Every January, Kickstarter runs the Make 100 program where creators are encouraged to make 100 of something and crowdfund it on Kickstarter.
There are all sorts of great creative projects this year. Check them out.
I backed this one this morning
A number of people have been asking me what I think of the Game Stop situation. This is not really my world. I don’t trade stocks, we hold them. I don’t use Robinhood, though I have an account thanks to my friend Howard. I don’t hang out on Reddit, though I visit it from time to time.
So I have not paid enough attention to this one, but it certainly is fascinating. The generational aspect of this is important. Boomer hedgies getting crushed by young folks self-organizing in social media. It feels like a moment where you realize that the power structure has shifted and things won’t be the same.
The financial system in the US, and in other developed countries, is a rigged system and has been for a very long time. Only big institutions can get into hot IPOs. Only rich people can invest in startups. Many of these rules are designed to protect “widows and orphans” but all they really do is make the rich richer and keep those without money out of the game.
Not anymore. Whether it is crypto (Coinbase) or day trading (Robinhood), the retail investor now has the tools to get into the game and win the game.
The new startup investing is buying into the Ethereum crowdsale. Had you done that in the summer of 2014, you would be looking at roughly 1,000 times your money right now. And that crowdsale was launched by a team led by a 20 year old. Though the SEC and others would like to impose the same rules on crypto that protect the rich and keep out everyone else, that has not happened and I pray that it won’t.
The new hedge fund is the Robinhood army self organizing on Reddit. They can move a stock more easily than the largest hedge fund.
There will be calls to regulate this “madness.” But it is the same madness we have always had. It is just a different crowd in charge.
I do worry that this Game Stop short squeeze will end badly and not only the hedge funds will get hurt. Markets can be brutal. But regulating markets to protect the small investor is not the answer. As we can see, the small investor is often a lot smarter than the large investor.
What we need to do is stop printing money to stabilize the economy. And start addressing the real economic issues that exist on main street, not wall street. Monetary policy is not the answer. Fiscal policy is. That won’t stop more Game Stops from happening. They are a by-product of markets. But it will get the money to where it is needed versus where it is just gameplay.
Last fall, USV raised two new venture capital funds from our loyal and supportive investors. We announced the new climate fund on January 8th and I blogged about it here.
While the climate fund is something new and important, we also raised another early stage fund to invest in the same kinds of companies we’ve been investing in at USV for over 15 years. While it is less newsmaking, it is worth talking about.
And so we did that yesterday on the USV blog and I tweeted about it.
So it is more of the same and also something new at USV. We are excited about both.
I found myself using this hack a few times this week and I thought I would share it. I think many/most of you probably know it, but it is so damn useful that it’s worth sharing it anyway.
If your email is [email protected] and you want to create a new email address that will get email at [email protected], you just put a + and add something. Let’s say you want an email address for a netflix account, you enter [email protected]. To netflix, this seems like a different email address but the mail still goes to [email protected].
This is particularly useful for creating multiple accounts with the same service. Many services don’t let you use the same email address for multiple accounts. So you just add the + and something you will remember and you get around that issue.
This is one of those little things that is super useful and once you know about it, you will find yourself using it quite a bit.
Update: The comments to this post on Twitter tell me that this hack is a gmail feature and is not necessarily available on other email services.
I am returning to a theme that I feel quite strongly about.
I blog on WordPress using a host that I have selected and can move from at any time. WordPress is open source software and I can download it and run it on my own machines if I want to. I don’t. But being able to do that is key.
Medium and Substack and Clubhouse and Twitter, etc, etc are fantastic. They make it drop dead simple for anyone to share their thoughts with the world.
But they are controlled by someone else. You can get kicked off. And when you get kicked off, you lose all of your followers, all of your content. Gone.
I’m not down for that.
Nor should you be.
I am really into the NYC coming back stronger than ever theme and want to support efforts to make that happen.
Today, I backed a project on Kickstarter to support NYC’s largest “board game cafe” called Hex & Co to move into a larger space a few blocks away.
Doing something like this in the midst of lockdowns and social distancing is a bold and optimistic move and I support it wholeheartedly. If you agree, you can support it here.
I have written about our portfolio company Dapper‘s NBA Top Shot game here at AVC a few times now. Think of NBA Top Shot as digital trading cards. It is more than that, but that’s a simple way to think about it.
I tweeted this out today:
I don’t like to sell crypto, but I do like to trade crypto for crypto. I got all of our Ethereum by swapping Bitcoin for it a few years ago, for example.
NFTs (non fungible tokens) are a different kind of crypto asset. They are digital assets like art, trading cards, etc that are issued on a blockchain and as a result are rare, unique, and easily traded.
NFTs, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, can increase and decrease in value over time.
Rookie cards have been traded for as long as there have been physical trading cards. They are a way to speculate on an athlete and their career. This Steph Curry rookie card is listed for $150,000 on eBay right now.
So my purchase of the Tyrese Haliburton moment is a bet that Tyrese is going to have a long and successful NBA career. Hopefully, he will be an all-star someday. That would make my moment increase in value. Will it increase in value more than the 3.33 BCH that I parted with to buy it? Well, that remains to be seen.
When a CEO has been removed for failed leadership, it is best to have a new CEO waiting in the wings to take over. I have been in the middle of this transition many times and have often been the person announcing the change to the company and introducing the new CEO. I have seen this done well and I have seen this done poorly.
That first all-hands meeting is a critical moment for the new CEO. He/she needs to connect with the team, tell them who they are, what they care about, and, most importantly, where they are going to lead the Company.
Most of the time the team is shaken up, things are not going well, they are nervous. There may have been layoffs. There may be more layoffs. Calm, confident, assured leadership is what is needed. But it is also critical to show empathy for the team and humanity in the leader. A warm smile and a sense of humor can help a lot.
When explaining where they will take the Company, less is more. Companies cannot do that many things at the same time. Failed leadership often results in doing too many things. So a shortlist of things that the Company will do and a longer list of things that it will not do anymore is a great start for a new leader. If there will be more layoffs, it is best to say that right upfront. You must start off by being honest with the team. Anything else will doom you to failure.
Getting off on the right foot is so important. If you do it well, the team will rally around you. If you do it poorly, you are done before you even started.
The United States is getting a new leader today. I plan to watch his introduction to the country. I wish him well. Good luck President Biden.
On the USV website, we show the most read blog posts by author.
I want to do this for AVC too. I will ask my partner Nick who managed the construction of USV.com how he did that and will see if I can get that working on AVC.
When you’ve written 8,800 posts, there are sure to be some duds and some great ones. It would be nice to showcase the great ones.
In early June, I wrote this post explaining that I and we need to do more to reduce the inequality issues for Black people in tech, venture capital, and startups.
I think MLK day is a good time to talk about what has happened since that post.
We have identified a number of areas where we must do better:
We have ongoing projects, workstreams, investments, and efforts in each and every one of these areas and we have made tangible progress in almost all of them.
I believe that the inequity issues are so severe and deeply rooted that it will take a concerted effort over a number of years to truly erase them.
But we are making progress and if we keep at it, across many dimensions, we can get where we need to go. Roughly 15% of Americans are Black. Until we can look around the room and see at least one Black person for every six in the meeting, we haven’t done enough. Today is a good day to remind ourselves of that and recommit to the work that needs to happen.
