StartupAdvise II

Welcome back to the Art of Manliness Podcast! In this week's episode we talk to Chris Guillebeau, author of the blog The Art of Non-Conformity. We discuss how a man can travel the world on a budget, how you can start a small business to give you the freedom you want while still holding down a 9-5, and overcoming the fear to living the life you always wanted.

Listen in!

Episode #25: The Art of Non-Conformity with Chris Guillebeau

Fall-out from the Panama Papers as more wealthy people and world leaders are found to have tried to hide their wealth. We look at the Americans on the list and why there haven't been more caught up in this leak with WILLIAM BLACK, an economics and law professor at the University of Missouri– Kansas City and co-founder of the Bank Whistleblowers United. 

Panama Papers

Cartels: A Hidden Evil in the Marketplace

There's been a lot of talk about the need for our healthcare system to shift away from volume and fee-for-service, where you pay by appointment, procedure, etc, to value-based care, where you pay for both quality and outcomes—essentially, good health. But there's also been a real dearth of seeing how that might work in action, or concrete models for how to implement it at scale. In this episode, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina Patrick Conway dives deep into how exactly we can make the move towards this kind of healthcare a reality, in conversation with a16z's General Partner Jorge Conde, Venkat Mocherla and Hanne Tidnam.

Conway—also a pediatrician, and formerly Deputy Administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI)—gets into what value-based care really means; different ideas for how payors can implement the shift away from fee-for-service and volume-based care towards outcomes; as well as the critical role social determinants (food insecurity, transportation, and more) play in our health—and how tech can be a driver of change. And finally, Conway shares thoughtful analysis from an insider’s point of view from the Hill on how to actually effect change in policy and regulation in healthcare to move the entire system in this direction.

This podcast was recorded on April 10, 2019. As of September 25, 2019, Patrick Conway is no longer CEO and President of Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina.

a16z Podcast: How to Pay for Healthcare Based on Health

What is the nature of physical pain? Why do we even experience it? Is there one type, or many? Do people experience pain differently? What is happening in our brains and our bodies when we experience pain? What is the biological link between pain and addiction? In this episode Clifford Woolf, Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and a renowned expert on understanding pain, shares with with a16z's Hanne Tidnam all we know about the biology of pain.

Technology is enabling a new, deeper, and much more complex understanding of pain—which pathways and neurons are activated in the brain when, what patterns might represent which experiences of pain. We now understand that the notion of pain as a simple switch that can be switched on or off (you have pain/you don't have pain) and measured by categories like mild, moderate, or severe is just incorrect. Woolf describes the 4 different broad types of pain we in fact experience, what the purpose of each is, and what it means now that we can phenotype them and begin to understand them as distinct. Now that we have this deeper and much more complex understanding of pain, what does it mean for how we can treat pain in the future, and where we can intervene?

a16z Podcast: The Biology of Pain

Podcast! If you haven't signedup for my text community, it's the best way to get access and talk directly with me with! These 3 fans were selected to come to the NYC office to meet the team and myself and be featured on the podcast.... I want to do more things like this with the text community - to join just text 212-931-5731, and as always I hope you enjoy this episode. Tweet me @garyvee with your thoughts! &nbsp; TIMESTAMPS: 1:30 - Day of Pick Me Contest - where were you? 3:30 - Surprise and Delight 8:45 - Violet Intro - tech entrepreneur - home healthcare app 15:00 - Entrepreneurship is a game of merit 15:50 - Questions 16:20 - Game of giving 21:15 - Talking vs doing 25:30 - Manifesting the business man I wanted to look up to 26:30 - You were already your biggest fan 26:50 - What if you’re telling yourself you suck 32:30 - Automation 37:00 - Detachment from cheers and boos

3 Fans Text Their Way Onto My Podcast | 212-931-5731

with @kevinchou @cdixon and @smc90

The combination of cloud, social, and mobile took gaming beyond a small base of just console- and PC-gamers to a massive player base. But the underlying business model -- the concept of "free-to-play", built on top of games-as-a-service -- may have been the real innovation that led us to the global gaming phenomenons we have today.

Unfortunately, observes gaming veteran Kevin Chou -- who's seen it all when it comes to tech platform shifts and gaming as a longtime gamer, founding CEO of Kabam, and now founder and CEO of Forte -- there is "a dark side" to free-to-play: Game developers have to balance the gamers who aren't paying with those who are, and especially those who are paying a helluva lot more (the whales) in order to make money and keep the game going. This balance becomes incredibly challenging over time; it is, quite frankly, a lopsided economy. The players will leave: The incentives between game publishers and players are simply not aligned.

Yet what if we could re-align those incentives -- really, the economic relationships -- between game publishers/developers; players and guilds and clans; those who create on top of games (like on Roblox and Minecraft); those who trade and otherwise transact both inside and outside games (it's already happening in secondary markets and gold farms). We could do this in a more balanced way, thanks to blockchain technology and cryptoeconomic business models -- leading to thriving gaming economies with better monetization and deeper engagement, as well as new forms of collaboration, community, and creativity.

But smart contracts, cryptoeconomies, security, etc. is hard for gamers who just want to focus on designing the best game, so how do we get here? Chou shares his thoughts in this episode of the a16z Podcast with Sonal Chokshi and general partner Chris Dixon. In gaming (and in fact, with other tech trends too), innovation happens when there's a combination of new devices, new technology platforms, and new delivery mechanisms... but it's the business-model innovations, argues Dixon, that tend to create the most startup opportunities.

image: battle scene from Eve Online

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The views expressed here are those of the individual a16z personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. 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. 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.

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StartupAdvise II

StephenWHU