Do you sometimes wish you had been born in a different decade so you could have worked on the fundamental building blocks of modern computing? How fun, challenging, and fulfilling would it have been to work on semiconductors in the 1950s or Unix in the 1960s (both at Bell Labs) or personal computers at the Homebrew Computer Club in the 1970s or on the Internet browser at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (and later Mountain View, CA) in the 1990s? Good news: it’s not too late. There...
May 13, 2019•53 min•Ep 452•Transcript available on Metacast with Emily Oster (@ProfEmilyOster) and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Are chia seeds actually that good for you? Will Vitamin E keep you healthy? Will breastfeeding babies make them smarter? There’s maybe no other arena where understanding what the evidence truly tells us is harder than in health… and parenting. And yet we make decisions based on what we hear about in studies like the ones listed above every day. In this episode, Brown University economics professor Emily Oster, author of Expect...
May 11, 2019•41 min•Ep 451•Transcript available on Metacast with @annieduke, @pmarca, and @smc90 Every organization, whether small or big, early or late stage -- and every individual, whether for themselves or others -- makes countless decisions every day, under conditions of uncertainty. The question is, are we allowing that uncertainty to bubble to the surface, and if so, how much and when? Where does consensus, transparency, forecasting, backcasting, pre-mortems, and heck, even regret, usefully come in?Going beyond the typical discussion of focusing o...
May 08, 2019•46 min•Ep 450•Transcript available on Metacast In a followup to one of our most popular podcast episodes which originally aired in April 2017 (https://a16z.com/2017/04/03/cryptocurrencies-protocols-appcoins/), a16z Crypto Fund General Partner Chris Dixon returns to talk with Olaf Carlson-Wee of Polychain Capital in a free-wheeling conversation about the seven major trends they see happening in blockchain computing now as we shift from basic protocol design to pragmatic product launches: Improving developer productivity Scaling out versus sca...
May 07, 2019•51 min•Ep 449•Transcript available on Metacast As companies digitize, they change the way they make decisions: decisions are made lower in the organization, based on data, and increasingly automated. This creates opportunities for startups creating new ways to collect and analyze data to support this new style of decision making. In this episode (which originally aired as a YouTube video), Jad Naous (@jadtnaous) and Frank Chen (@withfries2) discuss this change and the startup opportunities these changes create. The views expressed here are ...
Apr 29, 2019•30 min•Ep 448•Transcript available on Metacast with Jorge Conde (@JorgeCondeBio), Julie Yoo (@julesyoo), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) Building a software company in healthcare is hard -- and comes along with unique challenges no other entrepreneurs face. In this conversation, a16z bio general partner -- and previous founder of genomics company Knome -- Jorge Conde; and a16z bio partner and former founder Julie Yoo (of patient provider matching system, Kyruus) share their mistakes and hard earned lessons learned with a16z partner Hanne ...
Apr 25, 2019•37 min•Ep 447•Transcript available on Metacast Join longtime Apple software engineer Ken Kocienda in conversation with a16z Deal and Research operating partner Frank Chen for an insider’s account of how Apple designed software in the golden age of Steve Jobs, spanning products like the first release of Safari on MacOS to the first few releases of the iPhone and iOS (very first codename: "Purple"). Ken vividly shares about the creative process, how teams were organized, what it was like demo'ing to Steve Jobs, and many other fun sto...
Apr 19, 2019•2 hr 37 min•Ep 446•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the a16z Podcast -- which originally aired as a video on YouTube -- general partner Alex Rampell (and former fintech entrepreneur as the CEO and co-founder of TrialPay) talks with operating partner Frank Chen about the quickly changing fintech landscape and, even more importantly, why the landscape is changing now. Should the incumbents be nervous? About what, exactly? And most importantly, what should big companies do about all of this change? But the conversation from both s...
Apr 04, 2019•50 min•Ep 445•Transcript available on Metacast with Nick Quah (@nwquah), Connie Chan (@conniechan), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) It's a podcast about podcasting! About the state of the industry, that is. Because a lot has changed since we recorded "a podcast about podcasts" about four years ago: podcasts, and interest in podcasting -- listening, making, building -- is growing. But by how much, exactly? (since various stats are constantly floating around and often out of context); and what do we even know (given that no one really kno...
Apr 03, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep 444•Transcript available on Metacast with Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) and Steven Sinofsky (@stevesi) What does Apple's recent event — in which a range of new services was announced, from Apple News Plus to Apple TV Plus to the Apple card — mean for the company's overall strategy and tactics? In this another of a16z's 'hallway conversations', Benedict Evens and Steven Sinofsky discuss the build up, announcements, and postmortem of the recent Apple event, and consider what it all means in terms of a big company's evolution into s...
Mar 30, 2019•29 min•Ep 443•Transcript available on Metacast with Safi Bahcall (@safibahcall), Vijay Pande (@vijaypande), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) A "moonshot" is a destination (like going to the moon, quite literally) -- but nurturing "loonshots" (which often involves a number of stumbles along the way) is how we get there. This goes beyond the trite mantra of failing fast! It is about not having "false fails" or not killing the seemingly small ideas that could lead to outsized yet unexpected outcomes, observes Safi Bahcal...
Mar 25, 2019•48 min•Ep 442•Transcript available on Metacast with Brian Koppelman (@briankoppelman), Marc Andreessen (@pmarca), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) The writer-showrunner is a relatively new phenomenon in TV, as opposed to film, which is still a director-driven enterprise. But what does it mean, as both a creative and a leader, to “showrun” something, whether a TV show… or a startup? Turns out, there are a lot of parallels with the rise of the showrunner and the rise of founder-CEOs, all working (or partnering) within legacy systems. But in the day ...
Mar 16, 2019•1 hr 6 min•Ep 441•Transcript available on Metacast When people talk about trends in education technology, they often focus on how to disrupt higher education in the U.S., whether it's about breaking free of the "signaling" factor of elite educations or how to shift education out of its "cottage industry" mindset to achieve greater scale. However, in China, the transformation of education is already well underway, with a fast-growing ecosystem built around lifelong learning. In fact, one of the largest demographic groups payin...
Mar 12, 2019•31 min•Ep 440•Transcript available on Metacast with George Church (@geochurch) and Jorge Conde (@JorgeCondeBio) Renowned scientist George Church is known for his groundbreaking work and methods used for the first genome sequence, and for his work in genome editing, writing & recoding -- in fact, Church’s innovations have become an essential building block for most of the DNA sequencing methods and companies we see today. In this conversation, a16z bio general partner Jorge Conde -- who also founded a company with Church out of the George...
Feb 26, 2019•41 min•Ep 439•Transcript available on Metacast with Peter Ludwig, Qasar Younis (@qasar), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) When people talk about autonomous vehicles, we hear everything from "we're much closer than you think" to "we're much further than you think". So where are we, really, in the widespread reality of autonomous vehicles today? It depends, of course, on how you define autonomy -- which is where a handy recap and update of the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) levels of autonomy comes in. But still, given eve...
Feb 24, 2019•49 min•Ep 438•Transcript available on Metacast Bobby Kotick is the CEO of Activision Blizzard (a merger he engineered); it's one of only two video gaming companies in the Fortune 500, and the largest game network in the world. The company is responsible for some of the most iconic entertainment franchises, including Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft -- as well as its own professional esports league. So in this episode of the a16z Podcast, Marc Andreessen interviews Kotick on everything from the evolution of video ga...
Feb 17, 2019•34 min•Ep 437•Transcript available on Metacast with Ryan Caldbeck (@ryan_caldbeck), Jeff Jordan (@jeff_jordan), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) It's clear that all kinds of commerce companies and consumer products have been disrupted -- or enabled -- by tech. Yet for certain categories, like consumer packaged goods (CPG), it seems like tech hasn't changed things very much. How is the rise of so-called "micro-brands" (or emerging brands) playing out here? And, how is it possible that "real" -- different -- innovation isn't real...
Feb 16, 2019•48 min•Ep 436•Transcript available on Metacast with Kate Darling (@grok_) and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) We already know that we have an innate tendency to anthropomorphize robots. But beyond just projecting human qualities onto them, as we begin to share more and more spaces, social and private, what kind of relationships will we develop with them? And how will those relationships in turn change us? In this Valentine’s Day special, Kate Darling, Researcher at MIT Labs, talks with a16z's Hanne Tidnam all about our emotional relations wit...
Feb 14, 2019•28 min•Ep 435•Transcript available on Metacast with Chris Burniske (@cburniske), Joel Monegro (@jmonegro), Denis Nazarov (@Iiterature), and Jesse Walden (@jessewldn) When designing cryptonetworks -- really, emerging economies -- how do we avoid some of the monetary and fiscal policy failings of "real-world" economies? Like not separating currency and capital, which accelerated and spread economic growth through the former... but also concentrated the latter into the hands of a few? Yet how can we empower users to access capital whi...
Feb 12, 2019•45 min•Ep 434•Transcript available on Metacast with Phil Daian (@phildaian) and Ali Yahya (@ali01) Whether in corporations, boardrooms, or political elections, voting is something we see in all kinds of social systems... including blockchains. It's the natural human tendency for how to organize decisions, and in distributed systems without centralized middlemen, it's the only clear Schelling point we can come up with. But too many people design voting mechanisms in distributed systems in isolation -- sometimes naively "porting over"...
Feb 10, 2019•39 min•Ep 433•Transcript available on Metacast with Jyoti Bansal (@jyotibansalsf), Peter Levine, Satish Talluri (@satishtalluri), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) One of the toughest challenges for founders -- and especially technical founders who are used to focusing so much on product features over sales -- is striking "product-market fit". The concept can be defined many ways, but the simple definition shared in this episode is: it's when you understand the business value of your product. And that comes down to users, which is where t...
Feb 03, 2019•51 min•Ep 432•Transcript available on Metacast with Mark Leslie (@mleslie45) and Peter Levine What does it actually take to win at enterprise sales? In this episode, Mark Leslie, former CEO and chairman and founding team member of Veritas Software, and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a16z general partner Peter Levine -- who worked together at Veritas -- share stories from the field all about sales and entrepreneurship in the enterprise. The wide-ranging conversation covers everything from what makes a good salespe...
Jan 30, 2019•27 min•Ep 431•Transcript available on Metacast with Peter Levine, Bob Tinker, and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) For consumer companies, often when the holy grail of product-market fit is achieved, the company takes off: magic happens, growth unlocks. Enterprise B2B companies face a different challenge. Sometimes, despite achieving product-market fit (and knowing when you've achieved it) and winning your first cohorts of renewing customers -- growth remains a challenge. Industry analyst maps are riddled with the logos of enterprise B2B compa...
Jan 30, 2019•38 min•Ep 430•Transcript available on Metacast Veterinary oncology can inform human oncology, and vice versa -- providing a better model for looking at drug performance, interrelationships, and more. Especially when you add in data (there's no "doggy HIPAA!") and networks to get a "living laboratory at scale". Or so argues Amy Abernethy (Chief Medical and Chief Scientific Officer at Flatiron Health and advisor to One Health), who was recently named the new Principal Deputy Commissioner of the FDA, pending ethics clearance...
Jan 26, 2019•36 min•Ep 429•Transcript available on Metacast with Joel de la Garza, Jonathan Lusthaus, and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) The idea of the cybercriminal as lone wolf or hobby hacker is no longer much of a reality. Instead, the business of cybercrime looks a lot more just like that -- a large, global technology business, with many of the associated structures, challenges, and even casts of characters that legitimate businesses have. In this conversation, a16z's Joel de la Garza, a16z operating partner for information security (formerly CSO o...
Jan 17, 2019•36 min•Ep 428•Transcript available on Metacast with Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) and Steven Sinofsky (@stevesi) Every year, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) puts the latest and greatest developments in consumer technology on display in Vegas. But beyond the excitement and the hype, what's really here -- or not here -- to stay? Will televisions roll up into tiny boxes? Will Alexa find her way into electric carving knives? Which of these new gadgets will stand the test of time? In this episode of the a16z podcast, Benedict Evans and Stev...
Jan 17, 2019•42 min•Ep 427•Transcript available on Metacast with Susannah Fox (@susannahfox), Anil Sethi (@anilsethiusa / @ciitizencorp), Vijay Pande (@vijaypande), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) The problem of "dark data" in healthcare isn't just a feel-good empowerment thing, but a structural issue that leads to miscommunication and extra friction, different players in the entire healthcare system not being able to collaborate with each other, and just major missed opportunities all round. And yes, it also leads to lack of empowerment for patient...
Jan 16, 2019•36 min•Ep 426•Transcript available on Metacast with Vas Narasimhan (@vasnarasimhan), Jorge Conde (@jorgecondebio), Vijay Pande (@vijaypande), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) On average, only 1 out of 20 medicines works when we actually bring them into the human body, and these rates of success haven't moved much in the pharma industry overall in the past 15 years, despite much scientific progress. Because if you really think about it, it's incredible that we find any human medicine that works at all, given that human beings are the product of bil...
Jan 14, 2019•59 min•Ep 425•Transcript available on Metacast with James J. Collins, Vijay Pande (@vijaypande), and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) The idea of 'designing biology' -- once science fiction -- has over the last 20 years become just... science. In this episode, a16z bio general partner Vijay Pande with Hanne Tidnam talk all about the field of synthetic biology with James J. Collins, professor of bioengineering at MIT. Collins, whose work in synthetic biology and systems biology pioneered the field, has also launched a number of companies and re...
Jan 11, 2019•36 min•Ep 424•Transcript available on Metacast The past and future of marketplace startups -- where are we? Ever since eBay popularized an internet meeting place for buyers and sellers of, well, just about everything, we’ve been waiting for 100 other at-scale marketplaces for everything else, including services. So in this hallway-style episode of the a16z Podcast (originally recorded as a video) Li Jin -- co-author with Andrew Chen of this post -- chats with a16z Deal & Research team operating partner about why there aren’t 100 thriving...
Jan 09, 2019•41 min•Ep 423•Transcript available on Metacast 
