February 3 2021
Context
Blog on 25 Jan 2021 by Margit Wennmachers who has been behind a16z's media dominance (she encouraged Marc Andreessen to write the now historic 'Why Software is Eating the World' op-ed) and is now spearheading an in-house media platform.
Key points
If we got the same question from entrepreneurs and their teams over and over, time to blog about it! If we found ourselves with a unique point of view, we would share it, as in Software is Eating the World.
Having this direct channel to express our thinking was powerful: Entrepreneurs felt that we “got” them, their tech, and their industries. Big companies found it was useful to learn about the new technologies and trends, as well as how these newfangled modern companies were being built.
Not one of us recalls exactly who came up with the podcast back in 2014… No matter, we started a podcast. It was a lot of experimenting and trying out different things. Then Sonal joined and made it into the powerhouse that it is today. The response was just as powerful and positive as with our posts. In fact, it expanded the audience globally and far beyond the tech community. Just one example is a United States senator contacted us saying he was going to draft legislation based on a podcast he heard and wanted to meet the entrepreneur who promoted the idea. It has worked so well that we now have a growing network of podcasts.
So we are doing just that: we are building a new and separate media property about the future that makes sense of technology, innovation, and where things are going — and now, we’re expanding and opening up our platform to do this on a much bigger scale. We want to be the go-to place for understanding and building the future, for anyone who is building, making, or curious about tech.