a16z Speedrun is an early-stage accelerator run by Andreessen Horowitz. Amy and Elena Wagenmans participated with Taya in late 2025.
The Program
Speedrun invests up to $1M in pre-seed and seed-stage companies. Cohorts work intensively for several weeks, culminating in a Demo Day. The program is designed for founders who are still figuring out product-market fit but have enough conviction and momentum to move fast.
Kickoff
The official kickoff week took place in Los Angeles, at a former Snapchat office in Venice. Elena posted on LinkedIn that she and Amy "started the program last week" and would be "based in LA for the next two months."
A photo from the kickoff shows Amy and Elena with Josh Sirota, the founder of ERAGON (another Speedrun company). This is one of the few documented images of Amy and Elena together during the Taya era.
Demo Day
Demo Day was held at the SFJAZZ theater in San Francisco with 500+ attendees. Amy posted about it on LinkedIn in October 2025, congratulating Elena. Taya's demo reportedly received "millions of views" across social platforms.
This was one of Amy's last public gestures of support for Elena. She left the company the following month.
The Acquisition Offer
During the Speedrun period, Taya received and turned down an acquisition offer. The details (acquirer, amount, terms) are not documented. Amy does not discuss this decision in her diary.
What It Meant
Speedrun gave Taya institutional legitimacy: the a16z stamp, access to the network, a Demo Day stage. It also produced the conditions under which Amy worked herself to collapse: drugs to stay awake, five jobs at once, no sleep for days.
The Speedrun page still listed Amy as CTO as of March 2026, months after she left. Elena did not update it.
In the Aftermath
The Speedrun credential continues to follow both Amy and Elena. Elena leveraged it into a $5M seed round announced in March 2026. Amy leveraged it into her Vizcom role and her social media credibility. The difference is that Elena uses it as a current story ("we just raised $5M") while Amy uses it as a credential on her bio, something that happened, not something that is happening.
From the March 12 diary, after Elena's TechCrunch article: "a16z Speedrun still lists me as CTO. It's like a ghost version of me is still there, still building, while the real me is at Vizcom scrolling LinkedIn at midnight."