USV Team Posts

Mrs. Crystal,Athttps://medium.com/@bethany…just read your “The Creation Story of Women in VC”.I’ve seen way too much in suffering women and hate to see women suffer, and with your “story” it appears that there is a lot of chance of more such suffering. So, I was THRILLED to see yourIf in 2016, it was “scandalous” for me to wear a floral dress to my wedding … So, you got MARRIED!!!!!! FANTASTIC!!!!Now the chances of suffering went way down! Terrific!And it looks like you have a really lucky husband! I wish the best for both of you.But for this stuff about “women in X” for X as VC, medicine, finance, law, the military, academic research, running large businesses, etc., “Monsters be there.”.Uh, in simple terms, “women in X” has high promise of creating weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree.Uh, I tried that: She was a really good candidate. Lucky you, or really anyone else, were trying to do well and not in a class with her because the best result would have been second place. She was Valedictorian, Summa Cum Laude, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, PBK, an NSF Fellow (two years in one award), and high end research university Ph.D. She tried really hard but could have won much the same without trying at all: E.g., she wanted to take a course in European History but didn’t want to work hard enough at it to make an A so audited the class. It was a lecture hall class with 300 students. The professor wanted the audits also to take the tests, so she did. At the end of the course, the professor told her she should have taken the course for credit because she had the highest score in the class and would have made an A. That’s when she didn’t even try.Since I spent enough time in academics to get a high end, research university Ph.D., I saw a lot of bright people; she was genuinely brilliant, the really talented kind.She didn’t need much sleep; trying to keep her hours, I’d soon be flat on my back.So, now I’ve got no wife and no children.Darwin is on the case with a severe solution: Another few generations of this “women in X” stuff, and there will be nearly no more women susceptible to that stuff.I noticed yourBack in 1957 when the post-war economy was once again beginning to pick up, a small group spun out of Fairchild Camera and Instrument that set out to make semiconductors out of silicon transistors. Uh, a silicon transistor actually, really, IS a semiconductor. That it is a semiconductor is much of the genius, magnificent, top, center crown jewel of civilization, of a transistor and Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain and one of the grand victories of quantum mechanics.Has our history really been dictated solely by men? Definitely not only no but hell no. In fact “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” Behind nearly each man who did something big and got famous was a mother who did a really good job.What did his mother do? She did really well with child development, e.g., with a lot or all of emotional, verbal, psychological, social, creative, artistic, empathetic, moral, ethical, religious, athletic, academic, mechanical, rational, quantitative, scientific, technical, romantic, entrepreneurial, etc. development.The contributions of women in the Revolutionary War and the roles they played on the “home front” secured about 350 words of real estate, compared to the pages dedicated to retelling battle stories and the generals who championed each one. To hell with the generals. Again, the main credit goes to the mother who did well with child development. E.g., get a little insight into Ike and Patton — they owe nearly all of it to their mothers.https://www.eisenhower.arch…https://s-media-cache-ak0.p…Women’s stories are sidebars. Men’s stories are the main narrative. Nonsense. And in a few more generations, Darwin will have that nonsense eradicated.I wonder about that today, as we stand on the precipice of a potentially game-changing world of blockchain and crypto-currencies, an area of technology that has the potential to be just as disruptive. Not a chance. Not even an itsy bitsy, teeny tiny, itty bitty microscopic drop of a chance: Instead, one of the main, and crucially necessary, supporting pillars of everything about “blockchain and crypto-currencies” is “semiconductors”. So, everything about “blockchain and crypto-currencies” just adds to the grand value of semiconductors so that semiconductors will always be bigger than “blockchain and crypto-currencies”. And, how much is added? Considering the value of semiconductors, only a tiny fraction of what is already there.Was she in the first meetings with Fairchild Semiconductor? Was she equally enthusiastic about the prospect of what this technology could bring to the world? There was no doubt about the value. There had been no doubt since before WWII when Bell Labs started the effort to make a solid state electronic amplifier. Transistors were definitely NOT mere happenstance; instead, they were desperately needed because the only alternative for the Bell system and much of civilization was old, too hot, too large, too expensive, too unreliable, too noisy vacuum tubes.WWII interrupted the work, and after the war as soon as Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain — who knew just what the heck they were doing; just why they were doing it; and just how to do it — had their results, Bell Labs, seeing the value, gave the patent rights to the world. Gee, if Bell Labs had gotten, say, one penny royalty per transistor, considering that now commonly can buy one chip with 100 million transistors for $10, Bell would own the world and everything in it. From the start of the project by Bell from before WWII, there was no question about the value.”Equally enthusiastic”? Hopeless; of course not.Also at Bell Labs, R. Hamming was working with the abstract algebra of finite fields. Waste of time, right? Not exactly: He got us going with error correcting codes, now crucial to nearly everything in digital computing, communications, and storage.Other big names at Bell Labs included C. Shannon and J. Tukey.Bell Labs did a LOT of just super good stuff. They knew it was good stuff, just why they were doing it, and just how to do it.So rather than pursue politics or finance (like most of her brothers), she took the safer route: philanthropy. So, who’s the most influential person in philanthropy in the world? Well, Bill Gates was playing cards with Warren Buffett and Melinda got to talking to both of them. Presto, bingo, she got both of them to sign her “giving pledge” or some such to donate half their fortune to philanthropy. Then she got lots more wealthy people to do the same.So, for the really big bucks in philanthropy, the real power, the real mover and shaker, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Gates, Buffett, Bloomberg, …? Nope: Chalk that victory up to Melinda.If she had stepped up, I’m fairly certain that she wouldn’t have named the firm Rockefeller Brothers, and maybe her taking the lead would have attracted the attention of the Vanderbilts, which may have inspired one of their female descendants to do the same. Maybe that “first follower” effect would have catalyzed our society into one where the wealthiest and most high-powered women are the ones who take on the tech industry, snowballing us into a world where today, the tech scene is less like a frat party and more like a high-brow, old-school women’s club, where women CEOs are more prevalent than men and where men wind up taking entry-level positions as office managers as any way possible to break into the industry and hopefully earn their way up the chain of command. Here you are beginning to sound like an angry, resentful, combative, competitive, nasty woman.That’s not the opportunity, not how things work. A girl of 4 can have her daddy totally wrapped around her little finger where he’d move mountains to avoid a single tear, even a frown. Instead, nearly the happiest he ever is is when she is smiling at him from being happy being his daughter. She is a privileged character, regarded as an angel, treated like a princess.Beating her brothers at football, basketball, changing a tire on a car, getting Linux to run on a Raspberry Pi, taking the lawn mower apart enough to get the wax from old gas out of the gas tank, fixing the fuel line on the trimmer broken from being brittle from ethanol in the gas, showing how to use Euclidean construction on triangle ABC to construct E on AB and D on BC so that the lengths AE = ED = DB, etc. is NOT her path.What you outlined won’t work: That will work less well than women in the NFL, on the first play get knocked into nickel seats, and NBA, get stuffed into the basket.Or, for “blockchain and crypto-currencies,” in addition to semiconductors, there is another pillar — new work in pure and applied mathematics.IMHO, for the future of information and computer technology, the main pillar of the really big results will be original work in pure and applied math.Men aren’t worth a darn at ballet and are there just to help the women. The women can be gorgeous, graceful, elegant, artistically expressive, etc. beyond all belief.In pure/applied math, the situation is the same except reversed: The women are there to smile at the men who do the good work.Yes, there are some exceptions for both ballet and math, but they are tiny fractions of the whole.In the E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, there is a summary remark:Men and women deserve equal respect as persons but are not the same. Women who try to fight that statement are in line to be weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree with their genes out of the gene pool and finally bringing the end of this “women in X” stuff and, finally, the end of the Betty Friedan, Communist sabotage shot in the gut of the US and its strength, brilliant, devastating.For this “women in X” stuff, I’ve been there, tried that, as part of trying blew a HUGE fraction of my life (e.g., walked out on being worth about $500 million from FedEx stock; missed out on maybe that much from Wall Street; etc.), and have the scars to prove it. Also missed out on wife and children.In simple terms, for “women in X”, don’t do that; don’t try it; don’t even think about it.I know a guy with more insight than I had. His wife wanted to go to law school and then use the legal system to drag the miscreants before the bar of justice and, thus, to save the world. Right, as Inspector Clouseau might say, “The old save the world ploy.”. So, he told her, “Yes, dear. Of course dear. Of COURSE you are going to law school. So, lean back here and think only about law school ….” And she tried. Soon outside her closed door where she was studying law, her two, young daughters were crying for their mother, and that was the end of law school and the start of some years of a really nice family. Smart husband.

Comments (Archived):

JimHirshfield Jul 19, 2017

I’ve noticed. Good discovery tool.
kenberger Jul 19, 2017

actually, the email I receive (via Feedblitz) shows this feature too.
1. onowahoo Jul 19, 2017
  
  I have been seeing team posts on Feedblitz email too for a while as well. I seem to get the Feedblitz email up to a few hours after the blog is posted here. Is anyone else having this issue?
2. Anne Libby Jul 19, 2017
  
  Ditto.
3. Nick Grossman Jul 19, 2017
  
  yes, that’s right — it’s in the email too
awaldstein Jul 19, 2017

Yup–old school approach works perfectly for the goal.
Geoff Jul 19, 2017

Is it a standard WP Widget?
1. Nick Grossman Jul 19, 2017
  
  No, we aggregate the rss feeds using Zapier and then serve the widget JS from USV.com
Twain Twain Jul 19, 2017

USV’s investment partners should make it a priority to train Bethany to become an investment partner. Her comments about women being treated as “sidebars” in history instead of the main narrative is a sad reflection of bias.
1. Matt Zagaja Jul 20, 2017
  
  A large part of the problem with the new economy is that companies can’t/won’t train anymore. It’s all churn and burn.
creative group Jul 19, 2017

CONTRIBUTORS:AVC blog received via email. Anti-Virus, firewalls and VPN work more efficiently with old school tools. Allows us to see who is attempting to walk through that door.We regularly venture into Albert’s view. Happy to support all women promoted in the AVC community with the ability to enhance our point of view.
IamJJ Jul 19, 2017

@Fred – I too have been seeing “Team Posts” in email beginning with your May 29th edition. *Really* interesting seeing alternative USV perspectives.
William Mougayar Jul 19, 2017

Good old RSS. People keep want to kill it but it’s still there. Just like Bitcoin. They have many lives.
DJL Jul 19, 2017

I am seeing these in the email as well. Good stuff (after all, how much Fred can someone read in a week?)
BillMcNeely Jul 19, 2017

I love the widget. Loving Nick’s stuff
1. Nick Grossman Jul 19, 2017
  
  Thanks Bill!
mikenolan99 Jul 19, 2017

My blog got hacked about a year ago, and I haven’t taken the time to re-boot. Seems like now is a pretty darn good time…
sigmaalgebra Jul 20, 2017

Mrs. Crystal,Athttps://medium.com/@bethany…just read your “The Creation Story of Women in VC”.I’ve seen way too much in suffering women and hate to see women suffer, and with your “story” it appears that there is a lot of chance of more such suffering. So, I was THRILLED to see yourIf in 2016, it was “scandalous” for me to wear a floral dress to my wedding … So, you got MARRIED!!!!!! FANTASTIC!!!!Now the chances of suffering went way down! Terrific!And it looks like you have a really lucky husband! I wish the best for both of you.But for this stuff about “women in X” for X as VC, medicine, finance, law, the military, academic research, running large businesses, etc., “Monsters be there.”.Uh, in simple terms, “women in X” has high promise of creating weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree.Uh, I tried that: She was a really good candidate. Lucky you, or really anyone else, were trying to do well and not in a class with her because the best result would have been second place. She was Valedictorian, Summa Cum Laude, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, PBK, an NSF Fellow (two years in one award), and high end research university Ph.D. She tried really hard but could have won much the same without trying at all: E.g., she wanted to take a course in European History but didn’t want to work hard enough at it to make an A so audited the class. It was a lecture hall class with 300 students. The professor wanted the audits also to take the tests, so she did. At the end of the course, the professor told her she should have taken the course for credit because she had the highest score in the class and would have made an A. That’s when she didn’t even try.Since I spent enough time in academics to get a high end, research university Ph.D., I saw a lot of bright people; she was genuinely brilliant, the really talented kind.She didn’t need much sleep; trying to keep her hours, I’d soon be flat on my back.So, now I’ve got no wife and no children.Darwin is on the case with a severe solution: Another few generations of this “women in X” stuff, and there will be nearly no more women susceptible to that stuff.I noticed yourBack in 1957 when the post-war economy was once again beginning to pick up, a small group spun out of Fairchild Camera and Instrument that set out to make semiconductors out of silicon transistors. Uh, a silicon transistor actually, really, IS a semiconductor. That it is a semiconductor is much of the genius, magnificent, top, center crown jewel of civilization, of a transistor and Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain and one of the grand victories of quantum mechanics.Has our history really been dictated solely by men? Definitely not only no but hell no. In fact “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” Behind nearly each man who did something big and got famous was a mother who did a really good job.What did his mother do? She did really well with child development, e.g., with a lot or all of emotional, verbal, psychological, social, creative, artistic, empathetic, moral, ethical, religious, athletic, academic, mechanical, rational, quantitative, scientific, technical, romantic, entrepreneurial, etc. development.The contributions of women in the Revolutionary War and the roles they played on the “home front” secured about 350 words of real estate, compared to the pages dedicated to retelling battle stories and the generals who championed each one. To hell with the generals. Again, the main credit goes to the mother who did well with child development. E.g., get a little insight into Ike and Patton — they owe nearly all of it to their mothers.https://www.eisenhower.arch…https://s-media-cache-ak0.p…Women’s stories are sidebars. Men’s stories are the main narrative. Nonsense. And in a few more generations, Darwin will have that nonsense eradicated.I wonder about that today, as we stand on the precipice of a potentially game-changing world of blockchain and crypto-currencies, an area of technology that has the potential to be just as disruptive. Not a chance. Not even an itsy bitsy, teeny tiny, itty bitty microscopic drop of a chance: Instead, one of the main, and crucially necessary, supporting pillars of everything about “blockchain and crypto-currencies” is “semiconductors”. So, everything about “blockchain and crypto-currencies” just adds to the grand value of semiconductors so that semiconductors will always be bigger than “blockchain and crypto-currencies”. And, how much is added? Considering the value of semiconductors, only a tiny fraction of what is already there.Was she in the first meetings with Fairchild Semiconductor? Was she equally enthusiastic about the prospect of what this technology could bring to the world? There was no doubt about the value. There had been no doubt since before WWII when Bell Labs started the effort to make a solid state electronic amplifier. Transistors were definitely NOT mere happenstance; instead, they were desperately needed because the only alternative for the Bell system and much of civilization was old, too hot, too large, too expensive, too unreliable, too noisy vacuum tubes.WWII interrupted the work, and after the war as soon as Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain — who knew just what the heck they were doing; just why they were doing it; and just how to do it — had their results, Bell Labs, seeing the value, gave the patent rights to the world. Gee, if Bell Labs had gotten, say, one penny royalty per transistor, considering that now commonly can buy one chip with 100 million transistors for $10, Bell would own the world and everything in it. From the start of the project by Bell from before WWII, there was no question about the value.”Equally enthusiastic”? Hopeless; of course not.Also at Bell Labs, R. Hamming was working with the abstract algebra of finite fields. Waste of time, right? Not exactly: He got us going with error correcting codes, now crucial to nearly everything in digital computing, communications, and storage.Other big names at Bell Labs included C. Shannon and J. Tukey.Bell Labs did a LOT of just super good stuff. They knew it was good stuff, just why they were doing it, and just how to do it.So rather than pursue politics or finance (like most of her brothers), she took the safer route: philanthropy. So, who’s the most influential person in philanthropy in the world? Well, Bill Gates was playing cards with Warren Buffett and Melinda got to talking to both of them. Presto, bingo, she got both of them to sign her “giving pledge” or some such to donate half their fortune to philanthropy. Then she got lots more wealthy people to do the same.So, for the really big bucks in philanthropy, the real power, the real mover and shaker, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Gates, Buffett, Bloomberg, …? Nope: Chalk that victory up to Melinda.If she had stepped up, I’m fairly certain that she wouldn’t have named the firm Rockefeller Brothers, and maybe her taking the lead would have attracted the attention of the Vanderbilts, which may have inspired one of their female descendants to do the same. Maybe that “first follower” effect would have catalyzed our society into one where the wealthiest and most high-powered women are the ones who take on the tech industry, snowballing us into a world where today, the tech scene is less like a frat party and more like a high-brow, old-school women’s club, where women CEOs are more prevalent than men and where men wind up taking entry-level positions as office managers as any way possible to break into the industry and hopefully earn their way up the chain of command. Here you are beginning to sound like an angry, resentful, combative, competitive, nasty woman.That’s not the opportunity, not how things work. A girl of 4 can have her daddy totally wrapped around her little finger where he’d move mountains to avoid a single tear, even a frown. Instead, nearly the happiest he ever is is when she is smiling at him from being happy being his daughter. She is a privileged character, regarded as an angel, treated like a princess.Beating her brothers at football, basketball, changing a tire on a car, getting Linux to run on a Raspberry Pi, taking the lawn mower apart enough to get the wax from old gas out of the gas tank, fixing the fuel line on the trimmer broken from being brittle from ethanol in the gas, showing how to use Euclidean construction on triangle ABC to construct E on AB and D on BC so that the lengths AE = ED = DB, etc. is NOT her path.What you outlined won’t work: That will work less well than women in the NFL, on the first play get knocked into nickel seats, and NBA, get stuffed into the basket.Or, for “blockchain and crypto-currencies,” in addition to semiconductors, there is another pillar — new work in pure and applied mathematics.IMHO, for the future of information and computer technology, the main pillar of the really big results will be original work in pure and applied math.Men aren’t worth a darn at ballet and are there just to help the women. The women can be gorgeous, graceful, elegant, artistically expressive, etc. beyond all belief.In pure/applied math, the situation is the same except reversed: The women are there to smile at the men who do the good work.Yes, there are some exceptions for both ballet and math, but they are tiny fractions of the whole.In the E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, there is a summary remark:Men and women deserve equal respect as persons but are not the same. Women who try to fight that statement are in line to be weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree with their genes out of the gene pool and finally bringing the end of this “women in X” stuff and, finally, the end of the Betty Friedan, Communist sabotage shot in the gut of the US and its strength, brilliant, devastating.For this “women in X” stuff, I’ve been there, tried that, as part of trying blew a HUGE fraction of my life (e.g., walked out on being worth about $500 million from FedEx stock; missed out on maybe that much from Wall Street; etc.), and have the scars to prove it. Also missed out on wife and children.In simple terms, for “women in X”, don’t do that; don’t try it; don’t even think about it.I know a guy with more insight than I had. His wife wanted to go to law school and then use the legal system to drag the miscreants before the bar of justice and, thus, to save the world. Right, as Inspector Clouseau might say, “The old save the world ploy.”. So, he told her, “Yes, dear. Of course dear. Of COURSE you are going to law school. So, lean back here and think only about law school ….” And she tried. Soon outside her closed door where she was studying law, her two, young daughters were crying for their mother, and that was the end of law school and the start of some years of a really nice family. Smart husband.
jason wright Jul 20, 2017

maybe you need to add one ‘out’ post slot to the matrix. otherwise it gets a bit too ‘in’. i already know my navel all too well.