Writing
Choose
Time to Explore Alternative Ownership Structures for Network Effects Businesses including Twitter
Albert Wenger – Apr 24, 2017
At Union Square Ventures, network effects have been central to our investment thesis for a decade. From an investor perspective network effects are one of the few, possibly the only, source of sustainable competitive advantage in a world where almost [...] Read more
Venture Capital is a Capacity Industry with Boom and Bust Cycles
Albert Wenger – Apr 21, 2017
A long time ago when I worked as a management consultant, I did a study for Lafarge which has a huge cement business. The study involved real sleuthing as we were trying to determine the operational capacity of cement plants [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Independence
Albert Wenger – Apr 19, 2017
Last week, I provided a recap of what we have covered so far in Uncertainty Wednesday. To go on from here we need to introduce some more concepts that are usually covered earlier but that I believe will make more [...] Read more
Copying and Competition in the Tech Industry
Albert Wenger – Apr 14, 2017
Yesterday Instagram announced that it has 200 million users for stories, which exceeds Snapchat’s 160 million users from their S-1 filing. Never mind that nobody outside these companies knows what those user definitions really mean or how to compare them. [...] Read more
goTenna
Albert Wenger – Apr 13, 2017
Disruptive innovations often start out as worse versions of something that already exists. Worse along all dimensions except for one, but one that turns out to really matter because it unlocks a new use case for which the incumbent does not work at all or is not affordable. The PC was slower, had less memory and less storage than a minicomputer. But it was massively more affordable and could be set up and run without the help of the centralized IT department ... Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Recap
Albert Wenger – Apr 12, 2017
Today in Uncertainty Wednesday I want to provide a big recap of the series which I started last August. The key takeaways so far should be that Reality itself is not directly accessible to us. All we have to go [...] Read more
Changing Everything: Basic Income is Not Enough
Albert Wenger – Apr 10, 2017
One of the criticisms leveled against Universal Basic Income is that it is too big a change. But if anything it is not enough of a change. Why? Because it is just one part that needs to change and human [...] Read more
Upgrade
John Buttrick – Apr 6, 2017
In July 2011, we were fortunate to lead the Series D financing round in Lending Club, founded in 2006 by Renaud Laplanche. Along with Zopa (UK company) and Prosper, Lending Club was a pioneer of the now-familiar marketplace lending model, which cut interest costs for high quality borrowers by as much as 50% (not a typo) and at the same time offered investors attractive risk-adjusted returns not available elsewhere. This was a fundamental innovation in financial services that is thriving globally and will continue to gain in importance. Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Sensitivity and Specificity (Cont’d)
Albert Wenger – Apr 5, 2017
Last Uncertainty Wednesday, I introduced sensitivity and specificity as measures of how good a test is (or using the language of our framework, how strong a signal is). We derived the following formula P(B | H) = P(B)/P(H) * P(H [...] Read more