General Catalyst posted VC rage bait and it worked, especially on a16z
One of the most entertaining moments in VC this week was a piece of rage-bait marketing from General Catalyst.
In a now-viral post on X that parodies the old Mac vs. PC commercials, the venture firm — better known as GC — posted a “VC vs GC” video on Wednesday. The VC was played by a tall actor in a baggy shirt and vest with a distinctly large, bald head — an apparent dig at Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen. (But the real Andreessen never looks that disheveled).
The GC character was played by a man with a thick head of dark hair, white kicks, and a tendency to stare deeply into the camera. He was clearly supposed to represent actor Justin Long’s cooler, “hipper” Mac character from the original commercials, in contrast to John Hodgman’s straight-laced “square” PC persona.
GC asks VC about his robotic dog.
VC explains, “This is Woof AI” and then extols the virtues of the artificial companion (you don’t need to walk it or break the news to the kids when it dies!) and declares, “You’ll never want a real dog after this.” VC mentions that his firm is leading the seed round and pitches GC to join the cap table.
GC explains how people like real dogs and remarks, “I’d love to hear more, but we actually have a really high bar around responsibility for these things.”
Then VC kicks the AI dog and the dog chases him off the screen. The post has now been viewed 2.4 million times with hundreds of shares and comments, and thousands of likes.
I’d have to read so far between the lines that I’d be off the page and peering into another book to unpack this, but I’ll try anyway. The message, roughly: Other VCs, and a16z in particular, will fund anything. GC won’t. (I asked about this. GC hasn’t responded.)
It’s a pointed argument if so, and not entirely without basis. Andreessen’s firm frequently invests in companies that are considered controversial, like the surveillance startup Flock Safety, AI notetaker Cluely, and Adam Neumann’s Flow. But the same measure could just as easily be applied to General Catalyst. GC’s portfolio includes Anduril, Percepta, and Polymarket.
My takeaway is that GC wanted to show an a16z-type character kicking a dog, without anyone actually kicking an actual dog because that would be a major problem.
Many of the comments on the video seemed to find the video, and the choice to post it, cringe. Plenty liked and loved it, too.
Compulsive X user Andreessen himself couldn’t resist responding, many, many times. He said it made GC look “smarmy” and said, “Stay tuned for our upcoming ad campaign, ‘We’re the VC who doesn’t sneer at your idea.'” He kept going from there. My personal favorite was: “The thing they got right is the relative heights.”
As others noted, you know you’ve hit the right rage bait when the target takes it.
There were plenty of a16z partners and staffers who came to Andreessen’s defense, too. So much so that their reactions drew lots of comments. My personal favorite in this category was from VSC Ventures VC Jay Kapoor: “GC vs. A16Z beef is like Kendrick vs. Drake for people who know what a 409A valuation is.”
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