Bill Gurley has a must-read post up on how the $32B of affiliate fees will slow down the Internet disruption of the TV industry. I have one addition and one amplification for Bill’s excellent post. First, the addition. More than just supporting an existing flow of dollars, bundling is in fact not only a logical but even a socially efficient model for costly to produce content, such as TV shows. HBO has proven this point for years, but there is a great academic paper by Erik Brynjolfsson and Y...

Bill Gurley has a must-read post up on how the $32B of affiliate fees will slow down the Internet disruption of the TV industry. I have one addition and one amplification for Bill’s excellent post. First, the addition. More than just supporting an existing flow of dollars, bundling is in fact not only a logical but even a socially efficient model for costly to produce content, such as TV shows. HBO has proven this point for years, but there is a great academic paper by Erik Brynjolfsson and Y...

Unix has some very powerful commands available. For instance, the simple combination of “rm -rf” if invoked by a superuser at the root would pretty much delete every file and directory on the system. Because such power is available systems are often configured to provide for some measure of protection from accidental disaster (e.g. thinking that you are in some directory way down the tree when you invoke rm when in fact you are in the root directory). This week I encountered two situations wh...

Unix has some very powerful commands available. For instance, the simple combination of “rm -rf” if invoked by a superuser at the root would pretty much delete every file and directory on the system. Because such power is available systems are often configured to provide for some measure of protection from accidental disaster (e.g. thinking that you are in some directory way down the tree when you invoke rm when in fact you are in the root directory). This week I encountered two situations wh...

Anyone who does mechanical work appreciates the impact the right tool can have on a job. For instance, the other day I needed to open up a cover that was held down by six screws. I first tried a screw driver. The screws were so tight, they didn’t even budge. But because the screws had shaped heads I was able to use a wrench instead. Minutes later the cover was off and I was examining the impeller for a seawater pump. Well, the same lesson of course applies much more broadly including processe...

Anyone who does mechanical work appreciates the impact the right tool can have on a job. For instance, the other day I needed to open up a cover that was held down by six screws. I first tried a screw driver. The screws were so tight, they didn’t even budge. But because the screws had shaped heads I was able to use a wrench instead. Minutes later the cover was off and I was examining the impeller for a seawater pump. Well, the same lesson of course applies much more broadly including processe...

This week my blogging is likely to be lighter than usual and my email responses slower than usual. The reason is that we have move to the phone screen stage of finding candidates for the two positions at USV. If you are interested / have applied, you can read a more detailed update on the hiring process.

This week my blogging is likely to be lighter than usual and my email responses slower than usual. The reason is that we have move to the phone screen stage of finding candidates for the two positions at USV. If you are interested / have applied, you can read a more detailed update on the hiring process.

I have spent most of this morning reading reactions and thoughts about Facebook’s “Open Graph” via Techmeme, Tumblr, Twitter and comments to my post and Fred’s post. All of it has me convinced that the power of the web will be stronger than any one company. That is with one important caveat: what we can do on the web has to stay as open as it is today! This is why I believe the real fight is not with or between Google or Facebook or even Apple. The real fight is for net neutrality and against...

I have spent most of this morning reading reactions and thoughts about Facebook’s “Open Graph” via Techmeme, Tumblr, Twitter and comments to my post and Fred’s post. All of it has me convinced that the power of the web will be stronger than any one company. That is with one important caveat: what we can do on the web has to stay as open as it is today! This is why I believe the real fight is not with or between Google or Facebook or even Apple. The real fight is for net neutrality and against...

A good friend of mine was one of the early practitioners in Europe of complex financial engineering for large corporate clients. I vividly remember a conversation with him on a vacation some 20 years ago, when he told me about a deal that was meant to remove energy cost risk from a company and sell that risk off separately. At the time he made the argument that this allowed for better hedging on part of the company and allowed investors to take a position in this risk alone. I took the positi...

A good friend of mine was one of the early practitioners in Europe of complex financial engineering for large corporate clients. I vividly remember a conversation with him on a vacation some 20 years ago, when he told me about a deal that was meant to remove energy cost risk from a company and sell that risk off separately. At the time he made the argument that this allowed for better hedging on part of the company and allowed investors to take a position in this risk alone. I took the positi...

At USV, we have long believed in “Social Objects." In the real world when people talk they often form a connection around objects, such as sharing a common interest in a movie. That was our thesis behind investing in GetGlue. Alex and the team there have done an amazing job delivering on that idea. When you have the Glue extension installed in your browser, you can connect with friends and discover new people around "social objects,” such as movies, books, etc. The power of Glue derives from ...

At USV, we have long believed in “Social Objects." In the real world when people talk they often form a connection around objects, such as sharing a common interest in a movie. That was our thesis behind investing in GetGlue. Alex and the team there have done an amazing job delivering on that idea. When you have the Glue extension installed in your browser, you can connect with friends and discover new people around "social objects,” such as movies, books, etc. The power of Glue derives from ...

Hats off to Mark Zuckerberg and the entire team at Facebook. They are managing that most impressive feat of innovating at scale. They are also incredibly ambitious in what they want to accomplish. The goal seems nothing short of one identity and one graph to “rule them all." With over 400 million users worldwide and a sign on system that is being widely adopted this ambition doesn’t seem crazy. Especially when you layer on top of this the possibility that soon many of these users might have F...

Hats off to Mark Zuckerberg and the entire team at Facebook. They are managing that most impressive feat of innovating at scale. They are also incredibly ambitious in what they want to accomplish. The goal seems nothing short of one identity and one graph to “rule them all." With over 400 million users worldwide and a sign on system that is being widely adopted this ambition doesn’t seem crazy. Especially when you layer on top of this the possibility that soon many of these users might have F...

In January I posted about staying fit (http://continuations.com/post/347328558/staying-fit) and mentioned that we started family yoga on weekends. While the kids’ participation has waned a bit, Susan and I have been quite consistent. In the past, I didn’t understand why some people were so fanatic about Yoga, but I am beginning to be quite the fan myself. So far I have found three benefits: First, my posture awareness has increased dramatically. Now when I slump my shoulders, I immediately no...

In January I posted about staying fit (http://continuations.com/post/347328558/staying-fit) and mentioned that we started family yoga on weekends. While the kids’ participation has waned a bit, Susan and I have been quite consistent. In the past, I didn’t understand why some people were so fanatic about Yoga, but I am beginning to be quite the fan myself. So far I have found three benefits: First, my posture awareness has increased dramatically. Now when I slump my shoulders, I immediately no...

So I know that there are lots of problems with the Google book settlement. But yesterday I got to experience the power of digitized books firsthand and it was awesome to behold. My son had to do a project for school where he described five different professions from Colonial times. There were quite a few resources available on the web, but many of them lacked any kind of source attribution for their claims about what Colonial life was like. Now instead of going to the library, I pointed my so...

So I know that there are lots of problems with the Google book settlement. But yesterday I got to experience the power of digitized books firsthand and it was awesome to behold. My son had to do a project for school where he described five different professions from Colonial times. There were quite a few resources available on the web, but many of them lacked any kind of source attribution for their claims about what Colonial life was like. Now instead of going to the library, I pointed my so...