tl;dr: Editor who adds layers of nuance; edits (and often co-writes) first-person, first-principles, ‘bare metal’ expertise; dives into the process behind the outcomes; and has built several media operations. The throughline of my career so far -- which has spanned education, tech, and media -- is all about broadening audience yet preserving depth; advocating for new ideas and identifying talent; and making influential hits that lead (not just follow) and shape conversations

follow

…subscribe to my newsletter on aesthetics and art, beauty and building, craft, curating and connecting interestingness across different worlds; plus cultivating taste: artdev.substack.com

…my book on editorial content marketing; I’m constantly asked “how I did it” or asked to share my editorial frameworks, guidance, and how-to; I’m writing a book that answers all these FAQs and shares resources, subscribe here for updates

about

Sonal Chokshi is the editor in chief at a16z crypto, where she runs the editorial operation and team (reporting to the CMO) 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 and run its editorial operation -- overseeing and defining its editorial vision, voice, and strategy (including pivoting the firm from reported-stories to first-person expert content). While doing so, Sonal also built, grew, and was showrunner (2014-2022) for the popular and influential a16z Podcast — leading it to its greatest and record-breaking period of growth; launched its podcast network, including conceiving of and producing the popular shortform news show 16 Minutes among others; 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, was an exclusive or early stop for book authors/ publishers, and much more.

Sonal also established and grew various a16z-wide and vertical 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 the pieces Sonal co-wrote, on the case study of WeChat and China ("When One App Rules Them All" by Connie Chan) was selected in the New York Times' Sidney Awards 2015 as one of the best long-form essays and was the first times a non-media outlet (“on the a16z website”) was ever featured. Other key pieces and moments included "16 Things"/ tech trends, which helped put a16z on the map as a media operation early on; the crypto canons franchise; a business primer on Dell-EMC; explainers on devops, emojis, LLMs, TikTok, vaccines, and many others.

Before being recruited to a16z, Sonal was a Senior Editor at Wired, where she built up the previously flailing expert opinions/ ideas section into one of the chart-leading sections there. Much of this involved editing non-professional writers -- researchers, business leaders, academics, politicians, others across various domains -- who were rockstars in their fields with lots of expertise to share but had limited experience doing so outside a captive audience. Sonal helped them start or shape conversations through big-ideas essays, themed series, adapted book excerpts, assigned/pitched/contributed (always edited) pieces, first-person/insider perspectives, and even some experimental formats (such as napkin sketches and narrative maps). Sonal also managed a network of book publicists/ publishers as well, later leading to her bringing (convincing!) authors onto the a16z Podcast early on and later leading in exclusive book launches there.

At Wired, Sonal was one of the first mainstream 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 the infamous innovation center 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 moving back to California from NYC, 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. This involved doing observational "ethnography" in classrooms and school districts in New Jersey, New York, and the Japanese school of Connecticut, which directly led to Sonal translating those insights from theory to practice, published in various journals and one in a kit by Pearson Education. Sonal studied English and Psychology at UCLA, where she also briefly worked in a pioneering lab for autistic children. She loves arts of all kinds, and can be found on Twitter at @smc90.

interviews and public speaking

I’m always astounded at people who give so many interviews; I’ve observed that the people who have so much time for those aren’t really building?? (I’ve observed an inverse correlation between trajectory of growth/ actual results and number of interviews)… So I’ve agreed to do very few of these over the past decade. Here are a select few (with some fun personal curations at the end of the list!):