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 372 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 8 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
De la Garza: Large enterprises report 20% of their codebase is AI-generated
“A lot of their code now is AI generated, that they're seeing probably twenty-ish percent of their code base being generated by AI.”
Schmidt: Acquiring legacy businesses drives software adoption faster than selling SaaS
“They just aren't accustomed to running their companies this way. I've gone and I've tried to sell software to a mom and pop insurance agency in Columbia, Missouri. Trying to drive adoption is super tricky. And so in buying the business, instead of like Trying …”
Full-stack hardware engineers are a16z's highest-demand role behind AI engineers
“So the highest demand jobs in our portfolio today, other than perhaps AI engineers, are people who have full stack hardware and software experience, whether it's mechanical, electrical, et cetera.”
Andreessen: a16z avoids investing in self-improving AI because nobody can build it
“Like it's, and by the way, like, I think it's fair to say if we knew how to do it, we would invest in that. And we have not yet.”
Andreessen and Horowitz disclaim any financial stake in GOAT meme coin
“A-sixteen Z, Ben and I have nothing to do with it. We are not investors. We were not involved in creating it. We have no role in it. We own none of it. We have no economics in it. We are completely unrelated to it.”
Andreessen and a16z provide no-strings research grants to independent AI developers
“We have been giving grants, small grants, but we've been giving basically research grants to these people over time. A-sixteen Z has had a grant program for a while. I've done a bunch directly and, you know, just like no strings attached you know, grants to ju…”
Horowitz: Most a16z founders come from middle-class or refugee backgrounds
“Almost none of the successful entrepreneurs we work with is that the case for. They all come from, you know, somewhere between like refugee and middle-class backgrounds.”
Andreessen: a16z's mistakes stem from overestimating platform turnover speed
“When we make mistakes, it's Because we kind of overestimate the degree to which this is going to happen. But our whole thing is to basically try to get in front of this and try to, you know, basically make the assumption that you're going to have complete turn…”
Only 5-6 GenAI apps overlap between top 50 web and mobile lists
“I think there was only five or six companies that made both lists.”
Multiple top mobile AI apps are copycat wrappers arbitraging OpenAI's models
“So there are quite a few apps on our mobile app list that are essentially copycat products and using OpenAI's own model, but are named slightly differently, and are just kind of playing this, like, maybe short to medium term arbitrage on App Store optimization…”
Horowitz: Nearly all a16z hardware investments required follow-on rescue funding
“I don't think that we've done anything in hardware where that hasn't been the case. I mean, the one was Oculus, but Oculus got, you know, they sold relatively early to meta.”
Horowitz: OpenAI maintains a small headcount relative to its revenue
“Like if you look at open AI, which is the big spender in startup world which, you know, we are also investors and is yeah, headcount wise, they're pretty small against their revenue.”
Horowitz: AI startups reached profitability faster than any in a16z history
“I think probably The companies that have gotten to profitability the fastest, maybe in the history of the firm have been AI companies or have been, you know, AI companies in the portfolio where the revenue grows so fast that it actually kind of runs out ahead …”
Horowitz: a16z is working with the UK government on AI policy
“So we'll, you know, look, we're working on that in Britain. And we look, we've got some pretty good reception from the UK government. There's you know, a lot of very, very smart people there. We're working with them, you know, tightly on their AI and crypto ef…”
Horowitz: a16z encourages dropping college degree requirements in its hiring
“In our own hiring process, we encourage people not to have those kinds of requirements because, you know, like people can become extremely smart without ever going to college and very skilled, you know, particularly in computer science.”
Lai: 87% of surveyed game studios use generative AI tools
“So we surveyed 230 game studios earlier this year. And it turns out that 87% of them are already using generative AI tools. And so some of the products that they named include ChatGPT, Midjourney, 11 Labs, KDEM, Adobe Firefly, GitHub Copilot, et cetera. And th…”
Yoo: The next digital health tech stack will enable risk-bearing care
“If the first generation of the digital health tech stack, which we wrote about in 2020, was about enabling administrative and operational efficiency for virtual first providers, the next generation will be about helping providers bear risk. And enabling payers…”
Andreessen: a16z invests in tech meeting two core criteria
“The way I think about it, like for our firm is for every new technology that we're exposed to, right? It's like, okay, does it pass like the basic sniff test of like, okay, if this worked, would it be a big deal? Right. And then it's like, are there really sma…”
Cooper: Any Andreessen Horowitz GP can independently approve investments
“Here at Injuries and Horowitz, we do things differently, which is as long as people follow the process, you know, consistently, you know, any single general partner has the ability to ultimately make a decision to invest and go on the board of a company.”
Andrew Chen: Sandbox VR's gaming DNA drove a16z's investment thesis
“The fact that both of you guys have you know, games DNA as opposed to Hollywood DNA was actually a really part, key part of the investment thesis.”
Jordan: a16z invested in Instacart viewing grocery stores as distributed warehouses
“We made the Instacart investment in the belief that the grocery stores are there. It's distributed. They have distributed little warehouses.”
Horowitz: VC firm networks must be institutionally owned, not partner-isolated
“A firm shouldn't be just a group of independent people who all had their own isolated networks. The network should be kind of owned and run by the entity itself.”
Ovitz: CAA's culture ate Hollywood just like a16z's ate venture capital
“Our culture ate the entertainment business. It just did, and so did the Andreessen Horowitz culture.”
Horowitz: a16z was the first VC firm to formally pitch entrepreneurs
“I think we're for sure the first and maybe still the only venture capital firm that has a pitch to entrepreneurs that's, you know, formal and professional and involves lots of people.”
Horowitz: a16z adopted CAA's organizational design and culture for venture capital
“It was one of organizational design culture and things that turned out we'd use in venture capital.”
Dixon: a16z discovered many of its early crypto investments on Reddit
“This is how we discovered a bunch of, a lot of the cryptocurrency stuff, by the way, like that I mentioned, it's almost all happening on Reddit.”
Andreessen: Andreessen Horowitz employs 85 operating partners to support portfolio companies
“We've got 85 people in the office every single day, and what they're doing is they're basically building and grooming network, a network on behalf of the firm, which then works on behalf of all the portfolio companies.”
Andreessen: a16z borrowed its operating model from talent agencies and advertising
“Like a lot of the ideas we have in our firm, we borrowed from other industries, and so we pulled ideas over from what had happened in the entertainment talent agency business, or in the advertising industry, or in other kinds of investment.”
Pantharatna: VR is the next major platform beyond gaming
“Our thesis is that VR is not just going to be for gaming. It's going to be, it's a, you know, it's like the next platform.”
Andreessen Horowitz advises startups to reach $1B market caps before IPOs
“So in general, kind of, you know, our bias for our companies is, look, you want to get to a certain minimum size, and typically that's probably a billion dollars plus of market cap, where you're going to have enough heft that the institutional community is act…”
Andreessen: a16z assumes a 50 percent failure rate on counterintuitive startup bets
“And, you know, and it's, you know, it, and by the way, it, even there we're gonna have, we assume we basically have a 50% failure rate. So, you know, we assume that half the time you know, we're gonna back the, what we think is a good idea, looks like a bad id…”
Levine: Legacy operating units consume corporate budget, killing internal innovation
“When it comes time for budgeting All the existing operating groups say we need X dollars, you expect us to grow a hundred percent a year, therefore we need a hundred percent of the dollars, and after everyone jumps in, there are no cookies left in the jar to g…”
Kupor: a16z advises portfolio companies to stay private while capital is available
“Right now, the advice we're giving our companies is in general, quite frankly, is to stay private, you know, as long as they have access to the capital resources that they need to grow the business in the private markets.”
Jordan: VC pitches are shifting toward hyper-personalized service at scale
“We're seeing a trend towards not, you know, not, not towards mass customization, but to ends of one. You know, more and more business models are being pitched to us are, you know, personalized service to every consumer.”
Andreessen Horowitz promised LPs a high-risk, home-run investment model
“We told our investors when we raised our first fund, we said, look, we're not in this to hit singles and doubles. We're in this, we're either going to give you know, grand slams or strikeouts.”
a16z targeting education, healthcare, and financial services for investment
“The big ones that we're working on right now that we've done some work in that we want to do more in are education, health care, and financial services. And those are the three really big ones that we think are up next.”
Andreessen Horowitz has a dedicated team testing big data startup sourcing
“So we're, we have a team on it. We're playing with it. We're trying to figure it out.”
Andreessen: a16z uses disruption theory to guide investment decisions
“We actually use this theory basically to tell us what not to invest in. As well as what to invest in.”
Andrew Chen's Three-Part Framework for Breakthrough Consumer Startups
“One of the easy ways to think about the intersection of all the things that I'm looking for are ultimately these three things, which is a new platform, a new technology that's hitting scale, right? Maybe it's providing a product experience that maybe has never…”
Sharon Chang: Giving away a full product for free before charging fails
“You don't want to give away your product, all of it for free, and we've heard this a lot. I'm going to give it away for free, get traction, and then charge, and that's just a bad idea because it's really hard to raise prices, and anything over free is, you kno…”
Ben Horowitz passed on TransferWise twice before investing
“And then Ben passed on the deal, I think twice, maybe? But finally corrected this ridiculous mistake, and now we are an investor in TransferWise, and very happily so.”
Andreessen Horowitz may eventually open a European office
“Eventually, we might get to a place where we have an office here, hopefully run by folks that are in this community.”
Casado: Kong is the fastest-growing open source project a16z has seen
“I mean, this is the fastest growing open source project we have ever seen.”
a16z fines partners $10 per minute for being late to founder meetings
“If you're late to meeting with an entrepreneur at Andreessen Horowitz, 10 dollars a minute.”
Pande: Early cooperation with regulators creates competitive barriers to entry
“One of the things that I feel is that people often think regulation is a challenge and in some ways it is, but it's also a huge opportunity. In that if, especially in this new space, you can work with regulators and get there first. You can actually have an op…”
Kha: Every a16z Fund I LP kept holding Stripe after 16 years
“Actually, very famously a year and a half ago or so, we went to our fund one LPs. At that point in time, the fund one was 16 years old, and we had this position in Stripe that we invested at the seed stage. And we asked all of our LPs, like, hey, do you want l…”
Wang: Cursor beat every forecast provided to a16z
“They actually beat every forecast they ever gave us”
Acharya: a16z Treats Sub-$15k ACV Small Businesses as Consumers
“I mean, our simple rule is if you cannot justify acquiring the customer through sales, which usually means a 15 K ACV, you have to acquire them through marketing. We think of them as a consumer, which is most small business owners. So I think that the plumber …”