What do we do here on the @a16z Ecosystem/New Media team ? why? ..here's my take: 1. All progress comes from great companies. They are the most effective machine humans have ever come up with for converting ideas --> prosperity. a "self-funding, self-scaling delivery mechanism for a better way of doing something." 2. Great companies are born and accelerated by coincidences: the founders who met by chance, an idea stumbled into or validated, the key early hire or customer introduced because of a passing conversation. The string of 10,000 things that had to go right for Cursor to win vs. Windsurf and all the others. 3. Therefore, the binding constraint on more great companies is the rate at which these coincidences occur. Our guiding question becomes: how do we increase that rate? -- The big Idea: coincidences occur more often at Schelling points. A point where people converge without having to coordinate... the default answer to "where do I go to find people to talk to about X", or “who is a great person to talk to for Y” that everyone lands on independently. A conference, a podcast, a group chat, a "Fellowship" Our job comes in three steps: 1- Identify rising networks & topics. Use our media reach to identify the "current thing" that people care about, or are going to need more of. 2- Build Schelling points within those networks: use our brand, credibility, ability to signal - so that conversation on that topic starts to converge & become the default place. 3- Maximize the rate at which people collide... do the routing so the right people have a better chance of meeting. #3# in particular is the magnum opus of my career - and in 2026 it's the most exciting product and engineering opportunity i've ever seen. We're hiring AI and Product engineers - DM me to chat  👋