States have different regulations for homeschooling. New York State requires the filing of an IHIP or Individualized Home Instruction Plan. Here are the governing regulation and the official FAQ about IHIPs. We are currently working on the IHIPs for our kids for this coming year. Thankfully one can find lots of examples on that wonderful resource that is the Internet. One of the things that’s fascinating to me here is how I have never seen anything like this for our children while they were i...

States have different regulations for homeschooling. New York State requires the filing of an IHIP or Individualized Home Instruction Plan. Here are the governing regulation and the official FAQ about IHIPs. We are currently working on the IHIPs for our kids for this coming year. Thankfully one can find lots of examples on that wonderful resource that is the Internet. One of the things that’s fascinating to me here is how I have never seen anything like this for our children while they were i...

When I wrote that we need protest and change rather than more crypto many people accused me of being naive and/or not proposing concrete enough alternatives. Well here is one thing you can do immediately: donate money to Barrett Brown’s defense fund. Why should you do this? Because Barrett Brown is currently facing 105 years in prison primarily for posting a link to materials already available on the Internet. The link in question was to information that had been obtained by someone hacking t...

When I wrote that we need protest and change rather than more crypto many people accused me of being naive and/or not proposing concrete enough alternatives. Well here is one thing you can do immediately: donate money to Barrett Brown’s defense fund. Why should you do this? Because Barrett Brown is currently facing 105 years in prison primarily for posting a link to materials already available on the Internet. The link in question was to information that had been obtained by someone hacking t...

Vinod Khosla said yesterday at Techcrunch Disrupt that one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs is to figure out whose advice to trust on what topic. That is spot on because as an entrepreneur you will get advice from just about everyone all the time (including random people you have just met for the very first time who don’t know squat about your product or company). Unfortunately that terrific quote will get buried because of a bunch of other things Vinod said right then, such that a lot...

Vinod Khosla said yesterday at Techcrunch Disrupt that one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs is to figure out whose advice to trust on what topic. That is spot on because as an entrepreneur you will get advice from just about everyone all the time (including random people you have just met for the very first time who don’t know squat about your product or company). Unfortunately that terrific quote will get buried because of a bunch of other things Vinod said right then, such that a lot...

This is a short follow up to my Friday post which argued for protest over more crypto and received a lot of critical comments. Based on these here are my replies to the key questions / objections: 1. The most common comment was – why not do both? Why not more crypto and protest? In fact won’t we need to crypto to protest? Doing both suggests that doubling down on crypto is a viable strategy. It is not – the more we invest in this now the more we expend resources on an unwinnable arms race (if...

This is a short follow up to my Friday post which argued for protest over more crypto and received a lot of critical comments. Based on these here are my replies to the key questions / objections: 1. The most common comment was – why not do both? Why not more crypto and protest? In fact won’t we need to crypto to protest? Doing both suggests that doubling down on crypto is a viable strategy. It is not – the more we invest in this now the more we expend resources on an unwinnable arms race (if...

Yesterday I took a little bit of time off from an otherwise very busy day to watch one of the America’s Cup races. I had watched a couple of them previously on “TV” and on Youtube. But seeing it in person was even more impressive. The true speed of the boats is hard to appreciate on a small screen. From the stern of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien I was able to see the entire race course and it was spectacular: The AC72s are to a boat such as the J100 that I sail like an F1 race car is to a norm...

Yesterday I took a little bit of time off from an otherwise very busy day to watch one of the America’s Cup races. I had watched a couple of them previously on “TV” and on Youtube. But seeing it in person was even more impressive. The true speed of the boats is hard to appreciate on a small screen. From the stern of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien I was able to see the entire race course and it was spectacular: The AC72s are to a boat such as the J100 that I sail like an F1 race car is to a norm...

I don’t know yet what to make of Smartwatches. I have friends with a Pebble and when I ask them none of them give me a fully enthusiastic endorsement. That could just be the Pebble and the next set including the Galaxy Gear, the Qualcomm Toq and the Apple Watch (if such a thing exists) may change that, but I am somewhat skeptical here. It is not that I cannot imagine some potential usefulness. There are many situations where it would be easier to glance at a watch than to look at your phone (...

I don’t know yet what to make of Smartwatches. I have friends with a Pebble and when I ask them none of them give me a fully enthusiastic endorsement. That could just be the Pebble and the next set including the Galaxy Gear, the Qualcomm Toq and the Apple Watch (if such a thing exists) may change that, but I am somewhat skeptical here. It is not that I cannot imagine some potential usefulness. There are many situations where it would be easier to glance at a watch than to look at your phone (...

One of the lasting legacies of YCombinator will be that it empowered engineers as company founders without the need for someone with a business background. At USV we have backed several all engineering teams out of YC and otherwise. These companies tend to have no issues delivering their product but face other challenges instead. A somewhat unfair summary is that they tend to believe too much in a build it and they will come view of the world. How so? Many engineering led companies have a rel...

One of the lasting legacies of YCombinator will be that it empowered engineers as company founders without the need for someone with a business background. At USV we have backed several all engineering teams out of YC and otherwise. These companies tend to have no issues delivering their product but face other challenges instead. A somewhat unfair summary is that they tend to believe too much in a build it and they will come view of the world. How so? Many engineering led companies have a rel...

I am a big fan of what Bruce Schneier has written over the years including a recent piece on our Newfound Fear of Risk. But I disagree fundamentally with him on the implications of the latest disclosures around the NSA’s extensive work to weaken, break or circumvent cryptography. Schneier essentially encourages people to try to outrun the NSA in a piece titled How to remain secure against NSA surveillance that ends as follows:Trust the math. Encryption is your friend. Use it well, and do your...

I am a big fan of what Bruce Schneier has written over the years including a recent piece on our Newfound Fear of Risk. But I disagree fundamentally with him on the implications of the latest disclosures around the NSA’s extensive work to weaken, break or circumvent cryptography. Schneier essentially encourages people to try to outrun the NSA in a piece titled How to remain secure against NSA surveillance that ends as follows:Trust the math. Encryption is your friend. Use it well, and do your...

I have often said that Amazon has done more for startups than all of us early stage VCs combined. I really don’t see a startup anymore these days that is not getting going on either Amazon or sometimes Rackspace’s cloud offering (I have yet to seen a startup on Azure or IBM’s cloud). The idea of racking your own server as a first step, which is what we routinely did in the late 90s and then later managed dedicated servers seems positively quaint. So I am with Marc Andreessen here in what seem...

I have often said that Amazon has done more for startups than all of us early stage VCs combined. I really don’t see a startup anymore these days that is not getting going on either Amazon or sometimes Rackspace’s cloud offering (I have yet to seen a startup on Azure or IBM’s cloud). The idea of racking your own server as a first step, which is what we routinely did in the late 90s and then later managed dedicated servers seems positively quaint. So I am with Marc Andreessen here in what seem...

One of the advantages of homeschooling is that it is easy to change the schedule to accommodate special events. On Monday morning we did just that. Jack Hidary, whose campaign for mayor of New York we have been supporting, was organizing a visit to the 9/11 memorial. None of us had been and so we all went. The evening before we talked with the kids – who were 1.5, 1.5 and -0.6 at the time – about 9/11. They clearly had picked up a lot from past conversations as they were well with the basic o...

One of the advantages of homeschooling is that it is easy to change the schedule to accommodate special events. On Monday morning we did just that. Jack Hidary, whose campaign for mayor of New York we have been supporting, was organizing a visit to the 9/11 memorial. None of us had been and so we all went. The evening before we talked with the kids – who were 1.5, 1.5 and -0.6 at the time – about 9/11. They clearly had picked up a lot from past conversations as they were well with the basic o...