• Migrating WordPress to AWS Lightsail and Going with Let’s Encrypt!

    (Update Jan 2021: Bitnami has made available a new tool bncert which makes it even easier to enable HTTPS with a Let’s Encrypt certificate; the instructions below using Let’s Encrypt’s certbot still work but I would recommend people looking to enable HTTPS to use Bitnami’s new bncert process) I recently made two big changes to […]

  • Advice VCs Want to Give but Rarely Do to Entrepreneurs Pitching Their Startups

    I thought I’d re-post a response I wrote a while ago to a question on Quora as someone recently asked me the question: “What advice do you wish you could give but usually don’t to a startup pitching you?” Person X on your team reflects poorly on your company — This is tough advice to give as its […]

  • The Four Types of M&A

    I’m oftentimes asked what determines the prices that companies get bought for: after all, why does one app company get bought for $19 billion and a similar app get bought at a discount to the amount of investor capital that was raised? While specific transaction values depend a lot on the specific acquirer (i.e. how […]

  • Snap Inc by the Numbers

    A look at what Snap’s S-1 reveals about their growth story and unit economics If you follow the tech industry at all, you will have heard that consumer app darling Snap Inc. (makers of the app Snapchat) has filed to go public. The ensuing Form S-1 that has recently been made available has left tech-finance nerds like yours truly […]

  • Dr. Machine Learning

    How to realize the promise of applying machine learning to healthcare Despite the hype, it’ll likely be quite some time before human physicians will be replaced with machines (sorry, Star Trek: Voyager fans). While “smart” technology like IBM’s Watson and Alphabet’s AlphaGo can solve incredibly complex problems, they are probably not quite ready to handle the messiness of qualitative unstructured information from […]

  • Why VR Could be as Big as the Smartphone Revolution

    Technology in the 1990s and early 2000s marched to the beat of an Intel-and-Microsoft-led drum. Intel would release new chips at a regular cadence: each cheaper, faster, and more energy efficient than the last. This would let Microsoft push out new, more performance-hungry software, which would, in turn, get customers to want Intel’s next, more […]

  • Laszlo Bock on Building Google’s Culture

    Much has been written about what makes Google work so well: their ridiculously profitable advertising business model, the technology behind their search engine and data centers, and the amazing pay and perks they offer. My experiences investing in and working with startups, however, has taught me that building a great company is usually less about a specific technical or business model innovation than about building […]

  • What Happens After the Tech Bubble Pops

    In recent years, it’s been the opposite of controversial to say that the tech industry is in a bubble. The terrible recent stock market performance of once high-flying startups across virtually every industry (see table below) and the turmoil in the stock market stemming from low oil prices and concerns about the economies of countries like China and Brazil have raised fears that the […]

  • An “Unbiased Opinion”

    I recently read a short column by gadget reviewer Vlad Savov in The Verge provocatively titled “My reviews are biased — that’s why you should trust them” which made me think. In it, Vlad addresses the accusation he hears often that he’s biased: “Of course I’m biased, that’s the whole point… subjectivity is an inherent — and I would argue necessary — part of making these reviews […]

  • 3D Printing as Disruptive Innovation

    Last week, I attended a MIT/Stanford VLAB event on 3D printing technologies. While I had previously been aware of 3D printing (which works basically the way it sounds) as a way of helping companies and startups do quick prototypes or letting geeks of the “maker” persuasion make random knickknacks, it was at the event that I started to recognize the technology’s disruptive […]