This article is sourced from: Sense AI

"If there is a fundamental breakthrough on the supply side, market size analysis becomes ineffective."

In mid-January 2026, shortly after a16z announced the raising of over $15 billion for a new fund, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz engaged in an in-depth conversation in Silicon Valley about AI, media, and the future. This was not a conventional interview, but a systematic discussion centered around the "supply-side revolution."

Their core judgment is: true innovation does not come from optimizing existing demand, but from creating unprecedented supply that forces new demand to emerge. From Elon Musk's restructuring of Twitter to AI reshaping all market boundaries, this logic runs throughout. The result is not a 10% growth, but opportunities that are 10 times, 100 times, or even 1000 times greater. This article is based on content from the official a16z podcast "The Ben & Marc Show," organized and expanded upon.

Speaker Personal Introductions

1. Marc Andreessen: Co-founder of a16z. At 22, he created the popular graphical browser Mosaic, then co-founded Netscape, igniting the first wave of the internet revolution. His portfolio includes Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, and more.

2. Ben Horowitz: Co-founder of a16z. Formerly the product head at Netscape, he later founded Opsware and served as CEO, leading the company to an IPO and successful sale. He is the author of "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" and "What You Do Is Who You Are," regarded as one of Silicon Valley's most respected "startup mentors."

3. Packy McCormick: Author of the tech business analysis blog Not Boring, known for his in-depth, optimistic, and insightful analytical articles.

4. Erik Torenberg: General partner at a16z, founder of the tech media network Turpentine, and host of "The Ben & Marc Show."

Media Liberation: From "Controlled" to "Free"

Ben Horowitz: Packy, you mentioned in your article the 2015 New Yorker piece, saying that was the last golden age when the media was willing to be honest with you. I think no one is better suited than Marc to summarize what has happened in the media over the past decade.

Packy McCormick: I want to ask Marc, to what extent do you think this shift in direction is due to your public confrontations with a few others, which pulled the entire public opinion environment back to this somewhat "out of control," or "liberated" state?

Marc Andreessen: I would describe today's information environment with three words: "neutral" and "uncontrolled," pejorative "anarchic," and laudatory "liberated." We are indeed moving towards a more open world, but I don't want to package myself as some moral hero.

This story begins in 1993. At that time, I refused to add censorship features to the Mosaic browser; if I had, today's world might look like another dystopia. Later, starting in 2007, I spent over a decade on the board of Facebook, experiencing the company's rollercoaster-like crazy ten years. But the real turning point was two things. First, Elon’s acquisition of Twitter changed everything. Second, I must give a big shout-out to Substack. As one of their earliest and largest external investors, we are proud of them. Under immense pressure, they held the line on free speech, standing firm and entirely based on principles.

Ben Horowitz: That's right. At that time, they were really under attack from various "anti-speech" forces.

Marc Andreessen: Yes, but they held up. Elon confronted the censors in a very public and visible way. And Substack, as a small company, had to fight many difficult battles behind the scenes to maintain the integrity of their platform.

Supply Precedes Demand: The Investment Logic of Substack

Packy McCormick: We can talk about your investment in Substack. I also use Substack, but I still think it's a crazy investment. Did you consider it purely from a commercial return perspective, or did you think it was beneficial for the future?

Marc Andreessen: We do not invest for sentiment; the goal is always returns. We believed at the time, and certainly believe more than ever today, that Substack has the opportunity to become a cornerstone of the industry. We fell in love with those few people (the founders); they are the kind of people who are very easy to like. Moreover, I experienced the early days of the internet, especially the golden age of blogging, which was a very special time. Blogging created a vast amount of intellectual content that would not have existed otherwise, but there were always a series of problems, one of which was that bloggers found it hard to make money.

We invested in Substack because we firmly believe it is a "supply-driven market." In an era filled with free content on the internet, the question seemed to be, "Will people really pay for content?" But we saw another side: if you can provide creators with the ability to monetize, you will create authors and content that do not exist today, which will give rise to currently unseen new demand.

This is essentially a bet: betting on a whole generation of high-quality content that has yet to be born due to a lack of monetization mechanisms. Just like no one asked for a Macintosh or an iPhone, demand will not manifest until products are provided on the supply side. As brands shift from The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal to the authors themselves, Substack is a huge booster; they created what is called "non-fungible writers."

Ben Horowitz: One of the founders of Substack, Hish, told us that many authors are trapped in traditional media organizations. I asked, "Are they really trapped, or did they build the prison themselves?" He assured me that as long as there is an independent path for development, many people would be thrilled to break free and write from different perspectives.

When Supply Leaps, Market Size Analysis Becomes Ineffective

Packy McCormick: Ben, I really liked the email you sent to Databricks founder Ali, where you said he underestimated his business, that it would be 10 times larger than Oracle. What is this "10 times" judgment mechanism?

Ben Horowitz: It's actually quite simple. If you compare on-premise software and cloud software, like PeopleSoft and Workday, the scale of the cloud version is 10 times larger. Oracle can be seen as the on-premise version of Databricks. At that time, AI wasn't as hot as it is now, and the emergence of AI accelerated my prediction. What I had to do was essentially a psychological game: Ali was very cautious, and I had to tap into his specific psychological channel to steer the company's trajectory in the right direction.

Marc Andreessen: I believe the value of Substack could be 1000 times that of the existing content industry. The reason is that the potential demand for high-quality, in-depth content is enormous; the problem is not a lack of demand, but a lack of supply.

Marc Andreessen: I've heard people complain about television since I was a child, saying it was a wasteland full of nonsense. Today, people are starting to have "moral panic" about short videos and TikTok, saying everyone just wants to watch cats playing the piano. By the way, I absolutely love cat videos; AI-generated cat videos are my favorite type right now. But the fact is, this is a typical "barbell market." On one end, there is a massive amount of time-wasting filler, and on the other end, there is a huge unmet demand for high-quality content in every field. The success of long-form podcasts is the best proof. The existing media structure is designed for a centralized world; today we need a new structure, which is why we are optimistic about Substack.

Marc Andreessen: This leads us to the core of our investment philosophy: when there is a fundamental breakthrough on the supply side, such as the emergence of an unprecedented capability like AI, you cannot frame it with existing market size. Traditional "market size analysis" becomes ineffective at that moment. From a venture capital perspective, the classic investment triangle is team, product, and market. If you put in tremendous effort in a small market, the result will still be small. But this prediction is based on the existing dynamics of the market. If there is a fundamental breakthrough on the supply side, an ability that did not exist before emerges, you cannot accurately model the market size.

Marc Andreessen: A classic mistake we made was thinking that Uber's market was just the taxi market, or that the GPU market was just for gamers. It turns out that when supply undergoes a qualitative change, it creates new markets that are 10 times, 100 times, or even 1000 times larger than the original market, and this will be the dominant trend in investment over the next 30 years.

Ben Horowitz: We believe we are reinventing the computer, and this new computer is far more powerful than the one from the past 50 years. Internally, we say every day: there is no problem that AI cannot solve. The way humans do everything will be reshaped. We recently raised over $15 billion, but this is just the beginning because there is so much to build.

Marc Andreessen: I often have this "out-of-body experience" regarding AI. When I think about a complex problem, I suddenly realize, why don't I just ask AI directly? It not only gives me 18 steps but also interrogates me back, digging into my thoughts. The old computers would just stare at you blankly.

From Inventor to CEO: The "Slingshot" You Need

Packy McCormick: In the age of AI, products seem to achieve success faster. In this context, do the market, policy, and other platform functions provided by a16z become more meaningful?

Ben Horowitz: We have been thinking about how to help founders not only succeed but also build their companies in the way they want. One key aspect is helping them transition from "inventors" to qualified "CEOs."

Ben Horowitz: This is essentially a "confidence game." When an inventor does not know how to manage an organization, they receive various advice, and their confidence can spiral into a vicious cycle. The entire structure of our company is designed to place founders into a virtuous confidence cycle. When you can connect with important CEOs, hire top engineers, or find key government figures, your confidence builds. With confidence, you make decisions faster, and company building becomes more effective. The whole company is designed to help inventors become CEOs and run their own companies, connecting them to anyone through our network.

Marc Andreessen: I would add that these super-genius founders often sit in labs staring at screens for 10 to 20 years. They have the ability to understand the world but have not yet acted. There is a misconception that as long as the product is good enough, the world will naturally adopt it. But the real world is vast and chaotic, and it may not always be friendly to new ideas.

Marc Andreessen: There are 8 billion people in the world, and their opinions do not necessarily align with yours. Many people have a real "vote" on your product and company. The real world is not necessarily friendly to new ideas and may even want to reject them. Building a company around a product and founder is both an art and a science.

Marc Andreessen: Our mission is to help founders navigate challenges. As an inventor, you need a kind of "power boost." We want startups to leverage our brand, network, and expertise to become extremely powerful quickly. The purpose of building this dominant venture capital brand is to enable our portfolio companies to use our influence in the world at critical moments, like using a "slingshot."

Compound Reputation: An Intangible Moat

Packy McCormick: You never publicly attack other technologies, founders, or companies. How do you manage that?

Ben Horowitz: This principle is clearly written in our culture handbook, and everyone who joins the company must sign it. Our core is: we are builders of dreams, not dream killers. As long as someone is trying to push the world forward, regardless of whether we agree with their methods, we support them. We always bet on the future.

Packy McCormick: If you had to choose one thing to accumulate compound interest on, what would it be?

Ben Horowitz: Reputation. We have been discussing this since the day the company was founded. Sometimes it requires significant investment and yields slow results, but this is our core competitive advantage. We want everyone in the tech circle to see us as the best partner.

Marc Andreessen: And this reputation transfers to the companies we invest in. When a company accepts our investment, they can leverage our reputation to gain customers, recruit talent, attract follow-on investors, and deal with regulators.

Ben Horowitz: Maintaining reputation requires vigilance. The damage caused by one employee's rude behavior requires 5 to 10 correct actions to make up for it. But once a reputation is established, it is the most powerful force. It took us 6 months and countless meetings to raise our first fund ($300 million). This time, raising over $15 billion was accomplished with just one AMA each from Marc and me. That is the power of reputation.

Packy McCormick: Do you enjoy the attacks you face?

Ben Horowitz: Sometimes it can be emotional because you know the intentions of these builders. Many attacks are often character assassinations. Now everyone thinks Marc is Jewish, so they can attack him more.

Marc Andreessen: My new name in certain political circles is "Andy Horowitz" because people think Andreessen sounds like a Jewish name.

Zoomers Will Save the World

Packy McCormick: Marc, you once said that venture capital will be the last job in the world. If this vision is true, what will a16z look like a century from now?

Marc Andreessen: I think I was misquoted. I was talking about a recurring historical pattern: a dreamer operating in a field with asymmetric returns (high risk, high reward). Traditional banks or large companies will not fund such projects.

But if you can build these combinations of dreams, the expected value will be very high. Imagine Columbus's funding pitch back in the day: I have a 60% chance of not coming back, and my initial idea turned out to be completely wrong. This intuition of betting on uncertain outcomes has existed throughout history and will only become more important.

Ben Horowitz: Exactly. There used to be a saying in software development called the "mythical man-month," meaning that adding more people would actually slow things down. But now it's different; you can throw money at problems to solve them. Elon has invested heavily in foundational models, and the speed of catching up is unprecedented.

Packy McCormick: If you were to train an AI to find the next "Columbus," what traits would you have it look for?

Ben Horowitz: First is independent thinking. They do not act based on others' opinions and have their own original ideas. Secondly, some degree of personal charisma that makes people willing to follow them. Beyond that, great entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes.

Packy McCormick: Finally, what excites you most about the future?

Ben Horowitz: It's like the invention of the steam engine or electricity; we are entering a better world. All those trivialities that consume our lives will no longer be necessary, and the quality of life will improve.

Marc Andreessen: I am enthusiastic about Generation Z (Zoomers). They are the "AI natives," the recipients of this strange period from 2015 to 2024, and they will no longer tolerate these things. **They have no moral guilt and do not feel the need to apologize for wanting to succeed. They have watched thousands of hours of tech videos online and understand the field better than previous generations of founders. They are driven and uncompromising. *I would be willing to spend 100% of my time on Generation Z.*

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。