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:

  • Friday Links

    “You must never lose gratitude for this privileged position that you put each other in.”

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  • Will natural language be the universal interface?

    Today, an app’s functionality is usually exposed for manipulation via an application-specific programming interface. Such interfaces conveniently abstract underlying functionality for easy usage but (1) are accessed via code and (2) are different for different applications. Since LLMs solved NLP, it’s now possible for natural language to be a simple, universal interface for interacting with…

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  • On Fandom

    From Tyler Cowen’s new book on the history of economic thinkers: Do you want to know which single book probably is the biggest influence on this one? It is the Bill Simmons 2009 book The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy. I loved that book and tried to pretty much read…

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  • Power Electronics 101

    I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of the grid, which I think will look increasingly decentralized and multi-directional. Power electronics, or devices that manipulate power with semiconductors, are a critical part of that story. They offer greater control and flexibility to facilitate the expanding variety of functionality needed at the grid’s…

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  • Biden’s Moral Clarity

    Too many people are trying to triangulate some kind of both-sides-ist ambivalence on Hamas’ invasion (or worse, shamelessly defending terrorism). Thankfully, President Biden is not one of those people. Instead of looking to muddy the waters by drawing false equivalences between Israel and Hamas, he understands that the only salient issue is Hamas’s evil. He…

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