The Daily Dose
At the bottom of the first post on this blog is a widget that contains links to recent blog posts by other USV team members. Many USV folks blog regularly and this widget surfaces those posts to all of you and everyone who visits the various blogs of the USV team members.
Other than me, there are a few other USV team members who blog regularly; Albert, Nick, and Bethany are the most prolific writers at USV. Andy and Brad are the best writers but we don’t get a lot of production out of them.
Since the start of the year, Bethany, who runs USV’s portfolio network, has produced a dozen blog posts, on topics like Hamilton In Puerto Rico, Nostalgia Creep In A High Growth Company, How To Measure A VC Firm’s Platform Efforts, and a lot more.
I am just one window into USV and the VC/startup world in general. I encourage those who are interested in this stuff to seek out other voices as well. Right now, Bethany is one fire. You should check her blog out.
Comments (Archived):
Wasn’t it Groucho Marks who said “I find most daily blogs very educating. Every time I read it, I go into another room and read a book.”AVC is a pub not a library
Full Marks for punning Marx on television.
You’d do well on television sir, Marx my word.
🙂 https://uploads.disquscdn.c… https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Yogi Berra would like a word with you.
Problem with most journalist today is quality and perspective. Are we ever in need of nonprofit journalism – The sky is fallinghttps://uploads.disquscdn.c… https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Part of why I stopped subscribing to Medium is because of the fact that 99% of the content is junk. If it was better curated, I’d consider going back to subscribing. But now, it’s not worth paying $5/mo to waste your time wading through junk.
I also paid – for me to take time to cancel anything is rare. I also cancelled. Curation is so poor today that the Drudge Report is one of the world’s top sites. He occsionally finds interesting stories. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Axios is pretty good – https://www.axios.com/as well as FlipBoard (though I find FlipBoard a little on the “light” side, it’s still better than most of what’s out there.) – https://flipboard.com/
Here in CT, we have a great non-profit news organization called CT Mirror that focuses mainly on politics/government in Connecticut. It’s not perfect but it’s far more in-depth than any of the other state dailies. I gladly donate $10/mo due to the quality. I’d love to see something similar in Tech and other sectors.I’d pay more than Medium’s $5/mo if it was better curated. (I used to subscribe but cancelled my subscription due to the plethora of junk posts on Medium.)You can check out CT Mirror here – https://ctmirror.org/I also support Hurricane Track with Mark Sudduth which produces extremely comprehensive information and in-depth videos about weather patterns and their effect on the Eastern Seaboard in the U.S. – http://hurricanetrack.com/
I’ve seen Bethany’s blog and it is good. Unfortunately it’s on medium and you need to either create an account or use Facebook/Google to sign in. That’s a non starter. I’ve actually been meaning to mention this.
And if you hit the monthly limit, you have to pay $5/mo. However, I also use Medium to blog/post because it’s really easy to use. You can have a blog up and running in less than a minute.
Wow I didn’t even know that about medium! But the point you are making to me conflicts with the idea of medium as a place of high quality journalism or writing. If it’s so easy to say something, and no barrier to saying something, ‘have a blog up and running in less than a minute’ then there is a great deal of content to wade through in theory.Also this idea of ‘great content’ is a canard anyway. People read to be entertained. Primarily. And the content on medium is not substantially better (especially since ‘anyone can say anything’ (and what is true or believable)$5 a month? I mean compare that to what I get entertainment wise on Netflix for double the price. And Netflix spends money and does heavy lifting to earn that monthly fee.One other thing. I suspect that part of the appeal of people who are spending $5 per month ‘to improve themselves’ (that is the narrative that I am seeing are doing so under the belief that they can get better by reading as opposed to doing and learning in traditional ways. They are looking for what I call ‘the answer’. I have seen that in a few articles about why someone should pay for medium. Because all this good content is not entertainment it’s ‘the answer’. Something that is so valuable that you will be able to take a short cut to life happiness and so on. Not the case.
I used to pay for Medium and cancelled due to the fact that 99% of the content on there is junk. If it was curated, I’d gladly pay.
I still pay for Medium, and have since they launched their paid tier. I find enough good stuff on a daily basis.I thought Medium had a curation algorithm but it doesn’t seem to be that way. As far as I can tell, the filter is limited to the people and topics you follow. I would like a way to apply other filters (e.g. no listicles, only articles over x minutes in length). The topics are losely defined and I find this to be frustrating and misleading. This is particularly the case in topics like Psychology. I expected (hoped?) to see articles discussing psychology research and applying concepts. Instead it’s articles about using psych tricks in job interviews, product development, or mental health blogs.I also like that NYT, FT, Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and Bloomerberg publish there.
Agree about both, but there is a whole lot of junk on there. I didn’t pay for cable for most of my adult life because I had no interest in paying for junk. Same concept here. Not willing to pay for a medium with so much junk. However, maybe their goal is to prove Marshall McLuhan right.https://youtu.be/jRcMsqCbzWk
A benefit on the high noise to signal ratio of Medium is that if you spend a few minutes scrolling down, you get to experience serendipity, albeit infrequently, and find high quality new writers and topics.There also seems to be a lot of repeat stories that show up on the top, which is a problem Google has on its native phone news feed (swipe right). I find the signal to noise ratio there even worse than Medium.Maybe Flipboard or Feedly are better aggregators. I didn’t like Flipboard – nice looking design, hard to access substance.
I love Electric Literature on Medium. I found several good books through their author interviews and book descriptions.
For now, Medium uses cookies to track consumption. You can easily get around the article limits, paywall, and account requirements using an incognito window.
You can read it on Bethany’s blog http://bethanycrystal.com/b…
Yes but:a) No disqus commentingb) No link from AVC which is how I would go there.c) No community (probably because of ‘a’ and ‘b’)What is sad is that Bethany says on her ‘about page’:If something you read resonates with you, I’d love to know about itThis is quite different than, say, Seth Godin who has decided he doesn’t want to know what anyone thinks. [1][1] Or more likely has made a conscious decision to not get dragged into spending time mediating blog comments.
Albert’s blog, much like avc, has substantially changed my life, and made me even more unbearable then before to my friends and family…
Blogging is contagious.
the power of a narrative with legs has no bounds.
For a second I thought you were referring to cats. 🙂
I’ve learned so much from how you and your team thinks about and approaches investments.I’m not blogging yet with my new think-tank/ angel investment firm but I do have a book coming out in February called “Dear Machine”, which covers the thesis for the firm and discusses a lot of what I believe to be investable, long-term trends.https://www.supersystemic.l…
Fred,I’ve followed Bethany since you introduced us to her when she joined USV.My wife and I are heading down to San Juan next week to catch up with old friends and see Hamilton. I truly enjoyed her piece on her experience being there for the dress rehearsals. Great post
I’ve been using the teleporter vortex since Nick installed it in the lobby.Have to admit that I not always jump, more likely I react to catchy topics.Bethany is very fun to read.
Fwiw, if you hadn’t written about the widget I would have glossed right past it as it looks very visually similar to those garbage content units from Outbrain and Taboola.
FRED:This continues to strengthen our confidence in you of being team & we person verses the me me me person so often presented by high profile people.Like it or not you are our MF and we F with you. All colloquial terms we happily apply with endearment. But you know if you F up we are the first to check it because no human being is beyond reproach.God, higher power, morals, etc are first in our view and man is only a vehicle to further those ideals.Like it or not your voice manners and we are happy to see you promote others.We will review Bethany’s thoughts. (Female voices and their empowerment we promote)On behalf of the thinkers who genuinely care about other human beings and who are not racist, mysogistic and xenophobic we thank you again for at least your efforts on being a good MF…Captain Obvious!#UNEQUIVOCALLYUNAPOLOGETICALLYINDEPENDENT
Bethany Crystal@bethanymarz·Nov 24, 2017“It is not our abilities that define who we are; it is our choices.” -Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets——–Would never think a reference to anything Harry Potter would be considered a great quote for us. But Bethany highlight of it allowed us to embrace a great quote.We don’t have a Twitter account but we were informed Periscope is connected.Captain Obvious!#UNEQUIVOCALLYUNAPOLOGETICALLYINDEPENDENT
I smiled when I read this today. I made this exact point on my vlog last week when I called out Fred and broader USV team as a go-to resource for founders and investors.
+100 I am an AVC regular and like the discovery element of that box. I’m now a regular reader of Bethany and Nick although always through the ‘avc portal’
I will take notice of the complaint and invite you to future jumps. But, on one condition: next time I visit NYC, we go together to see the Yankees play.Deal? 🙂