We Got A Copy Of The Email Andreessen Horowitz Sent Out Announcing The Hiring Of Daniel Penny

Before we get into the Garbage Intelligence report for January 2025, we’ve got a little news to break…

We received a copy of the email sent out by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to limited partners and investors announcing the hiring of Daniel Penny, the former marine who was acquitted of negligent homicide after putting Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold on the New York City subway in 2023. Penny is joining Andreessen Horowitz’s “American Dynamism team,” which invests in “founders and companies that support the national interest.” According to our source, “Investors are almost universally pissed” about the hiring of Penny.

The email, which was sent by General Partner David Ulevitch, reads, "We don't judge people for the worst moment in their life. We believe there is long-term value in expanding our network in collaboration with Daniel and are excited to have him as part of our team." It also includes a note that Penny will be learning “the business of investing” on the job, reporting directly to Ulevitch.

Ulevitch also wrote a shockingly passive description of Neely’s death, which he called a “highly politicized” incident. "A homeless person with mental health issues named Jordan Neely threatened numerous passengers on the subway. People were very frightened,” Ulevitch wrote. “To protect his fellow passengers, Daniel subdued Mr. Neely with a chokehold and Mr. Neely eventually died. The incident was highly politicized, so it was difficult to get to the truth. Through our investigations and interviews with Daniel, we believe with high certainty that he behaved honorably.”

Our source said that investors are not happy with hiring decision and they also believe it’s in line with the firm’s poor performance lately. “Headline risk and noise is antithetical to the goals of those investing, and also they frankly treat investors like shit,” the investor said. “Even if you’re not ideologically opposed to them, it’s not a good business relationship anymore.”

Have a general tip? You can reach us on Signal at ryanbroderick.69420, happy to keep things anonymous or off the record. 

New This Month

Starting this month, we’re covering crypto tokens, thanks to CoinGecko’s trade volume trackers. Trading volume doesn’t reflect a crypto token’s value, but how popular it is to buy, sell and trade. Using this metric, the biggest success in January was Newton Project, a independent blockchain that doesn’t charge transaction fees. Meanwhile, the biggest loss in trading volume was for ZEREBRO, a “cross-chain AI art project” by developer Jeffy Yu. Other losers included an unofficial Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) token and the Chill Guy memecoin, which lost popularity for obscure, mostly vibes-based reasons. Though, you could say that about basically anything that happens in the crypto market!

Some Charts For You

Three months of Bluesky means we have enough data to show the aggregate month-to-month change. November and January were better than December, which supports our theory that the platform is still almost completely downstream of Twitter and its owner Elon Musk. This month, some old Twitter mainstays gained ground, though. Lower down in the top 10 are Hank Green (who started an account this month) and Stephen King (who began using his dormant account in December).

Elon Musk had an especially good month on X, even by his standards. But as with previous months, we’re seeing a broader divide between the entire rest of the platform and Musk’s political and business associates. The biggest account after Musk and President Donald Trump, @RLWJ_kuking, is promoting a Chinese memecoin and got a small fraction of their followers in January.

The most-discussed app in January was the new AI model DeepSeek, but partially thanks to launching in the middle of the month, it barely cracked the top 10 on both iOS and Android. As the chart shows, daily download numbers have already trailed off going into February. Meanwhile, just like the app’s engagement, global download numbers for TikTok were largely unaffected by the ban in the United States.

All The Big Platforms

TikTok briefly went dark in the US in January, but that didn’t do much to slow it down. In fact, we saw a small jump in our aggregate engagement figure. We also didn’t see much of that engagement affected by the ban. Generally speaking, the platform’s biggest videos were the same mix of cute babies, animals, dances, and celebrities. The only exception was MrBeast, who is reportedly waiting to see who stands the best chance to buy the platform.

Path of Exile 2 and Marvel Rivals both hold over from last month as the biggest new games on Steam, in terms of both sales and average players. In the latter category, Marvel Rivals was neck and neck with PUBG this month. That’s impressive for any game, even one with the enormous popularity of the MCU behind it, but it’s become a genuine rival (no pun intended) to longtime titans of the multiplayer world like Overwatch.

Porn games have been lurking around the top of the Patreon charts for months. In January, one finally made it to the top. Congratulations! The game beat out several other independent game developers and modders, including a newcomer to our lists: Kyber.gg, elaborate software for Star Wars: Battlefront II that allows mods, customized servers and more.

We’ve called Reddit “millennial Facebook” before, and January’s biggest posts add to the evidence. Aggregated news, reposted memes, heartwarming stories of beloved grandparents, and now — finally — some classic fakery. This month’s second most popular post was a CGI render inspired by the LA wildfires, reposted from Instagram to crop out both the attribution and any sign it wasn’t a real photograph. At least it wasn’t AI-generated?

Kings League, an independent Spanish soccer league, has gotten success on Twitch thanks to signing big streamers as the teams’ owners and mascots. It was only a matter of time until they got on the field. The top stream in January, raising money for Doctors Without Borders, climaxed with two of France’s biggest streamers facing off in a soccer match. Meanwhile, the biggest stream out of the US was Asmongold, recent enemy of Elon Musk, reacting live to Trump’s inauguration.

MrBeast remained on top this month, and his many direct imitators continue to jockey for space just below him. January brings a new face to that list: Zhongni Zhu, aka Zhong. When he isn’t pretending to have Ronaldo in his videos, he’s best known for turning his girlfriend Kat Buno into a YouTube powerhouse of her own.

The most popular Instagram accounts this month were all the usual suspects — big soccer teams and players, the most popular influencers, and Instagram’s official account. The biggest news here is all in the horse race: Streamer IShowSpeed beat MrBeast for the first time in months, and FC Barcelona remains comfortably ahead of Real Madrid.

Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars weathered the storm of holiday tracks, and their Grammy-winning track remained Spotify’s most-streamed song. Just behind them is “DtMF” from Bad Bunny’s new album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, which released in full on January 5th. Three other songs off the album were in the top 10 in January.

The Facebook Corner

We’ve known for over a year at this point that Facebook was being overrun by bizarre AI-generated pictures. But this is the first month one of them has made it to the top of this list. Between comments, reactions, and reposts, there are over four million interactions on this obviously fake bread horse. For comparison, that’s more than any single news outlet got on the entire platform this month, besides Fox News.

When it comes to links, we’re back to the good ol’ days of Facebook. People are sharing very viral stories about old people. Two of the top links on the platform in January were about local centenarians. That said, coming in second was a CBS affiliate’s story about the LA wildfires, which is sort of promising.

Probably shouldn’t be much of a surprise, considering our current political moment, that right-wing publishers Fox News and The Daily Wire saw a 50% jump in engagement on Facebook this month. This is especially surprising considering how popular The New York Times was just two months ago. Which begs the question: Is this actually a snapshot of our current political moment or is Meta putting their thumb on the scale here a bit?

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