Kofi Ampadu, the accomplice at a16z who led the company’s Skill x Replacement (TxO) fund and program, has left the company, based mostly completely totally on an electronic mail he despatched to workers that TechCrunch obtained. This comes months after the company paused TxO and laid off most of its workers.
“During my time on the company, I was once deeply grateful for the different and the have faith to lead this work,” Ampadu wrote within the electronic mail, despatched Friday afternoon, with the topic line “Closing My a16z Chapter.”
“Identifying out-of-network entrepreneurs and supporting them as they sharpened their tips, raised capital, and grew into assured leaders was once one in every of potentially the most most fundamental experiences of my profession,” he wrote.
Ampadu led the program, which launched in 2020, for over four years till its cease final November, taking over for the preliminary leader, Nait Jones. Afterward, Ampadu appears to be to private worked at a16z’s latest accelerator, Speedrun.
Ampadu’s departure possibly signals the cease of the TxO chapter. The fund and program taking into account supporting underserved founders by offering access to tech networks and investment capital via a donor-informed fund. Despite the proven truth that some founders spoke extremely of the program, others criticized the controversial donor-informed constructing. This method also launched a grant program in 2024 to present $50,000 to nonprofits that abet diverse founders.
Its final cohort was once in March 2025, and its indefinite cease came as many high tech names reframe, reduce, or save away with prior public commitments to vary, equity, and inclusion. We’ve reached out to a16z and Ampadu for mumble.
His corpulent imprint below:
I moved to the United States three months sooner than my 11th birthday. One month later, I started 6th grade in a college bigger than 5,000 miles from my home, my chums, and the entire lot acquainted. Just now now not too long ago, my mother stroke a chord in my memory that my college required me to enroll as an English-as-a-2nd-Language pupil. My memory immediately returned to how puzzled I felt. Even at 10 years inclined, I knew it made no sense that a youngster from Ghana, an English-talking nation, was once being asked to be taught a language he already spoke fluently.
This was once a programs requirement, a blanketed assumption about what college students from particular locations may perchance well well or may perchance well well now now not invent. That identical form of systemic assumption is what we self-discipline out to downside via the Skill x Replacement Initiative. The endeavor ecosystem regularly relies on proxies akin to colleges, networks, and prior credentials, which is ready to vague excellent founders who invent now now not follow the commonest paths. TxO invested in and supported these lost sight of founders to bridge the outlet between capacity and different.
During my time on the company, I was once deeply grateful for the different and the have faith to lead this work. Identifying out-of-network entrepreneurs and supporting them as they sharpened their tips, raised capital, and grew into assured leaders was once one in every of potentially the most most fundamental experiences of my profession.
As I pass on to my next chapter, I fade with pleasure in what we constructed and gratitude for each person who helped form it. Thanks for the have faith, the collaboration, and the idea in what is that you will doubtless have the ability to take into consideration. There may perchance be extra work to invent and I’m enraged to contain constructing.
Dominic-Madori Davis is a senior endeavor capital and startup reporter at TechCrunch. She relies mostly in Unusual York City.
You would possibly well well possibly also contact or review outreach from Dominic by emailing dominic.davis@techcrunch.com or by job of encrypted message at +1 646 831-7565 on Signal.