Jack Altman & Martin Casado on the Future of VC

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Today on the podcast, we're sharing a feed drop from Uncapped, where Jack Altman sits down with Martin Casado, a16z general partner. They talk about the shifting dynamics of venture capital, why media now matters in a way it never did before, how a16z evolved from generalists to specialized platforms, the rise of AI infrastructure, and why talent competition might be more fierce than market competition. Let's get into it.

**Martin Casado** (0:26)
The market is so big and it's growing so fast, even companies that seem like they're competing end up in totally different places just because so much white space is being created. But they're all competing, like totally different companies and spaces are competing for the same talent. So the first time I can remember where the actual talent competition is like way more fierce.

**Jack Altman** (0:45)
Martin, I'm really excited to be doing this here with you today. Thanks for making time for it. And one of the things that I was just chatting with you and laughing about on my way in, there were like many other podcasts going. There's like one like before and after us. And I talked about this with Marc about how like podcasts are like this future thing of media. And basically, my question for you is sort of like, as somebody who's been on the inside of a firm that's dominated this, you do a lot of it yourself. Like, what's your experience about like the importance of media for venture capital?

**Martin Casado** (1:16)
So I think it's probably important to recognize that it's never been a thing really. Like, if you look at a lot of historically good investors, they want to be very public. I think about like the greats, like Maritz, Ping Li, Doug Leone, Benton, Mike Fulpe. Like, they're just not very public. And so historically, there's been no correlation to be between public or not. Yeah. I think a couple of things have changed in that time.
One of them is the traditional media just turned on tech and it hates tech, right? And so in the past, you know, when I was a founder, to get like a lukewarm to positive article is pretty straightforward. And the VCs would help with that. Like, you know, they would know a few reporters, it was very easy. But now it's actually very dangerous because like you go talk to them and like, who knows what they're going to say. And so in a way, like if you want to help a portfolio, you do want to build a bit of a platform, you do have to go straight. So I think that's one thing that's changed. The second thing is, so if you're traditionally in enterprise, take from the enterprise standpoint, like marketing has been something that you build brick by brick, right? And it's like you put content out there and people read it. And like it's durable over time. And so you get this kind of compendium and you build a brand over time. And it feels we're in an era now where it's just become so episodic, that if you don't understand like the current zeitgeist, you just can't even get a voice at all. And by episodic, I mean like today GPT-5 launched, right? It was massive. Like if you didn't know that that was going to happen, you would have been drowned out. And if you did know, you could draft on it. And so, and then it just feels like for some launches, they go, they're a big deal and then they just disappear forever. So I just, so much of the nature of how we consume and think about content has changed. And so I do think that venture capitalists, one, they need to like, if they have a message they want to get out, they kind of have to go direct because I mean, if it's your own platform, it doesn't hate you. That's one. But then also to help your portfolio company, I think you need to build an in-house capability so like they can know how to like most effectively message and you can't really borrow a page from traditional marketing. And this is from someone that's come very much from the age of traditional marketing. It's just different.

**Jack Altman** (3:20)
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I've been very surprised by is, you know, there's always room for like another podcast or something like that. Like people consume a lot of this stuff. And I think people in tech find it sort of like a, it's almost like a halfway between working and like watching Netflix, where it's like I'm passively learning, but it's like low stress and people would like rather consume a good podcast than like a new Netflix show.