

Marc Andreessen: Series A investments still bread and butter of A16Z - kloncks
http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/10/11/marc-andreessen-series-a-investments-are-still-the-bread-and-butter-of-a16z/

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pmarca
I'm posting on this topic at:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6530536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6530536)

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dmk23
As if this should surprise anyone.

It is pretty typical for an investor to pronounce one thing and then do
something totally different.

Investors are driven by the "feel" of the opportunities they get to look at
and any pronouncements "we are funding this, not this" are merely looks in the
rearview mirror. Trying to read the investors' minds and predict their actions
is a lot like Kremlinology, it is best to focus on building a solid business
and not worry about their opinions too much.

~~~
ericabiz
> It is pretty typical for an investor to pronounce one thing and then do
> something totally different.

They didn't do that. The original article was one of their partners saying
they weren't doing as many _consumer_ Series As anymore, and were shifting
toward doing A rounds for enterprise companies and B rounds for consumer.

A bunch of commenters on Hacker News misinterpreted the article as "A16Z isn't
doing _any_ Series As", so Marc Andreessen jumped in himself to clarify their
original point.

Now it's being misinterpreted again. Read the original article and Marc's
comments--they've been consistent with this message the entire time.

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ScottBurson
Interesting how things change. 5-6 years ago I was working for an enterprise
startup and our CEO reported that VCs were generally uninterested in
enterprise products. Now they seem to be the higher probability bet. Does this
reflect an increasing openness to new products among enterprises?

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pmarca
VCs as a group move as a herd just like every other class of investors.
Enterprise startups performed very poorly between 2000 and 2008 (in large part
because enterprises all but stopped buying new technology from new companies)
and so they went badly out of fashion. This naturally created a shortage of
innovation in important categories which started to get rectified by a new
wave of enterprise startups starting about then, and then those startups
collectively have performed very well financially including as IPOs, which now
has VCs as a group all lathered up for enterprise startups.

We like to think that we are observing this phenomenon but still
differentiated enough in our thinking and our network that we can pick a new
set of winners now. Time will tell if we are right or if we are just part of
the herd :-).

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ulfw
A16Z sounds so much more .comy than Andreessen Horowitz...

