Titans of New Media
I attended a16z's private, high-profile dinner during New York Tech Week.
The biggest venture capital firm in the world believes newsletters and YouTube are the future of media.
That was my takeaway from attending an invite-only dinner hosted by Andreessen Horowitz during New York Tech Week, titled “Titans of New Media.”
While I’m still scratching my head as to how I secured a seat at the table, the rest of the 40-person guest list lived up to the flattering, if not navel-gazing, headline.
Many of the people in the room I have been reading or watching for years.
By my napkin math, the room’s combined audience hovered around 30 million — more than double the combined subscriber base of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
The venture firm, also known as a16z, manages roughly $42 billion in assets, including a sizable 2019 investment it made in Substack, the leading independent newsletter company and the platform that I’m writing to you from right now.
The a16z staffers I spoke with at the event told me that legacy media, in their view, has dropped the proverbial baton in trusted storytelling and narrative-shaping. New media — like independent newsletters and internet-native creators — have picked it up with verve.
The timing of it all made the evening feel like a cheerful wake for corporate newsrooms. While we in the room exchanged anecdotes of quitting our jobs to found media startups, the institutions that once defined the fourth estate were nursing wounds.
The same week, both Business Insider, my former employer, and Inc. Magazine, which syndicates my daily column, announced layoffs. Just before that, The Washington Post quietly floated voluntary buyouts among its veteran employees.
The contrast was stark. These developments were not lost on anyone in the room.
The sequence of events, unfortunately, was too poetic to ignore. A Brave New World had arrived and with it came winners and losers. The old guard was trimming headcount while the new regime swapped growth strategies over burrata and sparkling water.
I left the event with a palpable sense that the center of gravity had shifted in media. Not long ago a dinner like this would have been hosted by The New Yorker or The Atlantic.
Now it was a media-savvy VC firm playing convener and kingmaker.
In the view of a16z, narrative provides something like infrastructure for the digital age. The company’s bet on Substack six years ago has paid handsomely in media credibility, and it’s become clear that the investment was the first tile in a creator-led mosaic.
In April, a16z announced it had acquired Erik Torenberg’s podcast network, Turpentine. Executives elevated him to general partner, and tasked him with building out a robust media operation.
The move meant a16z suddenly had a new web of trusted voices and their venues of choice.
It’s a clever inversion that I suspect we will see more of.
Rather than try to acquire legacy publications, investors want to assemble independent figures with their own distribution channels.
Puck News, which had an executive attending the a16z dinner, has taken a similar approach. It’s built on a constellation of strong personalities that each write their own newsletters.
At a glance, it resembles a talent agency more than a newsroom. The reporters are each high-profile and run their own subscription-based products, but they benefit from a shared infrastructure and editorial support.
What connects Puck to Substack to a16z — and to an extent, Opening Bell Daily — is a recognition that institutions are no longer their own banner products.
It’s not nothing that Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture firm, ever attuned to leverage, is betting that personal brands will define the next chapter of media.
Not corporate newsrooms full of Ivy Leaguers. Not mastheads.
Just people.
Phil Rosen
Co-founder & Editor-in-Chief, Opening Bell Daily
For more essays on the changing media landscape: