Scaling Creativity with Marc Andreessen and Shonda Rimes

that is the lightning in a bottle thing you know it's having the idea that sparks something for somebody that you know nobody else has had that you don't know is gonna work and you're working your tail off you know day in and day out it's making the pitch it's getting in the room and then it's doing the work and hoping it works [Music] hey everybody thank you all for being here today Shonda thank you so much for doing this thank you for us we know you live in a fairly busy life and so it's a big deal to get here tonight we're just thrilled to talk to you so I'd like to start with a show of hands how many people in this audience have seen the TV show little independent TV show on a little obscure network called Grey's Anatomy right keep the hands up let's keep the hands up and then who on top of that who has seen the TV show scandal and then on top of that was put up for how to get a road murder there we go I see two hands up in the front fantastic I'm a little concerned I know I know I know I know who that is and the fact that she's seen that show is it makes me a little nervous so I'd like to start by quoting a TED talk so in your words I think how you actually introduced yourself and described what you do in a TED talk a few years back so quote three shows in production at a time sometimes for the budget for one episode of network television can be anywhere from three to six million dollars let's say five a new episode made every nine days times four shows so every nine days that's 20 20 million dollars worth of television for television programs seventy hours of TV three shows in production at a time sometimes for 16 episodes going on all times 350 million dollars a season in budget my television shows are back to back to back on Thursday night all around the world my shows air in 256 territories and 67 languages for an audience of 30 million people I think this gives us some stuff to talk about so this is a conference about builders about builders about people who build things people who create things people who create products people who create companies create experiences in Silicon Valley when we talk about the building process we talk about it in two phases going from what we call 0 to 1 which is creating something from scratch for the first time and then we talk about the process of going from 1 to N right doing that doing that thing then repeatably yes which is like which is a whole ocean a whole nother challenge so I'd love to talk about both both parts of that in your career and so the 0 to 1 part is how do you go from having no shows on network television to having one show on network television that is the lightning in a bottle thing you know it's having the idea that sparks something for somebody that you know nobody else has had that you don't know is gonna work and you're working your tail off you know day in and day out it's making the pitch it's getting in the room and then it's doing the work and hoping it works and as somebody who had never had any experience in television before you know it's hard for me to to say how it doesn't work which is an odd thing you know for a lot of people it's they started as his staff writer and they worked their way up they worked their way through the business and then they get their own show I thought I'd been writing movies and I thought I'd like to write a television show and I wrote Grey's Anatomy and it really did work that way and so I went from 0 to 60 very quickly which was terrifying what was the process and I should describe the only talk about this more later but you did work in film Wow my favorite credit on your IMDB is that you know which one I'm going to say right you are in fact the screenwriter for the Britney Spears highlight movie crossroads if you have a teenage daughter she's seen it 100 percent and maybe if you haven't so how did you say you had worked in filming of you you were a successful film you had credits and so forth you had projects made how did you how did you what was the process of going from that to being in the room pitching Grey's Anatomy like how did that work basically I had a child and I was stuck at home suddenly because when you have a child you cannot leave her house and I started watching television which I hadn't really been doing before and realized that all of the really great character development that I had been really wishing for in movies was happening on television I watched 24 hours or 24 in 24 hours like it was that fast and thought like wow this is interesting and so really went to my agents and said can I have a chance of doing this and you know once the meeting started thinking of ideas started pitching you know did the work of research figuring out what was going to work pitched an idea didn't didn't have that one go pitched another idea I think I pitched maybe three ideas and they said sure like do this one right and medical dramas obviously are been a staple of television for a long time and there have been many famous ones well-regarded ones what was it about the idea of a medical drama that you felt like you could make it you felt like it was sort of a pre-established concept at the generic level but something that you could make special well there were two things one I had done these ideas and they I'd pitch them and they hadn't worked and it hadn't worked and so I said well what does Bob Iger want because really know what your customer and this is literally bobbies ABC News ABC but literally what the figure told me Bob Iger yeah literally what does Bob Iger want and they said he really wants a medical show and I thought okay so one it was about that I really wanted to make something that they wanted and then it was about making something that I wanted to see like I was an audience that I knew if I made something I wanted to see I was gonna be passionate about it and so I started talking to young female surgical residents about what their lives were like and I'd been watching all those like weird surgery shows that used to be on TLC where they would remove like giant tumors from people and I thought that was super interesting and melding those two ideas really came together I was a woman I was interested in surgery you know I had the idea of surgery why would I be writing about a dude like it didn't make any sense to me it felt like it made sense to me to write about you know young people entering this new profession and to make it a woman and then to make it a bunch of different kinds of people okay so then obviously Grey's Anatomy they bought it it went very well it could get still on the air season 16 on the air you just shot a three hundred and fiftieth episode not that many shows make it to 16 seasons yes not very many at all Gunsmoke yeah mash mash yeah so so okay so for a lot of people that would have been obvious that was a big success for a lot of people that would have been a career career defining success and maybe the definition of somebody's career how did you how did you make the decision to go from having one show on the air to over time having two and then three and then ultimately even larger number I used to jokingly say I want to take over the world through television and it I'll be honest it was not a joke for me I really thought like I want to take over the world through television like if I'm gonna do something I'm gonna be really good at it and that had been my first show so it felt like a fluke and I didn't want it to feel like fluke to me so I wanted to do more but also it was this feeling of you know in the beginning you made a show and it had gone for one season or two seasons three seasons I thought well we could get canceled at any minute this could go away at any second I need a second line so it really was about finding like another show just in case it was you know that thing of like keeps something else going right and so I would imagine you were flat out working on grays at the time how do you kind of then create for yourself for yourself the time and but but then also the organization around you to be able to then do more than one in the beginning it was about like overworking myself almost to the point of full-out exhaustion not really understanding what needed to be done and then it really was figuring out how to build the infrastructure you know had an on writing producing partner which was really helpful then it was taking the people who I'd worked with for a long enough time and you know spreading them out to understand like you guys go be where I can't be because I already trust you and getting the talent pool large enough and training people enough to the way I thought so that if I wasn't there looking they were and trusting people you have to you cannot do a job like that if you don't trust the people around you otherwise you're going to be trying to do everything and that's gonna flatten you very quickly right so a lot of people who have one hit do try to create what production companies and they do try to scale like that most of them aren't able to do it I think a lot of people are able to do it if other people are the creators you know if you have other creators it's a lot easier because it's not all on you for me I had Grey's Anatomy private practice and scandal all going at the same time for a while and that was that was brutal great right today you have how many shows on the air info and production I think we have five could you maybe walk us through a day in the life you know now I have a company that has I think there are three eight of us or maybe 40 of us working at my company I now have a full-scale basically in a mini studio with the head of production a head of post-production a head of content a head of digital content a head of branding so we have like this great group of people so for me it's about coming in I have an executive team I have a leadership team it's about talking everybody and finding out what's going on it gives me time to then go spend in my writers room with my writer to get my creative work done because honestly that's what Netflix is paying me for and then to get all the creative work done and then I can talk to the other creators of the other shows that we're doing and give them what they need but sometimes it's just mentorship sometimes it's just listening to them rant about things sometimes it's just telling they're doing a good job and deal with you know actors or networks or whatever needs to be done and then it's about sort of coming together home but at the end of the day figuring out what needs to be done a lot of what I do is listening to the problem solving that everybody else is doing for me you know my Head of Production will say I did this and it saved twenty million dollars from this or my head of content will say this was a nightmare but it's already taken care of we've all worked together for so long at this point everybody's a very well oiled machine so let's say I'm a newly minted graduate of let's say USC film school or top any program like that let's say I want to come work for you and be part of this machine I want to be number 41 what would I have to do to establish myself to the level that you would take a chance of me to be part of this I like really interesting hard-working people for me it's not about you know pedigree or or any of that it's about output what have you done what have you done that's creative how I'll pull yourself up by your bootstraps have you been we have a we have a wonderful girl who works for us who she doesn't have a car and so she used to over everywhere she goes which is in it you know in LA is like a nightmare and part of her job is like going to a million different places I should say but she is such a hard amazing working person I was you know we hire anyway it doesn't matter we're gonna figure out how to make that work and we did so to me it's about people who are passionate about what they do who are going to sort of eat sleep and breathe it I also like people who know how to have a life outside because the more creative you can be on the outside the more you bring to the inside and then I suppose I've been working for you for three four five six years and I put my head up and I say boy I have an idea for a show I'd like to make and I'd like to I'd like to make it under your umbrella what do I have to do to get to that level well that happens all the time so the show we're doing right now called Britain which is being made by Chris Van Deusen Chris was my assistant on Grey's Anatomy he's making a show Pete Nowak who does how to get with murder he was a baby writer on private practice I think and Grey's Anatomy at a certain point in time that's that's how we roll yeah I like to raise the people who are going to be our next group of writers mainly because they already know how to do everything but also because there's so many interesting people who come through who are the next great purveyors of ideas who sometimes get overlooked right so one of the things that Hollywood and Silicon Valley has in common is we both we both launch these projects and some of them work and some of them don't yes and even the best entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and even the best graders and Hollywood have project some projects succeed some projects don't as you think about this kind of it's a production company studio umbrella that you're building as you have all these projects what's the success rate that you expect to have and why what's the right success rate um I'm very hard on myself like I've never created the show that hasn't gotten less than 100 episodes you know so I'm very hard on myself you've written so you've written written treatments the screenplays for things that haven't gotten picked up maybe one okay okay all right but I never produced anything that hasn't done yeah okay that way you have a lot of projects underway now yeah I have a lot more projects underway now and some of them aren't supposed to go that long so it's not that thing but I have a real like panic about not doing well for me but for shows that we're making it's really about a lot of it is about like helping somebody figure out how you run a show running a show is not an easy thing it's you go from being a writer who's writing at home in your pajamas to having three hundred and fifty people working for you looking at you and saying what do we do now so it's not a simple like way of being so to me it's about sort of helping them stand on their own two feet because eventually they're going to have to whether or not you're showing them up or not they really have to be able to do it for themselves so for some people that's easier than for others for some people it's like duck to water for some people it's really teaching them how to swim how when when do you know that a show is gonna work oh what's the moment you know I don't know well yes I think you do you know around episode 10 is that right you see if you get that far into it yeah before you feel certain sorry for the shows I make for shows we may with other people around episode 10 I become sure whether or not it's going to survive really whether or not it has an engine that can keep going whether or not I feel like I understand what the show is because until then you're still just finding it you're you know you've just started to work with all these people you're all getting your feet wet you're figuring out what this thing is you know you're making a product and you've only been working together for by that point it's maybe six months seven months right yeah you see these shows that they take with parks and Records maybe the famous example this they kind of take a left turn yes and then some of them take a left turn to get much much better succession it's a show they're also he talked about that way I haven't seen season two yes oh he's genius no spoilers no spoilers but I've heard it's I love season even better in season two and so it's a it's a left turn to greatness is that the cut it's it's the result of the cohesion of the people is that though it's it part of its you you figure out what you have you gel scandal we I feel like we were like we don't quite know what we're doing season 1 and then we got to the end of season 1 and we hit this episode where you sort of saw what happened in the past and we all went ok now we understand our show completely a Grey's was very different I sort of knew from the beginning what was going on but it wasn't until the ex-wife showed up like there were these moments when you sort of been things gel and you know what the show is and it starts to sing right do you do test screenings for your shows the network does test screenings yes do you do you find value on test screenings or no it's an interesting question I find value in it especially when like for instance when we were making Grey's and I was this kid who was making a show and they had no idea who I was and they were very worried about you know what is this show there had never been a show or you know women were that competitive where a woman had slept with a guy that I performer first day of work where there was not many people of color in a show they were very nervous and so you know I've been sort of keeping my head down and just doing my work and hoping for the best testing was great because testing then proved that the show was working for them it proved what I felt you know was a good show was a good show for that so testing does help because it backs up you know the suits who need to know that this is going to work if they numbers for themselves to show people but it's never been a thing that I've really paid attention to in a real way in network television because testing and network television is really about opinion I'm very excited about it at a place like Netflix because that the data is very different than testing says my next question so so what what kinds of data would you find useful in the creative process well right now I'm excited by the concept that I could be told for instance like exactly when a whole group of people decide they're gonna stop watching something right because that's very different than you know in network television people will say like I hate that character and that's fine right but that doesn't mean that they're gonna start stop watching you know people say they hate somebody and they love to hate them they're gonna keep watching it doesn't matter but it can be interpreted differently but in data when they say like everybody stop watching exactly at this moment that is real and that helps us you know if you really want to know it and I haven't gotten to use it yet but I'm excited by the idea of getting to we'll talk more about Netflix in a few minutes but I'd love to talk a little bit more about the distinction between film and TV because it feels like something very important is happening so TV is like mass-market entertainment it may be not expected to be at the same creative creative bar although they were there obviously exceptions along the way and then it feels like something may be flipped is the right way to think about it television is the writer driven medium as you mentioned where the writers are actually given control of the show and of course legendarily in the film industry that is not the case its directors yes right actually books written about how terrible it can be for the writers to see the results of their work go through the the sausage-making machine and so would you agree with the thesis that there's been this inversion of quality from from from films to TV would you agree it's because it's writer driven or would you have a different point of view on that I don't like to use the word quality because I think it quality makes it it about what's good and what's bad I think that movies like Star Wars and jaws and all these really awesome blockbuster movies change the idea of what a movie could be and the pursuit of of a big blockbuster changed what people were interested in making on overtime you know for a while it meant they could make blockbusters and they could make these amazing you know small or character driven movies and then over time it began they made more just big blockbuster action movies then they made more blockbuster action movies and just remakes and at a certain point that began to be what was lucrative for them period less prestige films and more just bigger movies and you know I like a good Marvel movie so I'm fine with it but it didn't mean that a lot of that character based stuff didn't get made and at a certain point I think a lot of writers realized that if they wanted to make those kinds of stories and if they wanted to have control of them there was you can make a lot of stuff on television it literally was 2003 or four when I sat down and said oh all the good character driven stuff can be made on television so it is that time right and was in putting the writers in charge was that the well I mean television wasn't in film we always say the director fires the writer and in television the writer fires the director like and that's always been the way it's been so I think that it's just a writer driven medium right it's amazing because you just you think of it fills the director is so important yeah and yet in TV and TV shows you see this every every every episode as a different director and the director is very important it's simply that the writer has to continue you're writing a it's like writing a continuously long crazy epic novel so the writer is the person who's the through line right okay and then another analogy between Hollywood the belly that I think about a lot is both both of our worlds there's a form of creative expression there's creative expression the form of creating the product and then creating the company great that makes the product but then it's also a business and I think one of the things that you said is that everybody doesn't need to eat yeah and so it is important to also treat it as a business like how do you navigate as a creative as a creative professional how do you navigate that line between art and business well part of what I think is that you know you have to really think about your audience and I don't think that there's any shame in that I enjoy writing for my audience not necessarily to my audience or you know like thinking about my advertisers in that way but I enjoy writing for the audience that I'm writing for you know there's a lot of entry points for the audience that we have and and they're awesome you know they're loyal and they're wonderful and they pay attention and they care and you have to respect that and I don't think that there's any shame like there's something about the idea that you can ignore your audience and think that you're still going to get somewhere that is not very smart right so I enjoy writing for the audience and really enjoy the stories that I'm telling and I do think that if you're passionate about that you can you know you can still be creative yeah your shows are very adventurous many things happen in your shows and the characters do many things how do you know when you're pushing the audience too far is that is that possible it definitely is possible usually by the time I'm pushing them very far they've been with us for so long that they're just like oh god she's going man you know so it's it's sometimes it's okay yeah I mean at one point I'm scandal two of the characters ended up basically being sociopathic serial killers in a love-struck relationship it was but you know a lot about things that happened to them and I felt like a the right place for them to go but it was this very I you know it was it went with the idea that like DC was filled with monsters at the time right not literal monsters um but it was this very dark world and there's a lot of things that happen and I feel like you're you know you're following story and following story and following story sometimes sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't right so I remember watching you know watching scandal star scandal started in 2012-13 yeah 28:12 so 2012 I remember thinking okay boy like this is a crazy version of Washington DC and I am so glad that like normal Washington DC isn't crazy like this and then I watched season 2 and season 3 and then I started paying attention to normal Washington DC and I was like oh my goodness things are getting crazy in real life and so then it was like it given you know given what I would given Oh Thursday night do i watch scandal eat or watch the news is it a challenge for somebody writing a show like that well what happened for us is first we wrote about this made-up thing that we made up called thorngate where if you there was a spy thing that could like use your phone to spy on you and exactly and it could you know listen to your conversations and we thought we were just being like wild and then two months later if it was happening and like that kept happening to us mainly because we were sort of reading the papers and sort of extrapolating like what ifs then and we felt that was fun and the paper you know the critics thought it was fun and we thought like this is this cute but then we made up like the wild and crazy like southern like billionaire who wanted to run for president and and seemed to be like just somebody and then it was happening and that was not as funny because it was like too real and it kept being very real and then at a certain point we thought we can't surpass what's happening in Washington like there was a moment when I just thought I don't even know how to surpass what's happening in Washington we did our inauguration and it it just felt like what's happening in real life is just way crazier and I thought like I'm done which is why we ended in season seven I thought I cannot write any more about what's happening we'd have to go the other way we'd have to go like way serious in order to make it that interesting for a long time I used to ask my friends in DC as real is Washington more like scandal or veep yeah and for a long time the answer was veep I know yes so we'll finish up by talking about tech and time I wait you're not doing with Netflix first I'd love to ask has social media kind of arrived kind of mid these shows for you and it kind of made your career has social media changed how you do what you do um scandal really helped change how people used TV shows to do what they do like we we were part of the start of you know live-tweeting shows that was one of the things that we all did at the very beginning and the live twitting of shows was really a big deal and how we interacted with fans so it's changed the way we interacted with fans it didn't change the way we wrote the shows or create the shows but it was a very quick means of communicating with critics talking to the press and hearing what the fans had to say I've heard a theory that in the firm France might in the movie business that the social media has made movies much harder because you used to be able to release a movie on Friday and if the movie wasn't that great people would Sochi at three four or five days you could have that first opening weekend you could maybe still make a profit on that movie today movie comes out you know it shows up the theaters five o'clock by six o'clock or seven o'clock on Friday night the buzz is out buzz is not good the movie just dies and so one of the ones have heard is that that that's one of the things that's reduced risk-taking in the film business oh that's interesting do you buy that it's it's highly possible I mean one of the things that was great for us was because the live tweeting was so important and because it meant that if you missed it you missed the conversation we sort of brought back watching a show in real time so it worked great for network television for that moment but I do think for things like movies it's dangerous because it people also spoilers I've seen things where people like completely tell the ends of movies on Twitter and things like that streaming I think it's a good thing for for an audience as well because it does get the word out right well Chuck as I said we'll talk about Netflix but um when you make your shows for Netflix now will they be released weekly the way you have been or will they will you do the better I hope I really am big on binge watching myself so I'm hoping they're all it's a really spin in a binge way yeah so then one of the one of the things you hear about one of the questions about Ben I mean binging as a consumer proposition is amazing and I think I think we all love it one of the things you do hear is it does really it does reduce that water-cooler effect that kind of simultaneous experience and you do get these shows you know like what's the you do get obviously Game of Thrones has been a recent example of this where it's just like where it feels like at least for a brief moment in time the whole country is watching the same thing again is that do you think that that's something that should be preserved or is that just is that not necessary I'm not that worried about it I mean and I I think I'm not that worried about it because I still you know I'm in the grocery store and I still turn around a corner and there's a twelve-year-old staring at me and suddenly I'm Jesus and I realize oh you've just watched three hundred episodes Grey's Anatomy like at once so I think that binging no matter what still works and I don't think you have to have your water cooler moments all at once I I think that there's something interesting about telling somebody like oh my god have you seen you know dark which is my favorite show have you seen dark and you have to watch it and you go crazy on it and then somebody else watches it and it's sort of like you're passing on like a secret yeah almost like a novel yeah yeah great okay let's talk about Netflix so so you've made this huge announcement recently you're moving moving to Netflix any of this business big no deal relationship and Netflix I was going to ask you as well the shows you make for Netflix be different than the shows you make for ABC but you have said I believe that the shows that you've made for ABC are shows made for ABC whereas shows made for Netflix will be shows made for the world yeah I mean I think there's a difference ABC has a very specific audience of people who watch shows on ABC they have a brand themselves and there's a group of people they are making shows for they have advertisers who they need to keep happy and there's a there's a there's a system and I think that that's great I mean look that's what's been working so Netflix this thing is very different like the idea for Netflix is my job is to make shows that make people want to subscribe to Netflix which is very different than keeping people watching you know I mean this it's just different bringing people to the show for a specific hour of time so it means we can make almost anything as long as it's good and so for us it's been really fun to expand the content of what we're making while still keeping what I think I know are the same core audience members in our lines right what is what is that I mean in general terms Nitra specific spend in general terms what does Netflix ask from you when you want to make a show it's pretty good new person I can tell you exactly in specific terms what they ask from us which is make whatever it makes you happy which has been fantastic I mean that's an extraordinary deal to have to get to work with people who are like just make stuff that's good and they've been very supportive about that do they try to they connect that back to like projections on subscriber numbers or retention or does that come later or do they if that's just not part of the company yeah no there's no we don't have to ask those questions that's not a thing that happens it's more about are you excited about this that's great go we go to them and we say we're gonna make you know eat up suits this or ten episodes of this or we're excited about this and they've been very supportive right that might change if we start to make things that are terrible right now they're very very supportive of us making you know our shows right and it's the right format sort of the formats of entertainment kind of changed a technology and so the you know there's sort of you know arguments about why you know TV shows are half hour in an hour and has to do with you know the distribution of you know commercials of course placement has to do with you know the viewing patterns and how long people will sit and so forth is like the 45-minute one-hour drama and the half-hour comedy is that the stable state even in a streaming world who do you think the the the the sort of shape of programs will change you know it's interesting I think it was Amazon that made the 30 minute show homecoming which was there was a drama but it was 30 minutes and it was really interesting and people stayed riveted they've made a couple of things that have been like 15 minute comedies which are surprising I don't know about the length I know that for me writing something that's about 60 pages long which is about 45 minutes long on television feels right it's it's what I know how to do and it feels good to me I have not reached a point now where I'm thinking like I need to write something that's an hour in 15 minutes or that I need to write something that's only 20 minutes long that's not my thing I've also read the Russell reading studies over the years there's a great Steven Johnson the author wrote a book called everything is bad is good for you where among other things he makes a very positive case for for television one of the things he shows in that book is that television shows have gotten much more complex over time and so if you chart the plot of a drama from the 1970s and compare it to the Sopranos or to Grey's Anatomy like it's just like a wildly different level of complexity and there and therefore kind of stimulation I've heard an argument that streaming won't lead to a dramatic is a even increase in complexity and sophistication as a consequence of the fact no commercial breaks right so no need for the the cliffhanger and then the don't pick the narrative back up and then also no need to have the recap of the of the next episode because you I guess you assumed that the Benjy model does this like does this open the door to a much more sophisticated form of entertainment I think it can I mean and I think what's very interesting for somebody coming from so many years of writing network television it's been a it's been fun to really play with that to know like we don't have to recap we don't have to have out act breaks we don't have to worry about like how to get somebody from that episode to this episode you know there's a lot of things that go away when you don't have to do that and it does feel like stories can get more complex because you don't have to worry about driving the things forward in that way but I also am like I like a good plot like I like when things are moving forward I enjoy the pace of something like scandal writing it is fun so to me I you know a lot of streaming shows get really slow because they know they can because they know you're streaming them I don't think that's for me in terms of the way I write things I enjoy watching them but I don't think it's for me so we're still moving at a pace and then you're I saw an interview did about your Netflix deal your company Shonda lamb is moving to a new facility and there's a vignette one of the stories that has you and your partner's looking at a photos on the wall of the founders of United Artists oh yeah which is a studio from classic Hollywood room from Golden Age Golden Age Hollywood maybe and you talk about I think a little bit alluded maybe that's a little bit of an inspiration for where you're headed to a Shanda Lander and it's maybe there's some historical legacy there too we've we've really created that we were able to create a model in the beginning when we first got there to find a way to hold on to a series of our writers and to make it sort of a creative home for people to stay versus you know you have to go away and take a deal here and come back there and get hired for this show and come back as I was like can't we have more of an incubator for writers and Netflix was very excited about that idea and amenable to that idea and I felt like that felt like you know a home of a little bunch of creative people like all running in and out of their offices and screaming about how things aren't working and helping each other it felt good so United Artists the history for those who don't the history tonight artists was it was a studio founded by some of the legendary creative talent at that time Douglas Fairbanks Mary Pickford a series of these people and it ran for quite a while with with the kind of model through describing but then at a certain point that ended in the sort of modern studio you know the world that we know I've kind of dominated for the last 50 years like did that have to end why would now be the right time for that to come back because we can and we're enjoying ourselves and we can do it and also it feels like a really good creative time everything feels new you know we're on this new horizon and where we can go in terms of of this industry you know something is sort of going down and something is coming up and that means I don't know just a new space for us that's great maybe we could close on three recommendations from you for TV shows films or books that aren't made by you well yes plenty of those I'm I highly recommend dark which is a German show on Netflix so good now do I watch that with dubs or do I watch that with subtitles it depends on if you're a doubler subtitle person if people dark is one of those shows where they're speaking German but the actors who do the German also do their own dubs okay so it's actually really good and the fact that I know that means I'm one super nerd succession which you have not seen but you obviously need to see because it's genius the session that shows nonfiction right but yeah that's another one that shows and probably bury it which is really fantastic accommodation yeah it's accommodating to be oh it's really beautiful yeah what makes very special I think that's the way it was written in the way it's performed those that show feels like nothing else on television right now all right that's great yeah Shonda Rhimes thank you [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: a16z

Views: 14,196

Rating: 4.9370079 out of 5

Keywords: shonda rhimes, shonda rhimes interview, visionary leadership, leveraging tech, leveraging social media, business, live tweeting, audience development, audience first product building, greys anatomy, pop culture, entrepreneurship motivation, create stories, create stories people love, building a fanbase, creating network television, andreessen horowitz, marc andreessen, how to, shonda rhimes interview 2019, building a fanbase from scratch, showrunner interview

Id: IIMHfRZru5g

Length: 35min 2sec (2102 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 17 2019