42 Comments
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Joseph Guo's avatar

Love this program! Big fan of how accessible you (and a16z) are during SF tech week and here. Applied! Sending love from Australia :)

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Andrew Chen's avatar

awesome -- hope to see you at the next Tech Week!

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Joseph Guo's avatar

Absolutely! Well worth flying over for :)

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Rachel Johnson's avatar

This is awesome - I will forward to around to our J&O founder network

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Anton's avatar

This is the most founder-friendly version of a16z I’ve seen. $1M checks, stacked partner credits, and real hands-on help at the messy idea stage? Feels like the bridge between YC speed and full-stack venture muscle. Also love that you’re betting on underestimated founders with something to prove—not just the shiny decks. Watching this space closely.

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Andrew Chen's avatar

appreciate the kind notes and comments!

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Pirassena S's avatar

Exciting opportunity! I had applied as soon as I seen the Tech Week stream open up, hard to not jump on an accelerated review offer!

I think it’s perfectly aligned with what I’m building and the speed I’m building with Auralith, a new modular AR infrastructure powered by our own proprietary modular design and neural net.

From ideation to training the neural net in 3 weeks, I think Auralith x Speedrun would be the perfect fit! Looking forward to hearing from you guys.

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Cadu em Stanford's avatar

Love what you’re building with Speedrun, Andrew.

I’ve built and sold two startups in Brazil. Just wrapped up a Master’s at Stanford and moved to LA.

We’ve 41 days until the Speedrun deadline — and I’m using every one of them to go deep on a big, painful problem. Fast cycles, curious people, relentless execution. More than ever, every second counts.

Let’s make this happen.

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Andrew Chen's avatar

excited to see your application when you have it ready!

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Luis Llorens's avatar

Love this initiative!

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CJ Hernandez's avatar

Speaking for myself, it's hard to be scrappy, as a good founder should be, and fundraise all the time. This program seems to address that. And every hour spent on nothing else than product and PMF is worth gold. YC move over! 😂

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Amy Gong Maxwell's avatar

What a great program! Thanks for sharing ❤️

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Caitlin's avatar

What equity does a16z take? I imagine it varies, but can you please share insights into how this is determined?

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Andrew Chen's avatar

it varies! So we just want to start a conversation with folks. But we are doing market-rate valuations for preseed/seed startups

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Caitlin's avatar

Did you get hacked? There was a weird post that now is deleted.

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Caitlin's avatar

Is there openness to something in the B2C space for health care? Loved The Cold Start Problem, and that has been meaningful inspiration.

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Oliver Edis's avatar

We've applied for our XR company ReactVision - hopefully our application does our vision justice 🤞

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Doeon Kwon's avatar

Hi Andrew! This program is amazing, and thank you for creating it!

For passionate and driven founders with great ideas and execution skills but without a strong background, what key points do you look for or expect in them?

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Anton's avatar

Exciting to see a16z backing Very Serious! The intersection of media, tech, and venture capital is evolving fast—looking forward to seeing where this goes.

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Fundshare's avatar

Such a great program for founders!

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Nadeem Virani's avatar

Just applied Andrew!

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Piotr Matyja's avatar

Please check out our app and consider us for the next batch! ✌️

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/choosewise/id6667117583

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Robert Ta's avatar

Speedrun seems to have carved out a rare space for founders: fast capital, deep context, and clear paths to launch. Thanks for sharing.

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