a16z's New Media Playbook

This episode is from a recent a sixteen z all hands meeting where Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, and I discuss the firm's new media strategy. We cover why the old media playbook no longer works, why being interesting matters more than being inoffensive, and how speed and authenticity have replaced polish and caution. Really stoked to be making this happen. Today's gonna be a fun one. We're gonna dive into all things new media. First, start with a high level conversation about what is new media, how the media industry has changed, and then get into what the new media team is doing here at a sixteen z, what we've done so far, what we're focused on, and where we're going in 2026. But first, we thought we'd start with a little sizzle reel that gives a little bit of, insight into some of the activity that we've done here. So They pitched to us this idea of working working with a virtual production using Marvel scene. And we look at the calendar. This is such a crazy idea. Hi. I'm Jessica. Hi. I'm Jay. I'm Kevin Moody, founder of Voda Labs. E. Sola has raised a 17,000,000 series a c. Mark, Ursula, Sam. Gio, Jenna. Welcome welcome welcome to the a 16 c podcast. We've we've entered a world where attention is the scarce resource. There's unlimited channels. Mhmm. And then the brands are mostly people. If you grew up in market, your whole concept of the laws of physics is different. You have to approach new media with new media thinking new media people, that kind of thing. The the world of media is completely different than where we started. VCs didn't market themselves. There's actually tremendous hunger in the country and the world for actual law informed intelligent commentary. If you wanna do something larger than yourselves and make the world a better place, we are a 100% for it. One quick story I wanna tell is to the video that we put out for the fundraising announcement, which is our third most popular post ever. On the last night before putting it out, we had trouble getting one of the rights cleared for one of the songs that actually was, like, the backbone for the video. So the team using Eleven Labs recreated a different song that I think was actually better, but it was, sort of an amazing last night's sprint to make it all work. And I wanna start there with the fundraise announcement because, Ben, you had this quote, which I think summarizes one of the main principles of new media. I just wanna read a small part of it and then have you elaborate. Old media is defense oriented. In new media, offense is always better than defense. We've spent many years fretting about our results being leaked. Old media tries to please every audience. Old media is terrified of upsetting people, and new media only cares about being interesting. When in …