Continuations

It’s been a long time since I have written here. And I miss it. There has been a confluence of factors that have made it difficult. First, there has been simply finding the time. I have been crazy busy at work with many portfolio companies going through some kind of crisis as part of the adjustments in the financing environment over the last couple of years. I have also been working through some personal issues that have provided an opportunity for growth but have been time intensive (more on...

Readers of this blog and/or my book know that I am pro regulation as a way of getting the best out of technological progress. One topic I have covered repeatedly over the years is the need to get past the app store lock-in. The European Digital Markets Act was supposed to accomplish this but Apple gave a middle finger by figuring out a way to comply with the letter of the law while going against its spirit. We have gone down a path for many years now where regulation has become ever more comp...

My book, The World After Capital, has been available online and as hardcover for a couple of years now. I have had frequent requests for other editions and I am happy to report that they are now all available! One of the biggest requests was for an audio version. So this past summer I recorded one which is now available on Audible. Yes, of course I could have had AI do this, but I really wanted to read it myself. Both because I think there is more of a connection to me for listeners and also ...

I am unabashedly a technology optimist. For me, however, that means making choices for how we will get the best out of technology for the good of humanity, while limiting its negative effects. With technology becoming ever more powerful there is a huge premium on getting this right as the downsides now include existential risk. Let me state upfront that I am super excited about progress in AI and what it can eventually do for humanity if we get this right. We could be building the capacity to...

One tried and true tactic for suppressing opinions is to slap them with a disparaging label. This is currently happening in the Israel/Gaza conflict with the allegation of bothsidesism, which goes as follows: you have to pick a side, anything else is bothsidesism. Of course nobody likes to be accused of bothsidesism, which is clearly bad. But this is a completely wrong application of the concept. Some may be repeating this allegation unthinkingly, but others are using it as an intentional tac...

I have not personally commented in public on the Israel/Gaza conflict until now (USV signed on to a statement). The suffering has been heartbreaking and the conflict is far from over. Beyond the carnage on the ground, the dialog online and in the street has been dominated by shouting. That makes it hard to want to speak up individually. My own hesitation was driven by unacknowledged emotions: Guilt that I had not spoken out about the suffering of ordinary Palestinians in the past, despite hav...

I was at a conference earlier this year where one of the topics was the fear of a population implosion. Some people are concerned that with birth rates declining in many parts of the world we might suddenly find ourselves without enough humans. Elon Musk has on several occasions declared population collapse the biggest risk to humanity (ahead of the climate crisis). I have two issues with this line of thinking. First, global population is still growing and some of those expressing concern are...

Silicon Valley’s tribal boosterism has been bad for tech and bad for the world. I recently criticized Reddit for clamping down on third party clients. I pointed out that having raised a lot of money at a high valuation required the company to become more extractive in an attempt to produce a return for investors. Twitter had gone down the exact same path years earlier with bad results, where undermining the third party ecosystem ultimately resulted in lower growth and engagement for the netwo...

A few week backs I wrote a series of blog posts about the risks from progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI). I specifically addressed that I believe that we are facing not just structural risks, such as algorithmic bias, but also existential ones. There are three dilemmas in pushing the existential risk point at this moment. First, there is the potential for a “boy who cried wolf” effect. The more we push right now, if (hopefully) nothing terrible happens, then the harder existential risk f...

A couple of weeks ago I participated in Creative Destruction Lab’s (CDL) “Super Session” event in Toronto. It was an amazing convocation of CDL alumni from around the world, as well as new companies and mentors. The event kicked off with a 2 hour summary and critique of the new book “Power and Progress” by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson. There were eleven of us charged with summarizing and commenting on one chapter each, with Daron replying after 3-4 speakers. This was the idea of Ajay Agra...