How a16z built a media company inside a venture firm

The problem every fund has

From the outside, most venture firms look alike. The website lists portfolio logos, the partners are "founder-friendly", and the thesis is a sector name. A founder deciding whom to pitch first has little to go on, so they start with the firm whose thinking they already know.

a16z set out to be that firm. It has published as if attention were part of the product, and it kept publishing through one very public failure.

It started with essays

In August 2011, two years after the firm started, Marc Andreessen published "Why Software Is Eating the World" in The Wall Street Journal. It explained in plain language why his firm was backing software companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Skype, and the phrase became shorthand across the industry.

More essays followed. "It's Time to Build" arrived in April 2020, early in the pandemic, and "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto" in October 2023. Each one told founders what the firm believes, which is the hardest thing for any fund to get across.

Then a podcast, run like a newsroom

The a16z Podcast began in early 2014 as an experiment. The same year, Sonal Chokshi joined to build an editorial operation that covered everything from written pieces and the newsletter to the websites and multimedia. She hosted and ran the show for most of its first eight years, and in September 2020 the firm turned it into a network of shows.

The experiment that failed: Future

In June 2021 a16z launched Future, a separate publication with its own editors, opening with more than 20 articles at once. By September 2022 its traffic had fallen to about 423,000 visits a month, from about 1.3 million in July, according to Similarweb estimates. It published its last article on 5 October 2022 and was shut down that winter.

The firm's conclusion is the useful part. A person familiar with its content strategy said it would keep "going direct", publishing on its own website rather than building a separate brand, given how well known the firm already was.

2025: buying a podcast network

In April 2025 a16z acquired Turpentine, Erik Torenberg's network of tech podcasts, and made Torenberg a general partner. The firm said he would make investments and help "spearhead our media and network initiatives". The Turpentine shows kept running.

By November 2025 the firm had formally set up a new media team and opened a New Media Fellowship: an eight-week program in San Francisco for about 65 creators, editors, designers and marketers per cohort.

Where it stands now

The a16z YouTube channel has about 300,000 subscribers and 1,129 videos, and it posted a new one the day we checked: "Former Intel CEO: Why This is the Best Time to Build Hardware". In January 2026 the firm announced $15 billion in new funds, and says it raised 18% of all venture dollars invested in the US in 2025. That came after a year in which US firms raised $66.1 billion for new funds, the lowest total since 2017, according to PitchBook and the NVCA.

No one can measure how much of that the media operation earned. What it plainly did is make a16z the firm founders and LPs feel they know before the first meeting.

What a smaller fund can copy

A $50 million fund cannot hire a newsroom, and does not need one. Five things from a16z's record carry over at any size.

1. Say the thesis in one sentence, and repeat it. "Software is eating the world" did more for a16z than any portfolio page. Find your version and use it everywhere.
2. Publish under the fund's own name. Future's lesson is that a separate brand splits the attention the fund already has.
3. Let the partners be the voices. People follow people. a16z's best-known pieces carry its founders' names.
4. Pick a format founders come back to. A podcast or a video series builds a habit that one-off posts rarely do. The a16z Podcast has run since 2014.
5. Put your founders on camera. A portfolio founder explaining why they chose you is the most believable thing a fund can publish.

For most funds that adds up to a film for each fund launch, a founder story every quarter and a show if a partner enjoys hosting one. It is the work we do for venture firms and venture studios, including StudioK's founder residency.