with Marc Andreessen (@pmarca), Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz), and Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen) This episode of the a16z Podcast features the rare combination of a16z co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz in conversation, together, with economist Tyler Cowen (chair of economics at George Mason University and chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center there, and host of his own podcast.) The conversation originally took place at our most recent annual innovation Summit -- which features...
Dec 29, 2018•38 min•Ep 422•Transcript available on Metacast In his book (and podcast), Brian McCullough chronicles the history and evolution of the internet -- from college kids in a basement and the dot-com boom, to the applications built on top of it and the entrepreneurs behind them. General partner Chris Dixon chats with McCullough about How the Internet Happened -- and more broadly, about how tech adoption and innovation happens. The content provided here is for informational purposes only, and does not constitute an offer or solicitation to purchas...
Dec 24, 2018•46 min•Ep 421•Transcript available on Metacast with Andy Milenius (@realzandy), Jesse Walden (@jessewldn), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) The history, evolution, and use of money revolves around the important concept of debt: It’s what allows us to “time travel” and build toward the future — growing livelihoods, businesses, and the overall economy as a result. When it comes to crypto, however, this concept plays a key role as a way to potentially stabilize the volatility of cryptocurrencies, and more importantly, provide a more stable medium of ...
Dec 21, 2018•50 min•Ep 420•Transcript available on Metacast with Bernard J. Tyson (@bernardjtyson) and Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz) Bernard J. Tyson is the chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente, a $73 billion non-profit health organization that provides healthcare and coverage with more than 22,000 physicians caring for more than 12.2 million members across 9 states. In this conversion with a16z co-founder and general partner Ben Horowitz -- which originally took place at a16z's annual innovation summit, which focuses on building the future and included an ...
Dec 21, 2018•49 min•Ep 419•Transcript available on Metacast with Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong), Chris Dixon (@cdixon), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) Where are we, really, right now -- in terms of what we can/ can't do with crypto today? And what will it take to get from vision to mainstream reality? This episode of the a16z Podcast covers all this and more. It's based on a conversation that took place between Coinbase CEO and cofounder Brian Armstrong and a16z crypto general partner Chris Dixon, interviewed by a16z editor in chief Sonal Chokshi, at our...
Dec 18, 2018•33 min•Ep 418•Transcript available on Metacast with Jeffrey Katzenberg, Meg Whitman (@MegWhitman), and Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) In this episode of the a16z Podcast, based on a discussion that took place at our annual a16z Summit, Marc Andreessen interviews Jeffrey Katzenberg -- formerly CEO and co-founder of DreamWorks SKG (and chairman of Walt Disney Studios during some of its biggest hits), now co-founder of tech holding company WndrCo -- and Meg Whitman -- former President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and now CEO of Quibi (&quo...
Dec 05, 2018•45 min•Ep 417•Transcript available on Metacast with Boris Sofman (@bsofman), Dave Touretzky (@DaveTouretzky), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) We're just now beginning to truly see the the first 'real' robots in the home, from Roombas to toys to companions to... well, much more. How are humans beginning to forge relationships with these robotic devices (/entities!) -- and how will those relationships develop? What do we learn as we begin to forge relationships and interact with robotic toys like Cosmo and Vector -- about robots, and about ...
Nov 21, 2018•35 min•Ep 416•Transcript available on Metacast with Adrienne Mayor (@amayor) and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Is it possible that ancient Greeks and Romans dreamed of technological innovations like robots and artificial intelligence millennia before those technologies became realities? In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Adrienne Mayor, historian of science and author of the just released Gods & Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology, discusses with Hanne Tidnam the earliest myths around ideas of technology and even...
Nov 19, 2018•38 min•Ep 415•Transcript available on Metacast with Stephanie Cohen and Martin Casado (@martin_casado) As chief strategy officer of Goldman Sachs (and former global head of financial sponsors M&A), Stephanie Cohen has seen it all when it comes to the ins and outs of M&A. And what it means to innovate from within, especially at a large company. Given Cohen's unique vantage point and nearly 20-year tenure at Goldman Sachs, Casado -- himself a veteran of both an acquisition (Nicira) and big company innovation (VMware) -- interviews Cohe...
Nov 17, 2018•42 min•Ep 414•Transcript available on Metacast with Prasad Akella, Paul Daughtery (@pauldaugh) and Frank Chen (@withfries2) What is different on that factory floor from Henry Ford to today? In this conversation, Prasad Akella, Founder and CEO of Drishti; Paul Daugherty, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer of Accenture, and author of the recently published Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI; and a16z operating partner Frank Chen, talk about how the introduction of automation from Henry Ford to now co-bots and AI all change...
Nov 05, 2018•29 min•Ep 413•Transcript available on Metacast with Jeff Jordan (@Jeff_Jordan), Yogi Roth (@YogiRoth), Zack Weiner and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) For decades, the increasing value of sports teams, rights, licenses and more have been fueled by sports media. But dollars follow eyeballs, and eyeballs -- at least on the traditional broadcast -- are going elsewhere. "If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else,” Yogi Berra once said. So where exactly are those eyeballs going, and what does that mean for the sports...
Oct 19, 2018•26 min•Ep 412•Transcript available on Metacast The period from 2000-2016 was one of the best of times and worst of times for tech and the Valley (dotcom, financial crisis, Google IPO, Facebook founded, unprecedented growth, and so on), and John Hennessy -- current chairman of Alphabet, also on the boards of Cisco and other organizations -- was the president of Stanford University during that entire time. Given this vantage point, what are his views on Silicon Valley (will there ever be another one, and if so where?); the "Stanford model...
Oct 08, 2018•55 min•Ep 411•Transcript available on Metacast with Shannon (Stubo) Brayton (@sstubo), Margit Wennmachers (@wennmachers), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) One of the company building topics that’s surprisingly mystifying is PR -- and only surprising since so much of the strategy and tactics behind public relations are actually hidden from public view. We've tried demystifying the topic in an ongoing series, covering everything from "the why, how, and when" of PR" and leaders building a personal brand to crisis communications. But th...
Sep 27, 2018•39 min•Ep 410•Transcript available on Metacast with Michael Ovitz (@michaelovitz), Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) When Michael Ovitz co-founded the Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), he turned a number of the entertainment industry's well-entrenched traditions on their head. The origin story of a16z (not coincidentally!) is not that dissimilar. So in this episode of the a16z Podcast, Ovitz and a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz talk with Hanne Tidnam about Ovitz' just-released book, Who is Michael...
Sep 25, 2018•33 min•Ep 409•Transcript available on Metacast with Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) and Chris Dixon (@cdixon) There's all sorts of interesting tech trends happening right now, including AI, VR/AR, self-driving cars and drones (as well as interesting stuff happening in verticals like healthcare and finance) -- and there's a lot also happening in seemingly more "mature" tech revolutions, such as mobile and cloud. But where are we now, really, with these shifts... and how does that inform how we think about the next couple decades? And does...
Sep 24, 2018•54 min•Ep 408•Transcript available on Metacast with Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) and Steven Sinofsky (@SteveSi) In another of our hallway conversation episodes, Benedict Evans and Steven Sinofsky talk all about Tesla — and more broadly, the nature of disruption overall. How disruptive is Tesla really, and what exactly are they disrupting — from the dashboard to car makers to vendors to energy source to autonomy overall? The tech industry is littered with leading innovators... who nonetheless failed to be the dominant leader in the end. So...
Sep 17, 2018•44 min•Ep 407•Transcript available on Metacast with Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) and Steven Sinofksy (@StevenSi) In this hallway-style conversation episode of the a16z Podcast, Benedict Evans and a16z board partner Steven Sinofsky discuss Apple’s September 2018 keynote event and share their thoughts on the new innovations -- and lessons -- that really matter. With something that’s gone from toy to phone to fashion item -- and just pivoted to a health monitor that can literally save lives -- where are we now? How closely aligned is health ...
Sep 14, 2018•28 min•Ep 406•Transcript available on Metacast with Steven Johnson (@stevenbjohnson), Chris Dixon (@cdixon), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) There's a lot of research and writing out there on "thinking fast" -- the short-term, gut, instinctual decisions we make, biases we have, and heuristics we use -- but what about for "thinking slow" -- the long-term decisions we make that both take longer to deliberate and have longer spans of impact on our lives... and the world? Because we're not only talking about decisions like who to ...
Sep 08, 2018•46 min•Ep 405•Transcript available on Metacast with Jeff Jordan (@Jeff_Jordan), Cal Turner Jr., and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) The "death of retail" in the face of e-commerce and tech disruption is a very real phenomenon, but what about the flip side of that story -- that is, retail thriving despite all odds? Enter Dollar General, a multi-billion-dollar success story of the U.S. chain with 14,000 brick-and-mortar dollar stores. So in this episode of the a16z Podcast, general partner Jeff Jordan -- who was formerly an SVP for Th...
Sep 04, 2018•22 min•Ep 404•Transcript available on Metacast with Martin Casado (@martin_casado), Andrew Chen (@andrewchen), Russ Heddleston (@rheddleston), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) What happens when the bottoms up, organic growth usually associated with consumer companies starts to go.... enterprise? Part of our continuing podcast series (you can listen to part one on user acquisition and part two on engagement/retention) on growth, this episode explores the increasing trend of enterprise growth shifting to be more "bottoms up" -- wit...
Aug 25, 2018•29 min•Ep 403•Transcript available on Metacast with Devon Zuegel (@devonzuegel), Denis Nazarov (@iiterature), and Jesse Walden (@jessewldn) The open source movement enabled so much in computing, including the collaborative building of libraries -- that is, building blocks of code that developers could combine together to build applications. But as these applications grew to massive scale, those libraries ended up being somewhat asymmetrical for "nights-and-weekend" developers (compared to say, the disproportionate resources of a la...
Aug 20, 2018•37 min•Ep 402•Transcript available on Metacast with Andrew Chen (@andrewchen), Jeff Jordan (@jeff_jordan), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) Once you have users, how do you keep them engaged, retain them, and even "resurrect" or re-engage them? That's the focus of this episode of the a16z Podcast, which continues our series on the basics of growth from user acquisition to engagement and retention -- covering, as always, key metrics and how to think about them. Especially as many products and platforms evolve over time, so do the users, so...
Aug 09, 2018•33 min•Ep 401•Transcript available on Metacast with Andrew Chen (@andrewchen), Jeff Jordan (@jeff_jordan), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) Growth is one of the most top of mind questions for entrepreneurs building startups of all kinds (and especially consumer ones) -- but how does one go beyond a mindset of "growth hacking" to thinking about growth more systemically and holistically? What are the key metrics to know; why; and how? This episode of the a16z Podcast -- one of two in a series -- focuses on the user acquisition aspect of gr...
Aug 09, 2018•21 min•Ep 400•Transcript available on Metacast with Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz) and Sharon Chang (@sychang) What does it really take to start a startup (or work at one)? In this episode of the a16z Podcast -- based on a Q&A with Ben Horowitz as part of an event hosted by a16z's Technical Talent and People Practices team for a16z portfolio company summer interns 2018 -- Ben shares quick thoughts and advice geared towards those early in their tech careers. The conversation covers everything from how to know what kind of company to join early...
Aug 03, 2018•16 min•Ep 399•Transcript available on Metacast with Denis Nazarov (@iiterature), Jesse Walden (@jessewldn), Ali Yahya (@ali01), and Devon Zuegel (@devonzuegel) Cryptonetworks are often compared to firms, people, or even coral reefs -- but, observes a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya, they might be much more similar to cities. Where does that analogy fit, and where does it break down? And what can we learn from how cities both emerge from the bottom up and are motivated by a top down vision/design and apply to open source networks such as those in...
Aug 01, 2018•38 min•Ep 398•Transcript available on Metacast with Chris Dixon (@cdixon), Ali Yahya (@ali01), and Devon Zuegel (@devonzuegel) “Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcomes.” At the end of the day, observes a16z crypto general partner Chris Dixon, Satoshi's whitepaper [the original bitcoin paper outlining a peer-to-peer decentralized network and blockchain sans centralized third parties] is nine pages of incentives. It's the kind of incentive design that you can use to build many other things on the internet (which itself is driven b...
Aug 01, 2018•46 min•Ep 397•Transcript available on Metacast with Elad Gil (@eladgil) and Chris Dixon (@cdixon) There's a lot of knowledge out there -- and networks of talent (especially in Silicon Valley) -- on what to do in the early stages of a company, going from 0 to 1, and even in going from 1 to 100... but what about beyond that? It's not as simply linear as merely doubling or tripling resources and org structures; it's actually much more complex on many levels, communication to coordination. Because with great scale comes great complexity... and m...
Jul 20, 2018•34 min•Ep 396•Transcript available on Metacast with Katie Haun (@katie_haun), Robin Weisnman (@robinweisman), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) What’s going on, regulation-wise, in crypto? How should people who want to join a company or build something new in the space think about the regulatory environment? What to make of all the headlines, or the "alphabet soup" of agencies potentially involved in regulating crypto? This episode of the a16z Podcast shares principles -- as well as key players/acronyms to know -- for sorting the signal f...
Jul 17, 2018•33 min•Ep 395•Transcript available on Metacast with Tina Bhatnagar (@tinab), Preethi Kasireddy (@iam_preethi), Lily Liu (@calilyliu), and Kim Milosevich (@kimbatronic) Whether it’s sharing the decision-making behind joining a crypto company to the perspectives of a passionate early adopter (or relative latecomer), this episode of the a16z Podcast -- based on a panel from the “Intro to Crypto” event that Andreessen Horowitz and #Angels put on in April 2018 -- covers what it takes to build companies in crypto, from people to code. You can find...
Jul 17, 2018•28 min•Ep 394•Transcript available on Metacast with Chris Dixon (@cdixon), Elizabeth Stark (@starkness), and Jessica Verrilli (@jess) Why does decentralization matter? This episode of the a16z Podcast -- based on a discussion that first took as part of an “Intro to Crypto” event that Andreessen Horowitz and #Angels put on in April 2018 -- explores the whys and the hows, from the history of the internet to the culture of crypto communities today. Chris Dixon (now of a16z crypto) and Elizabeth Stark (CEO and co-founder of Lightning Labs) share...
Jul 16, 2018•42 min•Ep 393•Transcript available on Metacast 
