I have been investing in developer tools since the earliest days of my VC career. The first investment I led in the late 80s was a financing that provided the funds to acquire a programming editor called Brief. It was a text-based editor for PCs. That investment worked out but we … | Continue reading
The news this week that HQ Trivia has finally called it quits reminded me of this post I wrote back in 2012 about the difference in sustainability (and thus value) between entertainment and utility apps. What is interesting to me is if you could use a social app or an entertainme … | Continue reading
This Kickstarter project seeks funding to continue making a documentary about the NYC Subway Crisis. I rode the subway a lot this week and it is essential infrastructure for millions of people every day. Shining a bright light on its challenges is something I support and I backed … | Continue reading
The tech sector is the fastest growing sector of the economy in NYC and around the US and around the world. The tech sector offers high paying jobs and a growing number of them. But, as we all know, the tech sector lacks the gender and racial diversity that would allow everyone t … | Continue reading
I am sorry to see Andrew Yang leave the race for the Democratic nomination last night. He brought a sense of humor, fun, and a ton of new ideas to the slog that is called the primaries. He will be missed. I hope he shows up somewhere else and lends his considerable talents to our … | Continue reading
I just bought some US Dollars today. I do that many days. But the dollars I bought today are crypto assets, like Bitcoin and Ethereum. These US Dollar assets are called USDC and they are issued by an industry consortium called Centre, led by Circle and our portfolio company Coinb … | Continue reading
I just bought some US Dollars today. I do that many days. But the dollars I bought today are crypto assets, like Bitcoin and Ethereum. These US Dollar assets are called USDC and they are issued by an industry consortium called Centre, led by Circle and our portfolio company Coinb … | Continue reading
About ten years ago, I started asking why were weren’t teaching computer science to every student in the NYC public school system. That led to a journey that started with some computer science high schools and eventually got to a ten year program to get computer science teachers … | Continue reading
Kickstarter CEO Aziz Hasan is running a Make 100 project called Squids In Disguise where he will make 100 surprise sticker packs. 80 packs will contain 5 limited edition art stickers at random from at least 10 packs will be a special edition of 5 Super Squids (Superhero exclusiv … | Continue reading
SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce proposed a “safe harbor” for crypto projects that raise money before they are sufficiently decentralized. I am a big fan of “safe harbors”and wrote a bit a few years ago about why I like them so much and why a crypto safe harbor is such a needed and … | Continue reading
A year and a half ago, I converted my office at USV from a classic office with a desk to a small conference room with a couch, a chair, and a display for videoconferencing. I call it my “zoom room.” It looks like this. You can’t see the display because it is on the wall … | Continue reading
The FTC filed a complaint to stop the merger of Edgewell (Schick) and Harry’s yesterday. I don’t have a vested interest in this case in any way (other than having had a summer job working for Gillette in 1980). But it is a very curious action in my view. Over the last decade, two … | Continue reading
Our friend Benedict Evans posted his annual “macro trends” deck this weekend. I asked him if I can embed it here and while he said yes, I am not sure that will happen this morning. But you can download the PDF here. In the deck, Benedict poses the question “what is the next S-Cur … | Continue reading
One of the many things that venture capital has taught me is the value of the long buy. What I mean by a “long buy” is buying shares in a company over a long period of time. We have investments where we have bought shares seven or eight times over a ten to twelve year … | Continue reading
One of the many things that venture capital has taught me is the value of the long buy. What I mean by a “long buy” is buying shares in a company over a long period of time. We have investments where we have bought shares seven or eight times over a ten to twelve year … | Continue reading
I don’t usually take a reward when backing a Kickstarter project, but I really need one of these fingerprint bike locks so I did today when I backed it. | Continue reading
I saw this tweet coming out of the Upfront Summit yesterday (where I will be today): It is great that the capital markets serving founders have become hyperefficient. Being able to get a round done in a week vs a quarter is huge for founders who have better things to do than run … | Continue reading
Since launching AVC 3.0 on January 9th, we have had some site reliability issues. The most common issue is a “too many redirects” error that has been reported by many people and is intermittent and not easily reproducible. That said, a number of you have been able to create .HAR … | Continue reading
I just posted about USV’s investment in Justworks on the USV blog. I have known Isaac Oates for over a decade and he’s a terrific entrepreneur and has built a great company which offers a fantastic HR solution to small and mid sized companies. If you don’t love the payroll and be … | Continue reading
It was nice to see Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell run the table on the Grammy’s last night. It was yet another sign that the age of self made artists is upon us. As is our custom, my partner Andy and our friend Whitney posted some music to Twitter today. Andy and … | Continue reading
What a wonderful project. I backed it today. | Continue reading
Tech:NYC is NYC’s tech industry advocacy group. According to its 2019 Annual Report, Tech:NYC has over 800 member companies representing all shapes and sizes of tech companies in NYC. I am the co-chair of Tech:NYC. Today, the NYSE decided to celebrate tech startups in NYC (some o … | Continue reading
Our portfolio company Stack Overflow (which I like to call Stack) is an Internet Treasure. My friend Mark Pincus introduced me to the concept of an Internet Treasure many years ago and I am a fan of the notion. In my view, an Internet Treasure is a service on the Internet that is … | Continue reading
Our portfolio company Stack Overflow (which I like to call Stack) is an Internet Treasure. My friend Mark Pincus introduced me to the concept of an Internet Treasure many years ago and I am a fan of the notion. In my view, an Internet Treasure is a service on the Internet that is … | Continue reading
A friend asked me over the weekend “why do VCs ask for a management rights letter when they make an investment?” A management rights letter is a short agreement between a company and an investor to allow them certain “management rights.” These are typically the ability to attend … | Continue reading
A friend asked me over the weekend “why do VCs ask for a management rights letter when they make an investment?” A management rights letter is a short agreement between a company and an investor to allow them certain “management rights.” These are typically the ability to attend … | Continue reading
I read this post on Bloomberg about a theme this week at Davos (never been) about the 2020s being a “Peak Decade”: Peak Globalization (tighter borders in the coming years) Peak Capitalism (the emergence of “stakeholder capitalism”) Peak Inequality (the rich getting poorer, relati … | Continue reading
I love this project and backed it instantly when a friend showed it to me last week. | Continue reading
My partner Albert wrote a bit about how USV is investing in the climate/sustainability sector today. The high-level summary is “not very differently than we have and are investing in other sectors”. At USV, we like certain businesss models, go to market approaches, and product ty … | Continue reading
Today's guest blogger needs no introduction. Joel Spolsky one of the best bloggers out there. He also runs one of our portfolio companies, Stack. And his approach to management is unorthodox at times but amazingly effective. I asked him to tell us a little about how he does it. I … | Continue reading
My partner Albert wrote a bit about how USV is investing in the climate/sustainability sector today. The high-level summary is “not very differently than we have and are investing in other sectors”. At USV, we like certain businesss models, go to market approaches, and product ty … | Continue reading
Yesterday evening, the Gotham Gal and I went to see Jerry Colonna do a reading from his recent book, Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up. As we were standing around chatting waiting for Jerry to go on and start reading, Jerry mentioned that he once wrote a guest post for … | Continue reading
Most of you read AVC via email. Today, all of you will see a refresh of the look and feel of the daily email to match the refresh we did to the website last week. I want to thank Phil Hollows of Feedblitz who made this happen for all of us. And Kirk Love who … | Continue reading
I used this title for possibly the most regrettable blog post I have written on AVC back in 2011. My friend Alex’s post on the topic this weekend has made me revisit my thoughts on the subject of marketing. Alex starts off his post with this assertion: 2019 was the year when VCs … | Continue reading
Kickstarter kicks off the new year with a campaign called Make 100. The idea is to stimulate a lot of smaller projects where the creator makes 100 of something. It’s a hodgepodge of creativity in the best sense of the word. Here are the current crop of Make 100 projects live on K … | Continue reading
Welcome to the new AVC. This is the third “iteration” of this blog. The first iteration (AVC 1.0) was the Typepad era during which I redesigned AVC a number of times using Typepad’s tools. That lasted from September 2003 to February 2014. About six years ago, we moved AVC to Word … | Continue reading