In 2014, in “Why There Will Never Be Another Red Hat,” Peter Levine argued that Red Hat’s open source business model of commercializing support and services was highly difficult to replicate. Instead, he pr...

CAR T therapy, the groundbreaking new medicines that uses engineered T-cells to attack cancer, has been so effective in childhood leukemias that we believe it may actually be a potential cure. But this isn't just one new medicine, it's an entirely new therapeutic tool—and a total paradigm shift from most traditional medicines we've seen before.

The idea of "1000 true fans" argued that to be a successful creator, you don’t need millions of customers or clients, as long as you also have a direct relationship with those fans. But how is media changing today as a result, and what nuances do people often miss about the concept? And why are we apparently surrendering our attention (whether to TV, books, or whatever) for only $3 an hour?!

When designing cryptonetworks — really, emerging economies — how do we avoid some of the monetary and fiscal policy failings of “real-world” economies? Like not separating currency and capital, wh...

Recorded as part of our NYC roadtrip, this episode features Cornell Tech PhD student and software engineer Phil Daian, who researches applied cryptography and smart contracts -- and who also wrote about "On-chain Vote Buying and the Rise of Dark DAOs" in 2018 (with Tyler Kell, Ian Miers, and his advisor Ari Juels). Daian is joined by a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya (previously a software engineer and machine learning researcher at GoogleX and Google Brain), who also recently presented on crypto as the evolution -- and future -- of trust.

Veterinary oncology can inform human oncology, and vice versa — providing a better model for looking at drug performance, interrelationships, and more. Especially when you add in data (there’s no “doggy...

On average, only 1 out of 20 medicines works when we actually bring them into the human body, and these rates of success haven’t moved much in the pharma industry overall in the past 15 years, despite much scientif...

The idea of 'designing biology' -- once science fiction -- has over the last 20 years become just... science. In this episode, a16z bio general partner Vijay Pande with Hanne Tidnam talk all about the field of synthetic biology with James J. Collins, professor of bioengineering at MIT. Collins, whose work in synthetic biology and systems biology pioneered the field, has also launched a number of companies and received numerous awards and honors (including a MacArthur "Genius" Award, an NIH Director's Pioneer Award, and Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Award). This wide-ranging conversation about the birth of synthetic biology covers everything from the founding story of the discipline to what "engineering and designing" biology really looks like in action -- when instead of engineering electrons, you are engineering toggle switches for genes -- to the disciplinary differences (and synergies) between how biologists and engineers see the world. What are the engineering and design principles, techniques, approaches that work best when applied to science? How does building a company in this new space look different, in terms of platforms and products? And how is this new field changing education in science, all the way down to kits that allow you to play with the machinery of a cell... at home... and even in middle school?

There’s all sorts of interesting tech trends happening right now, including AI, VR/AR, self-driving cars and drones (as well as interesting stuff happening in verticals like healthcare and finance) — and ther...