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Uncertainty Wednesday: Sample Mean under Fat Tails
Albert Wenger – Nov 8, 2017
In today’s Uncertainty Wednesday we are putting some of the ideas from the last few weeks together: we are looking at the behavior of the sample mean of a fat tailed distribution. To do this we will again use a [...] Read more
Forking vs. Voting in Blockchains
Albert Wenger – Nov 6, 2017
There was an interesting post on the YCombinator blog by Ramon Recuero about the evolution of blockchain protocols through forking and copying. The post does not mention the alternative possibility of binding voting as a mechanism for the evolution of [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Interlude (Random Variable vs Distribution)
Albert Wenger – Nov 1, 2017
Super short Uncertainty Wednesday post today as I have a crazy busy week featuring our annual meeting (where we meet with our Limited Partners). The last few weeks we have been digging into sample means and expected values. We saw [...] Read more
Some Thoughts on the State of Bitcoin and Ethereum
Albert Wenger – Oct 30, 2017
Upfront disclosure: I am long both Bitcoin and Ethereum (personally and also indirectly via USV). In preparation for the annual meeting at USV, we have been putting together some slides on the cryptocurrency market. Looking back at the last year [...] Read more
Blockstack Update
Albert Wenger – Oct 26, 2017
I last wrote about Blockstack early in 2016 when the team announced the goals of the project. Since then a lot of progress has been made. The team has released a browser which is now available for Mac, Windows and [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Fat Tails
Albert Wenger – Oct 25, 2017
So last Uncertainty Wednesday we encountered a random variable that does not have an expected value. Now if you read that post you might ask, was this just an artificially constructed example or do random variables like that actually occur? [...] Read more
Rebecca Kaden: New Partner at USV
Albert Wenger – Oct 23, 2017
Last week was a big week for us at Union Square Ventures. We had the MongoDB IPO on Thursday and on Friday Rebecca Kaden announced that she has joined USV as a partner. Rebecca is a New Yorker and after [...] Read more
MongoDB IPO and New York Tech
Albert Wenger – Oct 20, 2017
I spent much of yesterday morning at the NASDAQ for the IPO of our portfolio company MongoDB (now trading as MDB). This is a big milestone for technology companies in New York. We have had New York IPOs before, including [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: A Random Variable without Expected Value
Albert Wenger – Oct 18, 2017
I ended the previous Uncertainty Wednesday post asking whether an expected value always exists. Going back to the definition, the expected value is the “probability weighted average of a random variable.” So let’s construct an example of a random variable [...] Read more