I'm on a plane right now. I always find plane/train rides to be some of the best times to focus and get work done. On this trip, I managed to get two "monkeys" off my back -- little tasks that have been lingering in the back of my mind for a long time, and that I've been avoiding. It doesn't matter what they are, but I can tell you that one of them was tiny -- so tiny (literally 5 minutes to do), and one of them was sort of medium-sized (maybe 2 hours). So on this trip I finally stopped avoiding them Having these little monkeys is the worst feeling, and clearing them out feels so good. What is so pernicious about avoidance is the way it turns small problems into big problems. I've written before about how Pain x Resistance = Suffering. The more you avoid/resist, the more pain you feel and the larger your "problem" actually gets. A 5 minute thing turns into hours, days, or weeks of avoidance. Avoidance is a debt frame of mind. Amazingly, the reverse is also true. Taking "big" problems/challenges/tasks, and plugging away at them dutifully without resistance or avoidance, makes them smaller! If you just focus on getting a little better every day, all of a sudden you have compounding results. A little better every day is a capital frame of mind. Don't avoid. Rip off the band-aid. Take the medicine. Increase your throughput. Make today a little bit better. It will feel so good.
I've written for a long time about my desire to re-build personal finance infrastructure in ways that benefit people with the least money. We see new personal financial products all the time targeting high value customers, but it still feels like they are ignoring a huge, and important part of the market: people scraping by living paycheck-to-paycheck. This is a huge slice of America and the world, and I believe that tools that serve this population well will not only make a huge positive social impact, they can build huge businesses. One such product that I've started using recently is the very aptly titled You Need a Budget. I have tried nearly every app out there that tries to help people get a handle on their moment-to-moment finances, but this is the most thoughtfully designed (and I suspect, the most effective) one I've seen so far.
YNAB is full of product nuances that show that they've thought deeply about how people use money, and how to help people craft effective budgets. The main idea, of course, is that you need to start with a budget. The nuanced parts are the way YNAB helps track budget categories, map expenses against them, make tradeoffs when categories are overbudget, and start to understand new concepts like
We have spent a fair bit of time over the past year working on security at USV and across the USV portfolio. Anyone who has spent time working on personal or corporate security -- and in particular information security, knows that there are a million ways in, and you're never "finished". Fred wrote a bit about his experience last year, and we had an issue yesterday with Albert's phone:
Thanks to everyone who has been helping me recover from a Twitter account takeover based on an unauthorized SIM switch on my phone
The way we have been thinking about it is in terms of "the weakest link". It is critical to have your most important accounts (primary email, banking, crypto, etc) secured well, but it's also important to work your way down the line to other accounts and entry points. The lesson being that attackers will seek the weakest point and work from there. One of weakest points in personal security is the phone -- cell carriers are notoriously bad at security, and attacks like phone porting and SIM swapping are common. For that reason, it's important to move away from using SMS as a second factor backup wherever possible, and instead moving to apps like Google Authenticator, or to hardware-based 2FA using
I'm on a plane right now. I always find plane/train rides to be some of the best times to focus and get work done. On this trip, I managed to get two "monkeys" off my back -- little tasks that have been lingering in the back of my mind for a long time, and that I've been avoiding. It doesn't matter what they are, but I can tell you that one of them was tiny -- so tiny (literally 5 minutes to do), and one of them was sort of medium-sized (maybe 2 hours). So on this trip I finally stopped avoiding them Having these little monkeys is the worst feeling, and clearing them out feels so good. What is so pernicious about avoidance is the way it turns small problems into big problems. I've written before about how Pain x Resistance = Suffering. The more you avoid/resist, the more pain you feel and the larger your "problem" actually gets. A 5 minute thing turns into hours, days, or weeks of avoidance. Avoidance is a debt frame of mind. Amazingly, the reverse is also true. Taking "big" problems/challenges/tasks, and plugging away at them dutifully without resistance or avoidance, makes them smaller! If you just focus on getting a little better every day, all of a sudden you have compounding results. A little better every day is a capital frame of mind. Don't avoid. Rip off the band-aid. Take the medicine. Increase your throughput. Make today a little bit better. It will feel so good.
I've written for a long time about my desire to re-build personal finance infrastructure in ways that benefit people with the least money. We see new personal financial products all the time targeting high value customers, but it still feels like they are ignoring a huge, and important part of the market: people scraping by living paycheck-to-paycheck. This is a huge slice of America and the world, and I believe that tools that serve this population well will not only make a huge positive social impact, they can build huge businesses. One such product that I've started using recently is the very aptly titled You Need a Budget. I have tried nearly every app out there that tries to help people get a handle on their moment-to-moment finances, but this is the most thoughtfully designed (and I suspect, the most effective) one I've seen so far.
YNAB is full of product nuances that show that they've thought deeply about how people use money, and how to help people craft effective budgets. The main idea, of course, is that you need to start with a budget. The nuanced parts are the way YNAB helps track budget categories, map expenses against them, make tradeoffs when categories are overbudget, and start to understand new concepts like
We have spent a fair bit of time over the past year working on security at USV and across the USV portfolio. Anyone who has spent time working on personal or corporate security -- and in particular information security, knows that there are a million ways in, and you're never "finished". Fred wrote a bit about his experience last year, and we had an issue yesterday with Albert's phone:
Thanks to everyone who has been helping me recover from a Twitter account takeover based on an unauthorized SIM switch on my phone
The way we have been thinking about it is in terms of "the weakest link". It is critical to have your most important accounts (primary email, banking, crypto, etc) secured well, but it's also important to work your way down the line to other accounts and entry points. The lesson being that attackers will seek the weakest point and work from there. One of weakest points in personal security is the phone -- cell carriers are notoriously bad at security, and attacks like phone porting and SIM swapping are common. For that reason, it's important to move away from using SMS as a second factor backup wherever possible, and instead moving to apps like Google Authenticator, or to hardware-based 2FA using
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
. Having used apps like Mint in the past, which work on the same ideas, I've found that YNAB has figured something new out, which is how to make tracking your money, and tending to your budget, a daily activity. The YNAB mobile app makes it easy to categorize expenses as they come in, on a daily basis. It's this daily check in that both makes the process less overwhelming (since you're only dealing with a handful of transactions at once) and potentially change-making, since you are reflecting on your budget and expenses in real time. Getting a grip on finances is hard. It's emotional, complicated and often overwhelming. I like the way YNAB demystifies the process and provides a real helping hand. I hope we see more things like this come to market.
or similar. Another weak point is personal email, or old email accounts. It's easy to forget about old accounts that you used back in the day, but those can be problematic, especially if they are linked to other accounts, and if 2fA is non-existent or tied to SMS. So, by all means, start with the most important accounts. But don't stop there -- keep sussing out weakest link. For more resources on personal information security, see this
. Having used apps like Mint in the past, which work on the same ideas, I've found that YNAB has figured something new out, which is how to make tracking your money, and tending to your budget, a daily activity. The YNAB mobile app makes it easy to categorize expenses as they come in, on a daily basis. It's this daily check in that both makes the process less overwhelming (since you're only dealing with a handful of transactions at once) and potentially change-making, since you are reflecting on your budget and expenses in real time. Getting a grip on finances is hard. It's emotional, complicated and often overwhelming. I like the way YNAB demystifies the process and provides a real helping hand. I hope we see more things like this come to market.
or similar. Another weak point is personal email, or old email accounts. It's easy to forget about old accounts that you used back in the day, but those can be problematic, especially if they are linked to other accounts, and if 2fA is non-existent or tied to SMS. So, by all means, start with the most important accounts. But don't stop there -- keep sussing out weakest link. For more resources on personal information security, see this
