Double Standards: Venture Firm Offers “Social Media 101” As It’s Embroiled in Public Feud with VC Rival Over Fake News
Andreessen Horowitz is lecturing startup founders on building their social media presence, but its founder Ben Horowitz is currently dodging the fallout from a very public scandal. Just yesterday, he threw a tantrum on social media over a bombshell report exposing his family’s suspicious political donations, while simultaneously claiming that his rival VC Michael Moritz was behind the article. (Oh, and did we mention that The San Francisco Standard’s executive editor, Jon Steinberg, explicitly stated that Moritz had zero involvement in the exposé?) It’s all very fishy, and only underscores the stark hypocrisy at play here.
Marc Andreessen, the venture firm’s other co-founder, has his own infamous history of clashing with social media, having quit Twitter in 2016 after it became “too toxic” for him. But somehow, he’s managed to rebuild his reputation and now proudly serves on Meta’s board. Meanwhile, it was only recently that Andreessen Horowitz – yes, that’s the same venture firm – pumped a cool $420 million into AI firm X (formerly Twitter). And it’s the same X where Ben Horowitz got into a very public argument with Vinod Khosla over… wait for it… AI. So much for social media sanity!
