The New Rules of Media | Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz

One rule of old media is don't be interested. Like, that's the worst thing you can do. There is no way to get to anything resembling a story that you're gonna like through the traditional media anymore. Like, it's just basically not possible. Old media, you have very restricted channels with very restricted formats. New media is unlimited formats, unlimited channels, and the brand is now the person. The grand wizard of this is Alex Karp. If you watch his interviews, he never talks about Palantir. Everybody just naturally thinks inside out, me and my company and my product out into the world. Don't think that way. Think in terms of like, what are the most interesting things happening in the world, and then how do those things relate to us? Old media is defense oriented, new media is offense. Talk talking more about why that is. There's still this anxiety that people have, which is legacy media somehow is, like, where the respectability is, the prestige is. I don't believe that anymore, and I think it's very important for people to kinda get that out of their system. For decades, most public communication flowed through a small number of institutions. Television networks, newspapers, magazines, and a handful of gatekeepers determined which stories were told and who got to tell them. That world is changing. Today, founders, creators, investors, and operators can communicate directly with audiences through social media platforms, newsletters, podcasts, and video. The result is a new set of rules for how ideas spread, how brands are built, and how influence works. Recorded live at the New Media Summit, this conversation explores the rise of direct communication, the decline of traditional gatekeepers, and what founders can learn from the people who have successfully built audiences in the Internet era. So first, I just wanna say it's Gabby's birthday today. Welcome, Gabby, to the firm. I'm so excited to the Knicks one in five for many reasons, but one is that Ben had floor seats to game six and wasn't gonna make it today, and so we're so lucky that we get to have been here. And Mark, not a huge basketball guy, but he did tweet about how Jalen Brunson, he had a comment where that he operates purely on instinct, not on introspection. And Mark appreciates that. Maxxing. Obviously working. Exactly. Many people are saying across industries. And so, I actually think that's a pretty interesting segue because one of the rules of new media, Mark, that we were talking about with the CEO last week in our growth portfolio is authenticity. And sort of being able to have the same conversations on camera that you would have in person behind closed doors. Why don't you talk about that a bit more and why that's so important to really nail in terms of nailing your voice and how to build that presence? Because a lot of mistakes that founders will make is trying to be too buttoned …