2008–2026
1,267 posts
2026 39
October 2026
- Why There Will Be More Pro Rata Conflicts
- Mercury’s CEO on their Principles of Writing (and AI Usage)
September 2026
- I used to respond to every cold email but now AI slop is killing my inbox
- AI: “It’s very difficult to have a sober conversation about this when there’s so much money at stake”
August 2026
- Does Your Startup Have an AI Writing Policy Yet? Here’s One from Clay.
- AI is Changing South Korea Even Faster Than it’s Changing the US; Why 🥀 Is The Fastest-Rising Emoji; How Robots Might Save Cherry Blossom Season; +++ [link blog]
- Why “Grab Any Seat on the Rocketship” is a bad career strategy; this VC thinks people are right to hate today’s capitalism; look for founders who play RTS games; and a Chrome extension which blocks slop ecom brands ++ [link blog]
July 2026
- Airlines Are Using AI to Maximize Prices – Here’s How You Fight Back
- Startup Kool-Aid; Why You’re Making Enough Money but Still Anxious; $100 Million in Odyssey Popcorn Buckets; the World’s Best Fake $50 Bill, +++ [link post]
- I’ve Changed My Mind. Early Stage Venture Funds of $100 Million or Less Should Hold Almost No Reserves for Follow-On.
- Three Words That It’s Time For Us To Leave Behind: Non-Technical, Unicorn, and Oversubscribed.
- Product Market Fit is Hard to Find, but False PMF is Even More Painful
June 2026
- Celebrate People like Om Malik and Susan Wojcicki When They’re Alive. That’s the Best Chance We Have To Make Tech Good Again.
- Let’s Learn Together: Financial Tools Startup Ambrook Spent Six Weeks Helping Their Entire Team Adopt AI. And Now They’ve Open Sourced the Materials
- Tips on Asking for Advice; Foreign Spies All Over Florida; Feeling Like You Don’t Have Enough Money Drives You Nuts; How to Use AI (and when not to) in Your Hiring; +++ [link blog]
- Technical Interviews Are Dead – What Comes Next?, The Cosmetics You Buy Online Are Fake (and Unsafe), If You Can’t Get a Job Right Now It’s Your Fault, and +++ [link blog]
- SAFE Adjusted TVPI: How Early Stage VCs Should Communicate SAFE Note Markups to their LPs
- Some investors shape markets, while others are shaped by them
- With all the AI money sloshing around Skin in the Game isn’t enough anymore. I’m looking for Heart in the Game too.
May 2026
April 2026
- At AI Dinners, You Can Leave Before Dessert. And Other Rules for IRL IS BACK Networking
- Why I Hope I’m Wrong When I Pass on Investing in a Startup
- “Having said that, it’s not a company that I’d start today. My bar for working on meaningful problems has gone up since I was 24” – Dan Teran, on evolving from a founder to an investor, and building what matters to him.
March 2026
- Don’t Worry 26, 34, 41 Year Old Friend In Tech. You’re Not ‘Too Old.’
- Before You Automate It, Ask Whether You Should Even Be Doing It in the First Place
- Opting Out of the Unicorn Race; The Code Doesn’t Love You Back – former Meta/Google Exec on How Engineering is Changing; A Case Against Big Companies (Why People Are Gonna Get Laid Off); and More+++ [link blog]
- “If they raise VC, they usually get stuck and it’s a bad outcome for an otherwise good company.” Brad Hargreaves on which proptech companies should seek (or avoid) venture dollars. And more, from the founder of General Assembly, Common, and now, Thesis Driven.
- “My one big tip for any of these business side roles is you still need to get close to the product. Nothing bothers me more than people that work at companies and never use their own products.” Zapier’s Corp Dev Lead Austin Johnsen on how AI is changing his job and building his own tools with Claude
- Can You Be Part of the System Without Also Being Part of the Problem? Yes but…
- “Vast wealth of tech billionaires has made many of them unconcerned with the little people’s lives — and deeply unpatriotic.” Is Paul Krugman correct?
- The AI Vampire; Startup Tolan Changes How It Hires Engineers in an AI World; Do You Back Into Parking Spots?; Social Engineer Hacks Against AI Agents; and More++ [link blog]
February 2026
- No Coding Before 10am; VCs Are Investing in Competing Companies – DGAF About Conflicts; “Technology is Not Destiny” – Principles for AI’s Future; and +++ [link blog]
- “You’d also maybe be surprised how many X thinkbois hate on the media publicly but don’t behave the same in private” – reporter Jason Del Rey on going Indie with The Aisle, who inspires him, and why he failed to pay enough attention the the ChatGPT launch
January 2026
- “So say you’re against that. Now. Before it stops shocking you.”
- GitHub Cofounder on Becoming a VC: “For me this is much more than a financial game. I want to fund founders that want to create a better future for PEOPLE.” Five Questions With Tom Preston-Werner.
- So You Want To Watch YouTube
- The LLM Way of Life; Boss Gives $240 Million to Workers; Connecting Ice Cream Trucks to Ukraine’s War; and +++ [link blog]
- “I deeply regret not paying more attention to AI as a field before the release of ChatGPT. Like everyone, I’m certainly paying attention now!” More Truths and Advice from Sources Founder reporter Alex Health
- How Reliable Does AI Actually Need to Be?; Building a Career in Tech These Days is Hard; Backchannel References Are Lazy; Mac & Cheese is Changing; and More+++ [link blog]
2025 40
December 2025
- My Mother-in-Law Wanted to Visit a Data Center. This Holiday, “Are we in an AI bubble?” Went Mainstream.
- Should It Be Easier To Sue Influencers for Defamation?; 2025 Was the Year Self-Driving Car Optimism Went Mainstream; a Startup CEO’s Annual Learnings Post; a Podcast Where I Spoke for 43% of the Time; and +++ [link blog]
- Org Charts Are Funhouse Mirrors Because Span of Influence is Not Limited to Span of Control
- Graphite Gets Bought By Cursor: Three Reflections from Six Years of Work [PMF didn’t happen right away; working IRL mattered; three founders, three distinct roles]
- Waymo’s CEO Isn’t Like Elon At All; Venture Capital Might Soon Depend on $1 Trillion Startups; Everyone is Gambling and No One is Happy; Are MCPs Just APIs 2.0? and more++++ [link blog]
- Technical CEO Described How He Screwed Up Sales; Startup Operating Principles from an Ex-Stripe Founder; Most Leaders Move Too Slowly; and MORE [link blog]
- Does valuation or ownership matter more to a seed VC? Yes.
November 2025
- Bodegas Aren’t Going Anywhere; Degen Economics is Hollowing Out Society; the New Electric Tech Stack; and more++ [link blog]
- Vice Signaling is Poisoning Tech; Playing Entrepreneur on ‘Hard Mode’ is Worth Doing; OpenAI Won’t Build Every Dev Tool; and more++ [link blog]
- “I tend to manage via a mix of advice and opportunity” – what I told a young product manager 15 years ago. And how it applies to startups today.
October 2025
- Smart AI Guidelines for Students: It’s Not All or Nothing
- Why I No Longer Care About Startup Valuation When I Invest (Except for These Four Reasons)
September 2025
- When is Institutional Capital Right for a New VC Firm? And Two Myths About The Downsides of Taking LP Money.
- It might not be true, but it is real. AI, SF and our culture.
- Headcount isn’t a KPI, but talent density should be
- Tech Reporter Alex Konrad on Going Independent with Upstarts, What Drives Subscribers (vs Just Views) and How He Uses AI in His Content Creation
- S**t Shoveling
August 2025
- AI Buying Software Instead of Salespeople; Teaching Companies To Do Less; Have the Swiss Figured Out Cheaper Housing? and +++ [link blog]
- When Slack Went Down All The Time; AI is Learning to Lie in Order to Win; Your Org Chart is About Power Centers; and +++ [link blog]
- Why Marketing Sucks Right Now, Underground Robot Fights, Free Waffles Worth $50, and +++ [link blog]
July 2025
June 2025
April 2025
- Praise Our Lord For Secondary Markets, Because Selling Shares Is Now an Essential Part of (Seed) Venture Capital
- “I think CEOs that are interested in a future acquisition need to be building relationships or at least awareness with potential buyers at least 2-3 years in advance, especially with strategics. If you’re not on the list, it’s rare for a deal to happen.” Joe Hyrkin on Selling Issuu to Bending Spoons
- Anonymous AI Engineer Funding SF Events, How Startup Decision Making is Like an Outdoor Survival Trip, the Guy Who Reports on Hacks Gets Pwned Himself, and +++ [link blog]
March 2025
- The Right Amount of Fraud in Seed Stages Startups is Greater than 0% But It Shouldn’t Be Pardoned
- “I consider my writing a success if I’m able to produce words I can both stand behind/formally weave into my worldview.” Five Questions with Moth Fund’s Molly Mielke
- Men Spend More Time with TV than with People, Founder Gives Away Half His Wealth to Progressive Causes, a VC Thinks the LLMs are Going to Try and Eat SaaS, & the AI Prompts That Saved a Life [link blog]
- How a Venture Fund (Ours!) Actually Works With Their LPAC
- When Software Eats the World, Vulnerable Populations – Like Kids – Can Get Exposed to Venture Risk Without Knowing It
- After Investing $100 Million Into New VC Firms, Here’s What I Look For: Traditional But Better, or Different & Excellent.
February 2025
- Exceptional Startups Are Needles in a Haystack. So the Best VCs Build Needle Magnets.
- Simple Advice for Junior Folks in Venture Capital: Don’t Be a Generalist. Do One Thing Really Well for your GP and One Thing Really Well for Founders.
- “You have to assume every company will have access to the same LLMs and voices. The challenge, then, is to build a company that thrives despite this reality” Five Questions with RegalAI’s Alex Levin on Building In a Fast Moving Industry and More
- “I wanted to do the deal but couldn’t get it through my partnership” is always such weaksauce
- Nine Signs Your Startup Is Going to Fail; Planning Your Annual Family Summit; SNL Performers Cracking Themselves Up; and +++ [link blog]
- Don’t Take It Personally. Take It Professionally.
- I never want founders to QUIT, but sometimes they should STOP
January 2025
2024 48
December 2024
- If You Don’t Like Sales, Don’t Start a Company
- 10 Tips for a Great Career, Will AI Help Us Talk to Animals, an Economic Fairness Metric to Rival GDP and +++ [link blog]
- What to do about sports gambling addiction in America [mini post]
- Self-Driving Cars are (a) magical, (b) ready, and (c) should be allowed to kill people [mini post]
- A VC Firm Can Be Either a Partnership or a Collection of Partners [mini post]
- VCs Leave Their Funds and Their Portfolio Companies Often Suffer [mini post]
- “Look, like, i don’t know if this company is going to be around in three to six months. But what i can tell you is it’s going to be the most memorable three to six months of your life”: Sequoia’s Roelof Botha with YouTube’s Steve Chen
November 2024
- Duct Taping Your Org Chart, How to Use ‘Code-Yellows’ at Your Startup, Do AI Meeting Assistants Make You More Present, and MORE+++ [link blog]
- “I think viewing your board as an audience to be ‘sold’ to instead of a partner in your journey will orient your board to be less trusting and collaborative.” Five Questions with Nilam Ganenthiran, Former President of Instacart
- Winning at Seed Investing Isn’t Just About When to Buy, but Increasingly Also When to Sell
October 2024
- “I actually thought I’d stay at Flexport my entire career.” Ben Braverman’s Path Into, and Out of, His Dream Job and Then Founding Saga, a New Venture Firm
- My Goal is to NEVER be on the VC Midas List
- “Sanzo is at its best when we serve as a bridge across cultures for both AAPI and non-AAPI.” CEO Sandro Roco on building a beverage startup, what to avoid in influencer deals, & protecting the brand.
- Are Bookstores a Waste of Space, Can Scientists Change the Weather, Future of AI Agents, and Curing Loneliness Is Tough [link blog]
- I Once Feared Professional Irrelevance. Now I Embrace It.
September 2024
- “One Thing You Wish People Better Understood About Venture Capital” – Part V, featuring Ethan Kurzweil, Lily Lyman, Ashley Mayer, and Leshika Samarasinghe.
- “One Thing You Wish People Better Understood About Venture Capital” – Part IV, featuring Diana Kimball Berlin, Jake Gibson, Jesse Middleton, Adam Nelson and Nikhil Basu Trivedi.
- “One Thing You Wish People Better Understood About Venture Capital” – Part III, featuring Maya Bakhai, Paris Heymann, Nakul Mandan, Eric Tarczynski, and ANONYMOUS.
- “One Thing You Wish People Better Understood About Venture Capital” – Part II, featuring Victor Echevarria, Chris Neumann, Micah Rosenbloom, Alexa von Tobel and Roseanne Wincek.
- “One Thing You Wish People Better Understood About Venture Capital” – Part I, featuring Andre Charoo, Bill Clerico, Ryan Hoover, Amy Saper, and Dan Teran.
- 30 Years Ago I Said ‘No’ to Working for Phil Donahue, and ‘Yes’ to Conan O’Brien. No Regrets, But Only Now Do I Understand How Amazing Donahue Was.
August 2024
- “I will say that a lot of tension arose from Googler’s expectations that the company’s culture had to be exactly the same as what it was when the company was one fifth the size” Former GOOG & MSFT executive (and multiple time founder) Javier Soltero on Career Advice, Big Company Culture, and Startup
- A Hollywood Director on Whether AI Will Replace Him, What It Takes to Raise a Series B in 2024, Don’t Hire an Executive If They’ve Never at a Job for at Least Five Years, and +++ [link blog]
- Email Introductions 101. And Why a Strong Cold Email Always Beats a Weak Warm One.
- What Do VC Returns Actually Look Like? Here’s a Screenshot from my AngelList account
- The Best of the New VCs Will Outperform Most of the Legacy Ones. That’s Why We Created Screendoor to Back Them.
- Thank You Susan
- Why Company Communication Breaks at 50 People; a VC Notices What Happens When a Startup is Down to their Final $250k; You Are Almost Certainly Mispricing Your Product; and MOOOORE
July 2024
- Building Your First Exec Team; Avoiding Micromanagement; Skilled Immigration Should Be Prioritized; Spielberg is a Genius; and More [link blog]
- Traits a VC Looks For In Founders, Are Plants Actually Intelligent?, How Duolingo Streaks Work, and +++ [link blog]
June 2024
- The Future of Fashion Commerce Is a Designer’s AI Bot Saying You Look Great and Your Personal AI Bot Sifting Through the Bullshit
- A Guide to VC “Congrats” Tweets, From 🤑 to 😐
- An Operating Manual for Cofounders, Why It’s Silly to Say Your Funding Round was “Oversubscribed,” Space Weather Forecaster is a real job, and more… [link blog]
May 2024
- Backing New VC Firms With Screendoor: Welcoming OGs from First Round Capital, Pear VC, Reach Capital, and Refactor to the Cause
- Textio’s Founder Kieran Snyder on the Two Advantages Startups Have in AI (While Remaining Skeptical Of The Funding Gold Rush)
- The Airline Chatbot Lied and a Passenger Sued, Why You Shouldn’t Care About Your VC Being ‘Founder Friendly,’ and Will AI Slop Kill the Internet? [link blog]
- Are Startup Stock Options Like ‘Lottery Tickets?’ A CEO and Former Employee Discuss. And My POV.
- He Sold His Startup for $130 Million, Here’s What He Learned, and Questions to Ask When Considering Whether a New Job is a ‘Fit’ for You, Plus Other Great Reads [link blog]
April 2024
March 2024
- When to Tip $$, Andrew Huberman-ization of America, Jelly Roll Owns 100% of His Masters, and More [Link Blog]
- Seven ‘Pivots’ Later, Warmly Finally Found Its Stride. CEO Max Greenwald Covers What He Wishes He Knew At The Beginning, and More…
February 2024
- Every time OpenAI cuts a check for training data, an unlaunched competitive startup dies. Without a ‘safe harbor,’ AI will be ruled by incumbents.
- The Introvert Economy, the Case for Longer Founder Vesting Cycles, What Happens When Your Product Goes Viral on TikTok, and More [link blog]
- Incentives in Venture Capital, Why You Should Avoid Your Competitors’ Investors, China’s Malaise, and More [link blog]
- The Fonz on Leadership Lessons He Learned From Happy Days
January 2024
- VCs Are Leaving Their Firms But It’s The Founders They Backed Who Often Get Hurt
- “It takes a year to find great executives so you must always look down the field.” Proof’s Pat Kinsel on why he believes a VCs most critical task is to make sure the WRONG person doesn’t get hired into a startup.
- 2024’s First Link Blog Post (Because Happy Birthday Matt Mullenweg)
2023 52
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
- How You Actually Feel Selling Your Company, Is It Worth Tolerating a Toxic Employee, & TechCrunch’s Former Editor in Chief Reflects on His Decade at the Helm [linkblog]
- Startups Fail All The Time, But Many Could Fail Better By Thinking Beyond the VCs and Founders
- Venture Capitalists Will Overpay For Seed Rounds But For Reasons You Likely Haven’t Considered
- Why VC Isn’t Right for Most Startups, The Place Where Taylor Swift, Gwar & Cypress Hill are Equals, and Parrothead Memories (RIP Jimmy)
- The Only Thing Which Has Failed About The ‘Creator Economy’ Thus Far Is Venture Capital’s Attempts to Get Their Piece. Why There’s Never Been a Better Time to Be a Creator.
- A Technical Cofounder Tells You How To Find Your Technical Cofounder, Where The Stuff We Return to Amazon Goes, a Benchmark VC on Rethinking Your AI Startup, and More….
August 2023
- And let’s be clear: The term “culture and employee engagement” doesn’t mean “Happy Hours” and “Pizza Parties:” Navigating Market Downturns and Other Startup Advice with Melanie Naranjo, Head of People at SaaS Startup Ethena
- The Best View of “What’s San Francisco Like Right Now?” Is Understanding This Simple Framework
- Why Starting Your Investor Updates With “Cash on Hand” Information is a Major Red Flag Right Now. It’s Maybe the Only Thing Worse Than Not Sending Updates at All.
- Lightspeed VC Michael Mignano on Why Apple’s Threats Influenced His Decision to Sell Anchor to Spotify, Why No FOMO in Venture is Good (AI Aside), & What NYC Founders Need to Realize
- I Like You But You’re Not Yet My Friend. What Do We Call Each Other? A Struggle to Replace “Acquaintance” With Something Better.
- US VCs Need to Lobby For High Skilled Immigration Reform (and Sacrifice Preferential Tax Treatment If Needed)
- Why We’re Heading Into the “Perfect Storm” of Startup Closures.
- Sold at the Peak: Congrats to Founders of Honey, Mirror, Frame.io and Others. You Timed It Perfectly.
- VC Optimism Returning But More Pain Ahead In Their Portfolios
- “Winners Take None:” Coworking, Self Storage, Scooters Have Burned Billions of Investor Dollars and Maybe Were Never ‘Tech Companies’
- Link Blog: Run Away When a VC Wants to ‘Preempt Your Next Round,’ How Barbie Got Made, Air Jordan Fraud, and More
- Great Time to Start a Company, Tough Time to Be Running One
July 2023
- Threads Gives You The Chance To Rebuild Your Follow Graph. Here’s All the Reasons You’ll Mess It Up.
- July 4th Linkblog: Don’t Fake FOMO When Fundraising, 50 Cent on Success, Miss Texas on Reproductive Rights, +++
June 2023
- “If I never again have to read a bunch of entitled tech bros mansplaining on twitter about their way of working is the only way, I will die a happy man.” Canadian Investor Chris Neumann on Venture Vibes, Who Helped Him Along the Way, and the Qualities of a Founder Who Could Fail But He’d Back Again
- Linkblog: What AI Model Should Your Startup Use, What Your VC Can’t Do For You, and More
- Why a Seed VC Should Care More About Ownership Than Valuation on Each New Investment, But Understand the Fund Impact of Paying Too Much Too Often
- I Can’t Stop Marveling at SF’s Driverless Cars
- Sunday Linkblog: What Do Investors Really Want From Founders; Stop Hiring Mediocre Executives; and Practical Tips for Investor-Led Go To Market Help
May 2023
- Three Reads Over a Holiday Weekend: Encrypted Phones Spill The Beans On Criminals, Yard Signs Ruin Democracy, and the Costs of a High Regulation/Low Trust Society (as told through a bus stop)
- Follow-up On “Sell Your Startup in Public”
- The Acquihire Market for Early Stage Startups is Ice Cold. One Better Strategy? Announce You’re For Sale.
April 2023
March 2023
- The Industry Needs to do One Thing to Avoid Regulation: Provide Better Phone Support
- Five Short Links To Long Reads
- I Graduated Into The 2000 DotCom Crash, And It Was The Best Thing To Ever Happen To My Career
- As a Human, I’m Excited About AI. As an Investor, I’m Still Wrestling With a Few Questions
- Killing The ‘Must Have a Warm Intro To a VC’ Myth Will Be Good For Founders and Great for the World
- “Imposter Syndrome” is Definitely Misnamed, Might Be a Condition of Privilege, & Has a Fascinating History
February 2023
- AI Enthusiasm is Not a Bubble and Even if it was We Wouldn’t Necessarily Know it Yet
- Changing The Face(s) of Venture Capital, Screendoor Hires Lisa Cawley, Our First Managing Director, to Scale Further
- Virtual Worlds Are Trade Schools In Disguise
- You Probably Can’t Hire Stripe’s First COO But Soon You’ll Be Able To Read Her Book
- Some of the Best Founders Are “Difficult” People
- “I’m Interviewing With AI Companies. How Do I Know If They Have an Ethical North Star?”
- Using Startup Advisors To Help Your New Hires Can Be The Difference Between Their Success or Struggle
January 2023
- For Those Recently Laid Off From Google, Leaving Your Job Doesn’t Mean Losing Your Identity.
- “Trying to bet on virality is just, it’s not, it’s something you can prepare for, but you can’t actually create.”
- Can OpenAI Live Up To The ‘Open’ Brand Promise?
- Death of The Generalist Seed VC
- Amazon v Google v China: Quantum Computing Will Blow Your Mind.
- The Economics of War and Vintage Concert T-Shirts.
- 2022’s Startup Layoffs Will Result In 2023 Startup Wind Downs
2022 56
December 2022
- NFT Tax Lost Harvesting, George Carlin, Living Colour and More: Seven Links To Read (12/30/22)
- Can a VC Think Like a Startup? That’s Part of Homebrew’s Goal in Switching to Our Own Capital.
- 2022 Was The Year We Decided To Not Raise Another Venture Capital Fund. What Happened Next..
- “Dead on arrival. I’m still waiting to see the first good Mastodon post. God help us.”
- Twikileaks
- Don’t Believe The Terminator Movies, Artificial Intelligence’s First Strike Against Humanity Is By Flattery, Not Force.
- Why VCs Explaining “It Was Only 4% Of Our Fund” Is Misleading Minimization When a High Flying Startup Implodes.
November 2022
- Now, Next, and At Exit: The Three Ways To Evaluate Compensation Before Accepting That New Startup Job. Salary Benchmarks Are Just a Single Piece of Data.
- “There is magic in the trying and learning and trying again.. but any unprocessed PTSD will come back to haunt you” Avni Patel Thompson on the Superpowers Of Second Time Founders
- “Being a 2nd time founder is basically figuring out how to leverage all your hype without believing it”
- Women’s Health & Women’s Rights Are One In The Same
- “You have to fight the urge to do everything the same way you did it the first time:” Pros and Cons of Being a Repeat Founder. Some guidance from an understudied segment of the startup ecosystem.
October 2022
- Two Questions To Ask During Hiring Reference Checks Instead Of “Where Can They Improve?” Be Specific About Situations & Create a Permission Structure for Honesty
- “As a Senator, the first project I’d tackle would be immigration.” Me! in Conversation with Sar Haribhakti
- Paid Subscriptions Aren’t Enough. Why Substack Should Build An App Store
- Like Bourbon and Whiskey? A New Auction Site Is Making It Easy to Buy (Too Easy According to My Credit Card Statement!)
- Job Applicant Turned Down Your Offer? How To Ask Them To Refer a New Candidate for the Role.
- The Most Important Concept of 2022’s Startup Downturn is Not Just Surviving, But Staying “Default Investable”
September 2022
- Succeeding in Venture Capital is Mostly About Knowing What to Buy. But When To Sell Matters Also.
- Why Figma is Worth $20B And Other Observations From The Adobe Acquisition
- When a VC Passes, And Is Wrong: Real Talk Between Me and Ethena’s CEO Roxanne Petraeus
- “Workers are mad and no longer willing to sit idly by being spoon fed ‘we’re family’ bullshit from bosses:” Logan LaHive is Helping Employees Organize & Collectively Bargain. But Did He Compromise His Own Vision By Taking Venture Capital for the Startup?
August 2022
- “I guess we’ll know we’ve made it when a woman can get away with behaving like Elon Musk.” Talking With VC Ashley Mayer About Finding Your Career, Taking Box Public, And Why She’s Not Interested In Reading Yet Another Female CEO Takedown
- I Assumed This Memoir Was Just Another CEO’s Personal Brand Reinvention. I Was Very Wrong.
- Seed Stage Founders Undervalue Angels With Marketing & Comms Expertise
- Three Startup Pitch Deck Mistakes That Are Red Flags For Venture Investors
July 2022
- Celebrating Milestones Doesn’t Kill Your Ambition. I Realized This Too Late To Enjoy Many Of Them.
- These Two Questions Are All You Need To Understand The Next Few Years of Venture & Startups
- 50+ Free Guides To Startup HR, Recruiting, Leadership ++
- In This Market, It’s a Great Time for a Mutual “Try Before You Buy”
- More New Hires Are Ghosting Before Their Start Date. Here’s How To Prevent That.
June 2022
- If You’re Interviewing With a Startup, Here Are Three Questions To Ask Their Investors
- Company Culture Is Really Important, But The Way We Talk About It Is Wrong
- Five Great Blog Posts I Found This Week
- 15,000 Tech Workers Have Been Let Go In May. Were You One of Them?
May 2022
- “My career was on the rise, I had the beginnings of a financial safety net …Yet I started to suffer from debilitating panic attacks”
- What Does It Mean To Be A “Good-Faith Skeptic” & When Is “Bad-Faith” Warranted
- Most Startups Add Independent Board Members Too Late To Make A Real Difference. Here’s Why.
- What’s To Stop Twitter’s New Owner From Publishing The Company’s Historical Internal Emails?
April 2022
- What Was The First Concert You Attended?
- Keep Your Personal Burn Rate Low To Maximize Your Options
- A Good Investor Can Help You Close Candidates. A Great Investor Will Sometimes Tell You Who Not To Hire.
March 2022
- It’s Pretty Cringey To Self-Anoint Yourself Any of These Four
- I Love Backing ‘Mission-Driven’ Founders But Here’s Where They Can Struggle as Startup CEOs
- Fired Up To Invest In East Fork, A Company With A Mission
- VCs ‘Anti-Portfolio’ Lists Are Mostly Performative BS
February 2022
- Peloton’s New CEO Is Incredibly Candid, & the ‘Micromort’ Estimates Risk of Dying From Any Activity
- How To Raise Venture Funding When Investors Hate Your Market
- How to Decide if a Career in Venture Capital is Right for You
- Neil Young’s Spotify Protest Isn’t Censorship, It’s Exercising His Free Market Rights. Why Are We Confusing The Two?
January 2022
- The Role That Luck Plays In Our Success
- Investor Jarrod Dicker on how “the emergence of NFTs has brought provable digital ownership to the internet. This evolution can’t be overstated.”
- In Order to Live a Happier Life, Say “No” More in 2022
- “I try not to ride the emotional wave of startup life like I sometimes did before” and other lessons from a second time founder
- Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth Says Video Games Were What Hooked Him On Tech
- Why Today’s ‘Mentorship Programs’ Mostly Fail Women in Tech (and How to Improve Them)
2021 44
December 2021
- “It’s okay to take profits and not hodl forever.” Does this make Alex Taub a web3 contrarian or just reasonable?
- I’m Successful In Tech Because I Managed To Visit The Future Without A Time Machine
- Avatars Don’t Poop But You Can Be Sure The Metaverse Will Have Toilets
November 2021
- How I Calmed My Imposter Syndrome with These Two Tricks
- Blame Me For YouTube’s ‘Dislike’ Option. But Now I’m Glad They’re Removing It.
- ‘Entrepreneur In Residence’ Used To Be One Of Silicon Valley’s Most Prestigious Titles. Now It’s Dead.
- “I’ll see in 2022 if I can turn The SF Minute into an actual business that’s somewhat sustainable”
- Vanity Fair’s Profile of The Rock is Just Fantastic
- A Tech Millionaire’s Guide To Philanthropy
- What I Tell All New VCs About Their First Funds
October 2021
- Why This Ex-Facebook Engineer Thinks Non-Technical Product Managers Are Awesome (Oh and He’s Hiring)
- Learn To Hire Well And You’ll Never Lose
- Ode to a Non-Technical Product Manager (Revisited)
- Win The ‘Sure Things’ Or Find The Hidden Gems? What’s My Job As A VC?
- Celebrating 10 Years of Therapy
September 2021
- “We Don’t Consider This a Conflicting Investment”
- Most Startup ‘Pivots’ Aren’t Really Pivots, They’re Just What Startups Are Supposed To Do
- If You’re Not Sure Whether Your Current Investors Would Give You More Money, The Answer Is Likely “No”
August 2021
- Future of Work Software That Focuses on EQ Not Just IQ
- ‘Inside Rounds’ Used to Be Bad. Sequoia & WhatsApp Changed Venture Forever
- Tech Reporters, You’re Being Played By Using “Oversubscribed” To Describe Successful Funding Rounds
- “I Can Really See Us Leading This Funding Round” Isn’t a Term Sheet
- We Don’t Talk Enough About Money In Silicon Valley, Revisited
July 2021
- 2 1/2 Angel Investing Mistakes You Can Easily Avoid
- End of an Error: As Conan O’Brien Wraps Up 28 Years of Late Night, I Was an Idiot to Leave the Show
June 2021
- Don’t Let Your Best Product Managers All Become People Managers Or Your Company Will Suffer
- We Raised $50m+ To Back New Venture Capitalists Who Don’t Look Like Me
May 2021
- How Pro Skateboarder Tony Hawk Made Me A Better Parent
- The Great Talent Reshuffling of 2021 Has Begun
- Employee Surveys Won’t Tell You Whether To Return To An Office Or Not
April 2021
- Digital Plastic Surgery: Why Boys and Girls Use Filters Differently
- Succeeding in Venture Capital as an Introvert
- Why Facebook’s Responsible A.I. Team Needs to Be Able to Lose Money in Order to Do Its Job
- Turntable.fm Reminds Me How Much Fun the Web Can Be
March 2021
- The Baddest Band In Town
- A Year of Zoom Genitals, Bourbon Bottles & Child-Rearing
- Why There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Startup Within a Big Company’
February 2021
- Three Types Of Startup Advisors You Might Not Have Thought About (But Will Help You Win)
- This Is The Single Most Important Page On The Web (If You’re a Human)
- Don’t Just Stand With Someone Being Harassed. Stand In Front Of Them.
January 2021
2020 23
December 2020
- Leaving SF? Bring The Best of SV Values With You, Not Just SV Dollars
- What Happened When I Deleted Every Meeting From My Calendar
- How To Grade This Week’s airbnb and DoorDash IPOs
- What To Do If You’re a Startup CEO & You Don’t Know How To Sell
- The Bad Habit That Even Productive People Keep Falling Into
- Why a Paid Newsletter Won’t Be Enough Money for Most Writers (And That’s Fine): The Multi-SKU Creator
November 2020
- Working In Tech & Worrying About Getting “Too Old”
- The Essential Nature of In-Person Work For Early-Stage Startups
- Is It Fair To Tell Founders “Just Execute And You’ll Be Fine” When We Know It’s Not A Level Playing Field?
- Never Become The Person Your Twitter Followers Want You To Be
- Coinbase’s Culture Memo: Not Good, Not Bad, But I Reject ‘Mission-Focused’ Framing
October 2020
- You’ll Need At Least Two of These Four Qualifications to Get Hired By a Venture Firm
- “Coming for the Content, Staying for the Community” Started With Video Games (Or Maybe Religion?) But Will Define Media This Decade
May 2020
April 2020
- Homebrew Turns Seven!
- The Economic Value of a Human Life, And Other Interesting Reads
- What Lessons Will Our Children Learn From COVID19. And Will They Be Useful Ones?
- “Did I intend to stay there for seven years? Hells no. But man, it’s a tough place to leave.” Five Questions on Startups, Newsletters & Life Post-Airbnb w Lenny Rachitsky
- Privilege & Anxiety Clash, Then Make-Up, In My COVID Brain
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
2019 42
December 2019
November 2019
- You’re Probably Asking the Wrong People For Career Advice
- No, It’s Not “Like a Startup Within a Big Company”
October 2019
September 2019
- Forget Returning The Fund. What Investment Can Return The Firm?
- Maybe Founders Should Background Check Their Investors (Instead Of The Other Way Around)
- Finally! The URL I Can Send To My Parents To Explain What I Do For A Living.
- How To Interpret VC Twitter Reactions To Portfolio Company Acquisitions
- I Love My Coffee (Gear & Beans Edition)
August 2019
- Nerdy & Proud! Eye of The Beholder Is a Fun Documentary About D&D Art
- How Does LinkedIn Manage News: Five Questions With Their Managing Editor Katie Carroll
July 2019
- Do It In Real Time: Practicing Your Startup Pitch
- “I wanted to do the deal but i couldn’t convince my partners” isn’t an Explanation, it’s an Excuse
June 2019
May 2019
- Why Hasn’t An Occupy White House Emerged?
- What To Do About A Company Like Equifax?
- If It’s a Favor To You Then Of Course, Otherwise I’d Rather Not
- Assholes Are Sometimes OK, But I Can’t Stand Weathervanes or Grin Fuckers
- Cameras Are Still So Dumb! And M.G. Wrote The Post For Me.
- Travel Gadgets For Phone/Mac Charging: May 2019 Updates
March 2019
- Have Caffeine, Will Travel: Searching For The Perfect Coffee Travel Mug
- High Tolerance for Stress, Low Tolerance for Frustration: Your Questions, Kinda Answered
- Oh Shit, Your VC Just Quit Her Fund! What a Good CEO Should Do Next.
- Why I’ll Sometimes Fund a Startup And Tell Them to Stop Making Money
- What Does “Self-Made” Mean (Or Matter) Anyway?
February 2019
- Indie Software I Pay For
- Would You Put Your Job On Your Tombstone?
- Wait, Did Amazon Just Build Their Version of Westworld? No, Of Course Not But…
- Five Questions With Jeff Berman (Public Defender Turned Kardashian App Builder)
- Five Questions With Adam Davidson (New Yorker Journalist, Planet Money Cofounder & Generally Smart Person)
- Five Questions With YA Author Rebecca Hanover
- Will Seed Funds Be Multigenerational?
- How I’m Handling The First Phase Of 2020 Dem Presidential Candidates
- Podcast Discovery Tools: Here Come The Transcripts
January 2019
2018 53
December 2018
- Do You Search For Your Name When You Join a New Slack Group?
- 3.5 Notes From Our Most Substantial Venture Exit So Far
- “Generational Transition:” Old Industries Are Changing Because The Youngs Are Taking Over
- Some Homebrew Portfolio News
- NETWORKING: The Intro vs The Vouch (and why the difference matters a whole lot)
- A Small Change Seed Funds Can Make To Their Websites To Help Founders (and Themselves)
- My Virtual Assistants 2018: Nothing New Under The Sun(set)
November 2018
- Where’s my Personal Wirecutter? I Want a Place To Talk About The Products I Love!
- What Happens When A Founder Wants To Stop Versus Pivot?
- As a Seed Investor, Do I Want Softbank to Invest In My Best Companies Or Not?
October 2018
- Finding Yourself In Places That Weren’t Built For You
- Dear Future Team Member, I Originally Didn’t Want You But I’m Glad You’re Here (aka Homebrew is Hiring)
- A Strong Cold Email Always Beats A Weak Warm One
September 2018
- Gee, Male: Using My Inbox As a Window To Gender Bias
- Second Seeds: The New Normal But Know This…
- Investing Outside Of Silicon Valley: Now More Than Ever (Where “Ever” = 2013)
- “The folks who have the most outsized successes are the least likely people to have been doing it for the money” – Jason Shellen Reflecting On His Time At Google, Startups
- A Handmade & Instagrammable Happy Birthday To You! (aka Punkpost App Makes Beautiful Greeting Cards *First One Free*)
- The 20% Rule: Some Success Porn From Theo Epstein That’s Actually Pretty Good
August 2018
- “You need to be extremely good at picking up on subtleties and subtext in communication and this is not something men are famous for” – Taylor Lorenz on covering Internet Culture
- Why This Latest Facebook Feature Is Likely About Civility, Not Virality
- Me! On the Digiday Podcast (Transcript & Link)
- The Best VC on Instagram
July 2018
- Old Man Yells At Clouds (and Aspiring VCs As To What This Industry Really Is About)
- Boobs, Muscles & Fairy Wings: Everything I Know About How Humans Design Their Avatar Selves
- Communities Can Grow Too Quickly
- The One Problem Most Publishing Platforms Forget To Solve
June 2018
May 2018
- Cancer is Bad. Bid On Lunch With Me To Raise $$$ To Fight It.
- “I can tell if a podcast is going to stink beforehand if the person has a PR person asking for questions.” Digiday’s Brian Morrissey on Digital Media, VC and Light at the End of the Tunnel.
- CoLiving & Shared Housing Isn’t Just for Urban Millennial Bros
- Future of Commerce and Retail Hot Takes With Web Smith
- We’re Running Web 2018 With Web 2008 Dashboards. And That’s a Problem.
- A Nutrition Label for Internet Privacy. And Apple Should Lead the Way.
April 2018
- In Living Color: Pantone’s Palette and Popular Culture
- And When My Time Is Up, Have I Done Enough: Fred Wilson’s Post on ‘Time & Money’
- The SF Scooter Wars & Proposal for Urban Safe Harbor Zones
- I Am The Meme Slayer
- The Empty Chair at the Table During Meetings: Who Should Be In The Room That Isn’t
March 2018
- For VCs, Your Thesis Is Your Portfolio Page, Everything Else is Just Hopes and Dreams
- YouTube Lets People Decide Their Own Truths – And That Was Once a Good Thing
- Giving Visionary Women Their Due
- Human Resources Policy at Startups
- Is The Quest For “Software Margins” To Blame For Twitter’s Trolls, Facebook’s Russians and YouTube’s Fake News?
February 2018
- Venture Funds as Products. What We Changed for Homebrew III.
- For Fundraising, Seed is No Longer a Round, It’s a Phase
- SoCal Stunners: Why Homebrew Has Gone South
- Raised Homebrew III To Continue Backing New Startups
January 2018
2017 89
December 2017
- Evolutionary Biology: Movies are Slow Humans. YouTube are Fast Guppies.
- Should Regulators Force Facebook To Ship a “Start Over” Button For Users?
- Request For App: Calls I Need To Make
- 2018’s Word of the Year: Coalition
- What I Think We’re Talking About When We’re Talking About What We Can’t Talk About
- You Can’t Bullshit a Good VC, But You Can MAKE THEM BELIEVE
- To Raise a Venture Round These Days, You Need To Be a Little Crazy
- Internet Content Moderation 101
November 2017
- For VCs, “What Could Go Right” Is More Important Than “What Could Go Wrong”
- Five Posts I Would Have Written If Someone Else Hadn’t
- What I’ve Learned When I Ask For Feedback
- Rafat Ali on Media Startups and the Nature of Venture
- If You Work at Google or Apple, I Need You To Read This Post About Charity & “FlashMobs for Good.”
- “Thoughts & Prayers” Won’t Change VC Diversity But Incentives Will. Supporting Female Founders Office Hours.
- Virtual Assistants Are Still Vital to My Productivity But 2017 Was Ho-Hum
- Reinventing Political Ads: What If Facebook Went Further Than Regulators Were Asking
- Productivity Hack: Read One Chapter of a Book to Get 90% of the Value
- My Favorite Instagram Accounts: Coffee and Notebooks
- Part 2: How To Not Lose Female Engineering Candidates
- They Wanted To Eliminate Gender Bias In Technical Hiring But Ended Up Losing All Their Female Candidates.
- How Becoming a Dad Helped Me Become a VC
October 2017
- What I Learned Backing Female Founders: Every One Has a #MeToo Story
- What It’s Like Attending the New York Times “Page One” Meeting
- How Tech for Campaigns Has Helped 3,000+ Techies Make a Difference in Progressive Politics
- Twitter Needs a Public Police Blotter
- How This Anxious Introvert Handles Large Events
September 2017
- Hey Tech Industry, Let’s Focus Less on UBI & More on Minimum Wage, Portable Benefits & Vocational Training
- “Convince Me” said the Investor. “No” said the Founder.
- Fake Cues: Why The Next Photo Innovation May Be Helping You Tell a Lie
- The Markets Ignore Inputs But Over Time, Not The Means
- Thinking About Bodega
- The Bot Registration Act of 2017 Could Improve Twitter For Us Humans
August 2017
- The One Question Investors Should Ask Founders On Demo Day
- “My editors value impact stories” – Recode’s Jason Del Rey on Evaluating His Success
- This Former Hillary Staffer Is Building Aloe, A Self-Care App. Meet Amber Discko.
- Launched: Wim Yogurt
- Founders Should Set Aside More Equity for Their Team & “Split the Pain” With Investors
- “We are one of just 13 industrialized countries with a rising maternal mortality rate” – Christy Turlington Burns on Fighting for Healthy Mothers
- “the iPhone created a sea-change for women—as consumers but also as entrepreneurs” says BBG Ventures’ Susan Lyne
July 2017
- “Everything is a marketing campaign now, even policy ideas” – Renee DiResta Connecting Politics, Anti-Vaxxers & Social Media
- “We have a common philosophy that it all starts with people” – Heather Hartnett on Human Ventures, NYC’s Startup Studio
- Sorry Idaho, Employee Noncompetes Are a Scourge
- Three Questions Founders Should Ask Scouts Before Taking An Investment
- Podcasts Are Awesome But Are They A Business? Hot Pod’s Nick Quah Tells Me Some Stuff.
- “Their baseline knowledge of Silicon Valley probably comes from HBO’s Silicon Valley.” How Alyssa Bereznak Covers Tech for The Ringer.
- “A natural, & healthy, tension between myself & the people I write about.” How The Verge’s Casey Newton Handles ‘Tech Friends.’
- “When there is pain in America, we see more volume.” Crisis Text Line, Tech & Trump.
- Harassment in Tech: Getting Beyond Words & Committing to Action
- Two Self-Promotional Things You Could Read
- Company as Iceberg: Why Casual Observers of theSkimm Don’t Realize What’s Below the Surface
June 2017
- How YouTube Ended Up On The First iPhone: A Tweet Thread
- Is Your Company a Friend of Mine or a Friend of Ours? Understanding VC Decision Making.
- This Week’s Best Podcast: Well Made’s “Getting Back to Basics”
- I Don’t Like Conferences But I Like Experiences. Trying WORLDZ.
- Derek Nelson Emails 25,000 People Each Week With Ways To Resist Trump
- #GrabYourWallet Urges Consumers to Vote With Their Dollars, Not Just Their Ballots
- Tommy Vietor is Saving the World, One Podcast at a Time
- Indivisible: How A 23-Page Google Doc Gave Birth To A National Progressive Movement
- Flippable: One of the New Progressive Organizations You Should Know
- VC Fund Differentiation *Should* Matter
- This Parasite Alters Mice Brains To Crave Cat Urine
- Et Tu Delta? Don’t Count On Corporations to Protect Public Art
- You Can Watch CNN, I’m Going to See Paramore
May 2017
- Death Race 2000: How Safe Will Autonomous Vehicles Need To Be?
- Sometimes The Secret Is To Just Show Up & Do Your Job
- Why Trump’s Victory Caused Alec Ross To Run for Governor of Maryland – Five Question Interview
- Why You Shouldn’t Loan Money to Someone Who Thanks God
April 2017
- Four Years of Homebrew: Notes From Our 2017 Annual Investor Meeting
- We Value Conversion More Than We Value Trust: Wading Into The Unroll.Me Discussion
- Seed Investing & Dark Dealflow: You Lose 100% Of The Deals You Don’t See
- Brain Food: Two Weeks Into Nootropics
- Why I Care About Problem Size More Than Market Size
- Why UpCounsel Launched “15 Minutes With a Lawyer”
- Stuck In My Teeth: Mike Monteiro’s Post on Ethics in Your Work
- Public Sector Drone: Our Investment in Shield AI
- Finally, The Walk Has Come Back to 20 Minute VC
March 2017
- A Question About Risk That Founders Forget to Ask VCs
- Why We’re Paying for Content These Days
- Magnet: Delightfully Simple Mac App for Window Mgmt
- How To Set Goals Like You’re Google (Even If You’re Not)
February 2017
- GOP’s Voter Suppression Playbook for 2017 Is Real and Treasonous
- Why Many Companies Mistakingly Think Trolls & Harassment Are Good for Business
January 2017
- Why I’ve Had Trouble Writing About Politics Since The Election And How I’m Solving It
- “Monopoly” Board Game Was Invented By a Woman, Who Was Then Written Out of the Story
- “Stay away from just making what the market is asking for” – How SF Gear Company DSPTCH Thinks About Design
- Twitter Trolls Should Lose Ability To Include @Names in Tweets
- Once You’ve Raised a Series A, Add an Outside Director
- I F’in LOVE Recruiting for Homebrew Companies
- In 2017, GE Will Buy More Tech Startups Than Google
2016 75
December 2016
- 2016 VC Half-Thoughts: You Want To Be An Investment Manager? Career Advice for Aspiring VCs.
- 2016 VC Half-Thoughts: Seed Companies Aren’t Being Overfunded, They’re Being Prematurely Funded
- 2016 VC Half-Thoughts: The Industry Has Shifted Back to Investing in Technology, Not Business Models
- Socialism & Autonomy: A Self-Driving Car Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Make Left Turns Across Traffic.
- “Regardless of who is in the White House, we have work to do from the bottom up and from the outside in” – Five Questions With Jennifer Pahlka of Code for America
- What’s Alcohol Good For? Staying Married.
- “Life Isn’t Fair, So Why Do We Behave As If It Is?”
- 2016’s Best Startup Podcast Was….
- Twitter Shouldn’t Ban Trump, But It Could Show Him Baby Pictures Before He Tweets
- “Why You Bought That Ugly Sweater” & How Stores Trick You Into Spending
- “Why We’re Terrible At Reading Faces – Yet Quick To Judge Them”
- Update to “My So-Called Virtual Life: The Assistants Which Power Hunter Walk”
- “If Animals Have Rights, Should Robots?”
November 2016
- “Civic Paywall”
- How We Almost Gamified Copyright Infringement Detection on YouTube (& Ideas for Fake News)
- This White, Male VC Has Something to Say About Diversity
- Bunch of Homebrew Funding Announcements
October 2016
- On Risk and Control
- Crowdfunding a Community in Haiti After Hurricane Matthew: Checking in With New Story’s CEO
- Should Ethics 101 Be Part of CS Degree Requirements?
September 2016
- Google Steps Up to Protect Security Analyst from Humongous DDoS
- The Robots Are Coming for Investment Bankers, Not Just Truck Drivers
- Google Finds That Successful Teams Are About Norms Not Just Smarts
- New Yorker Longreads for the Holiday Weekend
August 2016
- Some Posts and a Podcast
- Here’s a Guide to Startup Compensation Strategies
- “We Made Sure We Got Our Asses Kicked Regularly” – Accompany Founder Amy Chang on Building a Polished Product
- Why Your CEO Should Give You An Election Day Vacation
- Some Career Reflection & Product Mgmt Advice
July 2016
- “WHAT WAS ALL THIS VIDEO???” Five Questions with Magic & Loss Author Virginia Heffernan
- Why Doesn’t Twitter’s Safety Policy Differentiate Between My Backyard and Your Backyard? A Simple (?) Proposal.
- Trump Would Hurt Innovation (& I’m With Her)
- What YouTube Taught Me About Facebook Live & Violent Footage
June 2016
- Some Stories Need to be Founder To Founder
- The Best Startups Resist Snacks (& I’m Not Talking About Food)
- A Busy 60 days at Homebrew
- “Why give up that much equity for an amount we could raise other ways?:” SMB Tech Talk from ArtJamz
- “We reinvest all free cashflows back into the business:” SMB Tech Talk from Blank Label
- “I don’t ever plan on retiring:” SMB Tech Talk from Tone Academy
- A Socially-responsible, Triple-bottom line Taco Shop: SMB Tech Talk from Chaia
- “We’ve focused on instagram and Facebook and increasingly, snapchat” -> SMB Tech Talk from 305 Fitness
May 2016
- To Avoid Burnout, Take Pleasure in the Journey, Not Just the Destination
- LA Founders Have More Diverse Backgrounds: Seed VC (& LA Fund) Erik Rannala
- Finally, I Know How to Answer “What’s Your Favorite Homebrew Investment!”
- When White Men Panic, They Rally Behind Fake Manbeasts: Why Trump is Like Bigfoot
- “It’s hard to convey the impact seeing the work in person has on people” – Charity: Water’s Scott Harrison on Making a Difference
- 1096 Days of Homebrew: A Look Inside Our 2016 Annual Meeting
- “Culture is Important Everywhere, But at a Startup, It’s Paramount:” Five Questions With Reserve’s Anneke Jong
April 2016
- Vevo Has 17 Billion Video Playbacks Monthly, 5% of Which Is Me Watching Taylor Swift
- The Emotional Impact of a High Cap
- What Happens When Bots Learn to Lie?
- Amazon Echo Is Magical. It’s Also Turning My Kid Into an Asshole.
- From Haitian Roots to a Silicon Valley Address: How Bianca St.Louis Is Building Her Rep & a Career in Tech
March 2016
- To Make Real Money, The Podcast Industry Needs to Stop Calling Them Podcasts
- What Happens When Stephen Colbert Joins Your Board: Five Questions with DonorsChoose Founder Charles Best
- From Reporter to a16z Venture Capitalist: Five Questions with Kyle Russell
- “Bootstrapping is sexy! You own your entire company.” Five Questions with Founder Emily LaFave Olson
- Spend Time with A+ People in Other Industries
- “YouTube is still the only place where you can passively monetize your content” – Online Content Evolution From Awestruck’s Sarah Penna
- The Importance of Addressing Diversity Early in a Company’s Life
February 2016
- “Fundamentally, technology, and creative arts have always interacted with some friction:” Five Questions With CNBC’s Julia Boorstin
- “If you stop learning, you stop living” – Why Alexia Tsotsis Left TechCrunch for Stanford BSchool
- Should. Must. And Our Lives: Five Questions with Author, Designer Elle Luna
- “Change is hard and change is slow. But I think we’re on the right track.” CODE2040’s Laura Weidman Powers on Diversity in Tech
- YouTube’s Vanessa Pappas: “The distance that mainstream media manufactured between a celebrity and fan has all but eroded online”
- “But I only wanted to write” – Five Questions with Wired’s Jessi Hempel
- Five Questions for Alec Ross: Secretary Clinton’s Senior Advisor for Innovation
- Non-Conformity is Your Path to Success: Five Questions with Adam Grant on His New Book “Originals”
January 2016
- Five Questions with Dr. Kimberly Newell Green on Patient Tech & Where Health Startups Go Wrong Pitching Doctors
- Sasha Lubomirsky Has Held Design Leadership Roles at YouTube, Android, Airbnb and Medium. Damn! Here’s Five Questions With Her.
- How Homebrew “Got Smart” About Hardware Investments
- Ted Rheingold Founded Dogster in 2004: Five Questions About Building a Startup, Selling a Startup and Whether SF Is Still a Good Place
- So, You Got Laid Off. What Next?
- “Experiencing the spectrum of “outsider” status relative to Silicon Valley has been life changing.” Five Questions With Spotify’s Product Leader Shiva Rajaraman.
- Earning My Chair on the Stage
2015 71
December 2015
- “It takes a very special founder to build a media business long term. I have not met many.” Five Questions With Howard Lindzon
- You Can Always Find an Anonymous Former Employee to Trash the Founder
- Sorry Startup Employee #100, Your Equity Probably Won’t Make You Rich
- My So-Called Virtual Life: The Assistants Which Power Hunter Walk
November 2015
- Hiring for Fit Gets You to IPO, but Over Time, Hiring for Potential Wins
- “The Core Value of a Good Leader is Humility:” Sam Schillace, Box Engineering SVP
- Two VCs Interview Me While They Drive: A Transcript
- 1 Store, 1000 Times: Five Questions with Philz Coffee CEO Jacob Jaber
- Don’t Start a Company Without a Hiring Plan
- Talent: “The artistic side is always looking for new acts. The business side wants to make sure they aren’t irreplaceable.”
October 2015
September 2015
- Yes, Let’s Ask Men in Tech About Being Dads
- Every Once in a While, Shake Up Your Calendar
- Why My Kitchen Cabinets Could Solve Jet’s Cold Start Problem
August 2015
- What’s It Like Being a NonProfit in Y Combinator? Five Questions with New Story CEO Brett Hagler
- Public Spaces: Towns Creating Safe Zones to Meet For Craigslist Transactions
- Has the “Buy One, Give One” Buzz Faded?
- Seed Stage VCs Compete With One Another But Not How You Imagine
July 2015
- Quickie Homebrew Update: Clementine Acquired by Dropbox & UpCounsel Raises $10m Series A
- A++++ : Is eBay’s Reputation System a Hidden Gem?
- Sales Lessons From 13 Year Old Who Sold 22,000 Boxes of Girl Scout Cookies
- Fire Faster: Five Excuses Startup CEOs Give For Not Getting Rid of Low Performers
June 2015
- The Three Types of “Second Seed” Rounds: Too Cold, Too Hot and Just Right
- The One Thing VCs Shouldn’t Hand Over to Their Firm’s Talent Partners
- “I Wanted to Do the Deal But Couldn’t Convince My Partners:” A Handy Explainer
- Near Zero Employee & Customer Churn? That’s ManagedByQ (Now Fueled With $15m Series A)
- Startups Are Stories: 18 Months With Bond Street As They Raised $110m
May 2015
- The Time When Lady Gaga Told YouTube to Keep Its UX “Shitty” (& Some Snapchat Thoughts)
- The Problem With Virtual Tip Jars is Calling Them Tip Jars
- Who Invests In Investors: Homebrew LP Shares VC Performance Goals, Importance of Diversity & What They Look For In New Funds
- Five Questions With: Marc Barros, Founder of Moment (err six questions)
- Five Questions With: Sara Chipps, CEO of Jewelbots
- Please Succeed or Fail Fast: Why Large VCs & Seed Rounds Could Lead to Portfolio Conflict Down the Road
- Homebrew’s Second Annual LP Meeting: Why We Do Them
- The Time When YouTube Eliminated Pay Bias For Its Product Managers
April 2015
- Shyp Raises $50m: Some Inside Baseball Notes
- Your Total Addressable Market Stat Is Probably a Lie
- Referral Programs Power the On-Demand Economy
- A Good Marketplace Looks Like a SaaS Business
- Five Questions with: Douglas McGray, Editor-in-Chief of California Sunday Magazine
- Five Questions with: Zach Sims, Codecademy CEO/Cofounder
- Five Questions Charlie O’Donnell Asked Me to Answer
- What’s a Seed Fund to Do When a Seed Round is $20 Million?
- B2C becomes B2B every time someone walks into an office with their smartphone in their pocket
- Homebrew Funding Announcement: Honor, Helping Seniors “Age in Place”
March 2015
- Homebrew Funding Announcement: Primary, Brilliant Kids Clothes/Basics Under $25
- Midas List 2020: Forerunner’s Eurie Kim (and Why Company Names Matter to Her)
- Foursquare’s Noah Weiss on The App Split and Becoming a Product VP That Founders Can Trust
- How This Young, Female and Latina Investor Broke Into a Middle-Aged, Male and White Industry
- Writing When You Might Be Wrong
- Meerkat & The Value of ‘Slow Graphs’
- Klout Founder Joe Fernandez on Hype Cycles, Lessons Learned & Rapping to His Dog
- Branding, VCs and the ‘Uncanny Valley’
- Leaning In Together: Our Story
February 2015
- Hiring Momentum: Underrated Component of Startup Success
- Do SF Engineers “Get” Art? 3 Fish Gallery Owner Weighs In…
- Announcing Homebrew Fund II
- I Hope Product Hunt is Building “IMDB for Products”
- Beyond SKUs: Dipping Our Toe Into Hardware Investments
- Homebrew Investment: eero Home WiFi
- Silicon Valley Is Still Best Place to Build a Startup But…
- Successful startups say “no”
January 2015
- What a New VC’s Goals Look Like: Homebrew’s First Two Years
- The 10x Angel. The 0x Angel.
- New Homebrew Investment Pillow Lets Short-Term Rental Hosts & Guests Sleep Easy
- Blue Collar Jobs Deserve White Collar Respect
- What We’re Curious About at Homebrew…
- Deals Homebrew Lost: 2014 Edition
- Facebook’s Hidden Commerce Business
- Productivity Tip #1: Don’t Read Any Content When It’s Published Unless It’s Urgent & Actionable
2014 109
December 2014
- Run Your Playbook, Not Someone Else’s
- The Seed Rounds They Are a-Changin’: Three Shifts We’ve Made to Homebrew Investment Model
- Homebrew investment The Skimm raises $6m+ Series A
- Homebrew: Our Follow-on Investment in UpCounsel
- What People Who Worked At Google Know That You Probably Don’t
- Entrepreneur Russ Fradin Makes More Money, Less Noise
November 2014
- From Fistbump to Hitchhiker Thumb: Lyft’s March Towards Free?
- One Founder Told Me He Wanted to Overpay His Employees. So We Invested.
- Don’t Carpet Bomb For Introductions
- Tweet Disclaimer
- New Homebrew Investment: Q
- The Most Difficult Question I Ask Founders
- Jonathon Triest of Ludlow Ventures: “VC Done Right” (and in Detroit)
- Dear Twitter, I Want to Be Your Spam Sheriff But Need This One Feature
- Two New Homebrew Investments: Reserve & Abacus
- Hello, My Name Is… (or, What I’m Surprised is Missing on Square’s Receipts)
- Homebrew Investment: Chime
- Myth: Online Labor Marketplaces Only Lower Worker Wages
- Check Yo Babymaker: A Note About Male Fertility Testing
October 2014
- Thoughts On Bringing Your Employees Into Startup Board Meetings
- Let’s Meet: How to Prevent Big Companies from Wasting Your Startup’s Time
- The Five Most Important Decisions of My Life Thus Far
- “Your Site Has a Cadence:” The Best Blog Post from 2012 You Never Read
- Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, Investor’s Schedule
September 2014
- Copy-Remix-Profit: How YouTube & Shapeways Are Inventing the Future of Copyright
- Piggy Rounds Part II: Why Some Large VC Funds Are Doing More Seed Deals
- There Be Dragons: Ultima Online’s Lawsuit Connected to Today’s 1099 Workers
- “We’re Passing But Please Stay In Touch” -> Building a Relationship with a VC Even if They Don’t Invest in You
- Homebrew Invests in Chain and True Accord
August 2014
- Hey Buddy, Can You Spare a Vote? My SXSW Panels.
- Getting Founders Some Early Liquidity Can Benefit VCs
- Why Most VCs Won’t Intro You To Other VCs (Unless You Follow These Steps)
- Started From the Bottom Now They’re Here: Why Startups Are Racing to Build Operations Teams
- Don’t Send a Banker to Do a Founder’s Job: Seed Fundraising Can’t Be Outsourced
July 2014
- My Daughter’s iPad: When Your Kids Show You How Something Should Work
- “Beware Faraway Shareholder Meetings”
- Sunny Whether: Two Types of Forecasting Models for Running Your Startup
- Average American Gives 3.1% of Income to Charity. Three Product Ideas To Help Me Be More Charitable.
- “Writing started as therapy:” How Blogging Helped Founder Marc Barros Deal With Being Fired From His Startup
- For Startups, Knowledge is a Commodity but Insights are Valuable
- The Trust Economy?
- Startups That Help Small Businesses
- My First 15 Minutes of Work Each Day
- The Ideas That Won’t Beat LinkedIn (& Some Which Might)
- Should Seed Funding Decks Include a “Potential Exits” Slide?
June 2014
- To Understand VCs, Founders Should Meet Their LPs
- Death of the Time Stamp: Medium, Slingshot & the Movement Away from RIGHT NOW
- Random: Yo, Slingshot, Product Hunt, Yelp Competition, Taptalk
- The Changing Attitude Towards Boards at Seed Stage Startups
- Let No Pro Rata Go to Waste: How Smaller Funds Make Their Money
- Did Google Learn the Wrong Lessons from Buzz and Wave?
- Homebrew’s Investment in Personalized News App Nuzzel
- Today’s Startups Are Tomorrow’s Incumbents: What That Means for Regulatory Environments
- Homebrew’s Investment In Weave: Future of Small Business CRM+Telephony
- Money Doesn’t Talk. Why Most Startups Aren’t Announcing Their Seed Financings
- “There’s not really a single ‘technology industry ‘—every industry is being shaped by tech.”
- “I Run My Business Out Of My Cell Phone:” How Mobile Is Powering a Fitness SMB
May 2014
- Verified Data Will Prevent “Fake It Til You Make It”
- I Hope New Foursquare Replaces the Check-in With the Follow
- Goodbye Party Round, Hello Piggy Round: Should Seed Stage Founders Raise From Just a Single Investor?
- Death to CC & BCC
- Last Week I Got “Over The Shouldered” (& It Was Awesome)
- Announcing Our Investment in Layer (Communications Infrastructure for Mobile Apps)
- When The VC Asks: About Your Hiring Plan
- Five Mistakes New VCs Make (& How I Tried to Avoid Them)
April 2014
- Investors Updating Their Investors: Inside Homebrew’s First Annual LP Meeting
- Twitter is a Content Platform So Why is the Content Experience Lacking?
- Why Won’t Consumers Pay for Productivity Apps?
- “Any Favorites?” The Worst Question to Ask Me About Homebrew’s Investments
- The Belief Funnel: Your Term Sheet Waits at the Bottom
- Context Matters! Lessons Learned From YouTube Personalized Recommendations (And Why This Matters For Twitter)
- The Ethicist: VC Edition
- Bet On People Prematurely
- Gil Penchina’s Army: How AngelList’s Largest Syndicate Plans to Lead A Rounds, Hire An Associate & Keep VCs Honest
- Funding Probabilities: Are You One of The Best 10? 100? 1000? Companies Raising This Year?
- Never Been Easier to Become a VC. Never Been Harder to Stay One.
- Day Before Opower IPO, SVP Product Alex Kinnier Reflects on Journey
March 2014
- Unexplored UX: Getting iOS Users to Turn App Notifications Back On
- Wanted: Medium for Product Reviews
- Meeting Companies Before Their Demo Day
- Warrior Pose! Talking With Glow Yoga’s Founder About the Technology Powering Fitness SMB
- Remember Dots? App Promiscuity and “New” as Network Effect
- Are We What We Fund? Should VCs Only Back What They Believe is Morally Correct?
- The Short List
- “When is the best time to raise money for my new business?”
- CS Degree Won’t Make You A Great Engineer, Your First Job Will
- New Grads: Midstage Startups Are Your Best First Job in Tech
- You’re Either Venture-Backed or a Lifestyle Business: The Big Lie
- Pay By Uber: Coming to Restaurants & Bars Soon?
- Increasing Access to Health Insurance Leads to More Female Entrepreneurs
February 2014
- Twitter IRL: How Online Behavior Changes Us
- An Untitled Post About Having Money, Not Having Money and The Number
- Raven + Lily: Empowering Women Through Design
- Mobile App Notifications Are Horrible. Is There a Better Way?
- Beware the Reasonable Plan
- The Godfather of Peanut Butter: How One Sandwich Shop Turned Into a Nutty Empire
- From Exit to Cocoa Bean: How The Plaxo Founders Started Dandelion Chocolate
- My Investor Role Models
- The Strand: How an 86-Year Old Bookstore Uses Technology
- “Never Heard of It, Must Not Be Big” Has Never Been More Wrong
January 2014
- Philz Coffee: We’re In The ‘People Serving’ Business
- Bean There, Done That: How Technology Is Helping Blue Bottle Coffee Serve Up A Great Cup
- How We’re Thinking About Diversity At Homebrew: Start By Measuring It
- What I Want From Rapportive 2.0
- 3 Questions That Can Make or Break Negotiations with a Potential Superstar
- GOOGbye, Email Addresses, Phone Numbers: The Slow Motion Merging Of GMail & G+
- Don’t Be Afraid to Hire Your Critics
- How VCs Spend Their Time. Err, How This VC Spends His Time.
- Execs Who Can’t Attract Former Coworkers Are Red Flags
2013 125
December 2013
- Waitresses Who Wear Red Get Better Tips (& Other Things I Learned From The French)
- You, Robot: Why We Tend to Believe Robots Have Their Own Will
- Why NYC Tech Scene Excites Me: Deep Roots
- Deals We Lost: Homebrew’s Two 2013 Misses
- Do You Pay Yourself First or Last?
- $400 for The Information Is About What’s Missing, Not What’s There
- Homebrew’s Bottom Up Economy: Two Links
- What Y Combinator, SV Angel & a16z Can Do to Help SF [Updated]
- Why Vertical Incubators Are More Interesting to Investors
- Facebook Credits Could Have Been Bigger Than Bitcoin. Four Reasons Why.
- Andy Rubin Poses With Same Drone 2007 & 2013. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
- Disrupt Your Industry With Love, Not Contempt
- Mattermark’s 2014 IPO List
- Amazon, Apple, Kickstarter and Everyone Else
November 2013
- Skimm Founders Write About Funding Lessons Learned
- Three New Types of AngelList Syndicates I Hope to See
- Why I Don’t Ask “Is This a Billion Dollar Business” Before I Invest
- Reshaping the News: The Skimm Raises Seed Round from Homebrew
October 2013
- To Hire Excellence, You Need to Know What Excellent Looks Like
- VCs: Be a Partnership, Not a Collection of Partners
- For Startups, Your Culture Starts With Your First Hire
- Ev Williams’ Medium is Blogging for the 9%
- Applying Pressure Doesn’t Make Everything a Diamond: On VC & Fatherhood
- Weak Ties Are The Most Powerful: Meet Folks Outside of Your Social Graph
- Building an Advisory Board: Practitioners vs Coaches
- Forget Google Driverless Cars. I’m Excited for Driverless Tractors!
- Love, Greed & Fear: What’s at the Core of Your Product?
- Don’t Start a Job Search Without Answering This One Question
- The Tech Mentorship Gap: How Code2040 Is Solving. What You Can Do. And How LinkedIn Can Help
- The Time I “Interviewed” At Apple
- Homebrew’s Investment in UpCounsel, the On-Demand Legal Services Firm
September 2013
- Instagram Stabbing Itself By Leaving Twitter Cards Off
- AngelList Syndicates Will Also Pit Angel Against Angel
- Homebrew’s Investment in Shyp
- VCs Should Give Honest Feedback & Why They Often Don’t
- Syndicates Gives AngelList Insight Into Finishes, Not Just Starts
- Realtime Is A Trap & The Past Is Underrated
- AngelList Syndicates: Three Examples of Their Powerful Future
- Homebrew’s Investment in Plaid
- Look for Advisors Who Can Teach, Not Tell
- When Google Went Public … (Twitter IPO)
- Not Just a WordPress User, Now Also an Advisor to Automattic
- Has Mobile Killed The Fast Follower Strategy? Sure Looks That Way…
- Twitter SXSW Promo Email, 2007
- Web Rings For The Win! Adding Zemanta Tech Circles to My Blog
- Let a Thousand Flours Bloom: One local bakery’s opinions on technology
- What to Tell VCs When You’re Missing the Data They Want to See
August 2013
- How Facebook’s Shared Photo Albums Impacts Other Startups. Hint: Doesn’t.
- How VC Fundraising is Like Startup Fundraising, Part 2
- Special Bonuses Added to Charity Auction of “Lunch with Hunter”
- The “Why” of Homebrew
- Founders, “Why” Matters as Much as “What” & “How”
- I Don’t Want to Meet Your Company at Demo Day
- The Seed+ vs Pre-A Round Financing
- “You Literally Represent Everything Wrong With The World”
- Reinvent the Movie Theater: wifi, outlets, low lights, second screen experience
July 2013
- Deciding Whether to Leave Google/Apple/Facebook? Here’s the One Question to Ask Yourself.
- For an Operator, Becoming a VC Isn’t the “Best of Both Worlds”
- Wanted: Crowdsourced List of Celebs & Their Official Social Media Accounts
- Joining Engine’s Advisory Board to Help Tech & Government Work Together
- Homebrew: 100 Days of Fundraising
- Dark Side of the Moon: How We Unknowingly Encourage Bad VC Behavior
- Announcing: Homebrew, A Seed Stage Fund for The Bottom Up Economy
- Could the Real “Cheap iPhone” Just Be a Used iPhone?
- Trying Out a New Job Before Committing
- Internet Etiquette: The Rights & Wrongs of Publicly Criticizing a Friend
- Should Instagram Turn Twitter Cards Back On?
June 2013
- Waving Goodbuy: Facebook’s Big Whiff on Traffic of Commercial Intent
- The Why of Where I Write
- My Autobody Shop Has a Sense of Humor
- You Are Not Your LDAP: Why Leaving Your Job Doesn’t Mean Losing Your Identity
May 2013
- Should Startups Get "Patent Troll" Insurance?
- Don’t Mess Up Tumblr: Five Lessons Learned from YouTube
- Tech Conferences Are Destroying the World. But I Have A Solution.
- Congrats! The Backslappy Nature of Social Media
- Don’t Let a Minimum Viable Product Minimize Your Minimum Viable Vision
- Can You Really Trust A Cookie?
- Could Your Username Be Used For Fraud Detection?
April 2013
- Funding Kabuki (aka Creativity in Round Naming)
- These Three $50B+ Companies Should Be Fighting Over Foursquare
- Promoted Apps: Could Native Advertising Come to iOS App Store?
- I Just Delivered Cookies to Watertown, MA Police Department from 2,500 Miles Away
- VC Firms Don’t Back You, VC Partners Do
- How I Became An Overnight Success (Spoiler: Took 10,000+ Overnights)
- Why Video Discovery Startups All Fail
- Google Fiber: Just One More Search Per Session
- Optimizely Raises $28 Million via "Try Before You Buy"
- Be More Generous? There’s An App For That Too.
- Early Employees: Joel Jewitt & Palm
- “Well, that’s the future”
- Quantified Self or Better to Quantify Someone Else: Can We Improve Ourselves By Mimicking Others?
- Lean Startup, Lean City: Visiting Tony Hsieh’s Vegas Downtown Project
March 2013
- Flickr’s Early Days
- These engineers quit their jobs to start LeChat
- The DNA of Google AdSense
- Series A "Crunch" Explained
- Next Hot Dating App: The New York Times
- History of TiVo
- Other Reasons Nick Bilton Seeing FB Decline
- Manager OKRs, Maker OKRs: How I’d Change Google’s Goal Setting Process
February 2013
- Jason Shellen Remembers the Early Days of Blogger
- Seeing the World Through Rose Colored Google Glasses: Wearables & the Digital Divide
- Jason Kincaid Remembers TechCrunch’s Early Days
- Hiring Hack: You Should Send the Mail, Not the Recruiters
- At Startups, It’s Not About The Founders But About The Owners
- Started One Company, Seed Funded a $1b+ Startup, Now Mr. X Seeks Cofounder. Perhaps You?
- "Data Magician PhD" looking for HELLS YEAH Job in Bay Area
- Guest Blogging Again. First Up, TechCrunch.
- Early employee interviews continue w RedHat
- More Google Execs Should Blog, Tweet, Share Online
- Tweet at The Movies
- What is Product Management?
- Social Commerce: A Simple Definition
- I’m Feeling Lucky: Leaving Google for New Adventures
- Interview with Electronic Arts Employee #19
January 2013
- Influencing Founders: Have We Reached "Peak Hoodie?"
- Are Medium & Quora Just the Rebirth of Content Farms?
- Tales from the, gasp, 90s: Early Excite Exec Craig Donato Shares Stories
- What product/services are terrible but we use them anyway…
- Tina Fey, on Twitter
- Big Data, Robotic Cars, Lyft: How One Insurance Company Is Changing
- eBay’s Early Days
- Lawyer + Lil Wayne = Hilarity
- Oh Shit, I’m News-Blogging: Tumblr Revenue, Andrew Sullivan Subscription Plan
- Welcome to 2013, Where It’s Never Been Easier to be Average
2012 112
December 2012
- Trying to be the one true social graph is like trying to hold water in your fist
- Will Poke Slay Snapchat?
- Interview w Yahoo’s 17th Employee
- I Don’t Know Who You Are Marko Nichols-Marcy But You’re My DJ
- Big Idea 2013: Unbundling Corporations & The Business of You
- The Startup Chef: Giving Away All The Money
- Beware the Zombie Team
November 2012
- Seeking Captain America & Not Captain Crap: Hiring Your First Product Manager
- Twitter #Discover: Your First Click or Last Click?
- HuffPo 2.0? Inside Look at LinkedIn Influencer Program
- Uber NYC & the Surge: Right, Wrong, Lessons Learned
- The DNA of Product Management
- 11 Year Old Pakistani Girl, Youngest to Ever Pass Udacity Physics 100 Class
October 2012
- The top 400 students didn’t include anyone from Stanford
- One Area Where LA Has Us Beat: The Art of Gift Giving
September 2012
- A Swipe Too Far: Twitter Mobile Stresses Follower Count Over Bio & That Makes Me Sad
- Tech Reporters Should Disclose Whether They Actually Used The Product They Reviewed
- Who Will Speak for The Normals?
- How Working for Google Impacts My Blog
- [Updated w Comment from Paul] Why Paul Graham published Black Swan Farming
- Evaluating Talent: False Positives Way Worse Than False Negatives. Agree?
- Pandora: The Unsocial Music Station (& why this may be a good strategy)
- I want my clothing to be smarter…
August 2012
- When Safety Nets Become Hammocks: My Reaction to the Acquihire Debate
- Why startups are like acting…
- No God Mode: Live With Same Limitations Your Users Experience
- Ode to a Non-Technical Product Manager
- AT&T Charged Me Up: How Brand Sponsors Can Add Value
- Would you pay Twitter $10/yr to use 3rd party clients?
July 2012
- Joining Advisory Board of Giving Back Fund
- Karaoke Songs of Silicon Valley
- If You Only Had One Interview Question…
- The $8 Billion Elephant in the Room: How to Understand the Future of Twitter
- Want to ‘Grab Coffee & Catch-Up?’ Please Complete This Form.
- How Kickstarter Help Ouya Solve the Cold Start Problem
- Try Before You Buy: Why Smart People & Smart Companies Are Ditching the Interview
- Why "Follower" works on Twitter
- How Prismatic Hires
- You Don’t Have to Pay the Most If You’re the Best Place to Work
- Help me get over that (pay)wall
June 2012
- Where’s Kickstarter? Should Every Company Have An App?
- Tim O’Reilly Goes to Vidcon (aka sees the future of video)
- When I Get Angry, I Give Money to Charity
- Don’t Just Watch: YouTube Works with Change.org, Causes & DonorsChoose.org
- Old Interviews, New Viewers: How one journalist is reinventing the archives for a realtime world
- Branded Content: Spotify Playlists & Birchbox
- Chocolate Water? We all deserve diabetes.
- Make Good Art
- Bill Murray On His Career
- Checking In On New Foursquare
- Foursquare founder likes Nestle Crunch
- Does The World Need Product Managers?
- The Death of Social Proof
- Do tech turnarounds even exist?
- I Made $1000 Eating Dinner on Grubwithus and You Can Too!!!!!*
- Content, Community & Call to Action: The Three C’s of Successful Social Media Programs
May 2012
- Does the bank own you, or do you own the bank? The continued codependency of Facebook & Zynga
- FIRST! Two sharing vectors for you to exploit.
- What one decision would Yahoo want to redo?
- Peter Dinklage on Luck
- The most overused words in tech?
- Can Online Video Usher in a New Age of Empathy?
- Beating the market using sentiment analysis of Internet product reviews
- NBA Players Who Touch Each Other Win More Frequently
- Twitter, Instagram & the Challenges of Discovery Outside the Feed
April 2012
- Queen of England on Challenges of New Technology
- "Instagram for Video"
- The PreMortem: Preventing Failure Before You Fail
- Amazon Offers Me Money to *NOT* Use Prime
- LinkedIn for Mentorship Matching
- Howard Schultz of Starbucks. Always Inspiring.
- 1% Of Nothing is Something (How AngelList Can 100x Startup Philanthropy)
- Mistakes Matter Too: Why We Should Share Our Failures, Not Just Our Successes
- Sports Leagues Need to Own The 2nd Screen
- 1:10:100 – how to scale a new product
March 2012
- Bump Billboard in SF: Explained!
- Crowdfunding Becomes Crowdbuying: Why Kickstarter Will Power the Maker Economy
- License to Drive: Will Computerized Vehicles Speed Us Towards a Predictive Model for Driver Behavior?
- #UncensoredBook now free to all EFF supporters
- Good Eggs: How a 2007 brunch led to my investment in Karma Science
- "I’d Give It a Good Review but Then It Would Get Crowded:" How airbnb, vrbo, etc should evolve their user review incentives
February 2012
- "Is this a billion dollar business?:" The tension between market sizing and innovation
- Patents: When is it okay to aggressively enforce?
- 9th Level Blackbelt Email Intro Ninja Moves
- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star: Why App Markets Should Ditch the 5 Star Rating System
- "Do we all agree" is a terrible question
- Announcing Astrid Francesca Walk
- Power of Data: Tibco & Reliance Telecom
- To Angel or LP: Investing Guide for New Tech Millionaires
January 2012
- One untold story behind YouTube’s success
- The Growing Knowing<>Doing Gap
- Hunter Walk
- My New App: Drive n’ Text
- #BlackoutSOPA recap: how i learned to love Ashton Kutcher
- Don’t Wait. Donate.
- Confessions of an Unsuccessful Digital Pirate
- The "Not Caring" Crutch
- #Reinventing the Chamber of Commerce – from pandodaily.com launch
- Last saturday i woke up mad – a #BlackoutSOPA origin story
- Stars & Yipes: People More Likely to Vote Republican If Exposed to Picture of American Flag
- Day 3: #BlackoutSOPA community now ~5k reaching ~12.8m followers
- #BlackoutSOPA most followed members
- Day 2: #BlackoutSOPA now reaching 7.1 million followers
- Launch Post-Mortem: #BlackoutSOPA
- Sadd Digg
- Don’t Touch the Shopper
- The Post-Web 2.0 Era Doesn’t Have a Name — And That’s a Good Thing!
- Sorry Mike, Facebook could reboot and we’d mess it up again
- What a $2.50 New York Times means to the future of Starbucks
- Why I Write
- You don’t get to decide if you’re a platform
- ZNGA hidden value in online gambling laws?
2011 53
December 2011
- Entrepreneur of the Year 2011
- 14 Do’s & Don’ts Upon Taking a New Job
- Most Hard Core Founder Ever
- George Clooney does foreign tv ads to fund social causes
- "If it gets to my desk, then no one else could have handled it"
- Why Guns N’ Roses is like a Startup
- Free SF office space for startups
- Go ahead, quit
- It’s fine to get an MBA but don’t be an MBA
- Beware "cheap speed"
- Don’t do what you’re good at, be good at what you do
- Hyperbolic Headlines: Five Ways the Zynga IPO Changes Everything!!!
- True Ventures founding partner writes abt impact of Zynga IPO
- YouTube just launched on Xbox
- "I’d love if tech writing as a whole held itself to a higher standard:" What notable journalists are thinking about their craft
- Radio stations tweeting every song they play?
- Pathgatory & Asymmetrical Social Circles: Two weeks w Path 2.0
- One last thought on Louis CK’s Beacon experiment
- Linden Lab logo treatments, circa 2002
- "I’m just some guy:" Louis CK sells direct to fans AND IT WORKS
- Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made Of: Great Article About Tourism & NYC
- On Becoming a Parent….
- Why Twitter is making it easy to buy from Amazon (hint: it’s all about ads)
- Foursquare: Future giftcard player?
- Web Urban Legends
- My "Celebrity Angels" post in GigaOm
- Four Productivity Tools That Rock
November 2011
- Big Box retailers are Amazon showrooms
- Top angels/VCs sound off on celebrity investing
- Celebrity Angels
- How startups are like bumble bees
- Spotify Playlists: The Next Big Brand Play?
October 2011
September 2011
- Buying your kid into college?
- Stamped for Approval: Turn the 3700 Closing Post Offices into Tech Centers/Incubators
- Great wikipedia list of con games
- Venti Indeed! Kenny G was an original investor in Starbucks
- Foursquare: Checking Back In
- Palin’s the 3rd party nightmare
- Narcissist Bosses Flame Out Quickly
August 2011
- Here’s how to cure the world of disease 50% faster
- Smartphone aren’t yet that smart (at least if you asked Charles Darwin)
July 2011
- Two meditation resources for beginners
- No one bats 1.000 (or at least I don’t)
- "Focus on questions, not answers"
- Seven Days of Silence
June 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
- Once Bitten, Twice Buy: I funded his band & his company via crowdsourcing
- Why Wikipedia should care about $: because they can be Quora or "Community Powered Demand Media"
January 2011
2010 55
December 2010
November 2010
- Election Day Should Be a Holiday
- Slow Media: Don’t Consume for Consumption Sake
- Connect your YouTube<>Twitter accounts to get more followers
- Flick me? No, flick you!
- Discussion meetings vs Decision meetings
October 2010
- Hiring Outliers: Lions, Monkeys, Rabbits, Horses and Cows. Oh my!
- A thanks to Chad Hurley
- Minivan commercials go hipster
- The Devil Made Me Do It: how website UX influences information disclosure
- Anticipation of feedback motivates performance
- He’s got big balls: the role of testosterone in M&A activity
September 2010
- Parallel Entrepreneurism: I’m as smart as Fred Wilson was in 2006
- WSJ: Guys entering women’s running races
- TV show, webisode, mobile video, whatever: it’s all just audience
- YouTube: moving towards the VideoOS
August 2010
- Four CMU research papers on location, social
- Guest Post on TechCrunch re: Foursquare
- Office Space: The hidden productivity booster – or killer
- Sprint Evo & Crapware: Blank is the new Black
- Charity Hacks: Catalyzing empathy for good
- Goal: be scared of your job
- Billionaire Giving Pledge: Making it Stick (will Fortune, Forbes, CNBC and the news media do their part?)
July 2010
- Act like a new employee every day
- Bjorn to Help
- Discreetly billed to your credit card as PORN
- I know this isn’t funny but…
- The Gesture Web (and i don’t mean Apple’s touchscreen)
- Get more out of your smartest people by asking them to do less
- Smaller Plates = Increased Health
- Hilarious Wikipedia Entries Part XXII
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
- Van Halen = Productivity Hackers
- The Streamys: Can’t We Just All Get Along
- On the Internet, Data Will Verify You’re a Dog
March 2010
- Stupid Comics
- Visualization of Geo App Activity at SXSW
- Vintage Ke$ha footage: middle school talent show
February 2010
- Losing Your Virginity: Signing up first customers
- Apple insists TV is a ‘hobby’ but listening to their ‘gut’
- WSJ on Howard Stern
- My patent filing on conveying advertiser supply/demand imbalances
- Hey, dirty, baby i got your money: why start-ups need to make like ODB and turn users into customers
- Welcome Aardvark to Google!
- Veoh going but not forgotten
- The Geo Wars: How Foursquare survives…..
- Faith No More sells out a concert via Tweet
- The next AppleTV will probably be a TV
January 2010
2009 66
December 2009
November 2009
- DonorsChoose and Social Media: New Twitter Integration
- Iraqi Gov’t Launches a YouTube Channel!
- Earn College Credit for Watching YouTube
- Classic Warren Buffett Line re: Latest Acquisition
October 2009
- Spike Jonze on making movies (and great products in general)
- TownMe (ex-Googler Local startup) launches API
- Too many people or too few: coffee shops and crowd density
- Obama’s Nobel Prize: An attempt by the world to influence US behavior?
- If you don’t care, why should I?
September 2009
- Wikipedia’s Cognitive Bias Page: Look at this Daily
- Peeps you should know: Jeff Gomez @ Starlight Runner
August 2009
- "Nickelback" is now a codeword for bland uninterestingness
- Palm and Sprint should send me a free Pre
- Who needs more than 8 bits?
- Any Tech Co’s Need Iraqi Eng Interns?
July 2009
- "United Breaks Guitars" costs the airline $180m in market cap
- Andy Baio joins Kickstarter – very cool crowdfunding
- NYC MOMA integrates Facebook
- Wired covers my trip to Iraq
- Waisted Zombies
- If YouTube weren’t owned by Google….
June 2009
- Calorie Neutral
- Can’t we all get along? NFL team logos become more menacing over time
- Who knew Chuck E Cheese was so dangerous?
- Almighty Dollar: Staring at money makes you less collaborative
- Why do geeks hate partial feed RSS but love Twitter?
May 2009
- I’m voting with my wallet and giving Pandora $36
- Capital beats Labor in Dodgeball
- Official start to summer: saw Buffett @ Concord 5/19
- Who owns kindledx.com
- Baghdad Diary: Hands of Victory
- Postmark from Iraq
April 2009
March 2009
- Bo Doesn’t Know Tecmo Bowl
- Exploitative or empowering?
- The Return of YouTube Release Notes
- Hey! Get Off My Name. Username disputes are the domain squatting of the future.
- LED Sheep
- fūsen bakudan – Japanese balloon bombs from WW2
- Tim Armstrong – You’ve Got Mail
- Privacy is now a microtransaction
- Google’s Interest-Based Advertising. Finally!
- Recession special: Local events offering free booze
- The "Freakonomics" of Bill Collection
- A first look at Wikirank
- Thank Obama – for a larger CA jury pool
- Depression-era Cooking Tips on YouTube
- The Onion: Are Violent Video Games Preparing Kids For The Apocalypse?
February 2009
- Sweet Child of Mine Cover Version
- How YouTube Uses Twitter…
- Twitter will need filters in order to thrive longtern
- Blog design is dead: the sites i like the most, i see the least
- Coinstar: when you’re right, you’re right
- Why is Marriott Tweeting at Me?
- Why i <3 Joss Whedon
- ‘Because of This Thing, People Think They Are in Hell’
- Jimmy Buffett helps launch Google Ocean
- When is a start-up not a start-up?
January 2009
2008 115
December 2008
- Leo DiCaprio Loves The YouTube
- 09 Resolutions: Focus on Results, Not Just Actions
- American Girl: Now That’s a Business Model
- Long Live the Chronotebook
- How to tell if someone loves their job
- Road Hacks: why driving shortcuts don’t work…
- Lovin’ the Machinima.com Model
- Stained Brands: Tide and Facebook
- In times like these, vote with your wallet
- Your office or mine?
- Congrats to Sam Shank and DealBase
- My big gay t-shirt
November 2008
September 2008
- Election 08: Cell Phones vs Racists
- UNTITLED PALIN PROJECT in development at Disney
- He makes a living winning online video contests
- NYTimes tells Zagat "time to be like Yelp"
- NYTimes loses its futurist (or "doomed from the moment they decided it should be called ‘futurist’")
- GOP – Not even book smart
August 2008
- McCain/Fey in 2008
- Scientific proof that hiphop is bootylicious
- EA totally getting the web
- Your24 – new user travel review site
July 2008
- Welcome Omnisio
- Path101 – We have Alpha
- Lively domains which are now being squatted on
- Why Google Lively is good for Second Life
- Fair Use – what’s it to ya’
- Read Post-American World
- Zombies in Colma
- Features ARE NOT a one-way street
- Mariah Carey, not so stupid
June 2008
- Pride Puppy
- Benetton Brunch
- Veen’s Start Conference: Count Me In
- YouTube Comments: Classical Trolls
- YouTube Comments: Redeemed!
- Lame Link Post
- Rob Curley discusses his WaPo "flop"
- More great redband trailers on YouTube
- Staycation fun continues: Financial Times covers Walmart’s trademark app
- Zagat off the block – no buyers
- Tie me up, tie me down
- Walmart is trying to trademark a domain of mine
- Design for Zuck!
May 2008
- Radiohead FTW
- New Second Life board member: ex-VeriSign CFO
- The Technology of Air Transport
- Big Co’s: Understand the Top 20 websites or you’re missing the boat
- Second Life: New CEO Day One
- Iron Man: The Avatar
- Handy Celebrity Trick #129
- The Unspoiled Notebook: Overcoming Fear of Imperfection
- Great banned album covers site
April 2008
- OMG, explaining mommy’s plastic surgery to the kids
- It’s all about the ukulele
- Breaking Away
- Google Gear: Best YouTube swag yet
- And Mylie Cyrus will lead the way
- Phix launches
- Capital bests Labor
March 2008
- Taken the wrong way….
- Covering the Best
- Long Live Redband
- YouTube: New Media Douchebags Explained!
- I see pixies (and the future of social networks)
- The kid in Hillary’s 3 a.m. commercial endorses Obama
- YT Award Winners Announced
- Why I Give
- Completed: The Ghost Map
- Zagat for sale but no buyers
- Hot girls like a man with a big degree
- Now they call it Drew-stang
- YouTube APIs really open up
- Jury Duty 2.0
- 1% of Americans are in jail
- Gentle undertones of funny
- Love mountain climbing? No, I hate email.
- Refunds – Airborne Class Settlement
- God doesn’t have a BATNA
February 2008
- FriendFeed – save me from myself
- Geeking out at Wondercon
- Awesome Moments in Metal, Part 666
- The Psychology of the Salad Bar
- Clinton is MSFT, Obama is Google
- More stars than Dazed and Confused
- iTunes Movie Rentals: Sort by Battery
- The New YouTube Theme Song
- Randoms
- Soap Glad to See You
- Field of Dreams
- eBay: No negative ratings? -1,000,000!!!! Bad eBayer!!!!
- Go Fast Howcast and Yay for Flowplay
- And the salesgenie apology FTW
- Superbad’s McLovin and Daily Show Ed Helms discuss voting
- Me no likey likey salesgenie
- Vacation as Fraud Detection
- Sway Sway Sway
- Damon’s done this before
- The news today that changed the world…
January 2008
- Wanna be a furry, barbie or yourself?
- The Mobile Rocky Road
- Social Media Branding: Fancy Way of Saying Advertisers Will Get Used to UGC
- From lender to loan shark
- Ideas v Experience
- Ghostface speaks to the fans
- Another Satya Investment ™
- Slide funding: get ready for more "fraction of" math
- Wash your hands young man!
- My Second Life story
- Celebs on YouTube
- X > Y
- Five Books to Hold You
- Classy Rice