Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz recently made the interesting decision to hire Daniel Penny, the former U.S. Marine who is mostly known for having choked an unhoused man who was acting erratically on the New York City subway in 2023. Now, the company is trying to explain to investors why Penny seemed like a good hire, given the fact that his most noteworthy accomplishment is having put a man in a fatal chokehold.
The VC recently announced that they had recruited Penny to their American Dynamism fund, which invests in national defense, public safety, and aerospace companies. “He will learn the business of investing and he will work to support our portfolio companies,” said David Ulevitch, an a16z general partner, in a note sent to employees earlier this week. “I believe, as I know many of you do, that Daniel acted with courage in a tough situation,” he wrote. “He was acquitted of all charges. Beyond that, it has always been our policy to evaluate the entire person and not judge them for the worst moment in their entire life.”
On Thursday, the New York Times reported on a memo that a16z had circulated to its investors, which attempted to explain why they thought Penny was a necessary hire. Penny’s “military veteran experience can be helpful in continuing to build these relationships, and many of our public safety and defense founders and partners have shared a similar sentiment,” the memo reportedly said. Again, the memo was authored by Ulevitch. The memo further states that a16z is a huge investor in public safety products and companies and that, “as result, we spend a lot of time with active-duty military, veterans, chiefs of police, sheriffs; these relationships are critical to the success of our companies.” The implication appears to be that a16z thinks cops like Penny for what he did, and thus, hiring Penny will make cops like the firm.
Gizmodo reached out to Andreessen Horowitz for comment.
The encounter between Penny and 30-year-old Jordan Neely took place in May of 2023 when Neely boarded an F train in Manhattan and began screaming at the car’s other passengers. Penny’s response was to approach the man, put him in a chokehold, and then keep him in said chokehold for a period of six minutes, not long after which the man died. The New York City medical examiner’s office later declared Neely’s death was the result of “compression of the neck.”
“I had him pretty good,” Penny could be heard to say in footage from a cop’s body camera. “I was in the Marines.”
Penny was eventually arrested for his role in Neely’s death and prosecutors subsequently charged him with criminally negligent homicide and second-degree manslaughter. During the trial, Penny’s defense brought in a forensic pathologist who claimed that Neely hadn’t died from being choked but from a “combination of his schizophrenia, synthetic marijuana, sickle cell trait and the struggle from being in Penny’s restraint,” NBC previously reported. The NYC medical examiner who conducted the original autopsy subsequently dismissed these claims, alleging in court “that there are no alternative reasonable explanations” for Neely’s death and that the defense’s suggestions were “so improbable — that it stands shoulder to shoulder with impossibility.” A jury acquitted Penny of the charge of negligent homicide in December.
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