Ethics matter. And using them in times of stress matters, too. SBF lost the plot in his defense this week, seeking to blame his lack of attention to detail and his colleagues for the failings at FTX and Alameida. There was a lack of ethics in his decisions and a further lack of ethics in his trial strategy. I have no idea how contrived the entire set of episodes was at FTX, but blaming colleagues seems both a low shot and a long shot simultaneously. It would have been better to tell the...

Charles Hudson and Manu Kumar are two of the best early-stage investors in the world. This week, they both penned meaningful essays declaring that the fundamentals of early-stage investing have changed, possibly permanently. Charles states: For the past 18 months, the Series A market has been very quiet. Outside of AI-related investments, it feels like deal volume is off 75%. The Series A investors I know don’t feel any pressure to make investments and don’t really seem that excited or...

Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman and Geoffrey Hinton To quote Oscar Wilde:A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias. Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made...

This was a week when it was almost impossible to escape politics, particularly world politics. The barbaric, medieval images coming out of Israel on Shabbat Saturday morning, at the start of the Jewish New Year, were both sickening and, at the same time, sadly, not surprising. This was in a week where my media consumption included the interview Graham Alison did at the All In Summit and a similar couple with Ray Dalio and Larry Summers. All three focus on the current and future world order....

Another week when there are many talking points. The Q3 Venture Capital data is out, and both Gene Teare at Crunchbase and Peter Walker at Carta have significant insights this week. In an essay of the week, Kyle Harrison takes a stand back and examines the entire venture value chain - as we have discussed a lot in prior weeks. It is a great effort by Kyle and a very good read, Also, Sam Bankman Fried is not in front of a Jury. Only two days in, the prosecution is mounting a strong effort to...

I had promised there would be no That Was The Week this week, and Andrew decided we needed to record a show. Topics focus on the Bankman Fried trial, Amazon being accused of anti-trust, the Google trial, and developments with OpenAI --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thatwastheweek/message

Contents Editorial: Billions: The Venture Asset Class Essays of the Week Innovation Searching for a Breakup The Trouble With Walter: In His Elon Musk Tome, the Writer Shows Us the Perils of Access Journalism AI Regulation Venture Capitalists Will Overpay For Seed Rounds But For Reasons You Likely Haven’t Considered Venture returns vs. public markets : What the data says Unicorn Market Cap 2023: Rise of AI Video of the Week Bill Gurley on Regulation,...

Contents Editorial: Why Think Global? China, Chips and Airplanes Essays of the Week The next phase of globalization is going to be awesome It's Never Been More Important to Understand Your Capital Provider's Business Model Apple’s $60 iCloud Service Is the Future of Apple Huawei’s Breakthrough: The Strategic Implications A Look at the IPO Market As Investors Hope for Strong Instacart, Arm & Klaviyo Offerings Arm and a Leg: Arm's Quest To Extract Their True...

Contents Editorial:  Essays of the Week Least Bad (De-Dollarization?) Only About 10% of VCs Make Money Searching for Unicorn Funds - A Look at Fund DPI Venture Firms Hang the ‘For Sale’ Sign on Portfolios How to Win in Venture Capital: Focus on the Fat Tails What Makes a Good SaaS Company? The Best Founders are over 50 Years Old Meet the YC Summer 2023 Batch Garry Tan AI and the New Digital Cold War Video of the Week Andrew Keen and Ludwig...

Contents Editorial: Hit Job Essays of the Week VC Returns - The Power Law Down Rounds Are a Nothing Burger? VCs are just middlemen. Realizing Non-Winners Early Drives IRRs Secrecy Harms Startups Fund of funds: why to invest and, more importantly, why not As Venture Market Slows, Fewer Early-Round Unicorns Being Minted Rest - The case for sabbaticals Why Do Investors Care So Much About LTV:CAC? AI of the Week Generative AI applications: an...

Contents Editorial:  Essays of the Week Institutionalized Belief In The Greater Fool New Unicorn Creation Has Dwindled From 2 Per Day To 2 Per Month Even a Down Round is Hard to Get Tech Valuations Q2’23 Report Advice to Venture Fund Investors State of pre-seed fundraising: Q2 2023 Venture capital funds are mostly just wasting their time and your money Video of the Week Dave Winer and Andrew Keen on Blogging, Podcasting and More AI of the...

Contents Editorial: Dry Powder? Essays of the Week Dry Powder is not About to be Invested Down Rounds Should Be Led by Entrepreneurs Why Bill Gurley & Josh Wolfe Think VCs Won't Deploy All Their Dry Powder Anytime Soon ‘Tidal Wave’ of Down Rounds Hits Startups Global Venture Funding In July Was Second-Lowest This Year As Seed Startups Are Hit Hard   VC Optimism Returning But More Pain Ahead In Their Portfolios AI of the Week OpenAI Shoots To No. 1...

Contents Editorial: Bonfire of the Unicorns Essays of the Week Historical Futurism Venture Capital and the Retail Investor Raising a fund in a downturn Fundraising in Confusing Times Fundraising is Hard - Fund of Fund Fundraising is Harder Unicorns Hobbled Amid VC Pullbacks The Unicorn Fire Sales Ahead Hopin, the struggling virtual conference unicorn, sells events and engagement units to RingCentral Reset & Rethink – Assessing Venture Capital with...

Contents Editorial:  Essays of the Week Venture Capital — We’re Still Not Normal - @CoatsDavid Seed investing can’t turn back on - @lessin The Broken Venture Value Chain - @fintechjunkie Here Are The Venture Capital Firms That Are Investing Much Less - @ericnewcomer Indexing Venture and Other Fool's Errands - @jordsnel Manager Selection in Venture Capital - @scotthartley The meeting that showed me the truth about VCs - @tomerdean All-In Podcast on the...

Contents Editorial: Data-First Venture is Coming Essays of the Week The Future of Venture Capital? Insights Into Data-Driven VCs Has persistence persisted in private equity? Evidence from buyout and venture capital funds Why more is less in investing Symposium: The unique uselessness of business advice VCs make mistakes too. And LPs need to be aware of them. How This Ends (Part Three) Video of the Week Producing Charts with AI - Tomasz Tunguz AI...

Contents Editorial: Khan and Gensler Should Be Fired Essays of the Week Threads won’t kill Twitter if it’s boring Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard FTC appeals its loss to Microsoft in Activision Blizzard case XRP Sold on Exchange Declared Not an Investment Contract Ripple’s XRP Token Surges 96% After Court Rules XRP Sales Aren’t Investment Contracts FTC opens investigation into ChatGPT creator OpenAI Video of the Week Y Combinator -...

Contents Editorial: Data-First Venture is Coming Essays of the Week The Future of Venture Capital? Insights Into Data-Driven VCs Has persistence persisted in private equity? Evidence from buyout and venture capital funds Why more is less in investing Symposium: The unique uselessness of business advice VCs make mistakes too. And LPs need to be aware of them. How This Ends (Part Three) Video of the Week Producing Charts with AI - Tomasz Tunguz AI...

Contents Editorial:  Essays of the Week How to Do Great Work Paul Graham How Analytics Wins - Ergest Xheblati The Modern Data Stack - Muji Twitter and Threads Twitter's Final Boss: Zuckerberg Wages War You can’t post ass, Threads is doomed Meta’s New Threads App Reaches 30 Million Users in Less Than a Day Twitter threatens to sue Meta over its new Threads app Video of the Week Vinod Khosla - The Trillion $ AI Opportunity AI of the...

Content this week from @gideonrachman, @Tabby_Kinder, @KateClarkTweets, @askhalid, @DanKuhn13, @mvpeers, @maskedmanmarc, @BitcoinSVTrain, @IanBremmer, @IKrietzberg, @a16Z, @JagmeetS13, @EllenYChang, @Dexerto, @elonmusk, @finkd Editorial: The Venture Wreckage Essays of the Week Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing Silicon Valley VCs rush into defence technology start-ups Antitrust Threat to Figma-Adobe Deal Thwarts Hopes for VC Rebound Spotify’s...

Content this week from @Om, @Isabellesarraf, @pmarca, @elonmusk, @lexfridman, @jessicalessin, @ajkeen, @nickgrossman, @krishnanrohit, @kyle_l_wiggers, @demishassabis, @levie, @databricks, @@madewithmosaic, @mustafasuleymn, @inflectionAI Contents Editorial: Phew, That Was A Week Essays of the Week Why Apple’s Vision Pro Will Change Movie-Watching Spotify’s Video-Podcast Surge Linda Yaccarino’s vision for Twitter 2.0 emerges ‘Pressures Remain’: Coatue Prepares Tech...

Editorial - The Year of the Mask (again)? Essays of the Week The Gospel of ARK Invest Twitter’s value down two-thirds since Musk takeover, says investor Elon Musk reclaims title of world’s richest person Twitter is Approving Far More Government Censorship Requests Under Elon Musk Video of the Week The Cure @Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, 2023.05.27 AI of the Week Improving mathematical reasoning with process supervision - OpenAI Is The AI...

Contents Editorial Essays of the Week State of Private Markets: Q1 2023 Fund Size Is Still Strategy - The Growing Disconnect Between Founders and VCs 'ZIRP' No More: A Founder Playbook for the Market Downturn Series D Hits Lowest Point In Years. What Does That Mean?  Nearly Half of YouTube’s U.S. Viewership Is Now on TVs, Helping Drive Ad Shift The Unified Content Business Model Video of the Week Greg Brockman at TED Yejin Choi at TED AI of...

Contents Editorial: Shrinking Essays of the Week These 4 Charts Show That, Slowly But Surely, Startup Funding Deal Sizes Are Shrinking  The Fintech Funding Crunch In 4 Charts M&A for venture-backed startups has fallen to the lowest quarterly level in a decade Elon Musk Is Transforming Twitter, Not Killing It The Mother of All Pivots Grimes invites people to use her voice in AI songs 2023 State of AI in 14 Charts The History of AI in 7 Experiments ...

Content this week from: @jonfingas, @harrymccracken, @TurnerNovak, @fredwilson, @kwharrison13, @ballmatthew, @ttunguz, @timoreilly, @davidcummings, @NeilThanedar Netflix will shut down its DVD rental business in September The End of Computer Magazines in America Shuttering of BuzzFeed News Signals Shift to Survival Mode Can Substack Save the Social Network? What Is A Protocol And Why Does It Matter? Building an Actual Unicorn 2023 Private SaaS Company Valuations ...

Editorial: Product of the Week Now live for all: Substack Notes Notes questions answered Is Substack Notes a ‘Twitter clone’? We asked CEO Chris Best Essays of the Week ‘We have to move fast’: US looks to establish rules for artificial intelligence Prohibition of AI that ‘subverts state power’ in China may chill its nascent industry What the End of HBO Max—and the Rise of ‘Max’—Means for Streaming Crypto VC Funding Slows to a Crawl Here Comes the...