As I make my way through the various predictions & reflections that accompany the new year, one stands out: the EFF's 2019 Year In Review, entitled "Dodging Bullets on the Path to a Decentralized Future". I have long been disappointed that there have seemed to be two separate and parallel conversations going on: the "traditional" digital rights / internet freedom community talking about "re-decentralizing the web" and the blockchain/crypto community working on the same thing. I like the EFF's recent work because they are connecting the two conversations, and their year in review is a good place to start on that.
A key link in the EFF review is to Cory Doctorow's work on Adversarial Interoperability, which studies the history of interoperability of technical systems and all of the commercial, legal and policy battles that haven ensued because of it.
In this post in the Adversarial Interoperability series, Cory details the different kinds of interoperability and the dynamics around them. His mantra is "Fix the Internet, not the Tech Companies" and I couldn't agree more.
I believe, and we have said at USV many times, that driving interoperability is the best and most effective way to limit the power of big tech companies, and that in today's environment we should focus on "breaking up the data, not the companies.".
When I talk to regulators, lawmakers and policymakers, I often use this diagram (credit to Placeholder for the underlying graphic):
Which shows that from a historical perspective, these "open" or "interoperability" technologies have been the driver in breaking up each era's dominant monopoly.
It's the same today, and Cory's and EFF's excellent work on the subject adds a lot of depth to the analysis.
Last week, as I have done for the last several years, I gave a guest lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The class is DPI-662: Digital Government: Technology, Policy, and Public Service Innovation taught by my old friend David Eaves and the topic in recent years has been on Cryptonetworks and Blockchains.
I am always amazed at the people in the class -- incredible diversity of backgrounds from around the world. And as we have discussed crypto over the past few years, the conversation has gotten better and better -- whereas a few years ago it was a curiosity it is clear that people are paying close attention.
Here is the deck I used for the talk. Like many of my presentations on crypto, it is geared towards newer technical audiences with a deeper policy slant. Makes less sense without the narrative, but I have included speaker notes which you can see in the Google Slides version.
Enjoy!
At USV, we talk a lot about our investment thesis. The USV thesis is a set of ideas that has guided our investing over the years. It is a tool we use to help ourselves know what to look for, and to help companies who fit into it to find us.
Despite all of the writing we have done on the thesis over the years, some parts of the it remain understood, but unwritten. One of those is what I like to call "The Butter Thesis".
"Butter" is the term we use to describe interactions & experiences that are just so smooth. Rich, easy, delicious. Hard to define formally, but you know it when you see it / feel it.
Butter can apply to dev tools, enterprise/b2b products, and consumer products.
Classic examples of Dev Butter are the Stripe API and the Twilio API. Tools that are just so simple and fun to use (and useful!) that you just can't help build with them. Or, the first time you install Cloudflare and your site just gets fast and the DDOS just stops. OMG Firebase. Takes my breath away. Or before that, Ruby on Rails and jQuery. The category-defining tools of each era of development have succeeded in large part because of their Buttery-ness.
B2B Butter is Airtable and Slack (and really, Google Docs, though that's less exciting somehow). Or in narrower vertical, Splice. Or, in a hidden horizontal, Carta
As I make my way through the various predictions & reflections that accompany the new year, one stands out: the EFF's 2019 Year In Review, entitled "Dodging Bullets on the Path to a Decentralized Future". I have long been disappointed that there have seemed to be two separate and parallel conversations going on: the "traditional" digital rights / internet freedom community talking about "re-decentralizing the web" and the blockchain/crypto community working on the same thing. I like the EFF's recent work because they are connecting the two conversations, and their year in review is a good place to start on that.
A key link in the EFF review is to Cory Doctorow's work on Adversarial Interoperability, which studies the history of interoperability of technical systems and all of the commercial, legal and policy battles that haven ensued because of it.
In this post in the Adversarial Interoperability series, Cory details the different kinds of interoperability and the dynamics around them. His mantra is "Fix the Internet, not the Tech Companies" and I couldn't agree more.
I believe, and we have said at USV many times, that driving interoperability is the best and most effective way to limit the power of big tech companies, and that in today's environment we should focus on "breaking up the data, not the companies.".
When I talk to regulators, lawmakers and policymakers, I often use this diagram (credit to Placeholder for the underlying graphic):
Which shows that from a historical perspective, these "open" or "interoperability" technologies have been the driver in breaking up each era's dominant monopoly.
It's the same today, and Cory's and EFF's excellent work on the subject adds a lot of depth to the analysis.
Last week, as I have done for the last several years, I gave a guest lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The class is DPI-662: Digital Government: Technology, Policy, and Public Service Innovation taught by my old friend David Eaves and the topic in recent years has been on Cryptonetworks and Blockchains.
I am always amazed at the people in the class -- incredible diversity of backgrounds from around the world. And as we have discussed crypto over the past few years, the conversation has gotten better and better -- whereas a few years ago it was a curiosity it is clear that people are paying close attention.
Here is the deck I used for the talk. Like many of my presentations on crypto, it is geared towards newer technical audiences with a deeper policy slant. Makes less sense without the narrative, but I have included speaker notes which you can see in the Google Slides version.
Enjoy!
At USV, we talk a lot about our investment thesis. The USV thesis is a set of ideas that has guided our investing over the years. It is a tool we use to help ourselves know what to look for, and to help companies who fit into it to find us.
Despite all of the writing we have done on the thesis over the years, some parts of the it remain understood, but unwritten. One of those is what I like to call "The Butter Thesis".
"Butter" is the term we use to describe interactions & experiences that are just so smooth. Rich, easy, delicious. Hard to define formally, but you know it when you see it / feel it.
Butter can apply to dev tools, enterprise/b2b products, and consumer products.
Classic examples of Dev Butter are the Stripe API and the Twilio API. Tools that are just so simple and fun to use (and useful!) that you just can't help build with them. Or, the first time you install Cloudflare and your site just gets fast and the DDOS just stops. OMG Firebase. Takes my breath away. Or before that, Ruby on Rails and jQuery. The category-defining tools of each era of development have succeeded in large part because of their Buttery-ness.
B2B Butter is Airtable and Slack (and really, Google Docs, though that's less exciting somehow). Or in narrower vertical, Splice. Or, in a hidden horizontal, Carta
On the consumer side, Butter means end-user experiences that are frictionless and joyful. For example, I recently went to China and was blown away by the QR Code experience -- straight butter wherever you go, linking the real world to the online world. Duolingo is Butter for Learning. Nurx is Butter for Health. Coinbase is Butter for Crypto. Amazon Prime is Butter for e-Commerce.
Building for butter means understanding that every step of the experience can be honed, smoothed and improved, to the point that it's so good you just can't take it. Butter is deceptively simple. A single ingredient that yet does so much.
Sounds easy, doesn't it?! Maybe this is obvious and isn't that deep. But it is hard to pull off, and truly extraordinary when it is accomplished.
On the consumer side, Butter means end-user experiences that are frictionless and joyful. For example, I recently went to China and was blown away by the QR Code experience -- straight butter wherever you go, linking the real world to the online world. Duolingo is Butter for Learning. Nurx is Butter for Health. Coinbase is Butter for Crypto. Amazon Prime is Butter for e-Commerce.
Building for butter means understanding that every step of the experience can be honed, smoothed and improved, to the point that it's so good you just can't take it. Butter is deceptively simple. A single ingredient that yet does so much.
Sounds easy, doesn't it?! Maybe this is obvious and isn't that deep. But it is hard to pull off, and truly extraordinary when it is accomplished.
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