Sonal
Chokshi
Editor in Chief
Sonal Chokshi is the editor in chief at a16z crypto, where she runs the editorial operation and team (part of marketing) since 2022.
Before that, she was Editor in Chief for all of Andreessen Horowitz aka “a16z”, which Sonal joined over a decade ago to build its editorial operation — overseeing its editorial vision, voice, and strategy. Among many other things, from 2014-2022 Sonal built, grew, and was showrunner for the popular and influential a16z Podcast during its greatest period of growth; launched its podcast network, including new shows; and overseeing ~800 episodes across domains from AI, bio, and crypto to enterprise, fintech, infrastructure, and more. The show made several best-of lists, influenced policy listeners, was an exclusive or early stop for book authors/ publishers, and much more.
Sonal also established and grew various a16z-wide newsletters during this period; oversaw the firm’s website and social media; hired the early teams; and assigned, conceived, edited, and co-wrote countless op-eds, primers, canons, listicles, decks, and more pieces all focused on company building and tech trends — one of which was selected in the New York Times’ Sidney Awards 2015 as one of the best long-form essays, and the first times a non-media outlet was ever featured.
Before a16z, Sonal was a Senior Editor at Wired, where she built up the previously flailing expert ideas section into one of the chart-leading sections there. She was one of the first mainstream media editors to feature then-nascent trends such as crypto, e-sports, the sharing economy, and many others. Her work also started or shaped important conversations around the future of the internet, in some cases even helping influence tech policy such as software patent reform.
Prior to Wired, Sonal was responsible for content and community at Xerox PARC, where she briefly covered bitcoin in early 2011 and dove deep on several tech domains from automation, bioinformatics, cleantech, flexible electronics, manufacturing, natural language, networking, optoelectronics, to security, semiconductors, ubiquitous computing, and others. Before PARC, Sonal was doing graduate work in developmental and cognitive psychology at Columbia University’s school of education, where she also worked as a researcher on NSF grants around early numeracy in children and teacher professional development. Sonal studied English and Psychology at UCLA. She loves arts of all kinds.