Andreessen Pulls a Bezos

Before, VC money was precious and merely being a VC was enough to get deal flow.

Now, so much money has been printed and sovereign wealth / pension funds are legally obligated make 8% annual returns that their only option is to go far out the risk curve, which includes venture capital.

As a consequence, VC firms are a dime a dozen and the existing ones have more capital than ever. It’s still an accomplishment to raise money, but from the VC perspective there are still only so many hot deals per year and they need to be hyper aggressive to win those most promising deals.

Put another way, the very top-tier startups now have their pick of VCs, can raise a lot more money on better terms, and for a VC to truly be an automatic “yes” for the founders they need to check a lot of boxes. This includes all of the usual stuff like industry contacts but as government has become far more aggressive in tech a legal / lobbying arm also makes sense.

This feels like a puff piece for andreessen:

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Honestly it seems like what they did right, more than anything, was realize that to be successful VCs they had to make a ton of noise and build a super media-focused brand.

https://www.newcomer.co/p/the-unauthorized-story-of-andreess...

I've heard of other VC firms with similar models of having a lot of support services baked into their business. Does anyone know if what A16Z doing is actually unique, or if they're just branding/publicizing an existing model?