QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.”

-Jessamyn West (American author)

The Impending VR Moment

The iPhone didn’t happen in a vacuum. Apple needed to learn to make low-power devices with the iPod; flash memory needed to become viable at an accessible price point; Samsung needed to make a good enough processor; 3G networking needed to be rolled out; the iTunes Music Store needed to provide the foundation for the App Stor... See more

Effective fundraisers have mastered the art of risk framing, demonstrating the ability to clearly articulate the risks associated with each milestone. And then, reassure the investors on how they will meet each one of them. In return, investors have developed standardized expectations for each round of fundraising.

In that context, the onion theory ... See more

Sobriety source #2: AI as the next platform shift. Every wave of new companies that transforms their respective industries is fueled by a major platform or technology shift. The advent of the web did this. The smartphone and mobile applications did this. And there is no doubt that AI is our next wave. But does every new wave always necessarily favo... See more

As a founder, the goal then becomes to metaphorically peel each layer of the onion — Each fundraising milestone turning into a set of risks being evaluated and sidelined. The earliest investors become the partners to help figure out what to focus on. Good pre-seed angels and investors are often described as “having taste” for good startups — In tru... See more

Many people pretend they do. Often they don’t because their ego and fear of failing get in the way. There is a close inverse correlation between ego and self-confidence. The latter is also an excellent indicator of resilience. Last week, a new study on the characteristics of unicorn founders found unlimited self-belief to be one of the three domina... See more

Weird is interesting . My friend Jared recently joined Union Square Ventures as a venture partner and wrote a short essay about the consumer applications we should be looking for in the age of AI - and how likely they are to appear “weird” at first glance. Indeed, new social paradigms that consume our psyche tend to appear strange when we first use... See more

Social as a model works when people have about as much to offer as they want to receive along a given axis. But no trait is distributed uniformly; there are are outliers in the nice-to-look-at, nice-to-listen-to, nice-to-read, nice-to-get-stock-tips from axes, there's a population that can offer a respectable performance with these traits, and ther... See more

“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication…In the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about ... See more