a16z Podcast: Good Bubbles, Bad Bubbles -- and Where Unicorns Come from

As the CEO of a startup your board is a critical tool in helping your company grow; the board is there to make you a better CEO. (Or at least it should be.) But how do you best leverage your board’s expertise -- both during meetings and outside scheduled time -- and what kind of people should fill the precious few slots you have? “Don’t end up with one of those boards with six VCs on it,” says a16z General Partner Scott Weiss. Seems like strange advice coming from a VC, but the point, Weiss says, is to have a balance of people on your board -- especially in the early stages of a company. “For every VC you have, add a CEO -- that’s how you get that outside perspective.” Weiss is joined in this segment of the podcast by former Chairman and CEO of 3Com (and a16z Board Partner) Bill Krause; Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie; Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff; and former CEO and Chairman of NetApp Dan Warmenhoven to discuss the practicalities of building and leading boards over the lifetime of a company -- from early days to prepping for an IPO.

26 Mar 201548min

Getting a board seat isn't just about adding value, but also about what value you take from it for your career. But why do it? When? How? And should you focus on a public or private company? To answer these questions and share their perspectives, this segment of the a16z Podcast features three current board directors and veteran executives: Amy Bohutinsky, CMO of the Zillow Group and a board director at Hotel Tonight and Avvo; Dawn Lepore, former Chair and CEO of Drugstore.com and a board director at AOL, Real Networks, and Coupons.com; and Michelle Wilson, former Amazon general counsel and a board member at Zendesk.

25 Mar 201529min

Diane Greene -- who is on the boards of Google and Intuit -- has some golden rules when it comes to serving on boards. No 1: “You don’t want to tell them how to do strategy, whether it’s a big company or a small company,” she says. “That’s not your job. Your job as a director is to ask questions.” Lots of questions. In this segment of the a16z Podcast, a16z's Marc Andreessen and VMware co-founder and former CEO Diane Greene have a candid conversation about their experiences on boards from the perspective of both company founders and board directors. “I’ve almost never seen a problem that couldn’t be solved by better communication and consistency,” Greene says. That's rule No. 2. [This talk took place as part of a training program in corporate governance that a16z organized with the Director’s College at Stanford on March 5, 2015.]

20 Mar 201550min

Of the 371 board seats that opened up last year (within Fortune 500 companies that is), 39% ended up going to first-time board members. So how did they pull it off? What are some strategies for landing your first board seat -- especially if you don’t fit the typical 'profile' of the other board members? And why do it? In this segment of the a16z Podcast, three veteran executives and board members share their experiences and offer advice about building better public company boards: Shellye Archambeau, who sits on the Nordstrom and Verizon boards; Gerri Elliott, a board member at Whirlpool, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Charlotte Russe; and Raul Vazquez, a Staples board member.

16 Mar 201531min

As technology outgrows the tech industry, it moves from selling utilitarian products to selling things that fulfill other desires or pleasures. The Apple Watch is a perfect example of this market shift, says a16z's Benedict Evans. "It's another step in abstraction, and another step in the importance of delight rather than speeds and feeds." Technology meets desire in this segment of the a16z Podcast. image credit: David Adam Kess / Wikimedia Commons

11 Mar 201514min

Companies founded by a group of engineers often have a deep-seated mistrust of sales -- or more precisely, salespeople. That was the case at GitHub, says CEO and co-founder Chris Wanstrath: It wasn't until their customers started asking for a sales organization to help guide them that Wanstrath and the GitHub team realized sales wasn't necessarily filled with the fast-talking stereotypes they were used to seeing on TV. Wanstrath joins a16z General Partner Peter Levine to discuss how GitHub finally embraced sales, why good salespeople are like good teachers, and what it takes to sell to developers.

5 Mar 201523min

It may seem like good apps or services sell themselves. That's what the whole viral thing is all about, right? Wrong, says Daniel Shapero, who helped build LinkedIn's enterprise sales team from a small core group to more than 1,200 people all over the globe. Shapero joins a16z General Partner Peter Levine (an engineer who jumped into sales before taking on his first CEO gig, and who now also teaches a class on the topic at Stanford) to discuss the right way to build a sales organization -- from answering the basic question of why sales?, to hiring, compensation ... and the inevitable culture clash that occurs when salespeople and engineers meet.

4 Mar 201528min

Online marketplaces are growing much faster than e-commerce overall. Why is that? And what new kinds of marketplaces powered by the internet and mobile are we now seeing? a16z's Jeff Jordan and Anu Hariharan share their observations here and also explain what makes marketplace powered by software and reputation work -- as well as how to manage tensions, trust, and marketplace community reactions around change.

18 Feb 201526min