a16z Is Hiring Scriptwriters. Its Media Team Is Turning Into a Production Company.

Andreessen Horowitz is hiring for its video team, and the job titles read like the credits at the end of a film.

"We're hiring on the a16z New Media video team," Richard Zheng, the firm's head of media, brand and marketing, wrote on X this week. "If you're in Los Angeles, come hang at our office next Thursday (photowalk + film screening). We're looking for producers, creative directors, video editors, and scriptwriters."

A venture firm recruiting scriptwriters with a photowalk is an unusual sentence to write. It's also the next chapter of a story we've been following all year. In August, we argued that a16z had settled owned media's proof problem with a payroll. After twelve months of running its New Media team, the firm looked at the results and hired more people, including former founders, into storytelling roles. Zheng's post shows where the next round of investment is going. It's going into production.

Video was already the centerpiece

a16z formed its New Media team in mid-2025, with general partner Erik Torenberg running it after the firm acquired his podcast network, Turpentine. When the team marked its first year in June, it described its offering as go-direct as a service for startups, and in-house video was the first item on the list.

The firm says its video team turns out launch videos on deadlines most agencies would turn down. The best-known example is World Labs. About four weeks before the launch of its Marble product, the New Media team pitched Fei-Fei Li on filming the announcement on an LED volume stage, with Marble generating the sets in real time. a16z also produced a behind-the-scenes documentary and a launch event, and the launch went viral. In the team's original 2025 essay, one section was titled "The a24 of a16z."

A year ago that read as an aspiration. A team hiring creative directors and scriptwriters is building toward it.

Why these four roles matter

Most companies that say they're investing in video hire a social video editor or a content producer, someone who cuts clips from webinars and podcasts. a16z does plenty of that already. Its podcast feed, its X account with roughly a million followers and its daily newsletter with about a quarter million subscribers all need a steady supply of clips.

Scriptwriters and creative directors are different hires. They plan and write original work before anyone turns on a camera. Producers run shoots, budgets and crews. Together, the four titles in Zheng's post describe a team that originates films, where most corporate video teams repackage conversations that already happened.

The recruiting pitch is aimed at people who already work that way. Los Angeles has the deepest pool of production talent in the country, and a16z has had a Santa Monica office since 2024. A photowalk and a screening are how production companies meet crews. The firm expects to compete for the same people as studios, streamers and agencies, and it's betting it can win them with fast timelines, real stakes and distribution it already owns.

The rest of the build

The video hiring sits inside a much larger expansion. Recent a16z listings include a Head of Podcasts, a Chief Comms Officer to own the narrative for the firm and its portfolio, an events partner role that calls New Media the firm's thought leadership engine, and a dedicated HR business partner for New Media. A media group that needs its own HR partner has outgrown being a small team inside marketing.

The talent pipeline reaches outside the firm, too. The New Media Fellowship drew more than 2,000 applications for its first cohort of 65, and a second cohort of 65 followed, including economist Noah Smith and people from MrBeast's company and Amazon. In April the firm backed Monitoring the Situation, a live news show on X staffed partly by people who came off the New Media team.

The effect shows up in portfolio hiring as well. When Katie Kirsch, who runs ecosystem at a16z, shared a listing for Ramp's Head of Content earlier this year, the role was built around turning Ramp into a media brand. a16z says founders who work with its team often go on to hire "data storytellers" and heads of social for their own companies.

What brand teams can take from it

The usual caveat applies. a16z can afford things most marketing departments can't. It funds this out of management fees, it covers a beat its audience already cares about, and it can promise distribution through channels it spent fifteen years building. Very few brands are going to staff a production company.

The structure is still worth studying. a16z put creative production inside the company, next to the people who own the channels, instead of renting it from an agency one campaign at a time. That's the same decision companies face when they settle where owned media reports and whether to hire an editor in chief. It's also why so many efforts stall. Most brand newsrooms launching this year get a publishing calendar without the production capacity or the distribution to back it up.

Scarcity is part of the logic, too. As AI pushes the cost of written content toward zero, brands are turning to newsrooms to stay heard, and companies like OpenAI are putting more money into in-person events because effort is hard to fake in a room. Original film belongs in the same category. A two-minute launch video shot on a volume stage takes people, time and taste, and audiences can tell when a company spent all three.

a16z has behaved like a media company that writes checks for most of its history. With this round of hiring, it's building the production side to match. The screening is next Thursday.