Behind many great leaders, you’ll usually find a great mentor. The mentor- mentee relationship is often one of the most important and most fulfilling relationships people have, in both their careers and in their lives. So how do you find a mentor? What are different kinds of mentorship? And how can it help you break into an industry – or help others break in themselves? In this episode from July 2018, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz discusses mentorship with his mentor, Silicon Valley pioneer Ken Coleman, and Ben’s mentee, Michel Feaster, founder of Usermind and now Chief Product Officer at Qualtrics. …
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How do you transform and innovate as your company grows and matures, even as the underlying technology platforms shift? Michael Dell of Dell Technologies joins a16z's Martin Casado, Marc Andreessen, and Sonal Choksi to discuss.
Getting to “product-market fit” is one of the key milestones for any startup. But for enterprise and B2B founders, product-market fit often requires a strong strategy around how you sell that product.
It’s back to school season, and student loans and education funding are top of mind. Beyond the policy debates, though, what is the opportunity for fintech to help students and other young people navigate their first big financial decisions? Mos founder Amira Yahyaoui joins the podcast to discuss financing college, …
How do you make a smart and logical decision when you don’t have all the facts – and probably never will? When and how do you decide to go against consensus opinion? Decision strategist and professional poker player Annie Duke joins the podcast to share frameworks for better decision-making.
While “community” is a common buzzword in everything from web3 to SaaS, community has long played a key role in the modern open source movement. Author Nadia Asparouhova joins to talk about her book, Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, from Stripe Press.
Effectively moderating live discussions is for more than just podcasters and event hosts -- anyone who runs important meetings or communicates with large groups can benefit from the expert best practices of great moderation. This episode shares battle-tested frameworks, concrete tips, and more.
"The algorithm" is a common buzzword in discussions about social media -- but how do algorithms actually drive product design today? In this deep dive episode from 2020 on the algorithm that powers TikTok, Eugene Wei discusses the "creativity network effects" behind TikTok, product design, the future of video, and …
From 2000 to 2016, it was the best of times and the worst of times for Silicon Valley -- and John Hennessy, as president of Stanford University during that time, was a key player in the Valley's ecosystem. Hennessy is joined by a16z's Marc Andreessen and Martin Casado to discuss …
Managing a crisis is more than a communications challenge -- it's a business challenge and an opportunity to change your culture. a16z's Margit Wennmachers and Kim Milosevich discuss crisis communications 101.
With the field of synthetic biology -- which involves designing and engineering organisms to specific purposes -- exploding and driving both innovation and real-world impact from drug development to manufacturing and more, how did we get here? This episode digs deep with one of the pioneers of the synbio field.
With increased demand for better batteries, cobalt has become one of the most important metals on the planet. Kobold Metals co-founder and CEO Kurt House, John Thompson of Cornell, and a16z general partner Connie Chan join Hanne Winarsky in discussing why this happened and how technology is rapidly changing the …
While new generative AI models like DALL-E 2 and Imagen have recently brought broader awareness and excitement to the space, AI is already changing how we work and the software we use across the enterprise. People.AI founder and CEO Oleg Rogynskyy and a16z partner Peter Lauten discuss, in this episode …
In times of great uncertainty, it can help to examine the longer arc of innovation and where we are headed. MIT economist and best-selling author Andrew McAfee joins Marc Andreessen and Sonal Choksi to discuss the case for why human progress and growth doesn't have to be in conflict with …
In this crossover episode from new show "web3 with a16z", a16z general partners Chris Dixon and Ali Yahya and a16z crypto head of research Tim Roughgarden, with host Sonal Choksi, set context and discuss the connections between blockchain, crypto, and web3, as well as how lessons from earlier eras of …
In this special “innovation overview” episode from April 2021, the a16z crypto team and other experts give a primer on crypto and web3, starting from the basics of crypto and how it works to more recent innovations and beyond -- all through the lens of an oral essay.
The story of startups is often a story of survival. What do you do when the markets go down? When your biggest customer churns? When your big product launch falls flat? Ben Horowitz and Jason Rosenthal share stories and lessons learned from doing whatever they could to help their companies …
The story of startups is often a story of survival. What do you do when the markets go down? When your biggest customer churns? When your big product launch falls flat? Ben Horowitz and Jason Rosenthal share stories and lessons learned from doing whatever they could to help their companies …
What can today’s startups learn from Amazon’s so-called “invention machine” and a culture of growth and innovation that led to several successful and diverse lines of products? As it scaled, how did Amazon define and adapt its culture and practices to promote innovation even as it got more complex and …
What can today’s startups learn from Amazon’s so-called “invention machine” and a culture of growth and innovation that led to several successful and diverse lines of products? As it scaled, how did Amazon define and adapt its culture and practices to promote innovation even as it got more complex and …