Taking on Tech Titans
How Startups Can Compete with Industry Giants
The first truth of entrepreneurship and investing: The biggest new ideas are contrarian. They go so deeply against commonly held assumptions that they seem not only risky but flat-out ridiculous. They’re the kind of ideas that draw a lot of “Nos.” And this makes sense: The fact that an idea goes against conventional wisdom is…
Applying High-Level Thinking to Real-World Business
Today, Aurora and Reinvent Technology Partners Y announced their agreement to merge. In my own view, this is awesome news — because I’ve been an investor in Aurora since February 2018 when I co-led its Series A round for Greylock and joined Aurora’s board. At this point, it’s well understood that creating AV technology is an extremely challenging undertaking – especially…
Ethical Considerations in Building Artificial Intelligence
Most of us love a great founding story. Whether it’s the founding of a corporation or the founding of a nation, we’re drawn to the dramatic stories where everything began. But I came to realize something, as I reviewed the past four years of Masters of Scale interviews in preparation for writing the new Masters of…
Airbnb’s Playbook for Flourishing Amid Crisis
Knowing my background in philosophy, Brad Feld and Dave Jilk recently invited me to contribute a foreword for their new book, The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors. It’s now available andI highly recommend it; click here to get your copy. Here’s the foreword I wrote for it. Nietzsche is a troubling and troublesome philosopher. In different decades…
Tech’s impact, influence and responsibility to society
When it comes to safe, clean, super-convenient and technologically amazing transportation options, why should the sky be the limit? Founded in 2009 by JoeBen Bevert, Joby Aviation has been working under the radar at a base in Santa Cruz, California to develop an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The latest version of zero-emissions aircraft, which…