3 views of a16z’s most recent reported early stage efforts

a16z, a company capital firm known for its big funds and for shaking up the VC game when it piled up in the industry is devising a new strategy in 2009 to possibly strengthen the deal flow, according to a recent report. It creates a fund-of-funds to invest in smaller venture capital pools, giving it visibility into the next generation of breakthrough technology companies.

a16z has not responded to requests for comment on this story.

The trend for large funds – traditionally more focused on closing late-stage deals because it is difficult to put large funds into smaller, earlier deals – trying to find a way to get involved with earlier-stage companies , is not new. And it’s not hard to see the logic behind the a16z effort, provided it works out as expected: if it’s hard for big funds to go early, and therefore small, why not just fund the people who got in early invest and do you use those resources? relationships?

The new a16z effort sparked a little conversation within TechCrunch+, so we decided to adopt our traditional “talk it out loud” model to share different perspectives on the issue from our newsroom.