Dad. Techno-optimist. I help tell the story of the world's best seed-stage venture capital firm – @fcollective. Formerly Wired, NASA, RISD. 🇻🇦
Live free or die
Joined July 2008
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If you're able to tuck in a healthy, peacefully sleeping child into a warm bed in a safe home, you've won the lottery of life.
Property taxes remind me of cable bundles.
Everyone complained about paying for channels they never watched, then complained about having to pay for so many streaming services to recreate the experience.
I think there are limits to à la carte government.
If you're lonely or bored, just go to church.
Even if you're not the "church type," there's likely one near you that matches your political preferences and downplays the theology in favor of community service.
The doors of loneliness are locked from the inside.
Things my boomer parents did as adults to entertain themselves:
- played cards at friends' house
- had friend over to practice guitar
- had friend over to help with DIY projects
- bike rides
- potlucks
- socials in church basement
- club meetings
- sitting on the neighbor's porch talking
- reading library books
- walks
- classes at YMCA
I'm surprised there aren't more humanities grad students who have built podcasts/YouTube channels.
I assume it largely comes down to the kinds of people who self-select (and are selected by) grad programs, but it seems like a natural way to demonstrate research/teaching skills.
Raising capital is risky, and the more you raise, the riskier it becomes.
VCs have a portfolio, but you have only one career and a limited number of prime-earning years.
Invest them wisely!
Foursquare was acquired last month. The outcome was disappointing. It's taken me a while to write this, but I think I'm finally done grieving it. Here are some thoughts on our final years, an effort to honor the team who helped build & maintain FSQ's legacy, and my attempt to finally get some closure. teendrama.substack.com/p/som…
Joe Flaherty retweeted
Prediction for 2027: a few funds give capital "back" and shrink the size of their already raised funds.
Not out of conscience. Indigestion. Partners start leaving as the cycle cools, exits don’t come, LPs with no distributions finally have leverage.
CRV did it in 2002, cutting $1.2B to $450M. Did it again in 2024. Founders Fund halved its fund in 2023.
But it’s hard, and anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t run the math on their own firm: the fee stream is juicy. Easier for me to say this with a small fund (:
The tech you grew up with influences your POV:
Gen X / Elder Millennials:
Desktop → Internet → Mobile → Social → AI
Gen Z:
Social → Crypto → NFTs → Zoom school → AI
It’s easier to get excited about tech when earlier waves expanded your world rather than robbed it.
It’s easy to define consciousness in a way that excludes AI. Do you have the courage to apply that definition to humans?
Ben Affleck says AI is simply matrix multiplication, linear algebra and floating point calculations, and however convincingly it sounds like a person, it has nothing to do with thought, humanity or feeling
“Nor do I believe, and I think it’s important to draw the distinction between what AI does, which is simply predict the next token or the next word in a sentence, then add that word on, run it back to the machine, do a lot of computation and pick the next word."
"That is a very different thing than sentience or thought. And I think we need to be really clear about that because it can be convincingly, in an illusory way, sound like thought or like a person."
"But let’s be real clear. This is matrix multiplication. This is linear algebra. These are floating point calculations. It has nothing to do with thought, humanity, or feeling.”
I've seen a lot of explainers about why food prices have risen so much over the last five years, but I'm more curious about the sorcery that keeps bananas at $0.20 each.
Capitalism is amazing.
Excited that a brave entrepreneur relaunched the LawnDarts™ brand, just in time for holiday shopping season!
Crowdfunding is a great example of an idea that seems like it would "change everything," and was pitched as such, but just doesn't outside a few niche use cases.
"Humans will find a way" was the argument when we shipped jobs overseas. And most did!
Also, every year for the next 35 years, 75,000 individual humans died "deaths of despair."
We like to think we outgrew human sacrifice, but the god of Progress demands its tribute.
Half a dozen of these castoffs would be better than any other book cover produced this year.
I’m still mourning the cover affectionately known as “Building Man”— but I love where we landed on BUILT TO GROW press.stripe.com/built-to-gr…
The evolution:
DIY electronics enthusiasts make 3D printers possible.
3D printer fans popularize CAD.
Combined, these bring holography within reach of hobbyists.
One obscure technical pastime lays the groundwork for another.
The butterfly effect for builders.
HT: ggscience.net/
There's a @formlabs iMac!
A $699 resin printer with Formlabs-quality software and resin is a great value. Limited-edition transparent plastic, too!
formlabs.com/blog/announcing…
