A few years ago, maybe in 2016, we held a discussion of blockchain and crypto technologies at the annual meeting of our limited partners. I recall someone in the audience suggesting that the NYSE and Nasdaq could rebuild their markets on top of these technologies. I replied that … | Continue reading
I backed this project a few weeks ago and noticed that it is almost to its goal with a week to go. Shuggie’s is a restaurant that makes pizza out of food waste. Trash Pie. You got to love that. “Helping the planet can be super tasty.” Email readers can watch the video and back [… … | Continue reading
In the wake of the news yesterday that the FTC plus 46 states and a few other locales sued Facebook for being a monopoly, I want to, yet again, argue for a different, more modern, and more powerful regulatory approach to tech monopolies. I first posted this a year and a half ago, … | Continue reading
Michelle Zatlyn is the co-founder and COO of our former portfolio and now public company Cloudflare (NYSE: NET). In this conversation she did with the Gotham Gal a few weeks ago, she talks about how she and her co-founder Matthew decided to work on cybersecurity versus many other … | Continue reading
I have written about stablecoins a bunch here at AVC. I believe cryptocurrencies that are not highly volatile are important for use cases like e-commerce. I explained why here. So we need crypto assets that are price stabilized and one of the best ways to do that is to peg a cryp … | Continue reading
When people ask me why I prefer to invest in software-based innovation vs other important areas like biotech, hardware, energy, etc, I always point to the speed at which software can be built, released, and iterated on. This is a personal comfort thing for me. I am not saying tha … | Continue reading
E-Rate is a program put in place in the 1996 Telecommunications Act to expand Universal Service Fund fees to schools in order to help them upgrade their telecom infrastructure. Telcos charge customers Universal Service Fund fees so that they can provide “universal service”, origi … | Continue reading
I saw this project as I was browsing Kickstarter this morning and I watched the video and thought “I need to get one of those.” If you would like to display a favorite photograph in holograph form you can back this project and get one for yourself here. | Continue reading
It is very typical that options and RSUs that are issued to new employees upon joining a company will have “one year cliff vesting.” This means that the first year of vesting into your options or RSUs will not happen until you have completed one entire year. After that vesting us … | Continue reading
I have written about stablecoins a bunch here at AVC. I believe cryptocurrencies that are not highly volatile are important for use cases like e-commerce. I explained why here. So we need crypto assets that are price stabilized and one of the best ways to do that is to peg a cryp … | Continue reading
It is very typical that options and RSUs that are issued to new employees upon joining a company will have “one year cliff vesting.” This means that the first year of vesting into your options or RSUs will not happen until you have completed one entire year. After that vesting us … | Continue reading
I’m not much for the shopping mania that happens on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but I do like the idea of taking a day at this time of year to give back. Today is that day. This year is a particularly hard year for so many and so giving back, if you can, is […] | Continue reading
We learned last week that the US Treasury wants to regulate crypto wallets like bank accounts. On the surface, one can understand that temptation. If people store, send, receive, and sell crypto assets in crypto wallets, then surely they should be regulated like bank accounts. Ex … | Continue reading
We learned last week that the US Treasury wants to regulate crypto wallets like bank accounts. On the surface, one can understand that temptation. If people store, send, receive, and sell crypto assets in crypto wallets, then surely they should be regulated like bank accounts. Ex … | Continue reading
I learned yesterday of the passing of Arnold Waldstein. Arnold was as regular a reader of this blog as there ever was or ever will be. His warmth is what I will remember most. He cared about people. Arnold was a born and bred NYer who went to Silicon Valley and built a career in … | Continue reading
I’ve been biking several times a week in NYC this fall and every mask I’ve worn has caused me problems with fogging my glasses and making it harder to breath. I’ve tried a bunch of different masks and nothing works great. So when I saw this project to make something better for wo … | Continue reading
As years go, 2020 is not one that generates a lot of gratitude in my mind. Global pandemic, racial struggles, millions without jobs, local merchants closing up, a surreal election here in the US, and that is just what comes to mind in the time it takes me to write this. And yet, … | Continue reading
I have New York State’s exposure alerting app on my phone and check it every day. It gives me great statistics about what is going on in my location. You can download it here for iOS and Android. It will also notify me if anyone who is using the app and has been with me […] | Continue reading
I saw this tweet in my feed yesterday and read the New Yorker piece when I woke up this morning: Here’s what I think. There is more truth to that article than anyone in the venture capital industry wants to admit. The idea that capital alone can create a strong company is a flawe … | Continue reading
There are many ways to invest successfully. Public stocks, bonds, private equity, real estate, venture capital, etc. And within each category, there are so many different investment opportunities. In public stocks, there are something like 5,000 listed stocks in the US. In ventur … | Continue reading
I was on a zoom board meeting in early July and one of the board members started whipping out cards instead of interrupting. I captured the moment because I thought it was awesome. Since then, I have wanted my own set of zoom meeting cards, but never took the initiative to make t … | Continue reading
The latest charade of bringing Jack and Zuck in front of Congress to yell at them reminds me that our elected officials and regulators don’t have a plan for how to properly regulate social media. Jack and Zuck probably do have a plan and if they play their cards correctly, they w … | Continue reading
When I go back and read my Jan 1st post on what would happen in the 2020s, I am reminded how hard it is to predict the future. The Covid Pandemic changed everything in 2020 and likely for years to come. And yet it was not one of my predictions, even though Covid was already […] | Continue reading
A reader emailed me yesterday and I replied: Hi Fred, do you have any suggestion for good primers/book explaining cryptocurrencies a bit better to the inexperienced and uninitiated? i would start at the start https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf The Bitcoin Whitepaper, originally p … | Continue reading
The first crypto asset most people purchase is Bitcoin. It has the highest market capitalization. It has way more search interest. But Bitcoin is not all there is to the crypto sector. There is about $160bn of market value in the crypto sector outside of Bitcoin. The “non-Bitcoin … | Continue reading
AVC regular Charlie Crystle told me that his neighbors are doing a fun Kickstarter. So I went and watched the video (here for email readers): The video is only 30 seconds and it sold me instantly. I backed it and I bet you will too if you like to drink beer with friends. It’s a [ … | Continue reading
A number of members of Congress sent a letter to the Office of Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Tuesday. I have embedded it below but readers via email may need to click here to read it. Letter to the OCC on Fintec… by CoinDesk These elected officials are correct that way too … | Continue reading
A number of members of Congress sent a letter to the Office of Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Tuesday. I have embedded it below but readers via email may need to click here to read it. Letter to the OCC on Fintec… by CoinDesk These elected officials are correct that way too … | Continue reading
I was looking at the numbers on an early-stage VC fund that the Gotham Gal and I are invested in. I am not very familiar with the portfolio but this fund was formed in 2012. There are 24 names (investments) in the portfolio and 3 of them have produced 92% of the value in the […] | Continue reading
Yesterday morning we got the news that Pfizer’s mRNA Covid vaccine developed in partnership with BioNTech saw 90% efficacy in phase three clinical trials. While this is terrific news, Wall Street saw it as bad news for companies that are doing well during this pandemic (Zoom, Pel … | Continue reading
There has been a fair bit of good news in the last 48 hours. Here is some more. I logged onto Twitter just now and saw this tweet from my colleague Matt: It has taken almost nine months, but our USV portfolio companies have as many open and unfilled jobs this morning as they did … | Continue reading
I’ve always been a fan of music in the shower. So when a long time AVC reader sent me a link to his Kickstarter project, Shower Power, I immediately backed it. If you are into music in the shower like I am, you might want to check it out and support it too. | Continue reading
There was a good Twitter discussion of this issue over the weekend between some folks who work in the VC sector. I think it is worth sharing more broadly. Here it is as a Twitter Moment. | Continue reading
Well, we don’t know who won the election this morning, but we know that the turnout was the strongest in 120 years at roughly 2/3 of eligible voters. We can thank mail-in votes and early voting for that. Some will take offense at the late counting of mail-in votes and claim fraud … | Continue reading
I am not working today. USV gave everyone the day off. It is Election Day in the US. I believe it should be a national holiday so everyone can have the day off and vote. I can’t think of many things more important than participating in the selection of our government. I saw that … | Continue reading
I was talking to a group of education entrepreneurs (on Zoom naturally) last week and was advocating for the “direct to learner” approach that defines our eduction investing strategy at USV. For the most part, we do not like to back companies that sell learning tools to education … | Continue reading
This project has a bunch of things that interest/excite me: 1/ Entrepreneurs committing to building new things in NYC during the pandemic 2/ Young chefs going out on their own 3/ Brooklyn 4/ Jelly donuts I backed this project just now and took the jelly donuts reward because how … | Continue reading
Our portfolio company Recount put out this two minute video primer on the question of “when will we know.” I like getting the information I want in a very short period of time. This does that so well. | Continue reading
The NYC Fintech Innovation Lab is a program which accepts fintech entrepreneurs to develop their businesses with the assistance of senior execs at the leading NYC banks and insurance companies. The key priorities of the CTOs and CIOs of the Lab’s partner organizations include: … | Continue reading
The David Prize is a philanthropic effort to find NYers who are doing amazing things and support them financially. They recently announced five winners, you can see them here. They have an open call for new applicants and you can apply here. The deadline is December 4th. They are … | Continue reading
In almost thirty five years of working on boards, the hardest decisions I have had to make involve removing the CEO. It is an important decision and one that must be made from time to time. I am not a fan of removing the CEO until and unless it is abundantly clear that it must [… … | Continue reading
In almost thirty five years of working on boards, the hardest decisions I have had to make involve removing the CEO. It is an important decision and one that must be made from time to time. I am not a fan of removing the CEO until and unless it is abundantly clear that it must [… … | Continue reading
I like how Hidemi Takagi set up a free photo studio in her front yard in Bed-Stuy and took photos of her neighbors. For those on email, you can see the video here. I backed this creative project and a bunch of others this morning on Kickstarter. | Continue reading
As I have written here a few times, I prefer to do video meetings from a couch (vs a desk). I find it allows me to stay present in the meeting and not get distracted by everything on my desk. I call these couch setups “Zoom Rooms” and I have been doing this long before […] | Continue reading
I realize that most of us are not flying much these days, but I am confident that we will return to flying when the pandemic is over and when we do, we should offset the carbon footprints of our flights. The Gotham Gal and I have been doing this for the last five years. Here […] | Continue reading
If your job requires you to design, build, and ship software applications and you want a better way to get feedback on the application, the design, etc, then I have a suggestion for you. Try Jam. Or Jam.dev to be specific. Jam allows you to turn your web application into somethin … | Continue reading
I read Alex Konrad’s profile of Fred Ehrsam and Matt Huang of Paradigm yesterday and was reminded of my own career. In 1996, after almost a decade at Euclid Partners, I left to start Flatiron Partners with Jerry Colonna. I was 35. Jerry was 33. We had a lot to learn but we did kn … | Continue reading
The Gotham Gal and I have lived a block away from Westbeth for almost fifteen years. Westbeth is a treasure. It was Bell Labs for most of the first half of the twentieth century and became an artist community in 1970 about twenty years after Bell Labs left for New Jersey. Earlier … | Continue reading