with Lee Kleinman (@LeeForDallas), Joshua Schank (@joshuaschank), Andrew Savage, and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) There's a new wave of bike-sharing in town. But this wave looks a little different than previous waves -- from docked rows of government-funded bikes to dockless fleets of bicycles where users can find and unlock bikes through GPS from anywhere, with an app. What can we learn from previous (unsuccessful and successful) waves, what are the challenges in making bike sharing a real, v...
Feb 03, 2018•31 min•Ep 354•Transcript available on Metacast As cars become more like iPhones and less like just, well, cars — everything changes, from data to mapping to interfaces to security and more. How so? Where are we anyway, given all the hype around when self-driving cars will appear everywhere? And where are new opportunities in the space? This episode of the a16z Podcast, based on a panel discussion from the most recent a16z Summit, features a16z research and deal team head Frank Chen in conversation with various companies doing different thing...
Jan 31, 2018•18 min•Ep 353•Transcript available on Metacast In this hallway conversation of the a16z Podcast, Benedict Evans and Steven Sinofsky discuss CES 2018 and share insight on what they took from this year's show. How much can you discern each company's "big picture" strategy out of the slew of new products, press releases, and announcements that flood the floor? How do you sort the wheat from the chaff? And beyond the event of CES itself, Evans and Sinofsky analyze the experimentation we're beginning to see in connected consumer electro...
Jan 22, 2018•33 min•Ep 352•Transcript available on Metacast This episode of the a16z Podcast goes deep on various trends in cryptocurrencies -- from mental models for understanding tokens and what may give them long-term value; to the role of stablecoins in the ecosystem; to scaling, on-chain and off-chain protocols, forks, and more. The discussion features general partner Chris Dixon in conversation with Nick Tomaino, the founder of early-stage crypto venture fund 1confirmation, editor of The Control, and former business development at Coinbase. (He is ...
Jan 22, 2018•35 min•Ep 351•Transcript available on Metacast It's surprising that how (and what) we eat has actually changed very little over the ages, despite how much we’ve advanced as a species. Now, however -- driven by globalization, environmental factors, and other considerations -- the way we move, taste, and make our food is moving forward too. From countering the limits of seasonality and global transport to re-thinking our species’ dependence on meat to optimizing nutrition to distilling the essence of taste, this discussion with Bryan Crowley, ...
Jan 13, 2018•20 min•Ep 350•Transcript available on Metacast The complete sequencing of the human genome is one of the most powerful examples of technology and science in action: We've gone from needing $3 billion and over 13 years to read a single human genome to today, to where we can do that same amount of work for about $1,000 in roughly 2 days -- and the price will only continue to drop. But beyond pricing, what does understanding the gene -- and moving from the sequencing layer to the applications layer -- mean to us; what new questions arise now th...
Jan 10, 2018•15 min•Ep 349•Transcript available on Metacast We’re so used to thinking of “community” as our friends, families, and neighbors. But what a community is, and who it is made of, has changed thanks to the internet, and without our noticing it. What happens when online communities -- really, new subcultures -- form primarily around interests, not just personal relationships? Featuring VP of Product at Reddit Alex Le, CEO of Rabbit Michael Temkin, and CEO and co-founder of HVMN Geoffrey Woo -- in conversation with a16z general partner Chris Dixo...
Jan 06, 2018•20 min•Ep 348•Transcript available on Metacast New fintech companies are democratizing access to financial services in different ways, whether it's making food stamps more efficient, no longer waiting two weeks for a paycheck, or enabling anyone with a smartphone in developing countries to create small businesses. But what these all have in common -- besides a more inclusive approach to finance -- is also changing, in some way, the fundamental way our financial system works. Featuring CEO of Propel Jimmy Chen, CEO of Branch Matt Flannery, an...
Dec 19, 2017•18 min•Ep 347•Transcript available on Metacast The internet, believe it or not, was just the beginning. Yes, it spawned an incredible number of uses (some unexpected), from marketplaces and commerce to publishing and social networks... but that’s all been built with old models of funding and coordination. Now, as we enter a new phase of blockchain-enabled innovation -- decentralized, distributed, crowdfunded -- we’re finally bringing capitalism to open source: Smart people can come together in new ways, to build new things. In this brief dis...
Dec 19, 2017•23 min•Ep 346•Transcript available on Metacast What capabilities do enterprise companies really want from their computers? Twenty years ago, those capabilities might've been bundled into a mainframe. Ten years ago, it might've been the PC. Today, as more and more businesses rely on devices that need only browsers/ internet connectivity, what will the "$200 box" sitting at an employee workstation look like? In this hallway-style episode of the a16z Podcast, Benedict Evans and Steven Sinofsky discuss how tech devices evolve for the e...
Dec 19, 2017•33 min•Ep 345•Transcript available on Metacast Many of the big tech policy issues of the day play out more so at the state and local level, not just federal level. The decisions that cities and states make every day -- from autonomous vehicles to bike sharing -- may therefore end up setting the stage for broader government policies around new tech. But where do "politics" come in for these policy decisions? Many tech policies are in fact bi-partisan or even non-partisan, argue Governor Doug Ducey (R-Arizona) and Mayor of South Bend...
Dec 15, 2017•12 min•Ep 344•Transcript available on Metacast This conversation between the members of a16z's bio team -- including general partners Jorge Conde and Vijay Pande; Malinka Walaliyadde; and Jeffrey Low (the interviewer) -- takes a quick pulse on where we are with when bio becomes more like engineering. Especially given the announcement of our second bio fund, this episode of the a16z Podcast covers everything from the broader trends at play to some specific areas of interest... as well as what types of entrepreneurs may bring us forward into t...
Dec 14, 2017•29 min•Ep 343•Transcript available on Metacast No matter how grand a vision for a particular industry, disruption in practice is hard. This is especially true in industries like healthcare, which have long been resistant to software-driven change. But sometimes you can innovate within the bounds of the industry, using those very constraints to move it forward -- whether it’s understanding and working with the early adopters in healthcare to focusing on the bottomline. This conversation -- recorded at our recent a16z Summit in November 2017 -...
Dec 13, 2017•19 min•Ep 342•Transcript available on Metacast NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman runs one of the world's largest financial services companies, including the NASDAQ stock exchange that's home to more than 3,500 listed companies. They were also the creator of the world's first electronic stock market. Yet how does the company adapt to technology trends today, such as the blockchain? How does it deal with other headwinds in its business, from fewer listed companies to trends in passive vs. active investing? Based on a conversation that was recorded at ...
Dec 10, 2017•34 min•Ep 341•Transcript available on Metacast Data, data, everywhere, nor any drop to drink. Or so would say Coleridge, if he were a big company CEO trying to use A.I. today -- because even when you have a ton of data, there's not always enough signal to get anything meaningful from AI. Why? Because, "like they say, it's 'garbage in, garbage out' -- what matters is what you have in between," reminds Databricks co-founder (and director of the RISElab at U.C. Berkeley) Ion Stoica. And even then it's still not just about data operati...
Dec 05, 2017•10 min•Ep 340•Transcript available on Metacast When you have “a really hot, frothy space” like AI, even the most basic questions — like what is it good for, how do you make sure your data is in shape, and so on — aren’t answered. This is just as true for the companies eager to adopt the technology and get into the space, as it is for those building companies around that space, observes Joe Spisak, Head of Partnerships at Amazon Web Services. “People treat it like magic,” adds a16z general partner Martin Casado. This magical realism is especi...
Dec 02, 2017•34 min•Ep 339•Transcript available on Metacast There's a new C-level role in town: the CCO, or Chief Customer Officer. This episode (based on a previous event) is all about the rise of this new role, why it's so important -- and what the actual scope and function of the role should be. a16z's Matt Levy, partner on the exec talent team, discusses with (CCOs all) Allison Pickens of Gainsight; Krista Anderson-Copperman from Okta; and Hatima Shafique from Databricks why it is that the Chief Customer Officer is becoming more prevalent across a nu...
Nov 18, 2017•25 min•Ep 338•Transcript available on Metacast Hiring a VP of Product -- especially as the founder of the company -- can almost feel like handing over your baby to someone else to hold, observes a16z executive talent team partner Caroline Horn, who hosted an event on this topic earlier this year (which this podcast is based on). Featuring Vijay Balasubramaniyan, founder/CEO of Pindrop; Shishir Mehrotra, founder and CEO of Coda; Gokul Rajaram, Production Engineering Lead at Square; and Alan Schaaf, founder/CEO of Imgur -- and moderated by gen...
Nov 10, 2017•30 min•Ep 337•Transcript available on Metacast with Brandon Ballinger (@bballinger), Mintu Turakhia (@leftbundle), Vijay Pande (@vijaypande), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) There’s been a lot of talk about technology -- and AI, deep learning, and machine learning specifically -- finally reaching the healthcare sector. But AI in medicine isn’t actually new; it’s actually been there since the 1960s. And yet we didn’t see it effect a true change, or even become a real part our doctor’s offices -- let alone routine healthcare services. So: w...
Nov 03, 2017•30 min•Ep 336•Transcript available on Metacast Author and professor at George Mason University, Peter Leeson describes himself as not just an economist but as a "collector of curiosa." In his latest book, WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird, Leeson looks at just that -- the strangest beliefs, superstitions and rituals humankind has engaged in -- and using economics, uncovers the incentives and rational behavior that makes them, well, make a whole lot more sense. In this Halloween Special, Leeson and a16z's Hanne Tidnam dive into th...
Oct 31, 2017•28 min•Ep 335•Transcript available on Metacast with Frank Chen, Steven Sinofsky, and Sonal Chokshi There are many reasons why we’re in an “A.I. spring” after multiple “A.I. winters” — but how then do we tease apart what’s real vs. what’s hype when it comes to the (legitimate!) excitement about artificial intelligence and machine learning? Especially when it comes to the latest results of computers beating games, which not only captures our imaginations but has always played a critical role in advancing machine intelligence (whether it’s AI w...
Oct 23, 2017•40 min•Ep 334•Transcript available on Metacast with Tim O'Reilly and Benedict Evans In this hallway-style podcast conversation, O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly and a16z partner Benedict Evans discuss how we make sense of the most recent wave of new technologies --- technologies that are perhaps more transformative than any we've seen before -- and how we think about the capabilities they might have that we haven't yet even considered. O'Reilly has seen more than one wave of new tech make an impact over the last three decades in Silicon V...
Oct 13, 2017•34 min•Ep 333•Transcript available on Metacast with Ion Stoica, Peter Levine, and Sonal Chokshi We’ve already talked quite a bit about the Algorithms, Machines, and People lab at U.C. Berkeley (AMPLab) — all about making sense of big data — so what happens when the entire world moves towards artificial intelligence — and the need to make intelligent decisions on that data? That’s where the new RISElab (Real-time Intelligence Secure Execution) comes in. But what is a good “decision”, exactly? Beyond the existential question of that, what spec...
Oct 12, 2017•29 min•Ep 332•Transcript available on Metacast Head of the largest bioengineering lab in the world, former chairman of the FDA and one of the few recipients of the National Medals of Science and of Technology and Innovation, Bob Langer's work has spanned multiple fields and settings and has been applied across numerous fields, from pharmaceutical to chemical, biotechnology to medical device companies. What does it mean to move across disciplines like this, from science to engineering, both in the lab and into the field? In this conversation ...
Oct 06, 2017•29 min•Ep 331•Transcript available on Metacast with Chris Dixon and Fred Ehrsam We’ve already talked about why bitcoin matters. But as the set of cryptocurrencies — and networks and “tokens” enabled by the underlying blockchain — grow (Ethereum being one of the fastest-growing ones), where do we go from here? How do we tease apart the signal from the noise, given all the buzz and critiques out there? In this episode of the a16z Podcast, general partner Chris Dixon and Fred Ehrsam (former Goldman Sachs trader and a co-founder of Coinbase) bre...
Sep 28, 2017•35 min•Ep 330•Transcript available on Metacast with David Mack, Joseph Okpaku, and Matt Spence How should startups engage with policymakers, build their own government relations (GR) function (whether in house or with consultants), and just begin to figure out their GR playbook? Let alone explain their moves -- not just externally, but internally too? "We really viewed our first mission as education. Explaining what we were and, possibly more importantly, explaining what we weren't," shares Joseph Okpaku, vice president of governme...
Sep 26, 2017•21 min•Ep 329•Transcript available on Metacast with Wei Luo, David Rumsey (@davidrumseymaps), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) In this episode, Wei Luo, founding COO of DeepMap -- who build HD maps for autonomous vehicles -- and David Rumsey, founder of the David Rumsey Map Collection (one of the largest paper private map collections in the world, now at Stanford University, and the largest digital online private collection in the world, at 80,000 + maps) talk with a16z's Hanne Tidnam about how maps -- and mapmaking tools -- are changing i...
Sep 16, 2017•38 min•Ep 328•Transcript available on Metacast with Juan Benet and Chris Dixon The story of how innovation happens is a long one — from government funding early basic research, to the heyday of corporate R&D like Bell Labs, to startups as experiments before product-market fit. Through all that, we’ve ended up with “unprecedented superpowers” distributed through the internet, and people building on top of it. Yet there’s still a huge lag in going from brilliant ideas in the form of research papers to an application that’s actually working...
Sep 15, 2017•22 min•Ep 327•Transcript available on Metacast with Michael Dearing (@mcgd), Bob Sutton (@work_matters), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Bob Sutton's book The No Asshole Rule was all about how to foster company cultures that don't tolerate asshole behavior. But sometimes, dealing with an asshole is unavoidable -- in life or at work. So what are the best tactics to both protect yourself and to stop the asshole behavior? This is the subject that Sutton tackles in his new book, The Asshole Survival Guide. In this somewhat NSFW episode, a16z'...
Sep 13, 2017•35 min•Ep 326•Transcript available on Metacast with Russ Roberts, Noah Smith, and Sonal Chokshi Beyond the overly simplistic framing of trade as “good” or “bad” — by politicians, by Econ 101 — why is the topic of trade (or rather, economies and people adjusting to trade) so damn hard? A big part of it has to do with not seeing the human side of trade, let alone the big picture across time and place… as is true for many tech innovations, too. Speaking of: how does the concept of “trade” fit with “innovation”, exactly? They’re both about getti...
Sep 10, 2017•38 min•Ep 325•Transcript available on Metacast 
