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AVCSleep
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...
AVCMirror
I have written many times here that it is important to me that I control the platform that I publish on. I use the open-source WordPress software for my content management system and run that on a hosted server. I use my own domain, AVC.com, to locate my writings on the Internet. That has served me well. No matter how horrible I become, nobody is going to take me down. But we can go even further down this path of controlling our destiny. We can decentralize the entire thing; the content manag...
AVCOpen 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...
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AVCSleep
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...
AVCMirror
I have written many times here that it is important to me that I control the platform that I publish on. I use the open-source WordPress software for my content management system and run that on a hosted server. I use my own domain, AVC.com, to locate my writings on the Internet. That has served me well. No matter how horrible I become, nobody is going to take me down. But we can go even further down this path of controlling our destiny. We can decentralize the entire thing; the content manag...
AVCOpen 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...
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
I am a fan of and a practioner of investing in risky assets. I believe you must take significant risk to earn significant returns.
But I also am a huge fan of diversification when holding a lot of risky assets. It has been easier for USV to get into new sectors, like crypto and climate for example, knowing that we also have large positions in other parts of the early stage tech sector.
When crypto went crazy in 2017 and then blew up, it was mostly a blip in our portfolio values. The same was true in the second quarter of this year when crypto had a big pullback.
This is not an argument against crypto only funds. USV has invested in a number of them and so have the Gotham Gal and I. But I would not be comfortable with a portfolio that was only crypto funds. I like to have a mix of assets, ideally uncorrelated, in our portfolio.
An asset class that I really like as a hedge against early stage tech sector risk is real estate. The Gotham Gal and I own a lot of income producing real estate and it feels very uncorrelated to early stage tech.
But there are many ways to get diversification. If you don’t want to think about your investments, something I cannot bring myself to do, then a stock index fund or a portfolio of stock index funds, and some fixed income funds can get you the diversification you need. But the level of risk taking in that strategy is a lot lower.
But regardless of how you get there, it is very important that you not have all of your eggs in one basket. That basket can drop and then you have a mess.
I am a fan of and a practioner of investing in risky assets. I believe you must take significant risk to earn significant returns.
But I also am a huge fan of diversification when holding a lot of risky assets. It has been easier for USV to get into new sectors, like crypto and climate for example, knowing that we also have large positions in other parts of the early stage tech sector.
When crypto went crazy in 2017 and then blew up, it was mostly a blip in our portfolio values. The same was true in the second quarter of this year when crypto had a big pullback.
This is not an argument against crypto only funds. USV has invested in a number of them and so have the Gotham Gal and I. But I would not be comfortable with a portfolio that was only crypto funds. I like to have a mix of assets, ideally uncorrelated, in our portfolio.
An asset class that I really like as a hedge against early stage tech sector risk is real estate. The Gotham Gal and I own a lot of income producing real estate and it feels very uncorrelated to early stage tech.
But there are many ways to get diversification. If you don’t want to think about your investments, something I cannot bring myself to do, then a stock index fund or a portfolio of stock index funds, and some fixed income funds can get you the diversification you need. But the level of risk taking in that strategy is a lot lower.
But regardless of how you get there, it is very important that you not have all of your eggs in one basket. That basket can drop and then you have a mess.
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