The a16z Show

The thing about enterprise security, from the outside at least, is it reads like a Hollywood thriller. Nation states are after your company’s most valuable assets and they must be stopped at all costs. And yes, some nation state-sponsored hacks have caused tremendous damage. But the best course for most companies isn’t to focus on combatting Mission Impossible-like come through the vent break-ins,...

Smartphone components have become a kind of Lego kit for all kinds of consumer technology. Cameras, sensors, and batteries all get mixed and matched in different permutations to create different gadgets. It might be something that enables your connected home, offers a video capture system for cops, or powers a remote video chat/treat machine for your dog (I know, we all need that). But since pract...

For as long as there has been software we have had this collective hope -- maybe more of a desire -- that software will make all kinds of work easier, more productive, and more creative. Spreadsheets, computer-aided design tools, digital publishing platforms, though never perfect, are examples of software that have definitely changed how we work and what is possible. Still, you find very few peopl...

In this, world of massive cloud-based applications and services, rolling out software has moved from an episodic event to an almost continuous release cycle. In that environment, software products aren’t as “done” as they used to be -- they can’t be -- so the focus has shifted to reversibility. Building a development organization with the design tools and processes that can aggressively iterate wh...

Every organization these days is clear about the need to get its data act together. But that doesn’t mean the path toward data bliss is clear. Data has gravity. It resides in different places at different organizations -- on premise, in the cloud, and flowing from external sources. And the rate of change within organizations is always different. So an approach towards handling data that works for...

The old constraint when it came to technology was hardware -- how many CPUs can I get my hands on. Today, spinning up compute can be done from any smartphone with an AWS account or something similar. The current constraint is software. And since software is written and operated by people, tackling that constraint comes down to making people as informed, enabled, and efficient as possible. Three CE...

As software becomes core to every industry, there is a need for more and more software development across practically every department in a company. But as anyone who has tried to get quality software developed knows, that has given rise to a supply and demand problem. Leveraging open source software is a big part of the solution to that problem, but venturing into the open source world raises all...

Chris Milk calls virtual reality the “ultimate empathy machine.” The filmmaker and founder of VR shop Vrse talks with a16z’s Chris Dixon about how virtual reality can connect with people in ways no other medium can. Milk describes the ways virtual reality production veers from the traditional techniques of filmmaking, and why the results can transport people to places and feelings that we’ve never...

You know how talented Andre Iguodala is as a basketball player. You may not know that he signed with the Warriors in part to be near Silicon Valley and the tech scene. Iguodala knows tech, and in a conversation with a16z's Jeff Jordan at the 2015 Tech Summit he talks about his relationship with tech as a professional athlete and as a businessman. The views expressed here are those of the individua...

Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments, sits down with Ben Horowitz during a16z's 2015 Tech Summit for a wide ranging conversation on investing, the state of markets, and how Hobson began her career in finance. Oh, and Star Wars! Hobson has a little inside info given that her husband is George Lucas. And for the minuscule number of people who have not seen the new Star Wars pic -- no spoil...

Benedict Evans highlights the past year in mobile. From Apple's ongoing rule of the high-end, to Android's spread farther down the price curve. Without a clear and massive shift on the horizon in mobile tech, Evans outlines the trends in mobile that will matter and that possess opportunity for the right companies and emerging technologies. For a complete rundown of the year's trends check out Evan...

Our virtual reality-enabled future is arriving, but it’s hard to know -- as it is with every new technology platform -- how quickly we’ll all make the transition to VR and what it will ultimately look like. For example, beyond gaming and entertainment what applications does it seem like VR is best suited for, and will we all be wearing full VR-enabled body suits some day? When will the Matrix beco...

India and China. The two most populous countries on the planet are also two of the most tantalizing markets for companies of all size, from startups to conglomerates. But those markets are also intensely, densely competitive: There's a lot of capital, a lot of players, and a whole lot of people. So do local players really have the home-court advantage here? Can they compete with the global players...

Our final segment from the road in the U.K. features two well-known investors and entrepreneurs in the London tech world: Seedcamp co-founder Reshma Sahoni and Shakil Khan (known to all simply as Shak), the founder of CoinDesk and an early investor in Spotify where he also headed up special projects. Reshma and Shak break down the venture scene in London, and describe the particular way the best c...

What if you could bring the best version of yourself to everything you do everyday? What if you could get the most out of your mind and brain -- or more scientifically, your "cognitive performance" -- without going to those old addictive standbys like coffee or RedBulls? The promise of nootropics or cognitive enhancers is to help us work better and more productively (for example, through...

The pod continues its U.K. road trip, meeting up with three startup founders -- including one startup accelerator programme -- to discuss the entrepreneurial ecosystem in London and more broadly the U.K. and Europe. Let’s be clear upfront: London is not the center of the universe when it comes to technology. But the diversity of industries and thinking in the British capital brings with it advanta...

Brett Hagler was on a trip to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake where he saw too many of those displaced by the natural disaster still living in tattered blue-tarp shelters. What struck Hagler was the need for more permanent housing that could not only offer much needed safety for families, but help foster the community that was split apart following the earthquake. The non-profit startup NewStory i...

The best cooks know cooking a meal is all about having a plan (and a back-up plan if things go south); get the cooking out of the way, and then you can enjoy your family and friends -- the most important part. But now try doing it for thousands. How can one company be the de facto sous chef for so many? Turns out there's a lot of data science behind it, in everything from procurement to forecasts...

Farmers are among the best hackers in the business. They can fix anything, and are endlessly tweaking their approach to a business that is up against the strongest force on the planet: nature. As adopters of technology, the agriculture industry is both forward-thinking and, at the same time, hard to convince to make a change. For good reason -- you can’t A/B-test an almond orchard. You get one sho...

Rob Rhinehart, like most startup entrepreneurs, was strapped for cash and time as developed his ideas and ultimately a company. What stood out to Rhinehart in that all-consuming and ongoing process was the contrast between all the things in his life that technology had made more convenient and cheaper -- basically everything powered by smartphones -- and what he felt was a process still trapped in...

It's hip to be Square right now. Or is it? How do we assess whether it -- and other recent IPOs -- went well, not just for investors but overall? In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Nicole Irvin and Stephen McDermid from our startup corp dev team -- and Andreessen Horowitz managing partner Scott Kupor -- share an internal "hallway conversation" of sorts around how to make sense of marke...

If the U.K. is to continue its economic march onward and upward, technology needs to play an increasing role, say Martha Lane Fox (that's Baroness of Soho Lane-Fox in more public settings) and Russell Davies in this segment of the pod ... another one of our on-the-road a16z podcasts from London. But it can't just be the same apps and software solutions that are coming out of Silicon Valley, say th...

There are those who would say that Aubrey de Grey is out to cure death, but what this former artificial intelligence specialist turned gerontologist is really focused on is health -- and the side effect of health is living a lot longer. In this segment of the a16z podcast we talk with Aubrey de Grey on the subject of aging and health, and how his training as a computer scientist helped him approac...

The title of world's financial capital bounces back and forth between London and New York. This year London has bragging rights, but does being the word's center of gravity for finance mean so-called "fintech" companies will naturally flow from that position? London-based investor Eileen Burbidge joins a16z's Alex Rampell to pick apart fintech in this segment of the podcast recorded on o...

What is A.I. or artificial intelligence but the 'space of possible minds', argues Murray Shanahan, scientific advisor on the movie Ex Machina and Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London. In this special episode of the a16z Podcast brought to you on the ground from London, Shanahan -- along with journalist-turned-entrepreneur Azeem Azhar (who also curates The Exponential View new...