Latest Interviews
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Big Ideas 2024: A New Age of Maritime Exploration with Grant Gregory
Capitalized on a significant mapping gap where seabed resolution lags far behind celestial charts, the maritime sector is undergoing a digital and hardware revolution driven by urgent regulatory and geopolitical needs. Companies are adapting space-age engineering to replace analog workflows with autonomous vessels and synchronized seafloor topography, addressing critical vulnerabilities exposed by recent supply chain disruptions. This shift creates a multi-billion dollar opportunity for entrepreneurs to layer software onto hardware platforms, transforming an industry that handles over 55% of global GDP while overcoming decades of operational friction.
- a16z22 min
Big Ideas 2024: AI Interpretability: From Black Box to Clear Box with Anjney Midha
In 2024, a16z partners led by General Partner Anjane Mita prioritize mechanistic interpretability to shift the AI industry from observing model outputs to understanding the specific features and "head chefs" driving decision-making. This strategic pivot aims to transform AI explainability into an engineering discipline that enables precise model controllability and reliable deployment in critical sectors like healthcare and finance. By addressing scaling challenges through advanced autoencoders and combinatorial reasoning, the industry seeks to replace fear-based regulation with empirical evidence of model behavior.
- Goldman Sachs33 min
Asset allocation outlook: The case for greater portfolio diversification in 2024
Christian Mueller-Glissmann, Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, Alison Nathan
Goldman Sachs Research and Asset Management teams project a 2024 landscape defined by a strategic rotation out of underweight cash holdings toward a rebalanced 60-40 equity-bond mix to capitalize on normalizing inflation and renewed diversification benefits. While the U.S. economy is identified as late-cycle with a 30% recession probability, the firms recommend extending fixed income duration, utilizing equity put options for downside protection, and increasing exposure to private markets and real assets to navigate persistent structural inflation and AI-driven productivity divergence. This comprehensive strategy aims to achieve a soft landing by hedging against rising credit delinquencies and supply pressures while actively capturing alpha in a higher-rate environment where zero-interest rates are not expected to return.
- Goldman Sachs28 min
Focus on financials: Why banks and asset managers are constructive about the economy in 2024
Richard Ramsden, Alex Blostein, Alison Nathan
Financial institutions now anticipate a soft landing with reduced recession risks, driven by stable deposit flows and a shift toward a higher-for-longer interest rate environment. While commercial lending stagnates due to tightened underwriting and regulatory capital requirements, the private credit sector is expanding rapidly as non-bank lenders absorb displaced loan demand. Concurrently, banks are fortifying reserves against commercial office real estate exposure and navigating a contentious regulatory framework that could further compress traditional intermediation while accelerating industry consolidation.
- a16z24 min
2024 Big Ideas: AI-First Games That Never End with Jonathan Lai
A16Z partner Jonathan Lai forecasts a 2024 shift toward "AI-native" games that utilize Large Language Models to create dynamic, non-repeating narratives and lifelike companions rather than merely accelerating development. While current studios leverage AI for efficiency, new entrants are poised to disrupt the $200 billion market by pioneering subscription-based models designed to manage the variable costs of real-time generative processing. This evolution promises to reinvent core mechanics across genres, transforming static experiences into emergent worlds where players interact with adaptive agents.
- a16z35 min
Launching a New Category with Modern Treasury's Dimitri Dadiomov
Dimitri Dadiomov, Seema Amble, Dmitry Dadimov
Launched in 2018 by Dmitry Dadimov, Sam Aaron, and Matt Marcus, Modern Treasury addresses complex payment reconciliation challenges by providing a unified platform that bridges developer APIs with financial dashboards. The company initially targeted early-stage startups with a "three-legged stool" architecture combining bank integrations and manual oversight tools before securing its first client through personal networks. By coining the "Payment Operations" category and prioritizing deep product mastery over competitive tracking, the founders established a defensible market position that evolved from manual reconciliation into a standardized infrastructure solution.
- Goldman Sachs20 min
M&A in 2024: Navigating opportunities and challenges
Stephan Feldgoise, Mark Sorrell, Allison Nathan
Following a 2023 period defined by valuation misalignments and high interest rates, the M&A market is experiencing a surge in dialogue and specific sector activity driven by resilient natural resources, healthcare, and stable industrial performance. While private equity deal volume has contracted due to financing costs, corporate buyers have maintained robust activity and public-to-private transactions have reached record levels to address pressure on portfolio monetization. Looking ahead to 2024, experts anticipate a normalization of interest rates and reduced inflation will catalyze a rebound in technology deals and strategic spinoffs, with international activity expected to trail the US market by several months.
- a16z25 min
Big Ideas in 2024: Programming Medicine’s Final Frontier with Jorge Conde
Jorge Conde of a16z Bio + Health proposes "programming medicine" as a paradigm shift that reuses delivery platforms like SpaceX rockets to accelerate the development of genetic therapies beyond traditional bespoke drug cycles. This approach, validated by the recent FDA approval of a CRISPR-based sickle cell treatment achieved in just over a decade, aims to transform biological manufacturing through regulatory adaptability and engineering precision. Despite current hurdles regarding permanent safety, complex logistics, and multi-million dollar costs, the strategy seeks to apply exponential scaling to reduce treatment prices from millions to thousands of dollars for broader patient access.
- Bank of America23 min
Lessons in Leadership: Holly O’Neill & Former Bank of America Vice Chair Anne Finucane
Former Bank of America Vice Chair Anne Finucane, who retired in late 2021 after pioneering the bank's sustainable finance strategies, now serves as Chair of Rubicon Carbon to advance rigorous carbon offset solutions alongside former EPA head Gina McCarthy. Her leadership journey, which spans local government, broadcasting, and global banking, emphasizes distilling complex issues and combining capitalism with scientific rigor to fund clean energy in emerging markets. Finucane applies this experience to advocate for social justice and climate action in 2024, leveraging her network to drive private capital toward global challenges while promoting humble, listening-based leadership.
- a16z24 min
Big Ideas in 2024: Democratizing “Miracle Drugs” with Julie Yoo
Andreessen Horowitz partners project that democratizing miracle drugs like GLP-1s and cell therapies will define 2024, driven by a massive eligible U.S. population and the urgent need to prevent healthcare system insolvency. While these programmable medicines offer curative potential, their current exorbitant costs and complex logistics create severe friction in financing, manufacturing, and clinical operations. The industry is responding with 2024-focused innovations in industrialized biomanufacturing, fintech risk-spreading instruments, and real-world data infrastructure, all while awaiting necessary regulatory adaptations from the FDA and CMS.
- Bank of America23 min
Leadership Lessons with Cradles to Crayons’ Lynn Margherio
Lynn Margherio, Dean Athanasia
Founded by Lynn Magirio over two decades ago, Cradles to Crayons operates a volunteer-powered network of five "Giving Factories" to distribute clothing and essential items to 20 million children facing clothing insecurity across the United States. The organization has facilitated more than 4.5 million packages for families and agencies by leveraging a unique supply-demand model that transforms donated goods into dignified resources for over one million volunteers. Serving as a core component of a leadership series exploring philanthropy and business, the nonprofit continues to expand its reach while fostering a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion driven by both corporate partners and youth ambassadors.
- a16z32 min
Welding Yourself to Early Customers with Marqeta's Jason Gardner
Founded in 2010 by Jason Gardner, Marqueta pivoted from an initial consumer card concept to a B2B infrastructure provider after securing $5.2 million in Series A funding to develop real-time transaction authorization technology. The company achieved product-market fit by solving fraud and speed issues for food delivery platforms through its "Just-In-Time" system, subsequently expanding into the Buy Now, Pay Later sector with major partners like Affirm and Klarna. Marqueta's strategy prioritized deep operational integration with clients over immediate profitability, eventually becoming a leading global card technology solution for high-growth verticals including Square's Cash App.
- a16z29 min
Doubling Down on Founder-Led Sales with Pilot's Waseem Daher
Founded in January 2017 by three MIT engineers, Pilot operates as a tech-enabled service that transitions from manual bookkeeping to software automation to serve early-stage technology startups. The company achieved initial growth through founder-led sales and word-of-mouth referrals while charging customers from day one to signal value, subsequently pivoting its pricing strategy from cost-cutting to quality-based differentiation. By retaining founder involvement in sales for ten months and rejecting clients where accounting costs exceed 1.5% of expenses, the team validated market demand and established a high-trust model that has since grown its average selling price tenfold.
- a16z32 min
Competing in a Crowd of Incumbents with Mercury's Immad Akhund
Imad Akhund launched Mercury in 2017 as a "Minimum Delightful Product" to replace stagnant banking infrastructure for early-stage startups, utilizing a lean team of nine to build a platform backed by a16z and 60 angel investors. The company secured its initial traction through organic, founder-led sales and a free pricing model that generates revenue via interest and treasury fees, specifically targeting immigrant founders with robust wire transfer capabilities. After overcoming critical infrastructure failures during its first six weeks, Mercury established a repeatable sales process by prioritizing engineering-led product development and a groundswell of demand over traditional enterprise sales tactics.
- a16z41 min
Inside AI Town: What AI Can Teach Us About Being Human
Joon Park, Martin Casado, June Park, Yoko, Ian
A16Z's infrastructure team hosted a panel featuring lead author June Park and GP Martin Casado to dissect the architecture of Generative Agents, which utilize Large Language Models paired with external memory systems to simulate human behavior through observe-plan-reflect loops. The discussion emphasized applications ranging from testing economic policies to modeling social theories, while advocating for a "grad student" collaboration model over rigid API interactions. Furthermore, the speakers addressed critical ethical considerations, including the necessity for transparency and a regulatory stance that prioritizes freedom of development to avoid stifling transformative enterprise use cases.