{"id":32839,"date":"2025-03-31T17:11:33","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T17:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/?p=32839"},"modified":"2025-03-31T13:11:45","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T17:11:45","slug":"wordpressd-a-post-by-gagan-biyani-on-cold-start-author-as-vc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wordpressd-a-post-by-gagan-biyani-on-cold-start-author-as-vc\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress\u2019d a Post by Gagan Biyani on Cold Start Author as VC"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gagan Biyani 🏛<\/a><\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u2066\u202a@gaganbiyani\u202c\u2069<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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Many people ask me about Andrew and every time I tell them he is an outstanding board member, and I’ve worked with some great ones.<\/p>\n

He is thoughtful, patient, and has high expectations. Great combination.<\/p>\n

If you’re an ambitious founder, apply to speedrun – you won’t regret it.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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3\/31\/25, 11:58\u202fAM<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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new announcement from a16z:<\/div>\n
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startup founders — come work with me 1:1 and let a16z invest up to $1M in your very early stage startup \ud83d\ude42<\/div>\n
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(yes, this is via a16z speedrun, and we are launching the next cycle today, taking applications over the next ~month. Here’s how to apply: sr.a16z.com)<\/div>\n
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More details:<\/div>\n
I\u2019m back in (currently cloudy) LA after spending a couple months in San Francisco. It was super fun to be back in the bubble. It seemed, right after COVID, that so many other geos were ascendant \u2014 you saw a big explosion in LA and NY, and a lot of VCs (including us) starting offices in London. But very clearly the AI revolution has brought a lot of the action back to SF, even if folks are doing it remotely and SOMA is a bit dead. It was great to catch up with many of you over dinners, events, mixers etc. Bumped into a lot of friends during urban hikes in the city also!<\/div>\n
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I was in SF working on my big project at Andreessen Horowitz right now, which is building a16z speedrun . This is a new program where we invest up to $1M into very early stage startups and then work with them closely over 90 days, then launch them into the world. I am very involved, and it\u2019s been fun to get my hands dirty working 1:1 and in small groups with founders early on their journey. There\u2019s a new cycle kicking off, so would love if you could:<\/div>\n
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– recommend anyone I should be working with!<\/div>\n
– fine to share the website below, or reach out via neutrals<\/div>\n
– details + dates are: up to $1M investment from a16z speedrun plus $5M credits from our main partners (AWS, GCP, OpenAI, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Stripe, Deel, etc)<\/div>\n
– the next programs kicks off July 28 to October 10, 2025 this year.<\/div>\n
– speakers include the founders of Figma, Zynga, Zillow, DoorDash, Twilio, etc etc<\/div>\n
– application deadline is May 11, so please get ahold of us by then<\/div>\n
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how to apply: sr.a16z.com<\/div>\n
more details: speedrun.a16z.com<\/div>\n
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OK \u2014 so a bit more details on how this all happened:<\/div>\n
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I started working on Speedrun at a16z because there are a ton of very early stage startups out there that are building in and around our focus of tech, entertainment and AI. Many of these early wouldn\u2019t know what to do with a16z\u2019s usual check size of $10 or $20 million, but they would benefit from the a16z team (now numbering nearly 600 strong!) that provide access to everything from hiring, partnerships, financing, marketing, and everything else. I love working with founders at this stage.<\/div>\n
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Also it does not slip our mind that many of the best startups on the planet were started by first time founders and also repeat founders that also have a chip on their shoulder. We feel like we\u2019re not able to help as many entrepreneurs if we just focus on ones that have a ton of revenue and are growing quickly (though we want to work with those ones too!). So starting about 18 months ago, we kicked off a16z Speedrun which is now heading into its 5th cycle. It\u2019s been awesome and very rewarding!<\/div>\n
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If folks have any questions, I\u2019ll try to address stuff in the comments here. But best thing to do if you have a specific startup in mind is visit the website.<\/div>\n
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    Gagan Biyani 🏛 \u2066\u202a@gaganbiyani\u202c\u2069 Many people ask me about Andrew and every time I tell them he is an outstanding board member, and I’ve worked with some great ones. He is thoughtful, patient, and has high expectations. Great combination. If you’re an ambitious founder, apply to speedrun – you won’t regret it.   […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}