You're right about a lot of this, but I think what you're missing is that Marc Andreessen did this financial maverick thing once, which is why he is influential

You're right about a lot of this, but I think what you're missing is that Marc Andreessen did this financial maverick thing once, which is why he is influential. So it is probably right that Andreessen Horowitz the fund is not the right vehicle for such a thing, but having written his open letter, and with a deep well of influence and (presumably) some unique talent for setting up investment vehicles, Marc Andreessen the person is well positioned to put his money where his mouth is and work toward making this new kind of investment vehicle work. Yes, this would involve finding new kinds of LPs or selling the same LPs on a new vision with different trade-offs, but that finding-LPs-and-selling-them work is exactly what it took to launch Andreessen Horowitz, so it is not crazy to suggest that perhaps Marc Andreessen is well positioned to get to work on this. The response to your other comment you linked (edit, this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21588626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21588626) is also interesting and meshes with my intuition that there might be more of a market for this than your giving credence to. I would also add that a benefit of this possible market may be that it could be a lot bigger than the pool VCs are currently constricted to. I think one interpretation of what we've seen with unicorns (and SoftBank, which is increasingly looking like a debacle) is that there is more money that wants in than there are businesses with the right model for the kind of VC money they are getting. It is plausible that a more sustainable model might be found in a much broader market of less risky companies.