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Marc Andreessen: Every Great Innovator Learns to Like the Taste of Their Own Blood

By Marc Andreessen · Mindset & Career · 1 min read

Innovation means getting punched in the face repeatedly. The ones who survive develop a taste for it.

Key Points

Every successful innovator has been ridiculed, rejected, and beaten down
The survivors do not avoid pain. They develop a tolerance for it.
Andreessen looks for founders who have already been bloodied

Eventually you start to like the taste of your own blood.

The Beating

Nobody innovates without getting punched. Customers reject you. Investors laugh. Friends worry.

This is not a bug. It is the process. Every great company went through it.

The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, the world reconfigures itself around you.

The Taste of Blood

Andreessen noticed something about the founders who make it.

They do not just tolerate the pain. They develop an appetite for it.

Getting knocked down stops being scary. It starts being fuel.

Eventually you start to like the taste of your own blood.

The Filter

This is why Andreessen backs founders who have already failed.

They know what it feels like. They survived. And they came back for more.

That is the only hiring filter that matters: have you been bloodied, and did you come back?