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The Carried Interest Taxation Debate
Albert Wenger – Jun 2, 2010
My partner Fred has come out in support of taxing carried interest as income instead of capital gains. I agree with Fred’s position because I do not believe that this change will result in less investment in startups.Taxes generally cause [...] Read more
Final Hiring Update
Albert Wenger – Jun 1, 2010
We are excited to announce that we will shortly have two new members for the Union Square Ventures team! They will introduce themselves on this blog as soon as they are ready to do so (no additional details for now, [...] Read more
Learning from the Deepwater Horizon Disaster
Albert Wenger – Jun 1, 2010
The Deepwater Horizon accident is a terrible lesson in not testing backup plans. Yes, it is probably impossible to test the various way of trying to stop a well under exact conditions (i.e. with a gushing well), but the constant [...] Read more
The Artist is Present and Powerful
Albert Wenger – May 28, 2010
Saw the Marina Abromovic show “The Artist is Present” at MOMA yesterday. I was not a big fan of performance art previously, but was really moved by this. The combination of seeing a live performance with recording and broadcasting the [...] Read more
Margins in the Cloud
Albert Wenger – May 27, 2010
Historically in the software business high gross margins were considered essential. It is not clear to me that the same logic will apply for cloud-based services. Their cost structure might wind up being quite different. Much smaller development teams can [...] Read more
AAPL and MSFT and GOOG
Albert Wenger – May 26, 2010
I saw on Twitter this morning that Apple has passed Microsoft in market cap. This is a momentous occasion and a testament to the extraordinary talent and vision of Steve Jobs. But the real challenge starts now for both companies. [...] Read more
Misattribution of Motive Can Kill (Business) Relationships
Albert Wenger – May 25, 2010
A decade ago I was in the heat of a deal negotiation with a large company when they suddenly went silent for a week. I was furious. I thought they were trying to string us (startup) along to see if [...] Read more
You say you want a rEVOlution (by HTC)
Albert Wenger – May 24, 2010
So thanks to Google, since Thursday I have been playing around with an HTC EVO on the Sprint network. I have come away impressed and it has nothing to do with the EVO theoretically supporting 4G. I have mostly had [...] Read more
Artificial Life, Oil Spills and Transparency
Albert Wenger – May 21, 2010
Yesterday, a major barrier was crossed with the creation of the first artificial lifeform. Craig Venter and his team created a cell from scratch. Well not exactly from scratch: they created the DNA and inserted into an emptied cell. This [...] Read more