a16z Live

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.

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.

Respecting privacy and building trust with communities is essential to effectively integrate technology into public safety. a16z general partner David Ulevitch, Flock Safety’s Garrett Langley, and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill discuss how to build and implement products that communities can trust.

[00:01:22] Flock Safety's impact on public safety

[00:05:50] Building trust through tech

[00:08:23] How Flock Safety builds its product roadmap

[00:11:06] Drones as first responders

[00:15:46] Data privacy and protection

[00:19:05] How the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department rolls out new technology

[00:21:11] AI, robots, and the future of tech in public safety

This conversation was recorded at a16z’s 2023 LP Summit. To read a transcript of this talk, click here.

In this episode, a16z partner Seema Amble talks with Dimitri Dadiomov, the co-founder and CEO of payment operations platform Modern Treasury, about the challenges of creating a new category, hiring for marketing before you hire for sales, and why developing new features is similar to birding.

0:00 - 1:20 Intro

1:20 - 8:55 The founding of Modern Treasury

8:55 - 15:28 First customers

15:28 - 20:07 Building trust

20:07 - 32:00 Creating a category

32:00 - 35:28 Advice for founders/Outro

In this episode, a16z partner Seema Amble talks with Zach Perret, the co-founder and CEO of Plaid, about how Plaid built a community in the early days to acquire customers, how they tracked “free radicals,” and how to orient your first customers around speed.

0 - 1:09 Intro

1:09 - 9:57 Plaid history

9:57 - 16:39 First customers

16:39 - 26:45 Pricing philosophy

26:45 - 29:27 Boring as a brand

29:27 - 33:01 Advice for founders/Outro

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

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

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. 

.

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

Roblox cofounder and CEO David Baszucki and a16z's Jonathan Lai discuss the ways AI is changing games and virtual worlds, as well as how we create them. 

• [1:00] Generative AI in games
• [4:56] Fully personalized playthroughs
• [7:50] Roblox's generative model
• [11:28] Future of interfaces
• [13:25] impact on creators
• [16:36] NPCs as copilots
• [18:49] VR & spatial computing

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ali Ghodsi, CEO and cofounder of Databricks, and Ben Horowitz, cofounder of a16z, explain the data wars happening inside and outside enterprises and how they could impact the evolution of LLMs. 

• [0:59] Why is it so hard for enterprises to adopt AI?
• [3:29] Data wars
• [4:49] Big vs. small LLMs
• [8:35] Finetuning
• [14:14] Open source AI
• [18:13] Benchmarks
• [19:51] Why Ali isn't afraid of AI

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

• 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.

• 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.

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. To catch full live episodes of the show, follow the a16z Club on 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. 

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. To catch full live episodes of the show, follow the a16z Club on Clubhouse. 

• 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.

• 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.

• Founding story of Nautilus [1:43]
• Why was the Nautilus approach to proteomics a breakthrough? [6:12]
• Why a startup instead of academic research? [9:57]
• How to pick a good cofounder (it's not that different from choosing a spouse) [15:32]
• Advice for academic founders: how to work with VCs  [21:14]
• The tipping points of scale & the challenges of finding good talent  [25:17]
• Is proteomics really a gamechanger? [30:49]
• How is Nautilus bringing it to market? [34:17]
• What Nautilus can learn from Illumina and genomics [37:32]
• Looking ahead to the next 10 years [41:26]

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.

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. 

• 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.

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

This conversation centers on the arguments and findings of the a16z piece The Cost of Cloud, a Trillion Dollar Paradox. 

• The Core Findings of The Cost of Cloud piece [5:22]
• Cloud is a significant part of COGS for public SaaS companies [8:38]
• Should you allocate engineers to reduce cloud cost or just focus on growth? [12:06]
• How much of a problem is not knowing cloud spend? [15:56]
• The tradeoff between focusing cost and engineering resources [19:33]
• Should large public SaaS companies repatriate? [23:41]
• Performance  matters -- it's not all about cost [31:55]
• Is all the talent for running data centers at the Google, AWS, and Azure? [37:46]
• Will the cloud feature set become commoditized? [44:57]
• Cloud oligopoly and market dynamics [50:39]

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

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 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. 

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. 

• 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. 

Why  Future with Marc Andreessen, Margit Wennmachers, and Sonal Chokshi [2:20]

The New Creator Economy with Joost van Dreunen, Wes Kao, Cuy Sheffield, Chris Lyons, Lauren Murrow, and Zoran Basich [17:58]

Bubbles, Speculation, and Innovation with Byrne Hobart, Jamie Catherwood, and Zoran Basich [35:38]

Work Models & Measures for the Information Age with  Rajiv Ayyangar, Nicole Forsgren, and Das Rush [51:20]

The Power of Subtracting, Adding, and AI in Bio with Leidy Klotz, Vijay Pande, and Lauren Richardson [1:05:11]

***

Visit future.a16z.com for additional content on these topics and more. 

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

• What was the biggest surprise from the past 15 months of remote work? [5:24]
• How do you handle conflict and build trust? [10:09]
• What's the role of offsites? [15:45]
• Should you adjust compensation for different geographies? [24:02]
• How do you measure productivity? [34:10]
• What is the impact of remote work on retention and turnover? [49:17]
• How do startups built on decentralized  platforms (e.g., Ethereum) function? [53:36]
• Is this the beginning of the end for Silicon Valley? [56:07]

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

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]

• 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.

• mRNA research before COVID and how "mRNA is code" [3:21]
• The early days of COVID: designing a vaccine in 48 hours [5:44]
• The software behind the vaccine: getting mRNA researchers out of Excel and into a drug design studio [9:11]
• The first draft of the vaccine was the final draft [11:10]
• How the government sped up vaccine development for COVID [12:18]
• What other new vaccines will come from mRNA?  [15:34]
• How far are we from these mRNA vaccines? What do we need for them to be widely available? [25:31]
• Open sourcing Moderna  [27:53]
• When will COVID vaccines be available for a five year old? [29:47]
• The three factors that matter when dealing with COVID variants [30:46]
• How might open source shake up biotech [36:41]
• The moonshot applications for mRNA therapeutics  [39:43]
• Advice for building a new category in a regulated environment [46:49]
• The clinical or regulatory advances needed to speed drug time to market [51:08]
• Challenge trials for vaccines: good or bad idea? [59:11]

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.

• 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. 

• 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 did Substack think about the NYTimes article "Why We’re Freaking Out About Substack" [1:01]
• What is Substack? [4:40]
• The issues with social media content models and how Substack is different [5:54]
• What about the echo chamber? [8:54]
• Turning cultural principles (e.g., freedom of the press) into actual culture [12:00]
• Will Substack replace traditional media? [14:01]
• Would Donald Trump be welcome on Substack? [20:35]
• Why do they pay writers advances? And why is that controversial? [23:33]
• The origins of American journalism aren't what most people think [27:20]
• Non-fungible writers and the Substack model [31:45]
• Ad-supported media predates the internet  [39:21]
• How do I price my Substack? [43:39]
• Substack, political topics, and culture wars: "We knew we were running towards the fire." [45:01]
• How do you prevent algorithms from slanting the platform [51:06]
• Substack's vision for the future of media [55:27]

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. 

• 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.

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. 

• What inspired Eric and Sam to start Dyno [4:09]
• How does the use of ML impact Dyno's GTM [10:40]
• The current challenges of gene therapy [21:43]
• Why Dyno wants to be a horizontal platform for gene therapy [30:56]
• How does Dyno think about competition [44:23]
• After party and audience Q&A [52:01]

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

Note: the recording of this episode starts a minute or two into the show.

• Ali recommends: The Hard Thing about Hard Things  by Ben Horowitz [0:18]
• Ben recommends: High Output Management by Andy Grove [4:36]
• Marc recommends: Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success by Art Kleiner [10:48]
• Best read for enterprise sales: Power Base Selling by Jim Holden, et al [13:06]
• Microsoft, Google, government contracts, and politicized workplaces [16:28]
• Marc recommends: The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman [29:32]
• Ali recommends: Radical Candor by Kim Scott [33:19]
• Ben recommends: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention  by Erin Meyer and Reed Hastings [44:19]
• Ben recommends: Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar [50:28]
• How they are approaching the return to work and remote work [53:00]

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. 

• How Ben took over Take Two [1:42]
• How digital distribution and publishing changed gaming [8:36]
• What is a next generation publisher? [13:51]
• Can publishers add value as tastemakers? [17:36]
• How do you make sure studios ship on time? And in the era of persistent game worlds, does it matter? [22:01]
• Lessons learned from Take Two [27:27]
• Taking the long view of the creative process — "Every overnight success was ten years in the making." [30:53]
• Is there a successful game that surprised Ben? [37:08]
• What's the next big gaming platform? [46:07]
• Where will subscription models lead? [52:06]
• Sabbaticals and life advice [56:50]

Join a16z partners and special guests from the gaming industry for discussions on games, game development, online communities, esports, AR/VR, and everything in between. Wednesdays at 5pm PT. 

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

• 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 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. 

• 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.

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.

• Why does it feel like there's a database for everything? [4:46]
• What is the actual use case and market for streaming? [9:34]
• How real is real time? [20:12]
• Can you do everything in SQL? [25:08]
• Is the future SQL extensions or does SQL become embedded in data frames? [40:19]
• Is database consolidation coming? How many different systems will we have? (SPOILER: 3... maybe) [49:41] 

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, May 13, 11am-noon.  

• What is AI? [2:27]
• AI is statistics, not consciousness [7:05]
• Why then so much talk about the singularity? [12:12]
• AI breakthroughs and FAANGs [17:21]
• Building the AI toolchain [26:07]
• AI applications in bio and medicine [30:19]
• Ali's favorite AI use cases [34:35]
• What will AI do to jobs? [39:27]
•  AI in 10 years [46:09]
• Snowflake, Databricks, data Lake, data warehouse, and how it all fits together [48:16]

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 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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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

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

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.  

Anduril founders and team members Joe Chen, Matt Grimm, Palmer Luckey, Brian Schimpf, and  Trae Stevens in conversation with Big Ideas show on Clubhouse co-host Katherine Boyle (along with Antonio Garcia-Martinez, Erik Torenberg, and Marc Andreessen).

On this episode of Boss Talk:  

• How do the best product marketers see and explain a trend?
• How much is the best marketing truth vs. spin?
• Does the marketing function create the strategy or execute on it?
• What are the core skills and competencies of a great product marketer — and how do you find, or train, product marketers?
• Should you create a category, or try to capture an existing category?
• What is the minimum viable audience ?
• What's the role of open source in getting a minimum viable audience?
• How should an open source company handle DevRel, licensing, and big cloud competitors?

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. 

Zynga cofounder and SVP of Product Justin Waldron discusses his early iteration process, reimagining the game industry's business model, and important game metrics with a16z partner Jonathan Lai, Stillfront SVP Andrew Green, Presence Capital managing partner Amitt Mahajan, and Indie MEGABOOTH founder Kelly Wallick on Games Club.

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.

Every year, Edelman publishes a trust barometer. This year, trust in most of our social institutions — and especially in media — was down. Margit asks Richard Edelman (CEO of Edelman), Emily Chang (Executive Producer at Bloomberg), and Helena Maus (CEO of Archetype) how real is the crisis of trust in media and beyond; what’s behind it; how does it relate to the perceived friction between tech and the media… and what will it take to (re)build trust.

"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 more a16z Clubhouse shows, 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. 

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.  

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.

This week on Boss Talk: Why aren't there more academic CEOs? Should early stage companies  hire junior or senior engineers? What are the common mistakes high growth companies make, especially when expanding into new markets? Plus: balancing pay equity with retainment, CEO legal risk and protection, and growing through acquisition. 

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 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

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.

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.

OpenSea founders Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah join Katie Haun as well as Marc Andreessen and Chris Lyons to talk about the emergence of NFTs, what it means for crypto marketplaces, and how the creator economy will continue to evolve.

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.  

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 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?

🔐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. 

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.  

Amanda Atkins, who leads Internal Communications & Culture at Slack, and Shannon Schiltz, who heads up HR & People Practices at a16z, talk internal comms with Margit. They break down the basics — When do you need an internal comms function? Where should it report? Is it actually different from external comms — and share advice for the toughest parts of the job, including how to handle layoffs, divisive political issues, negative employee reviews on Glassdoor, and leaks. 

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.  

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. 

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?

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.  

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. 
 

Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan welcome Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, and other experts and early adopters to discuss all things NFT (non-fungible tokens) on the Good Time Show. Guests include Mike Winkelmann (aka Beeple), the digital artist whose work is currently being auctioned at Christie's, and founders of some of the leading digital creative marketplaces including Roham Gharegozlou of Dapper Labs and Kayvon Tehranian of Foundation.

Marc Andreessen joins a16z's Head of Marketing Margit Wennmachers for the first episode of "4B with Margit" — 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 this episode: 

• What is a 4B? 
• What is the playbook for dealing with a crisis? And has it changed with the rise of social media and other direct channels?
• How does a company or startup build its media machine? And how should they think about different channels, especially new channels like Clubhouse?
• When do you add internal comms? And how do you (or even should you) set a policy for individual employees on social media?  

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.

Ali shares his early experiences as an Iranian refugee growing up in Sweden and what he learned about leadership. Plus, how technical founders can support and understand sales leaders, striking the balance between sales and marketing, and more on the third 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.

Topics covered this week include:

• How to handle politics in the workplace
• How to avoid hiring talent just like your own
• How to have a prepared mind and  the "why now" question for startups
• Nuclear power and the future of energy
• Tech literacy and elected officials
• How has their definition of success changed over time
• The lessons marriage has taught them about partnerships and vice versa
• Science fiction and other book recommendations

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. 

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. 

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!