Alright, backstory's out of the way, and Acquired is rolling three hours deep on the venture firm that changed the game for everyone — a16z. VC marketing? Check. "Founder-friendly?" Check. Platform services? Check. Huge valuations and massive fund sizes? Check and check. We dissect it all in glorious detail, right down to the famous office library (located next to the Rosewood on Sand Hill, natch). The story of modern venture capital starts here. Let's Go!!! If you love Acquired and want more, join our LP Community for access to over 50 LP-only episodes, monthly Zoom calls, and access for live events and discussions with episode guests. We can't wait to see you there. Join here at: https://acquired.fm/lp/ Sponsors: Thank you to Pilot for being our presenting sponsor for all of Acquired Season 9! Pilot takes care of startups' bookkeeping, tax and CFO services so busy founders can focus on what matters. To paraphrase Jeff Bezos's AWS analogy: bookkeeping and tax don't make your product any better — so you should let Pilot handle them for you. Pilot is in fact backed by Bezos himself, along with other all-star investors including Sequoia, Index, and Stripe. They are truly the gold standard for startup bookkeeping, and many of the companies we work with run on them. You can get in touch with Pilot here: https://bit.ly/acquiredfmpilot , and Acquired listeners get 20% off their first 6 months! (use the link above) Thank you as well to Pitchbook and to Nord Security. You can learn more about them at: https://bit.ly/acquiredpitchbook https://bit.ly/acquirednord Links: Michael Mauboussin on persistence of returns across asset classes: https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/insights/articles/articles_publictoprivateequityintheusalongtermlook_us.pdf Tomorrow's Advance Man: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/18/tomorrows-advance-man Episode sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12jf9pwTdEuANtdOffUzSzvE0xEJptT0Or-gBSJgk8mg/edit?usp=sharing Carve Outs: Childhood's End: https://www.amazon.com/Childhoods-End-Arthur-C-Clarke/dp/110196703X MKBHD's Studio channel and tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkuxIy3kFZM The Godfather: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/ Who Got the Truth on Spotify!! https://open.spotify.com/track/03X7SwpsCjZIofK8RFPwch?si=649d93b2be7743d5