Reflections Prompted By A Conversation Between a16z Crypto Leader Chris Dixon & The Verge’s Nilay Patel — “Good-Faith Skeptic.” It’s a characterization that has been tossing around in my head since reading Chris Dixon’s tweet about his interview with the Verge’s Nilay Patel. It was crypto true believer in a conversation with a crypto skeptic, but containing a foundation of mutual respect, curiosity and, I think, a…

Think Of Your First Non-Investor Board Member As a Senior Hire, And Not Your IPO Board — Being a CEO and running a startup is hard! So you’d think that founders would take advantage of every resource available to help them out. And for the most part they do. But one gap I see too often is leaving the Independent Board member seat unfilled for long periods…

Selective Leaks of Previous Discussions & Policy Debates In The Name of ‘Transparency’ Would Put Twitter Employees At Risk — Typing “I know this makes me sound like a crazy person but..” as a blog post opener is usually a good reason to close my browser window and take a walk. But hey, it’s 2022, let’s soldier onward… Since it was announced that Twitter’s Board of Directors and Elon Musk…

Madonna, Like a Virgin Tour, June 1985 — We recently took our daughter to her first concert, delayed somewhat by, you know, that COVID thing. It was Billie Eilish at the Chase Center a few weeks back. Good show. …

Why ‘Living Below Your Means’ Is One Key To Success & Happiness — $0 per year. That’s what my business partner and I decided that we wanted in salary from our newest venture fund. Or at least it was the resulting impact of declining to take additional capital from our investors and commit our own dollars instead. …

Four Reasons Why I Was Going To Bet On Facebook Beating Crypto. And Was So Wrong. — So, yeah, ‘Zuck Bucks.’ The nickname is likely just an internal joke, not the actual product moniker (if it is I just threw up in my mouth a little). Sounds mostly like an updated version of Facebook Credits. Meta is reportedly making 'Zuck Bucks' Meta may have given up on its Diem cryptocurrency, but the company is still exploring finance products, according to a…www.theverge.com

For Early Stage Startups, You Need Employees To Choose The Company. Not The Other Way Around. — I love helping startups hire, especially early on. Look, companies don’t exist without founders — often when we write our initial investment checks there aren’t any employees — but nothing amazing happens without a team. I’d go even further and suggest that if I could access just a single predictive…

Let Others Call You a “Platform,” “Mentor,” “Low Maintenance,” & “Good in Bed,” Never Claim Them — Tall. I can call myself tall. It’s objectively true because I’m 6' 3". Sometimes I just joke that I’m ‘tall for tech’ but either way, I’m higher up than average. But there are some things I feel like I can’t just claim about myself. “Easy to work with?” That’s really…

Learnings From a Decade Investing In These Types of Leaders — We’ve sent hundreds of millions of dollars to startup bank accounts but none of those have gone to teams which don’t have at least one founder we consider to be ‘mission-driven.’ How do I define that term? Loosely, someone who has a personal connection to the problem they’re trying to…