with @PalmerLuckey @cdixon

In this special episode — our 100th on the a16z crypto show! — Chris Dixon interviews Palmer Luckey (founder of Anduril; founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift) to talk about the future of technology, belief, and building.

What does it take to build hardware at scale? Where are many of today’s tech bottlenecks? And what's the case for optimism about the future despite growing geopolitical turmoil, regulatory constraints, and other blockers to innovation? The candid, wide-ranging conversation covers crypto, banking, and stablecoins, as well as modern warfare, the U.S.–China technology race, AI and manufacturing, and much more.

Dixon also digs into company building in good times and bad with Luckey; the conversation was recorded live at our Founders Summit.

Highlights:
0:00 — Introduction
2:08 — Early Oculus: Why VR was hard
8:02 — Bitcoin & early crypto days
9:49 — The Facebook acquisition
13:36 — How successful was VR, really?
18:59 — Starting Anduril
20:01 — Hiring for mission ("Don't Work at Anduril")
23:59 — How Anduril works (product dev, org design)
27:47 — How Palmer stays ahead of the curve
33:00 — The US-China technology race
34:40 — What Putin understood early about AI
39:45 — Stablecoins & banking risk
45:00 — Politics as bottleneck
47:00 — Future of technology: AI, fusion, quantum
50:23 — Automation, abundance, and optimism
53:23 — Ukraine, drones, and the reality of war

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As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

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with @ccatalini @rhackett

Today we’re talking about who — if anyone — should own the rails of global money.

Our guest is Christian Catalini, cofounder and chief strategy officer of the global payments startup Lightspark, and a former architect of Meta’s shuttered Libra project — one of the most ambitious attempts to create a corporate-backed digital currency.

In this episode, we talk about…

• why Bitcoin is more than “digital gold,”
• what Christian learned from his time at Facebook, and
• why he believes openness — not corporate control — will ultimately win

Christian also wrote a feature for us expanding on his argument, which you can read by subscribing to a16z crypto on Substack. Check it out and let us know what you think.

This episode is part of a special series of interviews we recorded live at our Founders Summit in October.

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• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/web3-with-a16z-crypto/id1622312549
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto

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As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

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with @PrimordialAA @rhackett

In this episode, host Robert Hackett sits down with Bryan Pellegrino, cofounder and CEO of LayerZero, one of the core infrastructure projects that enables blockchains to talk to one another. We talk about why crypto went multichain, what it means for crypto to compete with legacy financial systems, and a lesson Bryan took firsthand from Elon Musk. We also get into Bryan’s background as a professional poker player, and how that has shaped his views on competition, conviction, and focus.

We go deep on founder psychology:
– When founders must replace early leadership — and why no one talks about it
– Why conviction matters more than advice
– And why the hardest decisions are the ones no playbook prepares you for

Highlights
0:00 – Introduction
0:47 – The need for interoperability
1:04 – How crypto went multichain
2:51 – The institutional adoption of crypto
6:56 – Focus and conviction
13:19 – The nature of competition
14:43 – Elon Musk's game-changing advice
18:48 – The importance of self-disruption
20:08 – Lightning round
22:56 – Challenges in scaling a company
26:46 – Book recommendations and productivity hacks
28:19 – Core principles and company culture

This episode is part of a special series of interviews we recorded live at our Founders Summit in October.

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• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/a16zcrypto/posts/
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• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/web3-with-a16z-crypto/id1622312549
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@a16zcrypto

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🎙️ Like, subscribe, comment, share the show: https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/podcast/

***

As always, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice. Please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.