why aren't all 183 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public
record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 checkable
ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't;
assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card:
▮▮▮▮▮ certainty ·
▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Disclosure
Andreessen: a16z passed on Anduril Series A out of political fear
“The most straightforward example is the deal we didn't do, we should have done, is the Andrewle Series A right, which was like, which was just, like, sort of obvious that it was gonna be special, and, you know, Palmer, we had worked with Palmer at Oculus, and …”
Opinion
Andreessen: Adam Neumann is a generational talent in real estate
“We got to know him after that. And, you know, as you know, like became, you know, thoroughly convinced or reinforced our view that he was a generational talent. And I think, yeah, we feel very strongly that that, that, that is the case.”
Disclosure
Andreessen: a16z Should Reflexively Back Every European Founder Moving to US
“One of my things in the firm is I say, we should back every single European founder who moves to the US. Like, we should just reflexively say yes.”
Opinion
Mitchell Green: Multi-billion VC funds are insane and require hitting next Google
“I think it's insane. I think these funds are way too, and they, just do the math, the fund math on like how, they're clearly, you have to have the next open, you have to have the next Google, effectively, or the math doesn't work, I don't think.”
Assertion Supported
Anish Acharya claims he has never lost a deal at a16z
“I've never lost a deal.”
Opinion
Acharya: Software market is oversold and vibe-coding narrative is wrong
“The general story that we're going to vibe code everything is flat wrong, and the whole market is oversold software.”
Opinion
Only five founders globally justify paying growth-stage valuations at early stages
“The kinds of people like that, that warrant an investment decision, you know, a thought process like that, I think are extremely small. I mean, the list is five people, I think.”
Assertion Contradicted
a16z's larger venture funds consistently outperform its smaller funds
“Our funds consistently beat small, large, Diversified, concentrated venture funds. So our larger funds have outperformed our smaller ones, and our larger ones actually have similar multiples of money to our smaller ones across, across strategies.”
Opinion
Stebbings: Andreessen Horowitz is Europe's biggest Series A threat
“When we sit and look at Series A, we don't sit and be frightened by Index or Excel or the big European players. We sit and be frightened of Andreessen coming into Europe. They're the ones who beat you.”
Opinion
O'Driscoll: Andreessen Horowitz is the Red Army of venture capital
“And recent words is the red army of the venture industry.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
O'Driscoll: Benchmark achieved 10% hit rate versus a16z's 2%
“Benchmark did something like 63 series A's and had a 10% hit rate across 15 years. Andreessen did a 454 series A's and had a two percent hit rate across the same period of time. Now in absolute numbers, they had 10 five billion hits and Benchmark had six.”
Opinion
Goldberg: Andreessen Horowitz's platform model has become a crutch for VCs
“If you go back to the innovation from 1015 years ago, when Andreessen Horowitz started, it was a great idea. It was this sense of, you know, excitement and innovation for venture. But I think where we are now is it's become more of a crutch to these organizati…”
What-if
Chirls: Coinbase would have succeeded without Andreessen Horowitz and USV
“Would Coinbase not have been successful? If they hadn't take money from Andreessen Horowitz and USV. No, I think they would have been just as successful.”
Opinion
Eyal: Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia have become BlackRocks for startups
“And that's part of the challenge with what's happened today within the, what I call the institutionalization of VC, where Andreessen and Sequoia have become such big funds, the investment managers you know, the multiple targets are different. The RR targets ha…”
Assertion Supported
Siroker: Top VC funds will break ownership minimums for hot startups
“Yeah, the best investors benchmark and recent, they will invest less than their supposed minimums for the right company.”
Opinion
Ehrenberg: Andreessen Horowitz and Insight Partners Are Corporations, Not Venture Firms
“Yes, you're going to have more of the Andreessen's and the insights and these platforms that they're not really venture firms. They're Corporations that are multi-stage investment firms. That have some venture, that have some growth, that have some pre-IPO, an…”
Assertion Supported
Lacaillade: Founders Fund, a16z, Greenoaks, and Thrive proactively marked down valuations
“In my core relationships Founders Fund's the most extreme, because Peter Thiel's very contrarian and he wants to reset the mindset of his team. Which I think is great. But Andreessen Horowitz, Green Oaks Thrive, they've all proactively marked down their compan…”
Opinion
Tomaino: a16z's large fund size drives investment in hyped token projects
“But yeah, I think more recently Fundsize has probably caused them to do some of the stuff that people you know, accuse them for, which again, I don't think they're dumping. They have to be very careful about that, but I do think they are investing in some of t…”
Disclosure
Stebbings: Hot seed rounds raised by executive founders consistently underperformed
“I looked at the seeds, and I looked at those that haven't really worked, and all of those that haven't really worked have often been head of product at Twitter, head of product at Twitch, head of product at amazing company, the hottest of hot seed rounds with …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gurley: Claims of Disrupting Traditional Venture Capital Have Been Proven False
“I think this whole notion that you're going to disrupt and fundamentally take over the business has just been proven false over and over again. AngelList is awesome, but it's not 20% of the industry, you know. Andreessen said, we're going to completely, you kn…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
George: Aggressive crossover venture funds actually generate good returns
“First, I think there's a little bit of a misperception in the market about some of those firms who have been more aggressive recently. Their returns are pretty good. They've done a good job.”
Insight
Cyan Banister: Multi-stage funds invest early to block rivals like a16z
“So it's a strategy, and it's a strategy to cut out the seed ecosystem and other Series A investors down the road. So there are certain firms like A-Six, Z, et cetera, that have ownership targets. And so if you want to ruin their chances of getting the ownershi…”
Insight
Andreessen: Passing on promising startups over price was always a mistake
“I think every time we passed on a promising venture company over price, I think it's been a mistake.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Andreessen: a16z has no reasons or needs to go public
“There's nothing that we're missing today that we could solve by going public.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2029
Andreessen: a16z will 100% not pass on defense tech deals again
“And so you'll notice that like we are now extremely enthusiastic investors in defense tech and in you know, things involving law enforcement, national security, public safety and, you know, say a hundred percent, we would not make that same mistake again.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
O'Driscoll: Andreessen Horowitz will survive generational handoffs by institutionalizing
“The beauty of what Andreessen are clearly trying to do, and why I think they'll be able to manage it, is they're basically trying to transcend the individual by just being an institution. Their fundamental bet has been that venture capital is going to go the s…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Weinberg: Most enterprise customers do not know Sequoia or Andreessen Horowitz
“The vast majority of our customers don't know who Sequoia, A-sixteen, Z, or any of those people even are, right?”
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Andreessen Horowitz has achieved top-decile VC fund returns
“The returns were published. The returns are top decile. So you have the biggest fund, the top decile returns or quartile, whatever, top tier, which used to be a knock. And founders love this brand.”
Insight
Rampell: Wanting $50M Is Insufficient Motivation for Large VC Funds
“The motivation has to be beyond just, like, I want to make fifty million dollars, because if that's the motivation, that's great motivation. You know, I'm a capitalist. Like, we live in a capitalist society. If that's the only motivation, like, it's not going …”
Insight
Unscaled mid-tier venture capital firms face high risk of being squeezed out
“Yeah, there's scale players, and then there's specialists. And I think, you know, we're obviously a scale player. I think the risk is, is everything in between, right? Department stores that have general merchandise, but don't have scale, for example. And that…”
Disclosure
a16z's best fund ever saw Databricks return 7x and Coinbase 5x
“Our best performing fund in the history of the firm is actually a one billion dollar fund. So it's a large fund, right? In that fund, Databricks has returned seven X the fund so far. Coinbase has returned already DPI five X of the fund.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Independent AI application software companies will win across almost every category
“We fully changed our mind. I think there's going to be application software companies built on top of models in pretty much every direction.”
Insight
Traditional SaaS margins in an AI pitch indicate low AI feature usage
“If we ever see a company that pitches us as an AI company, and they have SaaS gross margins, we ask a lot of questions because it probably means that people aren't actually using the AI features.”
Disclosure
a16z gives startups more leeway on gross margins today
“On the gross margin point today, I'll say this. We give a little bit more of a pass than we used to.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
53% of dollar gains in top recent IPOs came post-Series C
“We actually just looked at the 50 top IPOs from 2017 to 2025. And if you disaggregate where the dollars of return come from, 47% of the dollars of gain happens between the seed in the series B and 53% of the dollars of gain happened from series C plus.”
Disclosure
a16z paid growth prices for early-stage Character.AI to back Noam Shazeer
“My partner, Sarah led around a character AI and, you know, it was extremely early stage and, You know, we invested at a, you know, what you would call a gross stage price. But we knew that the likelihood of some degree of success in backing Nome was extremely …”
Insight
Venture capital kingmaking creates adverse selection by backing fundamentally weaker startups
“We can king make if we just put the capital into the companies and then that will allow them to win. But that's a bit of an adverse selection machine where the companies that opt into that as their winning strategy are the ones that maybe don't have as good of…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Robotics will become the largest category in artificial intelligence within 10 years
“You know, we have not made a large investment in robotics, but I think it's going to be the largest category in AI, B to C, B to B. You know, there's still kind of debate on what the right form factors are. Whether it's at home help, whether it's industrial, l…”
Assertion Supported
Winning AI applications are growing three times faster than predecessor SaaS startups
“For most of these companies that we've backed, these winning apps, they're growing faster, three X faster, you know, than predecessor SaaS and cloud companies.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Andreessen Horowitz led only two seed rounds for billion-dollar AI startups
“Of the first 40 of them, only one person had two lead checks, and that was Andreessen, and no one else had two, and if you look through the smattering, there are, you know, Green Oaks is in there, a lot of Gill's in there, but there's a lot of other random peo…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Stebbings: Top mega-fund partners will make over $1B in distributions
“Well, I think if you are one of the top one to three carry participants in one of the large mega platforms, be it Andreessen, be it Thrive, be it GC, I would argue that you will have more than that in distributions in the next few decades.”
Opinion
Bouaziz claims Andreessen Horowitz stood by Deel like no other investor
“Andreessen has been top tier by far, and they've always been super supportive through rainbows and unicorns all the way to shitstorms. They stood by us like no investor ever did.”
Assertion Open · timeframe Oct 2028
Stebbings: Andreessen Horowitz will generate $40B+ back from Databricks
“They're about to get the payday of paydays in Ventureland with a minimum of forty billion back from Databricks.”
Insight
Casado: The only real sin in venture capital is missing the winner
“The only sin in investing and I've sinned so much. The only sin investing is, is, is, is missing the winner. Like there's no, it's fine to like invest in a category that doesn't work. It's fine to lose money all. But like, if you choose the wrong company, like…”
Assertion Supported
Dixon: a16z Has Never Pivoted Strategy, Investing in AI Since 2013
“We are, we don't pivot at A-Six-Z, like we've never pivoted. We have all, you know, we've done AI for 10, since I've been at the firm, since 2013, we've done blockchain, crypto consistently, we've done bio, we've done SaaS, we've done video games.”
Disclosure
Dixon: Andreessen and Dixon Personally Funded California Forever Before a16z
“We do other kind of things like we, I don't know if you've seen this California forever. This was something we did. We, it's a new city in Northern California that, you know, at the time didn't fit into the venture Fun model. So we did that, you know, it was a…”
Prediction Held up
Stebbings: Andreessen Horowitz Will Keep Raising Billions on 12% Return Expectations
“I think to your point, though, that the 10, 12% being good enough, I think that's exactly why Andreessen respectfully will continue to thrive and raise billions and billions of more dollars, because compared to the six or seven percent net that they're getting…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kellogg: Andreessen Horowitz paused Silicon Valley founder replacements for over a decade
“Jason Horowitz, in my opinion, Put that trend on hold for a decade or more, right?”