a16z crypto show

Latest Episodes:

Let's Get Digi-Physical: From 'Tap' Chips to Taylor Swift Apr 13, 2024

Show notes

Welcome to web3 with a16z, a show about building the next generation of the internet from the team at a16z crypto — that includes me, Robert Hackett, your cohost and an editor here. Today's episode explores the merging of the physical and digital worlds, as well as what that means for the future of our interactions and identities.

Our guests today are Chris Lee, cofounder of IYK, a startup that's bringing the physical closer together to the digital through NFC chips, and joining us is Michael Blau, a deal partner at a16z crypto who creates generative art in his spare time.

In the conversation ahead, we cover new consumer experiences in everything from concert-going to commerce, the intersection of high tech and high fashion, and differences between building in web2 versus web3. We also dig into the power of open standards, the challenges of posed by bots and counterfeiting, and debates over terminology, including whether 'phygital' should be a thing.

Resources for references in this episode:

"After Taylor Swift Ticket Chaos, Senators Question FTC Over Bot Law Enforcement" (Rolling Stone, November 2022)
"Pearl Jam: Taking on Ticketmaster" (Rolling Stone, December 1995)
IYK FAQ (Notion)
"Tap to pay your fare with OMNY" (MTA)
"Introducing Stories Highlights and Stories Archive" (Instagram, December 2017)
Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (Live Aid 1985) (Youtube)
"Queen win greatest live gig poll" (BBC News, November 2005)
"The tech behind Taylor Swift concert wristbands" (Wired, June 2023)
"Finally, The P.J. Tucker x D&G Collab is Here" (GQ, July 2021)
On different models for linking NFTs to physical items (Mirror.xyz, February 2023)
"Lessons from 2023's fashion and beauty NFTs" (Vogue Business, December 2023)
"Singer Vérité’s fan-first approach to Web3, music NFTs and community building" (Cointelegraph, October 2023)
"How to Spot a Real Moncler Jacket" (TheRealReal, November 2019)
"Why Knockoffs Can Help Build a Strong Brand" (Freakonomics, September 2012)
On the verification process at StockX (StockX)
"I Returned to Webkinz So You Wouldn’t Have To" (Yale News, January 2019)
"A Wine-Soaked True Crime Doc with ‘Fraud, Deception and Intrigue’" (Wine Enthusiast, May 2023)
Sour Grapes (2016) documentary (Amazon Prime)
"I Love the Blockchain, Just Not Bitcoin" (Coindesk, November 2014)
"Timeline: Causes of the global semiconductor chip shortage" (Supply Chain Digital, January 2023)
"ERC-721 Non-fungible Token Standard" (Ethereum Foundation, November 2023)
Read Write Own by Chris Dixon book, bookmark, and NFT (Random House, January 2024)
On Duolingo outfits (Duolingo Wiki)
Ready Player One (Netflix, 2018)
On "phygital" (Collectid, March 2023)

As a reminder none of the following should be taken as business, legal, tax, or investment advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information including a link to a list of our investments.

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The Art of Technology, The Technology of Art Apr 02, 2024

Show notes

with @dennnnnnnnny @smc90

We know that technology has changed art, and that artists have evolved with every new technology — it’s a tale as old as humanity, moving from cave paintings to computers. Underlying these movements are endless debates around inventing versus remixing; between commercialism and art; between mainstream canon and fringe art; whether we’re living in an artistic monoculture now (the answer may surprise you); and much much more.

So in this new episode featuring Berlin-based contemporary artist Simon Denny -- in conversation with a16z crypto editor in chief Sonal Chokshi -- we discuss all of the above debates. We also cover how artists experimented with the emergence of new technology platforms like the web browser, the iPhone, Instagram and social media; to how generative art found its “native” medium on blockchains, why NFTs; and other art movements.

Denny also thinks of entrepreneurial ideas -- from Peter Thiel's to Chris Dixon's Read Write Own -- as an "aesthetic"; and thinks of technology artifacts (like NSA sketches!) as art -- reflecting all of these in his works across various mediums and contexts. How has technology changed art, and more importantly, how have artists changed with technology? How does art change our place in the world, or span beyond space? It's about optimism, and seeing things anew... all this and more in this episode.
As a reminder: none of this is investment, business, legal, or tax advice; please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.
SHOW NOTES:

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Leading through uncertainty (with Coinbase CEO) Mar 28, 2024

Show notes

with @brian_armstrong @cdixon

Welcome to web3 with a16z, a show about building the next generation of the internet from the team at a16z crypto. This episode features Brian Armstrong, CEO and cofounder of Coinbase, in conversation with a16z crypto founder and managing partner Chris Dixon.

The conversation was originally recorded at our Founders Summit in November. It covers the aftermath of FTX and the rise of crypto in politics — but it also goes into company building at scale, lessons for directing product development, how to balance core business with disruptive innovation, and more.

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Snowboards, software, and scaling (with Shopify CEO) Mar 28, 2024

Show notes

with @tobi @bhorowitz

Welcome to the web3 with a16z podcast. Today's episode features a conversation between Tobias Lütke, CEO and cofounder of the ecommerce platform Shopify, and Ben Horowitz, cofounder of a16z, which took place at our second annual Founders Summit in November. They discuss what it takes to build a breakout startup in a crowded category; the changing face of retail; how to effect change in the workplace; and how to handle individual emotions and corporate culture — including dealing with calls for activism as well as the value of embracing negativity. They also touch on the moral imperative behind creating quality software, the symbiosis between AI and crypto, and more.

As a reminder, none of the following should be taken as business, legal, tax, or investment advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

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Money, power, politics, and the internet's next battleground Mar 02, 2024

Show notes

with @cdixon @pmarca @bhorowitz @rhhackett

Welcome to the web3 with a16z podcast. Today's episode is the final installment in our limited series on Read Write Own, the new book by a16z crypto founding partner Chris Dixon. Today's episode features Dixon in conversation with a16z cofounders Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen. Their discussion covers the internet’s corporate takeover and how that affects startups, creativity, and innovation; blockchains as inheritors of the open source ethos; where AI comes in; and the next battleground in global politics. This episode is a crossover from the Ben & Marc Show, which you can find and follow on the a16z YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources for references in this episode:

"How an economic moat provides a competitive advantage" by Chris Gallant (Investopedia, August 2023)
"The dynamics of network effects" by D'Arcy Coolican and Li Jin (a16z, December 2018)
"Skeuomorphism" (Interaction Design Foundation)
"How to rebuild social media on top of RSS" (Hacker News, December 2022)
"Cardinal conversations: Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel on 'technology and politics'" (Hoover Institute, January 2018) [see @ 29:00]
"Peter Thiel: AI is communist" by Dan Primack (Axios, February 2018)
"Sam Altman seeks trillions of dollars to reshape business of chips and AI" by Keach Hagey and Asa Fitch (Wall Street Journal, February 2024)
"Join a union—but also join a DAO" by Daisy Alioto (The Nation, December 2021)
Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto by Aaron Bastani (Verso, June 2019)
"Friedrich Hayek and the price system" by Randal K. Quarles ("The Road to Serfdom at 75" conference, November 2019)
Pandora's Box: A Fable from the Age of Science "Part 1. The Engineers' Plot" by Adam Curtis (BBC, June 1992) [see @ 25:00]
"Going from web2 to web3: 'Your take rate is my opportunity'" by Chris Dixon (a16z crypto, August 2021)
"Blockchain & internet glossary (A–Z): Key terms from Read Write Own" by Chris Dixon and Robert Hackett (a16z crypto, February 2024)
"Why decentralization matters" by Chris Dixon (a16z crypto, February 2018)
"The Vision Pro needs apps. Now is not a good time for Apple to be at odds with developers" by Hasan Chowdhury (Business Insider, January 2024)
"Upgrading Ethereum | 4.2.5 Deneb" by Ben Edgington (Eth2book, September 2023)
"What to expect from Ethereum's Cancun-Deneb Upgrade" by Wilfred Daye (Coindesk, February 2024)
"Bitcoin Obituaries" (99 Bitcoins)
"An Overview of H.R. 4766, Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act" by Paul Tierno and Andrew P. Scott (Congressional Research Service, September 2023)
"The Rings of Power" (The Lord of the Rings Wiki)
"There's no downplaying the impact of Operation Choke Point" by Dennis Shaul (American Banker, November 2018)
"Operation Choke Point 2.0: The Federal Bank Regulators Come for Crypto" by David H. Thompson, et al. (Cooper & Kirk Lawyers, March 2023)
"Google Chatbot’s A.I. Images Put People of Color in Nazi-Era Uniforms" by Nico Grant (New York Times, February 2024)
"This is Worldcoin: Humanness in the age of AI" (Worldcoin, February 2024)
The Blocksize War: The Battle for Control Over Bitcoin's Protocol Rules by Jonathan Bier (Amazon, March 2021)
"Balaji Srinivasan: The Bitcoin Network State" (Bitcoin Magazine, October 2023)

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The story of the internet, emergent networks, and their effects Feb 11, 2024

Show notes

with @stevenbjohnson @cdixon @rhhackett

Welcome to the web3 with a16z crypto podcast. Today's episode features a conversation between Steven Johnson, a prolific author of books about technology and innovation who is also, as editorial director at Google Labs, helping to develop AI writing tools such as NotebookLM, and Chris Dixon, founding partner of a16z crypto and author of the new book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet. The two discuss the history of their shared interests, they explore the emergent properties of decentralized networks, and they dig into the past, present, and future of the internet.

Resources for references in this episode:

Author page for Steven Johnson
Google Labs's personalized AI writing tool NotebookLM
"Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble" by Steven Johnson (New York Times Magazine, January 2018)
How We Got To Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson (Riverhead Books: 2015)
Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, And History's First Global Manhunt by Steven Johnson (Riverhead Books: 2021)
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson (Sribner: 2002)
Chris Dixon's blog at cdixon.org
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (Random House: 1961)
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro (Vintage: 1975)
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual (Basic Books: 2000)
"A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" by John Perry Barlow
"1000 True Fans" by Kevin Kelly
Index, a History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan (W.W. Norton: 2022)
ReadWriteWeb blog (ca. 2003)
"Airbnb Proposes Giving Hosts a Stake in the Company" by Aisha Al-Muslim and Maureen Farrell (Wall Street Journal, September 2018)
"Lyft Unlikely to Get SEC Pushback on Plan for Two Share Classes" by Nabila Ahmed and Ben Bain (Bloomberg, March 2019)
"OpenAI Says New York Times Lawsuit Against It Is Without Merit" by Cade Metz (New York Times, January 2024)

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Read Write Own: A new era Jan 30, 2024

Show notes

with @cdixon @rhhackett

Welcome to the web3 with a16z crypto podcast. I'm Robert Hackett, an editor here at a16z crypto, and I'm here with Chris Dixon, founding partner of a16z crypto and author of the new book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet. I had the privilege of editing Chris throughout the book writing process, and I'm thrilled now to talk to you about what went on behind the scenes, the big themes of the book, the challenges, and also about the crypto industry at large as well as what we can expect from it in the future.

Learn more at https://readwriteown.com/.

Resources for references in this episode:

Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse
"'It's a canon event' TikTok trend, explained"
Chris Dixon's blog at cdixon.org
- "Come for the tool, stay for the network"
- "The next big thing starts out looking like a toy"
- "Can't be evil"
The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen
- On Andrew Chen's writing habits
On investing in Coinbase in 2013
Guidance from the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission in 2019: "Framework for 'Investment Contract' Analysis of Digital Assets"
On blockchains as "a programmable computer that lives in the sky" via a16z crypto head of research Tim Roughgarden
Gödel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstader
"How Aristotle Created the Computer" by Chris Dixon for The Atlantic
"A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" by Claude Shannon
Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead
An Investigation of the Laws of Thought by George Boole
The End of Education by Neil Postman
"Inside out vs. outside in: The adoption of new technologies" by Chris Dixon
"The Inevitable Showdown Between Twitter and Twitter Apps" by Chris Dixon
"Elon Musk says X is discouraging links in posts" by Sara Fischer
"Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again" by Vitalik Buterin
"What Will Happen in 2024" by Fred Wilson
"A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" by McCullough and Pitts
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
On "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis" and Hegel's Dialectics

As a reminder, none of the following should be taken as business, legal, tax, or investment advice; please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

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On the decentralized web, truth, and human rights: 'Hacking authenticity' Dec 23, 2023

Show notes

Welcome back to web3 with a16z -- a show about building the next generation of the internet, from the team at a16z crypto. This show is for anyone -- whether company leader or other entrepreneur, creator or developer, media or policymaker -- seeking to understand, and go deeper on all things blockchains, crypto, and web3. We’re back with all new episodes this season, beginning with some conversations that took place at our recent Founders Summit.

Today's guest is Jonathan Dotan, tech founder, Emmy-nominated producer, and writer who spent six seasons on HBO's show Silicon Valley. He is also the founding director of The Starling Lab for Data Integrity at Stanford & USC -- which prototypes tools and principles to bring historians, legal experts, and journalists into the new era of web3 -- and where he leads applied research on the decentralized web and human rights.

This episode is based on a conversation that took place at our recent second annual Founders Summit -- with a16z crypto's Robert Hackett (also former senior writer at Fortune) -- in which they discuss how cryptographic technologies can help establish "ground truth" in conflict zones; the history of open source regulation; and more.

Dotan is also a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Blockchain Research and a lecturer at Stanford’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Graduate School of Business. This talk was preceded by a short presentation from Dotan on the "enduring promise of web3" delivered at our second annual a16z crypto Founder Summit in November 2023, which you can watch on YouTube.

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Communicating in Crypto, and Beyond Oct 07, 2023

Show notes

with @smc90 @stanfordgsb

How does one *communicate* well -- especially in crypto, but also in other technical industries or open source communities? Or in distributed, decentralized organizations, where you may have participants that are both remote and in person, or a mix of regulars and newcomers/ strangers. (Take for instance a community call to discuss technical or governance changes.)

How do you present information to different types of stakeholders; speak spontaneously; or resolve and recover from conflicts on the spot? So in this special book-launch episode of web3 with a16z, we invited Matt Abrahams -- author of the new, just-released book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You're Put on the Spot (he also hosts a popular podcast by a similar name, “Think Fast Talk Smart”, which you should also subscribe to!). Matt is not only a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, but he works with lots of companies and leaders on strategic communication, persuasive communication, interpersonal communication, and much more.

In this episode, Matt covers -- in conversation with host Sonal Chokshi -- specific templates, tactics, and tools that anyone can use; but we begin the first 15 minutes setting some foundational context, including the difference between informal vs. formal communication; why structure matters and how it relates to "spontaneity"; the art of listening with pace, space, and grace (for listening to oneself, too). We then cover several types of structures that anyone -- whether leader or individual contributor, engineer, marketing, sales -- can use in many types of communication.

Ultimately, crypto isn't just about technology and code -- but about open source, decentralization, collaboration -- people coordinating with each other at unprecedented scale: a very human thing. That's why finding the "common" in communication is essential, and represents the future of work, now.

resources referenced in this episode:

How to Moderate Talks, Panels, Meetings, and More (Virtual and Beyond!), a16z Podcast, November 2020 -- with Matt Abrahams and Sonal Chokshi
Ethereum, Merge and Beyond, web3 with a16z podcast, September 2022 -- with Tim Beiko et al

None of the following should be taken as investment, legal, business, or tax advice. Please also see a16z.com/disclosures for important information -- including a link to a list of our investments -- since we are investors in some of the companies mentioned in this episode.

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Chain Choices: Or, How to Decide What Blockchain to Build On Sep 19, 2023

Show notes

with @guywuolletjr @eddylazzarin @smc90
"Which blockchain should I build in?" Is a very top of mind question for builders in web3, including for people coming into the space for the first time -- but also relevant to anyone interested in tech innovation, tech stacks, and the evolution of infrastructure. So how does one decide among all the chain choices out there, particularly given how fast-moving the crypto and web3 space is? Things are constantly changing, things are still being built, and there's no one size fits all answer...

So in this episode, we -- a16z crypto’s Guy Wuollet, and CTO Eddy Lazzarin, in conversation with host Sonal Chokshi -- tease apart all the tangled threads and nuances of the topic. In the first third of the discussion, we sketch out the overall landscape, why it matters, quick definitions. Then, we focus on common/ frequently asked questions, specific tradeoffs, and a framework for deciding which chain -- including discussing different technical specs, as well as other dimensions such as: community, marketing & ecosystem support, security, custody, programming languages, and much, much more.

resources related to or mentioned in this episode: