Marc Andreessen talks DOGE and Elon Musk: ‘It’s time to carve this government back in size and scope’
Marc Andreessen spoke about DOGE in an interview with Joe Rogan published on Tuesday.
Cut, baby, cut, Marc Andreessen says of Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-reduction effort.
“It is time to carve this government back in size and scope,” the Silicon Valley investor said during a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Andreessen, who founded the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz with his business partner, Ben Horowitz, is reportedly getting involved with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and talked about the effort in the interview published Tuesday.
“It’s time to take the overall tax load down,” Andreessen added.
The investor railed against independent federal agencies such as the Securities Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and Federal Aviation Administration for scrutinizing industries like crypto, fintech, and drones.
Andreessen also called out the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and said his portfolio companies had multiple founders who had been targeted by the agency.
Established by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the agency was created to oversee the financial industry in 2010 following the financial crisis. It has since drawn criticism from the Republican Party.
It appears Musk shares Andreessen’s dislike of the CFPB.
A day after Andreessen’s interview with Rogan was published, Musk called to “delete CFPB” in a post on X and said there were too many regulatory agencies with the same purpose.
‘What did you get done this week?’
Andreessen also criticized the number of federal workers who had not returned to the office since the pandemic and referenced Musk’s approach to his Twitter takeover as a potential example of how federal workers could be held accountable for their productivity under DOGE.
The VC specifically referenced a text exchange that Musk sent then-CEO Parag Agrawal shortly after being appointed to Twitter’s board. The exchange was revealed as part of the court battle over Musk’s attempt to back out of buying the social network. At the time, Agrawal called out Musk for tweeting about Twitter dying and questioned the disruption his internal distractions were causing.
Musk responded with a series of texts questioning the CEO’s productivity and his decision to resign from his board seat.
“What did you get done this week? I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private,” Musk said in the texts.
In the aftermath, Musk continued to criticize Twitter’s leadership and told former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who took on a role as a mediator for the two, that Agrawal was “moving far too slowly and trying to please people.”
The directness of Musk’s texts contrasts with the slower pace of many Big Tech companies that can take months or years to meaningfully enact change, Andreessen said.
“Imagine that statement being applied to the government,” Andreessen said, referencing Musk’s “What did you get done this week?” message.
Musk’s direct approach is one he has continued at his AI startup, xAI.
Andreessen referenced an xAI employee’s recent post that said Musk recently spent 18 hours at the startup’s office during which each employee had five minutes to update the billionaire on what they were working on.
The investor said that while Silicon Valley companies are typically well-run, Musk’s in-person chats with every employee show a level of intensity that doesn’t come close to the way most of them are operated.
Example of why @xAI is a truly special place to work at: Recently Elon took the time to hear 5min presentations from everyone at the company about what they are working on, with everyone going into as much technical detail as possible. He gave feedback to every single team member…
— ibab (@ibab) November 25, 2024
“Every employee had opportunity to be recognized for their effort, every employee had an opportunity to get live feedback from the big boss,” Andreessen said.
In a situation like that, he added, “there’s no place to hide.”
