Looking to the future, and emerging from the quarantined haze of 2020, Andreessen Horowitz’s Margit Wennmachers announced that they would be, “building a new and separate media property about the future that makes sense of technology, innovation, and where things are going.”
Building upon their existing network of podcasts, a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), one of Silicon Valley’s illuminated venture capital firms, welcomed Sriram Krishnan to the team just days ago, bringing in-house as a Partner, one of social media’s most well-regarded professionals.
We want to be the go-to place for understanding and building the future, for anyone who is building, making, or curious about tech.
– Margit Wennmachers, a16z
Venture capitalists embracing and oriented to media is certainly not unheard of; Geekdom Fund’s Michael Girdley is a wonderful follow on Twitter, Gotham Gal Joanne Wilson’s articles are brilliant, and First Round Capital’s Review is well known as must read material, to name but a few. I’m sure you can list the great book authors, podcasts, and other social media profiles with investors behind the keyboard; Andreessen Horowitz’s announcements mark a substantial shift that companies have evolved through this past year – realizing it’s the media business that tells the stories and inspires audiences to act.
Every Company is a Media Company
Whether you read Gary Vaynerchuk’s proclamation, Richard Florida’s observations, or our own insights to the fact, the world has been, for decades recognizing that every company is a media company.
“Eighteen months ago, I had breakfast with John Heilemann and he told me that his world, political media, was challenged in the shift from linear television (ie cable news) to real-time mobile (ie Twitter). He saw an opportunity to address that by filling the void in between them with news content that was made for real-time mobile consumption but had the journalistic integrity and production values of linear television.” Fred Wilson, AVC, “I said to him “you should start a company to fill that void and you should get John Battelle to join you in starting that business.””
But it’s not the investment communities work in media that struck me for this article.
My relocation, more than a decade ago, to Austin, TX, was in a small way prompted by the fact that a company by the name of Indeed is based in Austin. Don’t misinterpret… I didn’t have a new job with Indeed, it’s that Indeed was (is) this search technology born back when search engines were still inventing how we find things online; my past in search, was well aware of how the company was changing the way we find work.
Super Bowl LV is upon and Indeed announced recently that they’re airing their first Super Bowl commercial, ever, during the the first quarter of the game on Feb. 7. It isn’t just an advertisement to use Indeed, it’s that story, a brilliant use of media, that, well produced, inspires and tugs a bit at our emotions.
What we’re trying to accomplish is providing hope throughout (people’s) journey. Job seeking is tough, it’s full of ups and downs, and you need to be determined through those moments and you’ll come out the other side with a job.”
Jennifer Warren, Indeed
From Capital to Work to CRM
Every Company Is Realizing they are a Media Company
Twitter acquired the newsletter platform Revue. Payments platform Stripe purchased Indie Hackers. Streaming music’s Spotify now owns Gimlet Media. And the drink that gives you wings runs an entire media enterprise.
The work we all do in this context, media and technology, that you do, and in that which we teach and develop with entrepreneurs in our incubator, is the future of every company.
One of my personal favorite newsletters, The Hustle, content targeted at entrepreneurs and small business owners, was acquired by HubSpot this week.
Hubspot has long invested in using content to help educate its existing and potential customers about business trends, primarily through its web blog. The deal will help it double down on that effort. The Hustle’s daily business newsletter has more than 1.5 million subscribers.
– Sara Fischer, Media Trends
The media, content, is not remotely only what you do through marketing to promote your business, your company is a media company.
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[photo: “Idea Bulb” by qisur]
