When a new technology or a new entrant or some new behavior comes into a market, the initial reaction is often to reject it.

But, as my partner Brad likes to say, the better move is to take that new energy coming at you and use it to your advantage. He calls it the “Jiu-Jitsu Move.”

A good example is the emergence of Wikipedia in schools about fifteen years ago. Most teachers freaked out and told their students not to use it for primary research, citing the “inaccuracy” of the service.

But a few clever teachers started assigning their students Wikipedia entries to fix. That is a Jiu-Jitsu move.

Another example is personal health information. Many in the health care industry see the increasing amount of our health care information in our own hands as a risk to them and their profession. But a couple years ago when I went in for my annual physical, when I was using an iPhone, my doctor asked to see my Health app. He said it was another data point for him to use in my care. That was a Jiu-Jitsu move.

I spent the day yesterday at a real estate industry event and talked to a lot of agents about the fact that their clients are often more informed than they are these days. I encouraged them to embrace that fact and use it to their advantage and not fear it. It is hard when you have grown up in an industry when your advantage was information and you no longer have that working for you.

But I honestly believe the only thing to do with progress is embrace it. Fighting it is futile.

A few years ago I was up at the MIT Media Lab, where I have been on the advisory board, and met a bunch of faculty members. The one that blew me away was a woman who was building a 3D printer that could “print” office buildings. That really stuck with me.

So with that in the back of my mind, the Gotham Gal and I were in a bar in Palm Springs last night and we bumped into a couple people we kind of knew, one of them an AVC reader named Brett Hagler, and we heard the story of a house being 3D printed in Austin Texas during the recent SXSW conference.

Brett’s non-profit New Story (crowdfunding to finance and build homes in the developing world) and a robotics construction company called Icon collaborated to build an inhabitable 800 square foot home in Austin Texas in less than 24 hours.

These two companies think they can get the construction costs below $4,000 for a 3D printed home. That’s kind of amazing and disruptive in a whole bunch of ways.

It is exciting to see 3D printing technology continue to grow and scale into new and important sectors, like construction and real estate.

While NYC is committed, and well on its way, to getting computer science teachers in every school in NYC by 2025, the situation across New York State is bleaker.

Many schools in New York State do not have computer science teachers and do not offer computer science courses to their students.

Governor Cuomo recognized this shortfall in his 2019 budget by proposing $6mm of funding for computer science education across New York State.

But neither the NYS Assembly nor the NYS Senate has followed through and included this $6mm (or a single dollar) in their proposed 2019 budgets for CS education.

The budget process is scheduled to close on April 1st, so this week is the week to get movement on this.

If you live in New York State, please reach out to your Assemblyperson and/or Senator and tell them how important computer science education is to you and why you want them to follow the Governor’s leadership on this issue and put $6mm in the 2019 budget for Computer Science education in New York State schools. If you don’t know how to reach your representatives in Albany, click on the two links in the opening paragraph in this post.

To put that $6mm in context, New York City is spending $8mm a year on training existing teachers (math, science, etc) to teach computer science. And they are doing this every year for ten years in order to get over 5,000 CS teachers in their ~1,700 public schools.

Surely New York State can do the same. Every kid needs the opportunity to learn new ways of learning, making, and earning. Computer Science is the first new subject that has been added to most public schools’ curriculum in the past fifty years. Most states and large urban centers have already committed themselves to this effort. But not New York State. It’s time that changed.

This feels like a particularly risky time to me. The macro situation is not great; rising interest rates, trade tensions, saber rattling, etc. In tech we have dominant platforms extracting rents but also attracting scrutiny. Old line industries continue to struggle to adapt to new ways of doing business. And health care continues to eat up more and more of the GDP.

So what is an investor to do?

I think a barbell strategy is best in this environment. You want a healthy amount of low risk investments, like cash and low volatility cash producing assets (like real estate). And you want some risk too. I like venture capital and tech stocks, particularly ones that are not in the regulatory spotlight.

The thing about risk is that it is correlated with return over time. It is very hard to make money without taking risk. And those who tell you that they have a low risk/no risk way to make money are either lying to you or lying to themselves.

So you need to take risk. But you need to take risks you understand and avoid risks you don’t. I think there is a lot more risk in “the markets” than is priced in right now.

I don’t know if all the chickens I listed in the opening paragraph will come home to roost, or when. That is uncertainty. We have to live with the uncertainty. It’s always there.

So the stance you take is important. And I think the best stance in times like this, maybe all times, is one foot in and one foot out.

If you are curious what the state of play is in the US regulatory stance towards crypto and blockchain, the best place to turn is Coin Center, the crypto industry’s voice in DC.

And in this podcast, Coin Center’s Director of Research Peter Van Valkenburgh gives a fairly clear and concise view of where things are and where they are going.

I backed this project today.

What an awesome desk ornament this will make.

The relationship between profits and social responsibility is a topic I’ve touched on many times here over the years.

I believe you can be a socially responsible person, investor, or company and also be a high performing one.

I tweeted this yesterday on the news that our friend Shri has launched a new venture capital firm called Spero:

“At Spero, the mission will be to combine impact with top tier returns” This can be done. https://t.co/hgFkOun6Hq

— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) March 21, 2018

I do believe you can be an impact investor and produce top tier returns.

And then later yesterday, I came across this interview with Josh Silverman, the CEO of Etsy, where I am Chairman, and I love this comment:

The best of Etsy has always been our commitment to social responsibility. It was our execution that was letting us down. And I think we were at risk of confusing those two. So, we continue to hold to our commitment to the broader community. But when you’re a socially responsible company, you’ve got to hold yourself to a higher bar on execution. We’ve defined three areas in particular where we believe we’re especially well positioned to have impact on our community: economic empowerment [for sellers], diversity [of our workforce] and environmental impact.

I agree with Josh that you can do both, but when you are committed to doing both, you have to hold yourself to a higher bar on execution because any mis-steps will be viewed as the cost of the double bottom line. And that is unfortunate.

Our portfolio company SoundCloud is the first place most musical artists post their music, the first place most musical artists are offered an opportunity to monetize their music, and the first place most listeners discover new artists and their music.

To celebrate that, SoundCloud is launching the First On SoundCloud campaign:

“First On SoundCloud” kicks off with SoundCloud’s first-ever creator advertising campaign spotlighting 10 groundbreaking artists from across SoundCloud’s global community. Spanning hip hop, electronic and pop, these artists represent the more than 10 million creators heard on SoundCloud every month, and the accelerating global shift toward creators building their sound, their audiences, and their careers directly online.

But there is more. Because SoundCloud is for all artists, there is an opportunity for everyone to participate:

Alongside these featured artists, we’re also giving all creators the opportunity to upload and be heard as part of “First on SoundCloud”. Beginning today, you can upload an original track to SoundCloud and tag it #SCFIRST, for a chance to be promoted across SoundCloud, including:

“First On SoundCloud” playlist: Creators uploading their latest tracks to SoundCloud with the tag #SCFIRST will be considered for inclusion in the “First On SoundCloud” playlist on SoundCloud’s homescreen, giving them global exposure to new fans, plays, likes and follows.

#SCFIRST on social: After uploading a track to SoundCloud with the tag #SCFIRST, creators can use SoundCloud’s seamless Twitter integration to immediately tweet their track with the #SCFIRST hashtag. SoundCloud will be randomly selecting creator tweets and tracks to promote to its millions of social followers.

Fast track consideration for monetization in SoundCloud Premier: Creators uploading content with the tag #SCFIRST will also be reviewed for inclusion in the SoundCloud Premier monetization program which offers creators a leading revenue share and additional promotional resources from SoundCloud.

#SCFIRST in SoundCloud newsletters and blog: SoundCloud will also randomly choose creators who upload their tracks using #SCFIRST for spotlights in SoundCloud’s newsletters and blog posts.

Every day, almost 200,000 tracks are uploaded to SoundCloud, close to 10x any other music streaming service.

So when you upload your next track to SoundCloud, tag it with #SCFIRST, and participate in this campaign.

AVC readers may have noticed that I didn’t blog here yesterday.

That’s because I blogged on USV.com instead, about our most recent investment.

You can read that post here.