In the venture capital industry, just picking winners is a losing strategy. The goal is to pick blockbusters, companies that can scale from a team of founders in a garage to a multi-billion-dollar IPO in less than a decade. History has shown that it’s primarily these outlying performers that create returns for venture investors, so…
A roadmap for navigating the transition from human-controlled cars to a better driverless future In the six-plus years that Google has been developing self-driving cars, its test fleet has achieved an impressive safety record: Nearly two million miles* of real-world autonomous driving, eleven minor accidents, only one minor injury, with none of the accidents caused by the self-driving…
At least one global cryptocurrency will achieve mass-market adoption. That cryptocurrency will either be Bitcoin or a derivative inspired by it. The chance that it will be the former is so strong that in 2014 I invested in Bitcoin startups Xapo and Blockstream. And yet, perhaps surprisingly, when one of the very smart people I…
It’s said that when architects walk through an office, they see ceiling ornamentation, light sources, building acoustics. When psychologists walk through an office, they see unresolved father issues and avoidant personality disorders. When I walk through an office, I see networks. I know that makes me sound like the kid from The Sixth Sense. But I…
By Julie Hanna and Reid Hoffman In San Francisco, Teresa Goines is breaking down deeply entrenched cycles of poverty and crime, one bowl of peanut butter stew at a time. Old Skool Café, the 1940’s supper club she started, gives jobs to at-risk and former gang youth. When banks turned her down, 41 people she’d…
Is physical retail doomed? Last week, in conversation with Sarah Lacy of PandoDaily, Marc Andreessen argued that the retail industry is over. In one sense, the impending transformation is clear to intelligent Silicon Valley insiders. In the same way technology disrupted the bloated cost structure of the newspaper industry, technology will inevitably disrupt huge swaths of the…