I saw this project while browsing on Kickstarter this morning. I did not realize that many school and government issued computers have virtual backgrounds disabled. This project is about creating fun and inexpensive physical backdrops for kids who are doing remote learning. I lik … | Continue reading
My friend Seth is an entrepreneur and an artist. I have two of his paintings hanging in my office in NYC. His latest work is taking photographs of the sunset every day at Venice Beach and then training an AI model to turn it into a 30 second video. The work is published in a […] | Continue reading
Pro-Publica has an excellent interview with Jeff Kosseff, the author of The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet, a book about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Those 26 words are: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the … | Continue reading
Last month, I wrote about the value of having a list of the most read posts on a blog. I said I wanted to create that for AVC. Well, I am pleased to let you all know that we built it and it is now live on the AVC archives page. It looks like this: […] | Continue reading
Many/most of you know that a lot of my philanthropic time and energy is dedicated to making sure that all K12 students, but particularly young women and students of color, have access to a high quality computer science education. When I started this work a decade or more ago, I w … | Continue reading
My friend Joseph and his wife Mikayla have started a dairy farm called Fresh Start Farm. They will be using regenerative grazing techniques. Mikayla writes on her Kickstarter, “Regenerative agriculture refers to farming practices that reverse climate change by sequestering carbon … | Continue reading
I wrote yesterday about a couple of Zoom tricks I learned last week. Unfortunately, I messed up that post and conflated two different features and confused everyone. So I am going to try this again. If you are tired of looking at yourself on the endless Zoom meetings we are all d … | Continue reading
After almost a year of being on Zoom all day, I am sick and tired of looking at myself on the screen. But I don’t love going off video and then everyone seeing a black box with a profile picture of me. So I learned a new Zoom trick in a board meeting last week. […] | Continue reading
Show me a successful person and I will show you someone who has made a ton of mistakes. That’s how things go. You can’t really learn from your successes. You can try to replicate the wins and sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t. But mistakes – those are powerful learning mo … | Continue reading
I’ve been thinking a lot about the economics of rooftop solar. Our family has invested in rooftop solar over the last five years in an attempt to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce our electric bills. When you do that in combination with electrification of your heating and co … | Continue reading
A number of people have been asking me what I think of the Game Stop situation. This is not really my world. I don’t trade stocks, we hold them. I don’t use Robinhood, though I have an account thanks to my friend Howard. I don’t hang out on Reddit, though I visit it from time […] | Continue reading
Every January, Kickstarter runs the Make 100 program where creators are encouraged to make 100 of something and crowdfund it on Kickstarter. There are all sorts of great creative projects this year. Check them out. I backed this one this morning | Continue reading
A number of people have been asking me what I think of the Game Stop situation. This is not really my world. I don’t trade stocks, we hold them. I don’t use Robinhood, though I have an account thanks to my friend Howard. I don’t hang out on Reddit, though I visit it from time […] | Continue reading
Last fall, USV raised two new venture capital funds from our loyal and supportive investors. We announced the new climate fund on January 8th and I blogged about it here. While the climate fund is something new and important, we also raised another early stage fund to invest in t … | Continue reading
I found myself using this hack a few times this week and I thought I would share it. I think many/most of you probably know it, but it is so damn useful that it’s worth sharing it anyway. If your email is fred@avc.com and you want to create a new email address that will get […] | Continue reading
I am returning to a theme that I feel quite strongly about. I blog on WordPress using a host that I have selected and can move from at any time. WordPress is open source software and I can download it and run it on my own machines if I want to. I don’t. But being […] | Continue reading
I am really into the NYC coming back stronger than ever theme and want to support efforts to make that happen. Today, I backed a project on Kickstarter to support NYC’s largest “board game cafe” called Hex & Co to move into a larger space a few blocks away. Doing something like t … | Continue reading
I have written about our portfolio company Dapper‘s NBA Top Shot game here at AVC a few times now. Think of NBA Top Shot as digital trading cards. It is more than that, but that’s a simple way to think about it. I tweeted this out today: I don’t like to sell crypto, but I […] | Continue reading
When a CEO has been removed for failed leadership, it is best to have a new CEO waiting in the wings to take over. I have been in the middle of this transition many times and have often been the person announcing the change to the company and introducing the new CEO. I have seen … | Continue reading
On the USV website, we show the most read blog posts by author. Here are mine: I want to do this for AVC too. I will ask my partner Nick who managed the construction of USV.com how he did that and will see if I can get that working on AVC. When you’ve written 8,800 […] | Continue reading
In early June, I wrote this post explaining that I and we need to do more to reduce the inequality issues for Black people in tech, venture capital, and startups. I think MLK day is a good time to talk about what has happened since that post. We have identified a number of areas … | Continue reading
I remember back in the mid 90s, I used to say with some pride that I had not lost money on any of my VC investments. Then one day, someone told me “then you are not taking enough risk.” I ended that streak of not losing money on VC investments in the late 90s in […] | Continue reading
Yesterday, I had a gap in the middle of the day. So the Gotham Gal and I took an hour-long walk with our dog Ollie. It cleared my head and when I got back to work, I was full of energy and clarity. I’ve been working exclusively from home since the end of November 2019 […] | Continue reading
Longtime AVC regular Kevin Marshall launched a Kickstarter a week or so ago. He’s raising funds to support the launch of two playing card games he created called Fubnub and Bad, Bad, Turtle. I’ve embedded the video below for web readers. Email readers can click this link and watc … | Continue reading
While Bitcoin is the gold standard in crypto, Ethereum has been the innovator, bringing new ideas, particularly smart contracts, to the table. Smart contracts allow developers to easily build things on a blockchain and we have seen a proliferation of new things built on the Ether … | Continue reading
While Bitcoin is the gold standard in crypto, Ethereum has been the innovator, bringing new ideas, particularly smart contracts, to the table. Smart contracts allow developers to easily build things on a blockchain and we have seen a proliferation of new things built on the Ether … | Continue reading
Yesterday, I had a gap in the middle of the day. So the Gotham Gal and I took an hour-long walk with our dog Ollie. It cleared my head and when I got back to work, I was full of energy and clarity. I’ve been working exclusively from home since the end of November 2019 […] | Continue reading
Look at any successful person; Angela Merkel, LeBron James, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, and you will see someone who has benefitted tremendously from one or more mentors in their life. Nobody gets somewhere on their own. Everyone has help. I was reminded of this when I read this t … | Continue reading
Look at any successful person; Angela Merkel, LeBron James, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, and you will see someone who has benefitted tremendously from one or more mentors in their life. Nobody gets somewhere on their own. Everyone has help. I was reminded of this when I read this t … | Continue reading
I heard the news last week that Twitter had permanently banned Trump and thought “oh my.” Sure it is wonderful news that the lies, the hate, the awfulness that is the current President of the United States will no longer be available on Twitter (where I am still a shareholder) an … | Continue reading
Watching the election returns last night made me think about all of the math we are learning in the last year. Now that our elections include different kinds of votes that have different demographics associated with them (mail-in votes, early votes, same-day votes), the absolute … | Continue reading
The Secretary Of Treasury, in his last month in office, is giving us a textbook case of how not to regulate important technology innovation. The issue is “unhosted wallets” and how regulated exchanges and other “hosted wallets” interact with them. Let’s start with why this is imp … | Continue reading
It seems that many of us took most of the last two weeks off. I did as well. I paid attention to the things that needed to get done but not to much else. Instead, I spent a lot of time with my family, long walks with our dog, and watched a ton of movies […] | Continue reading
Hi Everyone. Happy 2021. Today, as is my custom on the first day of the new year, I am going to take a stab at what the year ahead will bring. I find it useful to think about what we are in for. It helps me invest and advise the companies we are invested in. […] | Continue reading
Hi Everyone. Happy 2021. Today, as is my custom on the first day of the new year, I am going to take a stab at what the year ahead will bring. I find it useful to think about what we are in for. It helps me invest and advise the companies we are invested in. […] | Continue reading
It is my tradition to end the year looking back and start the year looking forward. So today, I will write about 2020 in the context of tech/startups/VC/crypto. While it is inarguably the case that 2020 was a terrible year with a global pandemic, racial strife and ugly politics i … | Continue reading
It is my tradition to end the year looking back and start the year looking forward. So today, I will write about 2020 in the context of tech/startups/VC/crypto. While it is inarguably the case that 2020 was a terrible year with a global pandemic, racial strife and ugly politics i … | Continue reading
That’s what I decided to call my year-end playlist this year. I am happy to see 2020 move into the rearview mirror. It’s been a long, strange, and unsettling year. Thankfully, we had plenty of new and great music to get us through countless hours of hanging out at home. We starte … | Continue reading
The NBA is back in business. Our family watched a ton of basketball over the long weekend including the Knicks huge win over the Bucks last night. It’s great to have my favorite sport back in action after a short layoff. Also back in action is NBA Top Shot, the digital trading ca … | Continue reading
I remember when I was a kid and my parents would put presents under a tree and for weeks we would wait excitedly for the moment when we would get to open them. It was a great tradition that ended when we grew up, moved out, and started families of our own. Our family did […] | Continue reading
I knew that sending an email and tweet to hundreds of thousands of people saying that my father had passed away this week was going to generate a lot of replies. And it did. My inbox, messages, etc are chock full of an outpouring of sympathy and wishes for me and my family and I … | Continue reading
My dad, General Robert Maris Wilson, or Bob as most people called him, passed away on Monday at the age of 92. He had been in failing health for the last few months and moved on peacefully. My dad was a quiet and reserved man. He wrote those words about himself in four pages of [ … | Continue reading
As we get to that time of the year when we look back and take measure of 2020, it will be one for the ages, and not in a good way. I saw this photo book project on Kickstarter today and thought “it would be good to have this book to remember the early spring […] | Continue reading
This is a theme I have come back to many times over the last decade but in the wake of all of the headlines about high profile founders, VCs, and companies leaving the bay area, I thought I would return to it. There is no question that the bay area is losing some talent to […] | Continue reading
Dan Frommer, who many of you likely know from his writing at Recode, Quartz, Business Insider and other places on the web, has teamed up with my friends at Coefficient Capital to create a 120 page report called Consumer Trends 2021. Here’s a slide from that report: There is no do … | Continue reading
It’s winter in NYC now and I am reminded of all the apartments the Gotham Gal and I lived in during our 20s and 30s in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The typical heating system was hot water or steam-powered radiators that clanged all night long and had two settings, on and off. Sometim … | Continue reading
This is a theme I have come back to many times over the last decade but in the wake of all of the headlines about high profile founders, VCs, and companies leaving the bay area, I thought I would return to it. There is no question that the bay area is losing some talent to […] | Continue reading
This is a theme I have come back to many times over the last decade but in the wake of all of the headlines about high profile founders, VCs, and companies leaving the bay area, I thought I would return to it. There is no question that the bay area is losing some talent to […] | Continue reading