A conversation with Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince about the shift from search engines to answer engines, the future of content monetization in an AI world, and why original human creativity may be more valuable than ever.

A conversation with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber about building an open social network on the AT Protocol, giving users real control over their experience, and why protocol design decisions shape everything downstream.

A conversation with USV co-founders Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham about the early days of their partnership, how their investment thesis evolved with technology, and the curiosity-driven approach that has defined the firm.

Catching up on the latest episodes

A conversation with Jam CEO Dani Grant about her journey from USV analyst to founder, cultivating curiosity, and building tools that make bug-fixing and team collaboration not just efficient but joyful.

A conversation with author Steven Johnson — the originator of the "slow hunch" idea — about his path from Hypercard in the 1980s to building NotebookLM at Google Labs, and the dream of a digital commonplace book.

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.

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?

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 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.

A conversation with Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali about his decade-long slow hunch that blockchain networks will be used for far more than financial transactions, and why Bitcoin makes sense as the base layer.

Introducing The Slow Hunch Podcast. First guest: Fraser Kelton, who went from building an AI mental health startup to launching ChatGPT at OpenAI to investing at Spark Capital.

Instead of just strengthening your weaknesses directly, look for ways to move them into your strengths column by changing how you approach them.

It’s going to get interesting, fast

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.

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.

Why we write

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...

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...

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...