The a16z Show

How Bending Spoons Built a $20 Billion Compounder | Luca Ferrari

radical innovation can produce extraordinary outcomes, but systematic improvement can be more dependable, especially when paired with a model designed to compound over decades.

The Business of Tech

Meet the government’s new tech boss

The government has committed $ 231 million to the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Technology, with funding largely redirected from other parts of the science system. That puts serious expectations on the Institute and its leadership. Can they turn promising science into thriving businesses and make sure New Zealand keeps a decent share of the rewards.

The Business of Tech

Andfoods: Beans, cream and kitchen dreams

What if the cream on your cake tasted like dairy, whipped like dairy, but started life as a bean?

Diet TBPN

Inflation Heats Up, Anthropic Investor Day, Tesla Roadster Mania| Diet TBPN

If you're not getting distilled, that's the definition in your mind. It's like unless you're not frontier. Yeah. I think that's like the the most honest definition. Like unless other people will spend a lot of money to try to emulate your model and recreate it, then you are not

TED Radio Hour

The shocking power of tiny things

The diversity of life in our homes is more than a list of 100,000 new species. It is 100,000 new sources of solutions to human problems.

The Business of Tech

Small budgets, big ideas: Meet NZ’s Dyson Award stars

An expert thinks he knows it all, but he's also rather inhibited by his experience, his knowledge, and he finds it difficult to steer off the well-known path. Whereas if you have a lack of experience, but huge curiosity, and you approach your new challenge with naivety, I think it's sort of easier for you as an inexperienced designer to come up with something different and to follow a different path.

TED

The Gravity-Defying Future of Manufacturing | Schendy Kernizan | TED

3D printing has almost become kind of this system that's great for prototyping, but hasn't really created that bridge from prototyping to production. We solved that by printing inside of this gel that holds the shape that you're drawing. You're able to eliminate gravity.

Pivot

Why Kara Swisher Finds Pete Hegseth's Unhinged Speech So "Terrifying"

You can take your roided up macho w you know WWE e you know warrior and give me a 90 lb man or woman in thick glasses with a drone and a hellfire missile and a command module. Let's see who wins. We fight wars now not as much with brawn but with brains and with people who have a certain level of discipline, a certain level of respect for each other.

The Business of Tech

Inside Auckland’s innovation engine

If New Zealand puts too much emphasis on quick commercial returns and neglects fundamental research, it risks drying up the pipeline of discoveries that future businesses will depend on.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

I have some questions for Mark Zuckerberg

My response to all of that is it doesn't matter what Meta says. This is the essential truth of every piece of mainstream consumer technology. The users define the product. If you sell millions of gadgets to people, they will use them in ways you never expected. It's those emergent behaviors that often define the next version of the product.

The a16z Show

Amjad Masad on Rethinking College for the AI Era

one of the most valuable things young people bring to society is their willingness to question deeply held assumptions

The Business of Tech

Blackbird’s billion-dollar bet on founders

New Zealand is like a "Galápagos island of ideas", where founders often start companies not because startup status is fashionable, but because they have encountered a problem they feel compelled to solve.

China Decode

Why Microsoft Is Quietly Abandoning China | China Decode

I think there's a third category, and this is the category that I would put Microsoft into. This is the category of companies, big western companies that dared to dream the dream but never managed to realize it.

The Week

The Half-Trillion-Dollar AI Loop | The Week

If you were to go back and look at the average productivity of the US worker over the past 90 years, you will not see a single technological innovation. You won't see air conditioning. You won't see cell phones or computers or the internet or Microsoft Office. You don't see it because it takes a long time for productivity to be absorbed into the workplace and used by employers.

The Prof G Pod

"It Scared Me How Realistic It Is" — AI Porn's Danger

I think the greatest innovation in history isn't vaccines or the iPhone. I think it's the American middle class. And only 40% of men throughout history, I understand, have reproduced and 80% of women.

The a16z Show

Garry Tan on Taste, Agents and Founder Ambition

why the best ideas tend to begin with people pursuing strange, earnest obsessions outside the mainstream

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Eric Vishria - A Decade of Lessons Investing in Software & Hardware - [Invest Like the Best, EP.486]

The companies that really win are not just solving a problem that exists today, but they're creating a new category or they're redefining a category. And the ones that try to do it incrementally — 'I'm going to be 10% better or 20% better' — almost never work. It has to be a fundamentally different approach.

TED

Inside Dubai’s Mission to Build the City of the Future | His Excellency Khalfan Belhoul | TED

Usually governments are a hurdle or they take time or they're bureaucratic. We are hearing from our leaders that we can actually do this. This is music to our ears.

Freakonomics Radio

683. In the New Space Race, Who Makes the Rules?

Governments started the space age. Now, billionaires and private firms are reinventing it.

The Business of Tech

FTN Motion's electric ride

It's hard to imagine this, but back then there was no like e bikes within a thing lit alone electric motorcycles. So we put that thing together and started riding and around Pocacoli. It just turned a lot of hits like it was something new.

The a16z Show

Steven Sinofsky: AI Doesn't Need New Rules Yet

governments are rushing to regulate AI before they fully understand the technology, risking innovation in the process

Throughline

The architect of modern China | Throughline

If I wanted to propose a grand synthesis for Americans to understand Shenzhen, it would be uh Detroit in its heyday of about 100 years ago to Silicon Valley today.

The Business of Tech

FTN Motion's electric ride

It's hard to imagine this, but back then there was no like e bikes within a thing lit alone electric motorcycles. So we put that thing together and started riding around Pocacoli. It just turned a lot of hits like it was something new.

Freakonomics Radio

How a Great Architect Thinks, with Bjarke Ingels | Better in Person

Is the oxymoron really "the secret sauce to everything"? That's the case Ingels makes in this debut episode of our new video show Better in Person, filmed in Stephen Dubner's living room.

EconTalk

From Sawdust to Paw Patrol: The Spin Master Story (with Ronnen Harary)

A nylon stocking filled with sawdust that grows grass for hair launched one of the most successful toy companies in the world.

TED

Why I’m Obsessed with Health Wearables (and You Should Be Too) | Michael Snyder | TED

We practice sick care rather than health care. And even when we practice health care, if you think about it, it's a pretty archaic process. You will travel to a physician's office that really hasn't changed much in the last 40 years.

TED

Origami, the Ancient Art Form Solving Modern Problems | Miles Wu | TED

It's amazing that something can be so strong and yet so lightweight at the same time. And it's exciting to think about what potential applications a fold like this could have -- maybe even helping to imagine a better emergency shelter one day.

EconTalk

Can a Phone Be a Cow? (with Philip Auerswald)

How much of human progress is inevitable, and how much depends on the determination of remarkable individuals?

The Business of Tech

China’s AI and robot revolution

China may not be the leader in AI development yet, but it certainly is a leader in the adoption of AI.

TED

Why the Best Ideas Come from Play | Maxwell Pearce | TED

Play is the most important ingredient in every person and every industry's evolution.

Diet TBPN

Bezos' Prometheus Raises $12B, America Inc. Moves to Texas, Trucking Rebounds | Diet TBPN

Bezos argued that if AI makes it cheaper, faster, and easier to invent things, employment will ultimately rise because even though you're shrinking the number of people needed by 10x, the technology will create more than 10x as many opportunities.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Alex Sacerdote - How to Invest Through Technology Cycles - [Invest Like the Best, EP.477]

The exciting part of being in technology investing is that you have these waves of innovation that create extraordinary opportunities for value creation and also value destruction. And the companies that are able to ride multiple waves are extraordinary compounders over time, but it's actually quite rare.

The a16z Show

Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok on AI, Jobs, and Economic Growth

Throughout history, productivity-enhancing technologies have transformed work, created new industries, and expanded living standards, even as they disrupted existing jobs and institutions.

The Business of Tech

From Uber to Exaba: AJ Tills takes on Big Tech storage

if I reverse engineering my career, it's really been about normalizing disruptive technologies to make them more understood and to drive that mass adoption.

Hidden Brain

Unleashing Your Creativity

Most people think of creativity as the production of something new. But Ogas and Rose argue that creative breakthroughs almost always involve making unusual connections between existing ideas. They say that highly creative people are essentially librarians of their own knowledge and experience — constantly cross-referencing and combining things in ways that others don't think to do.

EconTalk

Thinking Inside the Box (with David Epstein)

The problem is that we're often led to believe that we need to think outside the box, but actually the most creative solutions often come from people who have gone so deep into a box that they understand the nuances and the constraints so well that they can find new pathways within it that others couldn't see.

EconTalk

Thinking Inside the Box (with David Epstein)

What do the inventor of the periodic table, the novelist Isabel Allende, and the almost-creators of the iPhone have in common? Join author David Epstein and EconTalk's Russ Roberts to explore a counterintuitive idea: that boundaries, and not unlimited freedom, often make us more creative, productive, and fulfilled.

The a16z Show

Crypto Fund 5: We Raised $2.2B. Here’s Why.

founders are shifting toward building products that work within existing systems, rather than attempting to replace them

The a16z Show

Crypto Fund 5: We Raised $2.2B. Here’s Why.

crypto has evolved from an ideological movement into a more pragmatic, product-focused ecosystem, shaped by real-world use cases and increasing regulatory clarity

Office Hours

Can AI Actually Help You Start a Company? | Office Hours

I would describe AI is all chip no salsa and that is real insight like what is it you're going to do differently with your business what is it that's unique about your business most new businesses make no sense at the outset otherwise they would already exist.

TBPN

Tech Earnings Quadkill, Red Button vs Blue Button | Diet TBPN

We're going into an entirely different era, but it is very exciting and we're getting a lot of data today.

The Business of Tech

Factories in retreat: inside NZ’s deindustrialisation crisis

Without a coherent industrial strategy covering energy, skills, investment, and R and D, we're effectively putting headwinds in front of our most productive exporters rather than giving them a competitive advantage.

The Business of Tech

Why big companies kill good ideas – and how to save them

really cool ideas can just naturally make the world better and be commercially successful.

The Business of Tech

Why big companies kill good ideas – and how to save them

for innovation to work in a corporate but has to look and feel like a real startup. It needs its own budget, a clear, finite time span, specific deliverables, and tough stage gates where ideas are reviewed and must earn the right to keep going exactly as they would if a founding team was pitching for the next funding round.

Fresh Air

Best Of: Arsenio Hall / Jeff Ross

I wanted to do this show that didn't exist when I was a kid, and I knew the talent was out there. You know, I found Bruno Mars and put him on the show when he was two feet tall. I wanted those things that Johnny didn't do.

TBPN

SpaceX Financials, Does AI Increase Unemployment or Leisure, Chimp Civil War | Diet TBPN

Elon has uh always had multiple irons in the fire, one project that's working and producing cash flow and and growing uh to finance the next uh piece of innovation.

The Business of Tech

From Leaf to lunch: the Canterbury startup rethinking protein

How could we develop a system that produced far more protein per hectare of land at a much lower environmental impact, and can we weave those things together into a business, which is what we have done.

Acquired

The physics of F1 cars are awesome.

What if you did the opposite? That is what the Lotus team did. They shaped a car like an upside down airplane wing.

TED

The Story You’re Not Hearing About AI Data Centers | Ayșe Coskun | TED

The very technology driving this unforeseen demand is also probably the only thing smart enough to tame it.