a16z launches TBPN — but with three letters, because three hours per day wasn't enough

What's going on here?

TBPN proved the timeline will watch two guys yap about tech for three hours a day.

Now a16z is betting the yapping can run 24/7.

This morning, a16z announced it led the seed round for MTS, short for “Monitoring the Situation,” a 24/7 livestream news network that runs entirely on X. Hosts read news stories live on air and riff on them in real time, covering tech, business, politics, and culture as it happens.

Erik Torenberg (the a16z general partner running the project with Brent Liang) says the mission is figuring out “what the hell is happening and why” at all times.

• Founding team: Chris Bakke (the legendary shitposter who sold his startup to X), Theo Jaffee, Gabriel Dickinson, and Sophie (known to the internet only as netcapgirl).
• Hosts: political journalist Mark Halperin, former Microsoft Windows boss Steven Sinofsky, AI podcaster Nathan Labenz, and more.
• Angels: Dan Romero, Packy McCormick, and a long list of internet-famous investors (seed amount undisclosed).

What does this mean?

Silicon Valley is done complaining about the media. It's now building its own.

“Go direct” has been Marc Andreessen's favorite gospel for over a decade. Skip the (usually so snaky) tech journos, own the narrative, and own how your story reaches people. a16z has always followed its own advice, first with blogs, then with podcasts, and now a whole news network.

But a16z isn't alone. Founders Fund bankrolls Pirate Wires, Sequoia produces its own podcasts, and Harry Stebbings did the same but in reverse (running a podcast and then raising a $400 million fund). Every big fund is building its own media. MTS is just the newest name on the list.

And it's bigger than VC. Reach used to belong to a few mega-corps, which made everyone else their bitch. If you wanted an audience, you got on your knees (only to beg… of course). The internet flipped it.

Now anyone can own distribution, and it's the mega-corps getting their knees dirty.

Why should I care?

1) Whoever owns the takes owns the narrative.

Nobody has time to form an opinion on everything. Most opinions are influenced by someone else on the timeline, and MTS wants to be the source that influences them. From a16z's POV, that makes perfect sense. Now they can AI-pill, crypto-pill, Marc's-head-isn't-THAT-eggshaped-pill, whatever-pill everyone, 24/7. So obviously, it's worth keeping in mind that the folks giving their takes on MTS will sometimes (very literally) be invested in the stories they're covering.

2) The timeline is getting its own networks.

For a decade, media kept leaving the platforms to go independent: podcasts, Substacks, newsletters. MTS is going the other way. It's a full news network built to live exclusively on X, and that's actually new. If it works, expect more channels to follow.