Most "news" in the tech industry is funded by VCs, if you follow the money.
It's not a terrible fact, but it's one to be aware of. All the `"X Technology" [that Y VC firm has recently raised $4Bn of capital to chase, cough cough] has massive potential to upend [big industry], here's why` articles are compensated-for boosterism.
There's still signal in there, although it's mostly in the meta-facts of what they choose to talk about and what they choose not to talk about.
When you compare the press coverage of "X VC-backed startup with product A" to "Y bootstrapped startup with product A," it's sort of evident how corrupt startup media actually is. Taking it at face value is not usually a good idea.
There's only so much money you can make off of banner ads and at a certain point native advertisements are way more lucrative. I wonder how they get around disclosure requirements but I guess it's probably because the articles are never directly funded but there's some other form of compensation in the backend.
Tom Scott made an interesting video about internet advertising regulations a while back. [1]
Not all of them are marketing. Some of them expose his belief system. After “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” it’s very hard for me to take him seriously again.
They were and remain big crypto investors and it's pretty weird that the essay doesn't acknowledge how much talent and money crypto sucked up. He asks where the supersonic aircraft are and - ignoring that they have awful externalities - there is actually a supersonic jet startup. A16Z hasn't invested in Boom, though, near as I can tell.
A16Z is a leading venture fund - if anyone's gonna build the future, they could use A16Z's money. So why is so much of what Andreesen wants from the future not what they've invested in?
> there is actually a supersonic jet startup. A16Z hasn't invested in Boom, though, near as I can tell.
A quick review of their website and some cursory googling reveals that while boom is not in their portfolio they have invested in a company developing a super sonic jet engine technology (Astro Mechanica) [1] as well as a company producing precision machine parts for aerospace (Hadrian) [1] and various other companies that intersect with the area. [3] Perhaps they wanted to invest in Boom but the deal wasn’t right or they are skeptical of that particular company or they simply never got the chance but clearly they are putting their money into this area and it’s worth researching before judging them.
> So why is so much of what Andreesen wants from the future not what they've invested in?
You still want to invest in a particular company or people who you believe will make you tons of money. Just because someone is active directionally in what you believe will be the future does not necessarily mean you should put your money with them.
if there's one thing that we've learned over the last eight or nine years, it's that you don't have to be taken seriously by most people to have an impact.
Oh wow, I forgot about that! What a wild read. It was such a mess.
I loved it. Something about a famous rich person putting that much effort into something so amateurish and clumsy, while apparently being so confident, in an eager-college-freshman sort of way… I dunno, call it endearing, maybe.
I mean it’s either that or it’s horrifying. I choose to pretend it’s endearing because there’s too much horrifying already.
It's horrifying because it's not an isolated wild rich man seizure, it's the same shit that Musk, Dorsey et al believe. The whole effective altruism movement is infected with this bizarre space feudalism.
I have never heard of it, but I just had a quick skim through and IMHO the bad parts are the parts that have anything to do with economics, because it exposes him as a totalitarian neofeudalist (although he might not think of himself that way ... most totalitarian neofeudalists don't, they just don't understand their own economics well enough to see where it leads).
This is a good question. What differentiates his six thousand word manifesto from all of the totally normal six thousand word manifestos that are written by completely normal people on a daily basis?
Most things in america are paid ads in disguise: these posts, blogs by mckinsey/bcg/big 4 accounting firms, news is often a paid ad/agenda in disguise. You're honestly better off spending time with your family and developing a small hobby.
~ musings from a late 30s guy
I'd argue that if you are really interested, you can follow a few academics and read up on their papers etc. Of course, that's a big undertaking but it's the only alternative I can think of given the incentives for pushing shit at us
if you want to get massively wealthy get a good CS education or just get business experience in the real world, these a16z blogs and podcasts are for what's appropriately been labeled Veblenian entrepreneurship, that is consuming entrepreneurship as a sort of cosplay lifestyle.
I have tremendous respect for a16z, a firm that helped pioneer the practice of working with and nurturing founders rather than forcing them out pre-IPO or minmaxing term sheets.
more a call to be more transparent and less submarine:
but to do so under the guise of being helpful and impartial is just plain silly.
I mean, I'm glad I know there's a bias in those blog posts now. Until this post, I didn't know a16z funded companies/projects let alone biased their posts toward them and I've read a few of their LLM blog posts.
Yeah, and the quality of the 'marketing writing' is good and informative. Because A16z can afford high quality writing...
These 'emerging stack' articles do promote their own companies, but are nevertheless useful for newcomers into a field, to quickly grasp the process and the players. If you don't like it, compile your own version.
I've used some companies recommended in their data architecture and it worked very well.
Hot take: I think the fact vector DBs are even a hot field with multiple competitors speaks to the bending of the branches due to VC weight, so to speak. These things take ~40 LOC and 3 hours to write yourself, they can process ~20 pages/seconds ms, locally, on devices from 3 years ago that fit in your pocket. Having it hosted is a massive privacy risk. Yet how many vector DBs as companies articles have we seen, and how many ONNX tutorials have we seen?
Since A16Z is famous, any bias advertisement can lead to monopolization and do damage to the production competition. Any kind of monopolization needs to get supervised.
"Online, the answer tends to be a lot simpler. Most people who publish online write what they write for the simple reason that they want to. You can't see the fingerprints of PR firms all over the articles, as you can in so many print publications-- which is one of the reasons, though they may not consciously realize it, that readers trust bloggers more than Business Week."
is very dated though. Nowadays pretty much anything on Medium or Substack should probably be treated as ads or personal branding by default.
> I have tremendous respect for a16z, a firm that helped pioneer the practice of working with and nurturing founders
Maybe I am ignorant in thinking that by now everyone knows that they are just pump and dump operators. Even without financial implications lot of their blogs appear clueless about technology. They seem to target folks who may find Gartner quadrants too advanced.
Readit News
It's not a terrible fact, but it's one to be aware of. All the `"X Technology" [that Y VC firm has recently raised $4Bn of capital to chase, cough cough] has massive potential to upend [big industry], here's why` articles are compensated-for boosterism.
There's still signal in there, although it's mostly in the meta-facts of what they choose to talk about and what they choose not to talk about.
Tom Scott made an interesting video about internet advertising regulations a while back. [1]
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-x8DYTOv7w
https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
They were and remain big crypto investors and it's pretty weird that the essay doesn't acknowledge how much talent and money crypto sucked up. He asks where the supersonic aircraft are and - ignoring that they have awful externalities - there is actually a supersonic jet startup. A16Z hasn't invested in Boom, though, near as I can tell.
A16Z is a leading venture fund - if anyone's gonna build the future, they could use A16Z's money. So why is so much of what Andreesen wants from the future not what they've invested in?
A quick review of their website and some cursory googling reveals that while boom is not in their portfolio they have invested in a company developing a super sonic jet engine technology (Astro Mechanica) [1] as well as a company producing precision machine parts for aerospace (Hadrian) [1] and various other companies that intersect with the area. [3] Perhaps they wanted to invest in Boom but the deal wasn’t right or they are skeptical of that particular company or they simply never got the chance but clearly they are putting their money into this area and it’s worth researching before judging them.
1. https://www.notboring.co/p/astro-mechanica
2. https://www.hadrian.co/
3. https://a16z.com/portfolio/ (Look under American dynamism)
You still want to invest in a particular company or people who you believe will make you tons of money. Just because someone is active directionally in what you believe will be the future does not necessarily mean you should put your money with them.
I loved it. Something about a famous rich person putting that much effort into something so amateurish and clumsy, while apparently being so confident, in an eager-college-freshman sort of way… I dunno, call it endearing, maybe.
I mean it’s either that or it’s horrifying. I choose to pretend it’s endearing because there’s too much horrifying already.
So the obvious assumption is that Ben and the other leadership is supportive of it.
It’s funny how the better way is never “end aristocracy” and secure equality of condition
Just more feudalism with the rich never fighting just betting
and what is "equality of condition" and how do you achieve it?
It's quite common to gloss over arguments or ignore data that don't support their cause.
These 'emerging stack' articles do promote their own companies, but are nevertheless useful for newcomers into a field, to quickly grasp the process and the players. If you don't like it, compile your own version.
I've used some companies recommended in their data architecture and it worked very well.
Maybe I am ignorant in thinking that by now everyone knows that they are just pump and dump operators. Even without financial implications lot of their blogs appear clueless about technology. They seem to target folks who may find Gartner quadrants too advanced.