Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism fund has created a new grant program aimed at bringing in top engineers and technologists to invest, a move that could help the firm identify less obvious sources for VC talent.
The American Dynamism Fund was launched in 2023 with the overall goal of supporting companies building in the country’s interest in hard technology sectors, including manufacturing, robotics, space and defense. Of a16z’s new $7.2 billion fund, about $600 million is earmarked for American Dynamism.
The 12-month American Dynamism Engineering Fellows Program will take approximately three technologists through a series of investment crash courses, with fellows spending the year learning about venture capital investing, working with partners to evaluate potential investments and engaging with the fund’s portfolio of industrial companies . At the end of the program, fellows could potentially join the company, join a lodge or even decide to start their own company, which is “a win-win in any scenario,” fund partner David Ulevitch told recent interview.
“We’ve always had a lot of technologists at this firm, but in recent years, the people who are really aggressively trying to get a job at Andreessen Horowitz tend to be more of the finance and banking people,” he said. “But we really like to have strong technologists and people who are thinking about the product and thinking about the future.”
But this type of person may not initially think that investing or being a startup founder is necessary for them. Ulevitch said the program was established as a structured way for technically minded people to explore a career transition.
“The issue of how we attract technical people is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” he said. “The people coming in are not always the people we’re really trying to find, and so this is a way to try to open up and cast a wider net.”
“In investing, you often want the people who seem like less obvious candidates,” he added.
It’s pretty important that applicants have some level of commercial work experience, such as spending a few years at a startup, but honorees pursuing advanced degrees alongside outstanding commercial or personal projects could also be a good fit, Ulevitch said. Selected partners should have expertise that crosses hardware and software and should be excited about scaling the American Dynamism mission more broadly.
The American Dynamism team aims to run the fellowship on an annual basis, with selected fellows based in either San Francisco or New York. Program details and application link can be found here.
