a16z Podcast with George Church (@geochurch) and Jorge Conde (@JorgeCondeBio) Renowned scientist George Church is known for his groundbreaking work and methods used for the first genome sequence, and for his work in genome editing, writing & recoding — in fact, Church’s innovations have become an essential building block for most of the DNA sequencing methods and … Read more
with Peter Ludwig, Qasar Younis (@qasar), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) When people talk about autonomous vehicles, we hear everything from ”we’re much closer than you think” to ”we’re much further than you think”. So where are we, really, in the widespread reality of autonomous vehicles today? It depends, of course, on how you define autonomy … Read more
Bobby Kotick is the CEO of Activision Blizzard (a merger he engineered); it’s one of only two video gaming companies in the Fortune 500, and the largest game network in the world. The company is responsible for some of the most iconic entertainment franchises, including Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft … Read more
with Ryan Caldbeck (@ryan_caldbeck), Jeff Jordan (@jeff_jordan), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) It’s clear that all kinds of commerce companies and consumer products have been disrupted — or enabled — by tech. Yet for certain categories, like consumer packaged goods (CPG), it seems like tech hasn’t changed things very much. How is the rise of so-called … Read more
with Kate Darling (@grok_) and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) We already know that we have an innate tendency to anthropomorphize robots. But beyond just projecting human qualities onto them, as we begin to share more and more spaces, social and private, what kind of relationships will we develop with them? And how will those relationships in … Read more
with Chris Burniske (@cburniske), Joel Monegro (@jmonegro), Denis Nazarov (@Iiterature), and Jesse Walden (@jessewldn) When designing cryptonetworks — really, emerging economies — how do we avoid some of the monetary and fiscal policy failings of ”real-world” economies? Like not separating currency and capital, which accelerated and spread economic growth through the former… but also concentrated … Read more
with Phil Daian (@phildaian) and Ali Yahya (@ali01) Whether in corporations, boardrooms, or political elections, voting is something we see in all kinds of social systems… including blockchains. It’s the natural human tendency for how to organize decisions, and in distributed systems without centralized middlemen, it’s the only clear Schelling point we can come up … Read more
with Jyoti Bansal (@jyotibansalsf), Peter Levine, Satish Talluri (@satishtalluri), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90) One of the toughest challenges for founders — and especially technical founders who are used to focusing so much on product features over sales — is striking ”product-market fit”. The concept can be defined many ways, but the simple definition shared in this … Read more
with Mark Leslie (@mleslie45) and Peter Levine What does it actually take to win at enterprise sales? In this episode, Mark Leslie, former CEO and chairman and founding team member of Veritas Software, and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a16z general partner Peter Levine — who worked together at Veritas … Read more
with Peter Levine, Bob Tinker, and Hanne Tidnam (@omnivorousread) For consumer companies, often when the holy grail of product-market fit is achieved, the company takes off: magic happens, growth unlocks. Enterprise B2B companies face a different challenge. Sometimes, despite achieving product-market fit (and knowing when you’ve achieved it) and winning your first cohorts of renewing customers … Read more