One of the most entertaining moments in VC this week was a piece of rage bait marketing from General Catalyst.
In a now viral post on X that parodies old Mac vs. Venture firm PC, better known as GC, released a “VC vs GC” video on Wednesday. The VC was played by a tall actor in a baggy shirt and vest with a distinctly large bald head, an apparent dig at Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen. (But the real Andreessen never looks so disheveled.)
The character of GC was played by a man with thick dark hair, white kicks, and a tendency to stare into the camera. It was clearly supposed to represent actor Justin Long’s cooler, “hipper” Mac character from the original commercials, in contrast to John Hodgman’s “square” PC character.
GC asks VC about his robotic dog.
VC explains, “This is Woof AI,” and then extols the virtues of the artificial companion (no 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.” VC mentions his company leading the seed round and proposes GC to join the cap table.
GC explains that people like real dogs, saying, “I’d love to know more, but we actually have a very high bar when it comes to responsibility for these things.”
VC then kicks the AI dog and the dog chases him off screen. The post has been viewed 2.4 million times with hundreds of shares and comments, and thousands of likes.
I’d have to read so much between the lines that I’d jump off the page and look at another book to figure this out, but I’ll try anyway. The message, broadly speaking: other VCs, and a16z in particular, will fund anything. GC won’t do it. (I asked about this. GC has not responded.)
If so, it is a clear argument and not entirely unfounded. Andreessen’s firm frequently invests in companies that are considered controversial, such as the surveillance startup. Herd safetyAI scorer Correctly, and Adam Neumann’s Flow. But the same measure could just as easily be applied to General Catalyst. The GC portfolio includes on the sensor, Perceivedand Polymarket.
My conclusion is that GC wanted to show an a16z type character kicking a dog, without anyone kicking a real dog because that would be a major problem.
Many of the comments on the video seemed to find the video, and the choice to post it, embarrassed. Many also liked it and loved it.
Compulsive X user Andreessen himself couldn’t resist responding many, many times. He said it made GC look like “smarmy” and said, “Stay tuned for our next ad campaign: ‘We are the VC that doesn’t make fun of your idea.'” He continued from there. My personal favorite was: “What they got right is the relative heights.”
As others have pointed out, you know you’ve hit the right anger bait when the target takes it.
There was plenty of a16z partners and employees who also came to Andreessen’s defense. So much so that their reactions dragged many comments. My personal favorite in this category was VSC Ventures VC Jay Kapoor’s: “The GC versus A16Z beef is like Kendrick versus Drake for people who know what a 409A valuation is.”
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