15
Jun 17

Golem – The Blockchain Supercomputer

tpsdave / Pixabay

Today’s rabbit hole for me is Golem, a group trying to monetize unused processor cycles. Again, this is a throwback to the ideas of, among others, MojoNation. Their alpha will allow Blender users to render CGI in a distributed manner.

The problem with distributing computation across a high latency network like the Internet is that you need problems to be extremely parallel, since almost any amount of communication between nodes is uneconomical. This is fine for things like SETI@home but isn’t great modeling that requires the previous output as input. Two major questions I have: are there enough use cases where someone has the ability to pay for this type of computation where they aren’t worried about have someone see the work they are doing and will the security model be strong enough to get people to run unknown code on their machines.


14
Jun 17

Pitched on Facebook

So this just happened:

What you’re seeing is a Facebook ad for a company looking for investors. I admit, I clicked on it because I was intrigued. Clearly these folks are scrappy and trying something new. 

Have any other investors out there seen anything like this before?


07
Jun 17

Summer Funding: Why It’s Hard To Close A Round During Burning Man

Years ago I went to Burning Man, this is my favorite memory.

The standard joke is that VCs take the entire summer off.  It isn’t true, but there is a good reason for the myth: it’s almost impossible to close a funding round over the summer.

The reason for this is quite simple, most deals require consensus of the partnership, and while no individual partner takes the entire summer off, at any time at least one decision maker is out of town with their kids. Or off on the Playa for Burning Man.

This means that the longer or more complex a funding is, the less likely it will happen over the summer.  Raising a seed round from a single micro VC? Sure, that is likely to get done. I even know of one micro VC that loves to close summer deals since they’re “the only game in town.” But if you’re raising a $50M Series C from a new lead that includes follow on investments by two other VCS? That’s probably not happening until after Labor Day!

If you need sign off from multiple investors, plan ahead so that you aren’t caught in the situation where there is always someone out of town.


06
Jun 17

Decentralized VPN – Zero Knowledge Systems v2.0

Before there was TOR there was Zero Knowledge Systems, they were a privacy network that let you set the number of hops you’d like to make before exiting as well as a simple system to manage multiple online identities. Sadly, they were not a commercial success, but they were an early cypherpunk company.

There is a now an open source project that hopes to bring a privacy VPN to the market using cryptocurrencies to pay for the solution. Mysterium just did an ICO (initial coin offering) arnd raised over $14M USD for development.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it is a direct throwback to a late 90’s failed cypherpunk idea. The question is are there now enough privacy conscious people out there willing to pay for such a service? If there are then maybe this time will be different.

The second is that they are going head-to-head with a free service that is trying to provide the same benefits. From their competitive matrix it seems their belief is that by putting an economy behind this they will be able to provide a faster service that TOR.

It is certainly true that TOR is slow, but the question is will be people willing to pay for privacy, especially if it is on metered usage instead of a flat fee. I’d be skeptical since I think the cognitive overhead of micropayments is why they haven’t been adopted and this feels similar to me. Anytime I have to think about whether or not to use a service it creates barriers, this is why most VPN providers have some sort of fixed pricing model, at least for “normal” usage.

This is one of those time I hope to be proven wrong. I’d really love a decentralized VPN to get wide scale adoption. Once I get my new high speed FIOS connection this month I may even try to run a node for a while to get a better feel for the project.

 


06
Jun 17

Back in the Saddle

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ericsurfdude/322217434

Wow, more than a year. A lot has changed. I’m at a new firm: Evolution Equity and I’m expecting a kid in September. I’m super excited about both.

To start the job I’m going to do a couple deep dives to create a new investment thesis. I’ll be focusing on cyber security and dabbling in the block chain.

Finally, I’ve decided to try to blog more. To do so I’m going to write a bit more informally and try to publish faster. No promises. But here we go.