Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen · 2025-05-29T20:13:19.968Z

final calendar for NY Tech Week will be published this weekend, in time for the kickoff next Monday (Jun 2) over 1000+ events will happen in the span of 7 days, mostly in Midtown, Soho, Flatiron. Wild. As y'all know -- a16z helps organize behind the scenes, and hosts a ton of events ourselves as well. There's 60+ portfolio company events, including Eleven Labs, Carta, Deel, Mistral, Hedra, Databricks, Stripe, Udio, and many others. The whole thing is sponsored (thank you!!) by the great folks at Fenwick, HSBC, IBM, Anthropic, Atlassian, AWS, PWC. why has there been such a big outpouring of support within the NY tech community? I have a few theories: - the AI revolution is more B2B than B2C, and events are one of the best ways to sell into startups - as social media and paid marketing saturates, IRL is cost effective and authentic. While IRL activities don't scale, they give quality over quantity - there's an exchange of value in IRL, because attendees hand over contact info and you know they're highly qualified - Many transactions, like VC funding, big partnerships, etc require the kind of relationships/trust that can only happen IRL - after lockdown, people want to get together Also, post-pandemic, NY has really established itself as the only credible alternative to SF: - there's real tech and engineering in NY now. A few decades ago, the knock was always that NY startup culture was built on the digital marketing/agency industry -- so you had a ton of expertise in brand, design, etc., but not hardcore eng. So much of early NY tech was in adtech (Doubleclick!), ecommerce (remember Gilt?), and sort of low-tech consumer-facing products like new media cos. That was sort of the 2000s-2010s of NY Tech - Infra lives in NY now. But recently, we've seen a huge development as a new generation of AI and infrastructure startups flourish in NY. A ton of very sharp young engineers are moving from the west coast to the east coast, and building very technical companies. And if you're from Europe, MENA, Boston or frankly anywhere on the East coast, NYC is a more attractive time zone than PST. - NY unifies the US, Europe, MENA, and the east coast. There's a ton of people who fly in for NYTW from all over. It's a better time zone than the west coast for many. So lots of folks from UK plus the European startup hubs. Plus the middle east and other emerging geos. PS. the calendar lives here: https://lnkd.in/gg5PEpvW and as I mentioned, we'll put the finishing touches over the weekend in time for the actual festivities next week See you all soon!!!

a16z speedrun / andrewchen.substack.com

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Andreessen Horowitz

University of Washington

Blog

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- Newsletter: http://andrewchen.substack.com
- Book: http://coldstart.com

Experience

General Partner

Andreessen Horowitz

May 2018 - Present 7 years 1 month

San Francisco Bay Area

a16z speedrun: We invest up to $1m into very early startups in tech, entertainment, and AI
Author, THE COLD START PROBLEM

HarperCollins Publishers

2019 - 2022 3 years

The Cold Start Problem launched in 2021 as a top 50 bestselling audiobook and top 500 hardcover on Amazon. Featured in Financial Times, Forbes, CNBC, the Tim Ferris podcast, and more.

https://coldstart.com
Growth

Uber

2015 - 2018 3 years

San Francisco Bay Area

I led Uber's Rider Growth product teams! (Plus tours of duty on NACS, driver growth, growth platform, etc.) #superpumpedness
Founder

Stealth Startup

2009 - 2014 5 years

Palo Alto, CA

Co-founded consumer startup that raised seed/A from Horowitz Andreessen Angel Fund, Mitch Kapor, Index Ventures, Ignition Partners, Tom Bedecarre/WPP Ventures and others.

Team soft-landed at Uber after building and launching fast-growing consumer apps with multiple viral loops with k-factor>1 resulting in 10s of millions of active users, growing on AOL IM, Facebook, and Android platforms

Education

University of Washington

Bachelor of Science - BS Applied Mathematics

Graduated at age 19

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Andrew Chen

a16z speedrun / andrewchen.substack.com

San Francisco Bay Area 464K followers 500+ connections

About

Experience

General Partner

Andreessen Horowitz

Author, THE COLD START PROBLEM

HarperCollins Publishers

Growth

Uber

Founder

Stealth Startup

Education

University of Washington

Bachelor of Science - BS Applied Mathematics

View Andrew’s full profile

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