Marc Andreessen on “preferential attachment” and why it’s critical for startups

“A startup needs to get into a loop where it’s accruing more and more resources as it goes.” Marc explains. “Those resources are qualified executives, technical employees, future downstream financing, positive brand momentum, public perception, customers, revenue, ability to throw weight in the government. There all of these resources that you need to be able to succeed as a business.”

Marc continues:

“You’re either a snowball rolling down the hill, picking up resources, gaining size and scope and scale, power, credibility as you go, or you’re not – you’re kinda stuck at the top of the hill as a snowflake and you’re just not going anywhere. The question becomes how do you get into this aggregation of resources thing?”

Economists call this preferential attachment, and this observation the rich get richer is sometimes called cumulative advantage or the Matthew effect, taking its name from the Parable of the Talents in the biblical Gospel of Matthew:

“For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

It is this process, Marc argues, that drives the power law distribution in startup outcomes. Your job as a founder is to get your company to the point where the next resource that you need is more likely to attach to you versus somebody else. And this is something venture capital firms can help you with. As Marc puts it:

“A top-tier VC is a bridge loan of credibility at a point in time when the startup maybe deserves it but just doesn’t have it yet. And that credibility is harvested primarily in the form of personnel, money, and brand. And those things turn out to be really important in the beginning.”

Full video: Stripe “Marc Andreessen and Charlie Songhurst on the past, present, and future of Silicon Valley“ (Oct 2025)