I am a fan of wireless charging for my various devices and I am glad that there is a standard, called Qi, for wireless charging that many manufacturers support. This means you don’t need to buy your wireless charging device from Apple or Google, you can buy it from any manufactur … | Continue reading
The Internet was developed by the US Defense Department to create a network that was capable of surviving a military attack. They accomplished that with a design where no part of the system was central to its operation. You can take out any part of the Internet and it will still … | Continue reading
The Internet was developed by the US Defense Department to create a network that was capable of surviving a military attack. They accomplished that with a design where no part of the system was central to its operation. You can take out any part of the Internet and it will still … | Continue reading
This should be obvious to AVC readers but I am a fan of short and sweet. Why take two pages to say something you can say in one page? Why take two paragraphs to say something you can say in one paragraph? This letter to potential investors from the CEO in the Duolingo S-1, which … | Continue reading
I understand that regulators and elected officials need to raise concerns about new technologies and their impact on society. It is their job or at least part of their job. But I am also dismayed regularly by how poorly many elected officials and regulators understand the technol … | Continue reading
A reader asked me if I had ever written about the infrastructure I use to run AVC. We both searched the archives and could not find a post on that topic. So here it is: 1/ Content Management System – WordPress – I use the open source software version of WordPress to write these p … | Continue reading
I understand that regulators and elected officials need to raise concerns about new technologies and their impact on society. It is their job or at least part of their job. But I am also dismayed regularly by how poorly many elected officials and regulators understand the technol … | Continue reading
It is officially summer now and with adult vaccination rates passing 70% in many parts of the US, people are out and about. I’ve heard the term “analog summer” used to describe this moment. If the past 15 months have been a digital lockdown, then the next three months are going t … | Continue reading
My friend Kirk backed this project earlier this week and I got a notification and checked it out and backed it immediately. I like everything about this project. Finding opportunities for people with special needs to work productively and happily is such a great thing to do. Emai … | Continue reading
For as long as I can remember, Pier 76 on the west side of Manhattan has been home to the west side tow pound. Some of my worst moments as a NYC resident have been there retrieving a car or a scooter, something I’ve done more than I want to remember. It was pure misery […] | Continue reading
ENS stands for Ethereum Name Service and it is a decentralized domain name system built on the Ethereum blockchain. You can get domains with the .eth extension by going here, connecting a wallet, and searching and purchasing a domain. I have purchased fredwilson.eth and avc.eth a … | Continue reading
NYC has a primary next week (June 22nd) in which parties will pick their nominees for Mayor, City Council races, Borough President races, and Manhattan will pick candidates for Attorney General. Because NYC is overwhelmingly Democratic, the primary is the main event. Most of the … | Continue reading
I remember when a friend of mine told me five or six years ago that he had bought some Dogecoin. I thought “what is he doing?” and dismissed it as something silly and or crazy. Dogecoin was initially introduced in late 2013 and 7 1/2 years later it has amassed a market cap of $43 … | Continue reading
I just backed this project. I love the idea of a simple deck of cards that can let anyone or any group design a website without any software or device. So many times, I have known pretty much what I want for a website for a project, an event, a new business, or whatever, but […] | Continue reading
On Monday, a copy of Startup CXO, my friend Matt Blumberg’s new book, arrived at the USV office. I picked it up to take a quick look and thought “this a heavy book!” So I texted Matt, congratulated him on getting the book out, and then asked why it was so heavy. He replied “becau … | Continue reading
Digital Asset Mining is shorthand for “proof of work consensus validation of public blockchain infrastructure”. Thankfully we have the shorthand. But it is important to understand what digital asset mining is. Public blockchains, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, store data securely but … | Continue reading
We had a situation recently where a rooftop solar project on a building we own became too expensive (because of NYC Fire Department requirements) and it no longer made economic sense to do the installation. And yet we want to avail ourselves of solar energy to benefit from the ec … | Continue reading
I’ve written a bunch about the globalization of the startup economy. You can start and build a tech company almost anywhere these days. That has been true for at least the last decade. But until very recently, raising capital for your startup was significantly easier if it was lo … | Continue reading
I backed this project last week and think the idea is really great. You put a Terra device outside where you hear the sounds of birds in nature and you can then listen to those sounds indoors. There are also features that let you identify the species of birds and track their migr … | Continue reading
One of the biggest challenges for developers building on Ethereum’s market leading smart contract platform/blockchain are the high fees and slow transactions. These issues arise from the fact that the Ethereum blockchain’s current architecture is not particularly scalable. The Et … | Continue reading
I’ve written a bunch about the globalization of the startup economy. You can start and build a tech company almost anywhere these days. That has been true for at least the last decade. But until very recently, raising capital for your startup was significantly easier if it was lo … | Continue reading
So this is pretty cool. Dirt is a daily newsletter about the entertainment industry. The folks behind Dirt are funding it with a crowdfunding campaign on Mirror using NFTs. There are three Dirt NFTs you can buy, a single edition called Rainbow Wave, an edition of 30 called Pearl … | Continue reading
I am returning to a topic that I have talked a lot about on this blog. A number of years ago at our annual CEO Summit, we had Angela Duckworth speak to our portfolio about Grit, the topic of her excellent book on the subject. In Angela’s research, she determined that the single g … | Continue reading
I am working on a new weekday routine the goal of which is to give me more time to read, think, and meet in person and less zoom meetings and phone calls. I am also mixing up my morning routine and attempting to sleep and work out longer. The net of all that is I […] | Continue reading
I was rooting for Phil Mickelson all weekend to win the PGA at age 50. I’ve watched Phil for thirty years and I’ve seen all of the highs and lows and there have been many. He plays the game of golf with a level of creativity that can often lead to problems. He is a […] | Continue reading
If I am going to be outside much, I need to wear a hat to keep the sun off my face. My light skin doesn’t react well to the sun. I like baseball-style hats, but I don’t like wearing logos. So this Kickstarter project got my attention. Fun stylish hats without logos, made with sus … | Continue reading
Back in the early 2000s, it was exciting to blog and use social networks to create our own media and move away from the traditional media outlets. That was the pull that got me into blogging and got me investing in Twitter. It was a powerful feeling. But a decade and a half later … | Continue reading
Back in the early 2000s, it was exciting to blog and use social networks to create our own media and move away from the traditional media outlets. That was the pull that got me into blogging and got me investing in Twitter. It was a powerful feeling. But a decade and a half later … | Continue reading
As USV is now about six months into investing our first climate fund, I am starting to see more clearly what climate investing is all about and my partner Albert said something in a team meeting earlier this week that really stuck with me. I did not write it down but it was somet … | Continue reading
As USV is now about six months into investing our first climate fund, I am starting to see more clearly what climate investing is all about and my partner Albert said something in a team meeting earlier this week that really stuck with me. I did not write it down but it was somet … | Continue reading
Coinbase shipped an important piece of its wallet product portfolio yesterday, the Coinbase Wallet Browser Extension. You can download the chrome extension here. If you want to use DeFi apps, buy and collect NFTs, or do anything that requires a crypto wallet in your browser, then … | Continue reading
Last week, I had to clear my calendar for two days and spend them in doctors’ offices and radiology labs. I developed a kidney stone last week and my doctors and I wanted to understand how large and where it was. The answer is 4mm and it was somewhere between my kidney and bladde … | Continue reading
This public art work speaking to the growing refugee crisis around the world is really great. I backed it earlier this week when I saw my friend Sunny back it. From July to November 2021, a giant puppet of a 9-year-old Syrian refugee girl called ‘Little Amal’ will walk from the S … | Continue reading
Stock-based compensation plans throughout the startup and tech sector are based on “golden handcuffs” – the idea that an employee can’t leave because they would be giving up too much money if they do. I’ve never loved that concept. It feels like staying in a bad marriage for the … | Continue reading
Stock-based compensation plans throughout the startup and tech sector are based on “golden handcuffs” – the idea that an employee can’t leave because they would be giving up too much money if they do. I’ve never loved that concept. It feels like staying in a bad marriage for the … | Continue reading
Last week I spent three hours with my six partners in a conference room talking through what we are investing in and why. It was a terrific session and I had more “ahas” in those three hours than I have had in many many months. There really is no substitute for sitting together w … | Continue reading
I have read more books written by Steven Johnson than any other author. In addition to being a friend and a USV-funded founder, Steven writes about things that fascinate me. And he is a wonderful writer. That’s a potent combination. I am about to embark on another journey with St … | Continue reading
I have read more books written by Steven Johnson than any other author. In addition to being a friend and a USV-funded founder, Steven writes about things that fascinate me. And he is a wonderful writer. That’s a potent combination. I am about to embark on another journey with St … | Continue reading
Longtime AVC reader Alex Wolf has a Kickstarter project that I think is awesome. She has long been working on a “pattern alphabet” to encode the patterns of nature and life. This project turns this alphabet into cards that can be used by kids in school and at home to learn. I bac … | Continue reading
Yesterday’s post has this line in it: I suspect all buy maybe two of those eleven funds have outperformed the public markets As you can see, there is a typo there. “buy” should be “but” A number of readers let me know about the typo, which I very much appreciate. But for some rea … | Continue reading
There has been this narrative about investing in VC funds that you have to get into the top quartile (25%) or possibly the top decile (10%) in order to generate good returns. I have heard that for as long as I have been in VC and probably have written it here a few times. Well, [ … | Continue reading
My friend Seth Levine and Elizabeth MacBride have written an important book about the changing face of entrepreneurship in the US. It is called The New Builders and it came out this week. You can purchase it at all the places listed here. This bit from the book’s Amazon page expl … | Continue reading
I was purchasing some domains with Ethereum yesterday and ran out of funds in my wallet and went to Coinbase to buy some more ETH. The price was approaching $3000 and I thought to myself, “the demand side of this network is exploding.” The way crypto-networks work is that the sup … | Continue reading
One of the many things I love about Kickstarter is when a friend backs a project, I am alerted. My friend Kirk went on a binge yesterday and backed a half dozen photo book projects and I followed him on that binge. I thought I’d blog about one of the projects we backed today. NYC … | Continue reading
When I was in my early 20s, I had a conversation with my dad. I told him I was against nuclear power because it was dangerous and because it created radioactive waste that we had no idea how to safely dispose of. He replied that there certainly were problems with nuclear energy b … | Continue reading
A trend I’ve been watching for a while now is the use of solar for devices that live outside away from electrical outlets. Last summer, I bought an inexpensive device that keeps snakes away from our yard. It vibrates into the ground like the animals that hunt snakes and scares th … | Continue reading
Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp, posted a message to his team yesterday in which he outlined a bunch of changes they are making to the way they run the business. Some will be familiar as others have done similar things (no more politics on the company’s communication channels, no mo … | Continue reading
I saw this tweet in my feed yesterday and I sent some ETH to India this morning. Sandeep followed with a bunch more wallet addresses to use if you want to send other crypto assets: With the pandemic easing in the US, thanks to vaccines, we cannot turn a blind eye to what is happe … | Continue reading