One of the most entertaining moments in VC this week was a piece of rage-bait marketing from General Catalyst.
In a now-viral post on X that parodies the old Mac vs. PC commercials, the venture firm — better known as GC — posted a “VC vs GC” video on Wednesday. The VC was played by a tall actor in a baggy shirt and vest with a distinctly large, bald head — an apparent dig at Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen. (But the real Andreessen never looks that disheveled).
The GC character was played by a man with a thick head of dark hair, white kicks, and a tendency to stare deeply into the camera. He was clearly supposed to represent actor Justin Long’s cooler, “hipper” Mac character from the original commercials, in contrast to John Hodgman’s straight-laced “square” PC persona.
GC asks VC about his robotic dog.
VC explains, “This is Woof AI” and then extols the virtues of the artificial companion (you don’t need to walk it or break the news to the kids when it dies!) and declares, “You’ll never want a real dog after this.” VC mentions that his firm is leading the seed round and pitches GC to join the cap table.
GC explains how people like real dogs and remarks, “I’d love to hear more, but we actually have a really high bar around responsibility for these things.”
Then VC kicks the AI dog and the dog chases him off the screen. The post has now been viewed 2.4 million times with hundreds of shares and comments, and thousands of likes.
I’d have to read so far between the lines that I’d be off the page and peering into another book to unpack this, but I’ll try anyway. The message, roughly: Other VCs, and a16z in particular, will fund anything. GC won’t. (I asked about this. GC hasn’t r …