Writing

I realize that most businesses are suffering greatly in this pandemic. Many have been shut completely. But there are some that are experiencing the opposite situation. They have a growth spurt as a result of this moment. Businesses in food [...]  Read more

I wrote about our portfolio company Duolingo’s English Proficiency Test back in August of last year. I have always loved the idea that a company that helps people learn a language can also help people prove their fluency in a [...]  Read more

I woke up to this tweet this morning: @fredwilson someone has hijacked your cap table link in this post – it now goes out to some random company rather than your template https://t.co/UzzIWcAtob — John Henderson (@johnhenderson) April 21, 2020 [...]  Read more

I wrote a blog post on March 12th called Open For Business and thought I would return to the topic. If you search for “vc open for business” on Twitter , you will see almost universal scorn for the idea [...]  Read more

You may have seen this short advertisement called Always Open on television over the last few days. It is part of a larger campaign called Stand With Small that Etsy (where I am Chairman and a large stockholder) is running [...]  Read more

Since I wrote my post on “The Road Back from COVID19 ″ we have made lots of progress on two out of the three pillars: masks and tracing. Masks went from a discussion of their merits to being mandatory to wear [...]  Read more

We continue to be concerned about the most vulnerable among us and that is where we want to focus our giving right now. To that end, Give Directly has a NYC Covid Fund that will give funds directly to people. [...]  Read more

We call it IRL “In Real Life” in the tech sector. IRL is the opposite of the virtual reality/online worlds that we have been reading about in science fiction and slowly building over the past three decades. I have heard [...]  Read more

One of the most fascinating things I’ve been watching is how the 80 something USV portfolio companies are adjusting their marketing strategies during this pandemic. It is all over the map, based on the unique situations of each and every [...]  Read more