How to Pitch a16z (Andreessen Horowitz)

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is one of the most prolific and visible funds in venture capital — 1,000+ investments, hundreds of blog posts, podcasts, and a public-facing thesis that covers everything from crypto to bio to AI infrastructure. They have been more transparent about what they're looking for than almost any other top-tier fund.

And yet most founders who pitch them still miss the mark.

This guide explains what a16z actually evaluates, what their partners look for in a first meeting, and how to structure your approach.

What a16z Actually Is

a16z is not a generalist fund. It operates as a network of specialized sub-funds:

• a16z Bio + Health — biotech, digital health, longevity
• a16z Crypto — web3, DeFi, crypto infrastructure
• a16z Games — gaming, interactive entertainment
• a16z American Dynamism — defense, aerospace, manufacturing, national security
• Growth Fund — Series B and beyond
• Seed / Core — early-stage software, AI, infrastructure

Pitching the wrong sub-fund is one of the most common mistakes. A biotech company that contacts the core software team is starting the relationship on the wrong foot. Research which partner covers your specific category before making contact.

a16z's Core Investment Thesis

a16z has a famous framework: they believe software will eat every industry, and they invest in the companies doing the eating. In 2025–2026, this thesis has sharpened around AI:

"Software is eating the world. AI is digesting it."

Key things they evaluate:

1. Category creation. a16z explicitly prefers founders who are creating new categories, not competing in existing ones. They are looking for companies that will define a market, not win a share of one.

2. Technical founder advantage. a16z was founded on the thesis that technical founders build more defensible companies. They strongly prefer technical CEOs and founding teams with deep engineering or scientific backgrounds.

3. Network effects or data flywheel. a16z partner Ben Horowitz has written extensively about companies where scale creates compounding advantage — where being bigger makes the product better, which attracts more users, which makes it bigger again. This is the pattern they're chasing.

4. Speed of iteration. How fast is the team shipping? In early-stage companies, a16z partners look for evidence of relentless building — frequent releases, user feedback loops, rapid hypothesis testing.

5. The right "enemy." a16z appreciates founders who are contrarian in the right way — who can articulate clearly why conventional wisdom is wrong, and why the incumbent will lose. This doesn't mean arrogance; it means having a specific, reasoned view on how the market will evolve.

Metrics a16z Looks For

Benchmarks by stage:

Seed: a16z will back pre-revenue at seed if the category thesis and team are strong. They're particularly attracted to technical founders with a novel insight about a large market. Revenue is a plus; exceptional team + clear insight is enough.

Series A: Informal bar has historically been ~$1M–$3M ARR with strong growth (>3x year-over-year) and early signs of product-market fit. For AI-native companies in 2025–2026, growth rate matters more than the absolute ARR number.

Growth (Series B+): $10M+ ARR with proof of repeatable go-to-market and a clear path to $100M. They want to see the sales motion working at scale.

Specific metrics they care about:

• DAU/MAU ratio (for consumer) — above 30% signals habit
• Net Revenue Retention (for B2B) — above 120% is exceptional
• Payback period — under 12 months for SMB, under 18 months for enterprise
• Gross margin — above 70% for software, higher for AI-native

How a16z Sources Deals

a16z runs one of the largest scout programs in venture — hundreds of scouts globally who are founders, operators, and academics. These scouts surface companies before they're ready to fundraise.

They also get significant inbound from:

• Portfolio company referrals (their portfolio is enormous — someone at a16z almost certainly knows someone who knows you)
• Co-investor referrals (First Round, Benchmark, YC, etc.)
• Their content — founders who build in public and get noticed by a16z partners
• Their accelerator programs (a16z Speedrun, which now invests up to $1M at pre-seed)

How to Structure Your Approach

1. Find the right partner. a16z has 40+ general partners and many more partners and principals. Each has a specific focus. Research who covers your space — read their posts, listen to their podcast appearances, look at their portfolio. Contact the person most likely to have genuine conviction in your category.

2. Build in public before you fundraise. a16z partners have cited companies they found via Twitter/X, GitHub, and podcasts. If you're building something technically interesting, share it. Write about the insight you've discovered. The scout network finds people who are creating signal.

3. Leverage the portfolio. a16z has invested in over 1,000 companies. Find founders in adjacent spaces, build genuine relationships, and ask for warm intros to the right partners.

4. Be concise and specific in your pitch. a16z has published a framework for what they want to hear in the first meeting: (1) the insight that everyone else is missing, (2) why now, (3) why you. That's it. Everything else is supporting evidence.

5. Don't oversell the market. a16z partners know that TAM slides are usually fiction. They're evaluating your thinking, not your slides. Show them you understand the dynamics of the market better than anyone — that's more compelling than a $10B market size number.

What Gets You Passed On

• Incremental improvement on an existing product. "We're 10x better than Salesforce" without a structural reason why is not enough. a16z is looking for companies that make the incumbent irrelevant, not marginally better.
• Missing technical depth. If no one on the founding team can speak to the technology with authority, a16z will have trouble getting conviction. They are not the right fund for non-technical founding teams in most cases.
• Vague market positioning. "We serve the enterprise" is not a market. "We serve head of security at Series B+ SaaS companies with 50–500 employees" is a market.
• Lack of urgency about why now. If you can't explain precisely what has changed in the last 12–24 months that makes your company possible, you haven't thought hard enough about timing.

The CTA That Works

Every a16z partner interaction should end with a clear next step you're proposing — not leaving it open-ended. "Can we schedule 30 minutes next week to show you the product?" is better than "let me know if you want to chat."

A Faster Path

Reaching the right a16z partner through warm intro channels takes time most founders don't have mid-raise. PitchProtocol matches your application to a16z and every fund in our network based on thesis alignment — your application arrives pre-researched, thesis-matched, and with fund-specific questions pre-answered. Apply to the First 100 Founders Cohort →