I’ve always believed the best early-stage founders are artists – they're obsessive about new and unusual things, they feel compelled to bring creation into the world, and they are often misunderstood for long periods of time–even lifetimes. Building businesses is their art.

The venture ecosystem went from cottage industry outsider to institutional insider – from a nascent practice to a consensus component of institutional portfolios. The result has been the industrialization–and bankerization–of venture. Firms that make dozens or even hundreds of investments per year, relentlessly focused on assets under management, u... See more

More beauty and craft,

less factory line

More weird and rebellious,

less safe and derivative

More really hard inspired work,

less status games

More authentic expression of self,

less patagonia vest

• Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: There must be something you want to do.


• Pierre Bezukhov: I want to discover... everything! I want to discover why I know what's right and still do what's wrong. I want to discover what happiness is, and what value there is in suffering. I want to discover why men go to war, and what they really say deep in their hearts when

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If you are depressed, you're living in the past. If you are anxious, you're living in the future. If you are at peace, you're living in the present. ~Lao tzu

As Mr. Petrini has said, “The quest for slowness, which begins as a simple rebellion against the impoverishment of taste in our lives, makes it possible to rediscover taste.” He is talking most forcibly about food, but this focus on a different, slower way reverberates into all facets of our lives.

Copley’s painting, in other words, is an embodiment of the delays that it was created to endure. If Copley had had instant access to his instructors in London, if there had been an edX course given by the Royal Academy, he would not have been compelled to paint the way he did. Changing the pace of the exchange would have changed the form and conten... See more

What this exercise shows students is that just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness. Or, in slightly more general terms: access is not synonymous with learning. What turns access into learning is ... See more

Bruce Hornsby did not start piano until he was 17 years old, yet he remains one of the most important pianists of the 21st century, as he established a sound that is his own. It is a clever blending of the Americana side of jazz that you hear in some of Keith Jarrett's work, a big influence on him, as well as that pure cinematic western landscape t... See more