Posts from May 2012

The idea for this post came in the comments at some point in the past week. I can't actually recall how we got to talking about the artist named Fred Wilson, but we did. And I said I was going to tell the story of how I met Fred. So I will do that. It's a fun story. And then I will post some of my favorites of his work. And then we can talk about Fred. Because he's a great artist and a super nice person too.

When Google came along I, like many peoople, started googling my own name. Slowly but surely the links on that result jelled along the lines of two primary people – me and the artist named Fred Wilson. Around that time, about ten years ago, Fred was selected to represent the US at the 50th Venice Biennale. That was a big moment for Fred and his name started appearing all over the palce. And that is when I became familiar with the memorable look of Fred.

So fast forward to a few years ago. I was walking down Broadway near the USV offices and I see Fred walking up Broadway on the same side of the street as I'm on. So I stopped and waited for Fred to reach me. When he did, I reached out and said "are you Fred Wilson?", he said "yes, I am", and then I said "I am the other Fred Wilson". He looked at me and smiled. We had a short conversation and that was that. Since then I've met Fred a few times at art events and such and most recently the Gotham Gal, our son, and I met him at his recent show at the Pace Gallery.

Fred is an installation artist who focuses on the issues of social justice, cultural norms, and racism. He uses objects found in museums as the basis for his artistic exploration. Here are some of my favorites of his work:

This work is called Guarded View and has been on display at the Whitney in NYC recently. It hits you as you walk out of the elevator on the fourth or fifth floor. It was inspired by Fred's time as a museum guard. It speaks to how security guards become part of the scenery in museums and other parts of our world.

 

Speak of Me as I Am is a work from Fred's exhibition a the Venice Biennale. This work was inspired by Shakespeare's Othello and Fred's time in Venice working with glassblowers. Fred's chandeliers, and he has made many varieties, are incredible.

 

Fred does these amazing black venetian glass mirrors. I have seen a number of varieties of them. This one is called Mark and was made in 2009. The Gotham Gal and I own one.

So that's a quick overview of Fred Wilson, how I met him, and a sampling of his work. If you want to see more, Fred is represented by The Pace Gallery in NYC, Rena Bransten in San Francisco. I have also seen his work at mitterand + sanz in Zurich and JGM. Galerie in Paris. And of course, his work is in many of the modern art museums around the world.

So our President finally had the political courage to say publicly what I am sure he has privately believed for a long time. Kudos to him. I am not sure about the political wisdom of that disclosure. But it takes courage to come out and say it, particularly in an election year in an country where 30 states have explicity banned it.

We talked about the same sex issue on this blog last weekend in connection with North Carolina's Amendment One, which passed this week with 60% of the vote.

I'm with the President on this one. I believe that same sex couples should be allowed to marry. And I am glad that I live in a state that recognizes that right. For me it is about basic human decency.

But more than that, I applaud the President for taking an important step to say that gay people are normal and accepted in our country. Frank Bruni put it this way:

I find myself thinking about all the teenagers and young adults out there who cower in silence because they worry about being ostracized if they speak the truth about their sexual orientation. I think about the ones who are bullied, even the ones who contemplate taking their own lives.

And I think about what it will mean to them to hear the president say what he did today, not because they’re focused on marriage but because they’re buoyed by any and every reassurance that there’s nothing wrong with them, nothing inferior about them. Today their president gave them that reassurance.

That's what this is all about. Normalcy. Being accepted. And I am with the President 100% on this issue and commend him for doing what he did. A proud day in my book.

I was asked by the excellent folks at Grind, a co-working space near our offices, to give a talk in their monthly #Rethink breakfast talk series. I am drawn to the idea of a #rethink hashtag. It's a good mental exercise. So I said I would do the talk and that I'd like to #rethink the VC industry.

I gave the talk yesterday and William storified it. And there was some blog coverage of the talk yesterday. I started out the talk by stating that I was "thinking outloud in realtime and that my remarks should be taken as such".

At some point yesterday I see the words "death of the VC business" in my twitter stream with my name attached to it.

 

Fred Wilson and the death of venture capital. A good read. > forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/…

— Martin Bryant (@MartinSFP) May 8, 2012

 

I can assure you I never said anything about the "death of the venture capital business" in my talk. The venture capital business is not dying.

My talk was a rumination on the forces at work on the venture capital business today and the changes that may be required to remain relevant and profitable in this new world. The talk was provocative and "out there" but it was not a eulogy.

I expect that Grind will post the talk at some point and everyone can come to their own conclusions.

This post is a plea to bloggers and journalists not to use the word "death" casually. It is a big word, a strong word, it means something real and devastating. And it is a word I would not use lightly.

Hacking Society is a discussion about how networks are transforming our economy and society, and what this means for the future of innovation, regulation, advocacy and politics.

Two weeks ago, a small group of activists, thinkers, investors and entrepreneurs gathered at Union Square Ventures in NYC to discuss this topic, joined by online listeners & tweeters from around the world.

We are still working on the full transcript, audio recording, and video clips from the event. If you would like to be notified when they are avaialble, click here and leave us your email address. We plan to keep the Hacking Society website live and there is a disqus comment stream there if you'd like to engage in the discussion with us.

In the meantime, here is a Storify "highlight reel" from Hacking Society. It gives a good sense of what was said, who said it, and where this discussion is headed.

When I asked everyone where to go next last Monday, I got a ton of great suggestions. But at the top of the list, with 24 upvotes was this one by Robert Holtz:

How about the job of recruiting talent?

Finding/attracting the right key people, where to go to find good hires, getting headcount dialed in right at various stages of development, in-house versus outsourcing (when to do or not to do each), good hiring practices (i.e. interviewing, evaluating, selecting new hires among candidates), and also the evolving VC's role (some, as you know, are not just advising in this area but actively functioning as a recruitment partner/talent agency).

So over the next roughly ten Mondays we will explore the issue of Human Capital on MBA Mondays. This is indeed a huge one. Possibly the single most important thing you will face in building a business.

It is not my sweet spot. I'm more of a product, strategy, finance person. But I've developed a huge appreciation for the role of human capital in a startup over the 25 years I've been in the venture capital business and I spend as much time on this as anything else these days. So I am going to give it my best shot and then call in the experts.

Here's a basic outline (taking a lot from Robert's comment):

– The importance of culture and fit when hiring

– Where to find strong talent

– Optimal headcount at various stages

– Best hiring practices

– How to leverage your partners (including your investors) in the hiring process

– Guest posts from several top HR/CPO executives

– Guest posts from several recruiters

– Guest posts from several CEOs who excel in this area

It should be a good series. I am looking forward to it.

So we've been running Disqus 2012 on and off here for the past month and in the middle of last week, I turned it on permanently. Many of you have left feedback in the comments and I've passed it onto the Disqus team.

But today I'd like to focus the comment discussion on Disqus 2012 so that we can collect even more meaningful feedback. Tell us what you like, what you don't like, and what you'd like to see that is not there.

And after you've done that, please take a minute and fill out Engagio's "State Of Social Conversations" survey. I just did it and it took me less than a couple minutes to complete. William plans to release the results at Blog World in NYC in early June. Since the community here is one of the most active, engaged, thoughtful and respectful of any on the web, I think we should make our opinions heard on this topic.

Yesterday, my partners and I invited Paul Romer over to USV for lunch. For those that don't know, Paul is a leading thinker in the world of economics and currently a Professor at NYU. It was a fascinating conversation. My favorite part of it was Paul's "lecture" on William Penn, early Pennsylvania, and the reaction to the growth of Pennsylvania from neighboring states.

William Penn was a Quaker and when King Charles II gave him a large piece of his land holdings in America, Penn created the colony of Pennsylvania and grounded it in the notions of tolerance and religious freedom. Instead of limiting Pennsylvania to Quakers, they welcomed all comers. And the result was that Philadelphia became the fastest growing city in America with a vibrant economy and lifestyle.

The neighboring colonies, which were initially centered around a single religion, reacted to Pennsylvania's and Philadelphia's economic success by opening up their cultural norms and becoming more tolerant as well.

Paul told us this story as a lesson in why cultural norms, even more than laws, are a determinant of prosperity and economic development. And tolerance is one of the more important cultural norms in this regard.

As Paul was giving us this lecture, I thought of my friend Bob Young's blog post about North Carolina's Amendment One, which seeks to ban same sex marriages. North Carolina is the only southern state that does not have such a law on its books. North Carolinans will be voting on Amendment One next tuesday, May 8th.

Bob's argument is as much an economic one as a social one. Bob says:

This proposed amendment to our state constitution is specifically telling them we don’t want their friends and fellow Americans to come here.   We need these talented, intelligent young Americans to come to North Carolina to help our technology industries succeed, but they have choices.   They can go to states with mottos like “Live Free or Die” instead of states that attempt to tell them how to live their lives, such as this Amendment One does.  And trust me, these bright young Americans can and will chose to join my competitors in Seattle, or San Jose, or New York. 

North Carolina has enjoyed a vibrant tech/startup economy and Bob's Red Hat and Lulu.com are two of its best known successes. Bob asserts that changing the cultural norms (and laws) of his home state are not going to be good for the local startup scene. Bob is right and his concerns are consistent with the lesson that Paul Romer gave us yesterday.

Tolerance and Prosperity go hand in hand. History tells us this. I hope the good citizens of North Carolina listen to Bob because I agree with him strongly on this one.

One of my favorite features of the DuckDuckGo search engine (a USV portfolio company) is the instant answer. The instant answer is the box at the top that gives you what you were looking for. For Fred Wilson, it looks like this:

So Gabe, the founder of DDG, hacked up a way for users to contribute instant answers. He calls it DuckDuckHack. And he created a Twitter account where he publishes all the Instant Answer hacks. Yesterday "mstratman" created a hack that generates QR codes. Here's the QR code for avc.com.

And this hack tells you what the currency is in a country.

If you use DDG, then you should absolutely follow the Twitter account and get tips on cool instant answer hacks. But more than anything, this shows how Gabe is thinking about making DDG better and I like that.

For anyone who is interested in Twitter, what is going on right now in the company, where they are headed, and why, this 30min interview with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is worth watching. I particularly like the last minute of the Q&A session at the very end. So if you only have a minute this morning and you can figure out how to fast forward, I suggest you at least watch that.

WIRED Business Conference: Taking the Pulse of the Planet from WIRED on FORA.tv