a16z Podcast

Legendary investor Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett's financial partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway) invokes a set of interdisciplinary "mental models" involving economics, business, psycho…

Apple has once again shown it absolutely dominates the high-end for smartphones, and no other company is likely to knock it from its perch in the near term, says a16z's Benedict Evans. But does it co…

Many of the most successful companies have their foundations in university labs -- from data science to the web browser itself. Yet the process of moving from research project to successful startup i…

a16z’s Chris Dixon and Mike Hearn talked about all things bitcoin on the a16z Podcast a couple months ago, including an issue that has bitcoin developers on edge these days: the question of how best …

Can digital work fight poverty? Can companies be profitable and also do social good -- especially in a society where the proxy for value is capital and much of that value accrues to platforms? And fi…

Longtime New York Times technology and science writer John Markoff joins the a16z Podcast to discuss our changing relationship with technology and machines ... as well as the changing nature of Silic…

Messaging app WeChat tells us a lot about mobile and business in China. In a recent deep-dive primer on the WeChat phenomenon, a16z partner Connie Chan analyzed WeChat and the notion of app-within-ap…

After the smartphone, what business has the global scale (in terms of people and profits) that make it attractive for tech companies to turn their attention and capital towards? The answer, argues a1…

Google, eBay, even the Web itself, in the beginning all of these things appeared as point products, interesting in their way, but small. Of course, they weren’t. “There is this swallow-the-red-pill …

How do you face down cancer? Get told you can’t get life-saving organ transplants, and go about getting them anyway? And in the middle of that mental and physical storm, how do you find the thing tha…

As more and more of what we do for fun and work- happens online, establishing identity becomes ever more critical. Whether it’s for dating or sending money, you want to trust that not only are you in…

This special episode of the a16z Podcast is based on a Q&A from an early screening we hosted of Universal Pictures’ Straight Outta Compton, the story of the group N.W.A. that revolutionized music and…

When you're going for a board interview -- especially when it's your first board seat -- you're actually not supposed to go into it advocating for yourself and trying to convince people that you're a…

There's been a lot of activity lately around trying to improve equity compensation (for example, by removing tax liabilities that handcuff them). Or by making equity more equitable in other ways; as …

The key to any great company is the people. Of course, part of attracting and keeping the best people is compensation. It seems straightforward, but if you don’t develop a philosophy early around how…

There are few things as old as financial catastrophe, except maybe finance. But in the latest fiscal meltdown in Greece, people started asking questions about whether newer technology -- bitcoin and …

Given the endless time we all spend with our noses in our phones, it may not be too surprising to hear that the smartphone has taken over the tech world. But the smartphone’s dominance is so complete…

Why do so many-government led efforts to build the next "Silicon Valley" in one geography or another fail? Is it misguided to even try? But then what does make such innovation clusters work?

In this …