Menn Joseph. Andreessen Expands Venture Capital Business

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Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.


Andreessen Horowitz invests in both early-stage start-ups and established growth companies.[1] Its investments span the mobile, gaming, social, e-commerce, education and enterprise IT (including cloud computing, security, and software as a service) industries.[2]


1 Founding and partnering
2 Investments 2.1 2009
2.2 2010-2011
2.3 2012-2013
2.4 2014-2015
2.5 2016-2019
2.6 2020

Founding and partnering[edit]

Between 2006 and 2010, Andreessen and Horowitz actively invested in technology companies. Separately, and venture capital together, they invested $80 million in 45 start-ups including Twitter.[3] During this time, the two became known as super angel investors.[3]


On July 6, 2009, Andreessen and Horowitz launched their venture capital, https://ysmwiki.dip.jp, fund with an initial capitalization of $300 million.[4] In November 2010, at a time when the field of venture capitalism was contracting, the company raised another $650 million for a second venture fund.[4][5] In less than two years, the firm was managing a total of $1.2 billion under the two funds.[2]


In May 2011, Andreessen ranked number 10 on the 2011 Forbes Midas List of Tech's Top Investors[6] while he and Horowitz ranked number 6 on Vanity Fair’s 2011 New Establishment List[7] and number 1 on CNET’s 2011 most influential investors list.[8]


As of March 27, 2014, the firm managed $4 billion in assets after the closing of its fourth fund at $1.5 billion.[9]


In addition to Andreessen and Horowitz, venture capital the firm’s general partners include John O’Farrell, Scott Weiss, Jeff Jordan, Peter Levine, Chris Dixon, Vijay Pande, Katie Haun,[10] Alex Rampell, Martin Casado and Andrew Chen.[11][12][13] In March 2019, it was reported that Andreessen Horowitz was opening an office in San Francisco.[14]

2009[edit]

In 2009, Andreessen Horowitz made its two first investments: one in business management SaaS developer Apptio[15] and the other in Skype stock.[16] According to Horowitz, the investment was seen as risky by other experts in the field who believed the company would be crippled by ongoing intellectual property litigation and direct competitive attacks from Google and Apple.[16] The company's founders viewed the investment as a success following Skype's sale to Microsoft in May 2011 for $8.5 billion.[16]

2010-2011[edit]

In 2010, Andreessen Horowitz invested $10 million in cloud company Okta while leading its Series A Round.[17] In 2011, Andreessen Horowitz invested $80 million in Twitter,[4] becoming the first venture firm that held stock in all four of the highest-valued, privately held social media companies at the time: Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, and Zynga.[2] Andreessen Horowitz has also invested in Airbnb, Lytro, Jawbone, Belly, Foursquare, Stripe and Venture Capital other high-tech companies.[4][18][19]

2012-2013[edit]

In 2012, Andreessen Horowitz invested in 156 companies, including the 90 companies in its portfolio,[20] and 66 start-ups[21] through its funding of Y Combinator's Start Fund.[22] The company invested $100 million in GitHub, which netted over $1 billion for the fund when GitHub was acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion.[23][24] In 2013, Andreessen Horowitz invested in Clinkle, Coinbase, Databricks, Lyft, Oculus VR, PagerDuty, Pixlee, Ripple, Soylent, Swiftype and uBiome.[25][26][27][28][29][30][31]

2014-2015[edit]

In 2014, the firm led a $57 million Series B round in the A/B testing startup Optimizely.[32] That same year the company invested in several more companies, including Tanium for $90 million,[33] BuzzFeed,[34] and Forward Networks.[35] In 2015, the firm invested $40 million in Stack Exchange,[36][37] $2.8 million in Distelli,[38] and $80 million in cloud-based CAD software company Onshape.[39] Also in 2015 Andreessen Horowitz invested in the blogging platform Medium,[40] Samsara,[41] Improbable,[42] Honor, Inc.,[43] OpenBazaar,[44][45] a blockchain startup, and nootropics and biohacking company Nootrobox.[46]

2016-2019[edit]

In 2016, the firm led an $8.1 million Series A round in Everlaw, Venture Capital a legal technology company, and led a $3.5 million Series Seed round in RapidAPI, an API connection platform for developers.[47][48] Also in 2016, the firm invested $2 million in Cardiogram, a digital health company,[49] and Apeel Sciences, a food science business.[50] In 2017, the firm invested in Sigma, Health IQ, Asimov, and Venture Capital Cadre.[51][52][53][54][55] In 2018, the firm raised $300 million for a dedicated cryptocurrency fund.[56] It has also invested in Imply, Smartcar, PeerStreet, CryptoKitties, Dfinity, Venture capital Earnin, Pindrop, Tenfold, and Very Good Security.[57][58][59][60][61]

2020[edit]

In 2020, the firm led a $150 million Series G round in Roblox, a social video game platform for children.[62][63]

Structure[edit]

Andreessen Horowitz partners work on behalf of all its portfolio companies, an approach modeled after the Hollywood talent agency, Creative Artists Agency.[64] In 2010, the company hired Margit Wennmachers, Venture Capital a marketing executive at the partner level.[65]


As of 2011, the firm had maintained a database of designers, coders, and executives and uses it to help fill positions at its start-ups.[66] Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers became a special advisor to Andreessen Horowitz in June 2011.[67]


In September 2012, former Washington D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty was appointed Andreessen Horowitz's second special advisor.[68] Fenty was hired to advise the firm's portfolio companies on working with local, state, Venture Capital and federal governments.[67]


In 2019, the firm applied to restructure as a registered investment adviser in order to have more freedom to take up riskier bets like crypto.[69][70]


^ Arrington, Michael. "Andreessen Horowitz Celebrates First Year With New General Partner John O'Farrell". News. TechCrunch. Retrieved April 14, 2012..mw-parser-output cite.citationfont-style:inherit.mw-parser-output .citation qquotes:"\"""\"""'""'".mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free abackground-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lock-green.svg/9px-Lock-green.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:9px;background-position:right .1em center.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration abackground-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-gray-alt-2.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:9px;background-position:right .1em center.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription abackground-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-red-alt-2.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:9px;background-position:right .1em center.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registrationcolor:#555.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription span,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration spanborder-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon abackground-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/12px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:12px;background-position:right .1em center.mw-parser-output code.cs1-codecolor:inherit;background:inherit;border:inherit;padding:inherit.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-errordisplay:none;font-size:100%.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-errorfont-size:100%.mw-parser-output .cs1-maintdisplay:none;color:#33aa33;margin-left:0.3em.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration,.mw-parser-output .cs1-formatfont-size:95%.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-leftpadding-left:0.2em.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-rightpadding-right:0.2em.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflinkfont-weight:inherit
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