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16 Things

a16z.com

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Re: 16 Things

#41

Post by capex »

pbreit wrote: post #19
jfernandez wrote: post #4

In the 'Online Video' section he calls out podcasts as an emerging/trending medium. I'd love to hear more about where people in HN community feel it's moving. Of course there's the obvious Serial momentum, and as a passionate consumer of podcasts I'd love to think through with you guys a little more where we think it'll go. For example a YouTube-like podcast portal seems like a potential option (i.e. moving away from…

The subscription/download orientation of podcasting is so ridiculous. With music and video you just find what you want and consume. I don't want to subscribe and I don't want to download!

Podcasts can be two people and a mic, or something that a team of talented people make over a year or so, like Serial. You can't put both of these types in the same bucket.

Re: 16 Things

#43

Post by onewaystreet »

bbcbasic wrote: post #36

I don't know why these 16 things are more important than the other 16000 things start-ups could be working on. Bitcoin is the interesting one, as I would love to know in 10 years time if we look back at that with a wry smile as a fad, or if it ends up being something everyone uses.

> We don’t invest in themes; we invest in special founders with breakthrough ideas. Which means we don’t make investments based on a pre-existing thesis about a category. That said, here are a few of the things we’ve been observing or thinking about.

The list is nothing more than some of the things they find interesting.

Re: 16 Things

#44

Post by WestCoastJustin »

jfernandez wrote: post #4

In the 'Online Video' section he calls out podcasts as an emerging/trending medium. I'd love to hear more about where people in HN community feel it's moving. Of course there's the obvious Serial momentum, and as a passionate consumer of podcasts I'd love to think through with you guys a little more where we think it'll go. For example a YouTube-like podcast portal seems like a potential option (i.e. moving away from…

I run https://sysadmincasts.com/, which is a weekly bite sized screencast for sysadmins. Also posted to Show HN a while ago [1]. I can tell you that my inbox is flooded with "Thank You" messages, and requests to put out more content, I am struggling to keep up! As patio11 put it, if you can say: "I'll save you 12 hours of Googling and reading Free Information On The Internet (TM) and it will cost you $50" [2], you can make money. There is just so much text content out there, and not very many high quality videos, so there is a major void in the market. Shane Smith (creator of VICE) talks about how he is creating tons of video content, and text is pretty much toast [3], well worth a watch, just think about how this applies to the tech education space.

I am not doing anything unique or novel though, there are countless sites that I have learned from, railscasts.com, railstutorial.org, egghead.io, laracasts.com, gorails.com, etc. Granted, so far this has all been free, and I have not started to monetize yet, but I do have traction, and see a clear need. So, take that for what it's worth. Very happy to have any feedback, or answer questions, just shoot me an email (see profile). Also, if you have a talent in a particular area, I would highly suggest thinking about how to share that via video with other people.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8011081

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8508187

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHjln3yZFs

Re: 16 Things

#45

Post by walterbell »

briantakita wrote: post #34

I'm not sure what they want to accomplish with this edict(?). Maybe it's an attempt to influence entrepreneurs to create ideas in those 16 areas. I mean, only those 16 areas? We are in the middle of some unprecedented cultural shifts, and those are the 16 areas to focus on?

Those 16 are likely to be strategically aligned with existing/planned a16z investments.

It would be interesting to see potential tech investment areas related to your list of unprecedented cultural shifts.

Re: 16 Things

#46

Post by jackschultz »

jfernandez wrote: post #4

In the 'Online Video' section he calls out podcasts as an emerging/trending medium. I'd love to hear more about where people in HN community feel it's moving. Of course there's the obvious Serial momentum, and as a passionate consumer of podcasts I'd love to think through with you guys a little more where we think it'll go. For example a YouTube-like podcast portal seems like a potential option (i.e. moving away from…

I see podcasts moving to a space where a person can consume in more than one way. Video, audio, and text.

Depending on what you're doing at the time, you'd be able to 1) watch the hosts talk along with guests, relevant images and all that, basically a youtube show, 2) Just listen to the audio like "normal", or 3) read a transcription of the audio just as you would a blog post.

Allowing a person to choose how they get the podcast's information depending on what they're doing seems very logical to me.

And I don't think there's anything special about podcasts. You can get the same information through blogs currently. What's different is the passiveness of listening. It allows me to listen to something interesting when I'm working out rather than just music. But sometimes I would want to watch, and other times I would want to read the text. That's why having the content that's currently on podcasts move multiple formats makes the most sense for the future.

Re: 16 Things

#47

Post by [deleted] »

fit2rule wrote: post #37
Plough_Jogger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of their portfolio companies are based in the US, where regulation will likely stifle the growth of commercial drones, at least during 2015.

Another field the US will lag behind the rest of the world, then..

[deleted]

Re: 16 Things

#48

Post by walterbell »

qeorge wrote: post #9
blfr wrote: post #5

For instance, the cost of an endpoint CPU and memory is a 1000x cheaper than the cost of CPU and memory in the server. [1] What do they mean? How was that calculated? It sounds completely wrong. [1] http://a16z.com/2015/01/22/cloud-client-computing/

From later in the post: "The key is nobody has to cool these devices, so it’s almost like free computing at the endpoint." Also, you don't have to buy it! (the user bought their phone/computer and pays for the power) I agree its a bit handwavy. I suppose the remaining cost is the cost of transmitting more data? But regardless, it is a good point - we are absolutely crazy to not be taking advantage of all the free com…

Also applies to desktop browsers, e.g. https://crowdprocess.com

Re: 16 Things

#49

Post by soylentcola »

icpmacdo wrote: post #25
jfernandez wrote: post #4

In the 'Online Video' section he calls out podcasts as an emerging/trending medium. I'd love to hear more about where people in HN community feel it's moving. Of course there's the obvious Serial momentum, and as a passionate consumer of podcasts I'd love to think through with you guys a little more where we think it'll go. For example a YouTube-like podcast portal seems like a potential option (i.e. moving away from…

I have been working over ideas recently on how to solve the problem of people podcasting in different geographic locations. I think the big problem is latency and audio quality. The audio quality one seems like it is easily solvable with local recordings on both ends adjusted for said latency. The other thing I think would be cool is if with something like the oculus rift you could tune is and sit as the third person…

Out of curiosity, are you using the term "podcast" to refer to something more like a Shoutcast stream? I may be behind the times but I always thought the term "podcast" essentially referred to mp3s (or other pre-recorded audio files) delivered via an RSS-type feed. Kind of the audio equivalent of setting a TV show to record and only watching them as they show up on your DVR.

I messed with live streaming audio quite a bit back in the 90's and early 00's and bandwidth/latency definitely could cause issues but I haven't seen a whole lot of interest in that format for quite a while. For better or worse, people seem to prefer that DVR/on-demand format where you get something delivered to your computer or device and then watch or listen when convenient.

Re: 16 Things

#50

Post by soylentcola »

Plough_Jogger wrote: post #23
pbreit wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subscription/download orientation of podcasting is so ridiculous. With music and video you just find what you want and consume. I don't want to subscribe and I don't want to download!

Subscription is available (and popular) on YouTube for video, and the content of Podcasts is generally episodic, lending itself to a subscription model. What about this do you find to be 'so ridiculous'?

Not to mention that most podcatchers I've messed with also allow you to search for content and listen on demand as the file is downloading (which is all a stream really is anyway).
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