Andreessen Horowitz just closed $15 billion in new funds. To mark it, Not Boring's Packy McCormick went deep: interviews with GPs, LPs, and founders representing roughly $200 billion in portfolio value, plus fund-level returns data going back to inception.
McCormick is not a neutral party. He advised a16z crypto for over two years, Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon are LPs in his own fund, and he shares cap tables with the firm regularly. He states this plainly, then argues it doesn't matter: sophisticated institutional LPs already voted with $15 billion, and a decade will settle the debate no critic can pre-empt. What he offers instead is a specific claim: a16z's public pitch and its internal training are the same document. The story it tells outside the firm is the story it tells inside.
The piece is worth reading for the returns appendix alone, but the sharper argument is structural. McCormick contends a16z doesn't optimize to look like venture capital, because it doesn't think of itself as a venture capital firm. Understanding what it actually thinks it is, and whether that self-model holds against the data, is the question the full Deep Dive tries to answer.
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