Earlier this year someone suggested that I read “How Children Succeed” by the aptly named Paul Tough. It is an excellent book that deals with the question of how to help influence the character of children and how in turn that character contributes to their success as students and in life. This had already been on our mind and one of the things we were struggling with was how to measure character so as to give our children some kind of baseline and see how that changes over the year. So we we...

Earlier this year someone suggested that I read “How Children Succeed” by the aptly named Paul Tough. It is an excellent book that deals with the question of how to help influence the character of children and how in turn that character contributes to their success as students and in life. This had already been on our mind and one of the things we were struggling with was how to measure character so as to give our children some kind of baseline and see how that changes over the year. So we we...

No Tech Tuesday today as I am pondering the big news that Microsoft is acquiring Nokia’s devices and services business. From glancing at the deal terms it is not clear to me whether this was really an offensive move (as Microsoft is positioning it) or a rushed defensive rescue of a failing company that was the only one making Windows phones at meaningful volume. Here is one line from the press release that suggests that it may have been an emergency: “Microsoft will also immediately make avai...

No Tech Tuesday today as I am pondering the big news that Microsoft is acquiring Nokia’s devices and services business. From glancing at the deal terms it is not clear to me whether this was really an offensive move (as Microsoft is positioning it) or a rushed defensive rescue of a failing company that was the only one making Windows phones at meaningful volume. Here is one line from the press release that suggests that it may have been an emergency: “Microsoft will also immediately make avai...

No, USV isn’t suddenly becoming a cleantech investor. But for anybody allocating assets you should consider cleantech. Why? Because cleantech today is where Internet investing was after the dotcom bubble burst: all the institutional (and even most individual) investors have retreated while the secular trends are all in favor. The price of many publicly traded cleantech companies is in the dump (a few bright lights such as Solarcity and Tesla notwithstanding, aka the Elon Musk effect) and priv...

No, USV isn’t suddenly becoming a cleantech investor. But for anybody allocating assets you should consider cleantech. Why? Because cleantech today is where Internet investing was after the dotcom bubble burst: all the institutional (and even most individual) investors have retreated while the secular trends are all in favor. The price of many publicly traded cleantech companies is in the dump (a few bright lights such as Solarcity and Tesla notwithstanding, aka the Elon Musk effect) and priv...

Today’s Tech Tuesday is a relatively short note on the “Bleeding Edge” – technologies that are even beyond the cutting edge. Every technology tends to start life at the bleeding edge with early releases that are unstable and poorly tested, many different ways of doing something (instead of an agreed upon best way) and with upgrades that are not backward compatible. It is tempting for startups to embrace bleeding edge technology for several reasons: first, you are starting from scratch, so why...

Today’s Tech Tuesday is a relatively short note on the “Bleeding Edge” – technologies that are even beyond the cutting edge. Every technology tends to start life at the bleeding edge with early releases that are unstable and poorly tested, many different ways of doing something (instead of an agreed upon best way) and with upgrades that are not backward compatible. It is tempting for startups to embrace bleeding edge technology for several reasons: first, you are starting from scratch, so why...

We went to see Jobs on Saturday night with our older son who is interested in being an entrepreneur. I had heard that the reviews had been largely bad and didn’t have high expectations going in. I left the movie quite impressed and wanting more. It is easy to fault the movie for omitting many important parts of Steve Jobs’s life and accomplishments. But then again let’s keep in mind that he did accomplish way more than most and that Isaacson’s biography clocks in at 656 pages. In the end I th...

We went to see Jobs on Saturday night with our older son who is interested in being an entrepreneur. I had heard that the reviews had been largely bad and didn’t have high expectations going in. I left the movie quite impressed and wanting more. It is easy to fault the movie for omitting many important parts of Steve Jobs’s life and accomplishments. But then again let’s keep in mind that he did accomplish way more than most and that Isaacson’s biography clocks in at 656 pages. In the end I th...

Time for Homeschool Wednesday! On of the biggest goals for homeschooling that I can think of is to instill a desire for lifelong learning and to provide the tools to achieve that. As I am beginning to understand from reading up on learning it would be wrong to only emphasize cognitive tools in this regard. Instead there is also a big role to play for simply developing grit – the ability to overcome obstacles in the desire to achieve a goal. I am about halfway through the aptly named Paul Toug...

Time for Homeschool Wednesday! On of the biggest goals for homeschooling that I can think of is to instill a desire for lifelong learning and to provide the tools to achieve that. As I am beginning to understand from reading up on learning it would be wrong to only emphasize cognitive tools in this regard. Instead there is also a big role to play for simply developing grit – the ability to overcome obstacles in the desire to achieve a goal. I am about halfway through the aptly named Paul Toug...

Whenever you are doing something out of the norm – and homeschooling is still that – it is good to find other people who are doing the same and connect with them. A great place to do that is our portfolio company Meetup. So when I looked today I was thrilled to find this Homeschool New York City meetup. I was even more thrilled to see who had joined it just days before: Caterina Fake and Jyri Engeström. I am not sure how much time either of them will be spending in New York but seeing people ...

Whenever you are doing something out of the norm – and homeschooling is still that – it is good to find other people who are doing the same and connect with them. A great place to do that is our portfolio company Meetup. So when I looked today I was thrilled to find this Homeschool New York City meetup. I was even more thrilled to see who had joined it just days before: Caterina Fake and Jyri Engeström. I am not sure how much time either of them will be spending in New York but seeing people ...

We live Chelsea, which is a mostly residential neighborhood in Manhattan and theoretically one of the world’s leading cities. Yet I have a choice of exactly one true broadband provider: Time Warner Cable. Verizon at my address offers DSL only, not FIOS. My Time Warner speeds are download at about 20 Mbps and upload at a paltry 1 Mbsp. For this and a phone number I pay a relatively absurd amount of money by any international comparison. Why is that? Because we don’t have any last mile competit...

We live Chelsea, which is a mostly residential neighborhood in Manhattan and theoretically one of the world’s leading cities. Yet I have a choice of exactly one true broadband provider: Time Warner Cable. Verizon at my address offers DSL only, not FIOS. My Time Warner speeds are download at about 20 Mbps and upload at a paltry 1 Mbsp. For this and a phone number I pay a relatively absurd amount of money by any international comparison. Why is that? Because we don’t have any last mile competit...

So the sentence for Chelsea Manning is 35 years. The intention of government here is obvious: like everything else in the ridiculously harsh treatment of Manning it is an attempt to deter others from leaking information. So is the detention of David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner under the Terrorism Act in the UK and the destruction of computer equipment at the Guardian’s offices. The game plan is clearly to intimidate any potential leakers and anyone who might help them. This is an extra...

So the sentence for Chelsea Manning is 35 years. The intention of government here is obvious: like everything else in the ridiculously harsh treatment of Manning it is an attempt to deter others from leaking information. So is the detention of David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner under the Terrorism Act in the UK and the destruction of computer equipment at the Guardian’s offices. The game plan is clearly to intimidate any potential leakers and anyone who might help them. This is an extra...

I already hinted at this topic in my last Tech Tuesday, when I wrote about having a healthy mix of young and more experienced engineers. More generally, diversity in engineering teams (and teams more generally) tends to be a healthy thing. Diversity helps prevent group think and provides for a better match with the wide variety of tasks that come up in the live of a startup engineering team. In the extreme if all you have are say realtime systems engineers your UI/UX is likely to be atrocious...

I already hinted at this topic in my last Tech Tuesday, when I wrote about having a healthy mix of young and more experienced engineers. More generally, diversity in engineering teams (and teams more generally) tends to be a healthy thing. Diversity helps prevent group think and provides for a better match with the wide variety of tasks that come up in the live of a startup engineering team. In the extreme if all you have are say realtime systems engineers your UI/UX is likely to be atrocious...