One way I have described myself is as a "professional amateur".  I am both deeply proud and deeply ashamed of that.  Let me explain. For basically my whole career, I've been learning new fields and professions from the outside-in.  While I have an undergrad degree in Urban Studies, which ostensibly prepared me for interdisciplinary work regarding cities (and you could argue that's exactly how my career has turned out), in practice I've spent the past 15 years learning other stuff and basically pretending to be a professional at it.  Design, programming, running a startup, tech policy, law, activism, "internet architecture", market structure, venture finance.  In every case I've ended up diving in despite not really knowing anything, and figured it out as I went along. (An aside: it's pretty hard to do this without the internet.  Curious about history?  Start reading some Wikipedia articles.  Want to learn to code?  Head over to Codecademy, then make best friends with StackOverflow.  Confused by a legal term?  Google it.  Need to install shingles on your roof?  There are YouTubes for that.  So, it's easier than ever to be kind of good at something.  Which is so fun.) I also enjoy lots of different things, and feel like I'm better than average at most of them, (though I'm sure that's a fallacy): baseball, singing, carpentry, ice skating, writing, cooking, water skiing, juggling, tennis, playing drums, playing piano, rock climbing, etc.  I am not the best at any of them, but I take a lot of pleasure from all of them. The good way of looking at this is that I can confidently call myself a curious person.  And generally think of myself as capable,  Curious and capable.  I like that.  I can get behind that. The bad way of looking at this is that it lacks focus.  And probably dedication & determination.  Feeling stuck on that music thing?  Fuck it, go build a shed. And, it's in tension with the idea of a "Half, not half-assed" approach.  Do less, but do it really well.   Then move on to the next thing.  I admire that approach, and really do believe it's central to building a successful product. But it's hard to pull off -- as Eddie Wharton put it on Twitter yesterday: "the best ideas are easy to articulate, but hard to master." So, that's the context.  I'm not looking for any answers, but just putting that out there in an effort to understand my real self.  But reflecting on this, perhaps there are a few rays of hope: 1) "Half, not half-assed" can apply to a lot of different things, and you could argue it's more about tight execution and shipping than it is about a more broadly restricted agenda (37 signals, who coined that term, built lots of small, successful apps -- though they ultimately shed them all and re-focused on Basecamp).  Maybe it's fine to have lots of interests, and to invest time in different things, but make sure you actually ship.  And when you do, make sure it's tight, focused, and not half-assed. (For example, USV has a relatively narrow investment thesis that constrains our outlook, but still ends up applying very broadly across sectors) 2) Perhaps having a "beginners mind" is a "deep" skill unto itself.  It certainly fits with the VC business, where one hour you're talking healthcare and the next, video distribution.  As Andy points out, there are plenty of times when that's not enough, but perhaps it's something. So, there you have it. For better and worse, here I am: a semi-pro, semi-proud, professional amateur.

My favorite book on product development and startups is Getting Real, published in 2006 by the folks at 37signals (now Basecamp).  If you haven't read it (it's freely available online), it's essentially a precursor to The Lean Startup (2011). Back when I was leading a team and running product and OpenPlans, it was like my bible. The copy we had at the office was tattered and torn. One of my favorite ideas / chapters from the book is: "Half, Not Half-Assed".  It's short, so I'll just include the whole thing here:

Build half a product, not a half-ass product Beware of the "everything but the kitchen sink" approach to web app development. Throw in every decent idea that comes along and you'll just wind up with a half-assed version of your product. What you really want to do is build half a product that kicks ass. Stick to what's truly essential. Good ideas can be tabled. Take whatever you think your product should be and cut it in half. Pare features down until you're left with only the most essential ones. Then do it again. With Basecamp, we started with just the messages section. We knew that was the heart of the app so we ignored milestones, to-do lists, and other items for the time being. That let us base future decisions on real world usage instead of hunches. Start off with a lean, smart app and let it gain traction. Then you can start to add to the solid foundation you've built.

This is so important and also so hard to do.  Despite having appreciated this idea since 2006, and having told it to others countless times, I still have not mastered it, and still find myself falling in love with features and ideas that really just end up diluting my efforts. I've been thinking about this because last week I had this exact advice delivered to me on two separate occasions, regarding two things we're building at USV; once from Brittany and once from Fred.  In both cases they were right, and the advice was important and helpful. So, there it is. Nearly 9 years later, still important and still helpful, still cleverly-titled :-)

There has been a lot of debate about how to protect Internet Freedom. Today, Senator Ted Cruz has an op-ed in the Washington Post on the subject, which starts out with an eloquent and spot-on assessment of what we are trying to protect:

Never before has it been so easy to take an idea and turn it into a business. With a simple Internet connection, some ingenuity and a lot of hard work, anyone today can create a new service or app or start selling products nationwide.

In the past, such a person would have to know the right people and be able to raise substantial start-up capital to get a brick-and-mortar store running. Not anymore. The Internet is the great equalizer when it comes to jobs and opportunity. We should make a commitment, right now, to keep it that way.

This is absolutely what this is about. The ability for any person -- a teenager in Des Moines, a grandmother in Brazil, or a shop owner in Norway -- to get online and start writing, selling, streaming, performing, and transacting -- with pretty much anyone in the world (outside of China). This is the magic of the internet.  Right there. By essentially a happy accident, we have created the single most open and vibrant marketplace in the history of the world.  The most democratizing, power-generating, market-making thing ever.  And the core reason behind this: on the internet you don't have to ask anyone's permission to get started. And that "anyone" is not just the government -- as we're used to asking the government for permission for lots of things, like drivers licenses, business licenses, etc. In fact, more importantly -- "anyone" means the carriers whose lines you need to cross to reach an audience on the internet.  A blogger doesn't have to ask Comcast's or Verizon's permission to reach its subscribers.  Neither does a small merchant, or an indie musician or filmmaker. Contrast that with how cable TV works -- in order to reach an audience, you need to cut a deal with a channel, who in turn needs to cut a deal with a carrier, before you can reach anyone.  It is completely out of the realm of possibility for me to create my own TV station in the Cable model.  In the Internet model, I can do that in 5 minutes without asking anyone's permission. What we don't want is an internet that works like Cable TV. So I agree with Ted Cruz -- his description of the internet is exactly the one I believe in and want to fight for. But where I think he and many others miss the point is that Internet Freedom is not just about freedom from government intervention, it's freedom from powerful gatekeepers, who would prefer to make the internet look like Cable TV, controlling and restricting the mega marketplace we've been so lucky to take part in. Let's not let that happen. p.s., I would encourage any conservatives pondering this issue to read James J. Heaney's powerful and in-depth case for "Why Free Marketeers Want to Regulate the Internet"