We had a situation recently where a rooftop solar project on a building we own became too expensive (because of NYC Fire Department requirements) and it no longer made economic sense to do the installation. And yet we want to avail ourselves of solar energy to benefit from the economics of solar, to reduce our carbon footprint, and to increase the resiliency of our property. So we are reaching out to some community solar developers in NYC who have built out solar infrastructure that the commu...

I backed this project last week and think the idea is really great. You put a Terra device outside where you hear the sounds of birds in nature and you can then listen to those sounds indoors. There are also features that let you identify the species of birds and track their migration. The video is here.

If I am going to be outside much, I need to wear a hat to keep the sun off my face. My light skin doesn’t react well to the sun. I like baseball-style hats, but I don’t like wearing logos. So this Kickstarter project got my attention. Fun stylish hats without logos, made with sustainable materials. Right up my alley. I backed it immediately. You can watch the video here.

So this is pretty cool. Dirt is a daily newsletter about the entertainment industry. The folks behind Dirt are funding it with a crowdfunding campaign on Mirror using NFTs. There are three Dirt NFTs you can buy, a single edition called Rainbow Wave, an edition of 30 called Pearl Pink, and an edition of 100 called Pea Green. I bought a Pea Green just now for .05 ETH: Dirty S1 Pea Green If you want to join this crowdfunding campaign, connect with your Coinbase browser extension or the Metamask ...

Digital Asset Mining is shorthand for “proof of work consensus validation of public blockchain infrastructure”. Thankfully we have the shorthand. But it is important to understand what digital asset mining is. Public blockchains, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, store data securely but publicly in a cooperative ecosystem that is not controlled by any company or government. When you store data on a public blockchain, it is your data, secured by your keys, and nobody can do anything to it without you...

On Monday, a copy of Startup CXO, my friend Matt Blumberg’s new book, arrived at the USV office. I picked it up to take a quick look and thought “this a heavy book!” So I texted Matt, congratulated him on getting the book out, and then asked why it was so heavy. He replied “because it is 640 pages, there is a section on every C-level function in that book.” That’s when I realized that Startup CXO is not really a book. It’s a “field manual” to scaling a leadership team and company. It is the k...

I am working on a new weekday routine the goal of which is to give me more time to read, think, and meet in person and less zoom meetings and phone calls. I am also mixing up my morning routine and attempting to sleep and work out longer. The net of all that is I am seeking a new time of day to write and I have not yet found it. I may need to go back to writing first thing in the morning but I am not yet sold on that. I missed my daily blog post yesterday and finally found some time to write ...

I was rooting for Phil Mickelson all weekend to win the PGA at age 50. I’ve watched Phil for thirty years and I’ve seen all of the highs and lows and there have been many. He plays the game of golf with a level of creativity that can often lead to problems. He is a risk-taker which isn’t always the best way to approach a golf course. But this weekend at the PGA, he was simply better than anyone else. He hit the ball as far as players thirty years younger than he is. And he showed off his incr...

Jun 11, 2021 I just backed this project. I love the idea of a simple deck of cards that can let anyone or any group design a website without any software or device. So many times, I have known pretty much what I want for a website for a project, an event, a new business, or whatever, but I am a terrible sketcher and I don’t know how to use the software tools that web designers use. A deck of cards would be ideal for me and probably a lot of other people too. You can watch the video here.

I’ve written a bunch about the globalization of the startup economy. You can start and build a tech company almost anywhere these days. That has been true for at least the last decade. But until very recently, raising capital for your startup was significantly easier if it was located in the major startup hubs, most notably Silicon Valley. I believe the pandemic changed that equation dramatically and USV’s “deal log” is a great example of that. When I look at all of the opportunities we are c...

One of the biggest challenges for developers building on Ethereum’s market leading smart contract platform/blockchain are the high fees and slow transactions. These issues arise from the fact that the Ethereum blockchain’s current architecture is not particularly scalable. The Ethereum core developers have been working on these issues for years and there are changes coming in the core Ethereum protocol that will help with scalability. But the broader Ethereum community is not relying entirely...

I am returning to a topic that I have talked a lot about on this blog. A number of years ago at our annual CEO Summit, we had Angela Duckworth speak to our portfolio about Grit, the topic of her excellent book on the subject. In Angela’s research, she determined that the single greatest determinant of success was not talent. It was grit. I was reminded of that last night as I watched Derrick Rose lead the New York Knicks to a must win in game two of their series against the Atlanta Hawks. The...