Tomorrow is a big election as potentially control of both houses is on the line. But why vote? There is something known as the “paradox of voting,” which questions why a rational voter would bother voting at all. The reasoning is that any particular voter is incredibly unlikely to influence the outcome of the election. So the marginal benefit from voting would seem to be much lower than the cost of taking time off from work, driving to the polling place, etc. There are quite a few things wron...

Tomorrow is a big election as potentially control of both houses is on the line. But why vote? There is something known as the “paradox of voting,” which questions why a rational voter would bother voting at all. The reasoning is that any particular voter is incredibly unlikely to influence the outcome of the election. So the marginal benefit from voting would seem to be much lower than the cost of taking time off from work, driving to the polling place, etc. There are quite a few things wron...

This morning I am speaking to a group of women entrepreneurs out here in Westchester about opportunities coming out of mobile. I have written about this before on the USV blog, but here is what I am planning to talk about today.. To understand mobile opportunities we need to look at - Device capabilities - Adoption rates - Behavioral changes Something that is intentionally left off this list are specific technologies. Whether it will be Android or iPhone or Flash or HTML5 are largely tactical...

This morning I am speaking to a group of women entrepreneurs out here in Westchester about opportunities coming out of mobile. I have written about this before on the USV blog, but here is what I am planning to talk about today.. To understand mobile opportunities we need to look at - Device capabilities - Adoption rates - Behavioral changes Something that is intentionally left off this list are specific technologies. Whether it will be Android or iPhone or Flash or HTML5 are largely tactical...

Chris Dixon has an intriguing blog post titled “Timing Your Startup” which ends with the following quote:One way to mitigate timing risk is to manage your cash accordingly. If you are trying to ride existing trends you should ramp up aggressively. If you are betting on emerging trends it is better to keep your burn low and runway long. This takes discipline and patience but is also the way you hit it really big.I generally subscribe to the same theory. But I have recently heard some people I ...

Chris Dixon has an intriguing blog post titled “Timing Your Startup” which ends with the following quote:One way to mitigate timing risk is to manage your cash accordingly. If you are trying to ride existing trends you should ramp up aggressively. If you are betting on emerging trends it is better to keep your burn low and runway long. This takes discipline and patience but is also the way you hit it really big.I generally subscribe to the same theory. But I have recently heard some people I ...

One more post on voting, but this tome about UX design. The new optical scanners have an awful user experience. Two things really stuck out. First, it was entirely unclear whether to insert one’s ballot face up or face down (or either). There should be a huge sample right on the feeding slot to show the proper orientation. Second, for the machine to just say “Ballot Processed” is really disconcerting. It requires too high a level of trust that the machine did in fact properly scan and was cor...

One more post on voting, but this tome about UX design. The new optical scanners have an awful user experience. Two things really stuck out. First, it was entirely unclear whether to insert one’s ballot face up or face down (or either). There should be a huge sample right on the feeding slot to show the proper orientation. Second, for the machine to just say “Ballot Processed” is really disconcerting. It requires too high a level of trust that the machine did in fact properly scan and was cor...

The election is over and the results are as expected bad for the Democrats. I worry a bit that we are experiencing first hand the limits of democracy. We have a great many people voting out of frustration with the economy (understandable) but voting for the same candidates and policies that got us here in the first place (less so). My own frustration is that even the Democrats seem to be in denial about the true underlying causes of the high level of unemployment. The mortgage crisis was a me...

The election is over and the results are as expected bad for the Democrats. I worry a bit that we are experiencing first hand the limits of democracy. We have a great many people voting out of frustration with the economy (understandable) but voting for the same candidates and policies that got us here in the first place (less so). My own frustration is that even the Democrats seem to be in denial about the true underlying causes of the high level of unemployment. The mortgage crisis was a me...

There is a fine line between supporting and enabling. I find this is true as much at home as in business. When one of our children asks for help with a homework assignment, I tend to provide it to be supportive. But I am mindful that I might just be enabling a bad habit of not learning a particular skill. For instance, our older son has had a series of assignments that he had typed up on the computer and that required a lot of formatting, which is surprisingly hard past the simplest adjustmen...

There is a fine line between supporting and enabling. I find this is true as much at home as in business. When one of our children asks for help with a homework assignment, I tend to provide it to be supportive. But I am mindful that I might just be enabling a bad habit of not learning a particular skill. For instance, our older son has had a series of assignments that he had typed up on the computer and that required a lot of formatting, which is surprisingly hard past the simplest adjustmen...

I have long operated an open and unsecured wifi access point at home. Why? For anything that really requires security, such as online banking, I am relying on end-to-end encryption via SSL. That requires being somewhat diligent to make sure your browser actually shows it has a secure connection because otherwise you are potentially subject to a MITM attack where the attacker rewrites secure to unsecure connections. But end-to-end based on certificates provides much higher security than any of...

I have long operated an open and unsecured wifi access point at home. Why? For anything that really requires security, such as online banking, I am relying on end-to-end encryption via SSL. That requires being somewhat diligent to make sure your browser actually shows it has a secure connection because otherwise you are potentially subject to a MITM attack where the attacker rewrites secure to unsecure connections. But end-to-end based on certificates provides much higher security than any of...

Last week I wrote that content owners’ decision to block access to TV content they had made available on the web based on recognizing which browser it was (in particular identifying and blocking Google TV) was a threat to net neutrality. Scott Rafer objected that I was doing net neutrality (and my readers) a disservice by confounding it with “universal access” and Andy Idsinga commented that net neutrality was strictly about content transmission by ISPs. I believe that both are wrong and want...

Last week I wrote that content owners’ decision to block access to TV content they had made available on the web based on recognizing which browser it was (in particular identifying and blocking Google TV) was a threat to net neutrality. Scott Rafer objected that I was doing net neutrality (and my readers) a disservice by confounding it with “universal access” and Andy Idsinga commented that net neutrality was strictly about content transmission by ISPs. I believe that both are wrong and want...

With so much infrastructure to build on, we are seeing smaller and smaller teams achieve amazing things. The combination of someone with a great product sense and one or two exceptional engineers can build and launch a new product or service. Many startups prove this every day. And the various accelerator programs such a YCombinator and TechStars have done a terrific job promoting the entrepreneurial opportunity that this represents. But what about folks who are awesome but don’t want to go t...

With so much infrastructure to build on, we are seeing smaller and smaller teams achieve amazing things. The combination of someone with a great product sense and one or two exceptional engineers can build and launch a new product or service. Many startups prove this every day. And the various accelerator programs such a YCombinator and TechStars have done a terrific job promoting the entrepreneurial opportunity that this represents. But what about folks who are awesome but don’t want to go t...

This is part of my series of posts thinking about a coming age of abundance. The main thrust of my arguments will be that abundance will be a feature of the physical world, but I would be the first to admit that we are a long way off from that. In the meantime though, we can look to the online world for some clues as to what abundance might look like. Online (at least on the margin), the cost of resources is already sufficiently close to zero so as to not matter. One of the interesting possib...

This is part of my series of posts thinking about a coming age of abundance. The main thrust of my arguments will be that abundance will be a feature of the physical world, but I would be the first to admit that we are a long way off from that. In the meantime though, we can look to the online world for some clues as to what abundance might look like. Online (at least on the margin), the cost of resources is already sufficiently close to zero so as to not matter. One of the interesting possib...