In the summer of 2003, Brad Burnham and I set out to raise a $100mm early stage venture capital fund. We had both been successful VCs in other firms and we had a thesis that the second wave of the Internet was upon us and that large networks were going to get built in this […] | Continue reading
Coinbase launched the first in a series of payroll offerings: If your employer offers direct deposit, you can deposit some or all of your paycheck in your Coinbase account and immediately convert it into USDC, BTC, ETH or any other asset that is available to you in your Coinbase … | Continue reading
Two years ago this weekend, the Gotham Gal and I were in Park City at the annual Sundance Film Festival with another couple we have been great friends with for thirty years. On Monday morning we came down to breakfast and our friends announced they were flying back to NYC a few d … | Continue reading
Six years ago this month Julie Samuels got together with a group of technology leaders in NYC and we decided to form an industry group for the growing tech sector in NYC. I agreed to co-chair the organization and have been in the chair role since then. We called it Tech:NYC and I … | Continue reading
Last month our portfolio company Kickstarter announced the creation of a protocol organization that will develop a web3 protocol for the crowdfunding of creative projects. They are now assembling a protocol team and are talking to candidates to lead that effort. The protocol lead … | Continue reading
The stock and crypto markets have started off the year in selloff mode, with the Nasdaq down almost 5% this week and the big crypto assets down almost 10% this week. But this selloff has been going on for a lot longer than one week. It has been going on since early November when … | Continue reading
So last year I made a bunch of predictions that with one exception were kind of obvious. I don’t want to do that again, so I am going to list five things that I think will happen this year that most people would not likely agree with. 1/ As the pandemic evolves into an endemic [… … | Continue reading
As is my custom here at AVC, I like to end the year looking back and start the year looking forward. This post will be the look back and I started by revisiting my look forward into 2021 that I wrote on New Year’s Day 2021. In my typical optimist fashion, I was dead wrong […] | Continue reading
Over the last month, there has been a ton of debate and conversation about web2 vs web3 with many leading voices raising doubts about web3. Debate and doubt are healthy. And web3 enthusiasts, particularly on Twitter, remind me of missionaries trying to recruit the unwashed to the … | Continue reading
I saw two charts last week that showed the same thing: This chart was in the deck I shared here last week called Consumer Trends 2022. It shows that after a big lift in 2020 and a bit of a lull in 2021, the e-commerce trendline is back to its old baseline. This is our […] | Continue reading
My friends at The New Consumer and Coefficient Capital have published their annual consumer survey. There are many interesting slides in it, none more than this one. I guess that explains this chart: But back to the consumer survey, there are lots of interesting slides in it and … | Continue reading
After skipping a year last year, USV held its annual team party last night. It has felt great getting back to getting together with friends, family, and co-workers this holiday season. It has meant a lot of rapid testing for me, all negative thankfully, including one this morning … | Continue reading
The second week of December every year is Computer Science Education Week. It is a week to celebrate efforts to get computer science education into the K12 system around the world, and it is also a week in which schools do events, like The Hour of Code, to encourage students and … | Continue reading
On Friday, the US jobs report produced a confusing result. From Bloomberg: The jobs report is composed of two surveys — one of employers and the other of households. The employer survey, which determines the payroll and wage figures, showed hiring slowed across industries, includ … | Continue reading
I backed this project the minute I saw it this morning. The idea of a wall-mounted device like a Nest Thermostat that controls/dims lights and lets you turn up or down your music seems awesome to me. The Nest interface is simple, intuitive, and works wonderfully. Also, the video … | Continue reading
Like many did, we spent much of this weekend watching Peter Jackson’s wonderful documentary of the Beatles making Let It Be, titled Get Back. I enjoyed so much of the film, particularly the music, but the big thing I took away is the power of real partnerships. While this was the … | Continue reading
Like most holidays we celebrate, the essence of the Thanksgiving holiday hides underneath our celebration of it. Ask anyone about Thanksgiving, and you will hear about turkey, stuffing, a big meal, family, and maybe football. I’m fine with all of that, particularly the stuffing a … | Continue reading
I remember about fifteen years ago, a well-known VC said to me “you need to sell a company within a few years of the founder leaving. Companies can’t sustain their innovation after a founder leaves.” I told that VC that my experience has been different on that measure and that I … | Continue reading
Are you a New Yorker doing something amazing and could use $200,000 to support your work? If so, you should apply for a David Prize. I have written about this program before so you might remember. But for those who haven’t heard about it, here’s the deal: Here are the most recent … | Continue reading
We have been seeing quite a few seed rounds getting done in and around $100mm post-money and that concerns me for a few reasons: Seed stage is when a company has a good team, a good idea, but has not yet proven product market fit and a go to market model, and has not yet […] | Continue reading
A number of friends have been asking us how to buy crypto assets. This is not the first time we’ve gotten this question and it won’t be the last. When I first started getting this question, my answer was “open a Coinbase account and buy Bitcoin.” Then there was a period when my a … | Continue reading
A number of friends have been asking us how to buy crypto assets. This is not the first time we’ve gotten this question and it won’t be the last. When I first started getting this question, my answer was “open a Coinbase account and buy Bitcoin.” Then there was a period when my a … | Continue reading
We have been coming to Paris regularly for about 15 years and back in 2008, I started using the Velib bike share system and wrote about it here. A lot has changed in a decade and a half when it comes to biking in Paris. There are more bikes, more bike lanes, and more bikers. […] | Continue reading
We have been coming to Paris regularly for about 15 years and back in 2008, I started using the Velib bike share system and wrote about it here. A lot has changed in a decade and a half when it comes to biking in Paris. There are more bikes, more bike lanes, and more bikers. […] | Continue reading
On Tuesday night the Gotham Gal and I boarded an overnight flight at JFK and arrived in Paris on Wednesday morning. That sounds like a normal thing to do and it is something we have been doing together since we met forty years ago. But we have not done any international travel si … | Continue reading
On Tuesday night the Gotham Gal and I boarded an overnight flight at JFK and arrived in Paris on Wednesday morning. That sounds like a normal thing to do and it is something we have been doing together since we met forty years ago. But we have not done any international travel si … | Continue reading
I’ve been hearing the term Metaverse for at least twenty years and I have always struggled with it. As I told my colleagues last week “I like the real world, I don’t want to live in a video game.” My colleagues explained to me that I am thinking about it incorrectly. They said th … | Continue reading
I’ve been hearing the term Metaverse for at least twenty years and I have always struggled with it. As I told my colleagues last week “I like the real world, I don’t want to live in a video game.” My colleagues explained to me that I am thinking about it incorrectly. They said th … | Continue reading
I backed this project this morning. The Tether Bike Light is “a bike safety device that projects a safe zone around your bike, responds to road users around you, identifying safe and unsafe roads in your city.” I like the idea that “locations of overtakes are recorded to identify … | Continue reading
I backed this project this morning. The Tether Bike Light is “a bike safety device that projects a safe zone around your bike, responds to road users around you, identifying safe and unsafe roads in your city.” I like the idea that “locations of overtakes are recorded to identify … | Continue reading
Now that we are beginning to see what consumer applications are like in the decentralized web (web3), it is interesting to compare that to what consumer applications are like in the centralized web (web2). It became clear early in the 2000s that the big opportunity in the web wou … | Continue reading
Now that we are beginning to see what consumer applications are like in the decentralized web (web3), it is interesting to compare that to what consumer applications are like in the centralized web (web2). It became clear early in the 2000s that the big opportunity in the web wou … | Continue reading
When you look at the recent Q3 numbers on seed and early-stage VC fundraising, you might think we are in the late stages of a VC bubble: The words I would use to describe the current environment in early-stage VC are “fast and furious.” And yet the thing that makes me think this … | Continue reading
When you look at the recent Q3 numbers on seed and early-stage VC fundraising, you might think we are in the late stages of a VC bubble: The words I would use to describe the current environment in early-stage VC are “fast and furious.” And yet the thing that makes me think this … | Continue reading
My friend Stephen sent me a text with a link to this Kickstarter project. I backed it immediately and went one step further than I ordinarily do, I bought a pre-order copy of the book. The NBA is back in season, I went to the opener on Weds night here in NYC, and it was […] | Continue reading
My friend Stephen sent me a text with a link to this Kickstarter project. I backed it immediately and went one step further than I ordinarily do, I bought a pre-order copy of the book. The NBA is back in season, I went to the opener on Weds night here in NYC, and it was […] | Continue reading
We started looking at crypto ten years ago, starting investing nine years ago, and have had a front-row seat to its development ever since. It has been enlightening, exciting, rewarding, but definitely not mainstream. I think that is changing quickly now and yesterday I saw this … | Continue reading
We started looking at crypto ten years ago, starting investing nine years ago, and have had a front-row seat to its development ever since. It has been enlightening, exciting, rewarding, but definitely not mainstream. I think that is changing quickly now and yesterday I saw this … | Continue reading
Since 2016, I have been working “half time” at USV and taking half of a partner’s carry. That has allowed me to allocate more time to things like building green buildings with the Gotham Gal, building a philanthropic organization with the Gotham Gal, sitting on non-profit and civ … | Continue reading
Since 2016, I have been working “half time” at USV and taking half of a partner’s carry. That has allowed me to allocate more time to things like building green buildings with the Gotham Gal, building a philanthropic organization with the Gotham Gal, sitting on non-profit and civ … | Continue reading
For the last ten years, my tax prep on crypto was pretty easy. I have always had a buy and hold mindset and have custodied with Coinbase. So a simple report on Coinbase was all I needed to send to my tax folks. Pretty simple. But as DeFi and NFTs have exploded on the scene, […] | Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I wrote about NYC’s Tech Resurgence. I observed that NYC continues to develop as one of the world’s leading centers of tech innovation. And then yesterday, I saw this tweet: NYC startups are getting funded at 2/3 the rate of Silicon Valley startups. That’s a huge … | Continue reading
A couple of years ago, I wrote about buying crypto in an IRA. I went and did that with an old unused IRA that was sitting in cash and I have 8x’d the value of that IRA in the last 18 months. While my family is fortunate that we don’t have to rely on our […] | Continue reading
A couple of years ago, I wrote about buying crypto in an IRA. I went and did that with an old unused IRA that was sitting in cash and I have 8x’d the value of that IRA in the last 18 months. While my family is fortunate that we don’t have to rely on our […] | Continue reading
Our portfolio company Dapper Labs, creator of CryptoKitties, the Flow Blockchain, and the NBA Top Shot collectible game, is announcing Dapper Collectives today. Dapper Collectives comes by way of an acquisition of Brud, a company that has been developing “community-owned media an … | Continue reading
Early in the pandemic, we were all deluged with stories of tech workers, companies, and founders leaving Silicon Valley for Miami and Austin. And that was true. But from my personal experience, they also left for many other places too, including Los Angeles and New York City. I m … | Continue reading
Early in the pandemic, we were all deluged with stories of tech workers, companies, and founders leaving Silicon Valley for Miami and Austin. And that was true. But from my personal experience, they also left for many other places too, including Los Angeles and New York City. I m … | Continue reading
Our portfolio company Mirror has been using a “game mechanic” called The Write Race to onboard users to the Mirror service. Mirror is something between a blogging platform, a crowdfunding platform, and a community platform, built for the crypto sector. Mirror is built on decentra … | Continue reading