As the responsibility of CSOs has expanded, the role has moved from technical IT to the boardroom. How do the best CSOs prepare for and respond to a crisis, from redteaming to comms? What responsibility should cloud & SaaS vendors, not to mention the government, have in security and data breaches?

with @vijaypande @andy23tran @heyjudka @lr_bio a16z Journal Club covers recent advances from the scientific literature; this inaugural episode for bio covers 2 two different topics: (1) identifying new antibiotics through a novel machine-learning based approach; and (2) characterizing the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic

Announcing a16z Journal Club, a new show where we curate and discuss recent research papers with a16z experts and others. The first episode is of bio journal club, which focuses on why specific scientific advances matter from our perspective at the intersection of biology & technology.

Today’s episode is one of our intimate hallway-style conversations — or as intimate as remote work allows anyway. It’s all about the history and future of protocol development. a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya, formerly Distributed Systems & Machine Learning researcher at Stanford & Google Brain, wrote a tweetstorm earlier this year about the “Narrow Waist of Blockchain Computing” (we link to in the show notes). Ali observed that the Internet Protocol, which emerged out of research labs and government funding decades ago, has taken the world from zero devices to more than 15 billion connected devices today. What was it about the Internet Protocol that allowed building so many applications on top? Helping us answer this question is a16z general partner in enterprise Martin Casado, who pioneered software-defined networking. He co-founded Nicira, which was acquired by VMware; and then he led their Networking and Security Business Unit, which he scaled to a hugely successful business, so he knows a thing or two about this topic. The two debate the tension between bottom-up design and top-down architected approaches to internet applications, including the role of standards bodies. More broadly, their discussion is about how innovation plays out in practice, and they end by sharing advice for entrepreneurs today. But they begin with a quick history and description of the “Narrow Waist,” and the conditions that create it:

@pmarca reads out loud IT'S TIME TO BUILD

an announcement about a new, occasional series of posts from us, read out loud here

with @ljin18 @samyamiam @laurenmurrow The Passion Economy -- where online platforms enable people to make a living off their unique interests and skills -- is a trend that's become increasingly relevant as the demand for virtual work grows.

a16z General Partners Jorge Conde and Julie Yoo talk with Hanne Tidnam about some of those big forces and dynamics in the healthcare system, at the intersection of business, policy, and public health: how in healthcare like perhaps nowhere else, broken policy can lead to broken business models that, in the wrong circumstances, can then lead major failures in public health like the one we’re seeing today; where we’ve seen this before, in the markets of vaccines, antibiotics, and diagnostics; and what should be different next time, so that when a new pandemic hits we aren’t facing another perfect storm.

Will remote work be our new reality, even after the pandemic passes? And if so, what are the current technologIes and practices that support organizational communication and alignment for distributed teams, development and otherwise?

Dr. Bobby Green, MD (Community Oncologist and Chief Medical Officer, Flatiron Health) and Dr. Sumit Shah (Oncologist and Head of Digital Health, Stanford Cancer Center) join a16z's Vineeta Agarwala (physician and general partner) and Hanne Tidnam to talk about what is happening to oncology during the outbreak—how treatment is affected; what kind of clinical decisions oncologists and patients are having to make, and how they're making them; the tech tools that specialists are using, and how they could improve; and what happens to oncology as a whole when it's forced to go virtual.

with @bobkolker, Stefan McDonough, and @omnivorousread In this episode, we dive into the remarkable story of one American family, the Galvins: Mimi, Don, and their 12 children, 6 of whom were afflicted with schizophrenia. Robert Kolker follows the Galvin's from the 1950s to today, through, he writes, "the eras of institutionalization and shock therapy, the debates between psycho-therapy versus medication, the needle-in-a-haystack search for genetic markers for the disease, and the profound disagreements about the cause and origin of the illness itself." So this conversation, with a16z's Hanne Tidnam, is more than a portrait of one family; it covers all of how we have struggled over the last decades to understand this mysterious and devastating mental illness: the biology of it, the drivers, the behaviors and pathology, the genomics, and of course the search for treatments that might help, from lobotomies to ECT to thorazine.

For any business, there are three core financial statements – the income or P&L statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement. While these statements can show investors and the board how the business is doing, they can do more than just keep score on your business – they are one of the best tools you have to run it, especially in times of crisis.

Since social distancing measures were first put in place, time spent gaming has gone up—way up. According to a recent report by Verizon, video game usage in the U.S. has risen 75 percent during peak hours. The "stay at home" movement has given way to an upswell of new and returning gamers—as well as new challenges, as online platforms struggle to keep up with the surge. In this episode, a16z partner Jon Lai joins host Lauren Murrow to talk about how game developers are grappling with skyrocketing numbers, why this may be an inflection point for VR, the surprising transition of professional sports into esports, and why live-streaming is having its moment.

A robot lawyer that helps people automatically fight bureaucracy to get money back, find hidden money, or sue others/ go to small claims court. Also now helps people delay utility bills and rent payments that are eligible for an extension or waiver of late fees due to the coronavirus crisis. with @jbrowder1 @bhorowitz @shakasenghor

A home care company and network of home care agencies that cares for elders and also puts caregivers at the center. with @sethjs @bhorowitz @shakasenghor

A hiring platform for nurses in the U.S. used by hospitals and health systems that helps hospitals find nurses faster, offers free continuing education to nurses everywhere, and puts nurses at the center. with @imanabuzeid @bhorowitz @shakasenghor

This is the next cycle of Hustlin' Tech, a podcast series about technology platforms that create opportunities for people. Recorded right before the coronavirus pandemic, these next 3 episodes touch on many things that are top of mind right now: from the profession of nursing; to taking care of the elderly; and fighting bureaucracy to get money back -- or to get help delaying utility bills and rent payments that are eligible for an extension or waiver of late fees due to the crisis.

We are in the midst of a rapid and unprecedented shift to remote work, what does this mean for security? How prepared are organizations? And what should each of us do to stay secure?

The spike in online ordering and food delivery—a trend that's particularly relevant now—is evidence of how tech is fundamentally changing how and what we eat. In this conversation between Virtual Kitchen Co. CEO Ken Chong, Snackpass CEO Kevin Tan, a16z general parter Andrew Chen, and host Lauren Murrow, we discuss what's driving this transformation, as well as its implications for the future of dining and cooking. Is this the end of the traditional restaurant experience as we know it?

We discuss the rise of remote work amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, and the platforms powering our newly homebound workforce (and student body) including creative use cases for video conferencing and streaming.