David Senra
How a venture firm was built, and what its first employee wants to fix in government
with Scott Kupor, 58 min
Published
More info
- Guest
- Scott Kupor
- Published
- Length
- 58 min
- Views when added
- 9,041
- Channel subscribers
- 146
Chapters from YouTube
- Scott Kupor was the first employee at a16z, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and stayed 16 and a half years.
- He now runs the Office of Personnel Management, the HR department for 2 million US federal civilian employees.
- The host, David Senra, has read over 400 biographies of entrepreneurs for his other podcast, Founders.
- Scott says government staff avoid risk to stay out of trouble. He wants incentives that reward good work.
What they say
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Scott quit a stable job in the 2008 crash to build everything except the investing.
a16z copied a Hollywood talent agency by surrounding each founder with specialists.
With no track record, a16z marketed itself, and fast early wins paid for growth.
Scott thinks government's incentives are broken, because taking no risk is the safe path.
Scott says the rules for ratings, pay and hiring don't reward the best people.
Few young people work in government, so Scott sells a two-year stint.
Scott says DOGE, Elon Musk's team, forced change, and his job is making it last.
A retirement office in an underground mine shows why obvious problems stay unfixed.
If you only watch 12 min
Best if you care how venture firms work or how the US government hires.
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Written by AI from YouTube's captions and checked against them, so mistakes are possible. Captions don't name speakers. Report a mistake
Watch the whole video on YouTube (opens youtube.com)