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The Path to Learning requires Failing: The DAO
Albert Wenger – Jun 18, 2016
Both individually and collectively we learn more from our failures than from our successes. Failures make us question our assumptions, successes generally don’t. I therefore welcome the hack of the DAO (even if I wind up losing the 0.5 BTC [...] Read more
Wattpad Turner Partnership: Write for Television!
Albert Wenger – Jun 13, 2016
When we first invested in Wattpad in 2011, we were excited about the community for writing and reading stories that was growing all around the world. Much as happened since then, including the publication of After which was a breakout [...] Read more
The Missing Mouse: VR’s Navigation (and Touch) Problem
Albert Wenger – Jun 9, 2016
As I wrote in my earlier blog post, VR is something that needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated. Once you do experience it, get past the initial amazing fascination and start playing games a fairly glaring problem reveals [...] Read more
The Coming Paradigm Shift in Manufacturing
Albert Wenger – Jun 6, 2016
The Star Trek replicator stands as the ultimate dream of on-demand manufacturing. The bad news is that despite advances in 3D printing we are many breakthroughs (including nearly abundant energy) away from realizing that dream. The good news is that [...] Read more
Do Believe the Hype (Benefits Coming Later)
Albert Wenger – May 31, 2016
At USV we have been using Carlota Perez’s framework that distinguishes between the installation and deployment phases of a technology. In short, the installation phase is when a technology first comes into a market and investments are capacity building. The [...] Read more
Skillshare: Welcoming New Investors
Albert Wenger – May 26, 2016
We first invested in Skillshare almost five years ago. At the time the company was focused on in person classes. While many of those were as engaging as I had hoped, it was difficult to grow. Coming to an in [...] Read more
Twilio: Powered by Innovation
Albert Wenger – May 25, 2016
I am bummed to be missing Twilio’s annual Signal Conference this year. Not just because Jeff does a fantastic keynote, but because Twilio always announces a truckload of amazing new goodness. Here are just two great things from yesterday: first, [...] Read more
VR/AR: Experiencing is Believing
Albert Wenger – May 23, 2016
I can still remember the first time that I experienced the web, which was on a workstation in a lab at MIT in late 1993 (Mosaic had come out in January of that year). The experience of easily accessing remote [...] Read more
Contestable Markets in the Age of Network Effects
Albert Wenger – May 19, 2016
Network effects are central to our investment thesis at USV. We believe that they provide one of the few (the only?) source of sustainable competitive advantage. We have also been outspoken about wanting to limit the power that these network [...] Read more