One of the funniest things in VC this week was General Catalyst’s infuriating marketing.
After a post on X that parodied old Mac vs. PC commercials went viral, the venture firm known as GC posted a “VC vs. GC” video on Wednesday. VC was played by a tall actor with a distinctly large bald head, wearing a baggy shirt and vest. This was clearly a dig at Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen. (But the real Andreessen never looks that disheveled).
The character of GC was played by a man with thick black hair, white kicks, and a tendency to stare deeply into the camera. He was clearly 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 his robot dog.
“This is Woof AI,” the VC explains, extolling the virtues of an artificial companion (you don’t have to walk it or tell your kids if it dies!) and declares, “You’ll never want a real dog again.” The VC said his company was leading the seed round and offered the GC a spot on the cap table.
GC explains how people prefer real dogs, saying, “I’d like to hear more, but the reality is we set a very high bar when it comes to responsibility for these things.”
VC then kicks the AI dog and the dog kicks him off the screen. The post has now been viewed 2.4 million times, hundreds of shares and comments, and thousands of likes.
You’ll have to read quite a bit between the lines to figure this out, or you’ll end up falling off the page and peering into another book, but I’ll try anyway. The message, broadly speaking, is that other VCs, especially a16z, will fund anything. GC doesn’t do that. (I asked about this, but the GC did not respond.)
If so, that’s a valid argument and not completely baseless. Andreessen’s firm frequently invests in companies considered controversial, including surveillance startup Flock Safety, AI note-taker Cluely, and Adam Neumann’s Flow. However, the same measures can easily be applied to General Catalyst. GC’s portfolio includes Anduril, Percepta and Polymarket.
My conclusion is that GC wanted to show an a16z type character kicking a dog when no one actually actually kicks the dog. Because that would be a big problem.
Many of the comments on this video seemed disgusted by the video and the choice to post it. A lot of people liked it and loved it too.
As a compulsive X user himself, Andreessen couldn’t help himself and reacted over and over again. He said it made the GC look “smart,” adding, “Stay tuned for future ad campaigns: ‘We’re the VCs that won’t make fun of your ideas,'” and continued from there. My personal favorite is, “What they got right was relative height.”
As others have pointed out, you know you’ve hit the right anger bait when the target receives it.
There were a lot of A16Z partners and staff members who came to Andreessen’s defense. Their reactions attracted a lot of comments. My personal favorite in this category comes from Jay Kapoor of VSC Ventures VC. “The GC vs. A16Z beef is like Kendrick vs. Drake for those who know what a 409A rating is.”
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