The power of the web has been that it has given us permissionless publishing. Want to publish your opinion? You no longer need to submit a letter to the editor of a newspaper in hope of it being published – you can just put it on your own website. Through additions to the original web specifications we have managed to extend this permissionless nature of innovation from content to entire applications. But the web specifications have been missing a crucial ingredient. We don’t have a standard ...

The power of the web has been that it has given us permissionless publishing. Want to publish your opinion? You no longer need to submit a letter to the editor of a newspaper in hope of it being published – you can just put it on your own website. Through additions to the original web specifications we have managed to extend this permissionless nature of innovation from content to entire applications. But the web specifications have been missing a crucial ingredient. We don’t have a standard ...

I was thrilled to hear about NASA’s discovery of water on Mars. I am hoping it will contribute to interest in a human mission to Mars. Ideally, such a mission would not be under the banner of a single nation but rather include team members from around the world. Why travel to space at all when there are so many problems to solve here? Many of the problems here have old historical gripes attached to them that will take a long time to overcome. Mars offers a unique opportunity to co-operate glo...

I was thrilled to hear about NASA’s discovery of water on Mars. I am hoping it will contribute to interest in a human mission to Mars. Ideally, such a mission would not be under the banner of a single nation but rather include team members from around the world. Why travel to space at all when there are so many problems to solve here? Many of the problems here have old historical gripes attached to them that will take a long time to overcome. Mars offers a unique opportunity to co-operate glo...

We have had all these innovations and have always found new things for people to work on. This is the Lump of Labor fallacy all over again. You are a Luddite! What makes you think this time is different?This is the rhetoric aimed at people like myself who argue that we need to fundamentally rethink how the economy and society work because digital technologies changing the world. I have taken to replying “you are correct, but you are looking at the wrong time frame.” What all of the above obje...

We have had all these innovations and have always found new things for people to work on. This is the Lump of Labor fallacy all over again. You are a Luddite! What makes you think this time is different?This is the rhetoric aimed at people like myself who argue that we need to fundamentally rethink how the economy and society work because digital technologies changing the world. I have taken to replying “you are correct, but you are looking at the wrong time frame.” What all of the above obje...

Quite a few companies are finding themselves in a situation roughly as follows: they have raised a lot of money at high valuations on a fast growth story, have real customers and the beginning of revenues, but growth has slowed down; they have money in the bank for 12-24 months and now need to decide between a strategy of rekindling growth or trying to push to profitability. This is a complicated decision to make and I see a lot of teams struggling with it. There is no easy answer and only on...

Quite a few companies are finding themselves in a situation roughly as follows: they have raised a lot of money at high valuations on a fast growth story, have real customers and the beginning of revenues, but growth has slowed down; they have money in the bank for 12-24 months and now need to decide between a strategy of rekindling growth or trying to push to profitability. This is a complicated decision to make and I see a lot of teams struggling with it. There is no easy answer and only on...

I am super excited that Kickstarter is no longer an INC but rather now a PBC, a Public Benefit Corporation. This means the company has changed its Delaware charter to include its mission of supporting creators as pari passu with creating value for shareholders. I would encourage you all to read the new Kickstarter charter which lays out that mission and also this piece in the New York Times. Benefit Corporations are a topic I care a great deal about and if you have been a long time reader of ...

I am super excited that Kickstarter is no longer an INC but rather now a PBC, a Public Benefit Corporation. This means the company has changed its Delaware charter to include its mission of supporting creators as pari passu with creating value for shareholders. I would encourage you all to read the new Kickstarter charter which lays out that mission and also this piece in the New York Times. Benefit Corporations are a topic I care a great deal about and if you have been a long time reader of ...

Today’s post is over at the USV blog, describing why we invested in Clue, which provides a period tracking and fertility app.A big thanks also to Susan and Katie for helping me understand the importance of Clue.

Today’s post is over at the USV blog, describing why we invested in Clue, which provides a period tracking and fertility app.A big thanks also to Susan and Katie for helping me understand the importance of Clue.

Last week I spent a few days with family, friends and startups in Germany. When I was at my parents we watched a television debate about Islam, religious freedom and German society. I was struck by the stark contrast to most political debates on US television. The debate had five participants, including the head of one of the largest Muslim organizations in Germany, several German politicians, as well as an outspoken critic of radical Islam. The tone remained civil at all times and the partic...

Last week I spent a few days with family, friends and startups in Germany. When I was at my parents we watched a television debate about Islam, religious freedom and German society. I was struck by the stark contrast to most political debates on US television. The debate had five participants, including the head of one of the largest Muslim organizations in Germany, several German politicians, as well as an outspoken critic of radical Islam. The tone remained civil at all times and the partic...

Yesterday, Twitter laid off about 8 percent of its employees or roughly 1 in 12 people. Most entrepreneurs dread a moment like that more than anything else. It takes the pain of firing an individual employee and massively amplifies it. And yet it is often unavoidable on the path to building a company and sustaining it for the long term. Some of the criticism of Twitter’s layoffs took the form of arguing that Twitter shouldn’t have hired those employees in the first place. That criticism amoun...

Yesterday, Twitter laid off about 8 percent of its employees or roughly 1 in 12 people. Most entrepreneurs dread a moment like that more than anything else. It takes the pain of firing an individual employee and massively amplifies it. And yet it is often unavoidable on the path to building a company and sustaining it for the long term. Some of the criticism of Twitter’s layoffs took the form of arguing that Twitter shouldn’t have hired those employees in the first place. That criticism amoun...

This past Saturday Susan, our daughter Katie and I (with help from our son Michael) taught a one day computer bootcamp for women at Cornell. Susan, who is a Cornell alum, had come up with the idea a few months earlier as she noticed how many more male than female students showed up at hackathons. Ami Stuart who organizes tech events for Cornell liked the idea and did an amazing job pulling together the actual event which wound up being sponsored by both Ziggeo (Susan’s company) and Accenture....

This past Saturday Susan, our daughter Katie and I (with help from our son Michael) taught a one day computer bootcamp for women at Cornell. Susan, who is a Cornell alum, had come up with the idea a few months earlier as she noticed how many more male than female students showed up at hackathons. Ami Stuart who organizes tech events for Cornell liked the idea and did an amazing job pulling together the actual event which wound up being sponsored by both Ziggeo (Susan’s company) and Accenture....

There is a lot we can learn from github and its identity model about the role of individual identity in the future of firms, networks and markets. When Linus Torvalds released git in 2005 he made a crucial innovation in version control widely available: git makes the full development history available locally to every developer (or put differently it is a distributed system). Over time this has made git the most widely adopted system of its kind. That in turn opened up the opportunity for git...

There is a lot we can learn from github and its identity model about the role of individual identity in the future of firms, networks and markets. When Linus Torvalds released git in 2005 he made a crucial innovation in version control widely available: git makes the full development history available locally to every developer (or put differently it is a distributed system). Over time this has made git the most widely adopted system of its kind. That in turn opened up the opportunity for git...