Blog

A difficult part of being a VC is evalutating a company at all levels, from engineering feasbility to business viability. Ove the coming weeks I will try to explain some complex engineering concepts in plain English. A term that is being tossed around more and more these days is homomorphic encryption, and it’s important to understand what it is when analyzing the value of cloud services targeted towards large institutions that have lots of sensitive data. (If you are...

E-books will never replace paper books. But they don’t have to. Comparing books to e-books is like comparing mechanical watches to digital watches, or manual cars to automatic cars. No one doubts the convenience, reach, and flexibility of the e-book format, but it will never convincingly replicate the experience of a paper book – nor does it need to. E-books are a fundamentally new medium, stuck in an awkward growing stage. The problem with e-books as...

most VCs talk about funding startups that "solve problems" for "big markets." i mean, sure... but that's usually only clear in retrospect.    so instead, i look for startups that:   are polarizing   do not require a pitch   nag you for days like a great movie or a crush   were started by founders that knew they had to start it   receive legal threats   are growing...

I'm super excited to share that Kane Hsieh has joined RRE's team as our new analyst. Kane joins us from robotics startup Romotive by way of Harvard and the MIT Media Lab, where he studied computer science and design. Kane is a hacker and a thinker.  He can talk to you about algorithms and leatherworking, interface design and book restoration.  He's got that balance between the left and right brain that is so essential to successful early-stage investing....

Maybe it's because I'm watching too much Olympic competition, but I don't believe in doing anything unless you have a shot at being the very best at it.  And you can only be the best if you regularly seek out feedback and act on it. As a VC you give a lot of feedback to people, but you don't receive much unless you ask. Your biggest weaknesses are the ones you don't recognize you have.  And to get at them, you often need others to point them...