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Top 50: Technology

Crypto

Podcasts from Andressen Horowitz on a variety of interesting topics.

a16z Podcasts

The push for efficiency and short-term profit could destroy our long-term economy and stall innovation, argues Clayton Christensen, from Harvard Business School.


Clayton Christensen Thinks Innovation is Crippled

Startups are not smaller versions of large companies, but interestingly we see that companies are not larger versions of startups.

Driving Corporate Innovation: Design Thinking vs. Customer Development

The gambling industry has made serious money by manipulating the science of human behavior, according to Natasha Dow Schull, a cultural anthropologist at MIT.

Gambling's Innovations

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer talks about finding a rhythm in work and life and the benefit of being off balance.

Marissa Mayer Says Balance Isn't Always Good

The modern, average 12-year-old Madden NFL videogame player has actually visualized more plays than ‪any past real-life NFL Hall-of-Famer. And now, for the first time, we're seeing those videogame tactics show up on the field too. There's a "technological and analytical arms race" going on in sports, and it's producing the world's best athletes in history.

How are they working smarter, using science and technology to enhance the way they train and perform, when it's not enough to put in 10,000 hours? How should athletes sleep? (Note: you can try this at home, too). And what does “performance by the aggregation of marginal gains” have to do with winning? 

Author of the new book Faster, Higher, Stronger Wired's Mark McClusky -- interviewed by a16z General Partner (and enthusiastic basketball player) Jeff Jordan -- bridge the worlds of "jocks" and "nerds" in this wide-ranging conversation about sports, performance technology, nature vs. nurture, and the tricky nuances of why some enhancement technologies are legal vs. illegal or better vs. worse than others.

a16z Podcast: Sports, Tech, and What We Can All Learn from the Latest Performance Science

The security landscape is changing. Can companies fight back against an increasingly well-armed and sophisticated set of bad players? “I think it is the beginning of a wakeup call,” former deputy secretary of defense Ashton Carter says. “That said, I think there are a lot of people at the top that don’t know what to do.” Carter (who is is expected to be formally nominated as the next Secretary of Defense) joins a16z board partner John Jack and Yahoo security chief Alex Stamos for a wide-ranging discussion about the state of security. 

a16z Podcast: Security’s Wakeup Call

VCs wouldn't fund Salesforce ("that obviously won't work") when Marc Benioff began. With the cloud a growing part of practically every company, government, organization, and people's lives, a lot's changed since 1999.  But what's next? Do enterprise CEOs get (mobile) religion? [Answer: not yet. Benioff thinks there's a ton of opportunity ahead there.] What's happening with international growth, when countries want their own clouds and 90% of enterprise software is bought in just 7 countries?

a16z Podcast: Where the Growth in Cloud and Enterprise Software Really Is (with Marc Benioff)

Storage as a set of technologies in the datacenter has a conservative reputation when it comes to innovation. Reliability, capacity, speed, and cost -- those have long been the only levers to pull in storage technology. Until Paula Long had the idea to add intelligence to enterprise-grade storage. Long, the CEO and founder of DataGravity joins a16z's Peter Levine for a discussion about storage. Why (and how) intelligence is a fit for storage technology, and how this smarter approach to handling data fits in with the datacenter of the future.

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The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.
 
This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/.

Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

a16z Podcast: Dumb Storage Gets Smart

Apple absolutely crushed its most recent quarter, and unquestionably owns the high-end of the smartphone market, says a16z’s Benedict Evans. So where does Android fit in the ecosystem going forward? Where is the leverage for Google? Not to mention for Facebook, Amazon, and handset-makers like Samsung?

Get used to this market complexion for the foreseeable future, Evans argues, with Apple owning the high-end; forked Android-powered devices flourishing at the low-end; and a battle to sell Google-approved Android gadgets in the middle. Until, of course, everything changes yet again.

a16z Podcast: Mobile is Eating the World (and Apple is Gobbling Fastest)

For promotional use only. (c) & (P) 2015 Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

Buy Bloodborne

Bloodborne: Cleric Beast

The Ether Review #4 - Augur

Reporter Rupa Shenoy looks at the growing trend of urban farming, and why a self-filtering fish tank just might be the future.

For more innovative content, follow us:
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Apartment Farming

In today's long overdue, landmark episode we are joined by an international panel of leaders in fin-tech and blockchain law:
Claire Wivell, Hannah Glass (Australia), Alex Simms (New Zealand), Peter van Valkenburgh (USA), and James Duchenne (USA/Mauritius)
The theme for the discussion was regulatory sandboxes — frameworks for enabling businesses to operate in a deregulated environment. The goal is to allow legislative bodies to develop an understanding of new businesses before regulating them. We have seen a successful example in the United Kingdom, but Australia’s efforts to replicate this have not been so successful. Claire Wivell explains why.
We follow this with a discussion of the unique environments of Australia, Mauritius, Singapore and Dubai. New Zealand unfortunately is not so interesting at this stage (both Alex Simms and myself have independently been involved in some interesting conversations since this episode was recorded so watch this space).
We conclude that a US regulatory sandbox is impossible due to the interaction of federal and state legislation and the complexity of their enforcement agencies. However, there is hope if a bright line can be defined between the regulation of custodial and non-custodial businesses

consensys.net
consensysmedia.net
etherreview.info
https://itunes.apple.com//podcast/the-ether-review/id899090462?mt=2

Ether Review Legal #6 — Playing in a Sandbox

with Chris Dixon and Fred Ehrsam

We’ve already talked about why bitcoin matters. But as the set of cryptocurrencies — and networks and “tokens” enabled by the underlying blockchain — grow (Ethereum being one of the fastest-growing ones), where do we go from here? How do we tease apart the signal from the noise, given all the buzz and critiques out there?

In this episode of the a16z Podcast, general partner Chris Dixon and Fred Ehrsam (former Goldman Sachs trader and a co-founder of Coinbase) break down the fundamentals of it all — from incentives, developer communities, and protocols, to new models of governance and the tradeoffs between centralized and decentralized systems (including central planning vs. letting a thousand experiments bloom). And then, given all the hype out there right now around crypto tokens and “ICOs”, how do we tell the difference between what’s promising/legitimate vs. a red flag? How could we value tokens? And what does it mean for incumbents when all the value that was created in the previous paradigm is being commoditized by the new one, and that value creation now has to happen at some new layer?

At the end of the day, the key word through it all is incentives. And it’s a testament to the power of getting incentive structures right that someone pseudonymously dropping a 9-page whitepaper onto the internet led to a $70 billion cryptocurrency, a whole ecosystem of companies and users, and the largest supercomputer network in the world. Then again… isn’t that how innovation happens?

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The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.
 
This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/.

Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

a16z Podcast: Why Crypto Tokens Matter

Video, mobile first, open APIs, an existing two-sided market, and a userbase already transacting digitally. The YouNow live video platform is an ideal candidate for a monetary network-based business. YouNow’s Props project aims to achieve just this.

Decentralized economies will reshape digital media.
Decentralized monetary networks work well when applied to existing producer-consumer networks.
Today digital media is a producer-consumer network with despotic intermediaries like youtube, Spotify, existing live video sites, etc. 
It may be possible to build a new type of business that can compete symmetrically with these intermediaries using a monetary network.

Which businesses can adopt the micro-economic business model?
Two-sided marketplaces
Established digital economies
Network-based businesses

https://www.younow.com/
https://propsproject.com/
thirdweb.net
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-third-web/id899090462?mt=2

The Third Web #2 - The Props Project by YouNow

Support the show, consider donating: 
BTC: 1CD83r9EzFinDNWwmRW4ssgCbhsM5bxXwg (https://epicenter.tv/tipbtc)
BCC: 1M4dvWxjL5N9WniNtatKtxW7RcGV73TQTd (http://epicenter.tv/tipbch)
ETH: 0x8cdb49ca5103Ce06717C4daBBFD4857183f50935 (https://epicenter.tv/tipeth)

The prospect of providing digital cross-border payments for the world's unbanked and underbanked population has always been one of the key use cases for Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies can be seen as a way for people in developing countries to participate in the global financial market by allowing easy cross-border payments, cheap remittance transactions, and simplified lending options.

We're pleased to be joined by Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO and Founder of BitPesa. BitPesa provides companies in frontier markets with the financial infrastructure to facilitate commerce and payments, where traditional financial markets are known to be fractured and expensive. As an early Bitcoin company founded in 2013, BitPesa is now present in a handful of African countries and provides essential financial services to businesses, allowing them to send and collect payments, and perform quick and affordable Forex trades. 

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Elizabeth's journey to Bitcoin and BitPesa
- BitPesa's vision and how it compares existing mobile money platforms present in Africa
- BitPesa's offering and how it has evolved since the company was founded in 2013
- The primary pain points and barriers to doing business in developing African markets
- Foreign exchange markets in Africa
- The challenges and opportunities regarding blockchain adoption in African markets
- The future of Bitcoin as a payment system

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- BitPesa: http://bitpesa.com
- Elizabeth Rossiello Describes How BitPesa Slashes International Payment Fees: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/06/15/elizabeth-rossiello-describes-how-bitpesa-slashes-international-payment-fees/#20f138aa2a6d
- BitPesa Founder Elizabeth Rossiello Keynotes at ConsenSys' Ethereal Summit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdGgR5HgNCk
- Elizabeth Rossiello on Twitter: https://twitter.com/e_rossiello

Sponsors: 
- Shapeshift: Buy and sell alt coins instantly and securely without a centralized exchange - http://epicenter.tv/shapeshift

This episode is also available on :
- Epicenter.tv: https://epicenter.tv/215
- YouTube: http://youtu.be/8v4D9Y--3nw
- Souncloud: http://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-215

Watch or listen, Epicenter is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Epicenter is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture & Meher Roy.

#215 Elizabeth Rossiello: BitPesa – Building Financial Platforms for Frontier Markets

Three themes from Detroit: Become Human, each focusing on one of the title's main characters, and each scored by a different composer.

Detroit: Become Human launches May 25, 2018 on PS4.

Detroit: Become Human — Kara Main Theme By Philip Sheppard

Detroit: Become Human — Connor Main Theme By Nima Fakhrara

This episode is sponsored by Audible - Go to http://www.audible.com/cynical or SMS "cynical" to 500-500 for your free 30 day trial. Audible paid us to promote their product. 

Watch The Co-Optional Podcast Live at https://twitch.tv/totalbiscuit every Tuesday at 3pm ET.

Discuss the podcast on our official subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/cynicalbritofficial

Genna and Dodger are joined by special guests, Rhianna Pratchett and LivinPink in this episode of the Co-Optional Podcast. Enjoy!

Original air date: July 17, 2018

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Rhianna Pratchett
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LivinPink
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The Co-Optional Podcast Ep. 222 ft. Rhianna Pratchett & LivinPink

with Chris Dixon (@cdixon), Ali Yahya (@ali01), and Devon Zuegel (@devonzuegel)

“Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcomes.”

At the end of the day, observes a16z crypto general partner Chris Dixon, Satoshi's whitepaper [the original bitcoin paper outlining a peer-to-peer decentralized network and blockchain sans centralized third parties] is nine pages of incentives. It's the kind of incentive design that you can use to build many other things on the internet (which itself is driven by very simple core protocols and could even upgrade itself as a result). But only with the right incentives (and alignment of those incentives among different entities), of course. Which is where cryptonetworks come in -- especially since they don't rely on hardware buildout (as with earlier generations of internet deployment), but rather on software (which is essentially just logic, the kind of building block you can use to build countless other things). The breadth of possibilities is endless.

This means that platforms and networks (and operating systems, for that matter) can spend less time, energy, money, and frankly, suffering due to fighting -- thanks to distorted business models that lead them to extract value from users and compete among complements (vs. substitutes/better alternatives). The internet-native business models baked into crypto, however, could lead to greater competition and better options for users.

But what are the missing building blocks, that can help make such networks more iterated games vs. one-off prisoner's dilemmas? And what will it take for these networks to truly reach web-scale, as it's still just the beginning? Because decentralization is the means to an end -- not the end in and itself -- observes a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya, so what do we need to build next to get there? In this episode of the a16z Podcast (guest hosted by freelance software engineer and writer Devon Zuegel), Dixon and Yahya share their thoughts on where we've been, and where we're going with the internet.



Please note that the a16z crypto fund is a separate legal entity managed by CNK Capital Management, L.L.C. (“CNK”), a registered investor advisor with the Securities and Exchange Commission. a16z crypto is legally independent and operationally separate from the Andreessen Horowitz family of fund and AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“AHCM”). 

In any case, the content provided here is for informational purposes only, and does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment solution or a recommendation to buy or sell a security; nor it is to be taken as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. In fact, none of the information in this or other content on a16zcrypto.com should be relied on in any manner as advice. You should consult your own advisers as to legal, business, tax and other related matters concerning any investment.

Furthermore, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor, and may not be used or relied upon in evaluating the merits of any investment and must not be taken as a basis for any investment decision. No investment in any fund advised by CNK or AHCM may be made prior to receipt of definitive offering documentation and due diligence materials. Finally, views expressed are those of the individual a16z crypto personnel quoted therein and are not the views of CNK, AHCM, or their respective affiliates. 

Please see https://a16zcrypto.com/disclosures/ and https://a16zcrypto.com/disclaimers/ for further information.

a16z Podcast: Cryptonetworks and Decentralization -- Building Blocks

with Denis Nazarov (@iiterature), Jesse Walden (@jessewldn), Ali Yahya (@ali01), and Devon Zuegel (@devonzuegel)

Cryptonetworks are often compared to firms, people, or even coral reefs -- but, observes a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya, they might be much more similar to cities. Where does that analogy fit, and where does it break down? And what can we learn from how cities both emerge from the bottom up and are motivated by a top down vision/design  and apply to open source networks such as those in crypto?

In this episode of the a16z Podcast -- guest hosted by freelance software engineer (and blockchain app developer) and writer (and urban watcher) Devon Zuegel -- a16z crypto partners Denis Nazarov, Jesse Walden, and Yahya share their thoughts on "rough consensus"; shared myths and beliefs; modularity vs. monolithic design; and the rivers and riverbeds that people build cities and code around.

At the end of the day, it's all about mass coordination at scale... but what are the incentives for building the infrastructure and ecosystem, for running experiments but also determining governance as well?

***
Please note that the a16z crypto fund is a separate legal entity managed by CNK Capital Management, L.L.C. (“CNK”), a registered investor advisor with the Securities and Exchange Commission. a16z crypto is legally independent and operationally separate from the Andreessen Horowitz family of fund and AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“AHCM”). 

In any case, the content provided here is for informational purposes only, and does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment solution or a recommendation to buy or sell a security; nor it is to be taken as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. In fact, none of the information in this or other content on a16zcrypto.com should be relied on in any manner as advice. You should consult your own advisers as to legal, business, tax and other related matters concerning any investment.

Furthermore, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor, and may not be used or relied upon in evaluating the merits of any investment and must not be taken as a basis for any investment decision. No investment in any fund advised by CNK or AHCM may be made prior to receipt of definitive offering documentation and due diligence materials. Finally, views expressed are those of the individual a16z crypto personnel quoted therein and are not the views of CNK, AHCM, or their respective affiliates. 

Please see https://a16zcrypto.com/disclosures/ and https://a16zcrypto.com/disclaimers/ for further information.

a16z Podcast: Cryptonetworks and Cities -- Analogies

with Devon Zuegel (@devonzuegel), Denis Nazarov (@iiterature), and Jesse Walden (@jessewldn)

The open source movement enabled so much in computing, including the collaborative building of libraries -- that is, building blocks of code that developers could combine together to build applications. But as these applications grew to massive scale, those libraries ended up being somewhat asymmetrical for "nights-and-weekend" developers (compared to say, the disproportionate resources of a large company with billions of users and big data).

Blockchains, however -- enabled by cryptotokens that align incentives among stakeholders -- shift open source development from libraries, to the creation of shared, open, permissionless services. Instead of being siloed and repetitively produced as if from the industrial factory era, any smart contract developed on Ethereum becomes a shared service that can interact with any other service... incentivizing developers to improve on existing services, build on top of them, and enable combinatorial innovation at greater scale than ever before.

But if decentralized networks are to win the third era of the internet, how will we resolve challenges such as single-purpose services (another form of consolidation), community conflicts, and other issues? In this video, freelance software engineer (and blockchain app developer) and writer (and urban watcher) Devon Zuegel guest-interviews a16z crypto partners Denis Nazarov and Jesse Walden, the co-founders of Mediachain Labs (which was acquired by Spotify in 2017). They draw on their past experiences leading open source development of a decentralized media attribution protocol for connecting creators to their audience, and what the implications of "services vs. libraries" could be for creatives now. And what about identity, stablecoins and crypto finance, and more? Finally, they extend their previous analogy of cities and network effects and how it fits the idea of libraries vs. services in crypto.

* * *

Please note that the a16z crypto fund is a separate legal entity managed by CNK Capital Management, L.L.C. (“CNK”), a registered investor advisor with the Securities and Exchange Commission. a16z crypto is legally independent and operationally separate from the Andreessen Horowitz family of fund and AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“AHCM”). 

In any case, the content provided here is for informational purposes only, and does NOT constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase any investment solution or a recommendation to buy or sell a security; nor it is to be taken as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. In fact, none of the information in this or other content on a16zcrypto.com should be relied on in any manner as advice. You should consult your own advisers as to legal, business, tax and other related matters concerning any investment.

Furthermore, the content is not directed to any investor or potential investor, and may not be used or relied upon in evaluating the merits of any investment and must not be taken as a basis for any investment decision. No investment in any fund advised by CNK or AHCM may be made prior to receipt of definitive offering documentation and due diligence materials. Finally, views expressed are those of the individual a16z crypto personnel quoted therein and are not the views of CNK, AHCM, or their respective affiliates. 

Please see https://a16zcrypto.com/disclosures/ and https://a16zcrypto.com/disclaimers for further information.

a16z Podcast: Crypto and the Evolution of Open Source

The a16z Podcast discusses tech and culture trends, news, and the future -- especially as ‘software eats the world’. It features industry experts, business leaders, and other interesting thinkers and voices from around the world. This podcast is produced by Andreessen Horowitz (aka “a16z”), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Multiple episodes are released every week; visit a16z.com for more details and to sign up for our newsletters and other content as well!