AVC - Page 2
Bi-Directional EV Charging
EV sales in the US are on the rise, reaching 7% of all car sales in Q1 2023, up from 4.6% a year earlier. If that rate of growth continues, EVs will be 10% of the US car market by next year. Most people who own an EV charge it at home, using an EV charger. Our family owns a few different models. Here are two of them. The reason we have two chargers right next to each other is one charges our Tesla and the other charges our other EVs. It is like an iPhone and an Android. Each has its own chargi...
AVC - Jun 26
Software That You Can't Shut Down
The term "censorship resistant" is used a lot in the decentralized computing/web3/crypto space to talk about a core feature of these systems. I don’t love the term censorship resistant because it is a wonky term. Software that is encoded in smart contracts (and other ways) on fully decentralized blockchains can’t be shut down or turned off. So why is this a big deal? Let’s make up a story: Imagine that an AI is trained to teach children to read better than humans. But the powers that be decid...
AVC - Jun 18
Voice Input
Smartphones have had voice input for over a decade now and yet I don’t know that many people who use voice input regularly. I would guess that maybe 10 to 20% of smartphone users are using voice input regularly. That’s a guess based on absolutely no data other than observing friends, family, and colleagues. However, in the last week I have started to use voice input a lot more as a result of a friend encouraging me to do it. Also in the last week, I’ve suggested to my mom that she start using...
Coming Back Up For Air
The last time I posted was May 23rd, three weeks ago. There was a time when I wrote every day. When I had not yet posted on any day, I felt like something was missing, like I had not yet had my cup of coffee. Clearly, I have moved on from that need to write every day. I don’t think I have ever gone three weeks without posting in the almost twenty years I’ve been writing this blog. The 20th anniversary of AVC will be on September 23rd of this year. So why did I go three weeks without posting? ...
AVC - May 23
The Freedom To Innovate
Back in 2014, USV got subpoenaed by the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) over our web3 investing activities. We hired a law firm, answered the subpoena, and that ultimately landed me in public testimony in front of the DFS staff. In my testimony, I explained to the DFS staff that the difference between the US and China is that the US respects the freedom to innovate. You can watch in this tweet. I was reminded of that moment yesterday when, in our quarterly call with our ...
Fun Friday: Upside Pizza Club
This is the second post in a row where I am bringing back an old tradition. This time it is Fun Friday, something I haven’t done in about five years. Like last week, the catalyst is our portfolio company Blackbird Labs, which I posted about a few months ago. Blackbird is a platform for the restaurant industry to build loyalty/membership and related business models on. Upside Pizza, which makes some of the best slices in NYC, launched the Upside Pizza Club this week using the Blackbird platfor...
Funding Friday: Crowdfunding Restaurants Via Blackbird
It has been a long time since I did a Funding Friday here at AVC. I used to do them every Friday. We have funded a lot of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and bakeries here over the years. Here are a few examples. L’Appartement 4F Land To Sea There is a new wrinkle in crowdfunding restaurants, bars, coffee shops, bakeries, etc courtesy of USV portfolio company Blackbird, which I recently wrote about. Blackbird is a loyalty/membership platform for the hospitality industry and it allows operato...
AI Art
There has been a lot of discussion about how AIs can make art and possibly replace artists, but I think the opposite is more likely to happen. Artists have been using AI to make art for a while now and the pace has picked up a lot in recent years. I have always loved the work of Ian Cheng who makes computer-generated simulations that evolve using artificial intelligence. His works change infinitely. The first time I saw that, maybe ten years ago now, it made me rethink many ideas I had about ...
AVC - May 4
AIVC
I was approached by a company this week that has trained a large language model on all of the blog posts I have written here at AVC. There are 9059 of them for those that are counting. They wanted to offer me a chat bot called “ask Fred.” I told them no thanks. Let me explain. I am totally fine with anyone using all of the content I have produced here at AVC to train their AI models. When I started AVC, I put a creative commons license on the content here. It has always been my view that anyt...
The Annual Computer Science Fair - AVC
Ten years ago, a small group of folks in the K12 Computer Science Education community in NYC decided to put on a “mock job fair” for high school students who were taking computer science classes in the NYC public schools. That was the start of an annual day of engagement and learning for high schoolers considering a career in tech. Yesterday we got the Fair back in person after three years of not doing it or doing it remotely. And it was so great to be there. This is a picture of all of the s...
AVC - Apr 25
Etsy Lens
I am the Chair of the Etsy Board and have been an investor and board member at Etsy since the mid-2000s. It is a company that I love and get great joy from being part of. Last year Etsy quietly launched a feature that has completely changed the way I use Etsy. It is called Etsy Lens. Etsy has millions of items for sale in its marketplace but shopping on Etsy is generally not intent-driven. It is idea-driven. Most people don’t go to Etsy and enter “pizza oven” into the search field. A more com...
AVC - Apr 17
What Is A Protocol And Why Does It Matter?
USV’s current thesis is: Enabling trusted brands that broaden access to knowledge, capital, and well-being by leveraging networks, platforms, and protocols. That last word is powerful but unfortunately less understood than the other words in that sentence. Protocols have been around forever and are well-understood codes of conduct between people. In computer science, protocols are the same thing, codes of conduct. I like this definition of computer protocols from...