with @rvenkayya @jorgecondebio WHEN are we going to have a COVID-19 vaccine, and how the heck are we going from 12 years of vaccine development compressed into 12 months or so? What will and won’t be compromised here, and where do new technologies (like mRNA) come in? Where will vaccines likely be distributed first; who will and won't get them initially; how do we maintain not just safety and efficacy of vaccines but trust and transparency when it comes to mis/information? We may actually see the emergence of a "Neo Anti-Vaxxer"... but we may also be entering a renaissance for vaccinology after this pandemic.

In this episode, we continue our community series with a recent discussion that applies to many kinds of community building. Today’s topic: How do you create a platform that people not only use, but tell their friends about? One that goes beyond just being useful and actually connects deeply with the user? In this discussion, which was recorded at our Crypto Startup School in April 2020, a16z General Partner Chris Dixon talked about building communities — specifically, communities of open-source developers — with GitHub cofounder Tom Preston-Werner. They discussed how to engage early users, how to turn them into your biggest advocates, how to create superfans, and more. Today, GitHub is the leading community for open-source developers and others. They also discuss in-person communities vs. distributed communities, a topic that is very top of mind today. Stay Updated: Find a16z on X Find a16z on LinkedIn Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg   Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

with @jorgecondebio @andy23tran and @lr_bio On this episode of the a16z Journal Club we discuss new research using engineered T cells to attack and destroy the "sleeping" cells that build up as we age and underlie many age-related conditions. This research lays the groundwork for a possible therapy that, in addition to treating specific diseases like liver fibrosis, is broadly health-promoting and restorative as we age.

with @nayafia @smc90 Communities are everything, but the word "members" is faceless. What if there's a better, more modern way to understand, support, and design for communities of all kinds -- whether open source, passion economy, or other groups coming together? Nadia Eghbal offers the latest research and insights from her new book, Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software... but it's not all participatory, and it's not all public, either.

with @smc90 @withfries2 Given all the recent buzz around the language model GPT-3 -- what is "it", how does it work, where does it fit into the arc of broader tech trends -- what's hype, what's real here? Are we really getting closer to artificial general intelligence? We cover all this and more and discuss broader implications for startups, incumbents, and the future of work too.

with @AndreaCoravos, @beauwoods, and @omnivorousread Many don’t realize we even need to think about the possibility of security hacks when it comes to things like pacemakers, insulin pumps, and more. But when bits and bytes meet flesh and blood, security becomes literally a life or death concern. So what are the issues and risks we need to be aware of in exposing security vulnerabilities in connected biomedical devices? This conversation—with Beau Woods, Cyber Safety Innovation Fellow with the Atlantic Council, part of the I Am The Cavalry grassroots security initiative, Founder/CEO of Stratigos Security; Andy Coravos, co-founder and CEO of Elektra Labs, advisor to the Biohacking Village at DEF CON (both of whom were formerly EIRs at the FDA); and a16z's Hanne Tidnam covers how we should begin to think about addressing these security issues in the biomedical device space. What are the frameworks that should guide our conversations, and how and when (and which!) stakeholders should be incentivized to address these challenges? How did the FDA begin to think about security as part of the safety of all medical devices, including software as a medical device, and how we should think about understanding, monitoring, and updating the security of these devices—from philosophical statements to on-the-ground practical fixes and updates?

With Nathalie Balaban and @lr_bio Antibiotic resistance is an urgent problem, but many aspects of how bacteria acquire this ability to evade the drugs designed to target them are still mysterious. On this episode of the a16z bio Journal Club, Lauren Richardson interviews Professor Nathalie Balaban about her group’s research into the conditions that promote antibiotic resistance in patients suffering from life threatening infections and how to prevent it with carefully and rationally selected drug combinations.

with Joel de la Garza, Jonathan Lusthaus, and @omnivorousread Cybercrime is unfortunately as evergreen a topic as the problem itself—which is why we’re re-running this popular security episode all about the criminal industry of cybercrime from 2019. The idea of the cybercriminal as lone wolf or hobby hacker is no longer much of a reality. Instead, the business of cybercrime looks a lot more like a large, global technology business, with many of the same structures, challenges, and even casts of characters that legitimate businesses have. In this conversation, a16z’s Joel de la Garza, a16z operating partner for information security (formerly CSO of Box and head Citigroup’s Cyber Intelligence Center), and Hanne Tidnam, discuss with Jonathan Lusthaus, Director of the Human Cybercriminal Project at the University of Oxford, the evolution of cybercrime into a sprawling and sophisticated international industry.

with @MartyMakary and @julesyoo Dr. Marty Makary—surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and health policy and innovation expert—has long been a passionate advocate for transparent pricing in the healthcare system. We don’t talk enough (or really at all) about price in healthcare, says Makary (instead, we talk about cost). But shedding a light on prices in healthcare—from not just what those prices are but how prices are set and the value we all receive as consumers of the system overall—can help us measure quality in medicine, and be a driver for real behavioral change in the healthcare system, correcting many of the unintended consequences of a fee-for-service system like surprise billing or unnecessary medical procedures. In this conversation with a16z General Partner Julie Yoo, Makary and Yoo discuss what price transparency in the healthcare system could really do; how we can "steer" towards the good physicians who are not just highly skilled, but make the right judgment calls based on need and holistic health, not cost; how we might distinguish between high value and low value through medical appropriateness; and how we might gain clinical wisdom from other kinds of scientific discovery beyond randomized controls, especially during the wartime protocol of COVID-19.

More than 98% of the information on the web is lost within 20 years, and huge gaps exist in our digital and cultural history. Zoran Basich and Alex Pruden of a16z talk to Brewster Kahle and Sam Williams, who are using different approaches to attack this problem. Brewster cofounded the Internet Archive, which is well known for creating the Wayback Machine that crawls a billion URLs every day. Sam cofounded Arweave, a company that uses decentralized crypto networks to store information forever. For both of them, this issue has implications that go far beyond just data storage. It touches on issues of censorship, government manipulation of information, and how historical context is necessary for well-functioning societies. They discuss how decentralized models offer the promise of building a next-generation web that works better for users. Stay Updated: Find a16z on X Find a16z on LinkedIn Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg   Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In part 2 of our series on human performance, rock climber Alex Honnold talks about the risk, fear, and preparation around his free solo of El Cap... and the parallels it has with entrepreneurship.

Is there a limit to what humans can do? And if so, how do you know when you've reached it? Welcome to part one of a two-part series on human performance with professional rock climber Alex Honnold.

@vijaypande reads out loud on why we shouldn't fear AI in healthcare/ medicine

@conniechan reads out loud on the case of WeChat and mobile in China

@astrange reads out loud on why every company is (or will be) a fintech company

continuing our series of a16z posts, read out loud by their authors here

With @jorgecondebio @vijaypande and @lr_bio On this special holiday weekend edition of the a16z bio Journal Club we discuss a recent opinion article suggesting the end of Eroom’s Law—the decades long trend in biopharma R&D towards higher and higher costs per new drug—and our take on the big trends in this space.

With @trvrb @heyjudka and @lr_bio We speak with Trevor Bedford, Associate Professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, about a wide-range of topics, including changes in scientific communication and publishing spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, the power of genomic epidemiology for tracking the evolution of outbreaks, how this information can aid public health decisions, and preparing for and preventing the next pandemic.

with @justin_larkinMD and @lr_bio The FDA recently approved the first prescription video game. The a16z bio Journal Club covers one of the key clinical trials that supported this FDA decision and discusses the evidence showing that this game can have a measurable impact on the attention impairments seen in children with ADHD.

Gross margins are one of the most important financial metrics for any startup, but figuring out what does and doesn't go into them as a company grows is not as simple as it sounds. In this episode, we discuss why and when margins matter, and how they evolve along the way.