Andreessen Horowitz is an investor in Stripe and also does not invest in companies that are competing with one another. Does that mean that Balanced and Stripe are not competitors?
Yeah, what does it mean that it's "via general partner Jeff Jordan"? That makes it sound like it's somehow not an "official" Andreessen Horowitz investment but rather a personal investment from Jeff. Will Balanced end up on http://a16z.com/portfolio/?
That likely means that Jeff Jordan was the partner that led the investment from a16z. Usually you're only directly interacting with one partner at a given firm.
Why is "who funded us" such a prominent theme these days with funding announcements from companies? Especially in this announcement? Back in the day, investment banks put up tombstones in the WSJ (for the big deals) and a minor blip went out on the news wires that funding was obtained by such-and-such company. Now it is "Hey! Look at us! We got funding! And one of the players was Andreessen!!!" .. or xyzxyz!
I realize Andreessen Horowitz is a prominent VC player, but I'm sure he's had his share of failures judging by the sheer number of investments he seems to play in. Those like him with a lot of capital are now engaging in "spray and pray" mentality. A few home runs might have made him insanely wealthy, but I question why all the sudden his name on your startup is so important.
And don't forget the old adage: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
I think of it like when Warren Buffet or George Soros buys a new stock. It's not that they can't be wrong - it's that people who are really, really good at this thinks it is a good investment.
We implemented Balanced into our app yesterday. We allotted a week to integrate payments; with Balanced, it took a mere three hours. Even better, we were able to play with payments with the dummy dashboard.
