The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 11 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
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.”
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.”
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 …”
Half of a16z's growth investments are follow-ons from its venture portfolio
“By the numbers, about half of what we do is follow-ons from existing venture companies. And then from a dollar standpoint, another 15% is follow-ons from existing growth stage companies. And then about a third or so is fully net new companies.”
a16z underwrote its later OpenAI investments primarily on consumer market potential
“As we under have kind of underwritten future rounds of open AI or later rounds of open AI is very much, you know, with the mind of consumer.”
George missed DoorDash by underestimating unit economics and localized network effects
“I missed a lot in DoorDash, not just the unit economics, you know, the power of the market size, the localized network effects, and probably most importantly, the best founder in the space building in that area.”
a16z Growth allocates reserves centrally rather than on a per-deal basis
“We don't explicitly reserve per deal, but we do keep a pool of capital in reserve for the best performing companies when we want to double or triple down.”
George: Passing on Qualtrics over price was my most painful miss
“The most painful one is probably Qualtrics. Which, I mean, look, it's killer founders, and yeah, I remain friends with the guys. We turned it down based on price when I was at GA.”
a16z's growth fund backed Anduril when it only sold border towers
“We invested in Andrel you know, in the growth fund when they had one program of record and it was border towers.”
a16z Growth operates a $3.2B fund across five core sectors
“We have a 3.2 billion dollar current fund in growth, and then the first one that we had was 2.2 billion dollars, and we invest across five major sectors, so B to B, FinTech, consumer internet, bio slash healthcare, and crypto, and we invest both inside and out…”