Andreessen Horowitz saw the future – but did the future leave it behind?

https://www.theverge.com/23697708/andreessen-horowitz-a16z-investing-tech

by jbredeche • 3 years ago

17 4 3 years ago

sonofaplum• 3 years ago

VCs want to be perceived as steely eyed futurists, who are specially gifted at sifting through the mass of ideas bubbling up in tech and picking the winners. But it's actually quite difficult to pick winners, and as more and more investment has flooded into the space even getting a few winners in a batch is more difficult. So what A16z has done is to cash in their reputation as futurists to pump their investments. The article points out that it was their late stage Groupon investment that was the anchor Andreessen's famous "Software Eating The World" op-ed, a late stage investment dumped as soon as the IPO lockout ended. However, one of the consequences of VC being more public and in the press is that now everyone has seen them breathlessly shilling shitcoins during the boom. How long will their reputation last as they are publicly associated with more and more high profile failures?

teg4n_• 3 years ago

When I get contacted by a recruiter for a A16z funded company I avoid it like the plague.

v0idzer0• 3 years ago

Lots of bias from the journalist in this piece. Not that you ever get anything unbiased from “journalists” anymore. They want to believe twitter and substack are “floundering” given they’re competitive platforms. But in reality they are likely healthier than this journalists employer. VICE, Buzzfeed News and FiveThirtyEight all died in the last month. Twitter is still Twitter and has positive cashflow and all time high usage if Musk is to be believed. Substack is still growing fast. Clubhouse is definitely floundering though.

peanuty1• 3 years ago

There is some bias but that's expected from a highly partisan media outlet like the The Verge (part of the extreme left-leaning Vox media). That said, I think the article is still a good read and mostly factual.

Elon Musk has proved to be an unreliable source time and time again. See his claim about Twitter lying about bots for instance, when he tried to squirm his way out of buying Twitter. Also note how he has not said much about bots since the deal closed.

Twitter has drawn the ire of regular users, blue checkmark celebrities like Lebron James and Stephen King, and government-funded and/or state-affiliated news outlets like the CBC, BBC, and NPR. Bluesky is being touted as a faithful and superior version of Twitter, following some of the unpopular changes Musk has made like floating all the replies of Twitter Blue subscribers to the top of a post's replies.

Andreessen Horowitz saw the future – but did the future leave it behind?

Related Stories