> Are you suggesting that a16z doesn't do this?

Yes I am.

(1)
It appears, really is quite clear, that
they have high contempt for initial contacts from
entrepreneurs via e-mail. Instead they want to believe
that the 'good' entrepreneurs will have enough 'exposure',
enough in 'networking', and enough in 'hustle', e.g.,
on LinkedIn, GetHub, etc., to come to the attention of
A16Z by means other than an e-mail message "over the
transom". E.g., they want an entrepreneur to get
introductions from bankers, lawyers, accountants,
or CEO's of companies in the A16Z portfolio. So,
A16Z (A) wants others to 'filter' their
entrepreneurs for them and/or (B) believes that
lawyers, etc. are good sources of good recommendations.
Nonsense.

(2) A16Z will just refuse to consider any
very technical support for a project.
E.g., if a project has some powerful, valuable
'secret sauce', intellectual property,
and high technological barrier to entry,
A16Z can easily just dismiss the technical
issues, the project, and the entrepreneur.
A16Z wants to believe that they have
'deep domain knowledge' where they invest
and, thus, wants to believe that anything
new that A16Z has not heard of must be
nonsense. If some supporting technical
material is not easy reading for them,
then they believe that they are justified
in just regarding it as nonsense.

But, looking at the partners of A16Z, it's
tough to find one with enough technical
qualifications and/or accomplishments to
(A) get a tenure track position in
the engineering school of a
leading research university,
(B) be an editor of a leading
technical journal of original research,
(C) publish a peer-reviewed paper
of original research in a technical field
in a good or better journal of original
research,
or (D) get an NSF grant for original research.

Net, A16Z apparently is not competent to review
or even to direct a competent review of
technical material in information
technology.

What the A16Z financial performance really
is is likely not easy to discover.

You seem to suggest that the project for
which the OP is some recruiting is for
an internal information system to
do causal modeling and
make valuable predictions
for venture investing. It would
appear that they want to do
cross tabulation and curve fitting;
sorry, there is nearly no chance
those techniques will work. Why?
In simple terms, they are looking
for new, exceptional cases, and
looking at 'averages' from the past,
even of successes in the past, is
just intellectual self-abuse.

If they are making money, then, fine.
But from all I can see, in information
technology their competence is way below
a level that would be useful for
actual technical work or doing
a technical review of such work.

I've been around technical work in
US national security, US business
and start ups, including one of the
most successful venture funded companies
ever, and high end academic research,
hold a Ph.D. in engineering from one of
the world's best research universities,
have published peer-reviewed original
research in computer science, applied
mathematics, and artificial intelligence,
and in comparison the technical qualifications
of
A16Z look like a bad joke.

Yes, most good quantitative analysis
needs some computing and programming.
So, in their recruiting A16Z seems to
believe that the computing, which is
necessary, is also sufficient. It's not.
By an analogy, A16Z is looking for
nurse practitioners instead of
MD physicians. Both are necessary,
but the nurse practitioners are not
sufficient. There is a difference!

But, why help A16Z? They have money
enough now!