A16Z has benefitted immensely from the positive press in its investments – in Lyft, Facebook, Zynga, Slack, Asana, and others – and watched as the press has changed from a relatively frictionless marketing channel for their investment rounds into something that requires a lot more effort, and isn’t simply an uncritical flume of people saying “damn that’s cool!”
Ed Z offers a really interesting history of the relationship between the press and Silicon Valley (and the tech world more generally) over the last 30 years or so. It has evolved from a press that has mostly been “on their side” to one that is far more critical these days.
To illustrate that point, one only needs to look at what’s been happening to Taylor Lorenz at Clubhouse, which Ed Z uses as his primary example. It is clear that Clubhouse won’t be doing much to stop this, especially since the harassment is coming from its largest investors. So we are forced to ride this one out, as the free press goes to war with the world of VC and I’m honestly not sure who wins.
