# Best of a16z.com on Kiwi News Page: https://news.kiwistand.com/source/a16z.com 14 stories from a16z.com have been shared on Kiwi News since 26 April 2023, with 41 upvotes and 0 comments in total. The latest was shared on 10 November 2025. They are listed below, most upvoted first. Summaries are AI summaries of the linked article. ## 1. The Techno-Optimist Manifesto - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Techno-Optimist-Manifesto?index=0x652d3a39b608bcbed9f9d1418e98408415d826ebcaf6b45a510e3b730775300260520409 - Source: https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto - Shared 16 October 2023, 11 upvotes, 0 comments The Techno-Optimist Manifesto argues that technology and free markets are the main sources of human progress, and that people should embrace technology rather than fear it. It states that economic growth comes from population growth, natural resource use and technology, and that technology is the only perpetual source. It cites William Nordhaus's finding that creators capture only about 2% of the value their technology creates, and says that markets lift people out of poverty. It also claims that as of 2019, before the COVID disruption, jobs, wages and material living standards were at their highest levels in history. ## 2. What is New Media? | Andreessen Horowitz - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/What-is-New-Media-or-Andreessen-Horowitz?index=0x6911a8d861fe341d6ded74a383ea297ecd5d39511e7b0a05ac955704840c7d04f9d922d9 - Source: https://a16z.com/what-is-new-media - Shared 10 November 2025, 8 upvotes, 0 comments Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has built a New Media team to give portfolio founders the media capabilities they need to win the online narrative, positioning it as a turnkey operation rather than a traditional VC service. The team's offerings include owned channels such as a podcast and newsletter that each ship five times a week, "timeline takeover" launch services, and an ecosystem team that builds talent networks. The article also describes an eight-week a16z New Media fellowship for operators, creators and storytellers, starting in January 2026, to train people who will be placed at portfolio companies. ## 3. How a16z evaluates CEOs - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/How-a16z-evaluates-CEOs?index=0x6672c39c486d663fc3a0b96a4731e119fc25cafab8b8cf2e3792ae12fe17fd8878901d72 - Source: https://a16z.com/how-andreessen-horowitz-evaluates-ceos - Shared 19 June 2024, 5 upvotes, 0 comments Andreessen Horowitz evaluates CEOs on three questions: whether the CEO knows what to do, whether the CEO can get the company to do it, and whether results were achieved against appropriate objectives. The post argues that the first two questions, which it calls "white box" criteria, predict future performance better than results alone, which it calls a lagging indicator. Under the first question, the author writes that a company's story and strategy are the same thing, and that a CEO's decision quality is shaped by incomplete information and the courage to act on it. The post also cites Jeff Bezos's 1997 shareholder letter as an example of a clear company story, and Netflix's Reed Hastings's culture reference guide as an example of designing a system that makes employees effective. ## 4. I'm joining a16z - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Im-joining-a16z?index=0x68a33ab522249442070f13500817d8c0fcc48159c9978ee806bf3a137eed88c29206b93a - Source: https://a16z.com/im-joining-a16z - Shared 18 August 2025, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Packy McCormick announces he is leaving Shopify after five years to join a16z as Editor at Large, responsible for the firm's written output. He argues that the central purpose of a VC firm's content, especially its writing, is to give founders power by granting them legitimacy. He contends that great writing transfers something into readers that talking does not, and that writers reach the widest audiences by writing for a narrow primary audience who then retell the ideas to others. He cites Byrne Hobart's 30-year mortgage piece as an example of a post that gave readers credibility to discuss the topic. ## 5. How Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Rewrites the Rules of Search | Andreess - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/How-Generative-Engine-Optimization-GEO-Rewrites-the-Rules-of-Search-or-Andreess?index=0x6837e9e01fdbcbabf0bb8ee03ec6b29a0eb0da100864c49a3c34e44644705c28508af7ed - Source: https://a16z.com/geo-over-seo - Shared 29 May 2025, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Andreess argues that generative engine optimization (GEO) is replacing traditional SEO, with visibility now meaning whether a brand is cited in the answers that language models generate rather than where it ranks on a results page. The article says ChatGPT already drives referral traffic to tens of thousands of distinct domains, and that Guillermo Rauch reported ChatGPT referring 10% of new Vercel signups. It names Profound, Goodie, Daydream, Ahrefs' Brand Radar and Semrush's AI toolkit as tools for tracking brand mentions in AI outputs, and says Canada Goose used one such tool to see whether models mentioned the brand unprompted. The article also describes GEO as still experimental and suggests that platforms able to act on those insights could become central to brand marketing. ## 6. Big ideas in tech for 2025 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Big-ideas-in-tech-for-2025?index=0x67509190479b078d30fafe28a592baa4bc349f202b84f9fd9002cee57a1ae56a436ac25d - Source: https://a16z.com/big-ideas-in-tech-2025 - Shared 4 December 2024, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Partners at venture firm Andreessen Horowitz predict major tech shifts in 2025, spanning energy, defense, space, robotics and health. David Ulevitch expects nuclear reactor orders to accelerate, citing AI data center demand and the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, slated to return in 2028. Erin Price-Wright expects demand for hardware-focused engineers to grow, possibly outpacing traditional software engineering over the next decade. Vineeta Agarwala says GLP-1 drugs are expected to create a $100B+ market by 2030, and cites Dr. Georg Schett's published results, in which all 15 patients with B-cell-driven autoimmune disease improved after CAR-T therapy. ## 7. Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Peacetime-CEOWartime-CEO?index=0x6685c619dfaeb57abf89a12a19bca21deb54b9000106721e537a4b797f3cd3effbe8e3a3 - Source: https://a16z.com/peacetime-ceo-wartime-ceo - Shared 3 July 2024, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Ben Horowitz argues that peacetime and wartime call for radically different CEO management styles, and that Larry Page's takeover of Google from Eric Schmidt signals a move into wartime. He contrasts Schmidt's leadership of Google's expansion over the last ten years with Page's apparent intent to lead through a war. He cites Andy Grove's exit from the memory business in the mid-1980s and Steve Jobs's return to Apple as wartime examples, and he says that Google must now come from behind in social networking. ## 8. Do You Have Lightning In a Bottle? How to Benchmark Your Social App - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Do-You-Have-Lightning-In-a-Bottle-How-to-Benchmark-Your-Social-App?index=0x66181c45eccb328e254f025b1ab82fb182edfc959612d8b21e105ee71a5eeb8c99341703 - Source: https://a16z.com/do-you-have-lightning-in-a-bottle-how-to-benchmark-your-social-app - Shared 11 April 2024, 2 upvotes, 0 comments A16z's benchmarks for early-stage consumer social apps are presented as a way to judge whether a product is likely to scale beyond early adopters, with metrics measured over time rather than at a single point. Growth benchmarks for monthly user growth are 20% (OK), 35% (good) and 50% (great), with paid sources ideally providing no more than 10-20% of users. Engagement is judged by DAU/MAU, rated 25%, 40% and 50%+, and by the share of users active five or more days a week (L5+), rated 30%, 40% and 50%+. Retention benchmarks are d1, d7 and d30 rates of 50%/35%/20% (OK), 60%/40%/25% (good) and 70%/50%/30% (great). ## 9. What Builders Talk About When They Talk About AI - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/What-Builders-Talk-About-When-They-Talk-About-AI?index=0x654cb55bb3fe800ee1ec7367b530948be2ed0c847e2bc799144beab0e5f32e44e48d72da - Source: https://a16z.com/what-builders-talk-about-when-they-talk-about-ai - Shared 9 November 2023, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Builders of AI describe generative AI as an emerging third computing platform that is still at its very beginning, with economics that can drive market transformation. Martin Casado of a16z says large models bring the marginal cost of creation to 0, after the microchip and the internet brought the marginal costs of compute and distribution to 0. In a hypothetical comparison, Casado contrasts an image model costing a tenth of a penny and taking one second with a graphic artist at $100 an hour. Noam Shazeer of Character.AI says creativity matters more than correctness for early uses such as virtual friends, while coding copilots become more accurate as humans use them. ## 10. How to Build ChatGPT for Robotics | Andreessen Horowitz - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/How-to-Build-ChatGPT-for-Robotics-or-Andreessen-Horowitz?index=0x6819880cf13f5e069cd7090ad427128e0c9a48977857aed04b4db886b2374e4b78020369 - Source: https://a16z.com/how-to-build-chatgpt-for-robotics - Shared 6 May 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments Robotics data must move beyond "on-policy" collection of task trajectories toward "off-policy" labels focused on safety, red-teaming, and deployed-system impact, and the authors introduce ARES, an open-source platform to help roboticists curate datasets, train models, and build safer systems. Robotics has scaled data through teleoperation, simulation, and synthetic retargeting, and Google's RT-1, released in late 2022, and RT-2 showed generalizable robot policies, with Open X-Embodiment offering a shared cross-embodiment dataset. Benchmarking remains difficult because small hardware differences and lighting can change results, and UC Berkeley's Auto Eval currently covers just four tasks across two evaluation cells. ## 11. What Stripe’s Acquisition of Bridge Means for Fintech and Stablecoins (April 202 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/What-Stripes-Acquisition-of-Bridge-Means-for-Fintech-and-Stablecoins-April-202?index=0x68143db96129e518bbd211acb8ca2c5cf7a7f64e28b49f8e1c4dccb6c998b9c20d3afc83 - Source: https://a16z.com/newsletter/what-stripes-acquisition-of-bridge-means-for-fintech-and-stablecoins-april-2025-fintech-newsletter - Shared 2 May 2025, 1 upvote, 0 comments Stripe completed its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge in February, its largest acquisition to date, which authors James da Costa and Sam Broner present as the payment industry's first big acknowledgement that stablecoins can go further mainstream. The article notes that stablecoins moved $15.6 trillion in value in 2024, putting their transaction volume on par with Visa's. Bridge offers orchestration, issuance and money transfer services for developers, and its current use cases include Starlink repatriating funds from Argentina sales. Stripe grew 38% in 2024, surpassing $1.4 trillion in total payments volume. ## 12. AI’s second order effects - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/AIs-second-order-effects?index=0x66431cb2564b036c176d7b11af4c3465ba7b76976f98ea5a387f2e350c8dd3c2860a9b3d - Source: https://a16z.com/ai-second-order-effects - Shared 14 May 2024, 1 upvote, 0 comments The article argues that AI could make viable a category of non-AI products that previously failed because they were too cheap to support a sales team. Its puzzle is that a salesperson selling 50 widgets a year at $100,000 pay cannot sell a $500 product profitably, so such products sit in a "dead zone." The author says AI's lower support, sales and retention costs could create a "why now" for these businesses, much as the smartphone enabled Uber. The article adds that AI will likely save incumbents money and spawn more software companies and marketplaces where AI is not the main offering. ## 13. Research internship at a16z crypto - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Research-internship-at-a16z-crypto?index=0x652da9d3bb17598d253ea8e904ce9bb09fb2bb220c1001434a37d6e21b789708a8538348 - Source: https://a16z.com/about/jobs?gh_jid=5766443003 - Shared 16 October 2023, 1 upvote, 0 comments ## 14. The Stickiest, Most Addictive, Most Engaging, and Fastest-Growing Social Apps - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Stickiest-Most-Addictive-Most-Engaging-and-Fastest-Growing-Social-Apps?index=0x64499a349e3a3ee2ca8d52e57f499c477ea6d37035d0c4869653d5af162e3d4e574468ba - Source: https://a16z.com/2020/12/07/social-strikes-back-fastest-growing-apps - Shared 26 April 2023, 1 upvote, 0 comments Social apps should be judged against benchmarks specific to their category rather than one standard, according to an analysis conducted with app intelligence firm Apptopia. It measures stickiness with DAU/MAU, which shows how often users return, and depth of engagement through sessions per day and minutes per session. Dating apps like Bumble and Tinder average 2.5 sessions per day but only one to two minutes each, while reading communities Goodreads, Wattpad and Readict see one to two visits daily with over 13 minutes per session. Kik leads messaging apps in retention, and Minecraft captures more than 100 minutes of daily attention per player.