From Crypto-Native to Crypto-Enabled
I’m not one to make big annual predictions, but one thing that seems likely to me is that 2024 will mark the emergence of mainstream apps powered by ...

Bitcoin as Battery
One of my favorite things about crypto is that, every so often, your conception of what it is changes.Bitcoin at first was "weird internet money...

The Internet's Next Business Model: A Conversation with Cloudflare's Matthew Prince
I just released a new episode of The Slow Hunch with Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare. Since we invested in their Series C back in 2013, I've watched Matthew and his team build one of the most critical pieces of internet infrastructure—protecting and accelerating vast portions of global web traffic. Our conversation traces Matthew's journey from his early "slow hunch" that the internet was fundamentally broken and needed fixing. We start with his law school days in 2000, when ...

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Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
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Our life is increasingly dominated by screens. Giant screens in public spaces; TVs everywhere in bars and restaurants; everyone standing around and walking around with their faces in their phones; watches, glasses and goggles with screens built-in, etc. "Screen time" is a thing.
Screens are amazing: full of information and entertainment. But they are also exhausting and over-stimulating.
It feels to me that, one way or another, we're poised to experience some amount of cultural backlash against so many screens. I can already start to sense it, as I spend time with my teenage kids -- while they are certainly on screens quite a bit, I can tell that they realize that it's a lot, and they seem to actively seek out escapes from the screen (as much as they understand that the screen can be an attractive escape from the real world).
In particular, I'm curious about digital interfaces that manage to capture the value & utility of being connected, but strike a different tone in terms of experience.
For example, I've been experimenting with the Meta Ray-Ban glasses for a while now, and while they aren't perfect, the experience of taking a photo or video without sticking my face in my phone is refreshing. That said, smart glasses are also clearly a step towards a more immersive, rather than less immersive tech experience, which has other potential drawbacks.
In terms of more visually interactive devices, the Kindle is probably the most successful example of this kind of "low-fi" computing. While it's also not perfect, and I still personally prefer to read a paper book, it doesn't scream "I AM A COMPUTER" quite the way other tablets do, and there's just something about the posture of reading on a Kindle (compared to a phone, for sure) that just feels more healthy and natural.
I am curious to see whether such an approach could work for other kinds of products that come closer to the experience of phones and tablets. I was surprised to learn recently that the

Our life is increasingly dominated by screens. Giant screens in public spaces; TVs everywhere in bars and restaurants; everyone standing around and walking around with their faces in their phones; watches, glasses and goggles with screens built-in, etc. "Screen time" is a thing.
Screens are amazing: full of information and entertainment. But they are also exhausting and over-stimulating.
It feels to me that, one way or another, we're poised to experience some amount of cultural backlash against so many screens. I can already start to sense it, as I spend time with my teenage kids -- while they are certainly on screens quite a bit, I can tell that they realize that it's a lot, and they seem to actively seek out escapes from the screen (as much as they understand that the screen can be an attractive escape from the real world).
In particular, I'm curious about digital interfaces that manage to capture the value & utility of being connected, but strike a different tone in terms of experience.
For example, I've been experimenting with the Meta Ray-Ban glasses for a while now, and while they aren't perfect, the experience of taking a photo or video without sticking my face in my phone is refreshing. That said, smart glasses are also clearly a step towards a more immersive, rather than less immersive tech experience, which has other potential drawbacks.
In terms of more visually interactive devices, the Kindle is probably the most successful example of this kind of "low-fi" computing. While it's also not perfect, and I still personally prefer to read a paper book, it doesn't scream "I AM A COMPUTER" quite the way other tablets do, and there's just something about the posture of reading on a Kindle (compared to a phone, for sure) that just feels more healthy and natural.
I am curious to see whether such an approach could work for other kinds of products that come closer to the experience of phones and tablets. I was surprised to learn recently that the
From Crypto-Native to Crypto-Enabled
I’m not one to make big annual predictions, but one thing that seems likely to me is that 2024 will mark the emergence of mainstream apps powered by ...

Bitcoin as Battery
One of my favorite things about crypto is that, every so often, your conception of what it is changes.Bitcoin at first was "weird internet money...

The Internet's Next Business Model: A Conversation with Cloudflare's Matthew Prince
I just released a new episode of The Slow Hunch with Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare. Since we invested in their Series C back in 2013, I've watched Matthew and his team build one of the most critical pieces of internet infrastructure—protecting and accelerating vast portions of global web traffic. Our conversation traces Matthew's journey from his early "slow hunch" that the internet was fundamentally broken and needed fixing. We start with his law school days in 2000, when ...
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I'm excited to see more experiments in low-fi computing, and am very curious to see which form factors and user experiences prove to be appealing to mass audiences.
Photo: Stanley Kubrick. Life and Love on the New York City Subway. Passengers reading in a subway car. 1946. Museum of the City of New York. X2011.4.10292.30D (link)
I'm excited to see more experiments in low-fi computing, and am very curious to see which form factors and user experiences prove to be appealing to mass audiences.
Photo: Stanley Kubrick. Life and Love on the New York City Subway. Passengers reading in a subway car. 1946. Museum of the City of New York. X2011.4.10292.30D (link)
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