8 multi-billion IPOs that cemented Andreessen Horowitz's power
AP
- Andreessen Horowitz earned its Silicon Valley power broker status by backing Facebook and Twitter.
- It's turned those wins into a decade of multi-billion exits.
- Here are the firm's eight biggest IPO exits since 2011.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
A decade after Marc Andreessen declared that software was "eating the world," his VC firm has notched a succession of multibillion-dollar exits.
Andreessen Horowitz, founded in 2009, hit the ground running early with a few IPOs among its portfolio companies in its first few years: Groupon and Zynga in 2011, and Facebook in 2012. The firm, known as a16z, reportedly bought a stake in Twitter, which went public in 2013, through secondary markets.
But as Crunchbase noted in a recent analysis of Andreessen Horowitz's performance, the VC firm didn't have large enough stakes in those companies to merit a mention in SEC filings.
That's also the case for a couple of more recent public debuts within its portfolio: Airbnb and Roblox. Andreessen Horowitz backed Roblox in 2020 as part of its later-stage portfolio.
But several of its more substantial investments have borne fruit recently. According to Crunchbase, the firm has had stakes of 5% or more in eight companies that have gone public since 2011. All but one have gone public in the last two years.
The VC firm was the largest institutional investor in Coinbase prior to the company's direct listing in April. Andreessen Horowitz's stake, based on the company's recent share performance, is worth around $6 billion.
Here are all the public companies since 2011 in which a16z held at least a 5% stake. For most of the companies, the VC firm got in early.
| Company | Public debut | First a16z investment |
| Okta | April 2017 | 2010, Series A |
| Lyft | March 2019 | 2013, Series C |
| PagerDuty | April 2019 | 2013, Series A |
| April 2019 | 2011, Series B | |
| Slack | June 2019 | 2010, Series A |
| Accolade | July 2020 | 2016, Series E |
| DigitalOcean | March 2021 | 2014, Series A |
| Coinbase | April 2021 | 2013, Series B |