Matthew Mandel

I’m an investor at Union Square Ventures in NYC. I write about the things I’m most excited about like technology, philosophy, business, and culture. If you’re interested in following my writing, you can subscribe below:

  • *Le Mage du Kremlin*

    I recently finished reading Le Mage du Kremlin. It was the runner-up in the big French book contest last year and received acclaim for its literary analysis of Putin in particular and power and politics in Russia more generally. Given the discourse around the book, I was pretty surprised by its final passages, which veer…

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  • New Blog

    Writing, especially online, is powerful. Ideas languishing in the notes app on my phone are far less valuable than ones that I share and get feedback on. I’ve written a bit on Substack over the last couple of years, but that format doesn’t feel exactly right for what I want to start playing with: daily-ish,…

  • Mind the Storage Gap

    (crossposted from the USV blog) Deployment of renewables has been accelerating globally. In 2022, around 12% of electricity came from wind and solar, compared to less than 3% a decade ago. These resources offer access to low-cost clean energy – but only intermittently. Energy storage systems can capture excess renewable energy in times of abundance and discharge…

  • AI Reliability and Building Trusted Brands

    Recent progress in AI is extremely exciting and has the potential to change the world for the better. However, in order for AI products to gain deep traction, they will have to earn our trust in the domains that matter the most to us. Andy summarized many of our questions around trust and AI in…

  • On the Philosophical Foundations of EA

    Intro EAs Should Care More About Philosophical Ethics  I think EAs should care more about debates around which ethical theory is true and why. The EA community is really invested in problems of applied consequentialist ethics such as “how should we think about low probability / high, or infinite, magnitude risks”, “how should we discount…

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