Patrick McHenry, a former congressman from North Carolina, said on Wednesday that he had been hired by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He will be a senior advisor.
He didn’t go into much into in his post on X about the job other than urging lawmakers to support startups, or what a16z likes to refer to as “little tech.” A request for comment from Andreessen Horowitz was not immediately answered.
Before retiring in January, McHenry served in Congress for 20 years. His most well-known act as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee was perhaps dressing down Gary Gensler, the chair of the SEC at the time.
In particular, Gensler has turned into a boogeyman in the cryptocurrency space, suing cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase and threatening to sue others like Robinhood. These investigations and lawsuits are being dropped by the current SEC.
McHenry said during a hearing in September
“Under Chair Gensler, the SEC has become a rogue agency,”
“regulation by enforcement.”
As of 2022, a16z had raised $7.6 billion for crypto/web3 technology, and it has recently become ingrained in all aspects of government and policy. Brian Quintenz, who oversees policy for a16z’s cryptocurrency division, announced earlier this month that he will be taking over as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Additionally, one of the firm’s managing partners, Scott Kupor, was appointed to head the Office of Personnel Management; Jamie Sullivan, another investor in the firm, is reportedly advising DOGE; and Sriram Krishnan, a former general partner at a16z, is now a senior policy advisor in the White House.
The growing American Dynamism business of Andreessen Horowitz, which invests in defense and government technology startups, is also recruiting a lot of people. Most recently, it added former Marine Daniel Penny as an investor.
