Though Musings

Longhorn Humor: 50 Reasons Why Being a Longhorn is Awesome

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:58:33 -0500

Longhorn Humor: 50 Reasons Why Being a Longhorn is Awesome:

50. Because we live in Austin, Texas

49. Because the 40 Acres is a beautiful campus

48. Because you can study in this library

47. Because spotting this little fellow before a test is good luck

46. Because Chaps > Overalls

45. Because Hook ‘em!

44….

A return to thought stream

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 21:00:19 -0600

Friends,

There is much I have been musing about in the past decade of conscious memory and voids and gaps from the time past.

I’ll share infrequently here and hopefully, find focus and desire to continue actively.

Regards,

Shreenath

Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 19 Notes Essay

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 04:56:52 -0600

AMAZING Read - Folks, heed the last walking away comment from Peter.

blakemasters:

Here is an essay version of my class notes from the last class of CS183: Startup, class 19. Errors and omissions are mine.

The following three guests joined the class for a discussion:

Sonia Arrison, tech analyst, author of 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity will Change Everything, and Associate Founder of Singularity University

Michael Vassar, futurist and past President of the Singularity Institute for the study of Artificial Intelligence (SIAI)

Dr. Aubrey de Grey, gerontology expert and Chief Science Officer at the SENS Foundation.

Credit for good stuff goes to them and Peter, who gave the closing remarks. I have tried to be accurate. But note that this is not an exact transcript.

Class 19 Notes Essay—Stagnation or Singularity?

I. Perspectives

Peter Thiel: Let’s start by having each of you outline your vision of what kinds of technological change we might see over the next 30 or 40 years.

Michael Vassar: It’s lot easier to talk about what the world will look like 30 years from now than 40 years from now. Thirty seems tractable. Today, we’ve gone from knowing how to sequence a gene or two to thousand-dollar whole genome sequencing. Paul Allen is running a $500 million experiment that seems to be going very well. This technological trajectory is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. Suppose, after 30 years, we have a million times today’s computing power and achieve a hundred times today’s algorithmic efficiency. At that point we’d be in a place to simulate brains and such. And after that, anything goes.

But this kind of progress over the next 30 years is by no means something we can take for granted. Getting around bottlenecks—energy constraints, for example—is going to be hard. If we can do it, we’re at the very end. But I expect that there will be a lot of turmoil along the way.

Aubrey de Grey: We have a fair idea of what technology might be developed, but a much weaker idea of the timeline for development. It is possible that we are about 25 years away from escape velocity. But there are two caveats to this supposition: first, it is obviously subject to sufficient resources being deployed toward the technological development, and second, even then, it’s 50-50; we probably have a 50% chance of getting there. But there would seem to be at least a 10% chance of not getting there for another 100 years or so.

In a sense, none of this matters. The uncertainty of the timeline should not affect prioritization. We should be doing the same things regardless.

Read More

ninakix: Burritob0t.net prototype - Kickstarter rough cut (by...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 12:03:01 -0600

ninakix:

Burritob0t.net prototype - Kickstarter rough cut (by Marko Manriquez)

I really hope this is serious.

Happiness is BURRITOS!

heyamberrae: Learn, unlearn, relearn.

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 19:52:32 -0600

heyamberrae:

Learn, unlearn, relearn.

brycedotvc: A few months back I wrote a post bemoaning the sad...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 19:40:51 -0600

brycedotvc:

A few months back I wrote a post bemoaning the sad state of the startup pitch.

That post sparked a series of conversations, both online and off, about what makes a pitch great and how to best use the time a founder secures with a potential investor. One point several commenters took issue with was my suggestion that founders ought to have a pitch deck prepared for their first meeting with an investor. Many cried foul that this flew in the face of today’s conventional wisdom that you should keep it light and informal, you know, ask for advice and get money or whatever they kids are saying these days.

There’s a saying I often use with founders as it relates to the deck/no deck debate- some people can pull off a pitch without a deck, you are probably not one of them.

Given my recent critique, and in keeping with tradition, I thought it only fair to share the pitch deck we used to raise the new $85M fund announced a few weeks ago.

First, little bit of background.

Similar to VCs tracking startups, often LPs start wanting to “get to know” a VC fund shortly after they close their most recent fund. That being the case, we’ve had active, ongoing discussions with potential investors about fund III since we closed fund II back in 2010. Tho many established firms have their LP base solidly in place, we’re relatively new and still trying to sort out the right mix of institutional investors, be it fund of funds, pensions, endowments, etc. So these meetings were helpful in shaping our thinking around what types of new investors we wanted to bring on board for fund III.

That said, we also keep a very active dialog with our existing investors in the form of quarterly reports, semi annual LP advisory board meetings and frequent 1 on 1s over a meal. We have a deep loyalty to them.

Our strategy for the new fund was to make sure that any existing investors who wanted to participate were able to make their allocations known before we started making commitments to any new investors.

This time around we were able to have the good problem of more investor interest than we could accomodate. Which meant the fundraising process was much more accelerated and fluid that in years past. In the midst of taking in commitments from existing investors and sorting out allocations for any new ones, a partner at a firm asked us to prepare a presentation for a meeting we had lined up to get final sign off from their entire partnership.

And that’s when it hit us- we didn’t have a pitch deck.

We were within 6 weeks of closing, had secured most of our commitments and had not put together an investor presentation.

The shock of that realization and scramble to pull something together, resulted in the above deck. Which I use here to highlight for the “anti pitch deck” crowd how lightweight an investor presentation can be and still remain effective. I called it our MVP- minimum viable pitch.

How I decided to frame the conversation with this presentation was as a review of what we said the last time we talked to investors for fund II, the progress we’d made since and what’s changing with fund III. Given how sparse the deck is, you can imagine that for every slide we had 2-4 stories from recent experiences in the general market or from our portfolio which brought home the points we wanted to make.

Despite its simplicity, the deck proved to be extremely effective for framing the conversation with both new and existing investors. It doesn’t hurt that we “brought it” or that those return numbers I removed were quite good by any industry standard.

Hope you enjoy! Let me know if you need me to clarify anything in the comments.

Elegance!

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:56:39 -0600

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?:

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

“Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail,” he said. “That’s your whole story right there. Hell, you don’t even have to write the rest of it. Just write that.”

brycedotvc: The Wall Street Journal released a report ranking...

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 17:10:16 -0600

brycedotvc:

The Wall Street Journal released a report ranking the most active venture funds of 2010. I wanted to take a minute to just point out that OATV is not on the list. In fact, I would venture that OATV will never be on a list like this. Its not our goal and its not our strategy.

There are a lot of different ways to skin the seed investing market. A popular approach is to make a large number of small investments. This model spreads risk out across a lot of different companies and if managed properly, i.e. not taking board seats, can allow a firm to get broad exposure to a number of exciting companies without spreading the individual partners too thin. I tip my hat to the guys who can pull this off.

At OATV we do things a little differently for seed guys and a little similar to more traditional VCs. In general, we make 2-3 new investments per partner per year that we lead or co-lead (rarely are we simply following someone else’s termsheet). We’re typically investing $500k or more in each round as opposed to the $50,000 to $250,000 popular among other angels and seed funds. And, generally, we’re taking board seats with each investment we make. Of course we’ve broken these rules in the past and reserve the right to break them in the future as well, but that’s our model.

When I come across a list like this I always want to see if we’ve made it. But each time I work my way to the bottom I find we’re not included. So, this time I wanted to find closure with that feeling and go public with who we are and what we do. I think it sets us apart from a number of firms and I like that.

Brilliant post! kziegs: Keep away from people who try to...

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:37:20 -0500

Brilliant post!

kziegs:

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.

Solid advice, courtesy Mark Twain.

Tsk tsk, the poor life meetingboy: You know who else hates...

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:36:06 -0500

Tsk tsk, the poor life

meetingboy:

You know who else hates PowerPoint? Overhead Projector. Poor, old, lonely Overhead Projector.

information as it evolves

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:23:08 -0500

information as it evolves:

thegongshow:

Naval Ravikant wrote a great (and concise!) post on a trend in popular web services of taking data that was previously private and making it public. I totally agree with this observation, and want to add to his post. From Naval’s post:

All sorts of businesses are being built by violating…

RIdiculous awesomeness! colinster: nickmcglynn: Vodafone Ad...

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 02:25:42 -0500

RIdiculous awesomeness!

colinster:

nickmcglynn:

Vodafone Ad Uses Rube Goldberg Machine to Show Awesomeness of Apps

fred-wilson: “Badges Like Us” good thing these guys are in...

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:45:25 -0500

fred-wilson:

“Badges Like Us”

good thing these guys are in business school because they are not the next Lil Wayne, but the rap itself is fun and gave me a chuckle

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:09:51 -0500

Wow - this is some phenomenal level of attributes that you can search by - seems like the next step is a souped up search engine for the mac!

Apple Snow Leopard, 10.6.2. These search attribute options are outrageous! I can search by key signature? loop descriptors? the version of the encoding software used?

(really- what kind of information does Apple think its consumer-facing brand is working with?) …consider the possible…

Great quote on life in start-ups

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:08:03 -0600

Amanda is one of the bloggers/tumblr’s that I am beginning to follow regularly cos she has really interesting useful tid bits of info.
Enjoy!

amandapey:

“running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly…but working for a large company is like being waterboarded”

— Paul Graham (founder, YCombinator), June 2009 Inc. Magazine article

"Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much…..."

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:35:07 -0600

“Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much… the wheel, New York, wars and so on… while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man… for precisely the same reason.”

- Douglas Adams (via cocknbull)

Is there a place more beautiful than this?

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:29:16 -0600

Is there a place more beautiful than this?

"Every person has a circle of influence and circle of worry; focus your efforts on changing what you..."

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:03:24 -0600

“Every person has a circle of influence and circle of worry; focus your efforts on changing what you can in the circle of influence and let it expand to the circle of worry”

- Co-worker

Though Musings

Longhorn Humor: 50 Reasons Why Being a Longhorn is Awesome

A return to thought stream

There is much I have been musing about in the past decade of conscious memory and voids and gaps from the time past.

Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 19 Notes Essay

ninakix: Burritob0t.net prototype - Kickstarter rough cut (by...

heyamberrae: Learn, unlearn, relearn.

brycedotvc: A few months back I wrote a post bemoaning the sad...

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

brycedotvc: The Wall Street Journal released a report ranking...

Brilliant post! kziegs: Keep away from people who try to...

Tsk tsk, the poor life meetingboy: You know who else hates...

information as it evolves

RIdiculous awesomeness! colinster: nickmcglynn: Vodafone Ad...

fred-wilson: “Badges Like Us” good thing these guys are in...

Courtney Bolton / ©BOE.: ...blown away by OSx Search Attributes available!

Great quote on life in start-ups

"Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much…..."

Is there a place more beautiful than this?

"Every person has a circle of influence and circle of worry; focus your efforts on changing what you..."