Andreessen Horowitz’s Post

One of the most powerful yet overlooked skills for founders: storytelling, Siqi Chen said in conversation with Andrew Chen. “As a founder, storytelling is a super power,” he said, particularly when seeking investment. During SF Tech Week, Brandon Penn of Runway, along with Andrew Chen and Siqi Chen, highlighted the importance of storytelling when it comes to building and leading a company. Founders often spend most of their time developing their ideas but little time talking about themselves or their products, Andrew said. To be successful, though, you need to highlight your own accomplishments. While it might feel uncomfortable to talk about yourself, Andrew warns that no one wants to hear a dry, dictionary-like explanation. And investors want to understand the people behind the company. Keep that in mind when explaining why you believe your startup will be successful, Andrew said. “A great story always has conflict,” he said. Focus on a “why now,” or what is broken in the industry, or even the idea of an incumbent and a new contender. And for founders who want to improve their storytelling skills: consume great stories, Andrew and Siqi said. Like an artist who wants to succeed in music listens to great music, you should watch and read great stories, taking note of what makes them work. Telling the story and taking the big risk is actually how you get the money, Andrew says. For more insights from SF Tech Week, and LA Tech Week up next, follow TECH WEEK by a16z.

Ever wish you could give others — your coworkers, your partner, your therapist — a direct line to your brain to help them understand your feelings, decisions, or actions? Well, thanks to LLMs, now you can. Justine Moore calls this idea “exporting your brain.” For months, she has been using ChatGPT like a daily journal: recording her thoughts, describing her feelings,  and sending it anonymized screenshots of interactions she wants advice on. “I’ve used it to analyze how I communicate with family members, talk through options for a tricky work situation, and get an external perspective on confusing messages from a friend,” Justine writes. Though ChatGPT isn't the ideal product for this (more on that in the link), she identified three core use cases for an "AI brain”: - Communicating with others - Understanding yourself  - Communicating with applications So what’s next? There are clearly real use cases for using AI in this way, Justine writes. She shares her take on what the future could hold and a few early examples of companies with tangible products here: https://lnkd.in/eAr_kcBM

In this article, a16z Partners Santiago Rodriguez and Alex Immerman address the myth that if you become a bank, you will “trade like a bank” and be valued at lower multiples.

When trying to find product-market fit, there is one person that we believe companies building in AI need to win over: the developer. As more companies enter the space, and existing companies mature, developers are emerging as the “kingmakers” in the AI industry, says Jennifer Li. They are often the first adopters of new technologies, and responsible for putting them into product experiences. So how should AI-focused companies adjust to keep these “kingmakers” in mind? Integrate your product into their existing workflows, said Keerti Melkote, CEO of Anyscale. Take care of governance, security and other important aspects of using your product, and allow the developers to think about the tasks they are actually trying to accomplish, he said. Keerti, along with Jennifer Li, Marjorie Janiewicz of Mistral AI, Lauren Nemeth of Pinecone and Monique Shivanandan of HSBC discussed how AI companies can find product-market fit in a competitive landscape, at TECH WEEK by a16z in San Francisco. “Developers don’t want to be sold to,” Lauren said. “They want to be able to say, ‘Here’s my use case. Here’s the problem I’m trying to solve.’” And using a new tool to solve those problems must be “frictionless,” Monique said. “Focus on the thing that you're going to be best, and be best at it, but integrate with the ecosystem that exists,” she said. This is also where the power of open source comes into play, Marjorie said. When your product is out there, there is so much you can learn, she said. Hearing from developers live about what their wishes are is important. “We do find that the requirements coming bottom up can be quite different from the requirements at the top,” she said. “And in the end, it's about connecting the two.” For more from Tech Week, follow TECH WEEK by a16z on X, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Fintech isn’t dead. AI is driving a new beginning, say a16z General Partner Angela Strange and a16z Partner James da Costa.

Great founders stay deeply involved in the decision-making loops that define long-term success even after hiring great execs. In the latest AI Revolution episode, Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of ScaleAI, breaks down the “founder fantasy”—the belief that bringing in top executives allows founders to take a step back from running their companies. Wang shares why staying involved in key decision-making is crucial for a company’s growth and success, even as your leadership team expands. Hear more on his leadership philosophies from the growth of Scale and what he thinks growth-stage founders tend to get wrong when hiring: https://lnkd.in/g6rhxTQr

Selling today is tough — much tougher than it was several years ago. Why? The entire pie of software spend is just smaller: net-new dollars up for grabs for startups have been cut in half. Unless you’re selling cybersecurity or databases whose growth rates have remained strong, your life has gotten a lot harder. Justin Kahl, David George, and Alex Immerman recently spoke with 30 Fortune 500 CIOs and software sellers about their spend and priorities. In those conversations, and in their own benchmarking and survey data, they found that even though the pool of opportunity has contracted, over 85% of winnable IT spend lies outside of the industries most disrupted by gen AI today. But there are pockets of opportunity for startups. The key is knowing where to look for that opportunity and how to win those customers. Winning this business requires a sophisticated selling motion and a solid product roadmap keyed to the actual pain points of companies today: getting ahead of gen AI disruption and showing real ROI. In their latest, Justin, David and Alex dive into how to do just that: https://lnkd.in/eGE_HNQy

There is still more work to be done around data as we advance gen AI to its next transformative phase. And one of the most highly-respected minds in the space, Alexandr Wang, the founder and CEO of Scale AI, is building towards this next breakthrough. Two of the biggest challenges, he says, when it comes to data currently, are increasing data complexity (moving toward frontier data), and increasing data abundance (the production of data.) These challenges can be overcome by investing in synthetic data, or "hybrid data" that incorporates human reasoning chains to produce higher-quality data, along with data foundries, Alex shared with a16z Growth's David George. The same way that chip foundries ensure enough means of production for chips, data foundries allow the ability to capture large amounts of data, essential for training generative AI models. For more on these data foundries, and what Alex and his team are making possible with Scale AI, check out the full video with Alex and David George: https://lnkd.in/eBYJs_zn