“I like coffee, I like hot sauce, would I like hot sauce in my coffee?” So starts the pitch for this Kickstarter. It’s a good one. Since I like coffee and I like hot sauce, I backed it. Email readers can click here and see the pitch. | Continue reading
Last June, I wrote about board diversity and suggested some things we are doing and that you can do to diversity your board. In the ten months that have passed since I wrote that I am pleased to say that we have seen a noticeable increase in board diversity in our portfolio. I ha … | Continue reading
A well-known entrepreneur turned VC, who will go unnamed because I am not sure he would want me to share this conversation publicly, once told me “if you remove a founder, you must sell the company within a couple of years or it will start to decline in value.” I don’t entirely a … | Continue reading
A well-known entrepreneur turned VC, who will go unnamed because I am not sure he would want me to share this conversation publicly, once told me “if you remove a founder, you must sell the company within a couple of years or it will start to decline in value.” I don’t entirely a … | Continue reading
Long-time readers know that I am a big Citibike fan. Citibike is the name of NYC’s bike-share program. I have been blogging about it since it launched in the spring of 2013, eight years ago now. I wrote this at the time. Since it started getting warm in NYC about a month ago, I h … | Continue reading
With new Covid cases down 30% in the last two weeks and partially vaccinated people approaching 50%, NYC seems ready to start getting back to work. I have been going to the office several days a week for the last two weeks and will be there again today. As my USV colleagues get f … | Continue reading
I backed this art program for teens this morning. I think summer programs for kids are important and particularly important this summer when we are hopefully beginning to emerge from more than a year of remote learning and social distancing. For email readers, you can see the vid … | Continue reading
Last night I watched the NY Knicks win their fourth straight game on the road in New Orleans. They are now 29-27 and have a fighting chance of being a .500 team this season with only 16 regular season games left. This is essentially the same team that went 21-45 last year. Elfrid … | Continue reading
Tech:NYC is the industry association for NYC’s tech sector. I am the Chair of the organization. I am excited about Tech:NYC’s work to bring the ongoing NYC Mayoral race to the tech sector. On Thursday, April 8th (tomorrow) at 4pmET, Tech:NYC will host a webinar with the top mayor … | Continue reading
We have a house in the northeast United States where the summers are warm and the winters are cold. We have solar on the roof and we heat and cool this house with electricity. This is the electrical generation/consumption chart for all of 2020 for that house: We produce almost al … | Continue reading
We have a house in the northeast United States where the summers are warm and the winters are cold. We have solar on the roof and we heat and cool this house with electricity. This is the electrical generation/consumption chart for all of 2020 for that house: We produce almost al … | Continue reading
I do a lot of “bulk emailing” but I hate sending bulk emails. I prefer to personalize emails and send them one by one so that the recipient understands that the email came from me. What that has meant is that I take google sheets full of email addresses and I cut and paste a […] | Continue reading
Most venture capital funds have a “recycling” provision that allows them to sell some percentage of their investments and reinvest those funds back into new investments instead of distributing that capital to their limited partners. There is no standard recycling percentage in th … | Continue reading
I wrote a blog post last fall asking for advice for headphones that don’t go into my ear and allow me to hear ambient noise around me. I got a ton of responses and that led me to bone-conducting headphones. I have been using AfterShokz bone conducting headphones for the last six … | Continue reading
Most venture capital funds have a “recycling” provision that allows them to sell some percentage of their investments and reinvest those funds back into new investments instead of distributing that capital to their limited partners. There is no standard recycling percentage in th … | Continue reading
TEALS is a longstanding program supported by Microsoft where software engineers assist in computer science instruction in K12 schools. I have been blogging about and advocating TEALS for over eight years now. TEALS came to NYC in 2013 and has been helping kids learn computer scie … | Continue reading
I have written about all of these things here at AVC before. But I am writing again as there is likely to be a bunch of chatter about Dapper, Flow, and NBA Top Shot as the news of a financing round comes out today. Financings don’t really interest me but companies do. And this is … | Continue reading
One of the gifts that I got was the ability to stay positive. I am grateful to my parents, my wife, and my genes (and anyone else responsible too). It is such a superpower. I don’t just mean optimism. I mean saying nice things about people. I mean keeping a smile on your face. I … | Continue reading
Kevin Kelly, who has been an editor at Wired and Whole Earth Review, is funding this book project on Kickstarter. He is attempting to capture the many cultures in Asia that are disappearing with modernization. I backed the project today and decided to get the book too. You can do … | Continue reading
I have a Samsung Frame in my home office. I think I posted a photo of it here at AVC once before. But for those who did not see that post, here it is: I’ve had it for something like three years and I change the digital art on it from time to time. Digital […] | Continue reading
A friend and I dined last night at a restaurant that opened in our neighborhood last summer, in the middle of the pandemic. For the first six months of its existence, they could not welcome diners into the space that they had spent time and money creating. They carried on, figure … | Continue reading
I wrote about crypto and climate earlier this month and suggested that the narrative that crypto is bad for the climate is not as straightforward as many make it out to be. Over last weekend (a beautiful one in the northeast), two of my partners wrote on this topic. My partner Al … | Continue reading
I could not help but use the word Freemium in the headline to this post. For those that don’t know, the word Freemium was invented here at AVC, back in 2006. I am quite proud of that fact, even though I did not come up with the word myself. With that business taken care of, […] | Continue reading
I could not help but use the word Freemium in the headline to this post. For those that don’t know, the word Freemium was invented here at AVC, back in 2006. I am quite proud of that fact, even though I did not come up with the word myself. With that business taken care of, […] | Continue reading
A reader asked me to blog about the "Venture Partner" role in VC firms. I thought it was a good suggestion so here goes. A Venture Partner is a person who a VC firm brings on board to help them do investments and manage them, but is not a full and permanent member of the […] | Continue reading
This project was right at the front of my Kickstarter home page this morning. I clicked play and watched the video (you should too). The project creator, Daniel Wegner, says “there is power in young people, there is power in talent, there is power in art.” I agree with all of tha … | Continue reading
I have written many times here that it is important to me that I control the platform that I publish on. I use the open-source WordPress software for my content management system and run that on a hosted server. I use my own domain, AVC.com, to locate my writings on the Internet. … | Continue reading
I have written many times here that it is important to me that I control the platform that I publish on. I use the open-source WordPress software for my content management system and run that on a hosted server. I use my own domain, AVC.com, to locate my writings on the Internet. … | Continue reading
There are these news moments that we remember vividly forever. The plane flying into the World Trade Center. The mob breaking into the Capitol. Reagan at the Berlin Wall. Just writing the words, I can see the images in my head. Our portfolio company Recount Media is all about the … | Continue reading
I guess the theme of this week is taxes. But today’s post is about something completely different. A Company wants to collect and remit taxes to NYS and NYC and lawmakers don’t want the money. I’ve written about this sad tale before but the story continues. Back in February, NYS … | Continue reading
Most of our family’s income comes in the form of capital gains. And most of that comes in the form of carried interest on capital gains. Carried interest means the share of the profits that the managers of VC funds get (and PE funds and Hedge funds too). For many years, there hav … | Continue reading
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been playing around with a digital asset collecting game called Rare Pepe. My partner Andy tipped me off to it a while back and it took me a while to wade into it. Rare Pepe is based on an internet meme called Pepe The Frog that has been around […] | Continue reading
I am in Park City Utah right now so I checked to see what Kickstarter projects were near me and I found this cool carbon fiber guitar project right here in Park City and backed it this morning. Email readers can see the video here. | Continue reading
I have been interested in the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) since first hearing about it from my partner Albert years ago. I’ve mentioned it on and off here at AVC a bunch since then. NYC will get its own UBI experiment if front-runner Andrew Yang is elected Mayor. Yang … | Continue reading
I have been interested in the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) since first hearing about it from my partner Albert years ago. I’ve mentioned it on and off here at AVC a bunch since then. NYC will get its own UBI experiment if front-runner Andrew Yang is elected Mayor. Yang … | Continue reading
I keep reading that Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs, etc are a climate issue. It is true that proof of work mining which secures the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains uses electricity to do that work. And certainly there are carbon emissions associated with that electricity consumption. H … | Continue reading
With vaccinations topping 90mm doses in the US and upwards of 75mm doses likely to be injected into arms in the US in March, many companies are starting to think about what a return to the office might look like this summer and fall. I read two great posts this weekend talking ab … | Continue reading
My normal practice on Fridays is to post a Kickstarter project that I have backed that I think is interesting and that others might want to back. But today, I want to talk about Kickstarter’s Watch Now on iTunes offering. If you are like us and have watched so much TV during the … | Continue reading
Our portfolio company SoundCloud is introducing fan powered royalties to share revenues more equitably with musicians. The streaming music business pools its revenues and pays out based on a mathematical formula. There is no direct connection between a fan and artist. This graphi … | Continue reading
Our portfolio company SoundCloud is introducing fan powered royalties to share revenues more equitably with musicians. The streaming music business pools its revenues and pays out based on a mathematical formula. There is no direct connection between a fan and artist. This graphi … | Continue reading
Our portfolio company Clue announced yesterday that they have received FDA approval for a digital birth control feature. Clue’s mobile app is used by over 13mm women around the world to track their monthly cycle and this new FDA approved feature, called Clue Birth Control, will b … | Continue reading
The last two months have been challenging in NYC. It has been cold, rainy, and snowy. There has not been a lot of sun. And the pandemic has things locked down. I know so many people who have found the last few months very challenging. At the same time, more and more friends and l … | Continue reading
The last two months have been challenging in NYC. It has been cold, rainy, and snowy. There has not been a lot of sun. And the pandemic has things locked down. I know so many people who have found the last few months very challenging. At the same time, more and more friends and l … | Continue reading
In less than four months, the Democratic Primary will effectively choose the next mayor of NYC. For those of us who live here, this will be a very important choice. Though the race is partially funded by NYC through matching of small donations below $250, the candidates need more … | Continue reading
I remember meeting Zach Sims and his co-founder Ryan Bubinski back in 2011 when they started Codecademy. Zach was still in college and thinking of dropping out to focus on the Company. I just realized this morning that it has been ten years since then. Wow. Time does fly. Like ma … | Continue reading
QR Codes have been with us for as long as there has been a commercial Internet. They were invited in 1994 in Japan for use in the automotive industry. QR stands for “quick response” and a QR code is a barcode that can contain a lot of data and be read very quickly. But QR […] | Continue reading
I wrote this in yesterday’s post: Remote learning is here to stay. I got a bunch of emails and tweets from parents saying that they want their kids back in school. So do I!!! I think getting kids back in school is the single biggest thing we can do to put the pandemic in the […] | Continue reading
In my Jan 1st post talking about what I expected to happen this year, I wrote: I think we will see the end of the Covid Pandemic in the US sometime in the second quarter. I believe the US will work out the challenges we are having getting out of the gate and will be […] | Continue reading