"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)

"Sometime this past week Disqus flipped the switch and AVC has been using the beta version of Disqus' mobile embed. I have been using this embed on my Android for a month or so and at first it was hard to get used to clicking into a new tab to comment or read, upvote, and reply to comments, but I came to like that approach a lot better. The mobile embed in its own tab performs a lot better than the embed in the same tab as the main post."

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 01, 2013.

Feature Friday: Mobile Disqus (a post by @FredWilson)

"I love Hackpad. And it's strange because most of what Hackpad does, Google Docs does. And I really like Google Docs. I use Google Docs dozens of times a day."

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 04, 2013.

Hackpad (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)

"I would like to congratulate Bill De Blasio on his landslide victory in the NYC mayoral race. He will become our next mayor on Jan 1st 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 November 06, 2013.

Bill De Blasio, the next Mayor of NYC (a post by @FredWilson)

"My friend Matt Blumberg
 and I are co-teaching a class at Princeton in a few weeks. The subject 
of the class is the VC/entrepreneur relationship. As part of doing this 
class, Matt and I are doing two posts each in a point/counterpoint 
model. Today is the second of these two co-posts about the getting along post investment. Matt's post on today's topic is here and should be read directly before or after this post."

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 07, 2013.

What makes for the most productive Management-VC partnership? (a post by @FredWilson)

"On friday, as I ate a bowl of soup for lunch, I pulled out two phones, an iPhone and my Android. I opened up the app stores and went to the leaderboards. And I looked at the top free apps on both phones. They were radically different. That got me thinking about the different user bases on these two operating systems here in the 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 November 10, 2013.

Android and iOS Demographics In The US (a post by @FredWilson)

"When I was early in my career, I casually mentioned to an older VC that I had yet to lose money on an investment. He replied "that's not good, you aren't taking enough risk." I have gone on to lose a lot of money over the years. And made a fair bit too."

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 11, 2013.

Loss Ratios In Early Stage VC (a post by @FredWilson)

"My friend Howard is in town and he's going to come by my office today to see me. It got me thinking about the good old days at Wallstrip and all the fun we had. And how that led to the avatar I use here and everywhere else on the web. So I am reposting the story of my avatar which I initially told here four or five years ago."

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 12, 2013.

My Avatar (a post by @FredWilson)

"This isn't the first post I've written with this headline. That was here. But both of the posts are about slide decks I saw."

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 13, 2013.

Mobile Is Eating The World (continued) (a post by @FredWilson)

"I got wind of this yesterday in the comments to my SoundCloud post. You can now put a link to media that is embeddable (tweet, image, video, audio, etc) and Disqus will attach the media to the comment. Jim leaked the news in this comment."

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 15, 2013.

Fun Feature Friday: Embeddable Media In The Comments (a post by @FredWilson)

"One of the things I am noticing is the trend to try to solve problems with software instead of dedicated hardware. That makes sense for a whole bunch of reasons, but the biggest ones are that the marginal cost of additional user is almost zero with software and that you can iterate your product much more quickly with software."

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 17, 2013.

Software vs Hardware (a post by @FredWilson)

"I have written about the Fintech Innovation Lab here before. It's one of the first vertical accelerator programs that have cropped up in NYC and its one of the best. They take a handful of promising fintech companies each year and give them introductions to the top execs at the leading financial services companies in NYC."

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 18, 2013.

Fintech Innovation Lab 2014 (a post by @FredWilson)

"Everyone focuses on the price of Bitcoin these days and it is no wonder why. But for Bitcoin to be anything more than a store of value, we need to see a transactional ecosystem develop. When the citizens of the world will be able to buy and sell from each other and from retailers of all shapes and sizes via Bitcoin, then we will have truly realized the potential of a global digital currency."

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 19, 2013.

Buying Your Holiday Gifts With Bitcoin (a post by @FredWilson)

"With everything in the cloud now, it is important to protect your most sensitive information. I like two factor authentication for doing that. Bad people can steal passwords, but stealing your password and your phone at the same time is not as easy. And under the theory that being harder to rob than your neighbor is often enough, I feel pretty comfortable with two factor auth security and use it on as many online services as I can."

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 22, 2013.

Feature Friday: Two Factor Authentication (a post by @FredWilson)

"There's a great Andy Serwerinterview of Marc Andreessen up on Forbes. I would recommend everyone go give it a read. Marc expresses many of the same things my partners and I are seeing and feeling right now."

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 25, 2013.

The New Freedom (a post by @FredWilson)

"Arnold suggested we discuss these ads last week so we are going to do that. But first some background.

Disqus, which is a USV portfolio company, offers a free ad-supported service for both commenters and publishers. Their first ad product is promoted discovery which has been a link oriented product for the past year. Publishers opt into promoted discovery and share revenues with Disqus if they opt-in.

Recently, Disqus added the option for publishers who are running promoted discovery to switch from links to thumbnails. I decided to make that switch and turned on thumbnails a week or two ago. The revenue AVC is making has gone up as a result. I use that revenue to buy promoted discovery from Disqus, thereby bringing more readers and community members to AVC.

The promoted discovery ads run at the top of the Disqus comment thread if you are not logged in as a Disqus commenter. The promoted discovery ads run at the bottom of the Disqus comment thread if you are logged in as a Disqus commenter. The ads are very noticeable on a thread that is new or has very few comments on it. The ads are not as noticeable on threads like we have at AVC once there is a lot of discussion activity. Promoted discovery is not the only ad product that Disqus is likely to rolll out. It was rolled out first because these kinds of ads are common on blogs and online publications and advertisers are used to them and they are relatively easy to sell. Over time, I expect Disqus to come up with more native advertising models.

But for now, these are the only ads running on AVC. I am curious what folks think of them. If the community really dislikes them, I can easily turn off thumbnails and go back to links. The only cost to me is less promoted discovery for AVC running on the Disqus network.

So, what do we all think of the thumbnail ads?"

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 29, 2013.

Feature Friday: Disqus Thumbnail Ads

"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 it’s easy to read the education evangelism as motivated, at least in part, by a desire to mainstream techies’ own idiosyncratic way of looking at the world.

Pardon me, but that accusation stings. "A fiat from on high?"  "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 3, 2013.

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

"I've been doing some holiday shopping. I like to do all my shopping online. I don't really enjoy being in stores and I like the convenience of having the items delivered to me.

This holiday season, I've been trying to shop more on mobile, both phone and tablet. I am doing this partly because I want to see what the experience is like and partly because as I spend more time shopping on mobile, I realize it's easier in some ways.

It feels to me that as a reaction to the shrinking real estate that is available in mobile, particularly phones, designers have made the user experiences simpler and more intelligent. Features that were smart on the web, like recommendations, become essential on mobile.

My favorite holiday shopping service remains Etsy. I know I am talking my book here as USV has owned a large stake in Etsy since 2006 and I am on the board. But the things you can find and buy on Etsy are one of a kind, special, and ridiculosly affordable. 

In previous years, I found Etsy on the web preferable to Etsy on tablets and phones. Not this year. I just spent twenty minutes on Etsy's android app and completed most of my holiday shopping. If you try some holiday shopping on their mobile apps, you can download them here.

I'm curious if others are feeling this same way. Has the mobile shopping experience become better than the web shopping experience for you too?"

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 8, 2013.

Mobile Shopping (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)

"Kickstarter published a retrospective on 2012. It's worth browsing. Here's the lead in"

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 09, 2013.

Kickstarter in 2012 (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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