> His name and commentaries started popping up everywhere a few short years ago which to me smells strongly of having a PR agency This is exactly right. One of

> His name and commentaries started popping up everywhere a few short years ago which to me smells strongly of having a PR agency This is exactly right. One of the first things a16z did after it was founded was to hire Margit Wennmachers[0] and her PR firm [1]. Horowitz openly addresses the topic in his book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things[2]: > “We hired the Outcast marketing agency, headed up by its formidable founder, Margit Wennmachers, to generate media interest. We needed people to know what we were about as we had decided to defy the conventional venture capital theory of no PR. The daughter of a German pig farmer, Margit was the furthest thing from a swine wrangler imaginable. Smart and sophisticated, she was the Babe Ruth of PR. She worked her contacts, landing a cover story in Fortune in 2009 that featured Marc posing as Uncle Sam. Andreessen Horowitz was an overnight sensation, and yet Marc and I were still the only two people in the firm.” 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margit_Wennmachers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margit_Wennmachers 1: http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/02/news/economy/ozy-silicon-valley-queen/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/02/news/economy/ozy-silicon-val... 2: http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205/186-0159162-1772864 http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/00...