a16z Podcast

Financial Freedom, Company Building, More with David Marcus

Sonal Chokshi and David Marcus

Posted November 28, 2023

This wide-ranging conversation covers company building, big to small — including what cadence and when is the right “time” to ship; the relationship between centralization, decentralization, platforms, and financial freedom; moving from web2 to web3 in both crypto AND payments… as well as why bitcoin, views on remote work, and much much more.

Our guest is David Marcus, CEO and co-founder of Lightspark; Marcus was also a co-creator of Diem (aka Libra and Novi, the cryptocurrency project initiated by Facebook). Before that, he was vice president of messaging products there, where he ran the Facebook Messenger unit; and prior to joining Facebook, Marcus was the former president of PayPal (which had acquired his previous startup).

This episode begins with an interview just to help kick things off and then features a rich set of questions from the audience — as this originally took place live on stage at our Crypto Startup School 2023.