The Gong Show
Partnering with AllHere | Mark As Read |
Its not easy to contact your childs school to get the help you need to ensure your childs attendance. The best way to get your questions answered is to call, and calling only works during business hours, which is a significant barrier for working parents. Even if you call, the person best equipped to answer your specific question may or may not be ...
My New Path: Spero Ventures | Mark As Read |
Im delighted to announce that Shripriya Mahesh and I are partnering to lead a new $123MM fund at Spero Ventures.I cant say enough good things about Shripriya. I see in her a remarkable balance of product expertise, optimistic futurism, and empathetic leadership. Shripriyas execution as global head of product at eBay during their most dominant growt...
Next Chapter | Mark As Read |
After 9 years with the firm, Ive decided to leave Spark Capital. Its not a decision I make lightly, as Spark is an incredible firm, filled with talented, kind people. Im deeply grateful for the time they have invested in allowing me to apprentice in this industry and for giving me the opportunity to grow as an investor. My partners are at the peak ...
Our Investment in Nylas | Mark As Read |
The data inside of mailboxes, calendars, and contacts is incredibly rich. Many people treat their inboxes as mostly unstructured operating systems for their day to day lives. Ill speak for myself (and I am not unique) in saying my inbox is my todo list, ad hoc file repository, and gateway to most social interactions. My inbox is also an excellent p...
Atrium Panel on Raising Series A | Mark As Read |
The folks at Atrium were kind enough to host me on a panel alongside Justin Kan (Atrium), Zach Perret (Plaid), and Niko Bonatsos (General Catalyst) moderated by Lisa Han (Atrium) last night. The topic was about raising Series A, and the audience was primarily seed stage entrepreneurs that would be gearing up for a raisesoon.I was impressed by the c...
Ready Player One Review | Mark As Read |
Spark Capital hosted a Ready Player One viewing party last night in SF. It was a really fun event. I caught up with friends and meet a few new faces. A big thanks to Rachael and Dominique at Spark for organizing.I am a huge fan of Ernest Clines book, so when I heard a movie was being made I was excited. That said, when I saw the first trailer or tw...
Panorama Educations New Round | Mark As Read |
Teacher and student from Woodridge School District 68(Ill.)Panorama Education has news today. They raised $16MM in a Series B led by Emerson Collective. Ross Jensen has joined the board from Emerson Collective, and I look forward to working with Ross, along with co-founders Aaron Feuer and Xan Tanner and the rest of the amazing Panorama team on the...
The Road to Carta | Mark As Read |
eShares is announcing a rebrand today. The company is now called Carta. I love this name. It’s tight, concise, two strong syllables, that feels good on the tongue. The etymology of Carta is paper and maps. Paper we replace, so a web service that evokes paper sounds right to me. And when I think of the mission of the company most broadly and concise...
Our Investment in Particle | Mark As Read |
Photo Credit: ParticleGuy on InstructablesWhen Spark is exploring opportunities to partner with entrepreneurs who are building businesses focused on the enterprise market, we get excited when the product experience lights up our pattern recognition we have built up from our consumer investing experience. In consumer tech the product needs to be abl...
Monte Carlo Simulation of Sales Pipeline Projected Yield | Mark As Read |
I have partnered with a number of B2B software companies on behalf of Spark, and in each board meeting for these companies we review the sales pipeline. We look at the top deals in the pipeline and their likelihood to close. We consider pipeline coverage for upcoming quarters in hopes that it will be a leading indicator of whether we will hit our f...
Deterministic Unissued Options Pool Calculations | Mark As Read |
When investors write term sheets for investments in companies, they often state that the price per share of an investment is inclusive of an X% unissued options pool on a post-closing fully diluted basis. The percentage of X% is often negotiated significantly, and I see it usually falling between 8% and 12%. It seems like a simple statement in lega...
Vizio and The New Media Deal | Mark As Read |
Yesterday we learned that TV manufacturer Vizio will pay an FTC-imposed $2.2MM fine and delete the consumer usage tracking data they have illegally collected. Without soliciting consumers’ permission first, Vizio TVs would recognize the content being viewed by a consumer, keep track of viewing preferences, enrich this viewing data using IP address ...
When Fake Media and Real Media Are Indistinguishable | Mark As Read |
Nick Bilton wrote a terrific piece last week surveying recent advancements in video and audio manipulation that could be applied to creating fake news. It’s well worth a read to learn about these tech advancements, and here is one of Bilton’s video embeds from his piece that demonstrates what’s possible:https://medium.com/media/e9992dd8168c81650233...
You might consider programming this strategy on Quantopian. | Mark As Read |
You might consider programming this strategy on Quantopian. It’s pretty easy to use and you would get minute level pricing data for free to test your approach at tighter granularity.
The Software/Hardware Combination Premium | Mark As Read |
The team at Panic decided to discontinue their Status Board product and wrote a brief post describing their decision. Sunsetting a product is an emotionally difficult decision, and I empathize with them. The TL;DR on their post-mortem is simply there wasn’t enough demand for their product to justify the cost of continuing to support it. The part of...
Quantopian’s Progress | Mark As Read |
Quantopian announced today that they raised $25MM from Andreessen Horowitz, with continued support from Bessemer, Point 72 Ventures, Khosla, and Spark Capital.I’m really impressed with all the progress Fawce and Bredeche have made over the past 5 years. They have an amazing community of users that actively support each other while also competing ag...
Advanced Debate | Mark As Read |
I watched part of the first presidential debate last night (as much as I could tolerate before the social anxiety of watching people yell…Continue reading on »
Predictions | Mark As Read |
In January of 2014, I wrote the following tweet and then Pinned it to my profile, so it would be the first tweet everyone saw from me on…Continue reading on »
The Unbiased Algorithm is a Myth | Mark As Read |
The Unbiased Algorithm is a Myth: I published another longer read over on Medium. ?Syndicating here for Tumblr followers and email subscribers. ?Related lazy-web request: does anyone know a good way to mix together the RSS feeds of Tumblr and Medium so that I don?t have to do these cross posts for my Feedburner email subscribers?
"The Unbiased Algorithm is a Myth" in Spark Capital Collection | Mark As Read |
This week Gizmodo wrote an in-depth story about the bias in Facebook’s trending news product.Continue reading on Spark Capital Collection »
If you negotiate for board seats and you don’t show up, I have naive faith you will have a short… | Mark As Read |
tenure in the venture industry. what founder would recommend working with you in the future? Founder references are crucial for reputation.Continue reading on »
Corporate Governance: Dictatorships VS Democracy ? Medium | Mark As Read |
Corporate Governance: Dictatorships VS Democracy ? Medium: I wrote a post over on Medium. It will be my new full time place for long form writing. I?ll probably continue to post more Tumblr-ish content here. Go follow me on Medium.
"Corporate Governance: Dictatorships VS Democracy" in Spark Capital Collection | Mark As Read |
Before you fall asleep (or worse, hit the “back” button), let me acknowledge that there is no more boring phrase than “corporate governance…Continue reading on Spark Capital Collection »
The Darwinism of Encryption (Or... Why It Doesn?t Matter If You Side With Apple or The FBI) | Mark As Read |
I?ve restrained my commentary on the Apple/FBI encryption debate to tweets so far, but I couldn?t find a way to say this in 140 characters, so blog post it is.Digital communication is running a multi-decade inevitable march towards end-to-end encryption. In the beginning when the first ever TCP/IP packets were scooting around the ARPANET, all commu...
Podcast with Nick Moran | Mark As Read |
Nick Moran keeps a great podcast about VC and startups called Full Ratchet (the name is in reference to a particularly thorny term in venture deals… I hope you never need to face it). ?He interviewed me a few weeks back, and Part I just went live today. Check it out. Part II coming tomorrow.
This chart from fivethirtyeight shows a histogram of movie... | Mark As Read |
This chart from fivethirtyeight shows a histogram of movie reviews from 5 different sources. The reason they made this chart is to show that aggregated reviews on Fandango are skewed too high and thus untrustworthy (which is an appropriate conclusion). But I find this chart interesting for a different reason. The disproportionate 3.5 star reviews ...
Why Mobile-Optimized Works (pt 2) | Mark As Read |
Yesterday I wrote a post showing how companies? mobile-optimized websites are generally better than their desktop?websites?when viewed from a desktop browser. ?It?s a somewhat dramatic conclusion to make given that companies usually have a comparatively rag-tag team focused on mobile-optimized design (all the mobile efforts typically get aimed towa...
Mobile Optimized is the New Ideal Desktop Browsing Experience | Mark As Read |
When cruising through my Twitter feed on my desktop, I click on links that sometimes drop me on mobile-optimized pages. They are so much better designed than their desktop counterparts. These clicks inspired me to spend 5 minutes exploring the design contrasts at some of the most common sites I use.Wikipedia: Here?s the normal Wikipedia experience ...
Creativity Today | Mark As Read |
Steven Johnson has an excellent long read coming up this weekend in the NYT Magazine. ?It?s available online now. ?Its title says exactly what it?s about: The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn?t. ?In short, Napster was supposed to be a harbinger of doom for all creative talent as piracy and digital boogeymen were going to mean the end of any viable rev...
Thoughts On Digital Healthcare | Mark As Read |
Jonathan Libov of USV and Angela Tran Kingyens of Version One Ventures are collaborating on a mini-series of long reads that they are calling On Digital Healthcare. ?They released Part 1 today (about Mobile Endpoints) and you can subscribe to updates via email as they are released on their site. It?s terrific, and I?m delighted they?re sharing thei...
Panorama Education | Mark As Read |
Nearly all successful modern companies employ some variation of a build-measure-learn feedback cycle. ?It?s a cycle that iterates as follows: you take an initial position on what your product should be and build it. Then, you measure your target audience?s response and interaction with the product. Then, you analyze your data measurements to figure...
Permutation City | Mark As Read |
About 6 months ago I read Permutation City by Greg Egan. ?When I put it down, I was glad to be done with it. ?It wasn?t a gripping read, so despite being relatively moderate length (350 small trade paperback pages), it took me awhile to muscle through it. ?I don?t usually write reviews on this blog about books I didn?t enjoy much (I don?t see the v...
Series A Investment Pace Across Select VC Firms | Mark As Read |
The blog post I wrote earlier this week talking about Sequoia?s investment pacing back around the nuclear winter got far more distribution than I initially expected. ?It made me curious to look at some more recent numbers about investment pacing. Here is my analysis and conclusions.Investment pace is an interesting quality metric to use to evaluate...
Sequoia?s?RIP Good Times and Their Subsequent Investments | Mark As Read |
Brian Chesky, CEO and Co-Founder at AirBnB, recently published 7 rejection letters he received from valley VCs in an effort to raise $150k for a 10% stake in AirBnB during mid-to-late 2008. ?My own view into that era was already published in an email thread between Paul Graham and Fred Wilson that shows how easy it is to miss deals at the earliest ...
Seveneves Review | Mark As Read |
Yesterday I finished Neal Stephenson?s Seveneves. ?It is a great read, well suited for summer.?The plot is simple enough to explain spoiler-free: The moon blows up for an unexplained reason. What happens next?It?s a long read, but that?s because it?s actually two books in one. ?It?s 870 pages. The first two thirds are one continuous story, and the ...
Finding Startup Jobs | Mark As Read |
My friend John Gannon, Co-Founder and CEO of HireNurture, wrote a book that recently launched called Finding Startup Jobs. ?John asked me to write the forward for the book, and after reading a late draft I was delighted to contribute.The book is a great fit for people who 1) see the rise of popularity in startups and want to participate, 2) are lik...
This a computer the size of a grain of rice. | Mark As Read |
This a computer the size of a grain of rice.
Digital Systems of Control | Mark As Read |
I find it so curious the ways in which the technology we own controls us against our desires, by design. ?If you buy a new computer and you want to put music from your iPhone into your new iTunes installation, you?re prohibited.If you drop your phone in water, your device will tattle on you to the manufacturer via water damage indicators.Now that p...
The Next Stage for Socratic | Mark As Read |
I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Pedregal and Shreyans Bhansali, the Founders of Socratic, in the summer of 2013. ?During our first meeting we were quickly finishing each others' sentences as they described their vision for how they want to make learning easier for students. They had both a clear vision, a noble mission, and I could see how the ...
AI's DNA | Mark As Read |
I got a little over-excited at a dinner last night with friends and talked my way into a point of view about the inevitability of AI. It goes like this: Humans are husks of flesh and water with one purpose: perpetuate their DNA. See Dawkins's The Selfish Gene. If you're already not on board with the assumption here, you can stop and return to Twit...
Apple announced on Monday that it is selling a $17,000 gold... | Mark As Read |
Apple announced on Monday that it is selling a $17,000 gold watch, no different in technology from a $349 Sport model watch they are also selling. The tech world is of a divided mind on the issue. Paul Graham?s tweet screen-captured above is my favorite comment. I lump the gold watch decision in with the decision to buy Beats. Beats are notorious...
Quantopian Open | Mark As Read |
Quantopian announced yesterday the results of their first monthly Quantopian Open contest. ?The contest allows participants to submit their best algorithmic trading strategies to compete against each other. ?The owner of the best performing algorithm for the month wins the opportunity to run a $100,000 account with their winning algorithm on Quanto...
Crossing the Line #leanintogether | Mark As Read |
In college I was an RA for a year for an all-freshman dorm. Our team of RAs organized a handful of events during the year. One was called Crossing The Line. The purpose of the activity is to allow people to publicly declare how they self-identify with certain ideas and labels.?Here's how it works: A long piece of tape is applied to the middle of a ...
Affordances in Texting Apps | Mark As Read |
Jonathan Libov over at USV wrote a nice post about how texting is a great way to engage with apps, particularly in a mobile context. ?It's a long read, but well worth your time.I agree with how effortless a quick text exchange can be, and in combination with sufficient advances in NLP, I think it will be a terrific new medium through which we all c...
The Lifecycle of Software ObjectsOver the weekend I read Ted... | Mark As Read |
The Lifecycle of Software ObjectsOver the weekend I read Ted Chiang's novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects. (links to get this book down in the last paragraph? it's complicated*).?This novella is the most compelling vision of how near-term truly intelligent AI will evolve that I?ve ever read. Ted paints a world in which there are no short cuts...
Problems with 409a (and How to Fix Them) | Mark As Read |
A little over a month ago, Henry Ward (Founder and CEO of eShares) published a blog post about how cap tables are broken. Since then, nearly half my conversations with entrepreneurs have at some point meandered onto the issues he exposed (and his solution:?eShares). ?He hit a nerve; it's a pain point that all Founders and investors have felt at som...
Secret Knowledge | Mark As Read |
A few days ago, Sesame Street's Twitter account tweeted out the Konami Code. If you use the code on Sesame Street's home page, then… well, I won't spoil it, but give it a shot if you're curious.It reminded me of the secret knowledge culture of gaming (the Komami Code being perhaps the most representative example of this culture). Every (good)...
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