I am a VC & have been since 1986.
Making Advisors
A theme I have been hearing from founders lately is training an AI to create a virtual advisor. There are various flavors of this idea but here are a few I've heard in the last week: 1/ Train a virtual board. Pick ten to twenty real people (alive or dead) and collect all of their public speaking, public writing, and all that has been written about them, train an AI on them, and then ask them questions you would ask your board. 2/ Train a virtual CMO. Pick a bunch of the top CMOs and collect a...
Making Advisors
A theme I have been hearing from founders lately is training an AI to create a virtual advisor. There are various flavors of this idea but here are a few I've heard in the last week: 1/ Train a virtual board. Pick ten to twenty real people (alive or dead) and collect all of their public speaking, public writing, and all that has been written about them, train an AI on them, and then ask them questions you would ask your board. 2/ Train a virtual CMO. Pick a bunch of the top CMOs and collect a...
Gen What?
The Gotham Gal and I were born in 1961, at the tail end of the baby boom. Or so we thought. In an excellent longish essay on GenX in T Magazine, Amanda Fortini writes:The consensus, particularly among elder Gen X-ers .. is that the endpoints were mysteriously revised, but no one seems to know why or when or by whom .....many hold that the real Gen X range is 1961 to 1981 — beginning when fertility rates declined, soon after the Food and Drug Administration’s 1960 approval of the birth control...
Gen What?
The Gotham Gal and I were born in 1961, at the tail end of the baby boom. Or so we thought. In an excellent longish essay on GenX in T Magazine, Amanda Fortini writes:The consensus, particularly among elder Gen X-ers .. is that the endpoints were mysteriously revised, but no one seems to know why or when or by whom .....many hold that the real Gen X range is 1961 to 1981 — beginning when fertility rates declined, soon after the Food and Drug Administration’s 1960 approval of the birth control...
The Race to Run Businesses Autonomously: Cofounder by The General Intelligence Company of New York
Cofounder lets you break your business down into Flows—the repeatable workflows that make up everything from one-time setups to ongoing operations—and automate each one through a network of coordinating agents. The product suggests flows to fork and try and enables the creation of new ones, reformatting into a constantly self-updating to-do list where the tasks involved can be accomplished autonomously. The idea is to both take the repetitive work out of running businesses and also add opportuni
The Race to Run Businesses Autonomously: Cofounder by The General Intelligence Company of New York
Cofounder lets you break your business down into Flows—the repeatable workflows that make up everything from one-time setups to ongoing operations—and automate each one through a network of coordinating agents. The product suggests flows to fork and try and enables the creation of new ones, reformatting into a constantly self-updating to-do list where the tasks involved can be accomplished autonomously. The idea is to both take the repetitive work out of running businesses and also add opportuni
Investment Needs Speculation
I didn't learn much in business school. For me, it was a way to move from being an engineer to an investor. And as such, it was super valuable. As an education, not so much. It did lead to MBA Mondays, which was a ton of fun to write. But I digress. There are a few occasions in business school that were "aha moments" for me. One was in a class called "Speculative Markets." The professor explained that speculating and hedging were two sides of a trade. And that there would not be hedging witho...
Investment Needs Speculation
I didn't learn much in business school. For me, it was a way to move from being an engineer to an investor. And as such, it was super valuable. As an education, not so much. It did lead to MBA Mondays, which was a ton of fun to write. But I digress. There are a few occasions in business school that were "aha moments" for me. One was in a class called "Speculative Markets." The professor explained that speculating and hedging were two sides of a trade. And that there would not be hedging witho...
The Big Blind
In poker, the big blind is a mandatory bet you have to make if you are two seats to the left of the dealer. In the world of geothermal energy, the big blind is finding a huge source of heat underground where there are no obvious clues on the land surface above. Our portfolio company Zanskar has been using advanced AI models to prospect for geothermal sites. As this article in MIT Technology Review explains:The first step to identifying a new site is to use regional AI models to search large a...
The Big Blind
In poker, the big blind is a mandatory bet you have to make if you are two seats to the left of the dealer. In the world of geothermal energy, the big blind is finding a huge source of heat underground where there are no obvious clues on the land surface above. Our portfolio company Zanskar has been using advanced AI models to prospect for geothermal sites. As this article in MIT Technology Review explains:The first step to identifying a new site is to use regional AI models to search large a...
Declining Fertility Rates
This post made the rounds at USV this week and got us thinking about declining fertility rates around the world. While I am sharing that link with all of you, I don't agree with the author's conclusion about the inevitability of extinction. I think humanity is an extremely complex system with many self-correcting mechanisms in it. But the charts in the header of this blog post are worth paying attention to. I was emailing with a friend about this earlier this week, and he said that three char...
Declining Fertility Rates
This post made the rounds at USV this week and got us thinking about declining fertility rates around the world. While I am sharing that link with all of you, I don't agree with the author's conclusion about the inevitability of extinction. I think humanity is an extremely complex system with many self-correcting mechanisms in it. But the charts in the header of this blog post are worth paying attention to. I was emailing with a friend about this earlier this week, and he said that three char...
Turning locked up data into collective knowledge: Supper's agentic data platform
Supper is an agentic data platform that connects directly to your existing sources and answers questions in natural language, in real time. Not summaries of yesterday's data or static dashboards, but live answers that cross and combine your data sources on demand.
Turning locked up data into collective knowledge: Supper's agentic data platform
Supper is an agentic data platform that connects directly to your existing sources and answers questions in natural language, in real time. Not summaries of yesterday's data or static dashboards, but live answers that cross and combine your data sources on demand.
Rapidly Deployed Robots at Industrial Scale: Leading the Series A of Tutor Intelligence
If eight billion humans already possess the dexterous manipulation skills we want robots to have, why not let robots learn directly from humans, in realtime, at industrial scale and in the environments where they are needed? This central thesis for Tutor Intelligence drives its focus on getting its robots live in the field, working quickly, operating as a flexible workforce, and learning at rapid speed from both humans and models.
Rapidly Deployed Robots at Industrial Scale: Leading the Series A of Tutor Intelligence
If eight billion humans already possess the dexterous manipulation skills we want robots to have, why not let robots learn directly from humans, in realtime, at industrial scale and in the environments where they are needed? This central thesis for Tutor Intelligence drives its focus on getting its robots live in the field, working quickly, operating as a flexible workforce, and learning at rapid speed from both humans and models.
10 Highlights from USV's 2025 Annual Meeting
We like to say that USV is a continuous conversation. It’s through conversations that new ideas and observations emerge, take root as theses, and continue to grow through public engagement. Over the last year, we’ve been sharing ideas and sparks as they surface through the @usvlibrarian and the OH @ USV series. We believe that the best way to develop our thinking is to get our ideas out to the public. AI helps us capture and share more of those ideas across all our conversations. In that spir...
10 Highlights from USV's 2025 Annual Meeting
We like to say that USV is a continuous conversation. It’s through conversations that new ideas and observations emerge, take root as theses, and continue to grow through public engagement. Over the last year, we’ve been sharing ideas and sparks as they surface through the @usvlibrarian and the OH @ USV series. We believe that the best way to develop our thinking is to get our ideas out to the public. AI helps us capture and share more of those ideas across all our conversations. In that spir...
Recall: Skill Markets for AI
AI has a discovery problem that mirrors what the early web faced. Thousands of AI tools launch daily, but benchmarks get gamed in weeks, marketing budgets determine visibility, and many people still don't trust AI for real decisions. The technology works, but the discovery and trust layer hasn’t materialized yet. Against that backdrop, we’re excited that our portfolio company, Recall, has reached a key milestone today – the launch of skill markets and their token launch event. Skill markets a...
Recall: Skill Markets for AI
AI has a discovery problem that mirrors what the early web faced. Thousands of AI tools launch daily, but benchmarks get gamed in weeks, marketing budgets determine visibility, and many people still don't trust AI for real decisions. The technology works, but the discovery and trust layer hasn’t materialized yet. Against that backdrop, we’re excited that our portfolio company, Recall, has reached a key milestone today – the launch of skill markets and their token launch event. Skill markets a...
Sleep
I got an Oura ring a couple of years ago and have been working on improving my sleep and sleep habits ever since. For much of my adult life, I have been a poor sleeper. I have always been able to fall asleep quickly, but I have been plagued by two sleep issues. The first is waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep. The second is waking up early, like 4:30/5am, and being wide awake. So I’ve been working on those two things. I still wake up in the middle of t...
Sleep
I got an Oura ring a couple of years ago and have been working on improving my sleep and sleep habits ever since. For much of my adult life, I have been a poor sleeper. I have always been able to fall asleep quickly, but I have been plagued by two sleep issues. The first is waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep. The second is waking up early, like 4:30/5am, and being wide awake. So I’ve been working on those two things. I still wake up in the middle of t...
Open Office Hours at NYC Tech Week
NYC Tech Week is next week. It will be a week filled with events for the tech sector to engage and connect with each other. A particularly great part of tech week is VC Open Office Hours. There are over 100 VC investors signed up to participate next week. Here is how it works: 1/ you select four investors (out of more than 100) that you want to meet 2/ you get up to four twenty minute meetings 3/ you discuss your idea with the investor in hopes of getting them interested enough to take anothe...
Open Office Hours at NYC Tech Week
NYC Tech Week is next week. It will be a week filled with events for the tech sector to engage and connect with each other. A particularly great part of tech week is VC Open Office Hours. There are over 100 VC investors signed up to participate next week. Here is how it works: 1/ you select four investors (out of more than 100) that you want to meet 2/ you get up to four twenty minute meetings 3/ you discuss your idea with the investor in hopes of getting them interested enough to take anothe...
The Heist
On Saturday, September 9th, the Gotham Gal and I arrived at JFK airport after an eight-hour flight from Paris. While waiting for our luggage, I got pushed a notification in my web3 wallet that there was an NFT drop underway that I could participate in. So I clicked on the link, signed the transaction, and nothing happened (or so I thought). So I tried again. Again nothing happened. Frustrated, I turned my attention to the luggage, retrieved it, got in a car, and headed home. On the way home, ...
The Heist
On Saturday, September 9th, the Gotham Gal and I arrived at JFK airport after an eight-hour flight from Paris. While waiting for our luggage, I got pushed a notification in my web3 wallet that there was an NFT drop underway that I could participate in. So I clicked on the link, signed the transaction, and nothing happened (or so I thought). So I tried again. Again nothing happened. Frustrated, I turned my attention to the luggage, retrieved it, got in a car, and headed home. On the way home, ...
CEO 360s
I’ve written about this topic before. It is an important topic and I want to raise it again. Boards often discuss CEO performance without really knowing how things work inside the company. And CEOs often have very little visibility to how they are doing and what the board thinks about their performance. When you work for one person, your boss, it is typical that you will have regular catchups and at least an annual review of your performance (ideally more frequent). But when you work for a gr...
CEO 360s
I’ve written about this topic before. It is an important topic and I want to raise it again. Boards often discuss CEO performance without really knowing how things work inside the company. And CEOs often have very little visibility to how they are doing and what the board thinks about their performance. When you work for one person, your boss, it is typical that you will have regular catchups and at least an annual review of your performance (ideally more frequent). But when you work for a gr...
Subscribing To AVC
For many years, there were three ways to subscribe to AVC: 1/ Email – Get new posts delivered to your inbox 2/ RSS – Get new posts delivered to your RSS reader 3/ X – Follow AVC on X X revoked the API access that I was using to autopost three or four months ago. I have not been active on that service for almost a year now and have no interest in dealing with it. So if you are one of the 25.5k followers on X and want to keep getting alerted when I post, I suggest you go with option 1 or option...
Subscribing To AVC
For many years, there were three ways to subscribe to AVC: 1/ Email – Get new posts delivered to your inbox 2/ RSS – Get new posts delivered to your RSS reader 3/ X – Follow AVC on X X revoked the API access that I was using to autopost three or four months ago. I have not been active on that service for almost a year now and have no interest in dealing with it. So if you are one of the 25.5k followers on X and want to keep getting alerted when I post, I suggest you go with option 1 or option...
