Founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz (known as “a16z”) is a venture capital firm located at 2865 Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. The firm is stage agnostic: a16z invests in seed to late-stage companies, and both consumer and enterprise technology companies. As of April 2018, a16z has raised $7.1B, across seven funds, including the $650M Bio funds.
Andreessen Horowitz built a network of technical and executive talent; media and marketing resources; Fortune 500/Global 2000 companies; as well as other technology decision makers, influencers, and opinion leaders. The firm uses this network to help their portfolio companies grow. Their operating teams provide entrepreneurs with access to expertise and insights across a range of topics.
As a venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz’s organizational structure is generally comprised of board partners, special advisors, operations team, and a group of in-house service specialists. The firm uses a Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency model. Instead of having industry specific general partners, general partner works on behalf of all its portfolio companies. The in-house service specialists – whose skillset ranges from business development to recruiting – are meant to dispense their expertise to companies in Andreessen Horowitz’s portfolio.
Andreessen Horowitz also operates a facility that allows their portfolio companies to connect and network with established enterprises, called the Executive Briefing Center. The Executive Briefing Center is based both in California and New York. Established enterprises, who have been identified by their portfolio companies as potential customers, are invited to the center for a networking and presentation session of these companies’ products and services. For the established businesses in attendance, the session is an opportunity for them to be informed of the latest developments in their area of interest, alongside building possible partnerships with the presenting startups.
AH Bio Fund is a series of two Limited Partnership, Venture Capital, Pooled Investment Funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz.
AH Bio Fund I, L.P. specializes in Series A, seed, early-stage startup investments. The fund seeks to invest in software related biology, biotech, and medicine companies at the intersection of computer science and life sciences, with a focus on digital therapeutics, cloud technology in biology, and computational medicine robot. AH Bio Fund I raised $200M across 67 investors. It was announced on November 18, 2015.
AH Bio Fund II, L.P was announced on Dec 14, 2017 . The Andreessen Horowitz' second bio fund is a $450 million investment fund focused on the intersection of biology and engineering. As with the first bio fund, they invest across seed to growth.
In 2015, the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz launched a $200 million fund located in Menlo Park, CA, to invest in software, biology, and medicine, led by its ninth general partner, Vijay Pande. The Official name of the fund is AH Bio Fund I LP . The fund gathered $200M (18 Nov 2015) from 67 investors .
AH Bio Fund II, L.P is a venture capital fund located in Menlo Park, CA that invests in early-stage healthcare-focused information technology companies. This Andreessen Horowitz sponsored fund is led by Vijay Pande, the chair of Stanford University's chemistry department. The fund is an extension of the firm's early-stage information technology investment program, but differs in its focus on the healthcare sector.
The focus is in computational biomedicine, applying AI and ML to diagnostics and therapeutics; new bio utilities or tools that make it easier to "read", "write" or edit and synthesize DNA, as well as making advances in bioengineering itself.
This fund focuses on software companies built to enable and address biotech ideas. It makes roughly one Series A investment and 2-3 seed investments each quarter, on pace with other general partners at Andreessen Horowitz. The fund works closely with Y Combinator.
AH Bio Fund II invests in software companies which can benefit from the reduction in the costs of data storage, computational power, sensors to measure biological data, and genetic sequencing. AH Bio Fund II has identified computational biomedicine, new scientific utilities, and network effects in healthcare as areas of specific investment interest.
Announced in November, 2019, Andreessen Horowitz offers a free crypto startup school. They opened the applications during their announcement, for which they hoped to see 20 to 25 teams or approximately 40 participants. The program, held at their Menlo Park offices, is seven weeks long, and will include technologists and investors from the crypto currency space. The first program starts February 21, 2020 and finishes April 3, 2020.
During the seven weeks, participants can expect to receive 12 to 15 hours of lectures, workshops, mentorship and networking opportunities per week. The courses outlined include:
- What are Crypto Networks, and Why Do They Matter?
- Blockchain Computing Primitives: Cryptography and Consensus
- Overview of Application Development Tools
- Applications: Today and 2025
- Crytpo Business Models
- Cryptoeconomics
- UX, Product Development and Security
- Go-to-Market Strategy and Developer Relations
- Community Participation and Governance
- Regulatory Landscape and Considerations
- Guide to Fundraising
At the end of the course, Participants showcase a project idea or prototype during a demo day. Participating in the program does not guarantee an investment from Andreessen Horowitz, nor do they take any equity for participating.
For those interested, but unable to move or spend a couple of month in Menlo Park, Andreessen Horowitz has said they will record all lectures, and the recordings along with curriculum materials will be made available later.
Timeline
The exchanges have announced that users would have to continue trading SAI until the listing of the multi-collateral DAI on 2 December 2019.
And the company is officially launching its school today.
One was a $750m early-stage fund and the other a $2b later-stage fund.
Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz filed to become a registered investment advisor so that it can have more flexibility to put money in cryptocurrency and other assets.
Last year the firm raised its first cryptocurrency fund, with $300 million in capital committed.
$450M
$200M
Funded Companies
Golden is a company started in San Francisco, USA. The company is building an encyclopedia and knowledge tool. The founder and CEO of Golden is Jude Gomila.
Roblox provides an online entertainment platform that allows users to build and play games and share them with others.
Coinbase is a digital asset exchange company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It operates exchanges of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin.
CryptoKitties is a game built on the Ethereum blockchain in which users can collect and trade digitally scarce virtual cats.
Clubhouse is a San Francisco-based social app offering a space for casual, drop-in audio conversations with friends and other interesting people.
Instagram is a Menlo Park based photo-sharing social media platform.
A microventure capital firm and syndicate in California that focuses on seed and early stage investments.
Carta (formerly eShares) is a San Francisco based cap table management platform that offers 409A valuations, products for investors and public companies.
A company offering an email client designed to be the fastest email experience. The company was founded by Conrad Irwin, Rahul Vohra, and Vivek Sodera in 2015 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Ripple is a global currency exchange and remittance network that aims to lower the cost and improve the speed of international bank transfers relative to legacy financial infrastructure.
OpenDoor is a San Francisco-based real estate technology company offering virtual and streamlined real estate buying and selling founded in 2014 by Keith Rabois, Eric Wu, JD Ross and Ian Wong.
A cloud content management company. It was founded in 2005 and has headquarters located in Redwood City, California.
Airbnb provides an online platform for listing, searching and booking rental accommodations.
Rigetti Quantum Computing is a quantum computing company that was founded by Chad Rigetti.
A company offering an analytics platform for business, data science, and data engineering. It was founded in 2013 and is located in San Francisco, California.
Stripe is a financial technology company providing software that allows businesses and individuals to make and receive online payments.
RethinkDB provides an open-source distributed NoSQL document-oriented database storing JSON documents and scaling data for applications.
A biopharmaceutical company using artificial intelligence for drug discovery and drug development of small molecules.
Lyft is an American transportation network company. It designs, markets and operates a mobile application for matching drivers with passengers.
Co-founded by creators of the Uber Michelangelo feature store, Tecton is a San Francisco-based company which enables data scientists to build a library of features and serve them in production.
Investing tool and Public Benefit Corporation that emphasizes social responsibility.
A technology company that has made enterprise software that is an integration platform. It was founded in 2009 and is located in San Mateo, California.
Mercury is a company making banking products for startups based in San Francisco and backed by a16z.
A company offering an audio word processing platform that enables editor and producers to edit sound files while a writer would edit its lyrics.
Foursquare is a technology platform that specializes in location intelligence that can be utilized to unlock insights for business solutions and consumer products, through a deep understanding of location.
Funding rounds
Associated investment funds
TxO Fund, or The Talent x Opportunity Fund, is a program designed for entrepreneurs that have talent, drive, and ideas to build businesses but generally lack resources or the background to build a business.
People
Alex Rampell
Amanda Mulay
Employee
Andrew Chen
Balaji Srinivasan
Employee
Bart Dessaint
Employee
Ben Horowitz
Executive Officer
Chaz Flexman
Employee
Cheng Li
Employee
Chris Lyons
Employee
Connie Chan
Frank Chen
Fred Kang
Employee
Gina Bianchini
Employee
Grace Ellis
Employee
Jeff Jordan
John O' Farrell
Jorge Conde
Juliet Nyatta
Employee
Kristina Simmons
Employee
Louis Beryl
Employee
Marc Andreessen
Executive Officer
Martin Casado
Further reading
Andreessen Horowitz has a new, $450 million bio fund
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Andreessen Horowitz Is Blowing Up The Venture Capital Model (Again)
Alex Konrad
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April 2, 2019
Ben Horowitz on a Murder, Genghis Khan, and Corporate Culture
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November 9, 2019
Ben Horowitz reveals how he screens for culture in investment pitches - Business Insider
Melia Russell
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November 15, 2019
Menlo Ventures dives into data-driven healthcare investing with its newest partner
Connie Loizos
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Top Silicon Valley VC Andreessen Horowitz is investing $450 million into biotech
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What's next for Andreessen Horowitz after a wild 2019?
Kevin Dowd
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December 5, 2019