Poof! The Silicon Valley corporate headquarters of Andreessen Horowitz has vanished into the clouds.
Or cloud.
The venture capital firm, once based in Menlo Park, has gone virtual, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The firm known–also know as A16Z is now based in the cloud but can “materialize physically on command,” according to a co-founder.
It will keep its offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco, and add new ones in Santa Monica, New York and Miami. But its official headquarters is now kaput.
“In our firm’s new operating model, we work primarily virtually, but will use our physical presence to develop our culture, help entrepreneurs, and build relationships,” Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, declared on his blog. ”The firm is now virtual.”
Andreessen Horowitz is the latest tech company to wrest its hub out of the bricks and mortar.
Last month, the financial tech firm Block chose not to renew its lease for nearly 470,000 square feet at its former headquarters in San Francisco’s Mid-Market neighborhood.
The publicly traded firm, formerly known as Square, delisted San Francisco as its official headquarters as it shifts to a “distributed work model,” with the pandemic accelerating its focus toward remote work. The firm no longer claims a corporate headquarters.
Other companies to abandon their headquarters include a16z portfolio firm, Coinbase Global, which scuttled its base in San Francisco early last year.
The pandemic upended the tech world that Andreessen Horowitz invests in, Horowitz said.
Where it was once vital for tech companies to cluster in Silicon Valley “for the network effect,” that’s no longer the case, he said. It’s no longer important to be headquartered there, or anywhere.
“It turns out that running a technology company remotely works pretty darned well,” Horowitz said. “It’s not perfect, but mitigating the cultural issues associated with remote work turns out to be easier than mitigating the employee satisfaction issues associated with forcing everyone into the office five days/week.”
Despite the loss of its hub, a16z is still adding offices to support remote workers. This month, it signed a lease for a 26,000-square-foot building in Santa Monica, while also adding offices in Miami Beach and New York.
– Dana Bartholomew
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