Why Decentralized Identity Matters: Github’s Identity Innovation and Shortcoming
There is a lot we can learn from github and its identity model about the role of individual identity in the future of firms, networks and markets. When Linus Torvalds released git in 2005 he made a crucial innovation in [...] Read more
Land, Capital, Attention: This Time it Is the Same
This is the rhetoric aimed at people like myself who argue that we need to fundamentally rethink how the economy and society work because digital technologies changing the world. I have taken to replying “you are correct, but you are [...] Read more
Hard Choices: Growth versus Profitability
Quite a few companies are finding themselves in a situation roughly as follows: they have raised a lot of money at high valuations on a fast growth story, have real customers and the beginning of revenues, but growth has slowed [...] Read more
Clue
We are excited about our investment in Berlin-based Clue, which puts women around the world in charge of their fertility and their health more generally. Clue does this by offering a period tracker and fertility app. We have been pursuing [...] Read more
Investing in Clue
Today’s post is over at the USV blog, describing why we invested in Clue, which provides a period tracking and fertility app. A big thanks also to Susan and Katie for helping me understand the importance of Clue. Read more
Political Debates on German vs US TV: Paging John Stewart
Last week I spent a few days with family, friends and startups in Germany. When I was at my parents we watched a television debate about Islam, religious freedom and German society. I was struck by the stark contrast to [...] Read more
Going to Mars
I was thrilled to hear about NASA’s discovery of water on Mars. I am hoping it will contribute to interest in a human mission to Mars. Ideally, such a mission would not be under the banner of a single nation [...] Read more
Learn To Commit
This past Saturday Susan, our daughter Katie and I (with help from our son Michael) taught a one day computer bootcamp for women at Cornell. Susan, who is a Cornell alum, had come up with the idea a few months [...] Read more
Kickstarter, PBC
I recall meeting Perry Chen for the first time in the old USV offices on the 14th floor back in 2009 shortly after Kickstarter launched. He and his partners Yancey and Charles were onto something, I was sure of that. [...] Read more