Powerhouse venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz promotes Jennifer Li to general partner after six years with the firm. She is being tapped to help invest the new $1.25 billion infrastructure fund managed by Martin Casado, a16z’s longtime general partner.
The Infrastructure Fund is part of the new $7.2 billion that the Silicon Valley venture capital giant has just raised. Li has been an investment partner on the Infrastructure team for some time, meaning she was already writing checks and serving on the board. But her promotion puts her in a rarefied situation: She becomes the firm’s 27th general partner, and she reached this milestone in her career in her early 30s.
While this may sound like a lot of GPs, a16z currently has over 500 employees. Additionally, she is one of four GPs in the Infrastructure team. The others are Anjney Midha who joined the company last summer; Zane Laquais, who joined two years ago; and Casado.
“Promoting Jennifer to general partner means much more autonomy in closing deals and, just as importantly, much more influence over the team’s culture, investment philosophy and operating model,” said Casado to TechCrunch via email.
In Casado’s blog post announcing his promotion, he also mentioned that he and she were the two people largely responsible for building the infrastructure investment team. He described her as “a low-ego, incredibly reliable and generous partner to work with.” No detail escapes him and no challenge is too intimidating to take on. As Ben Horowitz has said many times: “She embodies a16z culture. »
While working at a16z, Li helped the company find data connectivity startup Fivetran, valued at $5.6 billion in 2021; and the launch of the dbt data analysis development tool, which reached a valuation of $4.2 billion in 2022 (Both of these transactions were led by Casado). She led the company’s investments in developer video platform Mux, a unicorn from 2021; starting the Motherduck database, valued at $400 million earlier this year; and AI voice startup Eleven Labs, a unicorn from January, where she serves on the board of directors.
Before joining a16z in 2018, she led products at AI startup Solvvy, acquired by Zoom in 2022; led self-service and analytics products at AppDynamics, acquired by Cisco for $3.7 billion; and was a Kleiner Perkins Product Fellow in 2016.
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