It's clear from the growth of Patreon, Substack, TikTok, Clubhouse and many more that the power of the Creator Economy continues to build. These platforms share one thing in common: They all enable independent creators to monetize their skills and products like never before. It's a trend that’s become increasingly relevant as the demand for virtual work grows. In this episode, first published a year ago, Patreon cofounder Sam Yam, Atelier Ventures' Li Jin (formerly a16z), and host Lauren Murrow ...
Apr 08, 2021•26 min•Ep 632•Transcript available on Metacast In today’s episode of the a16z Podcast, we’re talking about the Creator Economy, and how NFTs (but not just NFTS!) are making it possible for artists, musicians, videogamers, game developers, and writers to create entirely new markets to make money from their work and engage with their fans. Part of this emerging picture is social tokens, which share a crypto foundation with NFTs, but unlike NFTs (which are non-fungible tokens, in which each token is unique), social tokens are typically fungible...
Apr 03, 2021•34 min•Ep 631•Transcript available on Metacast This episode is all about NFTs. It seems like nothing has caught on and spread into mainstream interest like NFTs, where one hears everything from "I've never seen anything like this before" to "is this like ICOs all over again" to "it's just a jpg I don't get it" to "but what about the energy use!" So, in this special deep-dive episode from the a16z Podcast network, we break down everything you need or want to know about NFTs -- while cutting through the noise for what’s hype/ what’s real, as w...
Mar 28, 2021•56 min•Ep 630•Transcript available on Metacast In the tech world, marketplaces are a hot topic. That term—marketplace—encompasses a huge swath of services we use every day, from grocery delivery to online shopping to remote learning. How have marketplace dynamics changed since pre-pandemic, and what COVID-propelled consumer behaviors will persist into 2021 and beyond? In this episode, we discuss the most promising marketplace companies and categories on the rise, based on data from the Marketplace 100 , a ranking of the largest and fastest-g...
Mar 24, 2021•27 min•Ep 629•Transcript available on Metacast https://a16z.com/2021/03/15/16-minutes-58-the-johnson-johnson-vaccine-and-covid-efficacy-rates/
Mar 18, 2021•13 min•Ep 628•Transcript available on Metacast This podcast -- which was recorded at the Computer History Museum in a live event, before the pandemic (first published in December 2019) is all about how companies create culture: A lot's changed... and a lot hasn't. a16z editor in chief Sonal Chokshi interviews a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz -- author of the book What You Do Is Who You Are -- on whether companies and people can change; how the very thing that is your strength can also be your weakness; how startups evolve from pirates to the nav...
Mar 09, 2021•1 hr•Ep 627•Transcript available on Metacast Boss Talk is a weekly live show on Clubhouse, where a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff… you know, boss stuff. Here we share the second installment; in it, they explain Conway’s Law and shipping your org chart; how to transition from a boss to a boss of bosses; and their predictions for Silicon Valley post-pandemic. For more episodes of Boss Talk and other conversations from a16z, check out our separate feed, a16z Live....
Feb 28, 2021•1 hr•Ep 626•Transcript available on Metacast In just the last couple years, ransomware has grown into a multibillion dollar industry. It has evolved from taking systems and servers hostage to stealing data, and it has proven capable of shutting down global organizations. In recent months, ransomware groups directly shut down Kia Motors North American IT systems; indirectly may have contributed to the death of a patient due to hospital ransomware; and allegedly stole sensitive files from a law firm whose clients include former President Tru...
Feb 25, 2021•36 min•Ep 625•Transcript available on Metacast On social audio app Clubhouse, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are hosting a new live show called "One on One with A and Z", where they go deep on questions submitted via Twitter. The show is based in part by a newspaper column that Andy Grove did in the 80s, where readers sent in questions for him to answer in his column. In this mega-episode of the a16z Podcast, we've combined their first two episodes into almost three hours of discussion and debate about some of the most important topics in ...
Feb 17, 2021•3 hr 1 min•Ep 624•Transcript available on Metacast When you hear stories about Amazon's "invention machine" -- which led to a company with not just one or two products but several successful diverse lines of business -- we often hear about things like: Memos, six pages exactly and no powerpoints at all!; or, the idea of just "work backwards from the press release"; and other such "best practices"... But what's often lost in hearing about these is the context and the details behind them -- the what, the how (as well as their origin stories) -- no...
Feb 08, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep 623•Transcript available on Metacast In this special “3x”-long episode of our (otherwise shortform) news analysis show 16 Minutes -- past such 2-3X explainer episodes have covered section 230 , Tiktok , GPT-3 , the opioid crisis , more -- we cover the SolarWinds hack , one of the largest (if not the largest!) publicly known hacks of all time... and the ripple effects are only now starting to be revealed. Just this week, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency shared ( as reported in the Wall Street Journal) that a...
Feb 01, 2021•48 min•Ep 622•Transcript available on Metacast In recent years, there’s been a shift in how we think about psychedelics – from drugs of abuse and recreation, to powerful drugs for treating neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression, addiction, and PTSD. But there’s still a lot we don't know about how they work, and how we can maximize their therapeutic benefits while minimizing their adverse side effects. So this episode of Journal Club discusses a method for striking that balance, from a paper published in Nature last month, “ A non-hal...
Jan 23, 2021•26 min•Ep 621•Transcript available on Metacast The rise of developers -- as buyers, as influencers, as a creative class -- is a direct result of "software eating the world", and of key shifts in IT from on-prem to cloud & SaaS to the API economy , where application programming interfaces are essentially building blocks for innovation. Developers therefore not only play an outsized role in high-performing tech companies -- but managing and motivating them is actually critical in ALL companies, since every company is a tech company (whether th...
Jan 13, 2021•33 min•Ep 620•Transcript available on Metacast All about section 230 of the Communications Decency Act -- in what Wired senior writer (and host of the Get Wired podcast) described as "one of the clearest-but-still-nuanced explainers I've heard - worth listening to". So what does and doesn't it say? How does this law play out against broader questions and debates around platforms, content moderation, and free speech? This conversation between Mike Masnick (founder and editor in chief of Techdirt) and a16z editor in chief Sonal Chokshi was ori...
Jan 09, 2021•40 min•Ep 619•Transcript available on Metacast If software’s eating the world -- and more specifically, bringing costs down and increasing productivity through entire industries -- why have some industries, like healthcare, been so resistant? And what could the future look like once technology really gets in? With a16z co-founder -- and author of the now nearly decade-old thesis of “software eating the world” -- Marc Andreessen, in conversation with a16z bio general partner Vijay Pande. This episode originally ran on our show Bio Eats World,...
Jan 06, 2021•30 min•Ep 618•Transcript available on Metacast "In a year that left us speechless, 2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other ”... so it's unprecedented that for the first time, the Oxford English Dictionary did NOT name a word of the year. But do we really need the dictionaries to tell us what our words of the year are? Especially if the approaches "Big Word" takes may be based on more lagging vs. leading indicators; after all, language is created and constructed as we go . And yet. People want the dictionary to give them permissi...
Dec 24, 2020•51 min•Ep 617•Transcript available on Metacast In this special episode of Bio Eats World -- which aired right after the FDA authorized Moderna's mRNA vaccine for emergency use -- Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel tells the story of not just the vaccine’s development, but the machine that made the vaccine: the platform, the technology, and the moves behind the vaccine’s development. How does this new technology that uses mRNA work; why is this such a fundamental shift in the world of drug development; and where will this technology go next? https:/...
Dec 21, 2020•40 min•Ep 616•Transcript available on Metacast This episode features two relevant but previously recorded episodes, discussing the relevance of the Paycheck Protection Program (or PPP) from the Small Business Administration and the role of government stimulus/ pandemic relief for the economy as well as where tech comes in. It combines 2 separate episodes, beginning with one recorded much earlier this year (on our show 16 Minutes), which outlines a useful analogy of "eminent domain" for government-mandated shutdowns of certain businesses and ...
Dec 14, 2020•59 min•Ep 615•Transcript available on Metacast The intersection of social and finance—as well as shifting attitudes around what we share about money online—have given way to an ambitious new wave of financial products. While revealing one’s financial information was once considered taboo, now people are more apt than ever to openly discuss money online, particularly Gen Z and millennials . That’s evident on both ends of the spectrum, whether people are bemoaning their crushing levels of student debt on Twitter and Instagram or bragging about...
Dec 07, 2020•24 min•Ep 614•Transcript available on Metacast There's a few ontologies for describing the phases leaders -- and their startups -- go through, whether it's product-sales-etc. or pioneer to settler. In any case, as companies evolve, so must the leaders -- but can the same person transition across all these phases? When and when not; what are the qualities, criteria, and tradeoffs to be made? In this episode of the a16z Podcast, originally recorded as an internal hallway-style chat (pre pandemic!) a16z general partner Martin Casado, who co-fou...
Dec 04, 2020•43 min•Ep 613•Transcript available on Metacast What happens if we treat food as a medicine in the healthcare system: How, where, and who (pays)? What role can technology play in increasing access, distribution, and more? General partner Julie Yoo talks with the founder and former medical director of Geisinger Fresh Food Farmacy, Dr. Andrea Feinberg, and with the co-founder of food delivery start up Plated in this "holiday" cross-promo of our show Bio Eats World.
Nov 26, 2020•20 min•Ep 612•Transcript available on Metacast This episode features Q&As with two artists who are exploring crypto-powered auction sites and marketplaces – this is part of our ongoing series on the creator economy. The big picture is that emerging "tokenization" models, especially non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are creating new ways for collectors and investors to buy, sell, and trade digital art. More broadly, these innovations open the door to the tokenization of any products or collectibles that can be captured and owned digitally. Market...
Nov 22, 2020•20 min•Ep 611•Transcript available on Metacast A vaccine for COVID seems to be (almost) here… or is it? What’s hype/ what’s real beyond the headlines (and beyond the press release), when it comes to the announcement last week from Pfizer and BioNTech that their vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 -- and relatedly, the most recent news around Moderna's vaccine candidate? Of course, this was just the first interim efficacy analysis — so how close or far are we? What’s the significance of the readout...
Nov 20, 2020•22 min•Ep 610•Transcript available on Metacast True cloud-native games —those exclusive to and solely playable within the cloud—are poised to revolutionize gameplay and unlock new avenues of hyper-personalized storytelling and socializing. It's a vision that, though steadily advancing, is still in its early stages. Just one year ago this week, Google launched its cloud gaming service, Stadia, which shares the space with competitors including Microsoft's xCloud, Playstation Now, and Nvidia’s GeForce. In this episode, Jade Raymond, VP of Stadi...
Nov 16, 2020•39 min•Ep 609•Transcript available on Metacast Lakes v. warehouses, analytics v. AI/ML, SQL v. everything else... As the technical capabilities of data lakes and data warehouses converge, are the separate tools and teams that run AI/ML and analytics converging as well? In this podcast, originally recorded as part of Fivetran's Modern Data Stack conference, five leaders in data infrastructure debate that question: a16z general partner and pioneer of software defined networking Martin Casado, former CEO of Snowflake Bob Muglia; Michelle Ufford...
Nov 13, 2020•26 min•Ep 608•Transcript available on Metacast How to moderate good, productive discussions and navigate tricky conversations is top of mind -- whether doing a panel, conducting a live event, presenting a talk (or hosting a podcast), managing (and even just participating in!) a meeting. Especially in a world where remote and virtual work is increasingly become the norm for many knowledge workers, one in which we're increasingly communicating through little "Hollywood Squares, Brady Bunch"-like boxes. So how to translate physical and nonverba...
Nov 05, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep 607•Transcript available on Metacast "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they're indistinguishable from it." That quote from computer scientist Mark Weiser is from a 1991 paper where he outlined the vision of ubiquitous computing; in it, he also referenced "seamlessness"... We just can't get away from textile metaphors: we catch airline "shuttles", we "weave" through traffic, we follow comment "threads” -- the metaphors are as ubiquitous and abundant...
Oct 24, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep 606•Transcript available on Metacast Data, data, data – it’s long been a buzzword in the industry, whether big data, streaming data, data analytics, data science, even AI & machine learning — but data alone is not enough: it takes an entire system of tools and technology to extract value from data. A multibillion dollar industry has emerged around data tools and technologies. And with so much excitement and innovation in the space: how exactly do all these tools fit together? This podcast – a hallway style conversation between Ali ...
Oct 23, 2020•22 min•Ep 605•Transcript available on Metacast Gen Z—those born between 1995 and 2010—now makes up 35 percent of the population and represent $143 billion dollars in spending power. This episode is all about how brands can better understand, collaborate with, and resonate with this hugely influential segment of consumers. Our guest, Tiffany Zhong , is the 24-year-old CEO of Zebra IQ , a company that helps brands interpret the wants of Gen Z consumers and helps Gen Z creators turn their content into businesses. In its recent Gen Z Trends Repo...
Oct 19, 2020•33 min•Ep 604•Transcript available on Metacast We've already talked a lot about podcasting , both evolution of the industry as well as the form, but where are we going with the future of audio , more broadly? Can we borrow from the present and future of video (e.g., TikTok ) to see what's next in audio (more layers, more interactivity)? Can we borrow from the past of audio (i.e., radio) to see what's next for audio experiences (more blending of music, talk, podcasting)? Where do all these mediums converge and where do they diverge -- when it...
Oct 14, 2020•57 min•Ep 603•Transcript available on Metacast 
