We have been coming to Paris regularly for about 15 years and back in 2008, I started using the Velib bike share system and wrote about it here. A lot has changed in a decade and a half when it comes to biking in Paris. There are more bikes, more bike lanes, and more bikers. Velib is still a big piece of the Paris bike scene and they have a ton of pedal assist e-bikes in the system now. At most kiosks I see about half regular and half e-bikes. I wish NYC’s Citibike system had that mix in thei...

Are you a New Yorker doing something amazing and could use $200,000 to support your work? If so, you should apply for a David Prize. I have written about this program before so you might remember. But for those who haven’t heard about it, here’s the deal:Here are the most recent cohort of David Prize winners: ● Cesar Vargas: Fighting for immigrants in the armed forces and their right to stay in the U.S. ● Fela Barclift: Sparking academic excellence and positive self-esteem among NYC’s younges...

On Tuesday night the Gotham Gal and I boarded an overnight flight at JFK and arrived in Paris on Wednesday morning. That sounds like a normal thing to do and it is something we have been doing together since we met forty years ago. But we have not done any international travel since November of 2019 due to the Covid pandemic. So for us, it is quite a thrill to be traveling again. I took this photo last night walking back from an evening out on the town.Being in Europe is different. The langua...

I’ve been hearing the term Metaverse for at least twenty years and I have always struggled with it. As I told my colleagues last week “I like the real world, I don’t want to live in a video game.” My colleagues explained to me that I am thinking about it incorrectly. They said that as digitally mediated experiences have become a more important part of our everyday lives, we are already living in the metaverse. I’ve started thinking about it that way and it has helped me to be more enthusiasti...

We have been seeing quite a few seed rounds getting done in and around $100mm post-money and that concerns me for a few reasons:Seed stage is when a company has a good team, a good idea, but has not yet proven product market fit and a go to market model, and has not yet demonstrated a sustainable business model.These investments have a high failure rate. In my experience, roughly half of seed stage investments fail completely, wiping out everyone’s investment, including the founding team’s.Th...

A number of friends have been asking us how to buy crypto assets. This is not the first time we’ve gotten this question and it won’t be the last. When I first started getting this question, my answer was “open a Coinbase account and buy Bitcoin.” Then there was a period when my answer was “open a Coinbase account and buy Bitcoin and Ethereum.” Today, my answer is “open a Coinbase account and buy a diverse set of crypto assets.” A diverse set of crypto assets would include Bitcoin, Ethereum, t...

My friend Stephen sent me a text with a link to this Kickstarter project. I backed it immediately and went one step further than I ordinarily do, I bought a pre-order copy of the book. The NBA is back in season, I went to the opener on Weds night here in NYC, and it was a thrill to be in the arena watching incredible athletes play my favorite game to watch. So I am excited to get this book and put it on my coffee table. I will have endless fun rifling through the pages. And if you are an NBA ...

We own a fair number of NFTs that I have collected since 2017 when I was buying Rare Pepes and CryptoKitties. We have accumulated a nice collection of Top Shots and a bunch of other NFTs as well. But I don’t want to sell our NFTs. We also don’t like to sell the art we have collected over the years. We also don’t like to sell the crypto assets we hold. But I am very interested in swapping NFTs for other ones. Here’s how I would imagine an NFT swapping service would work. 1/ I visit the swappin...

I backed this project this morning. The Tether Bike Light is “a bike safety device that projects a safe zone around your bike, responds to road users around you, identifying safe and unsafe roads in your city.” I like the idea that “locations of overtakes are recorded to identify safe and unsafe zones in your city to help plan safer routing.” That is very cool. Here’s the video if you want to learn more.

I remember about fifteen years ago, a well-known VC said to me “you need to sell a company within a few years of the founder leaving. Companies can’t sustain their innovation after a founder leaves.” I told that VC that my experience has been different on that measure and that I did not agree. I have seen leadership teams take over great businesses from founders and get them to the next level. Etsy, where I am Chair of the Board and a large shareholder, is a great example of that. There are m...

Now that we are beginning to see what consumer applications are like in the decentralized web (web3), it is interesting to compare that to what consumer applications are like in the centralized web (web2). It became clear early in the 2000s that the big opportunity in the web would be to build large networks of engaged users. That was USV’s initial web2 thesis:USV in 140 characters: invest in large networks of engaged users, differentiated by user experience, and defensible though network eff...

When you look at the recent Q3 numbers on seed and early-stage VC fundraising, you might think we are in the late stages of a VC bubble:The words I would use to describe the current environment in early-stage VC are “fast and furious.” And yet the thing that makes me think this could be the new normal and not the late stages of a bubble is the dramatic increase in the number of people who are choosing to work in or form new startups. It has never been easier to start a company, build a team, ...