questions re: a16z speedrun

Hey all,

Just fyi that startups applying to speedrun should do it before Sunday, May 17th. If y’all have been waiting for whatever milestone (the demo to be better or metrics or whatever) just apply now. The best founders we fund usually applied too early by their own standards!!

If you’re on the fence, this is the call. Send it in.

More from the team below, plus some of the questions I get asked the most about speedrun.

–A

Andrew Chen
General Partner, a16z speedrun
2865 Sand Hill Rd, Suite 101. Menlo Park CA 94025

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The questions I get the most

“How do I know if I’m actually cut out to be a founder?”

Honestly, I think most people secretly know if they’re founders or not. Some of you can never be happy working inside a giant company, writing docs, in endless meetings. Deep down, you already know you’re supposed to build. If that describes you, the question isn’t whether you should start a company. It’s just when. There are very few moments in tech I’d rather be a founder in than right now.

“Am I too early to apply? My company isn’t even incorporated.”

That’s actually the sweet spot. In our last batch of 70 companies, probably a dozen were people who hadn’t quit their jobs yet when they applied. They had to turn in their badges, and we couldn’t even wire the money over because they didn’t have a company to incorporate yet. We want to find founders as close to day one as possible. If you’re a couple of friends with a real idea and the willingness to drop everything to go work on it, that’s a speedrun application.

“Do I need a cofounder, or can I apply solo?”

We don’t require it, and we do accept solo founders. But convincing one smart person to join you is probably step one in validating that it’s a serious effort, idea, or team. So we do look at it as a signal. If you have someone in mind but haven’t asked them yet, this is a good week to have that conversation.

“Do I need a specific background to get in?”

There isn’t a checklist. We have a team in the current batch that’s all 18 and 19 year olds who decided to skip college, and we also have cofounders of billion-dollar companies in the same batch. What we look for is something unique in your background. That could be a GitHub repo with thousands of stars growing fast, deep technical work at one of the top AI labs, a serious athletic background on the way to tech, or any number of other things we wouldn’t have predicted. Pedigree is one signal, but it’s not the only one.

“Is speedrun only for AI companies?”

No, it’s a horizontal program. The current batch has B2B, B2C, infra and dev tools, healthcare, gaming, govtech, and a growing number of robotics teams alongside the AI applications. There are also famous examples of ideas changing all the time. Slack started as a browser-based video game company. So if you’re an AI founder today and you end up pivoting in week three, that’s a pretty old Silicon Valley tradition. We care about the founders more than the category.

“I’m outside the US. Can I apply?”

Yes. We select founders from all over the world. This batch has founders applying from the US, India, UK, Nigeria, Canada, and dozens of other countries. If you get in, you and your cofounder will need to come to San Francisco for the 12 weeks of the program, and we help with visa support to make that possible. Don’t let geography stop you from applying.

“Do I have to move to SF?”

For the 12 weeks of the program, yes. You and your cofounder come to San Francisco. We have a welcome guide with recommended neighborhoods, help on Airbnbs, and access to the a16z office and a couple of co-working spaces. Most teams end up rooming with their cofounder for the duration, working together 24/7. After the program ends, plenty of teams go back to their home communities (Austin, Chicago, NYC, Pacific Northwest, wherever they came from, including other countries) and keep building. Plenty stay in the Bay. Both are great outcomes.

“What’s the biggest mistake founders make in the application?”

Being long-winded and vague when you talk about yourselves. A lot of founders bury the lede on their own team. If you started a successful company before, tell us you went from zero to X million in revenue. If you worked on a well-known product, tell us how many millions of users you served. If your side project hit a million downloads, say so. Specific facts and figures help. You can call this bragging. I call it the only good way to pitch a team in writing. (I wrote a longer piece about this called The Dinner Party Jerk Test if you want the full version.)

“What happens if my company doesn’t work out?”

Realistically, a lot of startups don’t. That’s just venture. What we care about is what happens next, and we think of the relationship as a lifelong one, not a batch-long one. The best outcome is we back the founder again on a new idea. We just did that last week with a founder whose first idea didn’t pan out. The other thing we see a lot is speedrun founders hiring each other when one team doesn’t make it, because the people coming through this program are unusually good at working on hard, unstructured problems with the latest AI tools. We want to be in business with these founders for their whole career.

The deadline to apply for SR007 is Sunday, May 17th at 11:59pm PT. Apply here.

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