a16z reputation
Curious about the reputation of a16z in comparison to other VC firms. Seems like everyone on their team is some sort of social media influencer and are prolific writers.
Have read a fair amount of their thesis writing from their Future site and think they're definitely brilliant (although all strong VCs are). Their fundraising skills are clearly phenomenal and they had homeruns with airbnb, lyft, interest, and slack.
Would love to hear from people in the VC industry in terms of the caliber of the people at the firm and the general trajectory.
They're turning into a mega VC platform and hiring like crazy. You pointed to it yourself: they have a great history and track record but are absolutely exploding their content and headcount. To me, that's an opportunity to join a good firm, but also a red flag, because you can't possible keep the same pristine level of talent when you explode that quickly. The exact opposite type of firm would be like Benchmark, small and extremely stable.
USV also functions like Benchmark
Yep fantastic point
Any insight on comp? I know they inflate "Partner" but have noticed they've add an Analyst role as well. Any ballpark estimates would be helpful though
Agree it's one of the strongest platforms in VC with a great brand, and also agree it's very hard to keep the same caliber of team when you're hiring at the rate they are. Thing I would add is they've been the poster child for VC investment in Crypto the past ~24 months and have received some pretty pointed criticism recently of their (alleged) pump & dump-like scheme of investing a bit of equity in nascent crypto players, receiving a bunch of tokens, marketing their investment like crazy to drive up the price, then cashing out their tokens in relatively short order. I have no idea if that's true, but it's rumbling around the industry of late.
Going to drop a few cents - A16z is one of the most well-known, well-reputed VC firms that exists out there. Their portfolio basically speaks for itself. They've basically laid down the blueprints for high net worth, high social presence individuals wanting to create a fund -- Invest large sums of money in a variety of early to middle stage companies and heavily market the successes. They've virtually attached their name to some of the biggest deals over the past half-decade, decade.
That being said, I personally haven't found them to be the top-tier VC candidate for companies that I worked as a partner/advisor on. Mainly because at this point their investment entails just the brand repute that comes with it, whereas other VCs or investment funds can bring a lot more value to the table for example Sequoia, or even in some cases ZX. It really depends on what sort of company you are. Recently, I went to a house-party in SF filled with tech bros and seemingly eeeeveryone's startup is backed by a16z at this point (whether publicly or in stealth). I guess with over $30B in funds under mgmt, I guess now they are just spreading money around as much as they can and hand-holding only the best of the best.
TL:dr super big, super reputable just because of the sheer amount of money they invest. Doing cool things, but as of late I feel they are on a bit of a downward trend.
I almost joined a16z and can attest to this point. They did exceptionally well with their early funds when they were focusing on Seed / Ser A deals. As they moved to later stage deals, they largely kept a similar mindset of not having a robust value framework under the presumption that only 1 / 20 of their investments need to be a fund returner. This was a similar mindset that Tiger had, who they invested alongside in several follow ons, which resulted in multiple deals valued at 100x ARR going into a 2022 downmarket. That said, they just raised a $3.75bn growth fund (down from their last $5bn growth fund), which is pretty good compared to other high-growth focused funds so it seems like LPs still have confidence in them. What stands out the most about them is their Marketing engine - internally they’re all encouraged to post articles / content to position themselves as thought leaders. I think that’s a great skillset to have, but it’s not worth it at the cost of not having a good value framework imho.
Edit: Growth and Venture are two different teams investing out of different funds but the ethos of marketing / high growth / less emphasis on fundamentals is true across the firm
Would you say their growth team is less respected then? It sounds like they don't have strong diligence skills. How would you view someone like Accel Growth in comparison?
Also curious, did you move from PE to VC or end up doing PE instead given your profile says you're in PE - it's rare to nearly join a16z and also recruit for PE just as they're so different.
I think they were higher signal in 2018 and earlier.
Still great brand, but if you're an entrepreneur looking at a term sheet from Sequoia or A16z...you're going with Sequoia.
definitely no longer as great as they used to be (their actual investing prowess seems a bit suspect lately), but the brand and network is super strong and will always be super strong
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