Andrew Chen is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he leads the Games Fund and the Speedrun accelerator program. He is best known for coining the term 'growth hacker' in a 2012 essay that reshaped how Silicon Valley thinks about product distribution, and for his book 'The Cold Start Problem' (2021), a landmark text on how networked products escape the bootstrapping trap. Before a16z, he led Rider Growth at Uber during the company's most explosive era - expanding from dozens to 800 cities and reaching 100 million active riders. A prolific writer with 650+ essays and a Substack newsletter, he is one of the most-read voices on growth, gaming, and consumer startups.
Steven Sinofsky spent 23 years at Microsoft building some of the most-used software in history - Office, Windows 7, Windows 8, and secretly, the Surface tablet. A meticulous operator who refused to promise features until they were ready, he rose to become President of the Windows Division and Microsoft's most likely successor to Steve Ballmer before his abrupt departure in 2012. Today he's a Board Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and writes Hardcore Software, a serialized Substack memoir chronicling the rise and fall of the PC revolution from the inside.
Balaji Srinivasan is a serial founder, investor, and author who holds four Stanford degrees and has co-founded companies sold for nearly half a billion dollars. Former General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and first CTO of Coinbase, he is best known for writing The Network State — a WSJ #2 bestselling book advocating technology-enabled sovereign communities — and for building The Network School, a live experiment in startup-society living on a private island near Singapore.
Erik Torenberg is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he joined in April 2025 after a16z acquired his media network Turpentine. A serial founder and investor, he was a first employee at Product Hunt, co-founded Village Global (a $100M VC fund backed by Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg), founded On Deck (a fellowship network for founders), and built Turpentine into a leading tech media network before its acquisition. Known for his wide-ranging intellectual curiosity spanning technology, culture, politics, and philosophy, he now leads a16z's media and ecosystem efforts including the New Media Fellowship and the live news venture MTS.
Katherine Boyle is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where she leads the American Dynamism practice - a $1.1B+ fund focused on startups that serve the national interest. A former Washington Post journalist turned VC, she champions defense tech, manufacturing, aerospace, and critical infrastructure companies. She sits on the boards of Anduril Industries and The Free Press, and is widely regarded as one of tech's most important bridges between Silicon Valley and Washington.
Marc Andreessen co-invented the Mosaic browser as a $6.85/hour student programmer, then went on to co-found Netscape, help birth the modern internet, and eventually build Andreessen Horowitz into a $42B+ venture capital juggernaut. The man who wrote 'software is eating the world' in 2011 spent the next decade proving himself right by backing Twitter, Facebook, Coinbase, and GitHub. In 2023 he published the Techno-Optimist Manifesto and in 2024 pivoted to advising the Trump administration's DOGE initiative - cementing his status as Silicon Valley's most opinionated, polarizing, and consequential voice.
Li Jin is a venture capitalist, writer, and creator who coined the term 'passion economy' and spent years investing in platforms that help individuals turn their passions into livelihoods. She served as a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), then founded Atelier Ventures, and later co-founded Variant Fund - raising over $450M to back web3 and ownership-driven platforms. An active creator herself, she writes 'Li's Newsletter' on Substack with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and co-hosted the Means of Creation podcast. In August 2024, she transitioned from General Partner to Advisor at Variant to pursue interests in education, innovation, and creative projects.
Benedict Evans is one of the world's most respected independent technology analysts, best known for his weekly newsletter with ~175,000 subscribers and a remarkable 50% open rate. A Cambridge-educated historian turned tech strategist, he spent six years as a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz before going independent in 2020. His twice-yearly macro presentations - most recently 'AI eats the world' - are required reading for executives at Apple, Google, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and hundreds of startups. Currently a Venture Partner at Mosaic Ventures and advisor to Edelman's Global Technology Practice, Evans brings a rare combination of sell-side analyst rigor, media industry experience (Channel 4, NBC Universal), and Silicon Valley insider perspective to bear on the forces reshaping the digital economy.
On March 31, 2026, OpenAI closed the largest private funding round in history — $122 billion in committed capital at a post-money valuation of $852 billion. Anchored by Amazon ($50B), Nvidia ($30B), and SoftBank ($30B), with continued participation from Microsoft and a sweeping syndicate of global institutions, the round dwarfs every prior private tech raise and cements OpenAI as the world's most valuable startup by a wide margin. The company is generating $2 billion in monthly revenue, counting 900 million weekly ChatGPT users, and is widely expected to pursue an IPO.