Powerhouse venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is promoting Jennifer Li to general partner after six years at the firm. She’s being tapped to help invest the new $ 1.25 billion Infrastructure fund managed by longtime a16z general partner Martin Casado.
The Infrastructure fund is part of the fresh $ 7.2 billion that the Silicon Valley VC giant just raised. Li has been an investing partner on the Infrastructure team for a while, which means she was already writing checks and taking board seats. But her promotion puts her in rarified air: making her the 27th general partner at the firm, and she’s hit this career milestone while in her early 30s.
While that may sound like a lot of GPs, a16z currently has over 500 employees. Plus she’s one of only four GPs on the Infrastructure team. The others are Anjney Midha who joined the firm last summer; Zane Lackey, who joined two years ago; and Casado.
“Promoting Jennifer to general partner means that much more autonomy in deal making and, as importantly, that much more influence on the team’s culture, investment philosophy, and operating model,” Casado told TechCrunch over email.
In Casado’s blog post announcing her promotion, he also mentioned that she and he were the two people largely responsible for building the infrastructure investing team. He described her as “a low ego, incredibly reliable and generous partner to work with. No detail escapes her notice, and no challenge too daunting for her to tackle. As Ben Horowitz has said many times, ‘She embodies the a16z culture.’”
In her time at a16z, Li helped the firm find data connectivity startup Fivetran, valued at $ 5.6 billion in 2021; and data analytics developer tool startup dbt, which hit a $ 4.2 billion valuation in 2022 (both of those deals were led by Casado). She led the firm’s investments in developer-focused video platform Mux, a unicorn as of 2021; database startup Motherduck, valued at $ 400 million earlier this year; and AI voice startup Eleven Labs, a unicorn as of January, where she serves on the board.
Prior to joining a16z in 2018, she led product 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.
