Ben Horowitz lays out the second of three ingredients needed to replicate Silicon Valley: business-friendly laws and policies, including tax treatment and secure property rights, without which people won't take entrepreneurial risk. ✦ AI generated
Ben Horowitz · a16z Podcast · 2026-07-03 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 38:57
“the number one question we often get when we're visiting different countries is how do you recreate Silicon Valley locally”
do you have a set of laws and policies that uh facilitate entrepreneurship are essentially good for business? Like can you create a company easily? Can you hire people easily? Um can you fire people easily? Is there a tax incentive structure that's not ownorous? Can you um own and this is a big one lately which uh you know California is kind of moving against but can you own an illquid asset that has value um or will it get seized
verbatim transcript · starts at 38:57
38:57essentially good for business? Like can you create a company easily? Can you hire people easily? Um can you fire people easily? Is there a tax incentive structure that's not ownorous? Can you um own and this is a big one lately which uh you know California is kind of moving against but can you own an illquid asset that has value um >> or will it get seized uh and so I think
39:32Norway uh introduced a um unrealized capital gains tax and that that kind of effectively ended the tech ecosystem there. Uh, and I think that that, you know, so those those kinds of policies are super important. If they're not right, nobody is going to take the extreme risk um kind of both personal and financial starting a company if it's not an environment that's conducive to that. And then the third one which is I
39:57think kind of a combination of everything in a way is is the culture such that young people the most capable young people willing to make the biggest contribution is do they get status social status reward is it cool to either start or join a new company um and almost no very few countries have that uh I would say that it's really really good in the US. It's um you know it's clearly good in
40:29China by the way. Uh although they've done a few things to mess it up, but in most countries you know like in a lot of ways like success is frowned upon. >> It's like oh you know and in a lot of you hear a lot of this in the political rhetoric. Oh the only way you could make a billion dollars is if you're a thief >> which is completely absurd. Um
40:48>> you know you just look at the people almost none of them are thieves. like they you can't steal a billion dollars is a real truth. But like that's just like it's a rhetoric that works because if you're you know if you're like how >> it's a great sour grapes idea, right? Like it's like how how did he get all that money? Oh, he's a thief. Okay, I go