Investing.
USV, startups, theses, portfolio announcements
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Getting Alignment
I am flying home from Europe today (by way of Reykjavik) and as a result, have a lot of time to catch up on things. I have spent the bulk of the day writing up a handful of strategy docs relating to some of our portfolio companies and subsequently chatting about them. In every endeavor,… Continue re...
- Form, Storm, Norm, Perform
I was out with some friends over the summer, one of whom is a college soccer coach, and we were talking about what it is that makes great teams great. I love talking to to coaches and people who have played for great coaches (just ask Ryan about how I always bug him for Coach… Continue reading
- The 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 use to help ourselves know what to look for, and to help companies who fit into it to find us. Despite all of the… Continue reading
- Building a culture of success
My son played in a baseball tournament this weekend. His team did well, and finished as the runner-up. The team that beat them in the finals played really well, but more importantly, it was obvious that they had a strong culture of success. From the moment they walked on the field, they had a notic...
- The Trust Equation
This week was the annual USV CEO Summit, one of my favorite moments of every year (remarkably, this was my 8th summit, and they seem to get better and better). The theme of this year’s summit was “Trust”, which, for those paying close attention, is the anchor of USV’s investment thesis 3.0. We have...
- The adjacent possible
Dani and I have been spending a bunch of time recently thinking about the relationship between applications and infrastructure. It’s a little bit of a chicken and egg situation. You need infrastructure to build apps, but often times you don’t really know what kind of infrastructure is needed until...
- The Myth of The Infrastructure Phase
Dani and I wrote this post together. Continue reading
- Zombies eating kitties
On Tuesday we announced our investment in Cryptokitties, and, as you might expect, received a combination of enthusiasm and skepticism in response. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies already sound ridiculous to most people, and virtual “real” kittens made out of cryptocurrency take it a step further. But...
- Running the USV analyst application process using Ziggeo, FormAssembly and Airtable
We are in the middle of our 2018 Analyst hiring process at USV. For the last several hiring cycles, USV has had an open process where anyone can apply. I actually wrote about it back in 2011, right before I joined, remarking at the high quality of applicants that the process produced. That is stil...
- The Next Web Amsterdam: Purpose, Mission & Strategy
Last month, I went to the (most beautiful city in the world) Amsterdam, to speak at The Next Web Conference. I did two talks, one at a sub-event focused on tech & social issues, on the topic of Data & Power, which I will post when it comes online, and a main stage talk on… Continue reading
- Going after it
I’m in SF this week with the USV team – once a year we all come out here together, do a bunch of meetings and social events w our portfolio. Yesterday struck me — and it’s amazing how much of a surprise this is to me, after doing this nearly 5 years — with just… Continue reading
- Big innovation and small innovation
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 ...
- OuiShare Rethink & Remix Barcelona: The Evolution of the Venture
I gave this talk at the OuiShare Rethink & Remix conference in Barcelona: Continue reading
- Shift Conference Croatia: The Cycles of Domination and Disruption
Two weeks ago, I traveled to Split, Croatia to speak at the Shift Conference, a large gathering of entrepreneurs and hackers from eastern and southern Europe. I had a great time meeting folks from that part of the world, and it was awesome to spend two days at the beautiful Croatian National Theatre...
- Competitors at the time
At USV, we talk a lot about how the landscape is changing, as more entrepreneurs and investors get behind the idea of building networks around problems, communities & verticals. And that means that we are seeing more competitors in each space we look at, especially compared to what it looked like w...
- Exploding business models
It’s fascinating to watch the process of business models exploding. What apple did yesterday in announcing free OSX and free iWork apps is a great example of that. MS has traded on license fees for Windows and Office forever, and for a long time, Apple has followed suit, charging reasonably high (a...
- Personal Equity
There are at least two startups that I know of (Pave and Upstart) that facilitate VC-style equity investment in individuals. Upstart describes this as “the startup is you”. In both cases, the idea is as follows: raise money from backers in exchange for a percentage of your future earnings. The ide...