The Four Waves of Crypto Disruption
With both Bitcoin and Ether surging to record highs this week, everyone – entrepreneurs, investors, consumers, businesses and governments – have been caught up in the flurry surrounding cryptocurrencies. Many are trying to understand what’s happening now and where all this is headed. It’s always hard to predict how a new computing platform will play […]
Data is the New Oil
In recent years “Data is the new oil” has become a frequently used phrase in tech and investor circles to describe the incredible rise in the importance of data for today’s economy. Some of the world’s most valuable tech companies are built on tremendous data network effects and access to unique data: Google, Facebook, Amazon, […]
Three lessons from ten years of investing
“It takes 10 years and $30m to become a great investor.” This quote has stuck with me from the first time I saw it. I believe the legendary investor John Doerr said it at some point, but I can’t track down the original quote anymore. Of course, I thought it was a complete exaggeration when […]
Who will be the Stripe for insurance?
A few years ago, we began to see SaaS companies integrate payment processing into their software. This push to integrate payments was due to a couple of factors. First, it offers a better user experience – why send somebody off-platform to pay for a product or settle an invoice? Next, adding payments to a platform […]
The Redistribution of Network Effects in Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies have strong network effects, built around the concept of mining. The more miners participate, the cheaper mining gets and the more quickly transactions are validated. (On a side note, this has actually not be true as of late for Bitcoin as it ran into scaling issues which is driving up mining costs). In fact, […]