Coverage on Presence, organized across crypto, technology, science, and company building with original bylines, publication dates, and source context preserved.
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao explains why bitcoin corrections are normal, what institutional adoption could mean for 2027, and how exchanges scale through record volumes.
Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik on building through the bear market, moving AI to the front of the product, exchange transparency after FTX, and why Asia matters for the next stage of crypto.
Yat Siu, one of the early major advocates of blockchain gaming and digital ownership, says gamers remain at the forefront of blockchain adoption.
Computational genomics pioneer Jimmy Lin explains what many machine learning-focused biotech companies and get wrong about hiring, data, and communication.
Lumos CEO Andrej Safundizc explains why companies that use software wisely have a competitive advantage over those that blindly consume it.
What if we viewed America’s cities as technological systems? Startups need to compete directly with legacy cities to offer better Land Use APIs.
Sprig founder and CEO Ryan Glasgow explains why the key to building successful products is understanding your users and what they want.
When your back's against the wall, you need a SuperGoal: a high stakes, focusing goal that instills a sense of urgency and clarity.
Caltech Professor Magda Zernicka-Goetz explains recent progress in building 'synthetic' embryos from stem cells and their applications.
The Basecamp and HEY cofounder discusses the power of short-term thinking, his framework for startup longevity, and the key thing he looks for when hiring remote.
A Slack chat to talk about CC0, commercial rights for NFTs, and the future of intellectual property in web3.
Forty percent of workers are considering quitting. Management that opts for empty arguments to force people back in-office will bleed talent to their competition.
A GPT-3-like AI model for science would accelerate innovation and improve reproducibility. Creating it will require us to unlock research.
Tech fears tend to follow a 4-step cycle fueled by politicians, scientists, and media, according to Jason Feifer's new book, Build For Tomorrow.
Technologies such as avatars and digital wallets are unbundling our digital identities and rebundling them in new ways.
Commercetools CEO Dirk Hoerig explains headless commerce and microservices, and why we'll see innovation in AR, in-car, and B2B commerce.
From unleashing creativity to mitigating risk, Ben Stokes of Tiny Projects shares some of the main reasons why developers are building so many side projects.
AI-created models of the brain will enhance art, advertising, and health by predicting how our minds will respond to images and sounds.
GPT-3 is a neural network machine learning model used to generate text. Chris Tweten explores how AI copywriters compare to humans and their potential to change SEO.
Sam Lambert is CEO of PlanetScale, a MySQL-compatiable serverless database provider. Prior to joining PlanetScale (then as chief product officer), he was VP of engineering at GitHub. In this interview, Lambert…
Danny Ryan details the path forward for scalability, explains the possibility of stateless Ethereum, and shares lessons learned from testing.
The Ethereum Foundation's Danny Ryan discusses how the Merge will increase security and explains how proof of stake impacts developers.
Isovalent co-founder and Cilium creator Thomas Graf discusses the state of cloud native networking and where the future of enterprise Kubernetes lies.
Jeremy Howard of fast.ai discusses the impacts of deep learning and AI now being accessible to people without PhDs in those spaces.
Takeaways from 30 successful marketplaces—including Uber, Airbnb, Tinder, and Instacart—on when, where, and how to grow.
Info Diet offers a peek into the personally curated feeds and media habits of the people shaping the future. In each installment, a different builder spends two days chronicling all the content they consume in order…
Sales enablement — the use of people, processes, and tech to improve sales productivity — is key for a well-oiled, agile, and high-performing sales machine.
The first half of 2022 saw momentum gains for a movement at the intersection of web3 and science: decentralized science (DeSci).
Seven pieces that cover some of the big ideas, movements, and research areas in crypto and web3 over the last several months.
A recap of artificial intelligence and machine learning coverage in Future so far in 2022, as well as the biggest advances in AI/ML research.
What would meaningful transparency mean for social media platforms? The author of Instagram's original ranking algorithm lays out a vision.
AI expert Daphne Koller of insitro identifies what we'll need for future AlphaFold-level successes and explains why some fail the academia-to-biotech transition.
Benefits and challenges of NFTs as a monetization channel, how creators are using them in practice, and more.
An interview with Provectus Algae CEO Nusqe Spanton about starting a synbio company, using microalgae as a platform, bioprospecting and more.
Chainguard's Kim Lewandowski explains why secure software supply chains are all the rage right now, and why open source is a double-edged security sword.
The London-based entrepreneur gets her daily fix of venture news, reads up on motherhood narratives, and winds down with sleep stories.
In order to create Iron Man-like innovations, defense tech startups must optimally engage the Pentagon instead of treating it as just another customer.
As enterprises grow their AI footprints, they must pay attention to data quality and real-world conditions to ensure what works in the lab works in production.
This book excerpt "ReCulturing" by Melissa Daimler shares mindsets for evolving the practices that shape a company culture, especially for communication.
Negative engineering is the time-consuming and sometimes frustrating work that engineers do to ensure small bugs don't take down systems.
This 101 guide on college ambassador programs for consumer startup covers the what, why, and when, how to get started, incentive structures, metrics, and more.
A Q&A with Fred Lalonde on building for Gen Z, the gamification of travel, and more.
Info Diet offers a peek into the personally curated feeds and media habits of the people shaping the future. In each installment, a different builder spends two days chronicling all the content they consume in order…
This excerpt from from Talent, by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross, focuses on how scouts can be useful for identifying talented entrepreneurs and employees.
MongoDB CTO Mark Porter discusses working with cloud providers as frenemies, and building consumer services for Southeast Asia at Grab.
There has been a lot of buzz about “the metaverse” since its coinage in the ‘90s, but especially during the pandemic (given the surge in online activity), and even more so after Facebook changed its name to Meta. Is…
Increasingly, building a successful startup involves not only building a product that people can’t get enough of, but also building an engaged, loyal community around that product. Today, most founders are acutely…
The way to improve search is not to mimic Google, but instead to build boutique search engines that index, curate, and organize things in new ways.
Info Diet offers a peek into the personally curated feeds and media habits of the people shaping the future. In each installment, a different builder spends two days chronicling everything they read, follow, listen…
Walmart Chief Economist John List on using data analysis and the scientific method to bridge the gap between idea and successful venture.
Shared lab space, DAO-funded projects, and other signs of big structural change in a traditionally centralized industry.
Okta co-founder Frederic Kerrest explains why all startup founders need to stay mentally, emotionally, and physically fit.
2022 marks our third year releasing the Marketplace 100, a ranking of the largest consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies. When we started this series in early 2020 (based on data from 2019), we…
We know how to capture value via go-to-market campaigns. Here's how to create value for users via go-to-community (GTC) efforts.
The promise of decentralization has been heavily discussed and debated, from why it matters to the bigger question of who will control the software that powers the internet. These questions are critical, because as…
A new idea to help web3 reach widespread adoption.
Over a decade after the idea of “big data” was first born, data continues to be one of the most important and furiously growing innovation drivers across both large enterprises and new startups. From providing pulse…
The Defense Department should test new categories of data rights for software licenses. The current ones inhibit competition and dissuade modern software companies.
Unqork founder Gary Hoberman, who spent decades managing Wall Street IT budgets, gives advice for startups getting started with enterprise sales.
The health-tech founder shares the content she consumes to stay ahead of the curve, from fertility journals to fashion newsletters.
To truly augment human intelligence, we need to design new workflows for machine learning models such as GPT-3 and Codex.
Thanks to a set of new AI models, we can reimagine common workflows, processes, and user experiences to augment human intelligence.
Richard Socher discusses advances in NLP, and how the experience for AI startups has changed since the early days of deep learning.
The long-running a16z Podcast is looking for a new host to lead the flagship show of the a16z podcast network into its next phase of growth.
Crypto faces a major barrier when it comes to mainstream adoption: The user journey is complicated and not yet built-out, and it’s not at all easy or intuitive for people new to crypto to even do the simplest…
Fivetran CEO George Fraser discusses the lack of software libraries for SQL, and how their emergence could change the nature of data analysis.
Software development is not all clean code and automated processes -- and it never will be. Buyers and vendors both need to realize this.
Info Diet offers a peek into the personally curated feeds and media habits of the people shaping the future. In each installment, a different builder spends two days chronicling everything they read, follow, listen…
Foundation models and cloud APIs bring opportunities, risks, and limitations for startups that want to innovate in AI and machine learning.
A growing number of scientists and entrepreneurs are leveraging blockchain tools, including smart contracts and tokens, in an attempt to improve modern science. Collectively, their work has become known as the…
Every company faces some version of the “cold start problem”: How do you get started from nothing? How do you acquire customers? How do you create network effects — where your product or service becomes more valuable…
Technical literacy is key to career success, even for non-engineers. Learn how to master the tools of your trade and build a solid tech foundation.
The Fourth Amendment protects our privacy rights in material that we keep private. The government can’t search our homes or computers, for instance, unless it has a warrant based on specific probable cause to believe…
Popular design software like Figma and Canva force experienced designers to adopt new roles: project manager, systems architect, and user advocate.
In the future, it’s likely that the average person will not work for a company. Instead, people will earn income in non-traditional ways by taking actions such as playing games, learning new skills, creating art, or…
The killer app of the internet is networks. The web and email are networks. Social apps like Instagram and Twitter are networks. Marketplaces like Uber and Airbnb are networks. Networks get more valuable with more…
Smart equity management strategies for employees with RSUs or stock options, a future-forward vision for companies, and a wish-list for builders.
What is (and isn’t) a DAO? Why do DAOs matter? How do DAOs fit into web3, crypto, the creator economy, future of work, and many other areas? Inspired by our NFT Canon earlier this year (and original Crypto Canon)…
This is the second installment of a two-part series on reputation systems in web3. Read part one here. Web3 is based on the premise that each internet user will have a unique internet identifier, like an email…
As blockchain technology rapidly gains the attention of a mass audience, the conversation is still centered solely around technical topics related to the scalability of a network — transactions per second, latency…
Are creator platforms enabling the 99 percent to chase their childhood dreams? Or are they helping the 0.1 percent expand their wealth?
Our narrow view of “kidtech”—games and shows, ad infinitum—is a missed opportunity. There's room for an audio-visual browser designed for kids.
As DeFi and NFT communities grow enormously in size, how to govern decentralized protocols takes on added importance. Now and over the next few years, one of the most immediate challenges facing these communities is…
In the rush to build frictionless payment features, the actual sales pitch—the "here's why you should pay"—is too often an afterthought.
Taking a page from China's relentless willingness to experiment with core apps.
Major computing waves generally have two eras: the skeuomorphic era and the native era. In the skeuomorphic era, the design thinking is largely adapted from older domains. For example, the early web was mostly…
Excerpted from MOVE: The Forces Uprooting Us, by Parag Khanna. Copyright © 2021 by Parag Khanna. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., for Future by a16z. The Great Lockdown of…
Modern software’s uniformity has fueled a craving for more interesting, opinionated tools — turning inanimate pixels into something with soul.
Web1 (roughly 1990-2005) was about open protocols that were decentralized and community-governed. Most of the value accrued to the edges of the network — users and builders. Web2 (roughly 2005-2020) was about siloed…
If the music business can revise its draconian approach to copyright and UGC, it will empower tech startups to do for audio what TikTok did for video.
Reputation systems present an opportunity for platforms to recognize—and thus incentivize—participants’ high-quality contributions, including content creation, moderation, community building, and gameplay. This is…
The promise of providing financial services to underserved communities around the globe is a key motivation for our work, and we’ve been concerned by a counterintuitive trend that’s taken root in Western economies…
Though LatAm leads the world in internet and digital media consumption, its creators still struggle to cash in on their influence.
The following is an excerpt from the book UNCONTROLLED SPREAD by Scott Gottlieb, MD. Copyright © 2021 by Scott Gottlieb. Published on Future with permission by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.…
New economic research supports a shift from the pursuit of longevity to a focus on healthspan: more healthy time over the duration of one’s life.
When people talk about the recent past and envision the distant future of crypto, conversation always comes back to the cycle of wealth creation and redistribution. Consciously or unconsciously, there’s an…
Esports are pioneering the future of sports engagement. But to succeed, they need to stop chasing the NBA and NFL.
How are developers supposed to manage and coordinate fast-moving, heterogeneous systems including maintenance & operations — and free themselves to build?
As therapists and patients debate a return to the physical office, both must consider the newly discovered advantages of "distanced intimacy."
“There is broad consensus in the scientific community that wildfire behavior is changing across the American West in general, and in California in particular. … All indicators shown—wildfire occurrence, total area…
Today, we’re releasing transcripts from some of our most popular episodes of the a16z Podcast here on Future.com, our new media site exploring the technologies driving the future, as told by the people building it.
Welcome to Future, a place to make sense of, well, the future as technology changes the way we work, live, and play.
The Ever Given container ship blocked the Suez Canal in March 2021 and cost the world time and money. This is not a one-off disaster. It’s an omen of a global problem.
It's easy to think extinction equals failure, but in fact, past life may encode the solutions to our most pressing future problems.
We will inevitably blend distributed work with in-person, but the details are much harder than they appear.
Our private lives have become a public commodity. Today, the business model of the web is to provide free services in exchange for personal data. Web services then sell this data. The user is not given a choice and…
One of the big, frequently discussed ideas of crypto is that it enables creators and communities to build their own internet-native economies. A key component of these economies is tokens, which got a bad rap during…
Consumers pay for what’s scarce. And within the crowded, cheap, content-rich world of online education, what's scarce is community.
Community is the “new” moat (or so some have said), and it’s true: Having a community helps protect against competitor companies or products entering your territory. Whether that community is a group of power users…
Over the past year, social tokens — those issued by creators and communities to access exclusive perks and invest in works — have taken off in the world of crypto and beyond. Celebrity artists and athletes like…
Every day we consume popular entertainment centered on characters. A collection of successful characters can become the foundation for a franchise — e.g. Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter — that can span decades, and…
The franchises of the future need to be designed to ensure quality and canon even when we hand over ownership to the fans.
While many in tech and beyond have heard of bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and the concept of a blockchain, less well-known are smart contracts, the major innovation of Ethereum. They’re programs that anyone can write and…
With software we can improve transparency, automate tedious processes, and in some cases, even avoid the need for costly lawyers altogether.
While COVID-19 vaccinations in the U.S. are continuing apace, calls are growing for a more ambitious strategy to rapidly vaccinate the entire world, and especially in developing nations. Legal proceedings around this…
How to decide the guiding metrics for every type of business, based on a survey of employees at over 40 of today's most successful growth-stage companies.
What does it mean to be productive? At the beginning of the pandemic, when many workers went remote, some managers were tempted to start counting things — whether hours, objects, or other things. But they’re about…
Product thinking is the skill of knowing what makes a product useful — and loved — by people. As with all skills, it can be nurtured and developed.
One possible solution to the replication crisis is to apply big data, "omics"-like approaches to the scientific literature: aka Publomics.
Instead of trying to eradicate speculative manias, we should channel investors’ innate affinity for speculation into productive ventures.
Players are finding new ways to monetize, whether by building original game worlds, selling in-game goods, or engaging with fans using new streamer tools.
Given the emergence of new forms of unpredictability, mathematical indicators that can isolate breakouts and trend shifts are crucial.
From responding to a pandemic — with novel mRNA vaccines — to building the future — with SpaceX’s rockets and Apple’s new chips — we are seeing that the material world still has the power to thrill. But even though…
To harness the untapped power of subtraction in the future, we need to understand why we haven’t embraced it in the past.
Technology is the set of rules that now governs global shifts. The task for builders and technologists is to discover all possibilities contained therein.
The right kind of bubble brings together the right group of people at the right time — it's a coordinating mechanism that can do a surprising amount of good.
There’s been a lot of hype, buzz, skepticism, confusion, and excitement around decentralized finance aka “DeFi,” the ecosystem of blockchain-enabled products and services that replace traditional financial…
We launched an abnormally fast source of emergency science funding during COVID-19. The results revealed flaws in current science funding models.
The NFT Canon is a go-to resource for artists and creators, developers, corporations and institutions, communities and other organizations seeking to understand or do more with non-fungible tokens. It’s a curated…
In his classic 2008 essay “1000 True Fans,” Kevin Kelly predicted that the internet would transform the economics of creative activities: To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of…
As the internet has evolved over its 35-year lifespan, control over its most important services has gradually shifted from open source protocols maintained by non-profit communities to proprietary services operated…
Crypto has gone through an eventful year. Decentralized exchanges and platforms that allow users to trade, loan, or borrow cryptocurrency have soared in volume. Developers are taking advantage of the flexible…
Many entrepreneurs and investors think that crypto projects can’t capture value because they are based on open source code. The thinking goes that if you develop open source code, someone will come along and copy it…
Vitalik Buterin argues that mechanisms governing high-stakes outcomes must be credibly neutral, then sets out practical rules for making them fair, legible, and effective.
What is a network effect? How do we untangle the nuances of ‘network effects’ with ‘marketplaces’ and ‘platforms’? What’s the difference between network effects, virality, supply-side economies of scale?
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