In 2024, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced a ânew eraâ of venture capital: a shift toward larger vehicles, deeper specialization, and faster pathways from idea to scaled company. With roughly $46 billion under management, spread across growth, infrastructure, seed, and artificial intelligence (AI)-focused funds, this doesnât just look like venture at scale. It looks like something newâan institution that feels part accelerator, part university, part capital allocator. Itâs venture-adjacent, but itâs not the venture weâve known.
Raising over $1 million at pre-seed in Canada is rare. And when it does happen, it almost always requires stitching together multiple investors. Thereâs the grind, the dance, the endless meetings.
From a Canadian perspective, the contrast is staggering. Raising $1 million pre-seed here is often a slog of 50-plus meetings, months of grinding, and piecing together multiple cheques. In contrast, a16z can deploy $20 million into an early-stage company as part of a carefully modelled portfolio. For the founder, $20 million looks like conviction. For the firm, itâs just portfolio math.
Understanding this difference matters because the next generation of venture isnât just about bigger funds, itâs about new institutional models for company creation.
The scale of a16z
A16z doesnât run a single, $20-billion fund. Its approximately $46 billion under management is spread across multiple vehicles: a growth fund, an infrastructure fund, an AI-focused fund, a seed fund, and so on. Each has its own limited partnership agreement (LPA), its own management fees, and its own investors.
But it is the collective power of those assets under management that matters. Because most LPAs allow cross-fund investing, a company that enters through a seed vehicle can later be led by the Series A fund, and then doubled down on by the growth fund.
So, while you wonât find a neat $20 billion âAI fundâ on paper, the effect is the same:
- hundreds of seed-stage bets;
- dozens of Series A follow-ons;
- a few growth-stage companies that can absorb $100 million or more.
At this scale, venture stops looking like a set of funds and starts looking like an institutional pipeline for company creation.
Enter Speedrun and YC
Hereâs where things get interesting.
A16z launched Speedrun, a program that invests $500,000 up front with the potential for another $500,000 if the company raises within 18 months. A16z backs around 500 founders in each batch.
Do the math and you see the shape of the funnel:
- 500 founders at $500,000 each;
- Approximately 20 percent advance to larger checks (100 companies at $20 million equals $2 billion);
- A handful eventually absorbs $100 million in growth capital.
Y Combinator (YC), of course, has been running its own version of this model for years, with even more brand gravity. Between them, these programs function like institutional pipelines for company creation.
The structure feels less like a traditional venture fund and more like:
- Admissions: Speedrun/YC acceptance;
- Stipend: $500,000â$1 million to start;
- Curriculum: mentorship, playbooks, investor networks;
- Progression: approximately 20 percent advance to the next stage;
- Tenure track: a few companies scale into $10-billion outcomes.
It looks remarkably like a university for startups. Except here, the IP and ownership stay with the companies, so outcomes are engineered for venture economics. Founders, investors, and the institution all share in the upside.
Itâs not just YC and Speedrun experimenting with institutional pipelines for company creation. The Thiel Fellowship has been running since 2011 and offering $100,000 to young people to drop out of college and work on projects.
The lesson is clear: structured, institutionalized programsâwhether itâs YC, Speedrun, or the Thiel Fellowshipâcan engineer funnels that produce outlier outcomes. Itâs not guaranteed, but they can do it at a scale and consistency that traditional seed investing struggles to match.
Why this matters in Canada
This is where the contrast becomes painful.
According to the CVCA/BDC H1 2025 report:
- Pre-seed activity was just 47 deals totalling $39 million, with an average cheque size 30 percent below historical norms;
- Seed activity saw 86 deals totalling $258 million, with an average cheque size of $3 million, down 29 percent compared to the five-year average;
- Early stage totalled $908 million across 68 deals, down 47 percent year-over-year.
Those numbers paint a clear picture: raising over $1 million at pre-seed in Canada is rare. And when it does happen, it almost always requires stitching together multiple investors. Thereâs the grind, the dance, the endless meetings.
By contrast, Speedrun writes a single, $500,000 cheque, from one funder, with no dance required. It does this for 500 founders, with a clear pathway to $20 million and beyond.
This has two big implications:
- Talent flight risk. If Speedrun and YC become the default on-ramps for ambitious founders, Canada risks losing its best entrepreneurial talent to US institutional funnels. Our local funds simply canât match the speed, certainty, or scale of these programs.
- Capital market adaptation. Canadian investors will need to rethink their role. Do we specialize and partner with these institutions, feeding into their pipelines? Or do we build our own equivalentsâCDL, Next Canada, or Pan-Canadian AI institutes 2.0âbut with venture economics built in?
Either way, the ground is shifting.
Looking ahead
Hereâs the analogy that sticks with me.
In the past, ambitious graduates invested in themselves by going to grad school. They spent $100,000 on an MBA, law degree, or medical program as their path to impact.
Today, ambitious people might choose YC or Speedrun instead. Instead of paying tuition, they receive $500,000â$1 million. Instead of grades, theyâre judged by traction. And instead of a diploma, the reward is a shot at building a world-changing company.
YC and Speedrun are not just accelerators; theyâre the new professional schools of venture.
Whether Speedrun was designed as a pipeline or as a new way of looking at software and markets, the effect is the same: it creates a structured way to discover and scale the next generation of outlier companies.
For founders, this isnât better or worse than traditional seed markets; itâs simply a different game design. One that is faster, more programmatic, and more institutional.
And for Canadian founders, it may be the most powerful new path available. Because at the end of the day, YC and Speedrun represent something bigger than capital: theyâre the modern equivalent of a university or research lab, rebuilt for the commercialization era.
Perhaps the most powerful way weâve yet seen to find, and fund, the next builders of world-changing companies.
David Crow runs the strategic advisory firm Danger Capital Corporation. His 25-year career also includes work with OMERS Ventures, Influitive, and Microsoft.
Feature image courtesy Paul Miller, licensed under CC BY 2.0.