Disqus - Latest Comments for andrewparker

Re: Birthday Wish: Contributions to Climate Crisis Collective

andrewparker — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 09:36:48 -0000

Nice use of a birthday wish! Backed. Happy birthday 🎉🎁🎊✨🥳. Hope you're doing well.

Re: Review: the Traska Summiteer

andrewparker — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 15:30:25 -0000

How is the rotor noise? Some 9015 movement rotors are so noisy the watch becomes unwearable. Others are great. This one?

Re: AI and Health Care

andrewparker — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 20:31:22 -0000

Healthcare is the single largest market AFAIK, so this makes sense.

Re: Trusted Brands

andrewparker — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 12:26:26 -0000

This is really well done, congrats. I especially like the broken promises examples slide. I remember after Tunblr's funding round from Sequoia in ~2010, the site went down for *3 days*. It's the kind of event that should kill most companies, but it wasn't a broken brand promise, and they bounced back. By contrast, when Oath (Tumblr's current owner) started censoring adult content from the site last year, it really felt like the death of the product (sadly). The product still works fine functionally, but it broke its brand promise as a home for artistic expression and inspiration. If the ban could have been limited to just porn, maybe it could have worked, but no algorithm can restrict porn without also restricting artists' original erotica or NSFW artwork, and this exclusionary decision was a shockwave to the whole community.

Re: Panic Attacks

andrewparker — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 10:22:28 -0000

Thanks for sharing this Fred. Very powerful and helps normalize my own difficulties for me.

There is a phenomenal piece of fiction released a year or two ago called The Nix. It's a debut novel by Nathan Hill. The central protagonist experiences panic attacks and its the most realistic portrayal of the experience I've ever read. Apparently, it's very well researched (the afterword credits scientific writing for the inspiration and verisimilitude).

Re: Panic Attacks

andrewparker — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 10:19:59 -0000

Quick endorsement for Dan's book 10% Happier on how to address the issues he faced (and modern stress in general) with meditation. It's a good read. And, small world, this is Matt Harris's brother (Matt at Bain Cap Ventures).

Re: Strike When The Iron Is Hot

andrewparker — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 15:56:21 -0000

You told me this story IRL roughly a decade ago. It made a very strong impression on me at the time, and I have even relayed it to others in parable form to make a point twice (though both times were personal than professional).

I love the times when your blog is the public version of the USV analyst program. Pearls of wisdom that I collected over my years at USV keep trickling out here, and I'm delighted everyone gets to benefit together.

Re: Voice Input – Some Observations

andrewparker — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 16:13:39 -0000

Take your Jeep in for an aftermarket media upgrade (or just trade in for a new Jeep that supports Android auto) to make it Android Auto compatible. Android Auto is great and I control it pretty much exclusively via voice.

If you spend any material time in your car, I promise it's worth it.

Re: The Best Cheap Sunglasses

andrewparker — Thu, 24 May 2018 16:44:22 -0000

Worth looking into Goodr sunglasses for the next rev of this article. I find they are great value for $25. Polarized and really nice grippy feel. Stylish, but durable enough to hold up to exercise too.

Re: Is Buying Crypto Assets “Investing”

andrewparker — Sun, 06 May 2018 11:28:13 -0000

I haven't read Berkshire Hathaway public filings in awhile, but I'd wager a nickel that they don't hold any Yen or Euro, beyond the underlying forex exposure of the treasuries of their subsidiary operating companies (Geico, Coke, etc...). They know money is not productive, so they try not to hold it. In their defense, this is what i hear when they say buying crypto is not investing. It's very much in line with his long held criticism of Gold as an investment. He sees crypto as another gold-like thing. He is missing how crypto could be more productive than a dull yellow metal of moderate electrical conductance by powering decentralize infrastructure. But he's right about the obsessiveness in the analogy.

The rat poison line on the other hand has no defense. That's just a poor excuse for trying to make a point with shortcutting, lazy language.

Re: Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb (Book Review)

andrewparker — Fri, 04 May 2018 13:19:43 -0000

I found Taleb's Twitter persona grossly unreadable and had to unfollow (not because of the semantic content and more because his delivery pattern maps tightly on to some of the worst people I've met). Your blog post gave a convincing argument for continuing to read his books despite his Twitter (or other non-literary) behavior. I'm glad you took this problem head on. Well said.

Re: Timing

andrewparker — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 14:27:37 -0000

This talk from Jawed Karim (third Youtube co-founder that left when Sequoia led the Srs A) is the best analysis I've ever seen of YT's timing and the secondary technologies that emerged to make the YT opportunity possible. https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Re: 200x Growth

andrewparker — Tue, 21 Nov 2017 13:16:04 -0000

I agree and had a similar experience while working at USV. That said, my biggest takeaway from this graph is the value of compounding growth. Eyeballing this, it looks log-linear to me. DDG figured out how to turn a 1 user into 2 on some reasonable time horizon, and then had the patience to let this cycle repeat itself consistently. It's not just patience: All marketing channels generally deteriorate over time, so they found new sources (such as the browser distribution deals flagged on the chart) to keep the 1-into-2 compounding process fed. But often patience is the most mentally challenging part of the formula, because in the early years its hard to convince your gut that the small upward bend in your graph is actually log-linear and not just linear, and thus, patience will work.

[insert your choice Warren Buffett quote about the value of compounding growth]

Kudos to Gabriel, this is quite impressive.

Re: Convertible and SAFE Notes

andrewparker — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 15:30:06 -0000

I don't follow your logic in the first paragraph. You say that if founders can negotiate a high enough cap, then the full ratchet never kicks in. I would say the opposite of that is true. The higher the cap, the more likelihood the full ratchet anti-dilution will kick in. Founders only avoid the full ratchet anti-dilution if the next equity round, which converts the debt note into equity, is done at a higher price than the cap. So, the higher the cap, the higher the hurdle for the next round to clear.

Re: Convertible and SAFE Notes

andrewparker — Sun, 12 Mar 2017 16:56:58 -0000

When founders (both spark portfolio and not) tell me they are debating between a note or a priced round for the capital they are raising, I simply reframe the question to them. I tell them, would you rather raise equity with a full ratchet anti-dilution or with a broad-based weighted-average anti-dilution? I quickly explain what the two different terms mean if the founder is unsure. All the founders pick broad-based weighted-average. So, then I say, "Great! So, do a priced round now instead of a note."

The only time I don't take this approach is if the note is uncapped (and, instead, has a discount into the next round as incentive to the investor), but I'm finding uncapped notes to be increasingly uncommon. They are only used for bridges, which is the only good purpose of a note in the first place.

If you're doing a capped note, always do it in equity instead. Pretty simple.

Re: Ticket Bots

andrewparker — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 14:39:56 -0000

I'd like to see a ticketing system that simply changed ticketing licensing terms to forbid resale. What if your ticket was tied to your name and required valid ID to use?

That might feel too restrictive if you're unsure you can make an event, so perhaps an event venue could redeem tickets at face value (or 90% of face) up to 24 hours before the event.

But as long as tickets are sold to the people who will use them, I'm optimistic that pricing will net out fairly for all parties because the value captured by resale will be redistributed.

Re: Founder Dilution

andrewparker — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 17:30:14 -0000

Bezos owns 17% of AMZN, not 47%. And he's the poster child argument against dual class structures, because he's doing amazingly well pushing an ambitious vision at Amazon without owning dual-class stock; he owns Common like everyone else.

Re: Future of Code Talk

andrewparker — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 22:18:38 -0000

Great point. Imagine what that means for the future of debugging, especially for errors in prod. And, in particularly difficult cases, how do you "rollback" when you don't know when your code learned an aberrant outcome?

Re: Future of Code Talk

andrewparker — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 12:39:17 -0000

The exponential growth of code makes me excited for the future of Code Archeology, best fleshed out in A Deepness in the Sky.

Re: Relaunching At Age Fourteen

andrewparker — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 10:01:04 -0000

I love this new approach, and I'm really rooting for meetup.

I remember a USV Portfolio Summit where I was seated at a lunch table with Scott and a half dozen other USV CEOs. It was probably around '08 or '09. Scott told the table that he would run meetup for the next 20 years. The conviction with which he said that statement, plus the length of time, ended up being the conversation around the table for the rest of the meal. The long term thinking made an impression on me.

Re: WATCH GIVEAWAY: Damasko Timeless DB1 Limited Edition

andrewparker — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 10:59:20 -0000

I think a special edition Omega Aqua Terra would be awesome.

Re: The Revolving Door

andrewparker — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 08:10:33 -0000

At the time of my joining the analyst program, my choice was between matriculating to a graduate program in Columbia's CS dept and USV. Both were school... one was just a bit more practical and came with a salary instead of tuition checks. USV is an education, and graduation is a fundamental part of education.

I like the idea that there is a group of incredibly talented people that shared my same education, but not at the same time as me. I wish Jennifer and Jacqueline the best of luck as they get going.

Re: US Crumbling Infrastructure: LIRR Edition

andrewparker — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 10:54:57 -0000

In the 50s and 60s, Civil Engineering was a competitive, well-regarded field. In my generation, it was the quirky leftovers of the engineering undergrads (the new hotness in its place was some combination of Mechanical, EE, and CS). While I'm 110% in favor of infrastructure investing; I'm more concerned about that fact that our nations top minds don't have nearly as much interest in Civil Engineering than they did historically.

I have no evidence, all anecdotal/gut, so take with a boulder-sized grain of salt. :)

Re: Tokenizing Your Claims

andrewparker — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 23:45:23 -0000

Matt Levine's take on this subject was pretty entertaining. In general, his daily email newsletter is great: https://www.bloomberg.com/v...

Re: The Golden Age Of Open Protocols

andrewparker — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 17:23:08 -0000

This post outlines a framework for protocols to generate money as they become adopted. Whether for-profit or non-profit, it would allow a protocol to pay it's own bills (and possibly some extra beyond the bills).

While that's a super interesting thought experiment, I still admire the completely decentralized protocols we depend upon every day (TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, Ethernet, etc) that generate no direct monetary benefit to those who create and maintain them and yet have created trillions of dollars of economic opportunity.

So, it begs the question for me, why does a protocol need to generate money? If the answer is: because a for-profit business created it, I find that underwhelming. Instead, just open source the protocol and let it blossom (or fail) unencumbered by the commercial burden. If the answer is: because there's a material overhead to operating the protocol, then I think there's an opportunity for decentralization as opposed to commercialization. In a parallel universe Twitter could have allowed anyone to host and serve tweets, decentralized, and in doing so, removed all the economic burden of hosting the API. I'm not saying Twitter should have gone down this path, I'm just showing a case for how a protocolized version of Twitter could have emerged without the need for a crypto token system to pay the bills.