startups beat incumbents

David favors business model shifts, new UI, and novel data sources as paths to displace incumbents.

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My guest today is David George. David is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm’s growth investing business. His team has backed many of the defining companies of this era – including Databricks, Figma, Stripe, SpaceX, Anduril, and OpenAI – and is now investing behind a new generation of AI startups like Cursor, Harvey, and Abridge.

This conversation is a detailed look at how David built and runs the a16z growth practice. He shares how he recruits and builds his team a “Yankees-level” culture, how his team makes investment decisions without traditional committees, and how they work with founders years before investing to win the most competitive deals.

Much of our conversation centers on AI and how his team is investing across the stack, from foundational models to applications. David draws parallels to past platform shifts – from SaaS to mobile – and explains why he believes this period will produce some of the largest companies ever built.

David also outlines the models that guide his approach – why markets often misprice consistent growth, what makes “pull” businesses so powerful, and why most great tech markets end up winner-take-all. David reflects on what he’s learned from studying exceptional founders and why he’s drawn to a particular type, the “technical terminator.”

Please enjoy my conversation with David George.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Show Notes:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best

(00:04:00) Meet David George

(00:03:04) Understanding the Impact of AI on Consumers and Enterprises

(00:05:56) Monetizing AI: What is AI’s Business Model

(00:11:04) Investing in Robotics and American Dynamism

(00:13:31) Lessons from Investing in Waymo

(00:15:55) Investment Philosophy and Strategy

(00:17:15) Investing in Technical Terminators

(00:20:18) Market Leaders Capture All of the Value Creation