Andreessen Horowitz Fund Overview (a16z) & Investment Trends

Provides information and in-depth analysis of the Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) portfolio.

Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, is an investment fund name that is probably too familiar to you in the crypto market.

It is not an exaggeration to say that this is the largest and most active crypto investment fund in the crypto market today, with many large investments and huge amounts of funds invested in projects.

So what exactly is Andreessen Horowitz or a16z an investment fund? What projects does Andreessen Horowitz’s portfolio include?

What is Andreessen Horowitz’s investment style? Let’s learn all about Andreessen Horowitz through the following article.

About Andreessen Horowitz Investment Fund (a16z)

Andreessen Horowitz Foundation (a16z)

Andreessen Horowitz (or a16z) is an investment fund founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. This is an investment fund that operates in Silicon Valley, California and focuses on investing in technology startups.

Andreessen Horowitz invests in the project in stages from the seed round to the Series A, B, C stages… A16Z has invested billions of dollars in various projects and funds over the course of time. 13 years of operation.

Andreessen Horowitz’s operating principle is to understand the problems of startups – understand the problems of founders when running a startup.

The general partners – or fund operators of a16z – have all been CEOs and CTOs of famous technology startups, so this investment fund understands the problems of the startups they invest in to support. timely assistance.

Andreessen Horowitz Fund (a16z) in the crypto market

With the above operating principle, the investment vision of the project is extremely long-term. Andreessen Horowitz has been investing in crypto since 2013, and starting out as an investment fund (Venture Capital) and not a hedge fund, they target investments with holding periods greater than 10 years.

They invest in crypto projects regardless of the market situation, because they believe that no matter how the short term plays out, the market will grow in the long term.

They support startups in a variety of ways: recruitment, operations and technical expertise, legal issues, communications and marketing, general administration.

Note: A crypto course to train support founders and projects is also posted on youtube, you can also review and learn because this course provides a lot of knowledge that not only project founders but retailers Investors like you should also know.

You can view the free course here.

They not only focus on investing in a specific area, but also invest in many areas in the crypto market: Layer 1, DeFi, NFTs, gaming, DAOs, social tokens, decentralized social network, Web3, and even new fields that don’t even have names.

a16z team in crypto

Andreessen Horowitz was founded by two founders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and has a dedicated team to invest in the crypto market.

Therefore, in the next part, I will learn with you guys about Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and 4 general partners – the people who are mainly responsible for making investment decisions of a16z crypto.

Marc Andreessen

Marc Andreessen (full name is Marc Lowell Andreessen) was born on July 9, 1971, was born in Cedar Falls, USA, and grew up in New Lisbon, whose parents both worked in incubation and business development companies. .

About Marc’s career:

• He graduated in computer science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, interned at IBM in Texas.
• He is the founder of Netscape, Loudcloud – two companies that were acquired for $4.3 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively.
• Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have become super angel investors, totaling more than $80 million in many startups including Twitter and Qik.
• On July 6, 2009, Andreessen and Horowitz founded a16z investment fund, with an initial fund of $300 million. This number has multiplied 9 times, becoming $ 2.7 billion three years later (due to more investment in the fund), with a portfolio of many famous companies such as Facebook, Foursquare, GitHub, Pinterest, Twitter, …

You can see that Marc Andreessen has been very successful in the field of investment and technology startups since the 2000s, which makes his position in the investment field very good. With such a good position, he easily led a16z to enter crypto early and is the largest investment fund, leading in the market.

Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz (full name is Benjamin Abraham Horowitz) was born on June 13, 1966, born in London, England and raised in Berkeley, California.

About Ben Horowitz’s career:

• He graduated from Columbia University in computer science in 1988 and graduated with a Master’s degree in computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles.
• 1990, he started his career as a computer engineer at a computer hardware and software manufacturing company in Silicon Valley. Then he and Marc Andreessen joined Netscape as a Product Manager, then together became the founders of LoudCloud, before founding a16z investment fund, with an initial fund of 300 million dollars.

Ali Yahya

Ali Yahya has worked at many big technology companies such as Google X and Google Brain as a software development engineer, working with algorithms to interact with robots and composing open source AI libraries for robots. Google, TensorFlow.

He first learned about official Bitcoin reports in 2010 while participating in research at the Stanford Computer Security Lab and has been tracking BTC ever since.

At a16z, he works closely with the foundation’s portfolio of Layer 1 projects such as Dapper Labs and Flow, Compound, Avalanche, Near, Rally, and Dfinity.

With a long time working in technology companies like Google, and starting to work at a16z and crypto investment since November 2017, Ali Yahya has a lot of experience not only in crypto investment, but also in the field of crypto investment. techniques of software developers, and especially early entry into the market since 2010.

Arianna Simpson

Arianna Simpson is General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she is in charge of crypto investments. Prior to joining Andreessen Horowitz, Arianna founded Autonomous Partners, an investment fund focused on cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

She also helped found Crystal Towers Capital in 2015. Arianna previously spent time in sales and product management roles at Facebook and BitGo, a company that provides enterprise security solutions with BTC and other digital currencies.

Arianna holds a dual degree in International Politics and Spanish from Schreyer Honors College at Penn State University. She grew up in Milan, Italy.

As you can see, Arianna Simpson has a lot of experience working in investment funds ranging from investment funds in the traditional financial industry to investment funds in the crypto market.

It can be said that she was the first to enter the crypto market, on her Twitter bio she also wrote “into crypto before it was cool” – or “entered crypto before it was hot”.

Chris Dixon

Chris Dixon has been a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz for the past six years, investing in companies from seed stage to later rounds. Previously, Chris was the co-founder of two startups, SiteCity and Hunch, which were acquired by McAfee and eBay.

Prior to joining Andreessen Horowitz, Chris was also a co-founder of Founder Collective, a venture capital fund that has made investments in various technology companies. From an early age, Chris started programming and became a professional programmer after finishing college, at the options-trading firm Arbittrade.

He holds Bachelors and Masters of Philosophy from Columbia and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard. In addition, Chris Dixon also has many valuable medium posts and podcasts, which you can refer to here.

It can be seen that Chris Dixon has a lot of experience working in investment funds, as well as working in many successful startups, in his youth he also worked in different financial companies.

Besides, Chris Dixon also shared a lot about his investment philosophies and thoughts on the market, on issues such as decentralization, NFTs, Web3,… to learn and to understand more about this person.

Kathryn Haun

Kathryn Haun is General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Previously, she worked as a federal prosecutor focusing on fraud crimes, cyber corporate crimes with agencies including SEC, FBI,… for nearly a decade.

She established the government’s first crypto-complaints task force, leading investigations into many of the market’s high-profile lawsuits.

Katie serves on the boards of Coinbase and HackerOne, and has invested in and advised tech startups. She also taught a course in management at Stanford School, in cybercrime at Stanford Law School.

As you can see, Kathryn Haun’s past is mainly experience in working in the field of law, with participating in many different disputes, and when the law on crypto is still not clear. As it stands, Kathryn Haun is one of the market’s legal leaders.

A16z portfolio overview

You can check out a16z’s portfolio through the image above. Next, we will take a look at a few outstanding projects of each Sector. All the projects mentioned below have informational articles on idolmeta.net, if you are interested in any project, you can search for the project name to learn more!

Project Layer 1

Layer 1 projects invested by a16z (besides Bitcoin and Ethereum) include: Avalanche, Celo, Chia, Difinity, Filecoin, Near, Oasis Network, Keep Network, Handshake, Helium.

• Near Protocol: In May 2020, a16z led a round investing $21.6 million in Near Protocol at an unknown valuation. Before this investment round, Near Protocol had previous funding rounds in 2018 and 2019, with the participation of Multicoin Capital and many other funds.
• Avalanche: Avalanche was invested by a16z in Series A with $6 million in funding in 2019, with the participation of many large investment fund names such as Initialized Capital, Polychain Capital or Naval Ravikant. Avalanche’s valuation for this funding round is unknown.
• Solana: a16z and Polychain invest in Solana $314 million, announced June 2021.

With Dfinity

• Dfinity: a16z invested in Dfinity very early, since the project called for the first rounds. They and Polychain invested twice in this project at valuations of $ 1.3 billion (information is verifying) and $ 9.5 billion in February 2018 and the end of August 2018. a16z and Polychain led two investment rounds worth $61 million and $102 million.
• These aren’t very early rounds for Dfinity (earlier rounds have had an ICO since 2017 with a valuation of less than $1 billion), but a16z has proven themselves to be a strong believer and investor in Dfinity with a double down payment at ascending valuations.
• Celo: a16z lead round invested $ 20 million in Celo in February 2021, before that there were some fundraising rounds of Celo with the participation of Polychain Capital, Reid Hoffman, Jack Dorsey, Coinbase Ventures with the initial amount. about 45 million dollars.
• Oasis Network: a16z led the round of $45 million investment in Oasis Labs in July 2018. The round also featured multiple funds including Accel, Binance, Pantera, Polychain, Metastable, Foundation Capital, Electric Capital, DCVC, and Coinbase. The valuation of the project is unknown at the time.

⇒ Comment: In layer 1 deals, a16z is usually not an investment fund that participates from fundraising rounds too early, they often join from round 2 and 3.

However, every time they participate, they are always the leader of the investment round, the investment round usually has a large amount of money and shows the responsibility, the “commit” of the fund to the project (investing more than one time).

The time to participate in these funding rounds of a16z is also in 2017 to 2020, and in 2021 it seems they have no Layer 1 investments.

This proves that a16z bet on the development of Layer 1 to replace Ethereum quite early, and they have been quite successful in that bet as Layer 1 has grown rapidly and strongly from the beginning of 2021 to now.

One more feature, the relationship of a16z and Polychain seems to be quite close, when many of the layer 1 deals these two funds participate in, such as Dfinity (2 rounds), Oasis Network, Avalanche, Solana, Celo,…

I will learn more about the relationship of these two VCs with you if I have more detailed information.

Project on exchange platform

Exchange projects invested by a16z include (including DEX, CEX, Derivatives):

• Uniswap: Andreessen Horowitz, USV, Paradigm, Parafi Capital invest in Series A of Uniswap $11 million, announced July 2020.
• dYdX: Today’s largest decentralized derivatives exchange, completed a Series C investment round in June 2021 with a $65 million funding round, led by Paradigm.
• Yellow Card: Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain invests $1.5 million in this exchange to attack the crypto market in Africa.
• CoinSwitch Kuber: October 2021, a16z and Coinbase Ventures have completed a $260 million investment round at a valuation of nearly $2 billion in CoinSwitch Kuber – a CEX exchange focusing on the Indian market.

⇒ Comment: a16z doesn’t have many investments in AMM DEX or CEX or Derivatives, only invests in some leaders like Uniswap or dYdX.

Stablecoin Project

Stablecoin projects invested by a16z include:

• MakerDAO: In September 2018, a16z invested $15 million to buy 6% of the total supply of MAKER token – the governance token of the MakerDAO project, at a project valuation of $240 million.
• As of now, their investment has had a 1,200% ROI within 3 years, and it is also the most popular decentralized stablecoin solution on the market at the moment.
• Trust Token: Trust Token is an issuer of stablecoin TUSD, with a centralized stablecoin capitalization of up to $1.2 billion. The project has raised capital many times, including two times with the participation of a16z.
  • In June 2018, a16z led a strategic investment round in a $20 million project at an unspecified valuation, with participating funds such as BlockTower, Founders Fund, Jump Trading Capital, Foundation Capital, Danhua Venture Capital (DHVC). , Distributed Global,…
  • On August 5, 2021, they were invested by a16z and many funds such as BlockTower, Alameda, and invested $12.5 million at an unspecified valuation. However, this investment is not only used to develop stablecoins, but also to develop the project’s lending protocol.
• Basis: An early rebase algorithmic stablecoin project, raised $133 million from many investors including a16z and many other funds such as Lightspeed, Foundation Capital, Sky9, Digital Currency Group,… in September. 4/2018.
• However, after 8 months of operation, the project stopped working and returned the remaining investment money to investors. This is a rare project that a16z participates in without being an investment round lead.
• Reflexer: In February 2021, Reflexer Labs announced the completion of a $4 million funding round to develop an ETH-collateralized stablecoin called RAI. The investment round was led by Pantera and Lemniscap, which involved a16z. Currently, the project has 52,641 ETH locked in the protocol.
• Fei Protocol: Fei Labs announced in March 2021 that it has raised $19 million from multiple funds including a16z, Framework Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Naval Ravikant.
• It is not clear what the project’s valuation was at the time of their investment, but this is a fairly innovative project in creating algorithmic stablecoins with a collateral factor. This is not the protocol’s first funding round.
• Angle Protocol: Angle Labs raised $5 million in September 2021 from multiple funds, including a16z and others, to build a Derivatives-Backed stablecoin solution.

⇒ Comment: Above are 6 stablecoin projects that a16z has invested in, of which only one was successful, one failed and returned investors money.

Investments also mostly happen in 2021, except for the first time investing in Trust Token in 2018 and buying MakerDAO’s MAKER token.

You can also see that investing in stablecoin solutions does not seem to be the strength of a16z, when most of the protocols they invest in are not having good growth in market share, the number of stablecoins circulating in the market. market or number of users (except for Angle Protocol, which just launched not long ago, so it can’t be confirmed, and MakerDAO has been successful with stablecoin DAI).

Project on Lending/Yield

Lending/Yield Farming projects invested by a16z include:

• TrustToken: This project I mentioned above, they not only work on TUSD centralized stablecoin but also on TrueFi lending protocol – a lending solution without collateral. The total assets locked in the protocol are currently $1 billion, and the amount borrowed by users is $520 million.
• MakerDAO: MakerDAO is actually a debt protocol lending, and I won’t repeat it because I’ve analyzed this project above.
• Compound: Compound Finance has two funding rounds attended by a16z.
  • The first was a $8.2 million Seed Round funding round in May 2018, attended by Bain Capital Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain, Coinbase,…
  • The second is a $25 million Series A funding round announced in November 2019. Participating in this round of funding are Polychain Capital, Paradigm Capital and Bain Capital Ventures, and the project valuation in these two rounds is unknown.
• Goldfinch: $11 million funding round announced in June 2021, led by a16z and attended by Divergence Ventures, Defi Alliance, Jason Choi from Spartan,…

⇒ Comment: You can see that a16z’s investments in lending protocols are not many, but these deals are of relatively high quality with 2 protocols in the top lending protocols in the market, MakerDAO and Compound .

Most of the time investing in these deals is from when the market was relatively stagnant in the years 2018-2019 (Compound and MakerDAO), and they no longer invested much in the lending segment in 2020, 2021, shows a16z’s vision of lending in DeFi.

Ethereum Layer 2 Solution Project

A16z’s leading projects in the infrastructure segment include:

• Optimism: Ethereum’s scaling solution, powered by the Optimistic Rollup mechanism, was led by a16z in a $25 million Series A investment round in February 2021.
• Matter Labs: Ethereum’s scaling solution, powered by zero-knowledge proofs, led by a16z in a $50 million Series B investment round in November 2021.

⇒ Comment: You can see that a16z’s investments are all announced in 2021, in Series A and B – when the projects have started operating and are adding infrastructure. floor. A16Z was not an early investor in these projects, but invested heavily in the later rounds of these Layer 2 solutions.

Project about NFT/Metaverse/Gaming

NFT / Metaverse / Gaming projects invested by a16z include many different large and small projects, here I will mention all the projects I have collected but only analyze a few typical projects.

Projects featured by a16z in the NFT/Metaverse/Gaming array include:

• Crypto Kitties: Dapper Labs’ NFT collectibles cat project successfully raised $12 million in Series A funding in March 2018 from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Naval Ravikant (CEO and founder of AngelList), Mark Pincus ( founder of Zynga) and Fred Ehrsam (founder of Coinbase).
• Dapper Labs: In March 2021, Dapper Labs – developer of Crypto Kitties, NBA Top Shots and Flow Blockchain – successfully raised $305 million. The funding round was led by Coatue, and involved a16z, USV, and more. Dapper Labs’ valuation in this round is $2.6 billion. Then, in September 2021, Dapper Labs completed another $250 million funding round also led by Coatue, but without the participation of a16z, bringing the project’s valuation to $7.6 billion.
• OpenSea: a16z joins OpenSea’s Series A and Series B, the investment announced in March and July 2021. OpenSea’s Series A was spearheaded by a16z and successfully raised $23 million, with the participation of many funds and giants such as Mark Cuban, Naval Ravikant. OpenSea’s Series B was also led by a16z and raised $100 million for the project at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
• Sky Marvis: Sky Mavis Series B was completed in October 2021, with a valuation of nearly $3 billion. They completed a $152 million funding round led by a16z and the participation of many large investment funds such as Paradigm, Accel, FTX and many others.
• Royal: An NFT Music platform called Royal has just completed a $55 million funding round in November 2021 with investors including a16z, Coinbase Ventures, Paradigm,…
• Forte: In May 2021, Forte successfully raised $185 million at a valuation of $1 billion. The valuation of the project in this round is unknown, and a16z is one of the investors in the project, not the lead round. In November 2021, a16z participated in another round of Forte funding, with a Series B round value of $725 million.
• Many other projects also invested by a16z include: Foundation (NFT Marketplace); Virtually Human Studio (ZED RUN, July 2021); Fingerprints (9/2021); Manifold (October 2021); OnChain Studios (October 2021); Bitski (May 2021); Cryptoys (seed round, $7.5 million, October 2021); RTFKT (seed round, $8 million, May 2021).
• Many game projects have been focused on recently by a16z, including Mythical Games (Series C, $150 million, 11/2021); Faraway (Series A, $21 million, November 2021); Core Loop ($12 million, November 2021).

⇒ Comment: You can see that most of a16z’s investments in NFT/ Metaverse/ Gaming projects are at quite high project valuations (OpenSea two rounds Series A and B, Dapper Labs in round has valuation of $2 billion, etc.).

In addition to Crypto Kitties, the projects they invest in are all in round from Series A onwards (when the project has formed, operates stably and has revenue, and invests to expand the project and customer base) and invest in 2021. They still continuously invest in new NFT/ Gaming/ Metaverse projects from 2021 to the present time.

This further strengthens a16z’s long-term investment thesis, because they really believe in the potential of the project and mass adoption of this segment, because if they only invest in a short-term investment, for continued investment Strong investment when the “circle crypto” is coming to an end will not make sense in terms of profits.

Infrastructure and data projects

A16z’s leading projects in the infrastructure and data array include:

• Arweave: Arweave received $8 million investment from various funds including a16z, USV, Coinbase Ventures. The investment was announced in March 2020.
• Deso Labs: In September 2021, Deso announced they were invested $200 million by multiple funds including Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, Pantera Capital, Sequoia. This is Labs that has created many products in the past including BitClout.
• Nym Technologies: This privacy project has just completed the next round of funding led by a16z at a valuation of $270 million, successfully raising 13 million in November 2021.
• WorldCoin: This eyeball-scanning personal identity project successfully raised a private round at a valuation of $ 1 billion, received an investment of $ 25 million with the participation of a16z, Coinbase, Coinfund, Digital Currency Group, Hashed , Multicoin, Sam Bankman-Fried, Three Arrows, Variant Fund, 1Confirmation.
• Nansen: Nansen was invested $12 million by a16z and other funds in July 2021.
• Kosen Labs: This Labs just received a $5 million seed round investment in November 2021 from a16z and Framework Capital, to bring AI to web3 in the future.
• Aleo: In April 2021, a16z announced they were leading a $28 million investment round in Aleo – a private data project using zero-knowledge proofs technology. Other investors include Placeholder VC, Galaxy Digital, Variant Fund, Coinbase Ventures…
• Forta: In September 2021, a16z announced it was leading the round with a $23 million investment in Forta, an enterprise-grade security platform.
• Protocol Labs: Labs with many popular infrastructure projects such as IPFS, Filecoin,… It is not clear when and how much a16z invested in Protocol Labs.
• Alchemy: An infrastructure piece that helps developers develop Dapps has completed a $250 million funding round at a $3.5 million valuation in mid-November 2021. a16z leads this Series C, starring Lightspeed and Redpoint.

⇒ Comment: Infrastructure and data projects are heavily invested by a16z and spread throughout their investment journey, and the deals are also growing, culminating in the Alchemy investment. Last.

This is a large segment and needs continuous improvement, so they have been spreading and investing in infrastructure all the time.

Reviews & Reviews of Andreessen Horowitz

Looking at the a16z portfolio, you can see the following characteristics through the a16z portfolio:

• They do not often invest early in projects at the seed or angel stage, but only invest in projects in Series A, B, C… mainly. This shows that a16z’s investment style is relatively “safe” and long-term, because investing in the following series means investing in projects that have already started operating, the model has come into use, not It’s not just at the idea stage, so the profits may not be big in the short term, but it’s safer.
• As you can see, most of a16z’s deals are “relatively large” and they are usually the ones who lead the deals.This may be because they have a lot of money so they need to invest in projects. have large capital needs, and are therefore suitable to invest in later rounds, leading rounds means they are more dedicated and take on more responsibility for leading the project.
• A16z not only invests in one segment, but also invests in almost all segments in the market, including those that have not yet been named. This is also stated in their “investing thesis”, and you can also notice this when you take a look at the fund’s portfolio.
• The past three months have been the time when a16z announced the most deals, a sharp increase in both the number and amount of money involved in the project. In this part, I will talk more clearly in this year’s investment trend of a16z.

Andreessen Horowitz Portfolio Review

Performance

The top 5 projects with the best performing Tokens (price of ATH compared to ATL) are:

• Solana (SOL): 51,800%
• Helium (HNT): 49.890%.
• Arweave (AR): 30.772%.
• Avalanche (AVAX: 5.177%.
• Uniswap (UNI): 4,361%.

The Top 5 Top 5 projects with the best performing Tokens from the beginning of 2021 are:

• Solana (SOL): 11,500%
• Avalanche (AVAX): 3,150%.
• Arweave (AR): 2.130%.
• Oasis Network (ROSE): 910%.
• Near Protocol (NEAR): 600%.

Investment trends of Andreessen Horowitz in 2021

From the beginning of 2021 to the present, Andreessen Horowitz has invested in many deals, in many different areas.

But as you can see, they pay a lot of attention to projects in the NFT / Gaming / Metaverse array with many projects with large raises, and many infrastructure, data and solution projects layer 2 for Ethereum.

Most of the deals announced by a16z in the past 3 months have increased sharply in both quantity and project investment amount. With the explosion of NFT/ Gaming and Metaverse, 5/9 projects they invested in in November 2021 are in this segment, 4 projects are in the infrastructure and data segment.

Therefore, you can also see their special interest in this segment in recent times, thereby paying attention to the projects they invest in in general and the area they invest a lot in particular to find opportunities. association for yourself.

The relationship between a16z and other investment funds

a16z has a relatively close relationship with Polychain as I mentioned above, when these two VCs regularly invest together in many different Layer 1 projects, in the same round of fundraising of the project (Dfinity, Oasis Network). , Avalanche, Celo,…)

In addition, a16z also invests in Polychain Capital to take advantage of this investment fund’s own strengths.

a16z also has a pretty close relationship with Coinbase Ventures. As an early investment fund in Coinbase, a16z has quite a few investments with the participation of Coinbase Ventures.

Summary

Above is an overview of the Portfolio and some comments on investment trends of a16z, if you have any other questions or comments, please comment below to discuss with idolmeta.net!