There is something very exciting going on in the world of software: a shift towards developing new application software in-house (as opposed to relying on third party offerings). For instance, at USV we have developed the linksharing on usv.com and our new analyst application process. Why does that make sense now? Because writing small applications has become so easy that it is today’s equivalent of writing an Excel macro. Chris Dixon has a good post yesterday where he describes some of the t...

There is something very exciting going on in the world of software: a shift towards developing new application software in-house (as opposed to relying on third party offerings). For instance, at USV we have developed the linksharing on usv.com and our new analyst application process. Why does that make sense now? Because writing small applications has become so easy that it is today’s equivalent of writing an Excel macro. Chris Dixon has a good post yesterday where he describes some of the t...

I am co-hosting an event on May 14 at the BuzzFeed offices with folks from Represent.us / United Republic and others backing the American Anti-corruption Act. We will be discussing the rationale behind the Act and how the campaign plans to pass it via ballot initiative in cities, counties, states, and eventually federally. We are getting together from 6:30 to 8:30pm, and food and drink will be served. If you are interested please email me so that I can get your name added to the list (firstna...

I am co-hosting an event on May 14 at the BuzzFeed offices with folks from Represent.us / United Republic and others backing the American Anti-corruption Act. We will be discussing the rationale behind the Act and how the campaign plans to pass it via ballot initiative in cities, counties, states, and eventually federally. We are getting together from 6:30 to 8:30pm, and food and drink will be served. If you are interested please email me so that I can get your name added to the list (firstna...

This will be the topic for my talk at DLD New York this coming Thursday. Here is the rough outline. If anyone has data to contribute I would much appreciate it since I am admittedly long on anecdotes and short on statistics. 1. Disappearance of growth. Here I will talk about how GDP is increasingly a bad measure for economic growth as we are moving to a world with lots of positive externalities. For instance, as Khan Academy grows it will reduce the number of traditional textbooks sold. That ...

This will be the topic for my talk at DLD New York this coming Thursday. Here is the rough outline. If anyone has data to contribute I would much appreciate it since I am admittedly long on anecdotes and short on statistics. 1. Disappearance of growth. Here I will talk about how GDP is increasingly a bad measure for economic growth as we are moving to a world with lots of positive externalities. For instance, as Khan Academy grows it will reduce the number of traditional textbooks sold. That ...

I have been writing a lot about wealth and income inequality and I am reading Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century (review forthcoming as soon as I am finished). So it seems appropriate to ask how I feel about the wealth being created by tech startups for entrepreneurs, early employees and investors (which of course includes VCs like myself). I have hinted at this here on Continuations in the past in a post about Twitter but it is worth clarifying. I believe that a large component of ...

I have been writing a lot about wealth and income inequality and I am reading Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century (review forthcoming as soon as I am finished). So it seems appropriate to ask how I feel about the wealth being created by tech startups for entrepreneurs, early employees and investors (which of course includes VCs like myself). I have hinted at this here on Continuations in the past in a post about Twitter but it is worth clarifying. I believe that a large component of ...

Yesterday I wrote about startup wealth and randomness and got a lot of good comments. One of them led me to an important way of summarizing my argument about the role of randomness:If the world were a simulation and you ran it many times, you would see a company like WhatsApp emerge many times. But only a few of the runs would have the same founders (ditto for the name of the company, the exact implementation, etc)While I wrote the post specifically about startup founders, employees and inves...

Yesterday I wrote about startup wealth and randomness and got a lot of good comments. One of them led me to an important way of summarizing my argument about the role of randomness:If the world were a simulation and you ran it many times, you would see a company like WhatsApp emerge many times. But only a few of the runs would have the same founders (ditto for the name of the company, the exact implementation, etc)While I wrote the post specifically about startup founders, employees and inves...

Chris Dixon recently wrote a post about the decline of the mobile web and the shift to apps and how that is hurting innovation. Fred expanded on that theme in his post on the mobile downturn. So it is worth thinking about what we need to get to a model of permissionless innovation in mobile. Here are some changes that might make senseAn unencumbered open source mobile operating system (Android is not that due to the control exercised by Google) Ability to side load apps / have competing app m...

Chris Dixon recently wrote a post about the decline of the mobile web and the shift to apps and how that is hurting innovation. Fred expanded on that theme in his post on the mobile downturn. So it is worth thinking about what we need to get to a model of permissionless innovation in mobile. Here are some changes that might make senseAn unencumbered open source mobile operating system (Android is not that due to the control exercised by Google) Ability to side load apps / have competing app m...

At the moment I am writing about why I think the industrial system is breaking down as its main components are no longer functioning properly and sustaining each other. In particular I wrote about the growth and increased concentration of wealth and its relationship to our present day democracy. Today I want to suggest another aspect of the changes in wealth and how it relates to the allocation of capital. Let us start with a look at what the components of the financial asset side of private ...

At the moment I am writing about why I think the industrial system is breaking down as its main components are no longer functioning properly and sustaining each other. In particular I wrote about the growth and increased concentration of wealth and its relationship to our present day democracy. Today I want to suggest another aspect of the changes in wealth and how it relates to the allocation of capital. Let us start with a look at what the components of the financial asset side of private ...

Living in New York City and having cut the cord years ago, Aereo has been a terrific service for us. Yesterday the US Supreme Court started hearing arguments over whether the service is legal. Timothy B. Lee has an outstanding summary of the background of the case and what’s a stake over at Vox. Based on the early reactions by Supreme Court justices it appears pretty clear that they don’t think Aereo is legal but want to come up with a narrow ruling that wouldn’t have implications for other c...

Living in New York City and having cut the cord years ago, Aereo has been a terrific service for us. Yesterday the US Supreme Court started hearing arguments over whether the service is legal. Timothy B. Lee has an outstanding summary of the background of the case and what’s a stake over at Vox. Based on the early reactions by Supreme Court justices it appears pretty clear that they don’t think Aereo is legal but want to come up with a narrow ruling that wouldn’t have implications for other c...

I am excited about Foursquare’s upcoming releases of two apps to unbundle social features from discovery features. You can read a detailed story about it over on the Verge reported by Ben Popper. Ben covers a lot of different angles. What’s worth emphasizing is how much courage it takes for a team to tackle such a fundamental product change. Too many companies when they have reached a certain scale of adoption simply can’t work up the courage to make big changes. Foursquare previously had tak...

I am excited about Foursquare’s upcoming releases of two apps to unbundle social features from discovery features. You can read a detailed story about it over on the Verge reported by Ben Popper. Ben covers a lot of different angles. What’s worth emphasizing is how much courage it takes for a team to tackle such a fundamental product change. Too many companies when they have reached a certain scale of adoption simply can’t work up the courage to make big changes. Foursquare previously had tak...

I am still not finished reading “Capital in the 21st Century” but the following introduction to Chapter 11 really got me thinking:The overall importance of capital today […] is not very different from what it was in the eighteenth century. Only its form has changed: capital was once mainly land but is now industrial, financial and real estate.One of my main intuitions about the coming changes is that “information” will become more important than industrial, financial and real estate assets. O...

I am still not finished reading “Capital in the 21st Century” but the following introduction to Chapter 11 really got me thinking:The overall importance of capital today […] is not very different from what it was in the eighteenth century. Only its form has changed: capital was once mainly land but is now industrial, financial and real estate.One of my main intuitions about the coming changes is that “information” will become more important than industrial, financial and real estate assets. O...