Alastair 'Alex' Rampell is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he leads the firm's $1 billion Apps practice with a focus on fintech, payments, and B2B/B2C software. A serial entrepreneur who started selling shareware at age 10, Alex co-founded seven startups before joining a16z in 2015, including TrialPay (acquired by Visa for $116M), FraudEliminator (acquired by McAfee for $75M), Affirm (NASDAQ:AFRM co-founded with Max Levchin), and TXN (acquired by Envestnet). His rare combination of operator experience, deep financial services expertise, and fluency in Russian and Japanese makes him one of the most distinctive investors in Silicon Valley.
Alex Rampell is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he leads the firm's $1 billion Apps practice investing in fintech, payments, e-commerce, and enterprise software. A serial entrepreneur who started selling shareware at age 10 (and got banned by AOL), he co-founded TrialPay (acquired by Visa in 2015), co-founded Affirm with Max Levchin (now NASDAQ: AFRM), coined the term 'O2O' (Online-to-Offline), and has backed companies including Mercury, Earnin, Descript, and Rocket Companies. He is perhaps best known for the investment framework: 'The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation.'