a16z Podcast

  • Innovating While Scaling: Lessons from Amazon

    In this episode from February 2021, early Amazon execs Colin Bryar and Bill Carr — in conversation with a16z’s Sonal Chokshi — go beyond the well-known artifacts of Amazon innovation, like the memo and the…


  • When Gross Margins Matter

    Gross margins–which are essentially a company’s revenue from products and services minus the costs to deliver those products and services to customers–are one of the most important financial metrics for any startup and growing business.…


  • The Founder to Investor Journey

    This week, we have a special crossover episode from June 2021: Joel Beasley, host of the Modern CTO podcast, interviews a16z general partner David Ulevitch about David’s journey from working at an ISP and Dot…


  • Inside Apple Software Design

    In this wide-ranging conversation from April 2019, a16z’s Frank Chen sits down with Ken Kocienda, a longtime software engineer and designer at Apple from 2001 to 2017, who wrote a book about his career there,…


  • Tesla and the Nature of Disruption

    In this re-run from September 2018, Benedict Evans and Steven Sinofsky talk all about Tesla — and more broadly, the nature of disruption overall. How disruptive is Tesla really, and what exactly are they disrupting —…


  • Designing a Culture of Reinvention

    In this episode from September 2020, originally recorded for the Commonwealth Club of California, Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hasting talks about his new book “No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention” with…


  • The Basics of Growth Marketing: Engagement & Retention

    After achieving product-market fit and starting to gain users, how do startups then avoid the “leaky bucket” problem of losing users as quickly as they gained them? By focusing on user engagement and retention, startups…


  • The Basics of Growth Marketing: User Acquisition

    Once known as “growth hacking”, the concept of Growth has now evolved into an entire discipline that spans marketing, product management, user experience, and more. Why? After achieving product-market fit, startups need to capitalize quickly…


  • The Great Data Debate

    Over a decade after the idea of “big data” was first born, data has become the central nervous system for decision-making in organizations of all sizes. But the modern data stack is evolving and which…


  • Principles for Work and Life

    In the face of great uncertainty, how do you make decisions? Can you really apply the lessons of the past to the present and the future, to navigate seemingly new situations and get what you…