The a16z Show

a16z Podcast: On the Genomics of Disease, From Science to Business

18 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Once we sequenced the human genome, we'd know the cause of -- and therefore be able to help cure -- all diseases... Or so we thought. Turns out, 20,00...

a16z Podcast: Stickers! Filters! Memes! Livestreams!

12 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

From glittery reaction gifs modded by grandparents to rage faces on Reddit, stickers (gifs and other layered images) and emotive “biaoqing” have t...

a16z Podcast: Truce for Mobile, Battle for VR

10 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The most recent Oculus Connect event (the third and largest yet) has been lauded as bringing us closer than ever to the future promised for virtual re...

a16z Podcast: Mastering the Game (with David Oyelowo)

30 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

This special episode of the a16z Podcast is based on a Q&A from an early screening we hosted of Disney's Queen of Katwe, now in theaters. The movi...

a16z Podcast: From Data Warehouses to Data Lakes

22 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

From the silver age of on-prem software companies like SAP and Siebel Systems to the golden age of enterprise software-as-a-service, we're now seeing ...

a16z Podcast: Welcome to the New Era of Commerce

18 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Just as "social networking" is a bland term that doesn't really capture the layers of what happens underneath (and on top of) social network...

a16z Podcast: Apple and the Case of Invisible But Audible Innovation

13 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

"Apple isn't just a tech company; it's a tastemaker." Remember the iconic ads of dancing silhouettes in black, with only the headphone wires...

a16z Podcast: Sleep!

06 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Sleep, productivity, and creatively are intimately linked, for better and for worse. And "we are living under a collective delusion that burnout ...

a16z Podcast: All About Microservices

31 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

"Incremental change may be good theory, but in practice you have to have a big enough stick to hit everybody with to make everything move at once...

a16z Podcast: It's Complicated

30 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

For better or worse, most of the computing systems that run much of our lives (whether invisibly or visibly) have become increasingly complex -- they'...

a16z Podcast: Ethereum, App Coins, and Beyond

28 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Bitcoin quickly made its way from a whitepaper to a production network, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. But its scripting/ programmin...

a16z Podcast: Pricing Free

19 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Now that we know to price and plan early, price high -- especially for category-creating or "pre-chasm" businesses -- how do we handle freem...

a16z Podcast: Pricing, Pricing, Pricing

14 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

"Raise prices." Regular listeners of our podcast have heard this advice more than once. But why is this so key and yet so hard for many tech...

a16z Podcast: The Meaning of Emoji

03 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

This podcast is all about emoji. But it's really about how innovation really comes about -- through the tension between standards vs. proprietary move...

a16z Podcast: Not all Network Effects Are Created Equal

01 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

From hardware and hardwires to smartphones and social, technology wants to connect. It's almost a native property of technology and especially softwar...

a16z Podcast: We Gotta Talk Pokémon Go

22 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Seemingly overnight, a single game -- Pokémon Go -- has taken people by storm. But it's a game that was technically years in the making, building on ...

a16z Podcast: Getting Network Effects

15 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

One of the biggest misconceptions around network effects (which are one of the key dynamics behind many successful and highly defensible software comp...

a16z Podcast: On Government as Software Builder, Not Just Buyer

14 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

We already know that the government is one of the largest IT buyers, but in many ways it is also an IT builder. Especially for areas where the governm...

a16z Podcast: Software Programs the World

11 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

"All of a sudden you can program the world" -- it's the continuation of the software eating the world thesis we put out over five years ago,...

a16z Podcast: Beyond One Size Fits All for Startup Employee Options

01 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Do we need a new pay system for the way startup employees are compensated? While many people agree that the current 90-day exercise practice — an ou...

a16z Podcast: When Humanity Meets A.I.

28 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

with Fei-Fei Li (@drfeifei), Frank Chen (@withfries2), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) Who has the advantage in artificial intelligence — big companies, ...

a16z Podcast: Fintech Revolution or Evolution?

22 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

How far along are we towards the vision of a "cashless, cardless, walletless, frictionless future" for fintech? We're not quite there yet, a...

a16z Podcast: An Economics Take on the Sharing Economy

16 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Love the term or hate it, the concept and reality of the "sharing economy" (or "gig economy" and so on) is here to stay. And in fa...

a16z Podcast: Apple and the Widgetification of Everything

14 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The world's most valuable company, Apple, made a number of seemingly incremental announcements at its most recent annual developer's conference (WWDC)...

a16z Podcast: Move Fast But Don't Break Things (When It Comes to Computational Biology)

14 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The mindset of "move fast and break things", while great for code, isn't exactly great for the human body. So adding computation to biology ...

a16z Podcast: Not If, But How -- When Technology is Inevitable (with Kevin Kelly)

07 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Technology has always been a force in how we live, work, and play; only now it's accelerating and compounding in unexpected ways. But just because we ...

Politics Over Pragmatism

02 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

"Anybody who is interested in China, who's developing things in China, who's doing business with China needs to be thinking about the instinct to...

a16z Podcast: Startups and Pendulum Swings Through Ideas, Time, Fame, and Money

30 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Everything old is new again when it comes to startup ideas and how technology innovation happens. But practically, how does that apply to starting and...

a16z Podcast: Trade, Commerce, Manufacturing, Immigration, & Cuba -- with Penny Pritzker

27 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

"We really want Apple here... Would you please call Tim Cook?" That's just one of the things Penny Pritzker, the 38th Secretary of Commerce ...

a16z Podcast: Managing Uncertainty -- Layoffs and Talent

26 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In many ways, managing startups is about managing uncertainty: in product, market, and... people. So what happens when changes in the business require...

a16z Podcast: Automation, Jobs, & the Future of Work (and Income)

23 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

There's no question automation is taking over more and more aspects of work and some jobs altogether. But we're now entering a "third era" o...

a16z Podcast: Innovation vs. Invention at Google I/O

20 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Innovation or invention? Platform or app? Vertical or horizontal? Strategy or tactic? Does the smartphone eat VR? And (not to get all existential abou...

a16z Podcast: Airspace as the Next Internet-Like Platform

18 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most important lessons of the internet age is what happens when we give people -- including companies, developers, engineers, hobbyists, an...

a16z Podcast: The Cloud and The Public Sector

17 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

It almost seems like gospel -- or at least a given -- today for startups to embrace the cloud. Services like AWS have powered an entire generation of ...

a16z Podcast: The Art of the Regulatory Hack

17 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

If the next 20 years of startup-led tech innovation are going to be about addressing massive problems -- like health, energy, transportation, cities, ...

a16z Podcast: On Productivity, Immigration, Trump, and Media

12 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes, our career paths are accidental not intentional... but then it all fits together and makes perfect sense in hindsight. This was especially ...

a16z Podcast: On Corporate Venturing & Setting Up 'Innovation Outposts'

11 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Every big technological shift (per Carlota Perez) brings with a structural shift too — an “institutional adjustment” in how companies innovated ...

a16z Podcast: Banking on the Blockchain

10 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Whether you think of it as a distributed ledger, decentralized database, computing infrastructure, open source/ software development platform, cryptoc...

a16z Podcast: E-commerce, Payments, & More in India's Evolving Retail Landscape

05 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

So many modern e-commerce sites and marketplaces are really digital forms of their physical counterparts, which makes it easier to figure out how to p...

a16z Podcast: Finally a Tablet that Replaces Your Laptop

28 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

When the iPad first came out in 2010 there was chatter that went in two directions: It’s just a big iPhone I’ll never carry a laptop again Both ...

a16z Podcast: Connectivity and the Internet as Supply Chain

22 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Our first instinct as technologists or users of technology is to think of 'connectivity' as digital connectivity -- the internet, our smartphone. But ...

a16z Podcast: Bots and Beyond

19 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

So... about those bots. Bots bots bots. Bots! In this episode of the botcast, a16z partners Benedict Evans and Connie Chan -- along with Chris Messina...

a16z Podcast: Selling to Developers & Open Source Business Models

14 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Developers are more than just influencers inside the enterprise -- they're now buyers, too. That's a huge shift from before, when only IT and other de...

a16z Podcast: The Why, How, and When of Sales

08 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The hallmark of many great technical founder/CEOs is that they envision a better way of doing things, and that's why they're building a company that d...

a16z Podcast: Teams, Trust, and Object Lessons

02 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Some of the best management books are actually military books, argues Ben Horowitz. There's just a certain mental toughness and focus that that experi...

a16z Podcast: Investing in (Business and Career) Change

25 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Most investors try to invest in things that don't change and last forever -- Warren Buffett for example loves Heinz ketchup! But VC is about investing...

a16z Podcast: Scaling Companies and Culture

17 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the a16z Podcast sharing more founder stories, Ben Horowitz interviews a16z partner Lars Dalgaard about SuccessFactors, one of the ...

a16z Podcast: Truth and Humanity in Leadership

16 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

How do you get into tech when you don’t have a tech background? And what special expertise can leaders from other fields -- like the military -- bri...

a16z Podcast: The Dream of AI Is Alive in Go

11 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Why are people so fired up about a computer winning yet another game? Whether it's checkers, chess, Jeopardy, or the ancient Chinese game of Go, we ge...

a16z Podcast: Your Worst Deeds Don’t Define You -- Life and Redemption in Prison

11 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Men and women who have spent decades in prison are being released into an iPhone-enabled world that they hardly recognize. Shaka Senghor is one of tho...

a16z Podcast: I Reject the Term Viral Video

11 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

YouTube star Casey Neistat rejects the term “viral video,” which is strange because he’s had more than his share of internet monsters. To say I ...

a16z Podcast: Data Network Effects

08 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

If network effects are one of the most important concepts for software-based businesses, then that may be especially true of data network effects -- a...

a16z Podcast: Disruption in Business... and Life

02 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

It's not incompetence, but competence, that causes companies to be disrupted. That applies to big companies and small, as well as people too. Or so ar...

a16z Podcast: Mobile Falls Hard for Virtual Reality

02 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The mobile world has fallen hard for VR, says Benedict Evans. But will virtual reality mean real profit for hardware makers? Evans offers his observat...

a16z Podcast: Mapping the Future of Virtual Reality

26 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Virtual reality is coming fast, and everyone seems to assume that it will be gamers who get to have all the fun first. But there are other application...

a16z Podcast: Infrastructure... Is Everything

24 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Infrastructure. It powers everything from cities to computing, yet is sometimes considered "boring" because it is so invisible to so many of...

a16z Podcast: Open vs. Closed, Alpha Cities, and the Industries of the Future

19 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The principal political binary of the past century was the political 'left versus right'. But in the 21st century the binary has shifted -- the battle...

a16z Podcast: 'In the Eye of a Tornado' -- Views on Innovation from China

18 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

No matter how one views Xiaomi -- and there are many ways to view it, for better or worse -- one thing is clear: It, and other such companies (like We...

a16z Podcast: Breaking the Barriers of Human Potential

06 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

During his “Stratos” jump Felix Baumgartner fell faster than the speed of sound, reaching an estimated speed of 833.9 mph plummeting from the edge...

a16z Podcast: Hall of Fame Football Meets Venture Capital

05 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The NFL has descended upon Silicon Valley for Superbowl 50, and a16z was fortunate to have 30 of the world’s best football players post-up at the fi...

a16z Podcast: Building Affirm, and Why Max Levchin Has Watched Seven Samurai 100-Plus Times

05 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Max Levchin helped build PayPal. Then he went onto tackle gaming at Slide. Now he’s back in the world of payments and finance with his latest startu...

a16z Podcast: The Future of Money and Monetization

03 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Technology companies are running hard at almost every part of the traditional banking business -- from raising funds to moving money from one person t...

a16z Podcast: How to Be Original and Make Big Ideas Happen

02 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

From Aaron Sorkin to Steve Jobs to Meredith Perry and Elon Musk, "original" thinkers -- such as entrepreneurs -- do a lot of different thing...

a16z Podcast: Reinventing Insurance

29 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Your homeowner’s insurance didn’t anticipate Airbnb. Your car insurance certainly didn’t see Lyft and Uber coming. And when your car drives itse...

a16z Podcast: When Banking Works Like My Smartphone

29 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

There are fewer and fewer parts of our lives that don't feel like an extension of our smartphones. Any song you might want to hear. Any place you migh...

a16z Podcast: Things Come Together -- Truths about Tech in Africa

25 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

We often hear stats like “more people have mobile phones than toilets” about places like Africa, but what does that actually mean for people? “I...

a16z Podcast: The Fundamentals of Security and the Story of Tanium’s Growth

20 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The thing about enterprise security, from the outside at least, is it reads like a Hollywood thriller. Nation states are after your company’s most v...

a16z Podcast: Software is What Distinguishes the Hardware Winners

15 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Smartphone components have become a kind of Lego kit for all kinds of consumer technology. Cameras, sensors, and batteries all get mixed and matched i...

a16z Podcast: Nobody Discusses Work Software Outside of Work -- and Then There’s Slack

13 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

For as long as there has been software we have had this collective hope -- maybe more of a desire -- that software will make all kinds of work easier,...

a16z Podcast: Harnessing the DevOps Movement -- Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls

08 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In this, world of massive cloud-based applications and services, rolling out software has moved from an episodic event to an almost continuous release...

a16z Podcast: Making the Most of the Data That Matters

07 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Every organization these days is clear about the need to get its data act together. But that doesn’t mean the path toward data bliss is clear. Data ...

a16z Podcast: What Software Developers (and Therefore Every Company) Need

06 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The old constraint when it came to technology was hardware -- how many CPUs can I get my hands on. Today, spinning up compute can be done from any sma...

a16z Podcast: The Future of Software Development

05 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

As software becomes core to every industry, there is a need for more and more software development across practically every department in a company. B...

a16z Podcast: Writing a New Language of Storytelling with Virtual Reality

18 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Chris Milk calls virtual reality the “ultimate empathy machine.” The filmmaker and founder of VR shop Vrse talks with a16z’s Chris Dixon about h...

a16z Podcast: Andre Iguodala Knows Tech -- And Why the Warriors Won't Be Stopped

18 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

You know how talented Andre Iguodala is as a basketball player. You may not know that he signed with the Warriors in part to be near Silicon Valley an...

a16z Podcast: Mellody Hobson and Ben Horowitz Talk Investing, Career, and Star Wars!

18 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments, sits down with Ben Horowitz during a16z's 2015 Tech Summit for a wide ranging conversation on investin...

a16z Podcast: The Year Mobile Began to Truly Dominate Tech

17 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Benedict Evans highlights the past year in mobile. From Apple's ongoing rule of the high-end, to Android's spread farther down the price curve. Withou...

a16z Podcast: The Present State and Future Possibility of Virtual Reality

17 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Our virtual reality-enabled future is arriving, but it’s hard to know -- as it is with every new technology platform -- how quickly we’ll all make...

a16z Podcast: The Tiger and the Dragon -- On Tech and Startups in India and China

12 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

India and China. The two most populous countries on the planet are also two of the most tantalizing markets for companies of all size, from startups t...

a16z Podcast: Scaling Ideas and Startups in the U.K. and Europe

04 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Our final segment from the road in the U.K. features two well-known investors and entrepreneurs in the London tech world: Seedcamp co-founder Reshma S...

a16z Podcast: Nootropics and the Best Version of Your Brain, Yourself

04 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

What if you could bring the best version of yourself to everything you do everyday? What if you could get the most out of your mind and brain -- or mo...

a16z Podcast: Building Tech Startups in a Place Where Tech Isn’t Everything

01 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The pod continues its U.K. road trip, meeting up with three startup founders -- including one startup accelerator programme -- to discuss the entrepre...

a16z Podcast: Using Social Tools to Build Homes for Those Most in Need

28 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Brett Hagler was on a trip to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake where he saw too many of those displaced by the natural disaster still living in tattere...

a16z Podcast: The Data Science of Food and Taste

25 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The best cooks know cooking a meal is all about having a plan (and a back-up plan if things go south); get the cooking out of the way, and then you ca...

a16z Podcast: Data Down on the Farm

24 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Farmers are among the best hackers in the business. They can fix anything, and are endlessly tweaking their approach to a business that is up against ...

a16z Podcast: The Future of Food

24 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Rob Rhinehart, like most startup entrepreneurs, was strapped for cash and time as developed his ideas and ultimately a company. What stood out to Rhin...

a16z Podcast: On Recent IPOs and Comparing Private vs. Public Valuations

21 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

It's hip to be Square right now. Or is it? How do we assess whether it -- and other recent IPOs -- went well, not just for investors but overall? In t...

a16z Podcast: London Calling for Tech Done in a Different Way

20 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

If the U.K. is to continue its economic march onward and upward, technology needs to play an increasing role, say Martha Lane Fox (that's Baroness of ...

a16z Podcast: Defeating Aging with Aubrey de Grey

19 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

There are those who would say that Aubrey de Grey is out to cure death, but what this former artificial intelligence specialist turned gerontologist i...

a16z Podcast: Fintech from the World's Financial Capital -- London

17 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The title of world's financial capital bounces back and forth between London and New York. This year London has bragging rights, but does being the wo...

a16z Podcast: Artificial Intelligence and the 'Space of Possible Minds'

15 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

What is A.I. or artificial intelligence but the 'space of possible minds', argues Murray Shanahan, scientific advisor on the movie Ex Machina and Prof...

a16z Podcast: Blockchain vs/and Bitcoin

11 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Blockchain without bitcoin? It's a debate as old as the cryptocurrency itself (which, to be honest, isn't that old). Given that bitcoin is not just a ...

a16z Podcast: Beyond Lean Startups

07 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

What began as a scientific approach to creating and managing startups has now become a worldwide movement for companies of all sizes -- and for creati...

a16z Podcast: A Whirlwind Tour of Policy Issues in Tech

03 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

There's a "game" being played right now among lawmakers and tech companies around policy issues, and as tech touches everything, everyone ha...

a16z Podcast: Telepresence and Tech for a Distributed Workforce

03 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Telepresence. It's an ugly, outdated word for an attractive and current/ emerging phenomenon where people can work from anywhere, anytime. It's techno...

a16z Podcast: 'The Most Boring Yet Valuable' 20 Minutes, All About Board Minutes

03 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

"The most boring yet valuable podcast in a16z history" -- he (our guest Joe Grundfest) said it, not we! That’s because in this episode of ...

a16z Podcast: Boards and the Power of Networks

29 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

It's easy to argue for "choosing possibility" when it comes to addressing diversity and inclusion in tech when certain people have access to...

a16z Podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman: What Disruption Theory Is ... and Isn't

24 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Disruption is such an overused buzzword. But the word itself does have meaning: As defined by the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries, it is a &qu...

a16z Podcast: What Comes After the Smartphone

22 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Technology is a progression of new ideas and new platforms gobbling up the one that came before. In the world of computers we went from mainframes to ...

a16z Podcast: Belief -- An Interview with Oprah Winfrey

16 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

This special episode of the a16z Podcast is based on a Q&A from an early screening we hosted of OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network)'s "Belief", ...