Andreessen Horowitz

Partner 22, Business Development Lead, Game Technologies

Founded in Silicon Valley 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 venture to late-stage technology companies, across bio + healthcare, consumer, crypto, enterprise, fintech, games, and companies building toward American dynamism. a16z has $35B in assets under management across multiple funds.

We’ve established a team that is defined by respect for the entrepreneur and the company-building process; we know what it’s like to be in the founder’s shoes. We’ve invested in companies like Believer, Bonfire Studios, Carry1st, CCP Games, ElevenLabs, Mainframe, Oculus, Overwolf, Parsec, Rive, Sandbox VR, Singularity 6, Snapser, Roblox, RTFKT, and Zynga. Our team is at the forefront of new technology, helping founders and their companies impact and change the world.

About a16z Games

a16z Games is a $660M fund investing in the future of interactive technology across games, tools and infrastructure, platforms, and AI. We launched SPEEDRUN, a first of its kind Games x Tech startup accelerator, in 2023. We’re a team of ex-game industry operators from companies like Riot, Supercell, Tencent, Oculus, Unity, Scopely, Activision Blizzard, Xbox, Mojang, Twitch, YouTube, and 100 Thieves.

The Role

The BD Lead, Game Technologies is directly responsible for driving the growth of our portfolio of B2B, infrastructure, and AI companies targeting the games and digital entertainment industries as primary customer segments. You will help our companies achieve their growth objective by alternatively serving as both an advisor and executor of strategic sales, technical partnerships, and innovative go-to-market strategies across the highest priority partners within these segments.

The ideal candidate possesses a nuanced, comprehensive understanding of game and digital entertainment development cycles and the intellectual curiosity to distill a range of emerging technologies into engaging and relevant use cases. 

You also bring an existing functional network of senior technical and business relationships across these segments that you have personally built and maintained through your previous sales and/or partnership experience, and a proactive approach to developing new connections in these categories.

This person will work closely with a16z marketing, content, go-to-market, and investing teams to develop innovative programs to engage builders, thought leaders, and decision makers across the ecosystem.

As a Business Development Lead, you will be expected to operate with autonomy and be directly responsible for:

1. Owning the relationship with our portfolio of B2B, infrastructure, and AI companies targeting the games and digital entertainment industries as primary customer segments; accelerating their go-to-market initiatives by creating critical early opportunities and design partner programs, and driving scale across executive briefings, workshops, roundtables, and industry-focused playbooks.
2. Managing and growing the firm’s network of practitioners and technology buyers in creative disciplines across the games and digital entertainment ecosystems while evangelizing the value of working with a16z Games and its portfolio.
3. Matching the innovation initiatives of these tech buyers with relevant portfolio companies and a16z investment partners to gain insights on trends, to create partnership opportunities.

The ideal experience profile is a seasoned professional with a blend of strategic sales/partnership acumen and technical and product expertise. This role is best of both worlds, offering the ability to coach and counsel our games portfolio companies, while applying your operational skills and strategic thinking to grow the capability and stature of our fund. This role will report to the Head of GTM, Games.

To Join our team, you should be excited to:

• Build Relationships - you’re a self starting networker who knows how to prioritize and grow long term relationships built around shared success.
• Drive Outcomes - you’re laser focused on delivering measurable impact for a16z by growing our network of technology decision makers in games and digital entertainment, and driving the success of our portfolio by creating critical early sales opportunities, design programs, and transformative partnerships.
• Work with amazing companies - you’re excited to advise a collection of the best companies building at the intersection of games and technology; you’ll build long-term relationships with our founders and connect them across our network through introductions, meetings, corporate briefings, events, and conferences.
• Create Scale - you can extrapolate key learnings from one-off wins into extensible programs that serve broad partner groups, and partner with content teams to build our expertise into our public facing brand.

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in sales, Business Development, or technology partnerships in gaming, digital entertainment. Startup experience is a plus.
• Extensive knowledge of the complexities of selling into the games and digital entertainment industries; established track record of successfully sourcing, pitching, and closing complex technical sales or partnerships
• Strong functional network of senior technical and business relationships across these industries; proven ability to build and grow new long-term relationships at senior leadership levels;
• Technical fluency to 1) communicate effectively across a spectrum of portfolio founders and prospective partners, and, 2) devise creative deal structures and/or solutions.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, executive presence, presentation skills, and high attention to detail.
• Ability to prioritize and manage work and trade-offs against critical project timelines in a fast-paced, dynamic environment; start-up, venture, and/or tech ecosystem experience is a plus
• Proven ability to self-start, operate autonomously, manage multiple priorities, independently contribute, ability to deal with ambiguity, and execute consistently in a dynamic environment
• Low ego, high empathy, and the capacity to collaborate effectively with diverse teams
• This role will be in either our San Francisco or Santa Monica offices

The anticipated salary range for this role is between $317,000-$370,000, actual starting pay may vary based on a range of factors which can include experience, skills, and scope.

This role is eligible to participate in the a16z carry program and various discretionary bonus programs as well as benefit and perquisite plans including health, dental, vision, disability, life insurance, 401K plan, vacation, and sick leave. 

a16z culture 

• We do only first class business and only in a first class way
• We take a long view of relationships, because we are in the relationship business 
• We believe in the future and bet the firm that way
• We are all different, we recognize that, and we win
• We celebrate the good times
• We do it for the team
• We play to win

At a16z we are always looking to hire the absolute best talent and recognize that diversity in our experiences and backgrounds is what makes us stronger. We hire candidates of any race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital or family status, disability, Veteran status, and any other status. These differences are what enables us to work towards the future we envision for ourselves, our portfolio companies, and the World.

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Andreessen Horowitz hereby reserves the right to make use of any unsolicited resumes received from outside recruiting agencies and / or individual recruiters without being responsible for payment of any fees asserted from the use of unsolicited resumes.