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Acquired Podcast

Acquired Podcast

Podcast | United States | Centre
www.acquired.fm/

Deep dives into the playbooks of the greatest companies and investors. Hosted by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal.

Engagement Insights

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82
Discussions
1
Participants
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Total Votes
96
Articles

Discussions from Acquired Podcast

Business

Ben Horowitz On What Makes a Great Founder

On the show Long Strange Trip, Sequoia Capital partner Brian Halligan speaks with a16z’s Ben Horowitz about what separates great founder CEOs from everyone else. Ben explains why first-time founders lose confidence, defer too much to senior hires, and let decision debt paralyze their companies. They discuss where founder mode works and where people are taking it too far, why the VP of Sales is the hire founders mess up more than any other, and why Andy Grove's "constructive confrontation" mat...

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Healthcare

Ambience CEO Nikhil Buduma on AI in Clinical Workflows

a16z general partner Julie Yoo talks with Nikhil Buduma, CEO and cofounder of Ambience Healthcare, to discuss how AI is transforming clinical workflows. They cover the early days of deep learning, why Ambience started by running a medical practice before building a platform company, and what it takes to achieve high clinician adoption rates at major academic medical centers. They also dig into the challenge of building products when AI capabilities change every few months, the real ROI that's...

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Technology

Ben Horowitz: RSI, Crypto as AI Money, & Classified Physics

Moonshots host Peter Diamandis speaks with Ben Horowitz, cofounder and general partner at a16z, alongside regular cohosts Salim Ismail, Dave Blundin, and Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, about whether AI can or should be paused, what happened when Horowitz told a Biden administration official that regulating AI means regulating math, why crypto is the natural money for AI agents, and why the gap between AI capability and societal adoption may be wider than people think. This episode originally ai...

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Technology

Patrick Collison on Stripe’s Early Choices, Smalltalk, and What Comes After Coding

Michael Truell, CEO of Cursor, sits down with Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe and an investor in Anysphere, to talk about Collison's history with Smalltalk and Lisp, the MongoDB and Ruby decisions Stripe still lives with 15 years later, why he'd spend even more time on API design if he could do it over, and whether AI is actually showing up in economic productivity data. This episode originally aired on Cursor's podcast

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Technology

AI’s Capital Flywheel: Models, Money, and the Future of Power

a16z's Martin Casado and Sarah Wang join Latent Space hosts Alessio Fanelli and Swyx to discuss what makes this AI investment cycle unlike anything in the history of venture capital. They cover why the lines between venture and growth, apps and infrastructure are blurring, how frontier model companies can raise more than the aggregate of everyone built on top of them, and why the industry-wide gap between perception and reality has never been wider

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Business

From Copilots to Agents: Rebuilding the Company Around AI

a16z's Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez speak with Carlos García Ottati, founder and CEO of Kavak, about building Latin America's largest online used car marketplace across Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and the Middle East. They discuss why building in emerging markets means constructing four businesses underneath your business, how Kavak replaced copilot tools with AI agents handling 90 to 95% of customer interactions, and what it took to go flat for a year during the transition before...

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Geopolitics

WSJ x a16z: The Next 25 Years of Defense Innovation

In this episode from WSJ Invest Live, Andy Serwer speaks with Katherine Boyle, general partner at a16z, about the American Dynamism practice she helped launch four years ago. They discuss why saying "America" out loud stunned Silicon Valley in 2022, how Russia's invasion of Ukraine changed everything, and what it means to invest in companies that support the national interest

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Business

Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan on Transforming a 250-Year-Old Company

a16z general partner Jorge Conde talks with Vasant Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis International, about transforming a 250-year-old conglomerate into a pure play medicines company and unlocking $180 billion of value in the process. They cover Novartis's platform technologies: cell and gene therapies, RNA medicines, and radioligand therapies. They also discuss AI in drug discovery, the rise of China as a biotech competitor, and what Vasant looks for when evaluating startup partnerships, including ...

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Geopolitics

Balaji and Dan Wang: The Engineering State vs Lawyerly State

Balaji Srinivasan speaks with Dan Wang, author of Breakneck, about China's industrial rise, America's competing strengths in software and finance, and what happens when an engineering state and a lawyerly state collide. The conversation covers manufacturing dominance, the future of the dollar, why both superpowers keep making costly mistakes, and where builders fit into what comes next

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Technology

Anish Acharya: Is SaaS Dead in a World of AI?

In this episode from 20VC, Harry Stebbings talks with Anish Acharya, general partner at a16z, about the future of SaaS in an AI world. Anish argues that software is completely oversold and that the general story about vibe coding everything is flat wrong. They discuss why SaaS switching costs are actually going down thanks to coding agents, where startups versus incumbents will win, and whether the apps layer or foundation models will capture more value. They also cover agent overhype, the ch...

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Technology

Marc Andreessen: Who Runs the World’s AI?

Cisco president and CPO Jeetu Patel speaks with a16z cofounder Marc Andreessen about why AI may finally break a 50-year productivity slump—and what's at stake if America doesn't win the race. They discuss where value will accrue in the AI stack, why open source complicates the US-China competition, and what's blowing Andreessen's mind right now

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Business

How Magic Johnson Built a Billion-Dollar Portfolio in 30 Years

a16z’s Chris Lyons speaks with Earvin "Magic" Johnson about his 30-year journey from athlete to billionaire businessman. They cover the art of deal-making, lessons from mentors Michael Ovitz and Dr. Jerry Buss, why boring businesses often make the best investments, and Magic's sports ownership portfolio, from the Dodgers to the Commanders to the Sparks. They also discuss what the next generation of athletes and entertainers should know about equity, building teams, and taking risks

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