Writing.
Essays since 2006, plus a few things first published at USV. Occasional by design. The podcast lives on its own page.
- The Rebel Alliance
Our view on the emerging agentic stack
- Leverage
Leverage is tricky. You need it to drive outcomes, but wielding it too openly can backfire. Best built up over time and used as modestly as possible.
- Low-Fi Computing
Screens are everywhere and screen time is exhausting. A cultural backlash is coming. What might digital interfaces look like that capture the value of being connected while striking a calmer, less immersive tone?
- Doing Less, More
Raise less, spend less, ship faster. Doing something imperfectly and getting it out in the world almost always beats waiting to do it perfectly.
- The System-of-Record Network Effect
The most durable network effects often come from being the system of record. Carta, blockchains, and enterprise ERP systems all share a common pattern: the more records and stakeholders in the system, the more valuable it gets.
- Moving Weaknesses into the Strengths Column
Instead of just strengthening your weaknesses directly, look for ways to move them into your strengths column by changing how you approach them.
- Superpowers
It’s going to get interesting, fast
- From Crypto-Native to Crypto-Enabled
After a decade of crypto-native exploration — DeFi, DAOs, NFTs — we're entering the era of crypto-enabled apps that look like normal web apps but have superpowers under the hood.
- You Never Know When You've Had a Good Day
A story from USV's Brad Burnham about a startup exec who got fired and cashed out right before the bubble popped — a reminder that bad days sometimes turn out to be the best ones.
- The Slow Hunch Redux
Why we write
- AI + Crypto: Best and Worst Cases
I think of AI and crypto as two very different, but very much related, elements of society moving from the industrial age to the digital age. At USV, we (along with lots of others over the years) have used the Carlota Perez framework, which studies how techno-economic paradigms unfold over eras. Ben...
- Motivating via Excitement vs. Fear
My favorite song from the past two years was Chris Stapleton’s Starting Over, the second verse of which goes like this: This might not be an easy time There’s rivers to cross and hills to climb Some days we might fall apart And some nights might feel cold and dark But nobody wins, afraid of losing A...
- Being in Motion
I find myself today flying across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, en route to Denver for ETH Denver followed by LA for the Upfront Summit. I often end up writing blog posts on planes — partially because of the large block of unscheduled time, but I think it’s more than that. I think there is… Con...
- Beautiful Permanence & Messy Change
I am traveling home today from Switzerland, having been there for a week for a few board meetings (and also some amazing skiing in between, notching a life goal I’ve had since I was a teenager). Every time I travel to Europe I end up fixated on the fact that the physical infrastructure there is… Con...
- Memory as a Service
Part of the USV investment thesis is “Access to Knowledge”. To date, most of our investing in this area has primarily been around consumer learning platforms, like Duolingo, Quizlet, Codecademy, Outschool, Brilliant and others. These platforms are generally focused on acquiring and internalizing n...
- Verified Personal Content
For the last 15 or so years, I’ve been blogging occasionally on this website. Unfortunately, towards the end of last year, I lost control of my long-term domain name, nickgrossman-dot-is (intentionally not linking to it here). This was a dumb mistake; I just missed the renewal notice and someone els...
- Bitcoin as Battery
One of my favorite things about crypto is that, every so often, your conception of what it is changes. Bitcoin at first was “weird internet money” and then it was “a protocol” and then it was “digital gold”. Ethereum is “ICOs”, or maybe “DeFi”, or maybe “Web3”, or maybe all three, or maybe something...
- Two Screens for Teachers
Sometimes, an answer to a hard problem is so simple and elegant that you’re surprised it wasn’t obvious earlier. Two Screens for Teachers is one of those answers. Even though vaccines are on the way, many students and teachers will be interacting remotely at least through the rest of this school yea...
- No Wasted Footsteps
This summer, we moved into a new house. Moving is a lot of work. As part of moving out of our old house, we got rid of a lot of junk that we had accumulated over the years. We ended up working with the amazing Dave O’Rourke of Spaceback. As Dave and I were loading… Continue reading