Writing, 2017.
Essays since 2006, plus a few things first published at USV. Occasional by design. The podcast lives on its own page.
- Aligning purpose and strategy: Cloudflare goes nuclear on patent troll
Last week, I was in Amsterdam at the Next Web conference, giving a talk about “Purpose, Mission and Strategy” — how companies can strengthen the connection between these to align efforts and make tough calls more easily (will post video when it comes online). From that talk: The idea here being tha...
- Cryptocurrenices: the native business model of attention
There has been lots of attention this week on cryptocurrencies and blockchains, what with Consensus conf and the Token Summit and lots of related announcements. And with like lots of new things (thinking back to Twitter circa 2010) I find myself spending a lot of time explaining to people what block...
- The Service Recovery Paradox
I’m writing this from a plane. I’ve been in the air for an hour and everything is fine, but for a few minutes before the flight, things weren’t fine. At roughly the time we were supposed to board (on an already late in the evening flight), the gate attendant came over the mic to announce… Continue...
- Complicity
I had an interesting experience today. As I was in the air on my way to San Francisco, I got a text from my Airbnb host saying that they had made a mistake and accidentally double-booked my room. I ended up taking their offer to cancel and booked a hotel room (at a steep increase… Continue reading
- Flexing the platform for good
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been touching base with many companies and individuals in the tech sector to understand how they are reacting to the current political environment. Every company and community (of users, customers) is different, with its own sensitivities, priorities, and goals. So it’...
- Cycles
It’s clear that right now we are in a moment of upheaval and turbulence, that seems to have come upon us very quickly. Pretty much everyone I know has been wrestling to unpack this for the past several months. I’ve been trying my best to understand the worldview of Steve Bannon, who is clearly an… ...
- The Public Data Layer
I have been thinking a lot lately about the increasing importance of the “public data layer” — meaning, data that we will need (“we” applied broadly, meaning the general public, NGOs, government, scientists, journalists) to make sense of what’s going on in and increasingly busy, but increasingly qua...
- Experience ↔ Design ↔ Policy
People often ask me how I ended up working in venture capital, and more specifically in a role that deals with policy issues (“policy” broadly speaking, including public policy, legal, “trust & safety”, content & community policy, etc.). Coming from a background as a hacker / entrepreneur with an u...
- Unintended Consequences
I’ve been struck recently by the power and surprise of unintended consequences. For example, a recent Slate article digs into flip side of the life-saving potential of automated vehicles: our reliance on car crash deaths for organ donors: “An estimated 94 percent of motor-vehicle accidents involve s...