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Marc Andreessen on why we shouldn’t encourage people to be entrepreneurs

February 13, 2025

“The idea of being an entrepreneur has been a romanticized concept. There used to be TV shows talking about how fun it was. And people ask questions, ‘How do we encourage more people to be entrepreneurs?’ And my answer was always: no, we shouldn’t do that. People shouldn’t be encouraged to do something that painful. They should do it because they really want to do it. In fact, they should do it because they can’t not do it.”

Marc continues:

“It’s tremendously painful. Most of the experience of being in business as a startup is being told no. You need all these things: employees, financing, customers. Then you go around all day long asking people for those things and they tell you no. Half the time they don’t even respond. And then just when you think you get it working, a new competitor emerges and just starts punching you square in the face. The minute you think your product is working, there’s a problem in it, and you have to do a recall. It’s just this constant rolling horror story.”