VCs want to be perceived as steely eyed futurists, who are specially gifted at sifting through the mass of ideas bubbling up in tech and picking the winners. But it's actually quite difficult to pick winners, and as more and more investment has flooded into the space even getting a few winners in a batch is more difficult. So what A16z has done is to cash in their reputation as futurists to pump their investments. The article points out that it was their late stage Groupon investment that was the anchor Andreessen's famous "Software Eating The World" op-ed, a late stage investment dumped as soon as the IPO lockout ended. However, one of the consequences of VC being more public and in the press is that now everyone has seen them breathlessly shilling shitcoins during the boom. How long will their reputation last as they are publicly associated with more and more high profile failures?
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