The Differences Between Benchmark and Benchmark

The market's just gotten bigger. So I think the way to think about it is if you believe the market was fixed at 15 companies, then that's exact right strategy. But our mission isn't to maximize the number of money per partner. Our mission is to kind of be the resource for building great technology companies. And so we generally come at the whole structure of what we do from that perspective.

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Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and one of the most influential venture capitalists of the last decade, joins Erik for the inaugural episode of Turpentine VC. If you’re looking to make fund administration easy and intuitive, check out: http://carta.com/turpentine

We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com.

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Episode Preview

(02:25) Ben on what allows the legendary VC firms to be great for multi-decades

(03:37) a16z’s unique product-first, investor-second approach

(04:34) YC as a16z’s closest spiritual analog

(06:20) The strategy behind how Ben and Marc set up their firm structure

(08:12) Ben on why venture firms should stay private

(09:32) How a16z scaled their fund sizes to market opportunities

(10:54) Why a16z chose to go bigger than Benchmark or USV on fund size