In May 2015, The New Yorker wrote a sketch of the Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen. In it, writer Tad Friend assembled Andreessen in his living room to watch an bout of Halt& Catch Fire , the AMC drama chronicling the rise of personal computing in the early 1980 s. The representation catered an intimate opening into the billionaire’s residence life. Friend described a powder room bathroom so sumptuous it wasn’t immediately clear how to flush it; the apartments were majestic to alter Andreessen’s giant attendance. Friend recounted the endearing abound with which the investor’s spouse presented dinner–omelettes and Thai salads for two, served on Costco TV trays. Andreessen’s obsession with a punk software prodigy removed light on his self-conception as a man aligned with the industry’s outsiders.

There was one presence Friend failed to document. That would be Margit Wennmachers, who wasted the evening folded on the couch across from Andreessen and his wife.

An operating marriage at Andreessen Horowitz, Wennmachers is among the most skilled spin rulers in Silicon Valley. She has a sixth sense for communication strategy, which has helped her develop the world about the revolution engineering is powering. She knows how to initiate the memorable place that they are able to determines a legend. She understands how to get ahead of bad news that’s about to break and when to push startup founders to take responsibility for their actions. She recalls almost every summon within 30 instants, be it from a blogger, portfolio corporation CEO, or New York Times reporter. Over the last two and a half decades, Wennmachers, 53, has worked with, admonished, or separated food with nearly everyone who has endeavored to build–or write about–a startup. “She’s like the router at the center of the industry, ” Andreessen says.

In numerous roads Wennmachers is an designer of Andreessen Horowitz, the esteemed investment firm that has backed the thousands of startups, including Facebook, Airbnb, and Twitter. Or, at least, she’s the designer of what the firm appears to be–and her attendance has left an indelible imprint on the hundreds of businesses that have come into contact with the conglomerate. Because of her, Silicon Valley looks very different than it did even a decade ago.

We’re all familiar with Silicon Valley’s mythological image of the tech founder: bright, nerdy, eccentric, well-meaning. What you don’t know is that, more than just about anybody else in tech, Wennmachers is the person responsible for mobilizing that example to build the legend of Silicon Valley. Before Andreessen Horowitz launched in the summer of 2009, most venture capital houses was held that no press was good press. They remained lean, behind-the-scenes outfits and triumphed agreements because of their back-room statures. Wennmachers cured throw the firm on the map by propagandizing its benefactors, Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, to accept the press and by helping the companies in their portfolio express their ideas publicly. In the years that followed, countless conglomerates mimicked Andreessen Horowitz’s strategy, hiring commerce and communications results. As a writer, I’d often get the ask: “Hey, we’re trying to hire a Margit. Do you know anyone? ”

Yet it’s the specific characteristics of the communications persona that we rarely discover much about the ones who impound it: The excellent communicators, by definition, lead unnoticed. They’re the invisible third party in every interview. It was Wennmachers who coaxed a reticent Andreessen into participating in Friend’s story because she believed it would be good for the conglomerate. It was Wennmachers who set up most of Friend’s interrogations at Andreessen Horowitz and had a collaborator organization them. When Friend felt he needed to see more of Andreessen, Wennmachers hit upon the idea of a TV-watching dinner date, accurately supposing the place would be just weird enough to guarantee inclusion and that Andreessen would come off precisely as she hoped: a relatable dreamer who identifies with oddball intruders and who, when he is not foreseeing the future of computers, is watching TV testifies about people who foresee the future of computers.

For times Wennmachers has softly boosted a narration that has influenced how the world recognizes Silicon Valley and how the Valley comprehends itself–as a group of brainy outcasts upending the limitations of the status quo. But as the Valley’s tinkerers become industry titans, that image is changing. In the wake of the 2016 elections, service industries x27; s largest firms have suffered a backfire. From almost every political position, they have been criticized as profit-mongering, reckless, privacy-invading, and out-of-touch. In the aftermath of that backfire, tech is now trying to come to expressions with the impact of the tools it has introduced and to succeed the capital it has created. This presents Wennmachers with a brand-new and critical request: crafting a refurbished image of the techie of the future, one that embraces the great responsibility that arrives with newfound great power.

One afternoon last October, I converge Wennmachers at the Battery, a tony private social club in downtown San Francisco. It had been a hectic daytime. She’d had jury imperative but wasn’t adopted, which left her time to meet up with a tech exec. The duet hadn’t met before in person, but a few eras earlier she’d helped him through an emergency. A friend , not a close friend, had announced Wennmachers with an urgent solicit, saying the man was “about to get skewered by The Journal . ” She’d depleted four hours helping out over the phone, and then she met him for a coffee because she x27 ;d been leapt from jury role. When you interact with a stranger at a prone moment, a certain closeness is structured, she tells me. “It’s like,’ I feel like I should give you a hug, ’” she says.

The guy wasn’t part of her conglomerate, or even connected to one of its portfolio corporations. But he could be important the working day. Maybe Apple will acquire his firm, and she’d have a friend at Apple. Maybe he’ll start a “companies ” and be submitted to Andreessen for funding. She announces people like this chap “the outside nodes of the network, ” and considers them strategic relationships that give her reach. “It’s not altruism–it just really toils, ” Wennmachers says. Spending large quantities of season requesting her superpower to the challenges of beings she doesn’t know is a deliberate move to nurture her most important resource: her social network.