A couple of days ago there was a much favorited and retweeted tweet by the often funny Startup L. Jackson Whenever someone tells me “coding is the new literacy” because “computers are everywhere today” I ask them how fuel injection works. Now I happen to think that this is wrong in an important way but right in another and it is important to pick those two apart. Let me start by how it is wrong. Coding is knowing how to drive the car, not how to tune or repair the fuel injection. There is a h...

Technology companies have a tendency towards the quantitative. We like to measure things. And there is a lot that can be measured from page load times to net promoter scores. Even in board meetings the question “have we A/B tested that” is common. But the quantitative can only take you so far. Here is a recent tweet from Patrick at StripeI think the biggest systemic improvement we could make to software and products would be to have a general way to measure user frustration.To which I replied...

A couple of days ago there was a much favorited and retweeted tweet by the often funny Startup L. Jackson Whenever someone tells me “coding is the new literacy” because “computers are everywhere today” I ask them how fuel injection works. Now I happen to think that this is wrong in an important way but right in another and it is important to pick those two apart. Let me start by how it is wrong. Coding is knowing how to drive the car, not how to tune or repair the fuel injection. There is a h...

Technology companies have a tendency towards the quantitative. We like to measure things. And there is a lot that can be measured from page load times to net promoter scores. Even in board meetings the question “have we A/B tested that” is common. But the quantitative can only take you so far. Here is a recent tweet from Patrick at StripeI think the biggest systemic improvement we could make to software and products would be to have a general way to measure user frustration.To which I replied...

Today’s blog post is over at USV.com announcing our investment in Clarifai, a deep learning company based in New York City. I have written a fair bit about machine learning and artificial intelligence here on Continuations. We have made a number of investments in this area already including HumanDX and Sift Science. I believe that we are at the beginning of an extraordinary expansion of the possible. And I am thrilled to be supporting another effort with Clarifai.

Today’s blog post is over at USV.com announcing our investment in Clarifai, a deep learning company based in New York City. I have written a fair bit about machine learning and artificial intelligence here on Continuations. We have made a number of investments in this area already including HumanDX and Sift Science. I believe that we are at the beginning of an extraordinary expansion of the possible. And I am thrilled to be supporting another effort with Clarifai.

We just got back yesterday from an amazing family trip to Japan. We spent 5 days in Tokyo, 1 day near Atami at an Onsen, 3 days in Kyoto, 1 day in Nara and 1 day Kamakura. Thanks to many recommendations by friends ahead of time (including great foursquare lists) and wonderful hospitality by people living there we had many terrific experiences. Here are a few of impressions from the trip. The importance of culture and norms in shaping human behavior is powerfully on display in Japan. There are...

We just got back yesterday from an amazing family trip to Japan. We spent 5 days in Tokyo, 1 day near Atami at an Onsen, 3 days in Kyoto, 1 day in Nara and 1 day Kamakura. Thanks to many recommendations by friends ahead of time (including great foursquare lists) and wonderful hospitality by people living there we had many terrific experiences. Here are a few of impressions from the trip. The importance of culture and norms in shaping human behavior is powerfully on display in Japan. There are...

I just woke up in Tokyo where Susan and I are visiting with our children (both as a vacation and as part of home schooling the kids). In the meantime the day is ending in the US but I still want to take the time to congratulate Chad Dickerson, Kristina Salen and the rest of the team at Etsy on the company’s successful IPO. As a New Yorker I am thrilled to be having a company of Etsy’s scale and importance here. It is also a good time to remember that many people have contributed to the succes...

I just woke up in Tokyo where Susan and I are visiting with our children (both as a vacation and as part of home schooling the kids). In the meantime the day is ending in the US but I still want to take the time to congratulate Chad Dickerson, Kristina Salen and the rest of the team at Etsy on the company’s successful IPO. As a New Yorker I am thrilled to be having a company of Etsy’s scale and importance here. It is also a good time to remember that many people have contributed to the succes...

I wrote a post not that long ago about how take rate (or rake) is one vector for disrupting incumbent marketplaces. Recently I have seen a number of startups that have taken this to its logical extreme: charge nothing at all. Several of these companies are growing very rapidly. But there is an important catch here: how should they be valued? Several of the startups in question are raising rounds based on a GMV metric, i.e. the size of their marketplace. Now we have a lot of experience with ma...

I wrote a post not that long ago about how take rate (or rake) is one vector for disrupting incumbent marketplaces. Recently I have seen a number of startups that have taken this to its logical extreme: charge nothing at all. Several of these companies are growing very rapidly. But there is an important catch here: how should they be valued? Several of the startups in question are raising rounds based on a GMV metric, i.e. the size of their marketplace. Now we have a lot of experience with ma...

The age of video is upon us. As humans we have a finely evolved system for extracting lots of information from even very short sequences of moving images. And now we have the bandwidth, storage and devices to make video ubiquitous. The result is an explosion not just of video usage across all platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Snapchat) but also in format, content and delivery innovations: livestreams (eg Meerkat, Periscope, YouNow), over the top (eg HBO, VHX), remixing (eg Dubsmash, Coub...

The age of video is upon us. As humans we have a finely evolved system for extracting lots of information from even very short sequences of moving images. And now we have the bandwidth, storage and devices to make video ubiquitous. The result is an explosion not just of video usage across all platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Snapchat) but also in format, content and delivery innovations: livestreams (eg Meerkat, Periscope, YouNow), over the top (eg HBO, VHX), remixing (eg Dubsmash, Coub...

I have been away for two weeks in Europe. The first skiing and the second meeting with startups in Berlin. As usual while traveling I took a break from blogging which I find helps me in a couple of ways. First, it frees up some more time for reading and I finished two interesting posts (more on those in separate posts). Second, it also gives me a bit more time to think about the bigger picture. And when I do that I unfortunately come back to the my “Is it 1880 or 1914?” post. Most of us worki...

I have been away for two weeks in Europe. The first skiing and the second meeting with startups in Berlin. As usual while traveling I took a break from blogging which I find helps me in a couple of ways. First, it frees up some more time for reading and I finished two interesting posts (more on those in separate posts). Second, it also gives me a bit more time to think about the bigger picture. And when I do that I unfortunately come back to the my “Is it 1880 or 1914?” post. Most of us worki...

I was going to write about something else this morning but then I happened upon a video of President Obama saying yesterday that he should have closed Guantanamo Bay on day 1 of his presidency I have written here on Continuations in 2010 and in 2013 that I wish we had the courage to close down Guantanamo Bay. It’s good to at least see the President Obama acknowledge this as an error. But he is still in office and he should do this using executive power. After all, he did sign an executive ord...

I was going to write about something else this morning but then I happened upon a video of President Obama saying yesterday that he should have closed Guantanamo Bay on day 1 of his presidency I have written here on Continuations in 2010 and in 2013 that I wish we had the courage to close down Guantanamo Bay. It’s good to at least see the President Obama acknowledge this as an error. But he is still in office and he should do this using executive power. After all, he did sign an executive ord...

I have long been writing about climate change on Continuations. Mostly it has been about more evidence with the occasional call to action. Today is such a call if you live in London: Our portfolio companies AMEE and Twilio together with IBM, CapGemini and others are organizing an Environmental Data Hack Weekend this coming weekend. Climate change is showing up in data everywhere. But many of the data sets are dispersed and not easily accessible. The Environmental Data Exchange was built by Di...

I have long been writing about climate change on Continuations. Mostly it has been about more evidence with the occasional call to action. Today is such a call if you live in London: Our portfolio companies AMEE and Twilio together with IBM, CapGemini and others are organizing an Environmental Data Hack Weekend this coming weekend. Climate change is showing up in data everywhere. But many of the data sets are dispersed and not easily accessible. The Environmental Data Exchange was built by Di...