a16z Live (Andreessen Horowitz)

We’re announcing and launching this new feed -- simply called “a16z LIVE” -- for conversations on Clubhouse and beyond. 

Our goal is to capture and share many of the live discussions and events featuring, hosted, or co-hosted by a16z partners (with outside voices too); many (though not all) of these different live events take place on the social audio/ drop-in chat app Clubhouse -- to attend those in real time or sign up, please visit joinclubhouse.com.

As a reminder, all the content posted here is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. Views expressed are those of the individuals and not the views of Andreessen Horowitz, please see a16z dot com/ disclosures for more. 

Finally: If you’d like to catch other shows on the broader a16z podcast network, be sure to check out the flagship "a16z Podcast", one of the consistently chart-topping shows in tech; our shortform tech trends & news analysis show “16 Minutes”; and our show "Bio Eats World", all about life sciences, healthcare, and technology. All of these are available wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about the a16z podcast network, please see a16z.com/podnetwork... And feel free to rate and review all our shows as well!

In this episode, a16z Partner Seema Amble chats with Tomer London, co-founder of Gusto, about establishing product-market fit and product discovery. London shares how Gusto, now valued at ~$10 billion with 300,000+ customers, identified early customers who could provide valuable feedback that helped the team optimize the self-service product experience. The conversation explores Gusto's approach to product development, as well as managing and incorporating customer feedback while maintaining a clear product vision.

1:18-3:14   Gusto’s founding story 
3:14- 4:56  Solidifying a GTM sales strategy 
4:56-10:03 Identifying early customers and perfecting the sales pitch
10:03-12:45 Working with customers to optimize the product UX
12:45-14:31 Engendering trust and finding success with accountants 
14:31-16:41 The role accountants planned in Gusto’s success
16:41-19:34 Creating a feedback funnel and balancing product vision
19:34-22:38 Self-service strategy and measuring success
22:38- 23:45 Refining the UX at scale 
23:45-25:45 Identifying real-world use cases to inform product strategy
25:45-29:52 GTM learnings and advice
29:52-30:05 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

As the deputy director for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Nitin Natarajan spends most of his days worrying about everything from risk identification and mitigation, to educating young people and small businesses on their potential to be victims. In this fireside chat with Joel de la Garza, a16z operating partner for security, the two men discuss what keeps the CISA official up at night, his view of the situation in Ukraine and Russia, and how being tech savvy doesn’t translate into being cyber savvy (especially for kids).

In this occasional Clubhouse series, a16z co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz talk with Greg Reyes, the former CEO of Brocade Communications who was recently pardoned after being convicted of and serving time for the fraudulent backdating of corporate stock options. Greg talks about his career before his conviction, his case and the SEC, his time in prison and what life was like after, the presidential pardon process, his advice for leaders today, and more. Catch Ben and Marc's Clubhouse show live at 7pm PT every Monday.

Finding and backing companies that can reach escape velocity is the name of the game over here at a16z Growth—but picking those winners is far from easy. David George, head of the a16z Growth fund, sat down with the I/O podcast to discuss his mental models for growth-stage investing, what it really takes to go public, where AI is today and where it’s headed, and more. 

[00:03:19] What makes Andreessen Horowitz different

[00:08:29] David's mental model for investing

[00:18:23] Focusing on inputs, not outputs

[00:26:52] What constitutes a growth company?

[00:29:14] David's three investing frameworks

[00:36:45] How to measure the ROI of R&D

[00:42:15] What it takes to go public today

[00:46:43] AI: market structure and infrastructure vs. application layers

To read a transcript of this conversation, click here. 

In a new episode of In the Vault, a16z General Partner David Haber talks with Marty Chavez, a partner and vice chairman of Sixth Street Partners, about the foundational role he’s had in merging technology and finance throughout his career, and the magical promises and regulatory pitfalls of AI.

 

0-1:30 Intro

1:30-12:50 Marty's history and transition to Wall Street

12:50-20:50 Financial Crisis and SecDB

20:50-32:10 GenAI's impact

32:10-36:15 AI and biotech

36:15-37:06 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

a16z cofounders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz talk  tech trends, company building, and more live on Clubhouse every Monday, 7pm PT. 

In this conversation:

• What does return to work look like for a16z portfolio companies (including exclusive survey data)
• How the re-distribution of the workforce might affect rural America
• The potential for social networks to replace networking in cities 
• Generalists vs specialists in a startup
• How to think about celebrity investors and executives (like Prince Harry)
• The growing distrust of institutions in America
• The technology that could still be with us in 500 years
• Books of the week! Marc on "Medici Money" by Tim Parks and Ben on "Lenin" by Victor Sebestyen

a16z cofounders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz talk  tech trends, company building, and more live on Clubhouse every Monday, 7pm PT. 

In this conversation:

• How can VCs be both investors and marketing/growth engines for companies they invest in?  How has a16z approached this and curating talent on Clubhouse?
• Are SPACs  the new IPO? What would you say to a founder who pitched you a plan to grow as fast as they can with the goal of selling to a SPAC in 3-5 years?
• If a startup is profitably bootstrapping, does it make sense to raise VC money?
• How do you fire executives the right way, especially when they own a percent of the company
• Can you fire an investor who doesn't align with your company mission or direction?
• What tips, tricks, and hacks can help founders maintain their mental health?

As CTO of OpenAI, Mira Murati oversaw the development and release of GPT-4 and ChatGPT. Here she tells Martin Casado the story behind the release of ChatGPT—and what it tells us about the future of AI and human-machine interactions. 

• [0:59] Mira's background
• [4:55] Math, physics, and AI
• [7:31] Natural language interfaces
• [10:51] OpenAI Roadmap
• [17:47] Scaling Laws
• [20:48] One model to rule them all?
• [23:34] The next 5-10 years

This conversation is part of our AI Revolution series, recorded August 2023 at a live event in San Francisco. The series features some of the most impactful builders in the field of AI discussing and debating where we are, where we’re going, and the big open questions in AI. Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution.

• eBay to today, a brief history of collectibles and tech [1:03]
• Are collectibles about sentiment or investment? [5:13]
• How do you bring the excitement of a collection to digital goods? [13:34]
• Is the future of all collectibles digital? [20:20]
• The role of blockchain and NFTs [26:39]
• Are collectible marketplaces different from other marketplaces? [32:19]
• Importance of live video [38:28]
• Celebrity interest in NFTs: will it last? [40:46]
• Are collectibles a bubble? [43:13]

Listen live to the a16z show People Behind the Product Wednesdays noon-1pm PT with the a16z consumer team.

This is an excerpt from the a16z Clubhouse show One on One with A and Z, where a16z cofounders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz answer questions on tech trends, company building, and more live . To catch full episodes of the show, follow the a16z Club on Clubhouse. 

 

On this episode of the a16z Bio Clubhouse Show, a16z general partners Vineeta Agarwala, Julie Yoo, and Jorge Conde talk to guests Sean Duffy, cofounder and CEO of Omada Health, Karan Singh, cofounder and COO of Ginger, and Chris Hogg, a serial entrepreneur in the digital health space. The conversation covers go-to-market strategies, financing and aligning incentives, the struggles of interoperability (or lack thereof), and what it is like to build today versus in the early years.

On this episode of the new a16z Bio Clubhouse Show "It's Time to Heal", a16z general partners Vineeta Agarwala, Jorge Conde, Jeff Jordan, and Vijay Pande, talk to guest Dr. Casey Means, co-founder of Levels Health, about metabolism and metabolic health.

Boss Talk is the Clubhouse show where a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi, the Founder/CEO of Databricks, discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff... boss stuff. Live every Tuesday 5-6pm on Clubhouse. 

Speaking coach extraordinaire Matt Abrahams, cofounder of Bold Echo LLC and Lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business; Zūm CEO Ritu Narayan; and Mixpanel CEO Amir Movafaghi talk with Margit about how to master the art of public speaking, communicating in a virtual world, tailoring and testing the message with different audiences, and more. 

"4B with Margit" is a Clubhouse show for raw and unfiltered advice from comms and marketing experts who have seen it all, as well as insider stories from the builders and pioneers who were in the trenches. Think “Scandal” meets “Halt and Catch Fire.” Catch it live Wednesdays 4-5 PST.  

In a new episode of My First 16, a16z partner Seema Amble talks with co-founder and CEO of Pilot Waseem Daher on how he thought about the importance of charging, how secondary signals often matter in an area like accounting, and never stepping away from doing founder-led sales.

 

0:00 - 1:45 Intro

1:45 - 6:36 Pilot's beginning

6:36 - 13:25 First customers

13:25 - 18:02 Pricing

18:02 - 25:29 Building a GTM team

25:29 - 27:58 Advice for founders/Outro

a16z Cofounder and General Partner Marc Andreessen and Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel are interviewed by a16z General Partner Sriram Krishnan at the “Time to Build: LA” event during LA Week. The trio chat about the future of content distribution, the bull case for VR over AR, the end of corporate brands, and why there is (or isn’t) ever anything good to watch on TV.

• An overview of diabetes Type 1 and Type 2 [2:58]
• Thinking beyond Type 1 and Type 2 [6:58]
• New treatment options: stem cells, continuous glucose monitoring [14:19]
• What's the timeline on stem cell therapies? [17:15]
• Therapies for controlling, rather than curing, diabetes [23:52]
• The current technology challenges to treating diabetes [29:52]
• The challenges in education and access [35:41]

This is an excerpt from the a16z Bio show on Clubhouse, where we explore all the ways that biology is technology. To catch full episodes of the show, follow the a16z Club on Clubhouse.

On this episode of the a16z Bio Clubhouse Show "It's Time to Heal", a16z general partners Vineeta Agarwala, Jorge Conde, Julie Yoo, and Vijay Pande, along with a16z cofounder Marc Andreessen, talk to guest Dr. George Church of Harvard University about past, future, and power of genome engineering.

• The MSCI origin story [1:07]
• How does an index get constructed? [6:51]
• How do you keep an index accurate? [11:42]
• MSCI business model... how do they get paid? [16:27]
• MSCI, competition, and why not an open source index? [23:14]
• ESG and investment objectives [27:00]
• ESG disclosure frameworks and the role of government in ESG [32:50]
• Defining ESG [34:44]
• MSCI, crypto, and other asset classes [42:55]
• Why an index business instead of principal investing? [51:09]

Follow the a16z Club to join conversations with tech founders, builders, and leaders live and in-full.

Topics covered this week include:

• How to tell if a startup has entered  "purgatory", where they're getting by each year but no longer has a chance to be a multi-billion dollar company
• Common mistakes founders make when pitching VCs
• When do the biggest disagreements happen over possible investments
• What happens when an idea is great, but one of the founders is toxic
• Is there anyone now like Silicon  Valley coaching legend, Coach Bill Campbell?
• What kinds of large companies are easiest to compete with?
• R&D and basic research, now and then
• Investing in people, pre-idea
• If you started today with zero connections and $50k in the bank, what would you do?

Noam Shazeer, Character.ai CEO and cofounder, talks to a16z's Sarah Wang about the dawn of universally accessible intelligence, the compute it will take to power it, and his pursuit of AGI's first use...

• [0:59] Real Noam vs. AI Noam
• [6:14] Next unlocks
• [8:11] First use case for AGI
• [11:06] Building a full-stack LLM
• [13:33] Noam calculates global compute capacity
• [15:24] Universally accessible intelligence

This conversation is part of our AI Revolution series, recorded August 2023 at a live event in San Francisco. The series features some of the most impactful builders in the field of AI discussing and debating where we are, where we’re going, and the big open questions in AI. Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution.

The CEOs of GOAT, StyleSeat, Cameo, Faire, Whatnot, and Neighbor join a16z partners Andrew Chen, Connie Chan, D'Arcy Coolican, Jeff Jordan, Katie Baynes, and Anne Lee Skates to talk about the cold start problem,  2020 metrics, growth, and the tricky business of scaling a marketplace company.

See more marketplace analysis, including a ranking of the 100 largest marketplace startups & private companies, in the Marketplace 100.

To celebrate the L.A. community and the city's growth, a16z recently hosted, "Time to Build Los Angeles," an event where we invited L.A.-based investors, founders, and operators from across a diverse range of industries to talk about company building in L.A. In the first in our series of interviews, we invited Andrew Chen from a16z, Minnie Ingersoll from TenOneTen, and Turner Novak from Banana Capital to talk about why L.A. is at an inflection point, misperceptions about the region, and what makes a great meme. But first, we opened our panel discussion with a presentation from a16z consumer partner, Katia Ameri, on what you need to know about the L.A. scene and why we think it's worth paying attention to in the years to come. What follows is a slightly edited version of that conversation.

In this episode of a16z Live, Chris Power, the Founder and CEO of the precision parts manufacturing company, Hadrian, talks with a16z American Dynamism Partner Oliver Hsu, about why he decided to build his factories in LA, why software engineers shouldn't be afraid of manufacturing company jobs, and how a single mom and pop machinist shop can affect the national supply chain. What follows is a slightly edited version of that conversation.

Inside sales, field sales, product-led, channel sales, marketing, post-sales…  a16z GTM is our clubhouse show for enterprise founders and builders about what it takes to go to market and the evolving strategies and lessons learned from enterprise companies past and present. Every other Thursday 4-5pm with David Ulevitch.

For our upcoming schedule of Clubhouse conversations, visit a16z.com/clubhouse. 

For videos of the NFT Virtual Summit, visit a16z.com. 

Session 1: The Future of the Digital Ownership Economy with Dan Boneh (Stanford University) and Chris Dixon (a16z)

• What is an NFT? [3:01]
• Why are NFTs  so big right now? [7:04]
• The most exciting programmable ownership structures  [11:36]
• NFTs and composability: what can  you do with NFTs? [15:16]
• How would quantum impact the immutability of the blockchain ledger? [18:40]
• How important is decentralized permanent storage for NFTs... and when will we get there? [20:54]

Session 2: The New Creative Economy with Kayvon Tehranian (Foundation Labs)

• How Foundation Labs works with creatives [24:54]
• Digital Art NFTs: Nyan Cat, Ethiopian Artists Collective, Rafael Rozendaal, Aphex Twin, and Reuben Wu [28:08]
• The Edward Snowden NFT [33:45]
• Why is tracking provenance powerful for creatives? [36:34]
• Creators becoming collectors and crypto investors [39:00]
• Can you buy an NFT on one platform and sell on another and still track provenance? [41:31]

Session 3: NBA Top Shot and Other NFTs on the Flow Blockchain with Dan Boney (Stanford University) and Dieter Shirley (Dapper Labs)

• The Flow Blockchain from CryptoKitties to NBA Top Shot [45:18]
• What is NBA Top Shot, and what was the hardest part of building it [50:34]
• Building a successful user experience [52:55]
• Negotiating with the NBA [54:32]
• The biggest challenges for NFTs going mainstream [56:55]
• Why did they build their own blockchain? [1:01:23]
• Building ERC-721 and lessons learned on crypto standards [1:04:00]

Session 4: Going Beyond Collectibles and The Future of Tokens for Creators with Kevin Chou (Rally) and Chris Dixon (a16z)

• What are social tokens? (and how is Portugal. The Man. using them) [1:05:51]
• What are the roles of fungible and non-fungible tokens? [1:08:30]
• NFTs in gaming now and what's next [1:14:35]
• Pricing and price discovery for NFTs [1:17:39]
• Tips for launching a social token [1:19:06]
• How does Rally make money? [1:22:08]

Session 5: NFT Use Cases Today and Tomorrow with Devin Finzer (OpenSea) and Katie Haun (a16z)

• What does OpenSea do? [1:26:14]
• Why the sudden interest in NFTs? [1:28:35]
• What can and can't be turned into an NFT [1:30:13]
• How NFTs can interact with the physical world [1:32:33]
• Virtual lands and the metaverse economy [1:35:14]
• Virtual concerts and NFT tickets [1:40:44]
• Mixing and remixing NFTs [1:43:04]

Session 6: The Accidental Art DAO with pplpleasr (digital artist)

pplpleasr's NFT "Apes Together Strong" that was auctioned as part of The NFT Summit serves as the artwork for this podcast. 

 

 

 

a16z General Partner David Haber chats with his former colleague Stephanie Cohen, Goldman Sachs' Global Co-Head of Consumer and Wealth Management, about her journey from being an investment banker to running a global division, how Goldman Sachs stays relevant to different client audiences, and how fintech entrepreneurs can think about partnering with the financial services giant.

This podcast is an excerpt. Follow the a16z Club to join conversations with tech founders, builders, and leaders live and in-full.

In this episode: 

• The abandoned M&A with Visa [3:47]
• Communicating to employees around the M&A [8:29]
• Plaid's near death experiences in the early days [12:41]
• The fintech trends that made Plaid possible [17:29]
• What is a bank now? [26:54]
• Fintech and new revenue models [29:20]
• Plaid's role in the creator economy [35:21]
• What is a neobank? [37:30]

 

What do Ben Horowitz and former President Obama have in common?  They both had their twitter accounts taken over to send cryptocurrency spam.

With our office now our home, all security has become personal. This week on Breach of the Week, Ben explains how his Twitter got hacked, and Geoff and Joel break down the personal threat landscape, the security measures that best protect you, and where the security industry needs to evolve to better protect individuals. 

🔐Breach of the Week 🔐looks at who got hacked, how it happened, and what it means for the industry. 

🎙With hosts Joel de la Garza (a16z Security Operating Partner) and Geoff Belknap (CISO LinkedIn) on Clubhouse every Thursday 5-5:30pm.

On this episode of the a16z Bio Clubhouse Show, a16z general partners Vineeta Agarwala, Jorge Conde, Julie Yoo, and Vijay Pande, along with a16z cofounder Marc Andreessen, talk to guest Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andme. The conversation covers the shifting trends and perceptions at the intersection of bio and tech, the power of patient data and importance of giving people access to their own health data, and advice to founders on when to lead and when to listen.

• The six functions in an enterprise marketing org [2:54]
• Why product marketing is the killer function [6:52]
• How do you hire a world class product marketer? [11:16]
• Is community or developer evangelists its own function or part of product marketing? [17:46]
• How does community tie into the marketing funnel? [22:56]
• Is community top of funnel, an accelerant for the whole funnel, or something else entirely? [29:39]
• If the product you're selling becomes someone's job, then your community marketing is working. [32:40]
• Plugging the community into sales... is there a tool for that? [34:29]
• How do all the different marketing tools come together? Do you need engineers in marketing? [39:24]
• How do you make marketing data-driven? [41:56]
• Building marketing in the early stages [50:06]

Inside sales, field sales, product-led, channel sales, marketing, post-sales… On a16z GTM, David Ulevitch talks to builders about what it takes to go to market, and the evolving strategies and lessons learned from enterprise companies past and present. Every other Thursday 4-5pm.

For more a16z Clubhouse shows, follow the a16z Club on Clubhouse or visit www.a16z.com/clubhouse. 

• What are red teams and blue teams? [2:03]
• How Cedric cracked Mac Gatekeeper [6:55]
• Apple's response [15:22]
• Cedric's craziest hack [19:24]
• Red team advice for the blue team [22:02]
• Audience Q&A [26:31]

🔐Breach of the Week 🔐looks at who got hacked, how it happened, and what it means for the industry. 

🎙With hosts Joel de la Garza (a16z Security Operating Partner) and Geoff Belknap (CISO LinkedIn) on Clubhouse every Thursday 5-5:30pm.

• Robert's foundational experiences growing up [3:03]
• His introduction to computers, how he got an internship at Bell Labs, and what he learned there [6:38]
• Why he studied chemical engineering [13:15]
• Working at Kraft and engineering macaroni and cheese [15:08]
• Why he moved to investing [18:12]
• How he realized that it made sense to do buyouts in enterprise software [23:19]
• Creating a common playbook for running enterprise software companies [30:45]
• How does he think about retaining vs replacing founders [34:54]
• Vista's approach to evaluating talent and getting people in the right roles [37:02]
• Robert's next ambition [46:10]
• His philosophy of philanthropy [49:15]
• Why he paid off the student debt for Morehouse College Class of 2019 [1:00]

For our upcoming schedule of Clubhouse conversations, follow the a16z Club on Clubhouse or visit a16z.com/clubhouse. 

What is the future of open source in the age of SaaS? Has it become more, or less, relevant with the rise of cloud-based services? What is the connection between open source and open standards? And what does this mean for startups building SaaS apps today? Those questions and more with Nick Schrock (Elementl, GraphQL), Christian Kleinerman (Snowflake), Andrew Shafer (RedHat), and a16z general partners Martin Casado and Peter Levine.  

a16z Infra is the Clubhouse Show where the a16z enterprise team and guests discuss the foundational technology and products that underpin all of tech. We dig deep into data, AI/ML, security, developer tools, compute, network, storage, hardware, and anything else found below the surface of modern  stacks.

Like what you hear? Tune in for our next show on Thursday, April 15, 4-5pm.  

What are the different types of failure? Which can (and can’t) we come back from? And what does it take to turn failure into a comeback story?

The second episode of “4B with Margit” explores failure and comebacks with Suneel Gupta, once a poster child for failure, featured in the New York Times and on the keynote stage of FailCon, whose new book Backable is a study in turning failure into success. Also joining the conversation is Eugene Soltes, Harvard Business School professor and author of Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal; Ash Spiegelberg, a partner at the Brunswick Group specializing corporate reputation and crisis management; and Carlye Adler, the Silicon Valley ghostwriter who helped Suneel with Backable.

“4B with Margit” is a Clubhouse show for raw and unfiltered advice from comms and marketing experts who have seen it all, as well as insider stories from the builders and pioneers who were in the trenches. Think “Scandal” meets “Halt and Catch Fire.” Catch it live Wednesdays 4-5 PST.  

• Fab 5 Freddy on New York in the 70s, Warhol, Blondie, Basquiat, and Yo! MTV Raps [1:40]
• Contrarian strategy and challenging assumptions [5:12]
• Boring AI and solving meaningful problems [8:42]
• Drop-in audio copycats [14:39]
• How is copying software different from remixing hip hop? [21:07]
• Do you want a CEO as an inventor or an operator? [24:12]
• Recruiting sales development reps [30:34]
• Being a boss and having a personal life [36:56]
• How do you tell the story of letting someone go? [42:47]
• Best practices for delegating responsibility [49:46]
• Worst boss advice Ben and Ali have received [57:15]

Boss Talk is the Clubhouse show where a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi, the Founder/CEO of Databricks, discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff... boss stuff. Live every Tuesday 5-6pm on Clubhouse. 

For more a16z Clubhouse shows, follow the a16z Club on Clubhouse or visit www.a16z.com/clubhouse. 

Daphne Koller is the founder and CEO of insitro, a company using AI and machine learning to engineer drug discovery. In this conversation with a16z's Vijay Pande, she discusses how an LLM for cells could revolutionize drug discovery and how to bridge the technological and cultural divide between building with atoms and building with bits.

• [0:59] Why life sciences?
• [3:42] AI in the life sciences
• [7:20] LLM for cells
• [11:55] Engineering disease and drug discovery
• [13:51] Bits vs. atoms
• [17:55] The opportunity ahead

This conversation is part of our AI Revolution series, recorded August 2023 at a live event in San Francisco. The series features some of the most impactful builders in the field of AI discussing and debating where we are, where we’re going, and the big open questions in AI. Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution.

CEO of Quora Adam D’Angelo discusses how building infrastructure for creators can democratize AI, in conversation with a16z’s David George. 

• [01:07] Social networks as compliment to AI
• [03:59] Poe: bringing AI to the masses
• [05:51] The future of AI is multi-model and multimodal
• [08:11] Is the model the product?
• [11:31] Building AI infrastructure for creators
• [13:41] Navigating platform shifts
• [16:02] Sharing human- and computer-generated knowledge
• [17:43] Knowledge sharing on the internet
• [20:41] The benefits of scale for AI
• [21:59] Competing on scale or feature differentiation
• [25:01] Fault tolerance as a wedge for startups

This conversation is part of our AI Revolution series, which features some of the most impactful builders in the field of AI discussing and debating where we are, where we’re going, and the big open questions in AI. Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution.

In this SaaS era, partnering with no one means competing with everyone. How the best companies take advantage of ecosystem-led growth—or where they sit in the SaaS ecosystem to improve acquisition, expansion, and access to new markets, as discussed by a16z general partner Sarah Wang and Crossbeam CEO Bob Moore.

• [00:01:43] The birth of ecosystem-led growth
• [00:05:12] The data revolution in partnerships
• [00:12:46] Integrating ecosystem-level GTM motions
• [00:16:29] Bob's founder history
• [00:24:30] Ecosystem-qualified leads and new opportunities
• [00:29:34] ELG as AI force multiplier

For a transcript of this episode of a16z Live!, click here.

In a new episode of In the Vault, a16z General Partner David Haber talks with Marco Argenti, the chief information officer at Goldman Sachs, about bringing fintech processes into financial services, turning developers into clients, and how AI is a major inflection point in the history of technology.

0-1:30 Intro

1:30-12:05 From tech to financial services

12:05-17:30 Turning developers into clients

17:30-23:50 GenAI and productivity

23:50-28:50 The future of financial services

28:50-29:31 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Cofounder and CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei unpacks how far can scaling laws take us and how can AI be used to improve AI, in conversation with a16z's Anjney Midha. 

• [0:59] Dario's background
• [2:45] GPT-2's emergent capabilities
• [5:16] Scaling laws
• [8:55] Why are there so many physicists in AI?
• [11:58] Constitutional AI
• [18:29] Anthropic's Roadmap

This conversation is part of our AI Revolution series, recorded August 2023 at a live event in San Francisco. The series features some of the most impactful builders in the field of AI discussing and debating where we are, where we’re going, and the big open questions in AI. Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution.

High-performance compute is the bedrock of generative AI, and if there’s anyone who knows about high-performance chips, it’s AMD CEO Lisa Su. In this wide-ranging conversation with a16z Operating Partner Bob Swan—himself formerly CEO of Intel—Lisa lays out her vision for the evolution of compute within the AI ecosystem, touching not only on raw power and the continuation of Moore’s Law, but also how AMD will support “the right compute for each form factor” for a wider ranges of real-world gen AI use cases. Lisa also shares her perspective on the state of chip manufacturing, how AMD matches their R&D cycles to fast-moving industries, and how partnerships build strong ecosystems. 

Read more, including a full transcript, here: https://a16z.com/how-to-build-ai-ecos... 

Time stamps:

[00:01:37] Lisa's career in compute
[00:04:48] Compute in the genAI era
[00:09:39] High performance or multimodal?
[00:10:47] Making the genAI ecosystem open
[00:14:16] The chip supply chain
[00:17:53] Resiliency and the CHIPS Act
[00:20:54] How AMD balances long development cycles with short term innovation
[00:24:48] Learnings from the hyperscaler market
[00:26:54] What being fabless means for AMD
[00:31:24] Lisa's advice for startup founders

Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution. 

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, in conversation with a16z's Bob Swan, explains how AI copilots are keeping developers longer in a flow state and why AI copilots more broadly could be the start of an industrial revolution for knowledge work.

• [0:59] Microsoft's approach to AI
• [6:15] The next Industrial Revolution
• [10:47] Developer productivity & flow state
• [15:46] Reprogramming the American Dream
• [20:08] Advice to builders

This conversation is part of our AI Revolution series, recorded August 2023 at a live event in San Francisco. The series features some of the most impactful builders in the field of AI discussing and debating where we are, where we’re going, and the big open questions in AI. Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution.

This podcast is an excerpt. Follow the a16z Club to join conversations with tech founders, builders, and leaders live and in-full.

• Early days of a16z crypto [2:38]
• New crypto governance capabilities [16:34]
• How is the VC model different when investing in crypto? [22:24]
• Crypto regulation and the recent attempt at holiday rulemaking [29:49]
• Is anyone effectively regulating crypto? [34:15]
• How do you start working in crypto? [36:58]
• What problems should crypto founders work on? [43:51]
• Identity, crypto, and the future of social networks [45:15]
• Centralized vs. decentralized: the battle for the internet [48:17]

• What happened at Basecamp and could it have gone differently? [3:51]
• When did Basecamp turn into a 4B? [7:45]
• Why were buyouts  a good policy for Basecamp and Coinbase? [10:26]
• Why not have a more moderate policy? [11:56]
• What makes something "political"? [14:45]
• What about when political issues have a personal impact on employees? [19:18]
• What happened at Peloton and why they apologized [22:53]
• When should you issue an apology?  [26:12]
• How do you rebuild trust after you apologize? [28:32]
• Audience Q&A [33:44]

"4B with Margit" is a Clubhouse show for raw and unfiltered advice from comms and marketing experts who have seen it all, as well as insider stories from the builders and pioneers who were in the trenches. Think “Scandal” meets “Halt and Catch Fire.” Catch it live Wednesdays 4-5 PST. 

For our upcoming schedule of Clubhouse conversations, follow the a16z Club on Clubhouse or visit a16z.com/clubhouse. 

🔐Welcome to Breach of the Week 🔐– the show that looks at who got hacked, how it happened, and what it means for the industry. 🎙With hosts Joel de la Garza (a16z Security Operating Partner) and Geoff Belknap (CISO LinkedIn)

👉 On the first episode: 

• the Verkada hack and the Cloudflare response with Joe Sullivan (CSO Cloudflare)
• $16 SMS hacks, how is it possible and what does it mean for SMS? 
• distracted guard allows intruder into Andrews Air Force Base
• Capcom had a breach and made everyone return to the office
• a Florida mother and assistant principal  hacked the homecoming queen competition so her daughter could win

For more security chatter, Breach of the Week airs on Clubhouse every Thursday 5-5:30pm. 

a16z cofounders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz answer questions on tech trends, company building, and more live on Clubhouse Mondays at 7pm PT.

In this conversation:

• NFTs and tokenization — how will they impact the arts, media, music and investing strategies?
• The potential for DeFi
• Using shocking new rules to create culture
• Structuring options to attract talent 
• Spending time in the markets vs. timing the market
• Operation Warp Speed — will it accelerate how novel medical treatments come to market?
• Younger workers and building professional connections in a hybrid world

• What makes a category? [0:37]
• The leading indicator? Everyone thinks you're crazy. [5:36]
• Can you create a category whole cloth? [7:02]
• How to create a category [12:05]
• The best category creation CEOs are product marketers [15:55]
• Category creation tactics: certification programs [18:54]
• Category creation tactics: persona-based storytelling [22:17]
• Is there a repeatable way to make a category? [25:35]
• The role of the CTO and product teams in creating the message [29:22]
• How do you structure product marketing? [45:16]

This is an excerpt from the a16z Clubhouse show a16z Infra. To catch full episodes of the show, follow the a16z Club on Clubhouse. 

• Who is your "B" and who is your "C"? [2:02]
• Why did they choose B2C2B? [6:36]
• How did they craft their enterprise story? [11:42]
• Does going B2C2B increase CAC (customer acquisition costs)? [16:56]
• Three things to build an enterprise story around [22:26]
• How did their choice of B2C2B impact investor conversations? [34:23]
• What mix of consumer vs. healthcare talent did they need? [40:42] 

For more on the new digital health go-to-market, visit a16z.com/digital-health-builders. And for more great a16z Bio shows on Clubhouse, follow the a16z bio club.

From first discovering the bitcoin white paper through the crypto winters to taking the company public... Coinbase founders Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam tell their story, with Good Time Show hosts Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan, plus early investors, employees, and board members — Garry Tan, Marc Andreessen, Dan Romero, Balaji Srinivasan, and Katie Haun.

In January, device maker Ubiquiti disclosed a breach and urged customers to change passwords. Then in late March, a whisteblower alleged that Ubiquiti had massively downplayed the severity and extent of the breach to preserve the stock price. So, how bad was the breach? What do we, and don't we, know? What does this tell us about best practices for disclosures in the aftermath of a breach? And what is the role of whistleblowers? 

🔐Breach of the Week 🔐looks at who got hacked, how it happened, and what it means for the industry. 

🎙With hosts Joel de la Garza (a16z Security Operating Partner) and Geoff Belknap (CISO LinkedIn) on Clubhouse every Thursday 5-5:30pm.

For some cloud software companies, they don't just build on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, they compete with them. So, how do you stay ahead when competing in the cloud?  a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi, the Founder/CEO of Databricks, cover that, as well as getting product-market fit on your second product, why it's difficult to do both on-prem and cloud software, the importance of making the right unpopular decision, and how to know if a potential exec hire is a cultural fit on this episode of Boss Talk – the Clubhouse show where a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi, the Founder/CEO of Databricks, discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff... boss stuff. 
 

Decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, are one of the hottest topics in crypto and tech right now. But what exactly are they? Why do they matter? And what new modes of governance, ownership, and creation do they make possible?

In a new episode of My First 16, a16z partner Seema Amble talks with co-founder and CEO of Mercury Immad Akhund about the idea of a “minimum delightful product” in fintech, doing the spreadsheet math on unit economics early on, and how to compete in a category already filled with incumbents.

 

0:00 - 1:28 Introduction

1:28 - 9:14 History of Mercury

9:14 - 19:07 Mercury's first customers

19:07 - 22:15 Scaling up

22:15 - 25:48 Pricing journey

25:48 - 31:37 Lessons and advice

a16z general partner David Haber and fintech partner Marc Andrusko talk to Tim Karpoff, the Global Head of Strategy at Citi, where he guides the bank’s core focus areas, as well as future investment in emerging tech like AI. The conversation covers the shifting landscape of banking policy and regulation, the increasingly important role startups are playing in partnership with big banks, and where Tim disagrees with the zeitgeist when it comes to the adoption of AI in financial services.

0:00-1:05 Intro

1:06-2:28 Navigating bureaucracy

2:29-4:26 What "chief strategy officer" entails 

4:27-8:18 Citi's role in the banking ecosystem

8:19-9:16 Fallout from the 2023 banking crisis

9:17-13:10 Citi's revised risk controls and tech investment

13:11-14:59 How Citi works with startups

15:00-20:00 Citi's future: AI and regulation

20:01-23:33 What people get wrong when it comes to AI 

23:33-24:12 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Supercell CEO and co-founder Ilkka Paananen discusses collaborative decision-making on game teams, learning from failure, product design, building company culture, and more with a16z partner Jonathan Lai, Stillfront SVP Andrew Green, Proletariat CEO Seth Sivak, and Indie MEGABOOTH founder Kelly Wallick on Games Club.

• What are you doing with real world data? [1:39]
• How valuable is real world data? [7:24]
• How and where do we need shared data infrastructure? [16:37]
• Can real world data be used for clinical decision support? [20:40]
• Are diagnostic companies becoming the data aggregator layer? [26:52]
• What will define the core competency of academic medical centers (AMCs)? [30:35] 
• How could drug manufacturers use real world data?  [33:58]

For more on the digital health, visit a16z.com/digital-health-builders. And for more great a16z Bio shows on Clubhouse, follow the a16z bio club.

In this episode, a16z partner Seema Amble talks with the founder and current executive chairman of Marqeta Jason Gardner about what it means to be welded to your customer and how to expand in multiple verticals.

0:00-1:10 Intro

1:10-6:01 Marqeta's beginning

6:01-9:15 First customers

9:15-16:25 "Magic" product market fit

16:25-24:58 Building customer relationships/Pricing

24:58-32:18 Advice for founders

Ben Horowitz discusses the leadership styles of Intel’s Andy Grove and Apple’s Bill Campbell, how Okta won its market with culture, and how to look for and hire the talent you don’t have in an interview with David Weiden, founding partner at Khosla Ventures, at the Khosla Ventures CEO Summit. Read a transcript of the conversation here. 

0:40: The management legacy of Intel’s Andy Grove
4:26: Why everyone remembers Bill Campbell
7:35: How culture gave Okta the competitive edge
12:15: Finding the talent you don’t have
16:07: Building a resilient company culture

Read a transcript of this conversation here. 

In this episode of a16z Live, Grant LaFontaine, the co-founder and CEO of the livestream shopping platform Whatnot, talks with a16z General Partner Connie Chan about building the company, his experience as the site's first person to go live, and why he prefers Los Angeles over San Francisco. What follows is a slightly edited version of that conversation.

On this episode of the a16z Bio Clubhouse Show, a16z general partners Vineeta Agarwala and Vijay Pande talk to guest Ben Oakes, cofounder, President and CEO of Scribe Therapeutics. The conversation covers the the power of engineering gene editors, the transition from academia to a startup, and how to select the first indication to target with a novel bio platform.

In this episode: 

• Melody McCloskey - CEO of StyleSeat, a booking platform that connects stylists and beauty professionals with clients. Since its founding in 2011, StyleSeat has powered 150 million beauty appointments and generated over $6.5 billion in revenue for beauty professionals. The company has created a loyal community of the country’s leading hair, makeup and nail stylists.
• Camille Ricketts - Head of Marketing at Notion, a popular workspace collaboration and productivity tool that has developed an almost cult-like following of users.
• Eric Lam - Founder of AspireIQ, an influencer marketing and community building platform that works with big brands like Walmart and Marriott as well as with startups to help them identify and activate their most valuable brand advocates, empowering them to share their passion for their favorite brands with the world.

"4B with Margit" is a Clubhouse show for raw and unfiltered advice from comms and marketing experts who have seen it all, as well as insider stories from the builders and pioneers who were in the trenches. Think “Scandal” meets “Halt and Catch Fire.” Catch it live Wednesdays 4-5 PST.  

For our upcoming schedule of Clubhouse conversations, visit a16z.com/clubhouse. 

An excerpt from a Clubhouse conversation, where Marc interviews Ken Griffin, CEO and founder of Citadel, on GameStop one year later and why the stock price hasn't crashed, as well as about his winning bid for the Constitution in the auction against ConstitutionDAO.

Sales wants more features. Product gets bogged down with one-off requests. Progress and growth grinds to a halt. It's a familiar story. How Segment turned the sales-product tension into a successful $3.2B acquisition, as told by the former CRO Joe Morrissey and former chief product development officer Tido Carriero.

[00:01:29] Joe's start as CRO

[00:03:40] The low point: annual planning

[00:07:59] Building a more focused product roadmap

[00:10:57] Why GTM feedback is essential to building great product

[00:13:04] Identifying value drivers in 48 hours

[00:19:11] How technical should sales be?

[00:20:44] How annual planning changed day-to-day operations

[00:22:57] Segment's Lighthouse program

[00:24:54] Reorging to deliver on new product priorities

[00:27:14] How engineering helped develop the product roadmap

[00:29:18] Leading a platform initiative

This conversation was recorded at ELC 2023. To read a transcript of this conversation, click here. For more about value-based selling and moving upmarket, check out Getting Ready to Move Upmarket and The Key to Selling in a Downturn. 

.

The API economy and a Cambrian explosion of apps are transforming best-in-class tech from monolithic tools to a stack of 20 applications that work together. Amid this unbundling, partnerships have become a critical part of early go-to-market strategy that can lead to higher quality pipeline and accelerated sales. In this fireside chat, recorded at the 2022 Crossbeam Supernode conference, a16z General Partner Sarah Wang and Bob Moore, Cofounder and CEO of Crossbeam, discuss how partnerships have changed and why the best startups invest early in building a partnership program.   

You can read a transcript of this podcast here. 

In this episode of a16z Live, we are joined by Titan Invest co-founder and co-CEO Clayton Gardner; a16z General Partner Anish Acharya; and a16z growth partner, Alex Immerman. The trio starts their conversation by diving into the difference between active and passive investment management and where Titan fits into that matrix. Building upon that foundation, they discuss how the fintech market is changing, why historically the best fund managers have not taken retail money, and whether that's changing the importance of curation in UX on competitive platforms, and of course the role of regulation.

In this episode: 

• Jamie Byrne, Senior Director of Creator Partnerships, YouTube
• Shishir Mehrotra, former Director of Product Management, YouTube; former VP of Product, Engineering, UX, YouTube; current Founder & CEO, Coda
• Shiva Rajaraman, former Director, Product Management (etc.); current VP Shops and Business, Facebook
• Lauren Riihimimaki (aka LaurDIY), Canadian YouTuber

• In what ways is digital health for complex care under or overrated? [4:04]
• Are digital health solutions better suited to tackling clinical or non-clinical needs for complex care? [17:32]
• The challenge of the physician's inbox [27:55]
• Have we meaningfully moved the needle on complex digital care? If so, where? [32:08]
• Should we focus on applying basic tech to easy optimization and automation problems or advanced tech to more complex problems? [41:48] 

It's Time to Heal, Mondays at 5pm PT on Clubhouse. Join the a16z bio team — Jorge Conde, Vineeta Agarwala, Julie Yoo, and Vijay Pande — plus special guests as they explore all the ways that biology is technology.

Will AI take all the design jobs? Dylan Field, founder and CEO of Figma, looks at the relationship between designers, developers, and AI, in conversation with a16z's David George. 

• [0:58] Will AI replace designers?
• [4:13] Human vs. AI creativity
• [8:38] Applying AI to design
• [11:35] Startups vs. incumbents

This conversation is part of our AI Revolution series, recorded August 2023 at a live event in San Francisco. The series features some of the most impactful builders in the field of AI discussing and debating where we are, where we’re going, and the big open questions in AI. Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution.

On this episode of the a16z Bio Clubhouse Show, a16z general partners Vineeta Agarwala, Julie Yoo, Vijay Pande, and Jorge Conde talk to guest Shantanu Nundy, the Chief Medical Officer of Accolade. The conversation covers Dr. Nundy's new book, "Care After Covid: What the Pandemic Revealed Is Broken in Healthcare and How to Reinvent It",  the next steps in the evolution of hospitals, interoperability (or lack thereof), and more.

In this episode, which took place at a16z's Connect Fintech event, a16z General Partner David George interviews Capital Group's Mark Casey on his investment philosophy, what sends him into what he calls "barnacle mode," his preference for customer-focused North Star metrics, and more.  

0:00-1:42 Intro

1:42-5:58 Approach to investing

5:58-8:20 What Casey told Jeff Bezos, and what he learned

8:20-12:57 How CEOs communicate with public market investors; unconventional North Star metrics

12:57-15:48: Why Casey loves dividends

15:48-20:44 Macro trends and investing theses

20:44-21:37 Ecommerce predictions 

21:37-23:15 Opportunities and choke points in AI

23:15-25:18 What makes a great public company?

25:18-26:04 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

SPEAKERS:

• Aarthi Ramamurthy, international, Clubhouse
• Donnie Dinch, founder and CEO, Bitski
• Gabby Dizon, cofounder, Yield Guild Games
• Jarrod Dicker, operating partner, TCG
• Jesse Walden, founder, Variant Fund
• Jon Lai, principal, a16z
• Packy McCormick, founder, Not Boring
• Sriram Krishnan, general partner, a16z
• Twobadour, founder, Metapurse
• Justin “3LAU” Blau, producer and musician

originally aired on Clubhouse  https://twitter.com/sriramk/status/1422987628958208007

In this episode of a16z Live, David Banks, a former Riot Games executive who's now the co-founder and CEO of Elodie Games, and Timmu Tõke, the co-founder and CEO of Ready Player Me, a leading platform for cross game avatars, join a16z General Partner and games investor Jon Lai for a conversation about where they think the metaverse is going, and the future of building games

SPEAKERS (in order they are heard in the episode):

• Shannon Kelly, a16z
• Connie Chan, a16z
• Brandon Chu, VP Product and GM  of Platform, Shopify
• D'Arcy Coolican, a16z
• Nait Jones, a16z
• Jess Lee, Cofounder and CEO, Modern Citizen
• Imran Khan, Co-founder and CEO, Verishop

This is an excerpt from the a16z Clubhouse show People Behind the Product. To catch full episodes of the show, follow the a16z Club on Clubhouse. 

Conway’s Law, how to be a boss of bosses, Silicon Valley post-pandemic, and more on the second episode of Boss Talk. The Clubhouse show where a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi, the Founder/CEO of Databricks, discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff...  boss stuff. 

In a new episode of In the Vault, a16z General Partner Angela Strange talks with Jeff Sloan, former CEO of Global Payments, about how he was early to spot significant industry trends, how to make bets that move an organization, and the sea change that AI represents for the financial services industry.

 

0-1:40 Intro

1:40-8:15 Joining Global Payments

8:15-19:30 Placing many bets

19:30-26:10 Deal integration and scale advantage

26:10-31:35 GenAI sea change

31:35-32:19 Outro

 

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

a16z cofounders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz answer questions on tech trends, company building, and more live on Clubhouse Mondays at 7pm PT.

In this conversation: 

• Which institution will last longer Harvard or the US? [00:58]
• How do you craft a good culture in a high pressure environment? [13:45]
• When will we have AGI? [31:15]
• Are network effects today so strong that big tech incumbents (e.g., Google, Facebook, Amazon) can deliver better products than startups? [44:06]
• What actually is the internet? [50:03]

For our upcoming schedule of Clubhouse conversations, visit a16z.com/clubhouse. 

When Ben and Marc started a16z, CAA and its founder Michael Ovitz served as inspiration for how to break into an industry dominated by a few large incumbents. In 1975, a few large talent agencies dominated the entertainment industry. To break into the industry, Michael and CAA came up with a new playbook — rather than a single agent representing an actor or actress, he turned the entire agency into a network. In this special edition of Boss Talk, Michael joins Ben, Marc, and Ali to talk about how both CAA and a16z went from scrappy startup to industry leader by giving talent access to bigger networks. 

Boss Talk is the Clubhouse show where a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi, the Founder/CEO of Databricks, discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff... boss stuff. Live every Tuesday 5-6pm on Clubhouse. 

King.com cofounder Riccardo Zacconi (developer of Candy Crush Saga) and Glu/Playfish cofounder Kristian Segerstrale (now the CEO of Super Evil Megacorp) discuss trends in the games industry, failing fast, and building enduring startups with a16z partner Jonathan Lai, Indie MEGABOOTH founder Kelly Wallick, and Stillfront SVP Andrew Green on Games Club.

Ben and Ali are joined by guest Shaka Senghor, who after 20 years in prison, became an author and activist for prison reform, an entrepreneur, and most recently, head of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at Tripactions. Shaka shares what prison taught him about building trust in a team, as well as what he sees as the path — and the obstacles— to meaningful diversity in the workplace. 

Boss Talk is the Clubhouse show where a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi, the Founder/CEO of Databricks, discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff... boss stuff. Live every Tuesday 5-6pm on Clubhouse. 

a16z co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz talk about tech trends, company-building, and more in the second episode of their new Clubhouse show, One on One with A and Z. Catch their show live at 7pm PT every Monday.

In this occasional Clubhouse series, a16z co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz talk with Steve Stoute, the founder and CEO of UnitedMasters and a former executive at Interscope and Sony Music, about the changing music business, the role of technology, how Steve started UnitedMasters, and more. Special guests MC Hammer and Fab 5 Freddy also joined.

On this episode of the a16z Bio Clubhouse Show, a16z general partners Julie Yoo and Jorge Conde, managing partner Scott Kupor, and market development partner Venkat Mocherla talk to guest Florian Otto, cofounder and CEO of Cedar. The conversation covers how to improve two of the trickiest aspect of healthcare: price transparency and patient engagement.

• The origins of growth hacking [1:20]
• Brand building vs. growth hacking? [13:58]
• Where does growth fit into the organization?  [31:06]
• The cold start problem: growth hacking from 0 to 1 [36:47]
• What can't be measured? [47:53]
• How do you test and validate new channels? [51:38]
•  Do growth hacks always work, or at some point does it come down to product? [54:55]
• How do you allocate budget? [1:00:27]

For the latest a16z conversations on Clubhouse, follow the a16z Club. 

Guests Elon Musk and Vlad Tenev (of Robinhood) join hosts of The Good Time Show on Clubhouse Sriram Krishnan & Aarthi Ramamurthy, Marc Andreessen, Steven Sinofsky, Garry Tan, and others.

As genAI expands through the enterprise, many leaders are figuring out how to evolve their genAI prototypes into production-ready tools. Pinecone CEO Edo Liberty and LangChain CEO Harrison Chase discuss which parts of the stack to build or buy, how to improve out-of-the-box models by helping customers select and ingest the right data, and picking the right partners to scale genAI applications with a16z Growth General Partner Sarah Wang.

• [00:02:16] Navigating the gap from prototype to production
• [00:07:03] How to educate partners on genAI tools and capabilities
• [00:11:38] Deciding whether to build or buy
• [00:17:36] Successful implementations of genAI
• [00:21:20] Balancing enterprise and open-source community needs
• [00:23:06] Balancing short-term revenue gains with long-term vision
• [00:25:18] Picking the right partners to scale

For a transcript of this episode of a16z Live!, click here.

 

a16z Infra is the Clubhouse Show where the a16z enterprise team and guests discuss the foundational technology and products that underpin all of tech. We dig deep into data, AI/ML, security, developer tools, compute, network, storage, hardware, and anything else found below the surface of modern  stacks.

Like what you hear? Tune in for our next show on Thursday, April 29, 4-5pm.  

• The early days of Zimrides [2:08]
• Driving early virality [7:56]
• Competing with Uber [15:47]
• Why they took political stances [27:03]
• Managing through the pandemic [38:09]
• The future focus for Lyft -- autonomous vehicles and the end of car ownership [42:50]

Follow the a16z Club to join conversations with tech founders, builders, and leaders live and in-full.

Pricing has huge implications for market size. How do you know if the price isn't right? And when a customer says something is too expensive, what are they really telling you? Also on Boss Talk #6: creating a new category, how Ali learned to handle racism, and when to bet on your next product. 

Boss Talk is the Clubhouse show where a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi, the Founder/CEO of Databricks, discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff... boss stuff. Live every Tuesday 5-6pm on Clubhouse. 

In this conversation with a16z general partner David George, Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang discusses the three pillars of AI—models, compute, and data—and how creating abundant data is core to the evolution of gen AI. With Scale’s work across enterprise, automotive, and the public sector, Alex is also building the critical infrastructure that will allow any organization to use their proprietary data to build bespoke gen AI applications. In addition to talking about frontier data, Alex also shares his learnings from the growth of Scale, his approach to leadership, and what he thinks growth-stage founder/CEOs tend to get wrong about hiring.  

Read more, including a full transcript, here: https://a16z.com/frontier-data-foundries-alex-wang-scale-ai/

Timestamps: 

[00:00:58] How frontier data will change gen AI 

[00:08:47] Are big tech companies over-investing in AI? 

[00:14:39] Where the best AI businesses will thrive 

[00:17:05] How enterprise businesses are approaching AI adoption 

[00:19:50] What does the next phase of gen AI products look like? 

[00:23:23] Alex's approach to scaling Scale 

[00:25:36] The founder fallacy 

[00:30:12] MEI and how Alex views talent acquisition

Hiring the right executives at the right time is the key to scaling your company. But to many founders, the executive search and hiring process can feel like a black box. a16z talent partner Matt Oberhardt dives deep into the executive search process with Kelli Dragovich and Nolan Church on the HR Heretics podcast.

[00:01:21] How a16z talent partners assess talent

[00:03:42] Balancing internal and external roles

[00:04:57] Measuring success in talent assessment

[00:06:07] The MOC

[00:10:29] Whiteboard sessions for assessing fit

[00:13:10] Referencing as a continuous cycle

[00:16:47] Putting negative references in context

[00:20:25] Assessing personal growth vs. mistakes

[00:21:50] Establishing trust with founders

[00:25:03] Vetting EQ

[00:26:53] Measuring success of what you can't control

[00:28:43] Why hire veterans for startups

[00:33:45] Talent landscape in 2024

[00:35:20] Recruiting top talent in a tight market

[00:38:42] Hiring the "operational glue"

[00:39:36] The value of tough feedback

You can read the key takeaways from this conversation, along with a transcript, here.

In this episode: 

• Jim Messina - CEO, The Messina Group; formerly Obama's Deputy Chief of Staff; known as the "fixer" and "the most powerful person in Washington you've never heard of"
• Adrian Durbin - currently at Greenbrier; former Director of Policy Comms at Lyft
• Risa Heller - CEO of Risa Heller Communications; former Director of Comms for Senator Charles Schumer

"4B with Margit" is a Clubhouse show for raw and unfiltered advice from comms and marketing experts who have seen it all, as well as insider stories from the builders and pioneers who were in the trenches. Think “Scandal” meets “Halt and Catch Fire.” Catch it live Wednesdays 4-5 PST.  

For our upcoming schedule of Clubhouse conversations, visit a16z.com/clubhouse. 

 

• Indra didn't plan her career -- and that was a good thing [2:15]
• The personal tradeoffs of professional success [4:24]
• Deciding between a job at GE and PepsiCo [7:27]
• Rising up the ranks of PepsiCo [12:13]
• Transitioning PepsiCo to healthier foods... and doing well by doing good [16:34]
• Management hack: writing letters to parents [19:04] 
• "Performance with Purpose" -- what is it and why does it matter? [22:15]
• Work-life balance requires tradeoffs [23:24]
• Meeting Steve Jobs and learning the power of design [31:02]
• The loneliness of leadership [33:15]

This is an excerpt from the Good Time Show on  Clubhouse. To catch full live episodes of the show, follow the a16z Club on Clubhouse. 

On this episode of the a16z Bio Clubhouse Show, a16z general partners Vineeta Agarwala, Jorge Conde, Julie Yoo, and Vijay Pande talk to guest Jay Bradner, President of the Novartis Institute of Biomedical Research (NIBR). The conversation covers the challenges of translating basic research into a clinical application, the state of innovation in therapeutics, and the transition from drug hunting to drug farming.

How do you keep internal politics in check? How do you know when an employee is not working? And how do you maintain culture as you grow?  Those questions and more on the fourth episode of Boss Talk, the Clubhouse show where Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff... boss stuff.

a16z general partner David Haber talks to John Stecher, Chief Technology Officer at Blackstone, where he advances cutting-edge technology, heads up innovation investing, and advises the firm’s investment teams and portfolio companies. The conversation covers how he decides whether to build tech in-house or partner with startups, what qualities he’s looking for in early stage companies, and how he sees AI impacting real estate, credit, energy, and ecommerce.

0:00-1:05 Intro

1:06-3:55 Changes in finance x tech over the past 2 decades

3:56-5:06 Investing in "themes" across asset classes

5:07-7:00 What the CTO role entails 

7:01-9:00 "Build it" vs. "buy it": trade-offs

9:01-11:57 Advice for early stage companies

11:58-16:37 Ways Blackstone is incorporating generative AI

16:38-17:46 How AI changes the role of an analyst

17:47-21:04 Gen AI's impact on private equity, real estate, credit, more

 21:05-22:54 How Blackstone will evolve over the next five years

22:55-23:26 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

On this episode of the a16z Bio Clubhouse Show, a16z general partners Vineeta Agarwala, Julie Yoo, and Jorge Conde talk to guest Connie Chen, Chief Medical Officer at Lyra health. The conversation covers what makes digital health different from traditional healthcare delivery, how to build a sustainable business model while maintaining high standards for care, and advice for founders of digital health startups.

The first episode of the new Clubhouse show Boss Talk, where a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi, the Founder/CEO of Databricks, discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff...  boss stuff. 

Welcome to a16z Infra, the Clubhouse Show where the a16z enterprise team discusses the foundational technology and products that underpin all of tech. We dig deep into data, AI/ML, security, developer tools, compute, network, storage, hardware, and anything else found below the surface of modern  stacks.

On our first show, a16z general partners Ben Horowitz, Martin Casado, and David Ulevitch  talk about their journeys as infrastructure founders-turned-investors; what exactly  infrastructure is; how it's different from other types of tech; and the importance of technical founders developing go-to-market know-how. Plus, what AWS canceling Parler signals about the state of infrastructure, the impact of cloud costs on margins, and the changing relevance of open source. 

Like what you hear? Tune in for our next show with former Microsoft Windows president Steven Sinofsky on Thursday, April 1, 4-5pm.