I have been having a great time thinking about education and learning. My interest in this topic started with a blog post I wrote on the Union Square Ventures blog about the transformative power of the Internet. The process that unfolded from there is illustrative of what is possible today. The initial post and subsequent ones (including ones by Fred) attracted a lot of comments which pointed to interesting resources on the web. Through the comments I also discovered several books that otherw...

There is a lot in the FY 2010 US budget and it will take some time to digest. But one thing that is clear right away is that there is a big tax hike coming for folks at higher income levels. I for one have never been upset about paying taxes. That’s probably in part because growing up in Germany my Dad, who was a teacher and – like all teachers in Germany at the time – a government employee, instilled a sense that paying taxes was a civic duty right up there with voting. I still believe that ...

I have been having a great time thinking about education and learning. My interest in this topic started with a blog post I wrote on the Union Square Ventures blog about the transformative power of the Internet. The process that unfolded from there is illustrative of what is possible today. The initial post and subsequent ones (including ones by Fred) attracted a lot of comments which pointed to interesting resources on the web. Through the comments I also discovered several books that otherw...

There is a lot in the FY 2010 US budget and it will take some time to digest. But one thing that is clear right away is that there is a big tax hike coming for folks at higher income levels. I for one have never been upset about paying taxes. That’s probably in part because growing up in Germany my Dad, who was a teacher and – like all teachers in Germany at the time – a government employee, instilled a sense that paying taxes was a civic duty right up there with voting. I still believe that ...

Upfront: I know much has been blogged (and tweeted) about this recently but I am writing this on the train so no links - sorry! I am on my way to another meeting about the economic future of the city. These meetings have resulted in a series of initiatives announced by Mayor Bloomberg last week. There has been a fair bit of commentary on the substance already, but I would like to address the process. I believe it could be hugely improved by opening it up. For starters, the folks running this ...

Upfront: I know much has been blogged (and tweeted) about this recently but I am writing this on the train so no links - sorry! I am on my way to another meeting about the economic future of the city. These meetings have resulted in a series of initiatives announced by Mayor Bloomberg last week. There has been a fair bit of commentary on the substance already, but I would like to address the process. I believe it could be hugely improved by opening it up. For starters, the folks running this ...

We don't do very well with predicting the future because we fail to anticipate non-linearity. This is apparent almost anywhere you look. Most people when they hear that the average temperature of the earth might rise by a couple of degrees, seem to have a mental image of a slightly warmer summer and maybe a bit less snow in winter (if you live in a place that has snow in winter). Very few people associate such a seemingly small change with the possibility of deserts in places that are lu...

We don't do very well with predicting the future because we fail to anticipate non-linearity. This is apparent almost anywhere you look. Most people when they hear that the average temperature of the earth might rise by a couple of degrees, seem to have a mental image of a slightly warmer summer and maybe a bit less snow in winter (if you live in a place that has snow in winter). Very few people associate such a seemingly small change with the possibility of deserts in places that are lu...

I was excited about Obama from before the primaries got started. Now his administration is getting off to a fairly rough start and it will be a true test of the man to see how he deals with it. It seems pretty unfair to me that some folks are already loudly proclaiming their disappointment. Given what’s going on in the economy (and the world), it seems unrealistic to me to expect everything to go smoothly. So I for one am willing to wait a bit to see what kind of course corrections take place...

I was excited about Obama from before the primaries got started. Now his administration is getting off to a fairly rough start and it will be a true test of the man to see how he deals with it. It seems pretty unfair to me that some folks are already loudly proclaiming their disappointment. Given what’s going on in the economy (and the world), it seems unrealistic to me to expect everything to go smoothly. So I for one am willing to wait a bit to see what kind of course corrections take place...

When we invested in 10gen last year, the team was working on a very ambitious approach to deliver an integrated cloud platform a la Google App Engine. While they made amazing progress on that, it turned out that developer interest was focused around the MongoDB datastore. Instead of having to buy into a complete stack, most folks (at least for now) want to continue using a broad choice of technologies and combine elements as they see fit. This appears to be one of the key factors in the treme...

When we invested in 10gen last year, the team was working on a very ambitious approach to deliver an integrated cloud platform a la Google App Engine. While they made amazing progress on that, it turned out that developer interest was focused around the MongoDB datastore. Instead of having to buy into a complete stack, most folks (at least for now) want to continue using a broad choice of technologies and combine elements as they see fit. This appears to be one of the key factors in the treme...

One of the great privileges of being in venture capital is the ability to observe many CEOs in action – not just at a distance, but close up. One of the lessons I have learned from that is that there are different ways to be effective as a CEO and that very different personalities can make for effective CEOs. I have observed effective CEOs who are technologists and others who are top sales people; CEOs who are methodical and others who are inspirational. You get the idea. But all the effectiv...

One of the great privileges of being in venture capital is the ability to observe many CEOs in action – not just at a distance, but close up. One of the lessons I have learned from that is that there are different ways to be effective as a CEO and that very different personalities can make for effective CEOs. I have observed effective CEOs who are technologists and others who are top sales people; CEOs who are methodical and others who are inspirational. You get the idea. But all the effectiv...

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story that described the paper’s strategy as trying to be the Last Man Standing. Nicholas Carr today picked up on that in his post on newspapers today and writes:Make sure you have enough cash to ride out the storm, trim your spending, defend your quality and your brand, expand into the new kinds of products and services that the web makes possible and that serve to expand your reader base. And then sit tight and wait for your weaker competitors to fail.He ...

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story that described the paper’s strategy as trying to be the Last Man Standing. Nicholas Carr today picked up on that in his post on newspapers today and writes:Make sure you have enough cash to ride out the storm, trim your spending, defend your quality and your brand, expand into the new kinds of products and services that the web makes possible and that serve to expand your reader base. And then sit tight and wait for your weaker competitors to fail.He ...

Today our portfolio company Clickable has released version 2.0 of their Pro Product. There are many great features in it, including support for emerging Google ad formats, keyword filtering & bulk edits, and enhancements to the Act Engine. What I am most excited about though is that Clickable’s conversion tracking is now out of Beta and generally available:Clickable Conversion Tracking is a powerful, independent, performance analytics tool that works across the three major search engines with...

Today our portfolio company Clickable has released version 2.0 of their Pro Product. There are many great features in it, including support for emerging Google ad formats, keyword filtering & bulk edits, and enhancements to the Act Engine. What I am most excited about though is that Clickable’s conversion tracking is now out of Beta and generally available:Clickable Conversion Tracking is a powerful, independent, performance analytics tool that works across the three major search engines with...

With Charlie O'Donnell on Brian Lehrer Live (via Vimeo)

With Charlie O'Donnell on Brian Lehrer Live (via Vimeo)