This week we chat with Scott Kupor, managing partner and COO, Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz is a $4 billion venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

The Lead Left: Scott, thanks for taking the time to speak with us. How did the tech bust of 2000-01 affect the way you look at tech companies and the way the industry operates?

Scott Kupor: The biggest lessons from the technology bubble of 99-00 are the importance of market size and individual customer economics in developing sound, venture-financed businesses. In 1999, we had about 400 million people globally on the Internet and – although this was a significant growth from the 40 million in the very early days of the Internet (1995) – it was too small of a market to be able to sustain large, standalone businesses. At the same time, the individual customer economics were not viable.