My a16z scout thesis: big ideas others would say no to.

Back in 2010, I was starting an AI music generation company. Today we’d call it a Generative AI startup — back then there was no catch-all term. As a result, raising money was all but impossible. I pitched probably 50 investors for my seed round. 49 said no or outright ignored me. Most (if not all) just did not believe that AI could be creative.

I got lucky. A single investor at a single fund — a great guy named Mike, at the spinout fund Cambridge Enterprise — believed in the idea, and believed in me, and invested. Without Mike, I would have given up. And, given that we sold the business to ByteDance and Generative AI proceeded to go mainstream, I would have hugely regretted it.

In Zero To One, Peter Thiel poses the question: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” For me, in 2010, that truth was the inevitability of Generative AI. I had total conviction in the idea, but persuading investors to see it was incredibly hard.

I know so many founders who have experienced this. Lots give up. Why does this happen? For the simple reason that too many investors aren’t willing to take this kind of bet. Too many are followers, not leaders. Too many are ‘happy to participate when you have a lead’. This isn’t all VCs — I know brilliant investors who are willing to take a risk on a daring idea. But it’s a significant portion of them. If you’re this kind of VC, you’re not really in tech. You’re moving money around, and nothing more.

The VCs who really contribute to the future of technology are the ones who are willing to take a bet. The ones who are willing to invest in a big idea even when others are saying no, because, if the founder is right, the company will be transformative.

I’m becoming a scout for Andreessen Horowitz — a fund that isn’t afraid to take risks — which I’m really excited about. Huge thanks to Bryan Kim for getting me involved. I’ll be investing small cheques, first money in.

In joining the scout program, I wanted to think about my thesis. What kind of companies will I invest in? And the answer I’ve come to is this: big ideas that others are saying no to. Ideas that will change the world if they’re right, but that are so outside of the current ways of thinking that most investors just won’t take the bet.

You don’t make an impact by joining rounds that are oversubscribed. You make an impact by giving people a chance to build their vision who wouldn’t have that chance otherwise. And the biggest ideas will almost always look crazy before they’ve caught on. If they didn’t, they’d already exist.

I’m hoping to be the kind of investor I wanted back in 2010: someone actively seeking out founders with ideas that sound so crazy that other VCs are saying no. But that, if they work, will change the world.

If that sounds like you — get in touch.