Benny Wong @bennywrong0

A16Z SPEEDRUN 2026 UPDATE: I think most people secretly know if they’re founders or not. Some of you can never be happy working inside a giant company, writing docs, in endless meetings. Deep down, you know you’re supposed to build. we're opening up a16z speedrun today! We are accepting applications for our 006 class, where we'll invest up to $1M. It's based in SF, kicking off Jan 2026 but you need to apply now in september. here's how to apply: speedrun006.a16z.com/x And yes, we are investing up to $100M in the next 30 days -- it's all happening in september. Quit whatever it is that you're doing, and in 2026 come to SF and work with us out of Andreessen Horowitz's office in SOMA, alongside over a hundred other founders, building the startup you've always wanted to build. We will help you -- both myself and the a16z speedrun team. the details: - up to $1M of investment - hosted at a16z HQ in San Francisco - 12 week program, with an IRL kickoff, luminary speakers, community events - live events with the founders of Carta, Zynga, DoorDash, Behance, Airtable, Twilio, Figma, and more - private dinners/Q&A with Marc and Ben of a16z - apply now, and the deadline will be Sep 28 2025 for SR6 At a16z speedrun, you get access to programs from our operating team and work with experts in marketing, BD, talent, people and capital—more below MARKETING Our team of expert marketers is here to help you win. Whether refining your brand, launching, or building a thriving community, our marketing operators have powered dozens of startups with: - Brand Development -End-To-End Marketing Strategy -PR & Media Coverage -Go-To-Market Execution -Creators & Content TALENT Find and attract the talent you need to build and scale your company. Our curated network connects you with world-class technical talent, executives, advisors, and specialists who can help accelerate your success. Here’s how the program works: - You tell us what you’re looking for. - We use a16z speedrun's brand and referral networks to magnetize talent. - We take hundreds of calls each week to curate a list that we only send to speedrun founders. - You request introductions and we put you in touch. PEOPLE We help you quickly stand up the tools and practices needed to hire, manage, and lead highly performant teams. Our goal is to help you anticipate challenges and navigate some of the most foundational decisions you'll make as you build a world-class company. While a16z speedrun takes place in the US, we welcome founders and companies from around the world. Our Global Founders Program provides specialized guidance for navigating visas and relocation, plus dedicated access to our expert immigration attorney network, so you can focus your energy on building your company. BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT We unlock unparalleled access to networks, expertise, and tools that help startups scale faster. - $5M+ in free credits in our speedrun Marketplace from AWS, GCP, OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Stripe, Deel, and many more. - Dedicated advisors & experts to guide you through every partnership, sales, and GTM motion, including crafting your business model and pricing. - Level up your sales with real live demo experience across various events to executives and operators in your target market. - Access to a16z’s network of executives & decision-makers at 2,000+ companies. CAPITAL One of the most important things a founder can do is raise money. Our fundraising program sets the stage for your raise through an in-person Demo Day and an online platform reaching 1,000+ top early-stage investors. We help you prepare with practice sessions, stress tests, and materials review. When you’re in high-stakes negotiations, we coach you, share insider knowledge, and leverage alumni intel on the investor across the table. More details: The a16z speedrun program is a fast‐paced, 12-week startup program that guides founders through every critical stage of their growth. It kicks off with an orientation to introduce the cohort, then dives into rapid product development—helping founders think through MVP while addressing key topics like customer acquisition and design partnerships. Throughout the program, startups benefit from expert-led sessions and interactive office hours that cover: - Brand Building & Go-to-Market Strategy: Crafting your story, marketing, and driving product-led growth. - Customer Acquisition & Launch: Securing early users and executing effective launch plans. - Fundraising & Strategic Partnerships: Pitching, navigating investment, and building lasting relationships. - Team Building & Operational Scaling: Developing high-performing teams and refining internal processes for sustained growth. - Community & Enterprise Sales: Building communities, forming strategic partnerships, and landing your first enterprise customers. - Product-Market Fit & Demo Day Prep: Assessing market traction which culminates in a Demo Day to showcase progress. The a16z speedrun program is IRL and runs for 12 intensive weeks in which our team of expert investors and operators guide your startup from idea to market launch. The program moves through sequential modules—each dedicated to key aspects such as rapid product development, go-to-market strategy, fundraising, team building, and operational scaling. Expect regular check-ins, one-on-one office hours, and interactive sessions, culminating in a Demo Day where you present your progress to potential investors.

ok - final reminder for tonight’s deadline: **11:59 PM PST is the deadline** to apply for a16z Speedrun with your project/startup. After this, we close out the application process and focus on meeting all the teams, investing up to $1m in each over the next few weeks. Doing interviews, asking references, and giving feedback We’ll be investing over $30-40m so it’s a great opportunity to get off the ground quickly. Our program is focused on tech, AI and entertainment, but more importantly we want to work with the earliest stage startups where <$1m investment could make a big difference. The whole process of applying to a16z Speedrun is meant to be easy, like 10 minutes or less. While many of you are focused on the investment, I also want to say something about the intangibles of the program: - first, the network. Many of you have amazing professional networks already, but a16z speedrun will connect you to hundreds of elite CEOs/founders who are thinking about startups at the same time as you. We have folks from amazing backgrounds - from FAANG to repeat founders to highly technical AI researchers. They are thinking about the same sectors (AI!), negotiating w the same vendors, hiring at the same time. You can compare notes, grow together, and ultimately this is the community that will be building over the next decade. On a personal note, when I moved to California in 2007 it was the friends I met early on that came to build many of the unicorns, run huge teams at the top tech cos, and became the next gen of VCs. Our goal is to do the same here - the a16z speedrun team. We have dozens of full time folks in marketing, partnerships, talent, corp dev, etc that will be working with speedrun startups to make them successful. And a16z has 600 employees across the broader firm with deep expertise on making startups win. Usually most preseed/seed firms only have a few generalist partners - with Speedrun we want to offer the best of both worlds, a hands on program experience plus access to a16z’s comprehensive knowledge and expertise at scale - support for global founders and employee hires. We know great entrepreneurs come from everywhere, and we have tons of best practices to help people relocate/split their activities to the US. This is both hands on advice on visas/immigration, introductions to the top lawyers, but also neighborhood guides and a pre-built community of new friends - world class speakers. We have had an incredible number of unicorn founder/CEOs speak at Speedrun. This includes a16z portfolio companies like Figma, Zynga, Carta, etc, cutting edge new AI startups, and also exited companies like DoorDash and Tinder. We often set up small group events with these founders, have set them up to angel invest in relevant startups, and make 1:1 intros to Speedrun cos - launch and growth. For early stage startups, getting wins on an initial launch is key. You might need a killer hype video, a coordinated investor-led social media push, etc. Or you might need an initial paid marketing spike. Or a new look at your signup flows to make them efficient. We can advise on all this and get hands on too. - building out your investor network. We help each and every company with dozens of 1:1 intros with VCs. This builds a network for the initial round and for the future Ultimately a16z Speedrun is all this and also an opportunity to start a relationship with Andreessen Horowitz. For future investment, to join our community, to get advice at inflection points, and much more. I’ll be spending 1:1 time w everyone in the Speedrun program so def excited to meet y’all.

new announcement from a16z: startup founders -- come work with me 1:1 and let a16z invest up to $1M in your very early stage startup :) (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) More details: I’m 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 — 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! 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’s been fun to get my hands dirty working 1:1 and in small groups with founders early on their journey. There’s a new cycle kicking off, so would love if you could: - recommend anyone I should be working with! - fine to share the website below, or reach out via neutrals - 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) - the next programs kicks off July 28 to October 10, 2025 this year. - speakers include the founders of Figma, Zynga, Zillow, DoorDash, Twilio, etc etc - application deadline is May 11, so please get ahold of us by then how to apply: sr.a16z.com more details: speedrun.a16z.com OK — so a bit more details on how this all happened: 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’t know what to do with a16z’s 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. 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’re 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’s been awesome and very rewarding! If folks have any questions, I’ll 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.

Copa Messi is ON! The ultimate Messi fan battle is here—are you ready to choose your side? 🐐 Team GOAT: Messi 2024 + iconic teammates. ⚽ Team PRODIGY: Young Messi + future stars. Pick your side, win matches, and unlock exclusive rewards! #CopaMessi

A Short History of OpenAI On Friday, OpenAI ousted its co-founder Sam Altman as CEO. While OpenAI cites a lack of consistent candor in Altman’s dealings with the board as the key reason for his removal, there is widespread speculation about other motives behind his termination. These range from disputes concerning the profit vs nonprofit motives of the company to the discovery of artificial general intelligence, a type of AI that can surpass human intelligence for most tasks. We wanted to look back at the history and corporate structure of OpenAI to understand how we got here. Here’s the story: Inception and Early Strides (2015-2018) OpenAI was initially founded in 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman as a non-profit organization with the stated goal to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole.” The company assembled a team of the best researchers in the field of AI to pursue the goal of building AGI in a safe way. The early years of OpenAI were marked with rapid experimentation. The company made significant progress on research in deep learning and reinforcement learning, and released ‘OpenAI Gym’ in 2016, a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms. OpenAI showcased the capabilities of these reinforcement learning algorithms through its ‘OpenAI Five’ project in 2018, which trained five independent AI agents to play a complex multiplayer online battle arena game called ‘Dota 2’. Despite operating independently, these agents learned to work as a cohesive team to coordinate strategies within the game. A crucial development occurred in June 2018. The company released a paper titled "Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training", which introduced the foundational architecture for the Generative Pre-trained Transformer model. This later evolved into ChatGPT, the company’s flagship product. Transition From a Non-Profit (2019) In 2019, OpenAI transitioned from a non-profit to a “capped-profit” model. According to the company’s blog post, OpenAI wanted to increase its ability to raise capital while still serving its mission, and “no pre-existing legal structure they knew of struck the right balance”. Per the IRS, for-profit entities and not-for-profit entities are fundamentally at odds with each other, so in order to combine the two competing concepts, OpenAI came up with a novel structure which allowed the non-profit to control the direction of a for-profit entity while providing the investors a "capped" upside of 100x. This culminated in a $1Bn investment from Microsoft, marking the beginning of a key strategic relationship, but complicating the company’s organizational structure and incentives. The non-profit entity, OpenAI Inc., became the sole controlling shareholder of the new for-profit entity OpenAI Global LLC, which answered to the board of the nonprofit and retained a fiduciary responsibility to the company’s nonprofit charter. Crucially, the board was responsible for determining when OpenAI attained artificial general intelligence (AGI), which the company defines as a “highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work.” The structure of OpenAI is outlined below: Becoming ChatGPT (2020-2023) In 2020, bolstered by new funding, OpenAI unveiled GPT-3, a large language model (LLM) capable of understanding and generating convincing human-like text. This was a watershed moment for OpenAI and the broader AI community. As the company grew, its LLMs continued to become larger and more intelligent. However, OpenAI's innovation didn't stop with language models. In 2021, the company expanded its horizons by launching Codex, a specialized AI model for programming, and DALL-E, an AI system adept at creating original artwork from text descriptions. December 2022 marked another major milestone for OpenAI with the release of GPT-3, laying the groundwork for the consumer-focused application ‘Chat-GPT’. Chat-GPT rapidly captured global attention, becoming the fastest app to amass 100 million users within just two months of its launch. Capitalizing on this success, OpenAI introduced a subscription model and unveiled its most sophisticated model yet, GPT-4, ~10x more advanced than its predecessor and capable of analyzing text, images, and voice. Further developer tools and a turbocharged version of GPT-4 were announced at the company’s Developer Day on November 6th, 2023. Removing Sam Altman (2023) On Friday, OpenAI announced that it was removing its co-founder Sam Altman as CEO, citing a lack of consistent candor in his communications with the company’s board. According to the company's official statement, the board “no longer has confidence in Altman’s ability to continue leading OpenAI.” OpenAI’s board of directors has undergone numerous changes since inception. Elon Musk resigned from his board seat in 2018, citing a “potential future conflict of interest” with Tesla’s AI development for driverless cars. Elon later expressed disappointment over the company’s for-profit motivations and dealings with Microsoft. Since Elon’s departure, a number of other board members have left the company, including former congressman Will Hurd who cited a Presidential bid, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman over an investment conflict, and Neuralink director Shivon Zilis. The remaining board members who removed Altman are: - Adam D’Angelo - CEO of Quora - Tasha McCauley - Co-Founder of Fellow Robotics and adjunct senior management scientist at RAND Corporation - Ilya Sutskever - Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI - Helen Toner - Director of Strategy and Foundational Research Grants at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology Altman’s removal as CEO prompted the resignation of President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman and three of the company’s senior scientists. Reports suggest that this may have been orchestrated by the company’s other Co-Founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever over concerns that Altman was pushing to commercialize the company too quickly. Sutskever was recruited to OpenAI from Google in 2015 by Elon Musk, who describes him as “the linchpin for OpenAI being successful”. A tweet from Greg Brockman confirms that Ilya was a key figure in Altman’s removal. x.com/gdb/status/172… Since OpenAI’s for-profit entity was ultimately accountable to the charter of its non-profit parent, its rapid commercialization may have conflicted with the company’s primary goal of developing AGI in a safe way. According to their 2019 IRS filings, OpenAI does not have a written joint venture policy but the company’s structure explicitly prioritizes the purposes of its nonprofit entity over maximizing profits, preventing OpenAI from engaging in activities that would jeopardize the company's non-profit status. As of this writing at 3pm PST on 11/19/2023, there are reports that the board is negotiating for Sam’s return, though it remains to be seen how OpenAI overcomes the challenges of its competing profit and nonprofit interests. Conclusion: While the details of Altman’s removal are still unfolding, it is becoming increasingly clear that OpenAI’s convoluted corporate structure led to conflicting motivations and incentives within the company. There is a key learning here. Whether you are a for-profit or non-profit entity, there are tried and true corporate structures to help you achieve your stated goal. Because just doing that is hard enough as it is. But once you decide what the goal is, you should work as hard as possible to achieve it; you should never compound unnecessary risk into this journey like iterating on corporate structure. While it can make a hero out of lawyers, it is one of these unnecessary risks that’s only blindingly obvious in the rear view mirror.

Greg Brockman @gdb

3 years ago

Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today. Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out. We too are still trying to figure out exactly

3K 7K 54K 21.0M 6K

Fun update: Today we're open for applications on SPEEDRUN 2024, the second run of our accelerator for Games x Tech, with $75M from the a16z games fund to find the next amazing pre-seed startups. Applications are now open for SPEEDRUN 2024: speedrun.a16z.com

Think you know FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 better than your friends? 🧠 Beat your friends with the special @Matchday Challenge game, with a chance to earn special virtual football cards 👀👇

🇷🇺🏎🤯

Check out this article from @builtin where I discuss what’s ahead for @ridespin: bit.ly/3yWUmUO

Today @ridespin is announcing the launch of S-100T 1st edition, custom-designed by Spin’s in-house team! I caught up with @moderncto_io to give him the download on our newest vehicle. Check it out: moderncto.io/benny-wong/

@kamal @spincities @derrickko Haxor

@lg Keyboard bottom gap is so weird

@kamal @envoy 😖

Chill people ... seriously... http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/13/no-your-zodiac-sign-hasnt-changed/?iref=allsearch

maybe I should give this thing a try....