Yesterday at one of our bi-monthly team deep dives at USV, we got into the conversation of essentially "Big Innovation" vs. "Small Innovation".  Those who have followed USV for some time know that at the core of the investment thesis is a belief in "decentralized", "bottom-up" innovation -- the kind that really became possible with the advent of the web. Given that, one of the market condition / policy issues that we care about is consolidation and excessive market power -- the potential for small players and new entrants to get blocked from a market by entrenched incumbents.  For example, this is why we care about the Open Internet and have supported the FCC's rules to prevent ISPs and telcos from blocking or throttling web-based applications and content. This issue, of course, is not limited to ISPs and telcos -- there is also a similar concern at the application / platform level: when does Google / Apple / Amazon / Facebook / Uber become too big?  What does too big mean?  What are the risks to "bottom up" innovation when that happens?  What should be done about it? Which led us to the flip side of the bottom-up innovation argument: the value of "big" innovation -- innovation that's possible because of size and scale.   For example, Uber is able to offer an incredible customer experience because they have invested in building a big, liquid, network (currently at a big big loss, but that's part of the strategy at this point).  In this case, "big" enables a kind of innovation that wouldn't be possible otherwise.  The whole world now knows that it's possible to summon a ride immediately at the push of a button.  That's a real innovation, with real practical implications for lots of people. Or take Amazon: their bigness means that I can get almost anything delivered to my house, for free, in 2 days or less.  Embodied in that are huge consumer innovations (I shop very differently than I did previously, and it's way more convenient), and huge organizational innovations, in terms of supply chain management, logistics, etc. Or AWS: perhaps Amazon's greatest achievement has been

Yesterday at one of our bi-monthly team deep dives at USV, we got into the conversation of essentially "Big Innovation" vs. "Small Innovation".  Those who have followed USV for some time know that at the core of the investment thesis is a belief in "decentralized", "bottom-up" innovation -- the kind that really became possible with the advent of the web. Given that, one of the market condition / policy issues that we care about is consolidation and excessive market power -- the potential for small players and new entrants to get blocked from a market by entrenched incumbents.  For example, this is why we care about the Open Internet and have supported the FCC's rules to prevent ISPs and telcos from blocking or throttling web-based applications and content. This issue, of course, is not limited to ISPs and telcos -- there is also a similar concern at the application / platform level: when does Google / Apple / Amazon / Facebook / Uber become too big?  What does too big mean?  What are the risks to "bottom up" innovation when that happens?  What should be done about it? Which led us to the flip side of the bottom-up innovation argument: the value of "big" innovation -- innovation that's possible because of size and scale.   For example, Uber is able to offer an incredible customer experience because they have invested in building a big, liquid, network (currently at a big big loss, but that's part of the strategy at this point).  In this case, "big" enables a kind of innovation that wouldn't be possible otherwise.  The whole world now knows that it's possible to summon a ride immediately at the push of a button.  That's a real innovation, with real practical implications for lots of people. Or take Amazon: their bigness means that I can get almost anything delivered to my house, for free, in 2 days or less.  Embodied in that are huge consumer innovations (I shop very differently than I did previously, and it's way more convenient), and huge organizational innovations, in terms of supply chain management, logistics, etc. Or AWS: perhaps Amazon's greatest achievement has been