The gamer who made chocolate for a Netflix show, then became the check-writer for the next generation of gaming founders.
Partner, Marketing & Games | Andreessen Horowitz
Before she wrote venture checks, she wrote brand briefs for a show about a city at war with itself - and convinced a chocolate company to get involved.
Samira Behrouzan has been playing the long game her entire career - she just changed the game she was playing. At Riot Games, she orchestrated 20+ brand partnerships for Arcane, the Emmy-nominated League of Legends Netflix series that turned a video game lore dump into prestige television. Among the collaborations she built: an actual chocolate product launch tied to the show. Not a tweet, not a banner ad. Chocolate.
That same instinct - find the unexpected detail, make the partnership mean something - is what she brings to a16z speedrun, the Andreessen Horowitz accelerator she helped build from the ground up. Speedrun commits up to $75 million in pre-seed investments and has since deployed more than $180 million to 150+ startups at the intersection of games and technology. The program is what happens when you put someone who's actually shipped products - actually run campaigns, actually stood in rooms with brand teams arguing over whether a musician fits a game's lore - at the front of the check-writing process.
Before Riot, she ran marketing at 100 Thieves, the gaming lifestyle brand that turned competitive gaming team branding into streetwear drops. Before that, she led marketing and gaming programs for musician ZEDD, building partnerships with Aim Lab, Twitch, Discord, and Snapchat. The common thread isn't gaming - it's the marketing-operator edge that Silicon Valley investors rarely bring to the table and almost always need.
She's based in Los Angeles. She grew up on Sega Saturn and N64. She completed an Executive MBA through the IE Brown program in 2022, writing her thesis on diversity and inclusion gaps in gaming. That thesis wasn't academic exercise - it became infrastructure for the work she does now, building on-ramps into the industry for founders who look like her.
"Right now is one of the best times in history to be an early-stage founder. Not because it's easy. It's not. But because the tools, capital, and support systems available today actually give you a real shot at building something that lasts."
- Samira Behrouzan, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
A path that runs through gaming's most influential institutions
Head of Marketing & Gaming, ZEDD Music. Built and launched gaming programs alongside Riot Games, Aim Lab, Twitch, Discord, and Snapchat. Bridging music culture and gaming culture before it was the obvious play.
Senior Director of Marketing, 100 Thieves. Led marketing at one of gaming's defining lifestyle brands - an organization that treats esports like streetwear drops. The Director to Senior Director progression happened fast.
Brand Partnerships, Riot Games. Orchestrated 20+ brand partnerships for Arcane, the Emmy-nominated League of Legends Netflix series. Highlights: making actual Arcane-branded chocolate, and bringing ZEDD into VALORANT. Not your standard logo placement.
Executive MBA, IE Brown Program (Class of 2022). Completed the IE Brown Executive MBA while working full-time. Thesis: diversity and inclusion in gaming. Not a box to check - a framework she'd use to build something real.
Partner, Marketing & Games, Andreessen Horowitz. Joined a16z to build speedrun - a pre-seed accelerator targeting gaming and tech founders. Since launch: $180M+ deployed, 150+ startups backed, a reputation as the place serious gaming founders go first.
a16z speedrun has deployed over $180 million to 150+ startups, making it one of the most active pre-seed programs focused on gaming and tech.
Led 20+ brand partnerships for Riot Games' Arcane - the Emmy-nominated series that redefined what a video game story could become on screen.
Brought global DJ ZEDD into VALORANT in a partnership that merged competitive gaming culture with mainstream electronic music - a career highlight she's openly proud of.
Brokered a brand collaboration for the Arcane launch that involved actually making chocolate. Not merch. Chocolate. The detail that tells you everything about how she thinks.
Her IE Brown EMBA thesis tackled diversity and inclusion failures in gaming - a research project that became practical infrastructure for her work at a16z speedrun.
Helped build a16z speedrun into what Bloomberg called a program that's "quietly woo-ing new founders" - a feeder program operating at Y Combinator scale for gaming.
The name says it all. Speedrun is a16z's pre-seed accelerator for gaming and tech founders - built for the moment when a company is more idea than infrastructure, and needs someone who's actually been inside the industry to help it move faster.
Samira built speedrun into the place that positions itself as the "cool younger sibling to Y Combinator." Each founder gets 1:1 mentorship from operators across talent, recruiting, business development, marketing, and capital network functions. The mentorship isn't advisory - it's operational.
The thesis behind speedrun tracks exactly with her career: marketing operators and brand builders create durable competitive advantages. Not just product. Not just code. The full stack.
Visit a16z speedrun →There's a version of Samira's career that looks like a straight line: gamer becomes marketer, marketer becomes executive, executive becomes VC. That version misses what actually happened.
She grew up playing Sega Saturn and N64 at a time when gaming was still considered a niche hobby, not a $200B industry. That upbringing wasn't nostalgia - it was formation. She understood the culture from the inside before she ever got paid to work in it.
The ZEDD years taught her the music-gaming intersection before anyone was calling it a trend. By the time she landed at 100 Thieves, she was operating in one of the most brand-forward organizations in esports history - a place where the logo drop mattered as much as the tournament win. The Riot years put her on the global stage with Arcane, a creative project that won Emmy nominations and changed what gaming IP could mean in culture.
"Strong female characters in video games are so infinitely important because they're about showing an entire generation of young girls, the next generation, they can do hard things."
None of those experiences is a detour. They're the credential - the specific, lived knowledge that lets her walk into a room with a pre-seed gaming founder and say something useful about their go-to-market before they've hired a single marketer.
Her EMBA thesis wasn't an accident. She wrote about diversity and inclusion in gaming because she'd spent years watching who got to be in the room and who didn't. The underrepresentation of women and marginalized groups in gaming wasn't just a policy problem - it was a structural one. The pathways simply weren't there.
Building a16z speedrun is, in part, about building the pathway.
The program offers mentorship, capital, and operational support at the stage when most founders are too early to know what they don't know. Samira brings the operator's perspective - the kind of knowledge that doesn't come from a case study, it comes from having personally shipped a product, launched a campaign, convinced a brand to make chocolate for a fictional city in a video game.
"I want to show the youth that there is a path in games where they can trailblaze and do really cool stuff. I want someone to see what I'm doing and say, 'Oh, she did it, and I can do it, too.'"
She's openly acknowledged the paralysis that came with building a public voice - years of being "precious" about what she posted, a quiet hesitation to share raw thoughts and real experiences. That she's naming it is the point. It's not a confession, it's a commitment: the next generation needs to see the work, not just the results.
"Right now is one of the best times in history to be an early-stage founder. Not because it's easy. It's not. But because the tools, capital, and support systems available today actually give you a real shot at building something that lasts."
"Strong female characters in video games are so infinitely important because they're about showing an entire generation of young girls, the next generation, they can do hard things."
"I want to show the youth that there is a path in games where they can trailblaze and do really cool stuff."
"By going through the program, I feel like I was forged in the fire, and now I'm a better speaker, presenter and ally to people in my organization."
Class of 2022. Completed while working in the industry. Thesis focused on diversity and inclusion challenges in gaming - specifically the underrepresentation of women and marginalized communities. The thesis became operational infrastructure, not just academic work.
UCI Political Science alum. The analytical foundation of a political science degree - understanding systems, power structures, stakeholder dynamics - translates cleanly to building brand partnerships and navigating the politics of large gaming organizations.
Her Instagram is @supersamjam. The handle perfectly captures the Samira brand: approachable, specific, not trying to be a brand. It was a nickname before it was a handle.
She made chocolate. Not a metaphor. As part of the Arcane brand launch at Riot Games, she brokered a partnership that involved producing actual Arcane-branded chocolate. In 2021. For a Netflix show about a fictional city. It sold out.
Sega Saturn before N64. She'll note the Saturn first. Anyone who started on Sega's famously underperforming 32-bit console before the Nintendo pivot has strong opinions and a high tolerance for difficult control interfaces.
a16z speedrun is occasionally called "the cool younger sibling to Y Combinator." Samira did not say this. Founders did. There's a difference between building that reputation and claiming it.
She studied the diversity gap before her VC role. The EMBA thesis wasn't career prep. It was passion research that turned out to be exactly relevant. The best kind of accident.
Working with ZEDD was "one of the highlights of my career." She said this publicly, without hedging. In venture capital, admitting you loved a collaboration is rarer than it should be.
"I want someone to see what I'm doing and say, 'Oh, she did it, and I can do it, too.'"
- Samira Behrouzan, Andreessen Horowitz