Posts from Random Posts

I’m not writing today and tomorrow as we are celebrating the year end holidays with family. Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas to all of you.

At USV, we have tried many different videoconferencing services over the years.

I use Google Hangouts for my personal videoconferences.

But as a firm, we are currently using Zoom.

And we have a number of Beam devices to allow people to “beam into” meetings.

Many of the portfolio companies I work with are using Bluejeans.

So I am curious to find out what all of you use in your businesses (not personal like Facetime).

If I was going to start selling ads on AVC (I am not), here are the advertising categories I should target according to Google Analytics:

Nothing too surprising in here but it is interesting that entertainment (Film and TV) scored so high. I guess you don’t spend all of your time reading AVC 🙂

Let’s talk today about something we all have, pet peeves. These are little things that shouldn’t bother us so much but they do.

One of my pet peeves happened to me this morning. I ordered a cup of coffee with a splash of milk in it. I got the coffee, ran to catch my train, and then settled in to enjoy my “Morning Joe” only to find it was black coffee with no milk in it. I only allow myself one cup of coffee a day so when it’s not what I really wanted it’s a total bummer to me.

It’s a little thing but to me it’s a big thing.

So that’s my pet peeve. What is yours?

Brandwatch on Twitter says that “chocolates, flowers, and teddy bears” are this year’s favorites

I am a fan of flowers but this year I’m going in a different direction.

What is your go to gift on valentines day?

The Gotham Gal and I are doing our annual winter in the west and we flew to the mountains of Utah with some of our family yesterday. We are in Utah, Los Angeles, and the bay area regularly for the next couple months. We return to NYC when it’s spring.

Look for this blog to post daily between 8am and 10am eastern time for the next couple months.

We found that being out west last winter allowed us to spend more time with our friends and colleagues and investments out west and we are hoping to do more of that this winter.

It’s Christmas Day, a holiday in much of the world and one of the biggest religious days of the year. We are spending it with family and friends on a beach in the caribbean. I hope that all of you are spending the day with friends and family. I know that Christmas is a tough day for some and I hope that you have someone close to you to spend it with.

We are on our seventh day of our vacation and have dialed it down to such a level that pulling out a laptop and writing on it is a real effort. As the Gotham Gal says in her post today, that is a good thing every once in a while.

We are back in NYC tomorrow and I plan to write some posts next week, like I did last year, on what happened in 2015 and what I think will happen in 2016. I’m looking forward to that, but for the next 24 hours I’m going to chill out with friends and family and put the finishing touches on a relaxing getaway week on the beach.

Between Black Friday and Cybermonday, it would seem that the big holiday shopping days have already come and gone.

I saw a report this week with holiday shopping market shares for the 2016 holiday season. Are we already done with this year end burst of ecommerce and can now report the winners and losers?

For Fun Friday I thought we’d do a Twitter poll to see what percent of the AVC community has completed their holiday shopping already vs those who procrastinate until the last minute.

When it comes to holiday shopping are you a ………..

— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) December 4, 2015

In my case, I don’t do a lot of holiday shopping. It’s not that I’m Ebenezer Scrooge, but I prefer to give as often as possible throughout the year and not do all of my giving at the end of the year.

As the holiday shopping season kicks off, we’d like to leave you with a 15 second message from our sponsor about where to do your holiday shopping this year.