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One of the more entertaining moments in venture capital this week was a bit of angry marketing from General Catalyst.
In a now-viral post on X that parodies old Mac vs. PC commercials, the venture firm — known as GC — posted a “VC vs GC” video on Wednesday. The venture capitalist was played by a tall actor wearing a baggy T-shirt and jacket with a conspicuously large bald head — an obvious dig at Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen. (But the real Andreessen never looks disheveled.)
The character of GC was played by a man with a thick head of dark hair, white chins, and a tendency to stare deeply into the camera. He was apparently meant to represent actor Justin Long’s “spirited” Mac character from the original commercials, as opposed to John Hodgman’s “square” PC character.
GC asks VC about his robot dog.
“This is Woof AI,” the VC explains, then extols the virtues of the artificial companion (you don’t need to walk him or break the news to the kids when he dies!) and declares, “You’ll never want a real dog after this.” The VC mentions that his company is leading the seed round and is pitching a GC to join the cap table.
JC explains how people love real dogs and comment, “I’d like to hear more, but we actually have a very high level of responsibility for these things.”
The VC then kicks the AI dog and the dog chases him off-screen. The post has so far been viewed 2.4 million times, with hundreds of shares, comments and thousands of likes.
I’ve had to read so far between the lines that I’m going to get off the page and look at another book to unpack this, but I’ll try anyway. Pretty much the message: other VC funds, and a16z in particular, will fund anything. JC Ln. (I asked about this. GC did not respond.)
It’s an obvious argument if so, and not entirely without foundation. Andreessen’s firm often invests in companies that are considered controversial, such as a surveillance startup Herd safetyAn artificial intelligence note taker Clearly, and Adam Newman streamed. But the same procedure can easily be applied to General Catalyst. Includes GC wallet on the sensor, tangibleand Polymarket.
What I concluded was that the GC wanted to show an a16z type character kicking a dog, without anyone actually kicking a dog because that would be too problematic.
Many of the comments on the video seemed to find the video, and chose to post it, feeling frustrated. I loved it so much and I loved it too.
Compulsive X user Andreessen himself couldn’t resist responding multiple times. He said he made the GC look”Smarmy“Stay tuned for our next ad campaign,” he said. “We are the venture capital that doesn’t do that.” Make fun of your idea“And keep going from there.” My favorite was: “The thing they got right is relative heights.”
As others have noted, you know you’ve hit the right rage when the target takes it.
There was Lots of a16z partners and employees who also came to Andreessen’s defense. So much so that their reactions caught attention Lots of comments. My personal favorite in this category was from VSC Ventures VC Jay Kapoor: “The GC vs. A16Z beef is like Kendrick vs. Drake for people who know what a 409A valuation is.”
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