The Best of a16z

Generative AI will have a massive impact in the software industry and beyond. The goal of this post is to map out the market dynamics and business models.

In the future, it’s likely that the average person will not work for a company. Instead, people will earn income in non-traditional ways by taking actions such as playing games, learning new skills,…

«DAOs as open economies will power the X-to-earn trend, which will make work more flexible, fluid, and playful than the 9-5s we are accustomed to.»

Shared by 326, including ThomNagy, Benedict Evans, David Smooke, Mark Kaigwa, Yann “不停” Heurtaux

DeFi’s two foundational qualities — permissionless-ness and transparency — translate to multiple, powerful use cases.

«decentralized finance aka “DeFi,” the ecosystem of blockchain-enabled products and services that replace traditional financial intermediaries with freely accessible, autonomous, and transparent software. »

“Financial operations” (FinOps) is an emerging software category with a massive opportunity to streamline, automate, and optimize how we move money, while giving the entire organization a real-time…

The next big social network, ecommerce empire, movie franchise, and super app? Games will lead the way.

If history repeats itself, the next social network won’t look like the social networks we know today. Since the invention of the Internet, there have been places to meet new people who share our in…

Human progress is defined by the desire to take risk -- whether that's getting married, buying a home, having kids, getting on a plane, taking a new job, even moving to earthquake country (where th…

We’re continuing to see tremendous innovation in marketplaces. The first generation of net companies saw a few big horizontal marketplace winners like eBay and Craigslist. But entrepreneurs are…

There might be no more beloved image of the American entrepreneurial spirit than that of neighborhood kids who open a sidewalk lemonade stand on a hot summer day. With a little bit of “capital” fro…

Some network effects (when a network gains more value to its users as more people participate in its platform) don’t show up in the usual metrics. Their hidden nature makes them hard to measure – but they can confer significant long-term competitive advantages. In an insightful article for A16Z.com, D’Arcy Coolican – an Andreessen Horowitz partner and a co-founder of the peer-to-peer lending platform Frank – shines a light on hidden networks, giving useful guidelines for identifying when they’re at work.

The most successful companies and products of the internet era have all been predicated on the concept of network effects, where the network becomes more valuable to users as more people use it. Th…

Increasingly, building a successful startup involves not only building a product that people can’t get enough of, but also building an engaged, loyal community around that product. Today, most…

Benchmarks for B2B companies, based on a16z data and investing team expertise.

An innovative new wave of social networks has arrived—from audio-first apps to social gaming to the countless consumer apps built with social in their DNA.

Web1 (roughly 1990-2005) was about open protocols that were decentralized and community-governed. Most of the value accrued to the edges of the network — users and builders. Web2 (roughly 2005-2020)…

«We are now at the beginning of the web3 era, which combines the decentralized, community-governed ethos of web1 with the advanced, modern functionality of web2.»

A few weeks ago, we shared some key startup metrics (16 of them, to be exact) that help investors gauge the health of a business when investing in it. But to repeat ourselves for a moment: Good…

To stave off national stagnation in a post-COVID world, technologists need to build companies that tackle America's biggest problems head-on.

One of the holy grails in the newco world is to build out a digital platform that successfully serves the needs of a broad number of adjacent verticals, and become the definitive platform in its sp…

Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade,…

Technical literacy is key to career success, even for non-engineers. Learn how to master the tools of your trade and build a solid tech foundation.

«MAKE A PLAN Learning “guitar” is hard, but learning a song on guitar is a lot easier.»

In many design, product management, engineering, or even venture capital interviews and pitches, you’ll be assessed on a dimension called “product thinking,” sometimes also called “product sense.” If…

«The simplest way to define product thinking is that it is the skill of knowing what makes a product useful — and loved — by people»

Frameworks for thinking about web3 go-to-market strategy, community building, organizational structure, and token economics.

How to decide the guiding metrics for every type of business, based on a survey of employees at over 40 of today's most successful growth-stage companies.

«By maintaining a laser focus on a single metric for too long, teams risk short-term thinking, missing new opportunities, and sacrificing the user experience.»