Writing.
Essays since 2006, plus a few things first published at USV. Occasional by design. The podcast lives on its own page.
- Mechanics of the token sale
In case you missed it, today Brave raised $36M for the Basic Attention Token. They had allocated 30 days for the token sale, but sold out of 1B BAT in 24 seconds. The Basic Attention Token (BAT) ICO just raised 30 million dollars in 24 seconds. VC’s didn’t even have time to put on a sweater… Contin...
- Open source leadership vs. corporate leadership
As cryptocurrencies and blockchains have continued to gain steam (and attract capital), a common question in the air is, what type of leader does it take to be successful in this space? A common variant on that question is: “will [leader] need a grownup in the room once they get ahold of all that mo...
- Regulating source code
As more areas of our economy become computerized and move online, more and more of what regulators need to understand will be in the source code. For example, take the VW emissions scandal: These days, cars are an order of magnitude more complex, making it easier for manufacturers to hide cheats amo...
- 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...
- 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
- The new normal
The week before last, my in-laws were hit by a truck while crossing the street after dinner. The time since has been a disorienting whirlwind of sadness, fear, hope and thankfulness. My mother-in-law suffered a very serious brain injury, and while she has cleared the first hurdle of basic survival,...
- Getting out the vote
Yesterday, a fabulous new tool launched — HelloVote: HelloVote makes it easy easy easy to register to vote. Sign up w your phone number and do the whole thing over text. This is great for a lots of reasons — from its immediate practicality, to its more general lesson that it’s possible to build new...
- Alternative Compliance
Summary To better support small businesses operating in regulated sectors, we should develop “alternative compliance” mechanisms — parallel regulatory regimes that achieve the goals of existing regulations but take an alternative, data-oriented approach to achieving them. Such an approach would be ...
- Personal Democracy Forum NYC: Regulating with Data
At this year’s Personal Democracy Forum, the theme was “the tech we need“. One of the areas I’ve been focused on here is the need for “regulatory tech”. In other words, tools & services to help broker the individual / government & corporation / regulator relationship. In a nutshell: we are entering...
- Cable boxes, ridesharing and the right to be represented by a bot
Here are two tech policy issues that don’t seem related but are: the FCC’s current push to open up the set-top-box, and the lawsuits challenging Uber’s and Lyft’s classification of drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. The way to see the connection is through the lens of control ...
- Crypto debate: separating Security from Control
For the past few weeks, I’ve been following the FBI / Apple phone unlocking case, and digging deep into the debate around encryption, security and privacy. This debate is as old as the sun, and the exact same arguments we’re going through now were fought through 20 years ago during the first crypto ...
- The Freedom to Innovate and the Freedom to Investigate
Earlier this week, I was at SXSW for CTA‘s annual Innovation Policy Day. My session, on Labor and the Gig/Sharing Economy, was a lively discussion including Sarah Leberstein from the National Employment Law Project, Michael Hayes from CTA’s policy group (which reps companies from their membership in...