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Marc Andreessen on Mark Zuckerberg’s founder “superpower”

December 23, 2024

“There are certain fields in which you really get to see somebody’s core personality. You get to see their core attributes, their core virtues, their core vices, and their core weaknesses. And it’s really only under situations of extreme stress where you really get to see that.”

Startups is one of those fields, and Marc points to Mark Zuckerberg as someone who handles extremely stressful situations well:

“A great superpower that Mark Zuckerberg has that is probably not well-understood enough is he does not get emotionally upset in stressful situations. He is able to maintain an analytical frame of mind even when other people would be bursting into tears and hiding under the table. And I’ve seen that many, many times… I’ve been involved almost for 20 years and we’ve been through almost everything good and bad, and I have literally not once seen him raise his voice.”

Marc explains why he believes this ability to keep your cool and maintain control of your emotions is such an important quality:

“Generally the thing that happens before a company goes down is the team cracks internally. The founders turn on each other. The management team dissolves. And so a big part of it with these things is just like: Can you keep the team together? If you can keep the team together then most these companies can battle through most things. I’ve seen just as many incredible last minute saves, rescues, and turnarounds as I have screaming disasters. And so, there is reason for optimism going into even the dark times.”