The Best of a16z
20+ most popular a16z articles, as voted by our community.
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Who Owns the Generative AI Platform?
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.
a16z on Crypto
The Future of Work is Not Corporate — It's DAOs and Crypto Networks
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.»
Crypto Canon
Shared by 326, including ThomNagy, Benedict Evans, David Smooke, Mark Kaigwa, Yann “不停” Heurtaux
a16z on Fintech
Decentralized Finance: What It Is, Why It Matters
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. »
How to Move Money in the 21st Century
“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…
a16z on Game Development
State of Play: Six Trends Revolutionizing Games
The next big social network, ecommerce empire, movie franchise, and super app? Games will lead the way.
Singularity 6
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…
a16z on Insurtech
Managing Risk and Uncertainty: The Future of Insurance
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…
a16z on Marketplaces
Online Marketplaces
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…
Where the Opportunities Are in Regulated Marketplaces: Managed Marketplaces
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…
a16z on Network Effects
Hidden Networks: Network Effects That Don’t Look Like Network Effects
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 Dynamics of Network Effects
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…
a16z on Saas
To Start Building a Community, Master These Two Concepts
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…
Introducing a16z's Guide to Growth Metrics
Benchmarks for B2B companies, based on a16z data and investing team expertise.
a16z on Startups
Why Web3 Matters
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.»
16 More Startup Metrics
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…
a16z on Venture Capital
Building American Dynamism
To stave off national stagnation in a post-COVID world, technologists need to build companies that tackle America's biggest problems head-on.
Platforms vs Verticals and the Next Great Unbundling
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…
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It's time to build
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,…
How to Excel in Tech Without Learning to Code
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.»
The Power of Product Thinking
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»
Go-to-Market in Web3: New Mindsets, Tactics, Metrics
Frameworks for thinking about web3 go-to-market strategy, community building, organizational structure, and token economics.
Choosing Your North Star Metric
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.»
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a16z on Social Audio
Social Strikes Back - Andreessen Horowitz
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.