A16z's foundational belief is that founders, not hired "professional CEOs," should lead their companies long-term. The firm is structured as a network of specialists to provide founders with the knowledge and connections they lack, enabling them to grow into the CEO role and succeed.

The ideal founder archetype starts with deep technical expertise and product sense. They then develop exceptional business and commercial acumen over time, a rarer and more powerful combination than a non-technical founder learning the product.

Despite strong technology, the coding tool Windsurf is rated poorly because the founder's departure eroded user trust. This demonstrates that a stable, reliable team can be more critical for user adoption and confidence than the product's technical excellence alone.

For a founder coding their own product, every minute spent trying a new, unproven tool is a direct opportunity cost against shipping features. This contrasts with developers in larger companies who may have downtime to experiment as a hobby or part of their job.

Since startups lack infinite time and money, an investor's key diligence question is whether the team can learn and iterate fast enough to find a valuable solution before resources run out. This 'learning velocity' is more important than initial traction or a perfect starting plan.

To stay relevant, tech platform companies must obsessively follow developers and startups. They are the primary source of insight into emerging workloads and platform requirements. This isn't just for partnerships, but for fundamental product strategy and learning.

When evaluating revolutionary ideas, traditional Total Addressable Market (TAM) analysis is useless. VCs should instead bet on founders with a "world-bending vision" capable of inducing a new market, not just capturing an existing one. Have the humility to admit you can't predict market size and instead back the visionary founder.

The key differentiator for companies succeeding with AI isn't technical prowess but mastery of core behaviors: flexibility, targeted incremental delivery, being data-led, and cross-functional teams. Strong fundamentals are the prerequisite for benefiting from advanced technology.

As AI makes it incredibly easy to build products, the market will be flooded with options. The critical, differentiating skill will no longer be technical execution but human judgment: deciding *what* should exist, which features matter, and the right distribution strategy. Synthesizing these elements is where future value lies.