Marc Andreessen on handling a crisis: “There are no silver bullets, only lead bullets”

Marc reflects on his partner Ben Horowitz’s essay Lead Bullets:

“There’s this temptation - especially when you get into crisis - to think there must be a magic answer or some stroke of genius [similar to Sherlock Holmes]…. There’s this really strong tendency to think that that’s out there. And we see a lot of entrepreneurs cycle through different silver bullets and they don’t work. Ben’s point is the answer is probably in firing a whole bunch of lead bullets.”

Marc continues:

“The answer is probably the engineers working later at night for six months and getting the next version of the product out. And the answer is probably for the sales reps to go call on twice as many customers and try to close more deals… I’ve certainly come around to that point of view a lot.”

Here’s a brief excerpt from Ben’s essay:

“There may be nothing scarier in business than facing an existential threat. So scary that many in the organization will do anything to avoid it. They will look for any alternative, any way out, any excuse not to live or die in a single battle… There comes a time in every company’s life where it must fight for its life. If you find yourself running when you should be fighting, you need to ask yourself: ‘If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?’”

Full video: Stanford Graduate School of Business “Marc Andreessen on Big Breakthrough Ideas and Courageous Entrepreneurs“ (Mar 2014)

More popular advice from Marc Andreessen

Marc Andreessen on the idea maze and getting a prototype working before raising venture capital “There’s a mythology that these ideas arrive like magic or people stumble into them… The reality usually with the big successes is that the founder has been chewing on the problem for 5-10 years before they start the company… So they’re a true domain expert.” (full article).

Marc Andreessen: Revolutionary technologies were often viewed as “trivialities” or “jokes” “The great innovations of the present, I believe, are virtually guaranteed to be viewed as trivial and to be viewed as jokes. I think history 50 to 100 years from now will enshroud them in legend. In our time, they won’t be recognized as such. Of course, in the future, when they become legends, our descendants will themselves have their own trivial innovations to laugh at.” (full article).

Marc Andreessen explains why he prioritizes satisfaction over happiness “I don’t think happiness is the thing to strive for. I think satisfaction is the thing… Satisfaction is a deeper thing which is like having found a purpose and fulfilling it. Being useful. That I’m fully delivering on the gifts that I’ve been given, that I’m net making the world better, that I’m contributing to the people around me, and that I can look back and say: ‘Wow. That was hard, but it was worth it.’ I think that generally seems to lead people to a better state than pursuit of pleasure and happiness.” (full article).