The a16z Show

The internet boom built bandwidth. The AI boom is building intelligence. Mike Volpi, who helped shape Cisco’s strategy during the internet buildout, asks what that era can teach us about this one. Mike joins a16z’s Raghu Raghuram and Guido Appenzeller to compare today’s investment in GPUs, data centers, and power with the fiber boom of the late 1990s, and explain why the infrastructure could prove valuable even if the market corrects. They also discuss NVIDIA, custom silicon, networking, and the changing economics of GPUs, plus lessons from Cisco’s acquisition machine. And Mike explains why he thinks this technology cycle could be even more consequential than the last.

As frontier AI labs expand into applications, where should startups build? a16z Partner Joe Schmidt joins HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah to explore why the software opportunity is growing, and how founders can stay off the “Yellow Brick Road” the labs are racing down. Drawing on HubSpot’s evolution, Dharmesh explains why founders should start with a narrow market, learn quickly, and solve the whole customer problem. They discuss where application companies can build lasting value as models become infrastructure: workflows, customer context, and the systems where work happens. They also explore HubSpot’s AI experiments, the rise of one-person businesses, and why cheaper software creation could unlock markets that previously couldn’t support a software company.

Scott Kupor helped build a16z from three people into a firm with hundreds of employees. Now, as Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, he’s applying some of the same lessons about talent, incentives, and organizational design to a workforce of roughly two million federal employees. Scott joins Founders host David Senra to tell the story of a16z’s earliest days, from joining Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz during the 2008 financial crisis to borrowing Michael Ovitz’s CAA model to build a venture firm around specialized networks and services for founders. He explains why a16z chose to market itself when venture firms traditionally didn’t, how early wins like Skype accelerated the firm’s growth, and why it eventually reorganized around specialized investing teams. Then they turn to Scott’s move into government. He lays out his effort to build a more merit-based federal workforce, attract younger technical talent, and create what he calls “permissioned risk” so government employees can actually try new things. That includes everything from changing how performance and promotions work to replacing a retirement process that still relied on hundreds of millions of pieces of paper stored in an underground Pennsylvania mine.

Health advice has become an endless stream of supplements, diets, wearables, and biohacks. Which interventions are actually worth your time? Truemed CEO Justin Mares argues that most people should ignore the extremes and focus on a few fundamentals: better food, movement, sleep, and reducing harmful exposures. Justin joins a16z General Partner Daisy Wolf to walk through his own approach to health, from what he eats and how he exercises to supplements, blood tests, sauna, sleep, and the changes he’s made to his home. They also discuss the larger problem behind Truemed: while chronic disease drives the vast majority of U.S. healthcare spending, relatively little goes toward prevention. Justin explains how Truemed is trying to change that by making it easier for eligible consumers to use tax-free HSA and FSA dollars on qualified lifestyle interventions.

What actually matters if you want to stay healthy as you age? Dr. Mark Hyman argues it isn’t the most extreme longevity intervention. It’s the small investments you make every day in strength, nutrition, sleep, and stress. Mark joins a16z Partner Daisy Wolf to walk through what he actually does, from meditation and strength training to protein, supplements, sleep, sauna, cold plunges, and the occasional ice cream. He explains why preserving muscle becomes increasingly important with age and how he uses testing to understand what’s happening inside his body. They also discuss the idea behind Function Health: combining blood tests, imaging, wearables, medical records, and eventually AI to move healthcare from treating disease toward understanding and preventing it earlier.