bitbanter

Menlo Park, CA — The world is changing, and so is the brand of one of the most storied venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.

“We reflected on ourselves, and our values, and realized the current name just doesn’t cut it,” said cofounder Ben Horowitz, wearing a blue wig, ignoring the din of complaints about pump-and-dump crypto projects unloaded on retail over the last five years. “It’s not who we are,” he yelled over the mob forming at the press conference.

The presser continued with dozens of ambiguously AI-generated PowerPoint slides, including one with a giant X atop “ndreessen horowit”, and another one that said “complex problems need simple solutions” alongside “P=NP” in rainbow-colored Impact typeface, and at least seven slides that were clearly lifted from SoftBank, but gayer.

This is not the first time aPequalsNPLGBTz has rebranded. Just two weeks ago, they shifted from a16zcrypto to a16zfrontier, which enabled them to raise another billion dollars from a consortium of sovereign wealth funds—before last week’s credit crunch hit. In 2021, they pivoted from aMRNA16z to a16zcrypto; in 2020, they went from aSaaS16z to aMRNA16z, and of course, who could forget the change from aPPstore16z to aSaaS16z in 2014?

It remains to be seen whether this particular rebrand will outlast the others. Critics have already pointed out that if one of the implicit hypotheses contained in their name were proven true, it would have grave consequences for digital security, not least for their own crypto holdings. But a firm spokesperson had a defense lined up: “What crypto holdings?”