Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a Founder and Managing Partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). He is also the author of the book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet released in January 2024. Dixon frequently shares his insights on crypto, blockchain, and NFTs with his substantial following on Twitter, which includes over 800,000 users. ^[1][3]

Early Life and Education

Chris grew up in Ohio. He earned a BA and an MA from Columbia University, majoring in Philosophy, and also has an MBA from Harvard University. ^[2]

Career

Business

Chris started programming as a kid, starting on a TRS-80 Model 1, and was a professional programmer after college at the high-speed options trading firm, Arbitrade. In 2003, he joined the venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners and 2 years later, he left to start his own company SiteAdvisor, a web-security startup that was bought by security company McAfee in 2006. ^[4]

In 2009, he founded Hunch with Caterina Fake and Tom Pinckney, which was acquired by eBay in 2011. ^[2][4]

He also co-founded Founder Collective in 2009, a seed-stage venture capital fund, and he made personal investments in BuzzFeed, Makerbot, Betaworks, Uber, Venmo, Pinterest, Kickstarter, etc. ^[5]

Andreessen Horowitz

Chris Dixon was welcomed into Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in November 2012 as a General Partner. Founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, a16z is a venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California. ^[5]

“At most V.C. firms, they have general partners and the bulk of the operating budget goes to their salary,” he said. “But here, the strategy is to have seven general partners and 55 other people whose sole focus is to help entrepreneurs on everything from market development to gaining users, a talent team for recruiting, research and marketing. These are real operations and look like little companies within the bigger company.” - Chris Dixon said when hired^[5]

After joining the firm, Chris led a variety of investments for the firm including FiftyThree^[6], Soylent^[7], and Nootrobox and he sits on the boards of drone startup Airware, 3D printing startup Shapeways, and digital Bitcoin wallet, Coinbase. Dixon also led the firm’s investment and sits on the board of Oculus VR,  which was acquired by Facebook in March 2014. ^[8]

In 2018, Chris founded and leads the section of a16z called 'a16z crypto', which invests in web3 technologies through four dedicated funds with more than $7 billion under management. ^[3]

In 2022, Fortune called Chris "the world's top crypto investor." He also relaunched an accelerator for crypto startups called Crypto Startup School. ^[9][10][14]

Read Write Own

In January 2024, Chris Dixon released his book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet. ^[12]

"Yes, it’s about crypto/web3 – but also internet history, networks, and the future of the internet. It answers a common question I hear: “What problems do blockchains solve?”

I explain why crypto/web3 is the only plausible path to sustaining the original vision of the internet as an open platform that incentivizes creativity & entrepreneurship.

I tackle controversial topics like policy/regulatory, and the harmful “casino” culture that has developed around crypto.

This book is for anyone interested in business, tech, & innovation. I wrote it to be succinct, thorough, & accessible to a wide range of audiences without watering it down. It also distills cutting-edge thinking from technologists and founders to make it useful to practitioners." - Dixon wrote in a Linkedin post^[11]

Social Media Presence

On X (fka Twitter) under the handle "cdixon.eth", Chris has a following of over 800K where he interacts, shares his thoughts and resources with his audience. Chris’s blog also consists of various articles on entrepreneurship, business, crypto, etc. ^[1][13]