Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday: time with family and food is great as is having a reminder to be thankful. Today I want to say how thankful I am for entrepreneurs. For the people who are crazy enough to believe that they can create something from nothing (ok, not exactly ex nihilo, more on that in a second). Without entrepreneurs there would be no VCs. And much more importantly there would be very little progress. We will eventually figure out how to finance startups through crowdfunding...

I love answering questions. On long car rides nothing makes me happier than when our kids ask me something difficult to explain. Makes the drive go by much more quickly. I blame this habit on my Dad who used to be a vocational school teacher in Germany. So here is an experiment. I am adding an AMA feature to Continuations. Below is a link which will let you record a video question (powered by Ziggeo). Every week I will pick one video question and record a video answer. Then I will post both h...

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday: time with family and food is great as is having a reminder to be thankful. Today I want to say how thankful I am for entrepreneurs. For the people who are crazy enough to believe that they can create something from nothing (ok, not exactly ex nihilo, more on that in a second). Without entrepreneurs there would be no VCs. And much more importantly there would be very little progress. We will eventually figure out how to finance startups through crowdfunding...

I love answering questions. On long car rides nothing makes me happier than when our kids ask me something difficult to explain. Makes the drive go by much more quickly. I blame this habit on my Dad who used to be a vocational school teacher in Germany. So here is an experiment. I am adding an AMA feature to Continuations. Below is a link which will let you record a video question (powered by Ziggeo). Every week I will pick one video question and record a video answer. Then I will post both h...

Even as recently as Web Summit at the beginning of November I was asked about a Bubble as part of a panel. It has since occurred to me that the problem with using that word to denote possibly overextended valuations is that is suggests a sudden correction in the form of a “popping” or “bursting” of a bubble. That’s pretty much what we experienced at the end of the actual Internet Bubble when many companies disappeared entirely and others were down 90% or more. So I want to propose a new word:...

Even as recently as Web Summit at the beginning of November I was asked about a Bubble as part of a panel. It has since occurred to me that the problem with using that word to denote possibly overextended valuations is that is suggests a sudden correction in the form of a “popping” or “bursting” of a bubble. That’s pretty much what we experienced at the end of the actual Internet Bubble when many companies disappeared entirely and others were down 90% or more. So I want to propose a new word:...

Next Tuesday (November 17th), my partners Brad and John and I will be in Berlin for an evening event to talk about entrepreneurship, the Internet, and whatever else is of interest to the audience. Somewhat to our surprise the event sold out within an hour and there is a waitlist. I believe there is a little more capacity so hopefully we can fit everyone. To make sure that we cover topics that people want to hear about: if you are planning to attend please add questions (or comments for that m...

Next Tuesday (November 17th), my partners Brad and John and I will be in Berlin for an evening event to talk about entrepreneurship, the Internet, and whatever else is of interest to the audience. Somewhat to our surprise the event sold out within an hour and there is a waitlist. I believe there is a little more capacity so hopefully we can fit everyone. To make sure that we cover topics that people want to hear about: if you are planning to attend please add questions (or comments for that m...

Six years ago I wrote three tips on making your board effective (tip #1, tip #2 and tip #3). Since then there is a lesson that I keep on relearning and so I am writing this tip #4 as much as a reminder to myself as anything: your board cannot be effective if it only talks to you, the CEO. Instead, you should make sure that members of your board also have relationships with execs on your senior team. Now I have a feeling that quite a few VCs/board members and also CEOs will disagree with this....

Six years ago I wrote three tips on making your board effective (tip #1, tip #2 and tip #3). Since then there is a lesson that I keep on relearning and so I am writing this tip #4 as much as a reminder to myself as anything: your board cannot be effective if it only talks to you, the CEO. Instead, you should make sure that members of your board also have relationships with execs on your senior team. Now I have a feeling that quite a few VCs/board members and also CEOs will disagree with this....

The terror attacks in Paris, just like other terror attacks before them including 9/11, are a challenge to core democratic values of tolerance and freedom of speech. Turning against Muslims or against refugees is a terrible response as it only confirms the apocalyptic ideology of the attackers. Insisting on a primacy of individual privacy and government secrecy and continuing down a path of moral relativism is, however, equally doomed as a response. Let me start with moral relativism. Now wou...

The terror attacks in Paris, just like other terror attacks before them including 9/11, are a challenge to core democratic values of tolerance and freedom of speech. Turning against Muslims or against refugees is a terrible response as it only confirms the apocalyptic ideology of the attackers. Insisting on a primacy of individual privacy and government secrecy and continuing down a path of moral relativism is, however, equally doomed as a response. Let me start with moral relativism. Now wou...

I have written in the past about how having richer information channels is letting us overcome various historic dichotomies. For instance we had to distinguish between private and public companies because disclosing information was costly. We relied entirely on the signaling of degrees, but now in many fields people can easily show their work directly. The worker-contractor distinction is similarly the result of not having enough realtime information sharing. There was a time when the overhea...

I have written in the past about how having richer information channels is letting us overcome various historic dichotomies. For instance we had to distinguish between private and public companies because disclosing information was costly. We relied entirely on the signaling of degrees, but now in many fields people can easily show their work directly. The worker-contractor distinction is similarly the result of not having enough realtime information sharing. There was a time when the overhea...

Recently I did an opening interview for the On Demand Conference here in New York. As part of the conversation we discussed intermediary liability for platforms and I suggested that complete transparency was a good trade for intermediary liability. Someone from the audience became quite upset and asked, “so you mean Uber should have no liability for a rape by one of their drivers?” I was reminded of that moment when I read the medium post about “Living and Dying on Airbnb.” So let me explain ...

Recently I did an opening interview for the On Demand Conference here in New York. As part of the conversation we discussed intermediary liability for platforms and I suggested that complete transparency was a good trade for intermediary liability. Someone from the audience became quite upset and asked, “so you mean Uber should have no liability for a rape by one of their drivers?” I was reminded of that moment when I read the medium post about “Living and Dying on Airbnb.” So let me explain ...

If you have looked for your car recently in a big parking lot and had trouble finding it you can be forgiven. All modern cars look alike. In fact, if you photoshop the grille of one maker onto the car of another and it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference as this work by Jalopnik demonstrates Yup. That’s a Kia with a BMW grille. So why do I bring this up? Because yesterday Twitter announced that it was replacing the star icon with a heart for favoriting. This too seems to me driven by a...

If you have looked for your car recently in a big parking lot and had trouble finding it you can be forgiven. All modern cars look alike. In fact, if you photoshop the grille of one maker onto the car of another and it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference as this work by Jalopnik demonstrates Yup. That’s a Kia with a BMW grille. So why do I bring this up? Because yesterday Twitter announced that it was replacing the star icon with a heart for favoriting. This too seems to me driven by a...

I recently finished Sapiens by Yuval Harari, which is subtitled “A Brief History of Humankind.” I highly recommend reading Sapiens even though I have a fundamental disagreement with one of Harari’s core premises. Let’s start with what’s great. The book delivers on its madly ambitious subtitle by in fact managing to cover key moments in the developmental history of humankind from the emergence of Homo Sapiens to today’s developments in genetic engineering. It does so in easily accessible langu...

I recently finished Sapiens by Yuval Harari, which is subtitled “A Brief History of Humankind.” I highly recommend reading Sapiens even though I have a fundamental disagreement with one of Harari’s core premises. Let’s start with what’s great. The book delivers on its madly ambitious subtitle by in fact managing to cover key moments in the developmental history of humankind from the emergence of Homo Sapiens to today’s developments in genetic engineering. It does so in easily accessible langu...