Most "news" in the tech industry is funded by VCs, if you follow the money.<p>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.<p>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 <i>not</i> to talk about.
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.
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 have tremendous respect for a16z, a firm that helped pioneer the practice of working with and nurturing founders<p>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.
The Sequoia puff piece on SBF remains a reminder that this is true for all of them. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221109230422/https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20221109230422/https://www.sequo...</a>
This reminds me of Benn Stancil’s post — “The posters decide”<p>Winners in the tech space are increasingly pre-determined by VC-influencer cos/ individuals, who create the buzz around products.<p><a href="https://benn.substack.com/p/the-posters-decide" rel="nofollow">https://benn.substack.com/p/the-posters-decide</a>
You could take this to be true of so many news orgs that are too far left/right.<p>Marketing for - conservative agenda, liberal agenda, gun ownership, gun safety, biden laptop, trump files.<p>If you ask "who is paying for this piece of writing" many times you'll find a pretty clear slant.<p>It's A16z's blog. What did you want them to do?
Most industry rags are just PR mouthpieces.
Once you see it you can't unsee it.
I worked at a shop that had some sort of cozy relationship with an online business paper and had many puff pieces published over the years.<p>What was interesting was once things turned for our fund, we must have fired whoever was their source because the paper went hostile and published some really detailed and damaging articles.<p>That or the press is just trend following - always backwards looking trying to come up with reasons for what already happened. (CEO was great until CEO was awful). You will see many cases of this in how the press covers particular companies/CEOs. Guys like Bezos who jump before the worm turns are smart.
We're not one monolith of content. Folks post what they want and think is interesting. You can also imagine a lot of our portco CEOs don't love when we mention their competitors.<p>Some of us do it more than others, depending on the topic or point of the post. Market maps do it a lot more than position pieces, as you'd expect, for instance. Anyways, the feedback is good.
A16Z is a totally f-cktified VC. They made so much money with the pump and dump blockchain startups that they have completely lost their way.<p>Now you have complete moron GP/MD level people in echo chambers talking about technology and you cannot determine if it is a real technical discussion or they are simply targeting YOU as the next mark.<p>There is a HUGE difference between being successful by identifying trends and doing straight up rug-pulls. As a VC, their record is tainted and I would be suspicious of everything out of their mouths.
Those who think that A16Z—and many other VCs per se—started their own media arms or at least blogs to "help industry" probably lived under a rock. There are just 3 reasons for a VC to invest in its media arm:<p>1. Help to create a deal-flow by writing about a current thing or their specialization in tech;<p>2. Promote its portfolio and pump it in every possible way for it to increase in value;<p>3. Promote its agendas and narratives like regulation/untiregulation.<p>So, yes. A16Z's media channels are a marketing tool.
This post itself is glorified marketing. I don't know what to call it, something like 'title hacking'.<p>I have no idea what the OPs company does, but I do agree with the title.
Yup. Back in time, they wrote an article about cloud repatriation (<a href="https://a16z.com/the-cost-of-cloud-a-trillion-dollar-paradox/" rel="nofollow">https://a16z.com/the-cost-of-cloud-a-trillion-dollar-paradox...</a>) and used a very nich use cases to extrapolate to all the cloud workload just to support their own portfolio company. So many people in the industry just thought it was a joke:)
In all fairness, this is what most blogs everywhere are. We all market. We are all driven to have our voices heard. We all want our positions to improve.
Just wait til you read Sequoia’s deleted puff piece on SBF: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequo...</a>
When I worked at a large-ish tech company it was very clear that their big PR pushes were coordinated with articles at major news sites like TechCrunch. It is all completely manufactured and disingenuous.
definitely marketing. they tried so hard to hype clubhouse. i think the experiment was to see if they could birth stars out of nothing only to learn it does not work that way.
<i>"Stung By Media Coverage, Silicon Valley Starts Its Own Publications"</i> - NPR 2021<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/25/1010066447/stung-by-media-coverage-silicon-valley-starts-its-own-publications" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2021/06/25/1010066447/stung-by-media-cov...</a>
People have grown shallow and mindless, not even recognizing that there is no substance behind many of the things they hear or read.<p>Now some genius might respond with "people have always been like this" and that is likely true, <i>but the scale nowadays is vastly different</i>. The omnipresence/constant exposure is making it worse and, because parents aren't actually raising their kids anymore, there is no entity left to correct all this
nonsense in the minds of the next generation.<p>Or it's being outlawed doing so, of course.
The VCs have their blogs to attract people - it’s lead generation<p>nfx has good stuff about network effects<p>avc talks about stuff from Fred Wilson’s point of view<p>But my favorite is <a href="https://worldaftercapital.org" rel="nofollow">https://worldaftercapital.org</a> by Albert Wenger, a partner at USV. Because it is clearly NOT about marketing and it’s about sharing his worldview. A venture capitalist talking about a post-capital world!