👋 Hi Reader,

I devour everything that the a16z team publishes.

Their events for SF Tech Week.

Their predictions for each year in Jan.

And of course, everything they produce in their media network.

So when they announced the New Media Fellowship with Erik Torenberg at the helm, (as my Gen Z niece says, no cap) I was frothing at the mouth. In 2022-2023, I had been a product management partner at OnDeck, where Erik and Julian Weisser ran a fine show. I had been following everything Erik had led since then, including building Turpentine with Natalie Toren.

Cut to a few months later this week, the first cohort for the New Media Fellowship was announced, and I was bummed to not make the list with LetterStack. Amidst the gloom that set in, I start going through the nominees.

To my pleasant surprise, I found a lot of people in the list, whom I already follow closely on socials. I saw Shawn Wang (@swyx), Gaby Goldberg, to name a few.

But what's interesting is that they have also pulled in incredible marketers and operators like Alli Pope, who has built an wonderful media program at Vercel.

I would encourage you to go follow all the names mentioned in this Fellowship, if you are not familar with their work already.

The part that stood out in the a16z cohort

What I found peculiar about the list of nominees, is that my initial read of the Fellowship was that they are going to pick up incredibly promising new media startups (ahem) and provide them with the support and coverage that would take them to the next level. To be fair, all the nominees in the Fellowship are stellar individuals, but also who have already carved a brand for themselves and dominated the media formats they operate in.

Also, a part of the chatter on the cohort announcement has been around the cohort being immensely centric around NY and SF, and not truly capturing the spirit of New Media nationwide.

That being said, I still feel it is incredible to know that a Fellowship dedicated entirely to New Media exists. I am hoping the a16z New Media team also pays attention to blend in a couple of budding talent to mingle with tenured operators like Gaby and Shawn. I firmly think that it would lead to an eclectic group of people, who are shaking down the traditional media tree of stale ideas violently.

But what about us newsletter creators?

You know I am there for you. You have already been an ardent supporter of New Media by subscribing to LetterStack.

If you feel that you are building a newsletter that can easily be one of these nominees mentioned in this cohort, but are not finding the right support to build it, I would love to talk to you.

Let me know by hitting ‘Reply’ on this email, or send a note to marketing@letterstack.co.

P. S. The real reason I had applied to the New Media Fellowship is I had been publishing deeply written thesis pieces on specific industries, long before the AI boom in 2023-2025. I felt I had a real shot at making Letterstack the essential education for new newsletter creators with such long-form content.

A specific example that I wrote this 3000+ word piece in Dec 2022 on how AI would transform education with Calin Drimbau on the Broadn blog.

When a16z published their 2026 predictions in Dec 2025, they wrote about AI-enabled learning paths in universities: exactly how we had described it 3 years ago.

Let me know what you think - read all about it in the following LinkedIn post:

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Cheers,

Renga from LetterStack

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