From file cabinets to typewriters, spreadsheets and word processing the tools we use for work change not only what we do, but the culture of our workplace. Steven Sinofsky, a veteran of building software tools for productivity, discusses the latest revolution in technology-enabled tools with Benedict Evans. Why today’s cloud-based tools change the role of managers, and why the perfect tool will never exist (nor would you want it to).
In this, world of massive cloud-based applications and services, rolling out software has moved from an episodic event to an almost continuous release cycle. In that environment, software products aren’t as “done” as they used to be -- they can’t be -- so the focus has shifted to reversibility. Building a development organization with the design tools and processes that can aggressively iterate while also creating safety nets. So if things do get screwy they can be fixed before customers even notice. Call it DevOps or application operations, Steven Sinofsky leads a discussion with Karthik Rau from SignalFx and Alex Solomon from PagerDuty about the evolution of I.T. operations – and the requirements and challenges that modern distributed applications pose for a development organization.
Innovation or invention? Platform or app? Vertical or horizontal? Strategy or tactic? Does the smartphone eat VR? And (not to get all existential about it or anything but), what is an app, really? a16z partners Benedict Evans, Connie Chan, Kyle Russell, and board partner Steven Sinofsky explore these tensions in this episode of the podcast as they share some quick reactions to Google I/O, Google's annual developer conference, where the company announced a number of new platform products -- for VR to messaging to the smart home. Maybe most new things are really old things, but maybe those distinctions don't matter as artificial intelligence leaps into how we live our lives, automating (and anticipating) things in a new way...
It’s always hard to predict how a generational shift in technology will impact the wider world, especially when you are in the trenches building that new technology. It happened with the mainframe computer, mini-computer, and the PC. These were all technologies that fundamentally changed how industries functioned and culture evolved (especially the PC plus internet), and in ways that were hard to predict. With mobile and the smartphone, a16z’s Benedict Evans argues, the impact will be even greater. a16z Board Partner Steven Sinofsky joins Evans in a conversation examining the massive scale and monstrous leverage of mobile devices and the software running on them and how -- unpredictably as always -- this technological shift is changing the world. As Sinofsky puts it, “Mobile is everything.”
As software becomes core to every industry, there is a need for more and more software development across practically every department in a company. But as anyone who has tried to get quality software developed knows, that has given rise to a supply and demand problem. Leveraging open source software is a big part of the solution to that problem, but venturing into the open source world raises all sorts of questions for most companies. For example, how do you engage as a company in the open source community; what are your obligations to the project; and if you are hiring a development team what clues ought you to be looking for to get the best developers? And what are the developers looking for? And in the end, who’s responsible and accountable for the all this code flowing around? In a discussion from the firm’s 2015 Tech Summit, Steven Sinofsky digs into all those questions with a panel that includes Roger Dickey, founder and CEO of Gigster, Slack CMO Bill Macaitis, GitHub Director of Field Services Matthew McCullough, and Joel Spolsky, co-founder and CEO of StackOverflow.
In this episode of ‘This Week in Consumer’, a16z General Partners Anish Acharya and Erik Torenberg are joined by Steven Sinofsky - Board Partner at a16z and former President of Microsoft’s Windows division - for a deep dive on how today’s AI moment mirrors (and diverges from) past computing transitions. They explore whether we’re at the “Windows 3.1” stage of AI or still in the earliest innings, why consumer adoption is outpacing developer readiness, and how frameworks like partial autonomy, jagged intelligence, and “vibe coding” are shaping what gets built next. They also dig into where the real bottlenecks lie, not in the tech, but in how companies, products, and people work. Timecodes: 00:00 Introduction 00:35 Discussing the Andrej Karpathy Talk 02:17 The Early Stages of AI and Tools 03:23 Vibe Writing and Vibe Coding 07:33 Automation and Human Judgment 15:13 The Future of Product Management 15:55 Platform Transitions and Vibe Coding 17:54 The Evolution of Programming Languages 23:07 AI in Creative Writing 28:06 Google's Position in the Tech Industry Resources: Find Anish on X: https://x.com/illscience Find Steven on X: https://x.com/stevesi Stay Updated: Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16z Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/ Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
There’s been a wave of M&A deals lately - Meta and Scale, Windsurf and Google - and a lot of it points to something bigger: how regulation, capital, and innovation are colliding in 2025. In this episode, Erik Torenberg brings together Steven Sinofsky, former Microsoft Executive, and Balaji Srinivasan, founder of the Network School and author of the Network State, to break it all down. From acquihires to “acquifires,” from FTC crackdowns to the deeper battle between the state and the network, this is a sharp conversation on the future of tech and power. Timecodes: 0:00 Introduction 1:00 Three Key Issues in US Capital Markets 2:25 The All-Out Anti-Tech Assault 3:23 The Rise of Computing Without Regulation 6:04 Network vs State: The Fundamental Conflict 25:02 The Evolution of M&A Deal Structures 32:04 The Power Law of M&A Success 44:05 Windsurf Case Study: Status vs Money and M&A Optics 01:03:17 AI’s Impact on Talent, Team Structure, and Scale 01:14:16 A New Proactive Approach to Tech Regulation Resources Find Balaji on X: https://x.com/balajis Find Steven on X: https://x.com/stevesi Learn more about The Network State: https://thenetworkstate.com Learn more about The Network School: https://ns.com Stay Updated: Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16z Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/ Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details, please see a16z.com/disclosures.