Hoda Eydgahi

Founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz (known as "a16z") is a venture capital firm that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. We are stage agnostic: We invest in seed to late-stage technology companies, across the consumer, enterprise, bio/healthcare, crypto, fintech and games spaces. a16z is defined by respect for the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial company building process; we know what it’s like to be in the founder’s shoes. The firm is led by general partners, many of whom are former founders/operators, CEOs, or CTOs of successful technology companies, and who have domain expertise ranging from biology to crypto to distributed systems to security to marketplaces to financial services. We aim to connect entrepreneurs, investors, executives, engineers, academics, industry experts, and others in the technology ecosystem. We have built a network of experts including technical and executive talent; top media and marketing resources; Fortune 500/Global 2000 companies; as well as other technology decision makers, influencers, and key opinion leaders. a16z uses this network as part of our commitment to help our portfolio companies grow their business, so our operating teams provide entrepreneurs with access to expertise and insights across the entire spectrum of company building. https://a16z.com/portfolio/ https://a16z.com/podcasts/ https://a16z.com/videos/ http://a16z.com/subscribe See Disclosures: https://a16z.com/disclosures/

Sequoia helps daring founders build legendary companies from idea to IPO and beyond. We aim to be the first true believers in tomorrow’s most valuable and enduring businesses. We partner with a few outliers each year and go all-in, providing them with the hands-on help required at every stage of the company building journey. Our expertise comes from 50 years of working with legendary founders like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Jan Koum, Adi Tatarko, Brian Chesky, Jensen Huang, Anne Wojcicki, Eric Yuan, Patrick Collison, Julia Hartz, and Sebastian Siemiatkowski. In aggregate, Sequoia-backed companies account for more than 25% of NASDAQs total value. Since our inception, the vast majority of the money we invest has been on behalf of nonprofits and schools like the Ford Foundation, Mayo Clinic and MIT, which means most of the returns we generate benefit these great causes.

Bluelight is an SMS-based consumer finance platform that draws on traditional informal savings tools and cutting-edge behavioral economics research to help households in the developing world save up for the things they need. We do this by partnering with large retailers to offer an affordable, convenient layaway savings product, and by leveraging an extensive distribution network of local agents (including neighborhood corner stores and microfinance institutions) to sell and market savings scratch cards. These scratch cards allow consumers to make micro-deposits toward gift cards redeemable at our retail partners, helping them save up for things that would be very difficult for them to purchase otherwise.