"Arnold's post on Citibike inspired this fun friday. "

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on October 18, 2013.

Fun Friday: Big Changes This Year (a post by @FredWilson)

"If a Company is making huge profits this year but will not make any profits in the future, it is worthless in the eyes of an investor. But if it loses money this year and next year and may lose money for a few more years, it can still be very valuable in the eyes of an investor."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on October 27, 2013.

Profitless Prosperity (a post by @FredWilson)

"I read a book this weekend. It is called The Fall of The Alphas. It was written by my friend and former colleague Dana Ardi. Dana is a coporate anthropologist. She studies what makes management teams work and has a PhD on the subject. She has also been a writer, a recruiter, a coach, a VC, and a private equity investor. "

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on October 28, 2013.

The Fall Of The Alphas (a post by @FredWilson)

"A few weeks back, I wrote about a study commissioned by the Bloomberg Administration that said the tech sector was the second biggest industry in NYC and was responsible for 262,000 jobs. The comment thread to that post was full of debunking those numbers, particularly for counting media industry jobs in that 262,000 number. So after seeing all of those comments, I reached out to my friends at the Partnership For NYC, which is the chamber of commerce for NYC, and asked them what the right numbers were."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on October 29, 2013.

How Big Is The NYC Tech Sector? (a post by @FredWilson)

"I'd like to announce something that a few of us have been working on for some time now. My colleagues at The NYC Foundation For Computer Science Education and I are raising a $5mm seed fund to invest in computer science education in the NYC public school system. The Gotham Gal and I have been investing out of this fund for several years, and now we are now opening it up to others who want to participate alongside of us."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on October 30, 2013.

The Computer Science Education Fund (a post by @FredWilson)

"Today, Perry Chen announced on the Kickstarter blog that he’s moving up to Chairman and that his co-founder Yancey Strickler will step into the CEO role at the start of next year. Like all things that involve Kickstarter, this is a classic Perry move. Perry and Kickstarter have always done things their way, and today's news is another example of that."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on October 30, 2013.

What I Have Learned From Kickstarter (a post by @FredWilson)

"From the outside, most people think that VCs are just looking for the best ideas that will generate the biggest companies. And that is true. We want to invest in big ideas, big markets, and big outcomes. That is a necessary part of our investment selection process, but not sufficient to get us to pull the trigger. We also want to invest in people and teams where we feel a personal chemistry."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on October 31, 2013.

The Role Of Personal Chemistry In Investment Selection (a post by @FredWilson)

"Yesterday evening I got a three minute speaking slot at the NY Tech Meetup and announced the effort we are making to bring computer science to the NYC public school system. If you didn't read about it last week here at AVC, you can click on that link to get a brief description of what we are up to."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on November 05, 2013.

Crowdfunding Computer Science in the NYC Public Schools (a post by @FredWilson)

"Last night the Gotham Gal and I went out with a bunch of friends. We met at a restaurant on the upper east side that had recently opened. It was snowing pretty heavily all day yesterday and we were worried about getting a cab on the street. So as we were getting ready to leave, I hailed a cab on my smartphone so that it would pull up in front of our apartment building. The car came more quickly than I thought it would and we scrambled out of the apartment and got in the car and headed uptown.

When we arrived at the restaurant, I realized that I had left my wallet in the apartment. Because the cab was paid for on my phone, the driver had been paid and tipped. But I was concerned about paying for dinner. So I told the Gotham Gal that she would have to pay for dinner. And then she told me that she too had walked out without her wallet.

Fortunately we were having dinner with friends and I asked one of them to pay for our share of the dinner, which he was happy to do. When the check came, I asked him how much our share was, he told me, and I pulled out my phone, opened my Coinbase app, and sent him a fraction of a Bitcoin to cover our part.

I then hailed a cab to get us back home and when we walked out of the restaurant the car was out front waiting for us. We got in, went home, and walked the dog and went to bed.

We paid for every part of the evening on my smartphone. Had we been going out solo last night the Bitcoin bit would not likely have been possible. But my gut says that will change pretty quickly. We are not the only people getting used to paying for things on our phone and doing it frequently. The experience we had last night seems likely to be normal and customary in a few years time. And I can say that it is a convenient and pleasant and I am excited to see it coming."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on December 15, 2013.

The Smartphone As A Wallet (a post by @FredWilson)

"Yesterday we announced a deal that I have been working on for the past three months. Our portfolio company Targetspot has merged with Radionomy, the leading streaming radio company in Europe.

The combination creates the largest global audio ad network and brings Radionomy to the US. It also gives the Targestpot network an anchor tenant that will make it easier to do sophisticated targeting campaigns that require both scale and reach. Advertisers can now leverage the capabilities of a digital audio network with reach to over 75M listeners and more than 80 publishers in both the U.S. and Europe.

The streaming audio business has gone mainstream in most parts of the world and is operating at a very large scale now. The advertising opportunities in streaming audio are attractive and there is no better place to reach a large and diverse base of listners than the Targetspot network.

I always look for mergers where 1+1=more than 2. This is one of those. And I am excited to see what Radionomy and Targetspot can do together."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on December 17, 2013.

Targetspot and Radionomy (a post by @FredWilson)

"Jeff Wise has  a piece in this week's NY Magazine  about teaching kids to code which features my partner Albert's home school and great programs like Code.org and Girls Who Code. It also talks about the work my colleagues and I are doing to bring CS education to all of NYC's public schools. Jeff ends the piece with this observation: Like much tech-world philanthropy, the tech schools are arriving as a fiat from on high, rather than welling up from grassroots demand, and itâs easy to read the education evangelism as motivated, at least in part, by a desire to mainstream techiesâ own idiosyncratic way of looking at the world.  Pardon me, but that accusation stings. "A fiat from on high?"Â  "A desire to mainstream our idiosyncracies?" No good deeed goes unpunished. I know that. But this critique seems so out of left field. My idiosyncratic view of the world is a place where we all understand how to control the machines that are increasingly controlling our world. It is a place where kids who are headed to flipping hamburgers for a living get an option to do something a bit more stimulating. It is a place where we all have the tools to make things that make our lives better. Now that I've got that out of my system, I will go do some yoga."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on December 19, 2013.

My Idiosyncratic View Of The World (a post by @FredWilson)

"Though I have made a few angel investments here and there over the years, it has never been my primary approach to investing in startups. I joined a venture capital firm when I was 25 years old and have been working at a venture capital firm ever since. I grew up in the business of investing other people's money and that is how I have gone about investing in startups ever since. Over the past five years, I have watched The Gotham Gal build  a portfolio of angel investments . She has invested in almost fifty companies in the past five years and if you include things like restaurants and retail establishments, that number grows to closer to sixty five. She is investing our capital but these are her investments.Â  As I watch her select her investments and then work with them, I am impressed with the purity of intent that comes with being an angel investor. She invests in people she has confidence in and she invests in businesses that make sense to her. When she engages with her investments, she is giving her advice. Compare and contrast that with a venture capital firm. A venture capital firm is in business to make money for its investors. They must invest in things that they believe will make money and they must be able to rationalize and explain their investments and their investment strategy. A venture capital firm has multiple partners and its investment decisions are based on the consensus of those partners. The advice an entrepreneur gets post investment reflects the inputs of all of the partners of the firm, not just the partner manageing the investment. There are some great strengths that come from the venture capital firm approach. At USV we have benefited greatly from our work to develop an investment thesis and then evolve it over time and be rigorous in our application of it. We also benefit from the collective insights and intelligence of our partnership and broader investment team. But the more people you put around a table, the harder it is to make really gutsy investments. And the more you stick to your disciplined investment strategy, the more you say no to people and projects you like personally. When people ask me about the startup investments I am most impressed with, the Mike Markkula investment in Apple and the Andy BechtolsheimÂ investment in Google are the ones I always talk about. These were people who took out their own checkbook and backed some people with an idea they thought had merit. And they were rewarded handsomely for these investments. They took 100% of the risk and got 100% of the rewards. Yesterday at lunch my daughter Emily asked what I plan to do when I retire in the next ten or fifteen years. I replied that "I plan to do what Mom does". It looks like a lot of fun and I think I might be pretty good at it.Â "

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on December 27, 2013.

The Purity Of Angel Investing (a post by @FredWilson)

"The Gotham Gal ends 2013  looking into the future  and thinking about how her porfolio companies will grow next year. I am similarly minded as we wrap 2013. I am excited about 2014, and in particular the big opportunities that await many of our portfolio companies.Â  I/we have a view about what is coming and  I tried to lay that out at LeWeb earlier this month . We continue to look for investments in companies that fit into that view of the world. But for me, it is the development of the companies we have already invested in that is always the most interesting work. And there are a bunch of them that are poised to have very big years in 2014 so that is what I woke up thinking about today and what I am most excited about professionally. I am also very happy to have finally wound down Flatiron Partners, our previous venture capital firm, in 2013. My partners and I continue to hold interests in a few of our remaining portfolio companies but the business of Flatiron Partners has been wound down, 17 years after we started it, and that is a great relief to me personally.Â  Like the Gotham Gal, I am also thinking about our impending empty nest status. This is something the two of us have been thinking about and to some extent planning for since 2007. Raising our family has been front and center for us for almost 25 years now and that phase is coming to an end in 2014. This means we can travel more, work more and less at the same time, and be more opportunistic about our lifestyle. I am looking forward to that. We are spending New Years in Mexico then flying back to NYC tomorrow to start 2014. I am refreshed, relaxed, and ready for 2014."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on December 31, 2013.

It's A Wrap (a post by @FredWilson)

"My friend John asked me yesterday what my New Year's resolutions were. I thought about it for a bit and then told him that I have none this year. Of course like most everyone I want to eat healthier and exercise more (which for me means mostly yoga and cycling). I want to be a better husband, father, business partner. But these are ongoing efforts that I have been working on for years. I also have some very specific things like finding a new doctor and shopping for some new pants, shirts, and jackets (some of which the Gotcham Gal has already started doing for me). But unlike years in the past, I can't find a thing or two that I really want to work on or change right now. So I am unresolved this new years day and totally fine with that."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on January 01, 2014.

Unresolved (a post by @FredWilson)

"The greatest thing about blogging is that it has opened up so many new voices and new outlets.Â  Just in the past few weeks, we have two new outlets, both from WSJ veterans. The All Things D team has flown the coop and has resurfaced as  Recode . The formula seems to be pretty similar to All Things D, the team is intact (at least it looks so to my untrained eye) and the format is familiar. They will do a big conference to anchor the whole thing. At least right now, it seems that the only things that have really changed here are the URL, the color scheme, and the ownership structure. But a new home and a new ownership structure may open up possibilities that they could not pursue in the past. We will see about that. Jessica Lessin, one of the top tech journalists at the WSJ over the past ten years, launched  The Information  in December. I am not a fan of paywalls and barriers to the free flow of content and information and so I am not a subscriber or a reader and I don't plan to link to anything behind a paywall. But this is an ambitious experiment and an attempt to make a challenging business model work in the tech news sector. As I told Jessica in a private email last month, I am happy to be proven wrong about the paywall business model and there is nobody I would rather see prove me wrong than her. But maybe more exciting to me is the proliferation of new voices that I am seeing out there. One of the driving factors is the emergence of  Medium  as a blogging platform that is home to many of these new voices. Every day I seem to find a new blogger on  usv.com  who has written something interesting on Medium.Â  But it isn't just Medium that is hosting great content. You can still find great stuff on old platforms, like the one that Ev built before Twitter and Medium - Blogger.  This post from Duncan Anderson on the important trends in mobile  is on Blogger. As far as I can tell, there has never been more diversity and quality of content than there is right now. And the reason for that is the printing press of our times, the cms in the cloud, is just getting better and better, easier and easier, and cheaper and cheaper. I will continue to do my part in feeding the blogosphere and I hope and expect that  usv.com  will continue to be a good filter for those who are interested in the intersection of technology, startups, policy, and capital markets. With all of these new voices and new outlets emerging, we need filters and discovery more than ever."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on January 02, 2014.

New Outlets & New Voices (a post by @FredWilson)

"I just finished filling out a sixteen page questionnaire for an investment the Gotham Gal and I are making. I fill out this identical form about once or twice a month for various investments we make. Each time I get the form, I find a version I filled out previously in my archived email and copy the answers line by line. It's complicated and I want to make sure I answer the questions correctly. This form is created by lawyers to make sure that we are qualified and/or accredited investors. They also use this form to verify our tax and regulatory and compliance status. If you make an investment in a venture fund, a hedge fund, a private equity fund or a private placement, you will probably fill out a similar or indentical form. Here's the thing. I am literally answering the exact same questions again and again. I take great pains to make sure I answer them the same way each time. And it is a chore. I hate doing it. Though the size of the accredited/qualified investor market may be small, I really don't understand why there isn't a web service where I can go, fill this form out once, and then certify that the answers are correct, and then simply auth with this service each time we make an additional investment. If such a service exists, please point me to it and I will recommend it to the lawyers who handle these sorts of transactions.Â  USV requires our investors to fill out these same forms. When we close our next fund, we are going to hack together a web based system in partnership with our portfolio company  CircleUp . But this isn't really CircleUp's business and they are doing this as a favor to us and our investors. What we really need is a third party to offer this service to all accredited and qualified investors and we need the market to adopt it. It would make me and many others very happy to stop filling out these forms."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on January 07, 2014.

A Web Service For Qualified and Accredited Investo (a post by @FredWilson)

"The fourth annual  Womens Entrepreneur Festival  starts this evening and continues all day tomorrow. The  Gotham Gal  and her friend  Nancy Hechinger , who is on the faculty at  NYU's ITP program , are the founders and festival chairs. The goal of the WE Festival is "to sow the seeds for a community of women entrepreneurs, to expose women who have not yet taken the entrepreneurial leap to women who have." This year's theme is "be bold" and we all know that being bold is a requirement for entrepreneurship (and life I would argue). This year's event, like the three before it, is sold out and has been for months. But, if you could not get in, can't make it to NYC, or are just learning about it, you can watch the whole thing live or later on  the livestream . The conference opens with  a keynote this evening at 6pm eastern  by  Anne-Marie Slaughter  who wrote one of the most talked about pieces on woman and work titled " Why Women Still Can't Have It All ". You can watch it live or later  here . Though USV is allergic to sponsoring things, we make an exception for things that can move the needle where the needle needs to be moved and growing the community of women entrepreneurs is certainly in that camp. So USV is proud to be a sponsor of WE4 and the livestream. I will be at Anne-Marie's keynote and I will be at the WE Festival all day tomorrow. If you are going, I will see you there."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on January 14, 2014.

Women Entrepreneurs Festival 2014 (a post by @FredWilson)

"One of the big european tech conferences starts today. It's called  DLD  and my partner Albert is giving a talk there tomorrow. The last big european tech conference was LeWeb and  I gave a talk there . You might wonder why we fly across the pond to attend and talk at these events. The answer, asÂ  Sten Tamkivi   explains in TechCrunch , is that europe is a great place to invest in startups. Sten lists five reasons that european startups are exciting: 1) Talent 2) New Models 3) 400 million customers 4) Global skills 5) Security and privacy I agree with all of those but to me the biggest thing is european entrepreneurs have fully made the change from locally focused to globally focused and are mostly now building businesses that can and do serve a global user base from day one. At USV, we have made  nine investments in europe  since 2008 when we started investing there. That is roughly 20% of our total investment activity in those six years. Contrast that with the bay area, where we have made thirteen investments during the same period. It is way easier to invest in europe from New York City than the Bay Area and that is something we have taken advantage of. And I am not sure that Silicon Valley can or will pay a huge amount of attention to Europe. But that is an opportunity for us. And we are taking advantage of it."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on January 19, 2014.

Investing In Startups In Europe (a post by @FredWilson)

"My friend  Gary  said this to me the other day in an email. He wasn't talking about me but he could have beeen. Last night I went to bed thinking about my work, dreamt about my work, and woke up thinking about my work. It's been that way for me since I started Flatiron in the mid 90s. To some extent it's been that way for me since college. Fortunately I have the Gotham Gal and three awesome kids to keep me from  going fully into the fire . I spent the past four days skiing wtih my family and some new friends and enjoyed it immensely. If anything I am letting my work sit idle in my brain more these days than I have in a long time. What Gary was talking about when he wrote those words to me was failure. And when you are your work, your failure at work is personal. Deeply personal. When Flatiron melted down after four great years and one awful one, it was painful. I went to see a therapist for the first time in my life. It was the best thing I could have done. I had been to see coaches but I had not taken the deeper dive into what was driving me. A few years later I was energized and Brad and I started USV. Failure can sow the seeds of success. It did for me. It did for Mark Pincus when he turned the failure of Tribe into the success of Zynga. It has done the same for countless others. But to get through failure, you need to be able to separate who you are and what your work is.Â  One of my favorite lines from an entrepreneur came from Rob Kalin. I am sure I've shared it here a few times. He said "I am an artist. Making websites is my medium right now" That's a helpful way for entrepreneurs to think about their work. They are the painter. Some paintings will hang in the MOMA and others will sit gathering dust in a storage room. Not every thing you create will be brilliant. But you can be brilliant while still making work that isn't, particularly if you understand why the work that wasn't great wasn't great. Jerry ended  his amazing post  with the observation that "I have to understand this viscerally if Iâm going to be of service to my clients". When your work is servicing entrepreneurs, it is actually pretty easy to "understand this viscerally". Their failure is your failure. Their success is your success. Their work is your work. But it is not you."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on January 21, 2014.

You Are Not Your Work (a post by @FredWilson)

"I told a Rob Kalin story yesterday and I am going to start this post with another one. When Rob left Etsy for the second time, it fell to me to tell everyone what was happening at the company's all hands meeting. I asked Rob what he wanted me to tell the several hundred employees who would assemble to hear the news. Often there is a story concocted about the founder or CEO wanting to step back, take more time with their family, needing a break, etc. And so I wanted Rob to tell me how he wanted this story told. Rob said "Tell them you fired me. They will know anyway. You might as well tell them the truth." So that's what I did, with empathy, respect, and appreciation for Rob and his work. It went well. The team was happy that I was being straight with them. I then handed the stage to Chad who took it from there and has been doing a great job ever since. I don't tell that story to bring up old unhappy times. Although it may for some. I tell it because Rob had the courage to allow me to tell it like it is.Â  And yesterday Chris Poole told it like it is. With  a blog post that is simple, honest, and sad . He made the decision that our portfolio company Canvas has failed. Running out of money is always the thing that brings this moment of reality. But so often an acquihire is arranged, or the company is put on mothballs, or you just stop hearing about the company. The story of failure is buried.Â  I prefer the way Chris did it. We tried, it didn't work, we failed. The truth is, as Chris explained in his post, that the first product Canvas was a failure. The pivot to DrawQuest came too late, took too long, and now  DrawQuest  is a succeeding product inside a failing company. I know that Chris is going to try to find a way to keep DrawQuest going. It's got 400,000 people who use it every month and 25,000 people who use it every day. But it has not monetized particularly well and the Company hasn't found a good way to inject virality into the product so it can spread without expensive marketing dollars. If you know of a good home or a good steward for DrawQuest, email me. There is a contact link in the footer of this blog that will send me an email. Chris says he is going to blog about the things he learned from this experience.  Chris hates writing . But I think he will do this, as therapy for him, and as a post mortem for him and everyone else. So pay attention to  his blog , subscribe to  his RSS,  or  follow it on Tumblr .Â  Like his post yesterday, I expect Chris will continue to tell it like it is."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on January 22, 2014.

Telling Like It Is (a post by @FredWilson)

"One morning earlier this week, I cam down early and was working in our family room/kitchen area. My oldest daughter was charging her iPhone in the kitchen and it was randomly playing music. I would get up, turn off the music, and then a few minutes later, it would start again. Eventually I turned off the phone. A bit later, when my daugher came down, she was in shock, her phone had randomly called dozens of her contacts on its own over the night. So I took a look at her phone and it seemed that voice control had taken over her phone. I googled around to see what could be done and came up with  this support forum thread . It explained that we could turn off voice dialing which we did, so that she would stop randomly dialing her contacts. But we were not able to turn off voice control entirely. She's in Park City this week so when she gets back to NYC, she will take the phone into the genius bar and get it fixed. But until then, Siri is controlling her phone. Randomly playing music when she doesn't want it. Randonly facetiming people she doesn't want to talk to. It's a glimpse of the future to when AI goes haywire on us. It is not pleasant."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on January 23, 2014.

When Siri Takes Over Your Phone (a post by @FredWilson)

"My partner Brad, who is the conscience of USV, said something in one of our recent monday team meetings that has been rattling in my brain ever since. It was a throwaway line for him. He probably doesn't even remember it. But I do. We were talking about some investment opportunity and one of us turned to him and asked him what he thought. He said, "I generally can't get excited about anything that is this for that." What he meant by "this for that" is Airbnb for boats, or Snapchat for business, or Dropbox for videos. What Brad is talking about is derivative works. There is nothing wrong with them, of course. But he was saying that it was hard for him to get excited about them. We've made a few of these investments and some of them have worked out pretty well.  Edmodo  is Facebook for classrooms.  SoundCloud  is YouTube for audio. If you are going to do a this for that investment, the first thing you need to make sure is the iconic company (this) is not going to go after this other market (that) themselves. Then you need to make sure the other market (that) is very large. And finally, you need to make sure that the founders are doing the startup for the right reasons. Nic and Jeff, the founders of Edmodo, were tech administrators in local school systems. They were frustrated with the tools teachers were using to distribute information to their students. So they built a new way to do it, influenced by Facebook for sure, but different in some important ways. Alex and Eric, the founders of SoundCloud, were musicians and sound engineers. They were frustrated by the tools that were available to them and their friends to put the sounds they were making out onto the Internet. They may have been influenced by YouTube (I honestly don't know that they were), but their drive to make SoundCloud was most certainly to scratch an itch, just like Nic and Jeff. The worst kind of "this for that" startup is one where you can tell that the founders have no intrinsic desire to build a solution for a recognized problem, but instead they are opportunists being influenced by the latest hot startup. We certainly try to avoid those sorts of things and comments like Brad's certainly helps us do that."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on January 26, 2014.

This For That (a post by @FredWilson)

"I have a new favorite blog and I thought I'd share it with all of you. I found it via  the Gotham Gal's blog  (which in and of itself is kind of embarassing. We sleep together and I found this via her blog). It's called  Humans Of New York . I follow it on Tumblr. Every day I get two to five posts. Each post is a picture of a new yorker or two. And something that was said by the subject of the photo. It's like riding the subway, but even better. You get to see all kinds of people and learn a little bit about them. Sometimes it is  sad . Sometimes it is  funny . Sometimes it is  upsetting . Sometimes it makes you  smile . But rarely does Humans Of New York fail to make me feel something. And that is great art at work. And that is Tumblr at work. Tumblr is great art and so is Humans Of New York. I love both of them."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on January 27, 2014.

Humans Of New York (a post by @FredWilson)

"My friend and former business partner  Jerry Colonna  has created  The CEO Bootcamp . It's a four day retreat in the Colorado mountains with 19 other CEOs and a few facilitators, led by Jerry. The first CEO Bootcamp was last fall and you can see what attendees thought about it  here . And here's  a blog post by Sooinn Lee  about her experience last fall at CEO Bootcamp. There are two aspects to this experience. There are the four days where attendees learn skills to help them manage the leadership role they are in, and there is the ongoing support that the group of CEOs provide each other after the retreat is over. The CEO Bootcamp has some requirements. They are: Youâre the CEO of a tech startÂ­up that has employees. This is the first time you have been a CEO within a company of this scale. Youâve logged immeasurable hours and have made tremendous sacrifices. Youâve had success with your company. You realize there is more to this game than âsuccess.â You may be tired, but youÂ  must Â be vulnerable,Â curious and courageous. If you fit these requirements and want to spend four days in early April in the Colorado mountains with a bunch of peer CEOs figuring out what it takes to be a successful leader, you can apply  here ."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on February 03, 2014.

The CEO Bootcamp (a post by @FredWilson)

"I attended a CS Teacher Meetup last night at USV. We talked about a lot of things but focused on the issue of getting more girls to code. It's an important issue that I think we are starting to make good progress on. Though not focused on girls per se, I heard about a neat coding challenge that is happening this Spring called  Dream It. Code It. Win It . This is a programming challenge (not a Hackathon) aimed at High School and College students. It is organized by the MIT Club of New York, MIT Enterprise Forum, and Trading Screen. The goal is to reward "the creative aspects of a computer science education." College teams can win monetary prizes ($20k, $15k, and $10k). High School teams can win iPads. The submission is a video where the team explains the problem they set out to solve, their solution, and a demonstration of a live working product that solves the problem. Submissions can be made  here  and the juding panel will meet in NYC on April 30th from 5pm to 9pm to select the winners. If you know a high school or college aged student who likes to code, please let them know about this contest."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on February 04, 2014.

Dream It. Code It. Win It. (a post by @FredWilson)

"I was on vacation with my friend John and he asked me how I used the favorite button on Twitter. I told him it is a way to tell people that I've seen the tweet when I do not want to reply. I use it in two primary ways. To signal that I saw and liked a tweet. And to signal that I saw a tweet to the person who sent it. The two are different only in that in the second case, I probably did not like the tweet but I still wanted to acknowledge it. I really like super lightweight engagement gestures. I am bombarded by stuff coming at me all the time. So if I can acknoweledge something publicly without having to do much work, I get a huge amount of value from that. Bumping on usv.com and upvoting on disqus are like that too. Because the identity of the bumber and the upvoter are on display publicly, they are an efficient way to signal that you saw it and liked it. I am going to try to upvote more on disqus. As I reply less and less in the comments, I need to upvote more and more. I will make an effort to do that."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on February 06, 2014.

Lightweight Engagement Gestures (a post by @FredWilson)

"Ben Horowitz has a great post up on his blog, called  Why I Did Not Go To Jail . I would encourage everyone to go read it. But in the event you aren't going to do that, he tells a story about an options strike price plan that his CFO recommended to him. It turns out the plan was against the law and his GC stopped him from implementing it. I've heard a lot of ideas over the years that, like this options strike price plan, sound too good to be true. And in most cases, they were just that. I have developed a deep skepticism around anything that sounds like a free lunch. As the saying goes, there is no such thing."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on February 09, 2014.

If It Sounds Too Good To Be True, It Probably Is (a post by @FredWilson)

"So Fast Company has selected  DonorsChoose.org  as  one of its most innovative companies  and on top of that, they decided to put DonorsChoose founder  Charles Best  on the cover of the magazine and write  a longer article about them  as well. It's pretty unusual that a non-profit would be selected for such a list and highlighted in this way. But then again, DonorsChoose is a pretty unusual non-profit. I've been fortunate to have been involved with DonorsChoose for the past seven or eight years and have been on their board for the past three or four. So I thought I'd list some of the things that DonorsChoose has done to illustrate the point. - DonorsChoose launched a crowdfunding service and business model in 2000, fourteen years ago. To my knowledge they were the first crowdfunding service launched on the Internet, long before the leaders of the category like Kickstarter, Lending Club, and other emerged. - DonorsChoose has built a network of  almost 200,000 teachers, over 10mm students, and over 1mm funders . That network has brought $227mm of funding into public school classrooms but it is being used for a lot more. Entrepreneurs are using it to get things like 3D printers, underwater robots, and computer science classes into schools. DonorsChoose has become a distribution network in addition to a funding network. - DonorsChoose has  open data sets and an API  that allow anyone to analyze what resources teachers and students are seeking. Increasingly policy makers are accessing this data to determine what resources are most needed in the public schools. - DonorsChoose is a sustainable non-profit. They apply a take rate like every other commercial marketplace (it is currently about 13% and donors can, but usually don't, opt out). This revenue scales as giving scales and has been covering the costs of the operating the business for a number of years now. Any profits they make above covering their costs are given back into the marketplace, usually in the form of match offers. - DonorsChoose looks like, acts like, and is a startup. When I walk into the DonorsChoose office, it feels just like walking into the Etsy, Kickstarter, or Twitter office. People are active, animated, and energetic. They have a large software and product team. They could easily fit into the USV portfolio and if they did, they would be one of our star companies. Networks are replacing hierachies as we enter the information era. And in the world of non-profits, the DonorsChoose network can and should be a model of how you can build an organization with huge impact using a networked model. Another node on the DonorsChoose network are corporations and their marketing and corporate social responsibility teams. Corporations and their brands have a place on DonorsChoose as well. They provide match and challenge funding in all sorts of interesting and innovative ways. If you are involved in these kinds of programs and want to work with DonorsChoose, you can  go here and learn more and contact them . It's very satisfying to see Charles and DonorsChoose get this kind of recognition. They are one of the most innovative organizations I work with. And I work in the innovation business. Congratulations DonorsChoose."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on February 10, 2014.

What's So Special About DonorsChoose.org? (a post by @FredWilson)

"The annual NYC tech bowling event is around the corner.  Kingpins of Silicon Alley  will happen on April 7th, at 7pm. Â  Kingpins of Silicon Alley Bowlmor - Chelsea Piers April 7, 2014 Â 7 PMÂ  Kingpins of Silicon Alley is New York CityâsÂ first and only startup bowling competition. ItÂ is a fundraiser and friendly competition forÂ the entrepreneurial community in NYC. TheÂ funds go to benefit InSITE, a fellowship thatÂ connects exceptional graduate students toÂ start-ups to help accelerate thoseÂ companies to funding. Â  At the end of theÂ event, we will crown the Silicon AlleyÂ Bowling Champion! Â  To attend clickÂ  www.kingpins.eventbrite.com   I will be there and plan to sponsor a lane. If you would also like to sponsor a lane, you can do that  here . I hope to see there on April 7th. It's a fun evening."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on February 11, 2014.

Go Bowling With The NYC Tech Community (a post by @FredWilson)

"VC is a service business like law firms and ad agencies. Our customers are the entrepreneurs we back. Our shareholders are our limited partners. When we do a good job of helping our customers create value, our shareholders benefit. But, like law firms and ad agencies, it is hard to provide truly objective and unbiased advice when you have a conflict of interest. In the law and advertising business, clients will demand that their service providers don't work for their competitors. The same is mostly true of entrepreneurs and VCs. There is no language in the stock purchase agreements we sign with our portfolio companies preventing us from investing in a competitor. But there is an understanding about conflict avoidance and breaching that understanding can have negative reputational consequences. The problem that arises is that conflct is not the same to everyone. As I said to an entrepreneur yesterday, "conflict is in the eye of the beholder." This entrepreneur had pitched me on his business via email and I told him it sounded a lot like one of our portfolio companies. He was shocked as he didn't (and doesn't) see it. A few months later, he went to see the Gotham Gal about making an angel investment in his company. She pointed out the exact same conflict to him. Again he was surprised. So he emailed me yesterday about the situation and I pointed out that not everyone sees conflict in the same light. But I went on to point out that the perception of conflict is conflict. When someone feels that something you invest in is encroaching on his or her territory, you have created a perception of conflict with that entrepreneur. Even if he or she is dead wrong about that, it doesn't really matter because they are now in conflict with you in their own mind and they won't listen to you the same way again. And that is the most powerful leverage point a VC has when making an investment. If you cannot get an entrepreneur to listen to you objectively and rationally, then you have lost your greatest hope of postively impacting that investment. And that is a tool that VCs should not throw away lightly. So the meta point I am making in this post is that it isn't the facts that matter when discussing conflict. It is the perception that matters. If anyone in a relationship with you percieves that you are in a conflicted situation, you are in a conflicted situation whether you agree with them or not. Your only choice is to try to convince them otherwise before you obligate yourself to the conflict situation. Once you've obligated yourself, it is too late. A friend in the VC business told me yesterday that he thinks this is the biggest issue top VCs face. Because they get to see the most interesting investment opportunities, but the opportunity cost of saying yes to an investment is that they take themselves out of the running for everything else in that category going forward. I agree that conflict issues are large and need to be front and center in everyone's minds when making an investment decision. But I also think that large markets are large and there are ways to slice them up in ways that do avoid conflict. And if you can get an entrepreneur comfortable, you can make multiple investments in a large space. We made five or six social media investments. We've made a similar number of crowdfunding investments. I would like to make a large number of bitcoin related investments. If you think carefully upfront about how these markets will likely segment themselves over time, and if you can make that case upfront (not after the fact) to an entrepreneur, I think you can navigate this tricky issue. But the thing you have to keep in your mind first and foremost is that perception is reality. And managing that is the most important thing of all."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on February 12, 2014.

The Perception Of Conflict Is Conflict (a post by @FredWilson)

"A few weeks ago the traffic coming to  the new usv.com  dropped off by 20 or 30% week over week. Brian and Nick were wondering if it was related to  the new design  we rolled out at the end of January. They decided to take a deep dive into our analytics to see what was going on. I told them it had to be some sort of plumbing issue. Something that was hooked up to usv.com must have gotten unhooked. Because I have rarely seen the behavior of an entire user base change drastically overnight because of something like a redesign. Change can come pretty quickly, but in my experience it is months not weeks or days for something to drastically change in your user base resulting from a subtle product change/tweak. They noticed in the analytics that front page views were steady but traffic to the article pages was off by a lot. I suggested that something in our twitter plumbing was off. And sure enough, we figured out that the autoposting of popular articles on usv.com to  this twitter handle  was broken (and apparently still is). I tell this story because we all encounter this sort of thing along the way of building and launching and growing a product. We make tweaks and something changes right away. That immediate change is usually related to something that brought traffic (google, twitter, email, appstore) and not a design change. More gradual changes (up or down) are usually because of design changes. There's a difference between these two kinds of effects and it is important to understand that."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on February 13, 2014.

The Behavior Of Your Users Normally Doesn't Change (a post by @FredWilson)

"My son turned me onto a wine app called  Delectable Wine . I am waiting for the Android version so I can use it too. But I've used it a bit on his iPhone and its a really nice and useful application. Think of Delectable Wine as Instagram for wine. People post the wines they are drinking, their reactions, tasting notes, etc. You follow your friends and experts (like  Arnold ) and you see what they are drinking. You can tag where you had the wine and what you thought about it. There's a really nice searchable archive so you can go back and see what the wine was that you had at  Perla  that night with your friends that was so good. But all of this is possible because of a very cool feature that my son calls Shazam for Wine Labels. When you want to add a wine to Delectable, you take a photo of the wine label and Delectable figures out what wine it is, what vintage it is, etc, etc. All of that important metadata comes in automatically just because you took a photo of the wine label. I don't think Delectable would work nearly as well without this feature. It enables so much of the discovery and data that makes the app so great. The first time I saw it in action, I said "wow". I see a lot of technology demo'd every day. I don't saw "wow" that often. But I did when I saw Delectable in action. If you are into wine and have an iPhone,  try it out . I think you'll like it."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on February 14, 2014.

Feature Friday: Recognizing Wine Labels (a post by @FredWilson)

"Senator Joe Manchin  wrote a public letter to financial regulators asking them to âtake appropriate action to limit the abilities of this highly unstable currency.â The letter in its entirety  is here . What follows is a letter from me to the Senator. Bitcoin is a powerful new technology platform that, like the Internet itself, is not controlled by anyone or any company. It is a globally distributed network of computers that allow financial transactions to flow seamlessly and at a much greater efficiency than current methods. A bitcoin is the store of value in the system and it acts a bit like a currency or a commodity. This store of value is actively traded for fiat currency at a number of exchanges around the world. Bitcoin is already regulated in the US and it is becoming more regulated every day. And the regulatory environment in the US has dampened the amount of innovation around Bitcoin that has developed here in the US. All the major Bitcoin exchanges have been built outside of the US and a significant amount of the venture capital investment in the Bitcoin ecosystem is happening outside of the US. This is a direct response to the stricter regulatory oversight and requirements here in the US versus other countries. The volatility of Bitcoin relative to fiat currencies should be expected in a nascent and emerging technology. What is amazing, however, is its resiliency in the face of massive scrutiny, company failures, fraud, theft, and a host of other challenges it faces as it becomes mainstream and mature. The value of a Bitcoin at this stage of its development should move up and down more like a hot technology stock than a stable currency. In time, as Bitcoinâs market value grows and transactional activityÂ  and liquidity develops, the value will stabilize and act more like a traditional currency. When something as new and as different as Bitcoin emerges, it is tempting to want to âput the Genie back into the bottleâ and protect ourselves from it. But thankfully the US did not do that with the Internet. The impact of the commercial Internet on the US economy and our society as a whole has been massive and overwhelmingly positive over the past twenty years. We should approach Bitcoin in exactly the same way and if we do, I expect the benefits we will see will be equally important, impactful, and beneficial to our economy and our society."

Content from Fred Wilson's blog, avc.com, used under Creative Commons License. Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. Originally posted on February 27, 2014.

A Letter To Senator Manchin (a post by @FredWilson)

I am a VC. I have been since 1986. I help people start and build technology companies. I do it in NYC, which isn't the easiest place to build technology companies, but it's getting better.

I love my work.  I am the Managing Partner of two venture capital firms, Flatiron Partners and Union Square Ventures.

I also am a husband and a father of 3 kids. I do that in NYC too. And it isn't the easiest place to raise a family either. But it's getting better too. I love my family more than my work.

I also love music, art, yoga, biking, skiing, and golf. That's a lot of interests for a guy who works 70 hours a week and loves his family. But I manage to make it work. 

Fred Wilson's A VC

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