June, 2021

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Anti-fragile Systems

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

The Internet was developed by the US Defense Department to create a network that was capable of surviving a military attack. They accomplished that with a design where no part of the system was central to its operation. You can take out any part of the Internet and it will still operate. When I read the Bitcoin White Paper for the first time, I was struck by the similarity of its design to the Internet.

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Leading by Example: Why It's Not Important Where Eric Adams Lives

This is going to be BIG.

“The term 'residence' shall be deemed to mean that place where a person maintains a fixed, permanent and principal home and to which he, wherever temporarily located, always intends to return.” Putting aside the archaic gendering of the law, this one sentence written into New York State’s Election Law that defines the residency requirements of candidates is one of the laziest and most ridiculous pieces of text I’ve ever seen.

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How to Turn Happy Clients into Your Best Referral Sources

C2P Enterprises

Are you nervous about asking your clients for referrals? Does it make you feel uncomfortable or pushy to approach the subject? What if we told you there was a process to get your clients telling you if they’d like to make a referral? No more nerves; no more uneasiness. In our latest episode of the [.]. The post How to Turn Happy Clients into Your Best Referral Sources appeared first on Clarity 2 Prosperity.

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How To Track Your Direct Mail Campaign Digitally

Tucker Advisors

How to Track Your Direct Mail Campaign Digitally. By Jordan Collins Tucker Advisors Senior Digital Marketing Specialist. Follow Follow Follow Follow Follow Follow. Table of Contents . Click the links below to jump to a page section specific to your needs. “What gets measured gets improved” How to track direct mail. What are my options: Tracking Links.

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9 Top-Performing Webinar Topic Ideas (For Financial Advisors)

Indigo Marketing Agency

Did you know the topic you choose for your webinar is the most important factor determining its success? Do you need webinar topic ideas? First of all, congratulations! You’ve decided that a webinar is just what you need to warm up prospects and convert them into clients. But now the big question is: Which webinar topic do you choose? There’s a lot of pressure weighing on this decision.

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Short and Sweet

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

This should be obvious to AVC readers but I am a fan of short and sweet. Why take two pages to say something you can say in one page? Why take two paragraphs to say something you can say in one paragraph? This letter to potential investors from the CEO in the Duolingo S-1, which was flipped to the public yesterday, is a fantastic example of that. Disclosure: USV is an investor in Duolingo and we stand to profit from their IPO.

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Digital Asset Mining In New York State

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

Digital Asset Mining is shorthand for “proof of work consensus validation of public blockchain infrastructure” Thankfully we have the shorthand. But it is important to understand what digital asset mining is. Public blockchains, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, store data securely but publicly in a cooperative ecosystem that is not controlled by any company or government.

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Getting Over Imposter Syndrome When Building Your Public Profile

This is going to be BIG.

A lot of people have furthered their career by “putting themselves out there”—creating blogs, newsletters, participating on Twitter, doing podcasts, etc. It’s a way that many have created connections for themselves and shown off their insights. A lot of these people aren’t the most experienced or knowledgeable people in their field. In fact, most of them aren’t.

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Analog Summer

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

It is officially summer now and with adult vaccination rates passing 70% in many parts of the US, people are out and about. I’ve heard the term “analog summer” used to describe this moment. If the past 15 months have been a digital lockdown, then the next three months are going to mark a return to analog activities; beaches, parks, concerts, bars, restaurants, nightlife, etc, etc.

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Regulating Software

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I understand that regulators and elected officials need to raise concerns about new technologies and their impact on society. It is their job or at least part of their job. But I am also dismayed regularly by how poorly many elected officials and regulators understand the technologies they are talking about. In particular, I am deeply concerned with how poorly many elected officials and regulators understand blockchains, smart contracts, and decentralized applications and organizations.

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Meme Investing

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I remember when a friend of mine told me five or six years ago that he had bought some Dogecoin. I thought “what is he doing?” and dismissed it as something silly and or crazy. Dogecoin was initially introduced in late 2013 and 7 1/2 years later it has amassed a market cap of $43bn and is one of the most popular crypto assets in the world.

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Funding Friday: The Wireframe Deck

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I just backed this project. I love the idea of a simple deck of cards that can let anyone or any group design a website without any software or device. So many times, I have known pretty much what I want for a website for a project, an event, a new business, or whatever, but I am a terrible sketcher and I don’t know how to use the software tools that web designers use.

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ENS

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

ENS stands for Ethereum Name Service and it is a decentralized domain name system built on the Ethereum blockchain. You can get domains with the.eth extension by going here , connecting a wallet, and searching and purchasing a domain. I have purchased fredwilson.eth and avc.eth and a bunch of other.eth domains for my family. It does not cost a lot of ETH to register a domain, but you need to remember to go back and renew it as there is no company/registrar operating a business to do that for you

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Pier 76

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

For as long as I can remember, Pier 76 on the west side of Manhattan has been home to the west side tow pound. Some of my worst moments as a NYC resident have been there retrieving a car or a scooter, something I’ve done more than I want to remember. It was pure misery to have to go there and I think that was intentional. So over the last four months on my morning bike rides up the west side bike path, I have been watching the city tear down the west side tow pound and replace it with an u

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Community Solar

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

We had a situation recently where a rooftop solar project on a building we own became too expensive (because of NYC Fire Department requirements) and it no longer made economic sense to do the installation. And yet we want to avail ourselves of solar energy to benefit from the economics of solar, to reduce our carbon footprint, and to increase the resiliency of our property.

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Funding Friday: Terra

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

I backed this project last week and think the idea is really great. You put a Terra device outside where you hear the sounds of birds in nature and you can then listen to those sounds indoors. There are also features that let you identify the species of birds and track their migration. The video is here for email readers. USV TEAM POSTS: Nick Grossman — Jun 3, 2021 Scaling Ethereum with zkSync John Buttrick — May 26, 2021 ADDI.

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AVC Infrastructure

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

A reader asked me if I had ever written about the infrastructure I use to run AVC. We both searched the archives and could not find a post on that topic. So here it is: 1/ Content Management System – WordPress – I use the open source software version of WordPress to write these posts and manage them. 2/ Hosting Provider – Cloudways – I have used a number of hosting providers over the years.

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Scaling Ethereum

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

One of the biggest challenges for developers building on Ethereum’s market leading smart contract platform/blockchain are the high fees and slow transactions. These issues arise from the fact that the Ethereum blockchain’s current architecture is not particularly scalable. The Ethereum core developers have been working on these issues for years and there are changes coming in the core Ethereum protocol that will help with scalability.

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Startup CXO

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

On Monday, a copy of Startup CXO , my friend Matt Blumberg’s new book, arrived at the USV office. I picked it up to take a quick look and thought “this a heavy book!” So I texted Matt, congratulated him on getting the book out, and then asked why it was so heavy. He replied “because it is 640 pages, there is a section on every C-level function in that book.” That’s when I realized that Startup CXO is not really a book.

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Funding Friday: Naperville Bakery

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

My friend Kirk backed this project earlier this week and I got a notification and checked it out and backed it immediately. I like everything about this project. Finding opportunities for people with special needs to work productively and happily is such a great thing to do. Email readers can watch the video here.

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Meet Our Team: Heidi’s Story

Indigo Marketing Agency

If you’re one of our current clients, then you’ve probably had the privilege of working with Heidi Wilson—one of our superstar Account Managers. Heidi is an incredible asset to our team and spends a great deal of her time working with financial advisors, helping them tell their stories and answer their questions. But what you may not know is that Heidi’s mom was actually a financial advisor, which is what inspired her to start a career in this industry.

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Early Voting

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

NYC has a primary next week (June 22nd) in which parties will pick their nominees for Mayor, City Council races, Borough President races, and Manhattan will pick candidates for Attorney General. Because NYC is overwhelmingly Democratic, the primary is the main event. Most of the time, Democratic candidates prevail in the General Election in November.

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