A16z Podcast

You've heard a version of this story before: Steve Jobs calls some executive out of the blue to come work for him. Only this time the story turns out great ... and the company wasn't Apple. This episode of the a16z Podcast shares some of the journey that former CFO Lawrence Levy went on with Steve Jobs as they took Pixar -- a company then on the verge of failure -- to its IPO and subsequent greatest hits. It's sort of an adventure story but is really more of a quest for product-market fit. How did they figure out a model for such an old-but-new business (i.e., animation and entertainment)? How did they take an improbable plan and figure out how to make it work -- both qualitatively and quantitatively? How did they then navigate and straddle the diverse worlds of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street? And finally, how did they price their IPO, which was also a symbol of Steve Jobs' comeback story ... a narrative that's sometimes lost in the Apple story. From the business of creativity to corporate culture

We live in very interesting times, to say the least -- whether it's a shift in how technology is built and adopted today compared to the past; a changing international landscape with leapfrogging players; or an increased cyberattack surface as computing and networking touch everything. So what's next for technology and national security? This episode of the a16z Podcast is based on a conversation that took place last month between Marc Andreessen and Michèle Flournoy -- former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and co-founder of the Center for a New American Security -- moderated by Matt Spence, partner on the a16z Policy and Regulatory Affairs team (and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense). It covers everything from technology procurement and the tyranny of the inbox, to the politics of industrial policy and ethics debates around use-cases for new technologies. But... do we really want innovation, not just in the abstract but in the specifics? If so, how do we think about the future? And how ca

In business, as in politics, "the movement is the message" -- whether that "movement" is a product that's taking off grassroots-style in an enterprise, or is a political candidate. In fact, you can think of political campaigns in general as a lot like startups ... only there's no second place in politics! And you can definitely think of business -- and in particular go-to-market strategy -- as a lot like political campaigns: in allocating marketing resources, going up against incumbents, and much more. Ultimately, it all comes down to the message -- setting the criteria and narrative as tailored for different "buyer" personas, from developers/users/CxOs to the voters you have to persuade. But how do you tell a message is working? With such complex, coordinated efforts behind a visionary product or person, is there room for instinct in message development and discipline? And where does the competition come in? They're laying traps for sure, and while that's obvious in politics it

There have been a number of new device announcements this past month -- from Google’s new Pixel phone (the first time they made their own phone on the hardware side as well) to more recently, Apple’s announcements around a new Macbook Pro and innovations in touch (including a Touchbar that replaces function keys and bringing TouchID to Macs); and then Microsoft, which among other things announced a new Surface Studio -- an all-in-one touchscreen desktop PC. How do these change the future of work? Turns out, even seemingly small interface improvements could have significant consequences for user behavior. Just look at touch. More broadly, though, what happens when a software maker becomes a hardware maker? Or when we're in the middle of an architecture shift, as we are right now with x86 to ARM processors in mobile (and beyond)? It's all about where you're at on the "S-curve" of innovation (a concept first coined by Gabriel Tarde and expanded on Everett Rogers in his theory of innovation diffusion).

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, 20,000 genes (and counting) didn't really explain why disease occurred. Sure, some could be explained by mutations in a single genome, but most, like cancer, are too damn complex. And while the focused, singular approach to understanding disease did yield some useful therapeutics, it's now reached its limits. It hasn't helped much on the diagnostics (and early detection) front, either. That's where a systems approach to bio comes in, drawing on machine learning techniques as well as a sort of "Moore's Law" for genomics that's driving costs down, and fast. We're now focusing on the 99% of the genome that hasn't really been understood yet in terms of how they affect the human body and disease. But what will it take for such an approach to succeed? For one thing, it involves building an applications layer on top of the sequencing layer -- so can we borrow less

From glittery reaction gifs modded by grandparents to rage faces on Reddit, stickers (gifs and other layered images) and emotive “biaoqing” have taken over messaging culture in China and beyond. Stickers are tied to filter culture, too — whether originating in real life as purikura photo sticker booths in Japan or digitally as Snapchat filters. Why are these forms of social communication so popular? Because sometimes you just want to say “I feel totally Nicki Minaj side-eye dot-GIF about this”, and no one can give a side-eye as good as Nicki Minaj can. But it’s not just about isolated expressions, celebrity stickers like Kimoji, or personalized bitmoji; stickers are shaping and codifying the way people talk to each other online in new and multi-layered ways. It’s even connected to mobile livestreaming, a phenomenon that’s taking off in China right now, in the most mundane (food eating streams) to subversive (seductive banana eating streams) ways. And how are all these memes tied to monetization and payments?

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 reality or VR. There have been many hardware moves by many players, both recently and over the past year. Who's in it to win it? How far are we from the "holy grail" of headsets that will truly mainstream VR? Will the killer app -- or layer -- for VR be social? And is there enough enthusiasm and activity to get us past the "trough of disillusionment" that inevitably follows the "peak of inflated expectations" in the hype cycle for new technologies like VR? In this episode of the a16z Podcast, partners Chris Dixon, Benedict Evans, and Kyle Russell deep dive on all the gear and players in the VR ecosystem; the evolution of content beyond gaming (with a teeny hint at what a VR horror genre might look like); and how the high-end will push the medium forward for all. The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Manageme

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 movie -- directed by Mira Nair and based on a book by Tim Crothers -- depicts the true story of Ugandan chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi. The conversation, hosted by Ben Horowitz, features actor David Oyelowo who (among other roles, previously played Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in "Selma") and plays Robert Katende, the engineer-turned-mentor who taught community sports and chess to kids in the slums of Kampala, Uganda. photo credits: Prentiss Earl lll

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 an explosion of data. All types, all sizes, and all over the place. And much of it is a sort of industrial "data exhaust", where companies aren't quite sure what question to ask of the data but are being bombarded with data due to the variety of data sources available today -- from websites to sensors (and therefore data capture) everywhere. Before there is even a signal in the noise. So how do you solve a problem like this-Data? Beyond requiring new types of plumbing and integrations, enterprises now expect -- given the age of mobile, web, cloud, and heck, let's add millennials to the mix too -- self service. To be able to ask, get, fit (curve-fit), predict. To take back the enterprise from the patchwork of integration and number of vendors we all have to deal with -- the scope of which most companies in fact are not truly aware of. It's about the lif

Just as "social networking" is a bland term that doesn't really capture the layers of what happens underneath (and on top of) social networking platforms, "crowdfunding" is a broader phenomenon than what the term and tools implies. Or so argue the guests on this episode of the a16z Podcast, Tilt co-founder and CEO James Beshara and a16z general partner Jeff Jordan with Sonal Chokshi. Crowdfunding isn't just about reaching a certain threshold to make something, but it's also about "pre-commerce" or "pretail" -- the next evolution in commerce, which involves the ability to suss out demand before production and sell directly to consumers. Crowdfunding is also about "social commerce" -- the ability to not only build community, but trigger collective action towards some goal. There's even a sort of Dunbar's number equivalent for crowdfunding, the tipping point at which the momentum of this collective action takes over (hint: it involves the magic number of 34%). Be

"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 visible in white? They were a critical part of the larger buy-Apple innovation narrative. So what happens now when those wires -- an emblematic and enduring image -- are no longer visible, as is the case with the removal of the traditional headphone jack in iPhone 7? It's part of a broader story, both about how product narratives are shared/told and about how innovation happens: "amazingly", subtly, and sometimes, invisibly. Some innovations, like preventing "battery anxiety" or building a platform ecosystem or even laying the tracks for a train that hasn't arrived yet ("ear computers" or "audible computing"? VR/AR? car?) take time. And a direction we may not be able to anticipate from the outside looking in. ...Or so argue the a16zers on this episode of the a16z Podcast featuring in-house analyst Benedict Evans and board

Sleep, productivity, and creatively are intimately linked, for better and for worse. And "we are living under a collective delusion that burnout is the way to succeed," observes Arianna Huffington, author of The Sleep Revolution. Not only does this affect our health and resilience, she argues, but the data shows that even though we are working longer hours than ever, we lose 11 days of productivity a year per employee due to sickness or diminished capacity. (It also hurts our ability to work in teams.) This isn't just a problem in the tech industry, either. BuzzFeed News senior writer Nitasha Tiku observes that "Any business book that's valorizing or diving into the life of a CEO is going to talk about how much he or she sleeps." But sleep isn't just a biological act, it's also a psychological (insomnia, anxiety, TV binge-watching?) as well as a socioeconomic one when you consider who gets to sleep (people higher or lower in the workplace hierarchy, other demographic factors?). And where d

"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". So shares Adrian Cockcroft, who helped lead Netflix's migration from datacenter to the cloud -- and from monolithic to microservices architecture -- when their streaming business (the "stick"!) was exploding. So how did they -- and how can other companies -- make such big, bet-the-company kind of moves, without getting mired in fanatical internal debates? Does organizational structure need to change, especially if moving from a more product-, than project-based, approach? What happens to security? And finally, what happens to the role of CIOs; what can/should they do? Most interestingly: How will the entire industry be affected as companies not only adopt, but essentially offer, microservices or narrow cloud APIs? How do the trends of microservices, containers, devops, cloud, as-a-service/ on-demand, serverless -- all moves towards more and mor

For better or worse, most of the computing systems that run much of our lives (whether invisibly or visibly) have become increasingly complex -- they're not fully engineered; they're almost grown. And with that we enter a brave new world of "biological" (as opposed to a more "physics") mindset applied to computing. It's more like evolution, horns and all. This isn't just abstract or backend-only stuff. Complex system design affects everything from datacenters and SaaS to word processors and cars, touching human lives in very tangible ways. So how do you solve problems in such systems? How do you even begin to understand "the system" in the first place? And is there anything out there yet that lets us test and verify the output of these systems? (Inquiring minds want to know!) All this and more in this episode of the a16z Podcast, a riff on the theme of "complicated" with complexity scientist Samuel Arbesman and author of the new book Overcomplicated. Also joining the co

Bitcoin quickly made its way from a whitepaper to a production network, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. But its scripting/ programming language was initially, intentionally, limited for a few reasons, which meant that building new apps on bitcoin wasn't always easy. Enter ethereum in 2014 -- a public blockchain platform that moved away from the "Swiss-army knife" approach to a more general protocol approach. This would in turn allow endless (and entirely new) use cases to be built on top of the blockchain, whether smart contracts or "app coins" that allow decentralized crowdfunding and decentralized business models. The results, at first glance, may seem just like a new way of financing a company. But it actually goes much deeper than that: They're really software protocols that are almost replacing centralized companies or what those companies would do. The possibilities are endless... In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Ethereum inventor and co-creator Vitalik Buterin

Now that we know to price and plan early, price high -- especially for category-creating or "pre-chasm" businesses -- how do we handle freemium models? While free to premium is a great way to get bottoms-up, often viral traction in an enterprise, the challenge is figuring out just where and how to "draw the line" between where free ends and paid begins. Especially for open source, which while not necessarily free/mium, is also affected by these questions. And in that case, how does one balance the developer community and desire to "spread the religion" within and beyond the enterprise? All this and more in this episode of the a16z Podcast with Andreessen Horowitz general partners (who cover all things infrastructure) Martin Casado and Peter Levine and Go-to-Market and EBC operating head Mark Cranney. The trick, they tells us, involves layering ... like layers in a cake.

"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 technical founders? And how should startups go about raising prices -- or more specifically, creating value -- for their products? In this episode of the a16z Podcast, former sales VP Mark Cranney (and head of a16z's EBC and go-to-market practice for startups) and former startup founder (and general partner focused on all things infrastructure) Martin Casado talk to managing partner Scott Kupor about pricing for startups ... especially for category-creating businesses. It's not all "pricing, pricing, pricing" though -- there's another important "p" in there too!

This podcast is all about emoji. But it's really about how innovation really comes about -- through the tension between standards vs. proprietary moves; the politics of time and place; and the economics of creativity, from making to funding ... Beginning with a project on Kickstarter to crowd-translate Moby Dick entirely into emoji to getting dumplings into emoji form and ending with the Library of Congress and an "emoji-con". So joining us for this conversation are former VP of Data at Kickstarter Fred Benenson (and the man behind 'Emoji Dick') and former New York Times reporter and current Unicode emoji subcommittee member Jennifer 8. Lee (one of the women behind the dumpling emoji). So yes, this podcast is all about emoji. But it's also about where emoji fits in the taxonomy of social communication -- from emoticons to stickers -- and why this matters, from making emotions machine-readable to being able to add "limbic" visual expression to our world of text. If emoji is a (very limited)

From hardware and hardwires to smartphones and social, technology wants to connect. It's almost a native property of technology and especially software businesses, which is why network effects matter. "It was endemic to these technologies that they wanted to become connected and once connected, they become networks and once networks, they become network effects. Other products like cars or toasters or houses or whatever, aren't natively connected physically or through information sharing," observes James Currier. But not all network effects are equal -- not only can they be strong or weak, there are many different types depending on the business. Currier, who is the co-founder and managing partner of an accelerator (NFX Guild) that advises and runs a runs a program for all kinds of early-stage companies with network effects, shares their ever-evolving taxonomy for thinking about different types of network effects in this episode of the a16z podcast. These labels matter. It's not just words, but lang

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 a legacy of creative intellectual property and technologies such as mobile, geomapping/ geolocation, computer vision, and more. And since "toys are the prelude to serious ideas" [Charles and Ray Eames] or "the next big thing will start out looking like a toy" [Chris Dixon via Clayton Christensen], we want to understand this phenomenon beyond the hype and the hope: Not only is Nintendo stock soaring, but people are sharing amazing stories of massive public play, meeting strangers, saving dogs, fighting crime, helping autistic children. So what are some of the mechanics behind the game and its viral growth (and is this also a case of network effects)? Is this the first in a new wave of phone-based lightweight augmented reality a.k.a. "light AR"? How will things change as our environments become even more sensorified or more people embr