The companies that do the best job on managing a user's privacy will be the companies that ultimately are the most successful.
— Fred Wilson
I think 'crazy' is a compliment. I think you make money with people who are crazy.
It's upsetting to me that you have to be a millionaire to invest in your friend's start-up.
I'm a free speech bigot. I don't like censorship; I just don't think it's a good thing.
My venture investing career has three phases, all roughly 6-8 years long. The first, at Euclid, was software to Internet. The second, at Flatiron, was Internet to bubble. And the third, at USV, has been web 2 to mobile. I have always used a new firm to denote a new investment phase for me. Throw away the old. Start with the new.
There is a difference between hiring a CEO and turning over control of the business.
To see things differently requires you to be wired a little differently.
If you have a native monetization system where the atomic unit of content is the ad unit, that scales down all the way to a small screen experience. That's why Twitter is performing so well on mobile.
One of the great things about young entrepreneurs is that they don't know that something can't be done. So they try something that's so audacious and usually end up pulling it off.
When I see people laughing at ideas and companies we have backed, I smile. It means we are going to make a lot of money on that investment.
Start-ups should be hunch-driven early on and data-driven as they scale.
The more entrepreneurs in the world that are getting their ideas financed, the more great companies there are going to be that we can all invest in.
Twitter wasn't planned. It just happened.
The venture business is a bit of an apprenticeship business, so the firm I worked for didn't let me make an investment until I was 30. That was probably a very smart thing.
