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Employee vs Contractor: The Role of Data and Getting Past the Distinction
Albert Wenger – Oct 30, 2015
I have written in the past about how having richer information channels is letting us overcome various historic dichotomies. For instance we had to distinguish between private and public companies because disclosing information was costly. We relied entirely on the [...] Read more
Sapiens by Yuval Harari (Book Review)
Albert Wenger – Oct 27, 2015
I recently finished Sapiens by Yuval Harari, which is subtitled “A Brief History of Humankind.” I highly recommend reading Sapiens even though I have a fundamental disagreement with one of Harari’s core premises. Let’s start with what’s great. The book [...] Read more
Decentralized Identity and Content Attribution: We Need a Specification
Albert Wenger – Oct 25, 2015
The power of the web has been that it has given us permissionless publishing. Want to publish your opinion? You no longer need to submit a letter to the editor of a newspaper in hope of it being published – [...] Read more
Why Decentralized Identity Matters: Github’s Identity Innovation and Shortcoming
Albert Wenger – Oct 21, 2015
There is a lot we can learn from github and its identity model about the role of individual identity in the future of firms, networks and markets. When Linus Torvalds released git in 2005 he made a crucial innovation in [...] Read more
Land, Capital, Attention: This Time it Is the Same
Albert Wenger – Oct 17, 2015
This is the rhetoric aimed at people like myself who argue that we need to fundamentally rethink how the economy and society work because digital technologies changing the world. I have taken to replying “you are correct, but you are [...] Read more
Hard Choices: Growth versus Profitability
Albert Wenger – Oct 12, 2015
Quite a few companies are finding themselves in a situation roughly as follows: they have raised a lot of money at high valuations on a fast growth story, have real customers and the beginning of revenues, but growth has slowed [...] Read more
Clue
Albert Wenger – Oct 9, 2015
We are excited about our investment in Berlin-based Clue, which puts women around the world in charge of their fertility and their health more generally. Clue does this by offering a period tracker and fertility app. We have been pursuing [...] Read more
Investing in Clue
Albert Wenger – Oct 9, 2015
Today’s post is over at the USV blog, describing why we invested in Clue, which provides a period tracking and fertility app. A big thanks also to Susan and Katie for helping me understand the importance of Clue. Read more
Political Debates on German vs US TV: Paging John Stewart
Albert Wenger – Oct 8, 2015
Last week I spent a few days with family, friends and startups in Germany. When I was at my parents we watched a television debate about Islam, religious freedom and German society. I was struck by the stark contrast to [...] Read more