Explore every episode of the podcast a16z Live

a16z Partner Seema Amble talks with MongoDB and Viam co-founder Eliot Horowitz about building sustainable open source software tools. From challenging Oracle to building the de facto cloud-based database management tool, Horowitz outlines MongoDB’s early go-to-market strategies, approach to community building, and enterprise sales motion. This episode provides detailed tips on creating solutions for the developer community, building trust amongst enterprises, and successfully scaling a business supported by the open source community.

 

 

01:18-03:42 Why open source is a strategic business decision 

3:42:6:03 Product development strategy + making developers’ lives easier

6:03-08:24 MongoDB strategy of building community through meetups

08:24-10:49 The five-second rule for developer products

10:49-13:09 How MongoDB used meetups to fuel growth

13:09-15:35 The importance of getting people excited about your product

15:35-19:29 MongoDB’s enterprise sales strategy  

19:28-20:26 MongoDB’s recruiting strategy 

20:26-25:12 Open source customers vs. users, adoption patterns 

25:12-27:35 The evolution of enterprise deals and building trust through demos

27:35-32:23 Product communication strategies and tactics 

32:23-39:37 Managing customers and building long-term relationships

39:37-40:16 Outro

a16z Partner Seema Amble connects with Zapier co-founder Wade Foster about the company’s founding and GTM success utilizing a product-led growth (PLG) strategy. Chock-full of actionable insights, this episode explores Zapier’s product strategy, customer experience, and how the team built a sustainable growth engine that enabled them to reach profitability within three years. Foster also provides valuable guidance on brand strategy and how creating an unconventional “weird” brand helped Zapier differentiate from competitors.

1:15-2:05      Zapier's origin story
2:05-3:13      Initial product idea
3:13-5:06      Finding product-market fit and YC
5:06-7:43      How Zapier found their early customers
7:43-10:15    Strategic approach to identifying services to integrate
10:15-13:28  Identifying customer needs and optimizing onboarding
13:28-16:10  Developing a scalable customer acquisition strategy
16:10-19:07  Guidance on building a successful self-serve product 
19:07:23:52  Early pricing experiments and brand evolution
23:53-27:04  Early hiring strategy 
27:04-29:59  Reflecting on Zapier’s brand identity and product strategy
29:59-31:19  Advice for founders regarding customer acquisition and GTM
31:19-31:59  Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see 

a16z.com/disclosures

.

In this episode, a16z Partner Seema Amble chats with Tomer London, co-founder of Gusto, about establishing product-market fit and product discovery. London shares how Gusto, now valued at ~$10 billion with 300,000+ customers, identified early customers who could provide valuable feedback that helped the team optimize the self-service product experience. The conversation explores Gusto's approach to product development, as well as managing and incorporating customer feedback while maintaining a clear product vision.

1:18-3:14   Gusto’s founding story 
3:14- 4:56  Solidifying a GTM sales strategy 
4:56-10:03 Identifying early customers and perfecting the sales pitch
10:03-12:45 Working with customers to optimize the product UX
12:45-14:31 Engendering trust and finding success with accountants 
14:31-16:41 The role accountants planned in Gusto’s success
16:41-19:34 Creating a feedback funnel and balancing product vision
19:34-22:38 Self-service strategy and measuring success
22:38- 23:45 Refining the UX at scale 
23:45-25:45 Identifying real-world use cases to inform product strategy
25:45-29:52 GTM learnings and advice
29:52-30:05 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

High-performance compute is the bedrock of generative AI, and if there’s anyone who knows about high-performance chips, it’s AMD CEO Lisa Su. In this wide-ranging conversation with a16z Operating Partner Bob Swan—himself formerly CEO of Intel—Lisa lays out her vision for the evolution of compute within the AI ecosystem, touching not only on raw power and the continuation of Moore’s Law, but also how AMD will support “the right compute for each form factor” for a wider ranges of real-world gen AI use cases. Lisa also shares her perspective on the state of chip manufacturing, how AMD matches their R&D cycles to fast-moving industries, and how partnerships build strong ecosystems. 

Read more, including a full transcript, here: https://a16z.com/how-to-build-ai-ecos... 

Time stamps:

[00:01:37] Lisa's career in compute
[00:04:48] Compute in the genAI era
[00:09:39] High performance or multimodal?
[00:10:47] Making the genAI ecosystem open
[00:14:16] The chip supply chain
[00:17:53] Resiliency and the CHIPS Act
[00:20:54] How AMD balances long development cycles with short term innovation
[00:24:48] Learnings from the hyperscaler market
[00:26:54] What being fabless means for AMD
[00:31:24] Lisa's advice for startup founders

Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution. 

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Finding and backing companies that can reach escape velocity is the name of the game over here at a16z Growth—but picking those winners is far from easy. David George, head of the a16z Growth fund, sat down with the I/O podcast to discuss his mental models for growth-stage investing, what it really takes to go public, where AI is today and where it’s headed, and more. 

[00:03:19] What makes Andreessen Horowitz different

[00:08:29] David's mental model for investing

[00:18:23] Focusing on inputs, not outputs

[00:26:52] What constitutes a growth company?

[00:29:14] David's three investing frameworks

[00:36:45] How to measure the ROI of R&D

[00:42:15] What it takes to go public today

[00:46:43] AI: market structure and infrastructure vs. application layers

To read a transcript of this conversation, click here. 

In this conversation with a16z general partner David George, Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang discusses the three pillars of AI—models, compute, and data—and how creating abundant data is core to the evolution of gen AI. With Scale’s work across enterprise, automotive, and the public sector, Alex is also building the critical infrastructure that will allow any organization to use their proprietary data to build bespoke gen AI applications. In addition to talking about frontier data, Alex also shares his learnings from the growth of Scale, his approach to leadership, and what he thinks growth-stage founder/CEOs tend to get wrong about hiring.  

Read more, including a full transcript, here: https://a16z.com/frontier-data-foundries-alex-wang-scale-ai/

Timestamps: 

[00:00:58] How frontier data will change gen AI 

[00:08:47] Are big tech companies over-investing in AI? 

[00:14:39] Where the best AI businesses will thrive 

[00:17:05] How enterprise businesses are approaching AI adoption 

[00:19:50] What does the next phase of gen AI products look like? 

[00:23:23] Alex's approach to scaling Scale 

[00:25:36] The founder fallacy 

[00:30:12] MEI and how Alex views talent acquisition

a16z general partner David Haber talks to John Stecher, Chief Technology Officer at Blackstone, where he advances cutting-edge technology, heads up innovation investing, and advises the firm’s investment teams and portfolio companies. The conversation covers how he decides whether to build tech in-house or partner with startups, what qualities he’s looking for in early stage companies, and how he sees AI impacting real estate, credit, energy, and ecommerce.

0:00-1:05 Intro

1:06-3:55 Changes in finance x tech over the past 2 decades

3:56-5:06 Investing in "themes" across asset classes

5:07-7:00 What the CTO role entails 

7:01-9:00 "Build it" vs. "buy it": trade-offs

9:01-11:57 Advice for early stage companies

11:58-16:37 Ways Blackstone is incorporating generative AI

16:38-17:46 How AI changes the role of an analyst

17:47-21:04 Gen AI's impact on private equity, real estate, credit, more

 21:05-22:54 How Blackstone will evolve over the next five years

22:55-23:26 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

a16z general partner David Haber and fintech partner Marc Andrusko talk to Tim Karpoff, the Global Head of Strategy at Citi, where he guides the bank’s core focus areas, as well as future investment in emerging tech like AI. The conversation covers the shifting landscape of banking policy and regulation, the increasingly important role startups are playing in partnership with big banks, and where Tim disagrees with the zeitgeist when it comes to the adoption of AI in financial services.

0:00-1:05 Intro

1:06-2:28 Navigating bureaucracy

2:29-4:26 What "chief strategy officer" entails 

4:27-8:18 Citi's role in the banking ecosystem

8:19-9:16 Fallout from the 2023 banking crisis

9:17-13:10 Citi's revised risk controls and tech investment

13:11-14:59 How Citi works with startups

15:00-20:00 Citi's future: AI and regulation

20:01-23:33 What people get wrong when it comes to AI 

23:33-24:12 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov joined a16z general partner David George to discuss how Waymo is using genAI to help them build safer, sustainable, and more accessible transportation. In the conversation, Dmitri talks about the potential of embodied AI, the value of simulations and building training data, and his approach to leading a company focused on solving the challenges of building AI that can navigate the real world.

• [00:01:22] The early days of autonomous vehicles
• [00:05:27] Layering genAI into traditional AI/ML
• [00:09:42] The value of simulation
• [00:15:56] The hard part about integrating AI in autonomous systems
• [00:22:45] AI in the real world
• [00:28:47] Where does Waymo go from here?
• [00:37:21] Dmitri's learnings from hard problems

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.

As genAI expands through the enterprise, many leaders are figuring out how to evolve their genAI prototypes into production-ready tools. Pinecone CEO Edo Liberty and LangChain CEO Harrison Chase discuss which parts of the stack to build or buy, how to improve out-of-the-box models by helping customers select and ingest the right data, and picking the right partners to scale genAI applications with a16z Growth General Partner Sarah Wang.

• [00:02:16] Navigating the gap from prototype to production
• [00:07:03] How to educate partners on genAI tools and capabilities
• [00:11:38] Deciding whether to build or buy
• [00:17:36] Successful implementations of genAI
• [00:21:20] Balancing enterprise and open-source community needs
• [00:23:06] Balancing short-term revenue gains with long-term vision
• [00:25:18] Picking the right partners to scale

For a transcript of this episode of a16z Live!, click here.

 

In this episode, which took place at a16z's Connect Fintech event, a16z General Partner David George interviews Capital Group's Mark Casey on his investment philosophy, what sends him into what he calls "barnacle mode," his preference for customer-focused North Star metrics, and more.  

0:00-1:42 Intro

1:42-5:58 Approach to investing

5:58-8:20 What Casey told Jeff Bezos, and what he learned

8:20-12:57 How CEOs communicate with public market investors; unconventional North Star metrics

12:57-15:48: Why Casey loves dividends

15:48-20:44 Macro trends and investing theses

20:44-21:37 Ecommerce predictions 

21:37-23:15 Opportunities and choke points in AI

23:15-25:18 What makes a great public company?

25:18-26:04 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

In this conversation, which took place at a16z's Connect Fintech event, a16z General Partner Angela Strange, Plaid CEO and cofounder Zach Perret, and Marqeta CEO Simon Khalaf discuss how AI will shape the future of banking, the battle between payment rails in the U. S., and how there's still opportunity to transform the basic credit card into a fully digital product. 

0:00-1:42 Intro

1:42-1:56 Topics: Generative AI, payment rails shift, and regulation in open banking and sponsor banking

1:56-4:46 GenAI's potential impact on credit modeling and fraud

4:46-7:09 Implications of payment products becoming digital products ("The open face of the internet")

7:09-8:33 Why brands need to embed finance, and why every company will eventually be a fintech company

8:33-11:01 The card vs. pay-by-bank debate

11:01-12:24 New infrastructure to combat fraud

12:24-17:27 Reassessing traditional "top-of-wallet" tactics and longstanding business models

17:27-20:04 Potential implications of Visa/Mastercard antitrust suit

20:04-24:12 Regulation around open banking and sponsor banks

24:12-24:40 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

In a new episode of In the Vault, a16z General Partner Angela Strange talks with Jeff Sloan, former CEO of Global Payments, about how he was early to spot significant industry trends, how to make bets that move an organization, and the sea change that AI represents for the financial services industry.

 

0-1:40 Intro

1:40-8:15 Joining Global Payments

8:15-19:30 Placing many bets

19:30-26:10 Deal integration and scale advantage

26:10-31:35 GenAI sea change

31:35-32:19 Outro

 

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

In a new episode of In the Vault, a16z General Partner David Haber talks with Marco Argenti, the chief information officer at Goldman Sachs, about bringing fintech processes into financial services, turning developers into clients, and how AI is a major inflection point in the history of technology.

0-1:30 Intro

1:30-12:05 From tech to financial services

12:05-17:30 Turning developers into clients

17:30-23:50 GenAI and productivity

23:50-28:50 The future of financial services

28:50-29:31 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

In a new episode of In the Vault, a16z General Partner David Haber talks with Marty Chavez, a partner and vice chairman of Sixth Street Partners, about the foundational role he’s had in merging technology and finance throughout his career, and the magical promises and regulatory pitfalls of AI.

 

0-1:30 Intro

1:30-12:50 Marty's history and transition to Wall Street

12:50-20:50 Financial Crisis and SecDB

20:50-32:10 GenAI's impact

32:10-36:15 AI and biotech

36:15-37:06 Outro

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

In this SaaS era, partnering with no one means competing with everyone. How the best companies take advantage of ecosystem-led growth—or where they sit in the SaaS ecosystem to improve acquisition, expansion, and access to new markets, as discussed by a16z general partner Sarah Wang and Crossbeam CEO Bob Moore.

• [00:01:43] The birth of ecosystem-led growth
• [00:05:12] The data revolution in partnerships
• [00:12:46] Integrating ecosystem-level GTM motions
• [00:16:29] Bob's founder history
• [00:24:30] Ecosystem-qualified leads and new opportunities
• [00:29:34] ELG as AI force multiplier

For a transcript of this episode of a16z Live!, click here.

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. 

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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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

a16z Cofounder and General Partner Marc Andreessen and Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel are interviewed by a16z General Partner Sriram Krishnan at the “Time to Build: LA” event during LA Week. The trio chat about the future of content distribution, the bull case for VR over AR, the end of corporate brands, and why there is (or isn’t) ever anything good to watch on TV.

In this episode of a16z Live, David Banks, a former Riot Games executive who's now the co-founder and CEO of Elodie Games, and Timmu Tõke, the co-founder and CEO of Ready Player Me, a leading platform for cross game avatars, join a16z General Partner and games investor Jon Lai for a conversation about where they think the metaverse is going, and the future of building games

In this episode of a16z Live, Chris Power, the Founder and CEO of the precision parts manufacturing company, Hadrian, talks with a16z American Dynamism Partner Oliver Hsu, about why he decided to build his factories in LA, why software engineers shouldn't be afraid of manufacturing company jobs, and how a single mom and pop machinist shop can affect the national supply chain. What follows is a slightly edited version of that conversation.

In this episode of a16z Live, Grant LaFontaine, the co-founder and CEO of the livestream shopping platform Whatnot, talks with a16z General Partner Connie Chan about building the company, his experience as the site's first person to go live, and why he prefers Los Angeles over San Francisco. What follows is a slightly edited version of that conversation.

To celebrate the L.A. community and the city's growth, a16z recently hosted, "Time to Build Los Angeles," an event where we invited L.A.-based investors, founders, and operators from across a diverse range of industries to talk about company building in L.A. In the first in our series of interviews, we invited Andrew Chen from a16z, Minnie Ingersoll from TenOneTen, and Turner Novak from Banana Capital to talk about why L.A. is at an inflection point, misperceptions about the region, and what makes a great meme. But first, we opened our panel discussion with a presentation from a16z consumer partner, Katia Ameri, on what you need to know about the L.A. scene and why we think it's worth paying attention to in the years to come. What follows is a slightly edited version of that conversation.

In this episode of a16z Live, we are joined by Titan Invest co-founder and co-CEO Clayton Gardner; a16z General Partner Anish Acharya; and a16z growth partner, Alex Immerman. The trio starts their conversation by diving into the difference between active and passive investment management and where Titan fits into that matrix. Building upon that foundation, they discuss how the fintech market is changing, why historically the best fund managers have not taken retail money, and whether that's changing the importance of curation in UX on competitive platforms, and of course the role of regulation.

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. 

a16z General Partner David Haber chats with his former colleague Stephanie Cohen, Goldman Sachs' Global Co-Head of Consumer and Wealth Management, about her journey from being an investment banker to running a global division, how Goldman Sachs stays relevant to different client audiences, and how fintech entrepreneurs can think about partnering with the financial services giant.

As the deputy director for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Nitin Natarajan spends most of his days worrying about everything from risk identification and mitigation, to educating young people and small businesses on their potential to be victims. In this fireside chat with Joel de la Garza, a16z operating partner for security, the two men discuss what keeps the CISA official up at night, his view of the situation in Ukraine and Russia, and how being tech savvy doesn’t translate into being cyber savvy (especially for kids).

Katherine Boyle, General Partner at a16z is joined by Hadrian founder and CEO Chris Power, Packy McCormick, founder of Not Boring, and a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen to discuss the opportunity to automate and upskill in the precision parts industry and shore up U.S. manufacturing with new technology.

An excerpt from a Clubhouse conversation, where Marc interviews Ken Griffin, CEO and founder of Citadel, on GameStop one year later and why the stock price hasn't crashed, as well as about his winning bid for the Constitution in the auction against ConstitutionDAO.

• 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.