Answer: Organizing events.
Author: Jessica
"What event did you attend today?"
During a week in San Francisco, this question became a greeting between my friends and me.
"Today was really packed, it was hard to choose events, they were all great, I wanted to go to them all. Tomorrow continues."
During a week in San Francisco, this was a common farewell I often heard when saying goodbye to newly met entrepreneurs at the end of each day.
In the previous week, entrepreneurs and investors from all over Silicon Valley were attending various events in every corner of San Francisco. Some made a "schedule" for the events they planned to attend, some flew in from all over the world, and some hurriedly asked questions at one event before rushing off to another.
These events revolved around AI and entrepreneurship, in all shapes and forms.
And at almost every event, people would mention one name: A16z.
This is SF Tech Week. This tech extravaganza organized by the top American venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (hereafter referred to as A16z) is held annually from October to November in major cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. The goal is to connect global tech practitioners, industry leaders, startups, and investors through a week of compact thematic discussions, workshops, demo days, investor meetups, and various offline activities, facilitating extensive communication and collaboration.
Throughout the Tech Week, A16z organizes key events and also allows any company or organization to submit their event proposals and actively participate in various aspects. This decentralized format gives the event great flexibility and diversity, making Tech Week rapidly popular in the tech investment community since its launch in 2022.
This year's Tech Week theme is "Artificial Intelligence, Climate Technology, and Women Entrepreneurs," also covering cutting-edge fields such as robotics, corporate innovation automation, Web3, gaming, and aerospace.
According to A16z partner Katia Ameri's summary on Twitter, the recently concluded San Francisco Tech Week hosted over 600 events in just 7 days, averaging nearly 90 events per day, three times the scale of last year.
Participating companies include tech giants like Google, OpenAI, and Snowflake, popular AI unicorns like Anthropic, Runway, Mistral AI, and Anyscale, as well as developer and founder communities like GitHub and Plug and Play, along with countless AI agents, applications, and hardware startups. The attendees, besides the star partners of A16z, almost included all the well-known experts and tech leaders in the AI circle.
The variety of event formats can be described as opening the door to a new world.
From common thematic speeches, panel discussions, and breakfast meetings:
To founder pitch Demo Days:
To robot prototype displays moved from garages to the venue:
Hackathons on various themes like agent building and retrieval-augmented generation:
And even more innovative activities. For example, a jogging meetup called "Pitch and Run" attracted 43 tech industry runners from different countries like Nigeria, Poland, Canada, and India.
AI company founders, tech enthusiasts, and investors exchanged ideas and discussed collaborations while leisurely jogging along the San Francisco coastline. According to the organizers, Pitch and Run has facilitated at least 8 investments in recent years.
Additionally, there were various "edutainment" social opportunities like rock climbing, poker, and stand-up comedy.
Currently, Los Angeles Tech Week has taken over from San Francisco and is in full swing. The event content is also tailored to local conditions, shifting towards the content and gaming industries. For instance, the generative AI film competition featuring 50 creators was held at a Hollywood theater for its premiere.
To be honest, while mainstream VCs are trying to increase their influence through events, very few have achieved the phenomenon that A16z has.
Gathering tens of thousands of like-minded individuals, when entrepreneurs meet talent, technology, products, funding, and customers in the deep autumn of San Francisco, the result is packed events from morning till night. A16z's name is ubiquitous on social media, and any discussion about Tech Week is rapidly fermenting and spreading.
In addition to hosting offline events like Tech Week, A16z's partner team and their continuously published content also demonstrate a strong presence.
Compared to traditional definitions of venture capital, A16z resembles a media marketing company proficient in content dissemination. Through extensive content production and event planning, they deeply integrate into the tech community and maintain ongoing interaction, staying active in the public eye to amplify their brand voice. Whether through blogs, podcasts, or social media, A16z appears in almost every discussion in the tech field, becoming an important participant and opinion leader in the tech investment circle.
Self-Made Media
In fact, A16z's "media style" has a long history.
As early as its founding in 2009, Andreessen and Horowitz hired Margit Wennmachers, known as the "home run king of public relations," to create a marketing buzz for the company, helping Marc Andreessen appear on the cover of that year's Fortune magazine as Uncle Sam. They also established connections with mainstream media, which quickly made A16z famous in the industry.
However, by 2015, this long-standing friendly cooperation began to show cracks.
At that time, a shocking event occurred in the Silicon Valley tech circle: Theranos, the blood testing company heavily promoted by A16z (founded by the female version of Steve Jobs), was exposed as a massive fraud. Since then, the media's attitude towards startups shifted from early "praise" to "criticism and skepticism," and A16z, which had supported countless startups, began to receive frequent negative coverage from the media.
From A16z's perspective, traditional media often lacks a deep understanding of technology and events, with reports filled with preconceived biases, sometimes even exaggerating or fabricating false news for sensationalism.
Thus, they decided to speak for themselves. They established their own media platform to control the narrative and directly confront traditional institutional media.
In 2021, A16z launched a media website called Future, with the underlying philosophy of promoting a "tech optimism" discourse space through "going direct." It aimed to provide an open platform for policymakers and tech experts, bypassing traditional media to convey unfiltered, more positive, and objective information.
However, Future did not achieve the expected disruptive or lasting impact.
Although it initially attracted a lot of attention and published several articles, over time, the frequency of content updates slowed down, and it failed to create a significant impact in the tech or media sectors. Critics argued that the platform's articles served more to promote A16z's investment portfolio, lacking independent news investigation and serious critical content. This made Future seem more like a corporate PR tool rather than a news platform providing in-depth reporting. Ultimately, Future was shut down in 2022.
Development Matrix
After the closure of Future, A16z quickly adjusted its media strategy. The company realized that while "going direct" could bypass traditional media, it also posed risks in building broad public recognition and trust. Therefore, A16z gradually restored some interactions with institutional media. During key news events or tech releases, A16z's executives, including founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, began accepting interviews with mainstream media like The New York Times and CNBC to enhance their public influence and credibility.
A16z also expanded its investment portfolio to multiple content platforms. Substack, known as the "American version of WeChat Official Accounts," is a newsletter platform that allows creators to earn income through paid subscriptions. A16z led Substack's Series B funding round, raising its valuation to $650 million. Through such investments, A16z not only strengthened its control over the media field but also helped Substack attract more creators and users through its extensive resource network.
At the same time, A16z has focused more on building its own content platform, integrating blogs, email subscriptions, and book publications. Everyone on the company team, in addition to their own responsibilities, has taken on a new role as "Author at Andreessen Horowitz." Everyone acts like a media editor, having their own author page. A16z's partners are almost all popular self-media writers, and the industry trend analyses and observational articles they write are not only widely disseminated but are also often regarded as important reference materials in the industry.
The author page of one of the founders, Ben Horowitz, includes all his content output and self-media updates.
In the published content, A16z has particularly strengthened the disclosure of conflicts of interest, transparently indicating its investment situations in relevant industries or companies. This shift has earned them more trust in terms of objectivity and professionalism.
In addition to written reports, A16z continues to expand its presence on content platforms like podcasts, embracing a broader range of multimedia formats, gradually shifting its focus to multimedia communication, including podcasts, short videos, online lectures, and in-depth industry reports, utilizing various channels to maintain interaction with different audiences.
According to official A16z data, its podcast has an average monthly download listenership of over 900,000.
One of the most praised examples is the "a16z Podcast" program. Each episode invites top tech leaders or well-known company founders to engage in deep conversations with A16z investors, discussing a variety of topics from startups to technology trends. Through high-quality analysis and discussions, the a16z Podcast has attracted a large audience in the tech and investment fields, becoming a widely popular content channel.
Additionally, A16z has released several highly influential industry reports covering multiple fields. These include "State of Crypto" for cryptocurrency, "Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps" for generative AI, "Marketplace 100" for digital markets, and "American Dynamism," which focuses on security and infrastructure.
Among them, the "AI Consumer Application Report" is updated every six months, ranking the 100 most popular generative AI applications based on independent monthly visit and active user data, covering web and mobile platforms. It provides important references for entrepreneurs and investors, becoming a barometer for the AI industry that attracts attention from major media outlets.
Building a "KOL" Super Partner Team
Leveraging its strong media operation capabilities, A16z has built a large self-media matrix and continues to cultivate several key opinion leaders.
Among them, Marc Andreessen has 1.4 million Twitter followers and is active in discussions on technology and social issues. He not only frequently interacts with netizens but also regularly publishes blogs and videos, delving into industry trends. Ben Horowitz is a well-known bestselling author in Silicon Valley, with over 10 million blog readers. He often uniquely uses rap lyrics to interpret business advice, earning the title of "the most valuable blogger among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs."
The two founders promote industry reflection on major trends by participating in various tech events and public debates. A16z has also launched a series program called "The Ben & Marc Show," co-hosted by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, discussing the hottest technology, policy, and social topics in each episode.
Another star partner, Chris Dixon, has become a top opinion leader in the Web3, blockchain, and cryptocurrency fields due to his rich experience and successful investments. He shares insights on decentralized technologies through blogs and social media platforms, helping the public understand these emerging fields. Dixon has over 900,000 loyal followers on Twitter, and his book "Why Web3 Matters" has sparked widespread discussion in the industry. He also led early investments in Coinbase and OpenSea, further establishing his community influence and making A16z an important player in the Web3 space.
Chris Dixon's book "Read Write Own," published this year, explores how blockchain technology is reshaping the future of the internet and has been selected as a New York Times bestseller.
Additionally, Martin Casado, a partner at A16z focused on cloud infrastructure and enterprise software investments, also has a wide supporter base. His proposed "cloud cost paradox" deeply explores the high-cost issues enterprises face when using cloud computing at scale, suggesting "cloud repatriation" to reduce operational expenses. This viewpoint has helped companies save billions of dollars and has influenced the infrastructure decisions of many tech companies.
Casado currently leads a $1.25 billion AI infrastructure investment project while writing high-quality industry content and engaging in in-depth discussions with tech experts on key topics like cloud infrastructure and generative AI models, allowing his views and insights to spread widely.
In September of this year, Martin Casado visited World Labs co-founders Fei-Fei Li and Justin Johnson.
It can be said that these partners have successfully generated widespread media attention in their respective professional fields by regularly publishing influential content and actively attending high-end tech events. This has not only made A16z a top venture capital firm but also a media entity with significant influence in the tech innovation field.
Direct "Ground Promotion," Speaking Out
In addition to turning partners into media figures, A16z also encourages them to actively participate in emerging technology platforms within its investment portfolio.
For example, as one of the main investors in Clubhouse, many early discussions about this voice social application were led by A16z partners, especially Andrew Chen. He played a crucial role in driving the growth of the Clubhouse community. By frequently participating in discussions and hosting events, A16z not only successfully promoted Clubhouse but also shaped it into a cultural phenomenon of real-time tech dialogue. Andrew Chen has thus become a public thought leader, continuously driving discussions in the tech industry.
Turning to the AI field, A16z has invested heavily in it, and open source is crucial for the development of AI startups, so A16z's corporate DNA strongly supports open source.
To oppose California's SB-1047 bill, which restricts technological innovation, A16z published numerous articles and podcasts to educate the community about the bill's impact and provide countermeasures. They called on AI developers, researchers, and founders to co-found a petition website, encouraging the public to resist these restrictions together. At the same time, A16z is actively releasing educational materials on AI technology, industry analysis reports, and various rankings, comprehensively promoting innovative achievements in the AI field.
A16z partner Anjney Midha continues to speak out on X and is one of the advocates against the SB-1047 bill.
By transforming partners into high-profile opinion leaders and super individuals, actively participating in content production and promoting technology platforms, and combining comprehensive media layouts with offline activities, A16z ensures that it is not just a provider of funds but also an important force in shaping future technology topics and driving industry change.
Since its founding in 2009, A16z has managed over $43 billion in capital, supporting more than 500 startups across cutting-edge technology fields such as AI, Web3, blockchain, and cloud computing.
In 2023, A16z announced the launch of a new $4.5 billion AI fund to support startups in the generative AI and AI infrastructure sectors. Many hot AI companies, including OpenAI, Luma AI, Mistral AI, Runway, and Black Forest Labs, have A16z behind them. As one of the most active venture capital firms globally, A16z participated in 79 venture capital deals last year, ranking first in annual investment activity.
Through years of media strategy practice and an expanding investment scale, A16z has successfully transcended the role of a traditional venture capital firm, becoming an important holder of discourse power in the global tech field and a leader in future technologies.
It must be said that A16z is indeed very comprehensive.
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