About
Scott Kupor is an investing partner focused on growth-stage companies building in the bio and healthcare industries, manages the firm’s investor relations team, and is responsible for the firm’s growth initiatives.
Scott was the first employee at Andreessen Horowitz and managed the firm’s growth from $300 million in AUM to more than $40 billion. Prior to joining the firm, Scott worked as vice president and general manager of software-as-a-service at Hewlett Packard. Before that, he held numerous executive management positions at Opsware, including senior vice president of global field operations, vice president of financial planning and vice president of corporate development. Prior to Opsware, Scott represented software companies in both financing and mergers and acquisitions transactions at Credit Suisse First Boston and Lehman Brothers.
Scott is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It, and serves on the boards of Cedar, Formation Bio, Foursquare, Headway, Labster, SnapLogic, Talkiatry, Tanium, and Ultima. He also served as chairman of the board for the National Venture Capital Association.
Scott graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in public policy with honors and distinction. He also holds a law degree with distinction from Stanford University and is a member of the State Bar of California.
Latest Content
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At Andreessen Horowitz, we’ve long believed in the power of software to reshape industries. As my partner, Marc Andreessen, famously put it, “Software is eating the world,” and we continue to see traditional industries r...
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Infinitus is tackling this problem by building the first AI platform specifically designed to automate healthcare phone calls and data gathering.
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Pharma represents one of the biggest industries in the world. The top 10 pharma companies account for over $3.4T in aggregate market cap, and last year, the US alone spent more than $700B on pharmaceuticals and prescript...
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Talkiatry addresses the acute end of the behavioral health market—psychiatric care—by offering virtual treatment covered by patients’ insurance.
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The public market situation for healthtech can seem pretty depressing. Recently IPOed healthtech stocks are underperforming the broader market, with some falling 95%+ from their IPO—meanwhile, more traditional companies...
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How we can improve the overall state of the IPO markets, economic growth, and retail access to capital.
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When we first met Chris Lyons eight years ago, he did not have the experience that most venture capital firms were looking for: early college days as a Cheesecake Factory server and Sound Engineer for So So Def, to launc...
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While we’ve long known that access to mental healthcare pales in comparison to physical healthcare coverage, the COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted this gap. Despite the increase in prevalence of mental health nee...
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This is a special episode of the a16z podcast — it's an audio history, told through the voices of the a16z crypto team, about what crypto is, how it really works, and why it matters. This "innovation overview" is meant as a resource, and it features hallway-style conversations with the a16z team as well as outside experts. In brief segments, we’ll take you from the ground up — from the basics, to the most current developments, and beyond that to a look at what we might see in the future.
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The pandemic has been devastating in many ways — from total number of deaths (in the U.S. alone, topping half a million — exceeding the number of deaths across World Wars I and II and Vietnam combined) to devastating eco...
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This first appeared in the monthly a16z fintech newsletter. Subscribe to stay on top of the latest fintech news.
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In the wake of the GameStop short squeeze, payment for order flow—the practice of market makers paying brokers to execute customer orders—has fueled no small amount of debate: Is it a tactic deployed by large capital mar...
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The way schools teach and students learn has not changed much since the broad introduction of formal schooling in the late 1800s, despite the fact that most developed countries spend around 5-6% of their GDP on education...
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In today's episode of 16 Minutes, where we take a look at the news and what it means for the long arc of innovation, we've got segments on artificial intelligence and public-markets innovation.
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Today we are excited to announce the closing of two new funds, bringing our total assets under management to nearly $16.5 billion. While many things in our industry have changed since we started the firm in 2009, closing...
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What’s really behind the IPO pop? TL;DR: it’s Economics 101. The laws of supply and demand, and marginal pricing, withstand the test of time.
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How pricing works, how post-IPO activity is influenced by the 4 types of stock market investors, and how we can improve the less-than-ideal price discovery of IPOs.
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Most of us can relate to the experience of receiving what appears to be a multi-page medical bill in the mailbox after a "recent" trip to the doctor.
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This episode of 16 Minutes on the news covers: 1) all the recent fintech acquisitions! from Intuit announcing it's acquiring Credit Karma this week to Morgan Stanley announcing it's acquiring E-trade last week to Visa acquiring Plaid last month, and so on -- what’s going on, why, and why now? -- with a16z general partner Anish Acharya. 2) recent hearing on SEC's complaint against Telegram, which turns out not to be about cryptocurrency at large, a particular subset of cryptocurrencies, or whether a cryptocurrencly is inherently a security -- but may have broader implications for policy and policy making -- at 7:49 with a16z managing partner Scott Kupor.
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Many in the crypto community and beyond have been closely watching the SEC’s case against Telegram as another regulatory test for the fast-growing space. In a complaint filed in October 2019 in federal court, the SEC all...
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This is the 16th episode of 16 Minutes, our news show where we cover the top headlines, the a16z Podcast way: what’s real / what’s hype; why they matter from our vantage point in tech.
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Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a number of SEC actions surrounding crypto that provide some meaningful insight into the regulatory posture of the agency. Last week, the SEC filed an action to enjoin Telegram (creato...
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This is the 11th episode of 16 Minutes, our weekly news show where we quickly cover the top headlines of the week, the a16z Podcast way: what’s real, what’s hype from our vantage point in tech. This week, we cover the following news -- with a16z experts managing partner Scott Kupor and general partner in fintech Angela Strange.
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Editor's Note: The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is responsible for regulating futures and options markets, but how is it approaching things like crypto futures and crypto-asset derivatives? Core to it...
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One of the hardest problems in any organization, whether a democratic government or a corporation, is figuring out how to strike a balance between short-term interests and long-term goals. For some companies -- especiall...
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If you've listened to parts 1 and 2 of this 3-part podcast series (which originally aired on YouTube), you learned whether venture capital is the best source of funding for your startup, and you've successfully negotiate...
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How to raise a convertible note and structure economic and corporate governance terms, liquidation preferences, and independent board members.
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Incentives matter. So understanding the incentives of venture capitalists will help you decide if raising money from a venture investor makes sense for your business.
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What to make of IPO prices and the headlines hyping their rise or fall? Pricing an IPO is way more art than science.
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a16z Managing Parter Scott Kupor’s new book, Secrets of Sand Hill Road, is a guide to engaging with and understanding VC that covers everything from terminology and term sheets to the fundraising process, governance, and...
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Editor’s Note: This testimony was delivered by a16z managing partner (and former chairman of the board of the National Venture Capital Association) Scott Kupor to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of their i...
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Editor’s Note: This testimony was delivered by a16z managing partner (and former chairman of the board of the National Venture Capital Association) Scott Kupor to the House Agriculture Committee as part of their public h...
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Editor’s Note: This testimony was delivered by a16z managing partner (and former chairman of the board of the National Venture Capital Association) Scott Kupor to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urba...
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If the current pace of tech change is the 21st-century equivalent of the 19th-century Industrial Revolution -- with its tremendous economic growth and lifestyle change -- it means that even though it's fundamentally empo...
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Stanford research shows those venture capital-backed companies founded since 1979 account for 43% of all US public companies, 57% of public company market capitalization, and 82% of the country's total R&D budget. Th...
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About 18 months ago, I sat down over a holiday and reflected on the many conversations I’d had over the years with friends, aspiring entrepreneurs, start-up employees and students about venture capital and entrepreneursh...
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We started Andreessen Horowitz a decade ago with the goal of partnering with great founders by investing across all stages of the company lifecycle -- from seed through late stage.
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As companies generally -- and tech companies specifically -- play a greater role in social and economic issues, the fundamental question that many consumers, politicians, and company builders are asking is, Do corporatio...
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Editor's Note: This testimony was delivered by a16z managing partner (and former chairman of the board of the National Venture Capital Association) Scott Kupor to the FTC as part of their hearings -- with various profess...
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We’ve been a multi-stage venture firm since our founding in 2009. And over the past nearly ten years, we’ve been lucky enough to invest in a variety of companies at different stages of development -- from seed through la...
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A fight is raging between chief executives and big investors over “dual” (or multi) class share structures, which give disproportionate voting rights to corporate founders and leaders at companies including Google, Faceb...
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Given all the attention out there around every little move in bitcoin prices -- as well as the now-they-like-it, now-they-don’t noise around crypto in general -- how might institutional investors think about investing in...
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With the goals of encouraging innovation in cryptonetworks and yet protecting retail investors from fraudulent activity, many government regulators -- from the SEC to state regulators -- have been considering how best to...
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Given all the activity, hype, and yes, the quality range of ICOs (initial coin offerings), many U.S. regulators have been thoughtfully considering how best to protect consumers from bad actors while still enabling innova...
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We’re struggling as a country to maintain our long-standing global leadership in technological innovation. Twenty years ago, the U.S. accounted for 90% of global venture capital; that number has fallen to 53%. Today, the...
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"The only unforgivable sin in business is to run out of cash" [so said Harold Geneen], yet startup CEOs "always act on leading indicators of good news, and lagging indicators of bad news" [according to Andy Grove]; after...
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"Orthogonal thinking" but "shared core values" -- that's what makes an ideal board... especially when it comes to "independents", i.e., board members who aren't also investors. But how do you get the most out of those in...
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Here are the facts: About two decades ago, we used to have 300 IPOs per year. Since then, that average has fallen by more than half. Why?
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We at Andreessen Horowitz believe in the power of networks. In fact, most of our team members are not investors, but rather operators who spend all of their time building external relationships with important partners an...
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How to think about business policy and top-of-mind issues for the tech industry, given a new president? From what agencies matter for startups and VC to what the first 100 days (and next two years!) look like, a16z manag...
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From the silver age of on-prem software companies like SAP and Siebel Systems to the golden age of enterprise software-as-a-service, we're now seeing an explosion of data. All types, all sizes, and all over the place. An...
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I wrote a post last week about the challenges in valuing portfolio companies in venture capital that I thought was wonky and inside baseball. But when I got lots of follow-up questions from people, I realized that the ba...
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Venture capital marks are highly variable based on different valuation methods. These are the main "mark" valuation methods used by venture firms.
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One of the things that struck me most during our recent pieces on startup employee option plans is how things that impact the value of those options aren’t well understood, even if communicated or known at the onset. Man...
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In this episode of the a16z Podcast, former sales VP Mark Cranney (and head of a16z’s EBC and go-to-market practice for startups) and former startup founder (and general partner focused on all things infrastructure) Martin Casado talk to managing partner Scott Kupor about pricing for startups … especially for category-creating businesses. It’s not all “pricing, pricing, pricing” though — there’s another important “p” in there too!