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I am a VC & have been since 1986.
I am a VC & have been since 1986.
I am a VC & have been since 1986.
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AVCJun 3
USV Analyst 2.0
A year ago, USV decided to explore what an AI native VC firm would look like. We hired Spencer who built a platform and a bunch of agents and wrote this post about all of that before departing to do a startup. And we paused our longstanding analyst program last year and saw how far we could get with analyst agents instead of analyst humans. That experiment was incredibly successful and we got a very long way without human analysts but in the end we concluded we could not get all the way witho...
AVCJun 3
USV Analyst 2.0
A year ago, USV decided to explore what an AI native VC firm would look like. We hired Spencer who built a platform and a bunch of agents and wrote this post about all of that before departing to do a startup. And we paused our longstanding analyst program last year and saw how far we could get with analyst agents instead of analyst humans. That experiment was incredibly successful and we got a very long way without human analysts but in the end we concluded we could not get all the way witho...
AVCMay 21
Create Your Own Currency With Flipcash
Our portfolio company Flipcash shipped a product last month that does something pretty interesting. It takes a little bit from three well-understood crypto concepts and combines them into something new. Like memecoins, anyone can create a new crypto asset in Flipcash. But unlike memecoins, these assets have a reserve and are price-stabilized at their initial value, meaning they can't go all the way to zero. And like Bitcoin, there is a fixed supply of each of them. The Flipcash website does a...
AVCMay 21
Create Your Own Currency With Flipcash
Our portfolio company Flipcash shipped a product last month that does something pretty interesting. It takes a little bit from three well-understood crypto concepts and combines them into something new. Like memecoins, anyone can create a new crypto asset in Flipcash. But unlike memecoins, these assets have a reserve and are price-stabilized at their initial value, meaning they can't go all the way to zero. And like Bitcoin, there is a fixed supply of each of them. The Flipcash website does a...
AVCMar 30
Tasklet's Task Computer
Our portfolio company Tasklet is a platform for making agents that do things for you. USV uses it to create agents that automate a lot of work for us. This post, which I mentioned last week, explains how USV uses Tasklet. Recently, Tasklet launched a feature called Task Computer which is a Linux computer in the cloud that can do things for you and automate them. My wife, The Gotham Gal, is using Task Computer to log into her Instagram account, go to her Instagram Collections, and pull out all...
AVCMar 30
Tasklet's Task Computer
Our portfolio company Tasklet is a platform for making agents that do things for you. USV uses it to create agents that automate a lot of work for us. This post, which I mentioned last week, explains how USV uses Tasklet. Recently, Tasklet launched a feature called Task Computer which is a Linux computer in the cloud that can do things for you and automate them. My wife, The Gotham Gal, is using Task Computer to log into her Instagram account, go to her Instagram Collections, and pull out all...
A
AVCMar 26
A Couple Of AI Things
1/ USV recruited Spencer Yen about six months ago to help us with USV's "AI Transformation." I wrote this blog post when we launched the search that led us to Spencer. In about six months, Spencer with the help of my colleagues Nick and Nikhil have completely rebuilt USV's operating system using Claude Code and Tasklet (a USV portfolio company). We have doubled the size of our team at USV without hiring another human. Spencer published a blog post yesterday about all of this, why, what, and h...
AVCMar 26
A Couple Of AI Things
1/ USV recruited Spencer Yen about six months ago to help us with USV's "AI Transformation." I wrote this blog post when we launched the search that led us to Spencer. In about six months, Spencer with the help of my colleagues Nick and Nikhil have completely rebuilt USV's operating system using Claude Code and Tasklet (a USV portfolio company). We have doubled the size of our team at USV without hiring another human. Spencer published a blog post yesterday about all of this, why, what, and h...
Q
AVCMar 23
QSBS and New York State
QSBS stands for Qualified Small Business Stock. At a high level, QSBS means founder's stock and stock bought early in a company's life. Since 1993, the Federal Tax Code has had benefits for buying, owning, and selling QSBS. Currently, there is a full Federal Tax exclusion for the first $10mm of capital gains on QSBS. Recently, the New York State Senate introduced a budget proposal in which NYS opts out of recognizing QSBS in its tax code. Historically, NYS has recognized the QSBS tax exclusio...
AVCMar 23
QSBS and New York State
QSBS stands for Qualified Small Business Stock. At a high level, QSBS means founder's stock and stock bought early in a company's life. Since 1993, the Federal Tax Code has had benefits for buying, owning, and selling QSBS. Currently, there is a full Federal Tax exclusion for the first $10mm of capital gains on QSBS. Recently, the New York State Senate introduced a budget proposal in which NYS opts out of recognizing QSBS in its tax code. Historically, NYS has recognized the QSBS tax exclusio...
S
AVCOct 30
Sleep
I got an Oura ring a couple of years ago and have been working on improving my sleep and sleep habits ever since. For much of my adult life, I have been a poor sleeper. I have always been able to fall asleep quickly, but I have been plagued by two sleep issues. The first is waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep. The second is waking up early, like 4:30/5am, and being wide awake. So I’ve been working on those two things. I still wake up in the middle of t...
AVCOct 30
Sleep
I got an Oura ring a couple of years ago and have been working on improving my sleep and sleep habits ever since. For much of my adult life, I have been a poor sleeper. I have always been able to fall asleep quickly, but I have been plagued by two sleep issues. The first is waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep. The second is waking up early, like 4:30/5am, and being wide awake. So I’ve been working on those two things. I still wake up in the middle of t...
O
AVCOct 12
Open Office Hours at NYC Tech Week
NYC Tech Week is next week. It will be a week filled with events for the tech sector to engage and connect with each other. A particularly great part of tech week is VC Open Office Hours. There are over 100 VC investors signed up to participate next week. Here is how it works: 1/ you select four investors (out of more than 100) that you want to meet 2/ you get up to four twenty minute meetings 3/ you discuss your idea with the investor in hopes of getting them interested enough to take anothe...
AVCOct 12
Open Office Hours at NYC Tech Week
NYC Tech Week is next week. It will be a week filled with events for the tech sector to engage and connect with each other. A particularly great part of tech week is VC Open Office Hours. There are over 100 VC investors signed up to participate next week. Here is how it works: 1/ you select four investors (out of more than 100) that you want to meet 2/ you get up to four twenty minute meetings 3/ you discuss your idea with the investor in hopes of getting them interested enough to take anothe...
T
AVCSep 27
The Heist
On Saturday, September 9th, the Gotham Gal and I arrived at JFK airport after an eight-hour flight from Paris. While waiting for our luggage, I got pushed a notification in my web3 wallet that there was an NFT drop underway that I could participate in. So I clicked on the link, signed the transaction, and nothing happened (or so I thought). So I tried again. Again nothing happened. Frustrated, I turned my attention to the luggage, retrieved it, got in a car, and headed home. On the way home, ...
AVCSep 27
The Heist
On Saturday, September 9th, the Gotham Gal and I arrived at JFK airport after an eight-hour flight from Paris. While waiting for our luggage, I got pushed a notification in my web3 wallet that there was an NFT drop underway that I could participate in. So I clicked on the link, signed the transaction, and nothing happened (or so I thought). So I tried again. Again nothing happened. Frustrated, I turned my attention to the luggage, retrieved it, got in a car, and headed home. On the way home, ...
C
AVCAug 28
CEO 360s
I’ve written about this topic before. It is an important topic and I want to raise it again. Boards often discuss CEO performance without really knowing how things work inside the company. And CEOs often have very little visibility to how they are doing and what the board thinks about their performance. When you work for one person, your boss, it is typical that you will have regular catchups and at least an annual review of your performance (ideally more frequent). But when you work for a gr...
AVCAug 28
CEO 360s
I’ve written about this topic before. It is an important topic and I want to raise it again. Boards often discuss CEO performance without really knowing how things work inside the company. And CEOs often have very little visibility to how they are doing and what the board thinks about their performance. When you work for one person, your boss, it is typical that you will have regular catchups and at least an annual review of your performance (ideally more frequent). But when you work for a gr...
S
AVCAug 23
Subscribing To AVC
For many years, there were three ways to subscribe to AVC: 1/ Email – Get new posts delivered to your inbox 2/ RSS – Get new posts delivered to your RSS reader 3/ X – Follow AVC on X X revoked the API access that I was using to autopost three or four months ago. I have not been active on that service for almost a year now and have no interest in dealing with it. So if you are one of the 25.5k followers on X and want to keep getting alerted when I post, I suggest you go with option 1 or option...
AVCAug 23
Subscribing To AVC
For many years, there were three ways to subscribe to AVC: 1/ Email – Get new posts delivered to your inbox 2/ RSS – Get new posts delivered to your RSS reader 3/ X – Follow AVC on X X revoked the API access that I was using to autopost three or four months ago. I have not been active on that service for almost a year now and have no interest in dealing with it. So if you are one of the 25.5k followers on X and want to keep getting alerted when I post, I suggest you go with option 1 or option...