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 urban planning degree, how I ended up here can be a little bit puzzling. The way I like to describe it is this: From the beginning, I've been fascinated with the "experience" of things -- the way things feel.  Things meaning products, places, experiences etc.  I've always been super attuned to the details that make something "feel great", and I'd say the overriding theme through everything I've done is the pursuit of the root cause of "great experiences". From there, I naturally have been drawn to design: the physical construction of things.  I love to make and hack, and I geek out over the minor design details of lots of things, whether that's the seam placement on a car's body panels, or the design of a crosswalk, or the entrance to a building, or the buttery UI of an app.  Design is the place where people meet experience. But over time, I came to realize something else: what we design and how we design it is not an island unto itself.  It's shaped -- and enabled, and often constrained -- by the rules and policies that underly the design fabric.  That's true for cars, parks, buildings, cities, websites, apps, social networks, and the internet.  The underlying policy is the infrastructure upon which everything is built. This first really hit me, right after college (16 years ago now), when I was reading Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown, a book chronicling the revitalization of many smaller downtowns across America, written by my old friend Norman Mintz.  Before I started the book, my main thinking was: "I want to be an architect, because architects design places".  Norman had told me "you don't want to be an architect."  But I didn't believe him.  But I distinctly remember, about halfway through the book, having an a-ha moment, where I scrawled in the margin: "I don't want to be an architect!  I want to do this!".  Where this was engaging in the planning and community engagement process that ultimately shaped the design.  It hit me that this is where the really transformative decisions happened. I spent the next three years at

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 urban planning degree, how I ended up here can be a little bit puzzling. The way I like to describe it is this: From the beginning, I've been fascinated with the "experience" of things -- the way things feel.  Things meaning products, places, experiences etc.  I've always been super attuned to the details that make something "feel great", and I'd say the overriding theme through everything I've done is the pursuit of the root cause of "great experiences". From there, I naturally have been drawn to design: the physical construction of things.  I love to make and hack, and I geek out over the minor design details of lots of things, whether that's the seam placement on a car's body panels, or the design of a crosswalk, or the entrance to a building, or the buttery UI of an app.  Design is the place where people meet experience. But over time, I came to realize something else: what we design and how we design it is not an island unto itself.  It's shaped -- and enabled, and often constrained -- by the rules and policies that underly the design fabric.  That's true for cars, parks, buildings, cities, websites, apps, social networks, and the internet.  The underlying policy is the infrastructure upon which everything is built. This first really hit me, right after college (16 years ago now), when I was reading Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown, a book chronicling the revitalization of many smaller downtowns across America, written by my old friend Norman Mintz.  Before I started the book, my main thinking was: "I want to be an architect, because architects design places".  Norman had told me "you don't want to be an architect."  But I didn't believe him.  But I distinctly remember, about halfway through the book, having an a-ha moment, where I scrawled in the margin: "I don't want to be an architect!  I want to do this!".  Where this was engaging in the planning and community engagement process that ultimately shaped the design.  It hit me that this is where the really transformative decisions happened. I spent the next three years at