emily: andreessen horowitz has really perpetuated this idea that good vc's need to be former foundersrmer ceo's. of which you are neither. sir michael: i think it's difficult to tell from someone's background whether or not they will be successful in the venture business. we have a lot of company founders at sequoia. but there is also room for lots of other people to succeed as well. being in the investment business is also different from running a company. people like us, we are not running the company. we are trying to help these companies as much as possible. the other thing that people miss is that we are working very hard on building our own organization, because unless you have that at the heart of everything, you cannot make consistent investment. emily: you say in the book that the minute you think you are winning, that is dangerous. and sequoia may be the most successful venture capital firm in history. what do you do from within to evolve the firm and stay on the edge? sir michael: it begins with consistency. showing up for work every day. i know -- emily: a lot of people sh

andreessen horowitz has come on the scene, and it is like the hot new firm.ve got a lot of people in recruiting, marketing. steve: like an operation. emily: right, right. where do you see dfj's place in the hierarchy today versus 20 years ago when you started? steve: i try not to compete with any of them. in a healthy economy, you are going to have many different firms that do different things, have different strategies. if we are doing our job well, we will not come head-to-head with the same group over and over again, because that might imply we are doing the same thing they are, and why would we do that? i like a different approach, which is looking for industry sectors that are not over-invested. the ones where frankly, no one else is competing for the deal. the vast majority of investments that i have made, there was no competing offer. like no one else. emily: really? the question i was going to ask is, how do you get on the top list for every entrepreneur? steve: in the sectors that have 18 different firms that are well known, pursuing the same sector,

andreessen horowitz has come on the scene, and it is like the hot new firm.ve got a lot of people in recruiting, marketing. steve: like an operation. emily: right, right. where do you see dfj's place in the hierarchy today versus 20 years ago when you started? steve: i try not to compete with any of them. in a healthy economy, you are going to have many different firms that do different things, have different strategies. if we are doing our job well, we will not come head-to-head with the same group over and over again, because that might imply we are doing the same thing they are, and why would we do that? i like a different approach, which is looking for industry sectors that are not over-invested. the ones where frankly, no one else is competing for the deal. the vast majority of investments that i have made, there was no competing offer. like no one else. emily: really? the question i was going to ask is, how do you get on the top list for every entrepreneur? steve: in the sectors that have 18 different firms that are well known, pursuing the same sector,

andreessen horowitz is the main investor. .hey own 25% of the company there was a big push to parker,eed to step aside. there was an internal investigation. it, it was, ok, we need a ceo change. parker did not wake up and say i will resign. emily: interesting given their support for founders and founder ceos. definitely. it was founded on the premise of founding ceos. they brought in this big time parker'sd sachs, to be supervisor. obviously david sachs has replaced parker. emily: he has not minced words in announcing this transition saying compliance is like oxygen. without it, we die. beenof our actions have inadequate and some decisions have been wrong. as a result, parker has resigned. what did zenefits do wrong? the parker cap is not happy with that message. the story is that there was a thing the company coined the macro which is a software tool that says i'm taking training. i do want to spend 52 hours paying attention. the licensingives tool into thinking i'm paying attention when i might not be. the 12 was created by parker conrad in the early days of the company. it has pers

andreessen horowitz selling some $75 million worth of shares.ording to people familiar with the matter. both firms continue to compete with uber for the u.s. market. it is part of a billion dollar round of funding in december where the saudi prince was also a big investor. current funding levels are falling from the 2014 peak. venture firms had raised to $31 billion. at the close of 2015, it was $28 billion. levels continue to fall. back with me to discuss the changing environment, first of all, selling lyft, is that a bad sign? >> i don't think so. we are supposed to return money. sometimes that waits until after companies go public or are acquired. sometimes people want to buy your stock. sometimes this happens because a new investor wants to invest more money so sometimes that means they buy stock. that is ok. emily: we have been talking about fidelity write-downs of some of these massive private companies like dropbox. how is all of this stuff impacting your psychology as an investor? mark: we asked people what they expected to happen in 201

emily: andreessen horowitz has really perpetuated this idea that good vc's need to be former foundersformer ceo's. of which you are neither. sir michael: i think it's difficult to tell from someone's background whether or not they will be successful in the venture business. we have a lot of company founders at sequoia. but there is also room for lots of other people to succeed as well. being in the investment business is also different from running a company. people like us, we are not running the company. we are trying to help these companies as much as possible. the other thing that people miss is that we are working very hard on building our own organization, because unless you have that at the heart of everything, you cannot make consistent investment. emily: you say in the book that the minute you think you are winning, that is dangerous. and sequoia may be the most successful venture capital firm in history. what do you do from within to evolve the firm and stay on the edge? sir michael: it begins with consistency. showing up for work every day. i know -- emily: a lot of people

andreessen horowitz is the main investor. they own 25% of the company.itely, there was a big patient -- a big push to parker, you need to step aside. there was an internal investigation. they brought in price waterhouse cooper. at the end of it, it was, ok, we need a ceo change. parker did not wake up and say i will resign. he was pushed. emily: interesting given their support for founders and founder ceos. eric: definitely. this was a firm that was founded on the premise that we want founding ceos, we will not build companies and swap out the ceo later. they brought in this big time coo, david sachs, to be parker's supervisor. but not the heir apparent. obviously david sachs has replaced parker. emily: he has not minced words in announcing this transition saying, for us compliance is , like oxygen. without it, we die. processesct -- many and actions have been inadequate and some decisions have been wrong. as a result, parker has resigned. what did zenefits do wrong? eric: the parker camp is not happy with that messaging. there was a that thing that the

stephanie: if you have somebody like andreessen horowitz in, maybe now we are talking about somebody is not feeling the love. , the bank has announced a hiring freeze and a pay freeze. that is a way to build morale. here is what i noticed about that. it is a pay freeze and not a pay cut. which brings me to talk about -- are you taking notes? wage rigidity.l this is a way economists have of saying a basic thing that we all know to be true, that people do not like to accept pay cuts. here is the problem. ramy inocencio, vonnie quinn, will help us break this down. classical macroeconomics says that macroeconomics -- nobody lose their job. it turns out, this does not happen. it is suspected for a long time this does not happen. stephanie: so we are more inclined to fire people than -- vonnie: this whole interest-rate cycle -- that is why janet has this indicator on her dashboard that she clings to. several looking at decades of this data, looking at bls data on the firm level, here is what we are looking at. this is 1982. see that spike? that is the spike at a pay freeze. if we move up t