With Nathalie Balaban and @lr_bio Antibiotic resistance is an urgent problem, but many aspects of how bacteria acquire this ability to evade the drugs designed to target them are still mysterious. On this episode of the a16z bio Journal Club, Lauren Richardson interviews Professor Nathalie Balaban about her group’s research into the conditions that promote antibiotic resistance in patients suffering from life threatening infections and how to prevent it with carefully and rationally selected drug combinations.

with Joel de la Garza, Jonathan Lusthaus, and @omnivorousread Cybercrime is unfortunately as evergreen a topic as the problem itself—which is why we’re re-running this popular security episode all about the criminal industry of cybercrime from 2019. The idea of the cybercriminal as lone wolf or hobby hacker is no longer much of a reality. Instead, the business of cybercrime looks a lot more like a large, global technology business, with many of the same structures, challenges, and even casts of characters that legitimate businesses have. In this conversation, a16z’s Joel de la Garza, a16z operating partner for information security (formerly CSO of Box and head Citigroup’s Cyber Intelligence Center), and Hanne Tidnam, discuss with Jonathan Lusthaus, Director of the Human Cybercriminal Project at the University of Oxford, the evolution of cybercrime into a sprawling and sophisticated international industry.

with @MartyMakary and @julesyoo Dr. Marty Makary—surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and health policy and innovation expert—has long been a passionate advocate for transparent pricing in the healthcare system. We don’t talk enough (or really at all) about price in healthcare, says Makary (instead, we talk about cost). But shedding a light on prices in healthcare—from not just what those prices are but how prices are set and the value we all receive as consumers of the system overall—can help us measure quality in medicine, and be a driver for real behavioral change in the healthcare system, correcting many of the unintended consequences of a fee-for-service system like surprise billing or unnecessary medical procedures. In this conversation with a16z General Partner Julie Yoo, Makary and Yoo discuss what price transparency in the healthcare system could really do; how we can "steer" towards the good physicians who are not just highly skilled, but make the right judgment calls based on need and holistic health, not cost; how we might distinguish between high value and low value through medical appropriateness; and how we might gain clinical wisdom from other kinds of scientific discovery beyond randomized controls, especially during the wartime protocol of COVID-19.

More than 98% of the information on the web is lost within 20 years, and huge gaps exist in our digital and cultural history. Zoran Basich and Alex Pruden of a16z talk to Brewster Kahle and Sam Williams, who are using different approaches to attack this problem. Brewster cofounded the Internet Archive, which is well known for creating the Wayback Machine that crawls a billion URLs every day. Sam cofounded Arweave, a company that uses decentralized crypto networks to store information forever. For both of them, this issue has implications that go far beyond just data storage. It touches on issues of censorship, government manipulation of information, and how historical context is necessary for well-functioning societies. They discuss how decentralized models offer the promise of building a next-generation web that works better for users. Stay Updated: Find a16z on X Find a16z on LinkedIn Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg   Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In part 2 of our series on human performance, rock climber Alex Honnold talks about the risk, fear, and preparation around his free solo of El Cap... and the parallels it has with entrepreneurship.

Is there a limit to what humans can do? And if so, how do you know when you've reached it? Welcome to part one of a two-part series on human performance with professional rock climber Alex Honnold.

@vijaypande reads out loud on why we shouldn't fear AI in healthcare/ medicine

@conniechan reads out loud on the case of WeChat and mobile in China

@astrange reads out loud on why every company is (or will be) a fintech company

continuing our series of a16z posts, read out loud by their authors here

With @jorgecondebio @vijaypande and @lr_bio On this special holiday weekend edition of the a16z bio Journal Club we discuss a recent opinion article suggesting the end of Eroom’s Law—the decades long trend in biopharma R&D towards higher and higher costs per new drug—and our take on the big trends in this space.

With @trvrb @heyjudka and @lr_bio We speak with Trevor Bedford, Associate Professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, about a wide-range of topics, including changes in scientific communication and publishing spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, the power of genomic epidemiology for tracking the evolution of outbreaks, how this information can aid public health decisions, and preparing for and preventing the next pandemic.

with @justin_larkinMD and @lr_bio The FDA recently approved the first prescription video game. The a16z bio Journal Club covers one of the key clinical trials that supported this FDA decision and discusses the evidence showing that this game can have a measurable impact on the attention impairments seen in children with ADHD.

Gross margins are one of the most important financial metrics for any startup, but figuring out what does and doesn't go into them as a company grows is not as simple as it sounds. In this episode, we discuss why and when margins matter, and how they evolve along the way.

Superhuman Founder Rahul Vohra and a16z General Partner David Ulevitch discuss how to build a product that can turn any user into a power user.

with @heyjudka and @lr_bio a16z bio Journal Club covers recent research building artificial chloroplasts to improve the processes of photosynthesis and carbon fixation, and how these artificial chloroplasts could one day be used to improve crop growth and carbon sequestration in plants.

This episode is the second in a two-part series that examines the pandemic’s impact on real estate. This episode, Part 2, focuses on the fallout for renters and landlords.

This episode is the first in a two-part series that examines the pandemic’s impact on real estate. Part 1 focuses on prospective home buyers, sellers, and existing homeowners. Part 2 (streaming on 6/17) addresses renters and landlords. How has social distancing shaken up the market to buy? What’s the ripple effect of eviction freezes and a record number of homes in forbearance? And how can tech streamline the inefficient process of renting, buying, and selling a home?

with @vijaypande, @drGregBowman, @lr_bio This episode celebrates the 20th anniversary of Folding at Home, the distributed computing project for simulating protein dynamics. Folding at Home is run on millions of devices, is the world’s largest supercomputer, and tackles some of biology’s toughest problems, including COVID-19.

with @sacjai, @vjkedar, @julesyoo, @omnivorousread The way we deliver healthcare has changed enormously over the last century, shifting from house calls by doctors to your own to institutionalized settings like hospitals and clinics. But now that trend has started to shift again, as some of the care we get in the hospitals and clinics has been "unbundled" back towards home settings for chronically ill patients or seniors. And now, of course, the impact of COVID-19 has created a huge sudden demand for home-based care, as all of us try to figure out how to manage certain healthcare needs at home. So, is home-based healthcare better? And what do we truly need to deliver the best care to patients, in their own homes? What do we gain and lose in different care delivery settings, and what shifts of mindset and new logistical processes do we need now, to best accomplish unbundling healthcare into the home? In this conversation, Vijay Kedar, CEO and cofounder of Tomorrow Health, a tech platform that delivers the products and services needed for home-based care; Sachin Jain, physician, previous CEO of Caremore and Aspire Health; part of the founding team at CMMI, the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, now incoming CEO of The Scan Group and Healthplan; and a16z General Partner Julie Yoo join a16z's Hanne Tidnam in conversation to talk about where we are today and where we are going in home-based healthcare.