One of the funniest moments in VC this week was General Catalyst’s outrage-baiting marketing.
The venture, better known as GC, posted a “VC vs. GC” video on Wednesday in a popular post by The VC was played by a tall actor who wore baggy shirts and vests and was noticeably tall and bald. This is an apparent dig at Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen. (But the real Andreessen never looks so disheveled.)
The GC character was played by a man with thick black hair, white kicks, and a tendency to stare deeply into the camera. He was supposed to represent actor Justin Long’s cool, “hip” Mac character from the original commercial, as opposed to John Hodgman’s straight-laced, “square” PC persona.
GC asks VC about the robot dog.
“This is Woof AI,” the VC explains, extolling the virtues of an artificial companion dog (you don’t have to walk it or break the news to your kids when it dies!) and declare, “You’ll never want a real dog after this.” The VC mentions that his company is leading a seed round and suggests that the GC join the cap table.
The GC explained how people actually like dogs and said, “I’d love to hear more, but the bar for accountability for these things is actually very high.”
The VC then kicks the AI dog, and the AI dog kicks him off the screen. The post has now been viewed 2.4 million times, with hundreds of shares and comments and thousands of likes.
I had to read between the lines to the point where I had to go off the page and look into other books to figure this out, but I’ll give it a try anyway. The rough message is: Other VCs, especially a16z, will fund anything. GC doesn’t. (I asked about this. GC didn’t respond.)
If so, that is a sharp claim and not entirely without basis. Andreessen’s company frequently invests in companies it considers controversial, including surveillance startup Flock Safety, AI note-taker Cluely, and Adam Neumann’s Flow. But the same measures could just as easily be applied to General Catalyst. GC’s portfolio includes Anduril, Percepta, and Polymarket.
What I’m implying is that GC wanted to show an a16z type character kicking a dog, but no one actually kicks a dog. Because that’s a big problem.
Many of the comments on the video seemed to have found the video and also cringed at the choice to post it. Many people also liked and loved it.
Compulsive X user Andreessen himself couldn’t resist responding on more than one occasion. He said it made GC look “cool” and said, “Stay tuned for our upcoming advertising campaign called ‘We’re the VC that doesn’t laugh at your ideas.'” He moved on from there. My personal favorite was “What they got right is relative height.”
As others have mentioned, you’ll know you’ve hit the right anger bait when the subject catches the anger bait.
There were also many a16z partners and employees defending Andreessen. So much so that their response sparked many comments. My personal favorite in this category is this quote from VSC Ventures VC Jay Kapoor: “The GC vs. A16Z beef is like Kendrick vs. Drake for people who know what 409A valuation is.”
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