Writing.
Essays since 2006, plus a few things first published at USV. Occasional by design. The podcast lives on its own page.
- Internet meets world: rules go boom
Since 2006, I’ve been writing here about cities, the internet, and the ongoing collision between the two. Along the way, I’ve also loved using Tumblr to clip quotes off the web, building on the idea of “the slow hunch” (the title of this blog) and the “open commonplace book” as a tool for tracking t...
- 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 ...
- Beam should have a hardware API
We’ve got a few Beam telepresence robots at USV, and use them all the time. Fred has written about them here. We had a team meeting today, and we had two beams going at once — Fred and I were the first to arrive, and we were chatting beam-to-beam — he in LAUtah, me in Boston,… Continue reading
- Learning to skate
For the past few winters, I’ve been teaching my kids to ice skate. Above is my son Theo at hockey practice a few weeks ago. At a certain point along the way, I got the bug and realized that skating was awesome and hockey was a beautiful sport. So for the past year or so,… Continue reading
- Zero-rating: putting Net Neutrality to the test
It’s been an intense 10 months since the FCC approved its latest Open Internet rules (aka Net Neutrality). On the wired side, we’ve seen the unbundling of content, as channels such as HBO (via HBO Now) and ESPN (via Sling TV) have split from cable to go “over-the-top” with direct-to consumer offerin...
- Hello, 2016
Breaking the ice — been off the blogs for quite a while now. Looking forward to this year, the way I tend to every year. 2015 was a tough one for me personally — went through a bunch of shit on the family front that both demonstrated how tough life can be and also how… Continue reading
- OuiShare Rethink & Remix Barcelona: The Evolution of the Venture
I gave this talk at the OuiShare Rethink & Remix conference in Barcelona: Continue reading
- As Massachusetts ponders ride-sharing regs, where’s the data?
Today, hearings begin at the Massachusetts state house over how to regulate the budding ride-sharing / on-demand transportation industry (Uber, Lyft, et al). Adam Vaccaro over at Boston.com has a good summary of the various competing bills — a pro-Uber bill that welcomes new Transportation Network C...
- Introducing Quackpad – simple collaborative docs for teams using Slack
Every month at USV we have an internal hack day, where we work on various fun tech projects. We hack on USV.com, we build internal tools, we play with fun new hardware, try out new APIs, etc. It’s a nice change of pace, and an opportunity to get a little closer to the tech we… Continue reading
- Supporting workers in the gig economy
If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout my years as a human, it’s that life is hard and people need help in order to make things work. That help can come in many forms: family, friends, co-workers, teachers, unions, healthcare providers, agents, assistants, coaches, therapists, strangers on the...
- Pain x Resistance = Suffering (the case for throughput)
For the past nine months or so, I’ve been seeing a therapist specializing in mindfulness. Perhaps the best decision I’ve ever made. One of the things we spend a lot of time talking about is resistance – everyone has their own quirks and issues, and that’s one of mine. The tendency to hit the brakes...
- Here’s the solution to the Uber and Airbnb problems — and no one will like it
It’s been a fascinating week to watch the war between Uber and the De Blasio administration play out. Not surprisingly, Uber ended up carrying the day using a combination of its dedicated user base and its sophisticated political machine. This is yet another very early round in what will be a long a...
- Brutal honesty delivered kindly
On my way to SF this week, I stopped over in Boulder, visited Techstars and then had dinner with Brad Feld, where got to talking about the dynamics inside and around venture firms. He has obviously been doing this for a long time, and for me, less of a long time (3-1/2 yrs at this point).… Continue...
- 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...
- The Blockchain as verified public timestamps
Two weeks ago at USV’s annual CEO Summit, Muneeb Ali from OneName explained the blockchain in a way I hadn’t heard before, and which I thought was really helpful: the blockchain is time. That’s a somewhat abstract way of saying it, so more concretely we could say that: The blockchain is database of ...
- EEC Bilbao: Supporting Workers in the On-Demand Economy
I gave this talk at the EEC conference in Bilbao Spain this week: Continue reading
- The more things change…
Here’s a slide from 2009, when we were convincing transit agencies to open up their data, and then later building MTA BusTIme: And here’s one from yesterday, from a talk I gave at the Shift Conference (blog post to follow w more on that): Continue reading
- Regulation, the Internet way
Today at USV, we are hosting our 4th semiannual Trust, Safety and Security Summit. Brittany, who manages the USV portfolio network, runs about 60 events per year — each one a peer-driven, peer-learning experience, like a mini-unconference on topics like engineering, people, design, etc. The USV net...