The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanThe Butter Thesis
At USV, we talk a lot about our investment thesis. The USV thesis is a set of ideas that has guided our investing over the years. It is a tool we u...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanFrom Crypto-Native to Crypto-Enabled
I’m not one to make big annual predictions, but one thing that seems likely to me is that 2024 will mark the emergence of mainstream apps powered by ...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanYou Never Know When You've Had a Good Day
Many years ago, when I had just started working at USV, I remember there was kind of a complicated situation that unfolded in a seemingly bad way, and I'll never forget what Brad said in response. He said:you never know when you've had a good dayI didn't really understand what that meant, so he told me a story that went something like: back around the year 2000 at the height of the dot-com boom, there was a guy who was a senior exec at a successful startup. That person had a falling out with ...
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The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanThe Butter Thesis
At USV, we talk a lot about our investment thesis. The USV thesis is a set of ideas that has guided our investing over the years. It is a tool we u...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanFrom Crypto-Native to Crypto-Enabled
I’m not one to make big annual predictions, but one thing that seems likely to me is that 2024 will mark the emergence of mainstream apps powered by ...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanYou Never Know When You've Had a Good Day
Many years ago, when I had just started working at USV, I remember there was kind of a complicated situation that unfolded in a seemingly bad way, and I'll never forget what Brad said in response. He said:you never know when you've had a good dayI didn't really understand what that meant, so he told me a story that went something like: back around the year 2000 at the height of the dot-com boom, there was a guy who was a senior exec at a successful startup. That person had a falling out with ...
Subscribe to The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
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Share Dialog
Share Dialog
We've got a few Beam telepresence robots at USV, and use them all the time. Fred has written about them here. We had a team meeting today, and we had two beams going at once -- Fred and I were the first to arrive, and we were chatting beam-to-beam -- he in LAUtah, me in Boston, both of us in NYC by robot:
Talking beam-to-beam w @fredwilson - him in LA, me in Boston, talking in the USV office in NYC pic.twitter.com/1ma4RGMsFD
— Nick Grossman (@nickgrossman) January 13, 2016
It works amazingly well. It has now become somewhat normal for robots to be roving around the office, having conversations w people, USV team folks and visitors alike. One idea that keeps coming up is an extensible peripherals API -- the Beam robots already come w a USB port (used for initial setup), and it should be possible to use that to extend it with hardware. We joke about jousting (and have done some), but I could seriously imagine bolting on devices such as additional displays / LCDs, sensors of various kinds, devices that can perform human-like gestures (the way the Kubi can nod, shake and bow), etc. Thinking of Beam as a platform in this way would certainly extend its capabilities (in particular for industry), and would also position Beam in a much stronger position at the center of an ecosystem. Would love to see that happen.
We've got a few Beam telepresence robots at USV, and use them all the time. Fred has written about them here. We had a team meeting today, and we had two beams going at once -- Fred and I were the first to arrive, and we were chatting beam-to-beam -- he in LAUtah, me in Boston, both of us in NYC by robot:
Talking beam-to-beam w @fredwilson - him in LA, me in Boston, talking in the USV office in NYC pic.twitter.com/1ma4RGMsFD
— Nick Grossman (@nickgrossman) January 13, 2016
It works amazingly well. It has now become somewhat normal for robots to be roving around the office, having conversations w people, USV team folks and visitors alike. One idea that keeps coming up is an extensible peripherals API -- the Beam robots already come w a USB port (used for initial setup), and it should be possible to use that to extend it with hardware. We joke about jousting (and have done some), but I could seriously imagine bolting on devices such as additional displays / LCDs, sensors of various kinds, devices that can perform human-like gestures (the way the Kubi can nod, shake and bow), etc. Thinking of Beam as a platform in this way would certainly extend its capabilities (in particular for industry), and would also position Beam in a much stronger position at the center of an ecosystem. Would love to see that happen.
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