Tag: VC
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Volteras
One of the most exciting trends in energy is the rise of programmable power. Energy devices have become increasingly software-controllable. Developers can now build large virtual energy systems out of many small decentralized assets. We’ve been investing across the programmable power stack from foundational hardware to app-layer networks. At present,…
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You Can Just Program Biology
The Information Age was a consequence of two developments: the ability to work with information programmatically and the democratization of that capability. We are now entering a similar period in biology. We can now program life itself with the ever cheaper tools of synthetic biology. We believe this era of…
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Against The End of History of Venture Capital
I’ve written previously about the deep tech opportunity. While lean software startups have been a great place to invest venture capital over the last thirty years, I believe we’re living through a shift where future returns in venture capital will be more driven by companies that engage in fundamental innovation.…
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Collaborative Intelligence
Humans are not simple creatures. Although we like to present ourselves as coherent wholes to the outside world, on the inside, we’re divided. Marvin Minsky argues in The Society of Mind that minds are composed of smaller agents, each with specialized roles and drives. Inside Out similarly imagines the mind…
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The Three Kinds of “Deep Tech” Startups
Something that’s frustrating about investing in non-purely-software companies is the poverty of vocabulary. People talk about “deep tech”, “hard tech”, “frontier tech”, “atoms”, and so on. Sometimes they just mean to distinguish hardware from software companies, sometimes to distinguish technical moonshots from more immediately commercial ventures. Despite the linguistic fuzziness,…
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Blixt
(Crossposted to the USV blog) Existing electrical infrastructure is ill-suited to our current needs. It was developed for a world where we simply sent firm AC power from centralized power plants to end-customers. Today, however, electricity flows multi-directionally, as both AC and DC, and more intermittently. As we continue to…
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Self-Mythology & Authenticity
At the end of his recent interview with Patrick Collison, Dwarkesh asked … what really strikes out to me about you… is just how broadly you think of your job description. To the extent that you think of if science is slowing down and civilization is stagnating, that’ll be bad…
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Vertically Integrated and AI-First
Crossposted from the USV blog A new pattern is emerging that we are excited about at USV: entrepreneurs are upgrading physical industries with an AI-first and vertically integrated approach. Instead of selling software to industry incumbents, startups are increasingly deciding to use their technical know-how to compete head-on. We think…
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AI and Art Demo Night
I recently published a post on the USV blog about AI and art. I’ve been reflecting on how intimately connected technology and art are. The art we make is mediated by the tools at our disposal, and the visions technologists pursue are often downstream of the stories artists tell. Since…
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AI Aesthetics
(Crossposted from the USV blog) The word “technology” comes from the Greek word techne, which refers to an art or skill or practice. Plato writes a lot about the concept, often making reference to artists such as flute players as canonical examples of those engaged in a techne. Though today…
Matthew Mandel 