Strategy & Ideas

“It is trust, more than money, that makes the world go round.” — Joseph Stiglitz, In No One We Trust The week before last, I visited Yahoo! to give the keynote talk at their User First conference, which brought together big companies (Google, Facebook, etc), startups (big ones like USV portfolio com...

Saying no to things is something I’ve always been bad at.  I have always been (and to some extent, have prided myself on being) more of a “why not” guy than a “why” guy. This has many of advantages — I’m open minded and I end up doing tons of interesting things w interesting people.… Continue readin...

I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of being organized vs. being disciplined.  It’s easy to want to “get organized” — or worse, to spend a lot of time and effort getting organized — but then not actually have the discipline to see it through (this is also known as “systems to cover up symptoms“...

Cescalouise and I have started using Wunderlist to keep track of shared to-dos (bills to pay, stuff to buy, etc).  I’ve been a user of Wunderlist for a number of years now and have written about it before. The shared lists in Wunderlist actually seem to be working for us.   Whenever she adds or… Con...

I am writing this post from the balcony of my Airbnb apartment in nob hill in sf. Its by far the nicest place I’ve ever stayed in sf. Beautiful duplex penthouse, with an amazing view of downtown, for less than the price of a hotel room. To get here, I hopped a ride via Lyft,… Continue reading

Matthew Yglesias has a good piece up this morning on the immigration debate in the wake of the Boston bombings.  He points out that historically, as we’ve tightened our border lockdown, we’ve not decreased illegal immigration, we’ve just made the coyote industry more lucrative.   In my favorite line...

Last night at USV, we hosted the latest of several recent meetups on the “Peer Economy”.  We are in the process of organizing a number of companies and organizations that represent a certain sector of the internet economy in NYC, with an eye towards building a more formal coalition (perhaps in the m...

One of my favorite advocates for “open innovation” is Ed Felten. Today, Ed has a post up that looks at some of the positive recent developments in the “freedom to tinker” movement — from advances in cell phone unlocking, to the response to Aaron Swartz’ passing, to the Kiartsaeng case (which affirms...

Yesterday Uber made me feel like a superhero. It was about 10 degrees in Boston, and I was on the T on my way into Cambridge.  And as we pulled in to Kenmore station the conductor notified us that all Green Line trains would be going out of service.  So my train — and every… Continue reading

Happy MLK Day everyone. I just spent the last half hour reading MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  To be totally honest, I don’t think I’ve ever read it in its entirety before.  It is incredibly powerful and moving.  I encourage anyone reading this to take some time with it today. I pulled a few ...

I always spend a lot of time around the turn of the new year thinking about self-improvement.  This year is no different. Last summer, at a charity fundraiser for a friend, I bought several sessions of personal coaching. Throughout the fall, I’ve been working with my coach, Lisa Lahey, using her met...