Book

If you are a movie producer and you want to actually make an AI movie that helps people really understand one of the paths we could find ourselves going down in the next decade, read vN: The First Machine Dynasty by Madeline Ashby . I’ve read a lot of sci-fi in the past few years that involves AI. William Hertling is my favorite writer in this domain right now (Ramez Naam is an extremely close second) although his newest book – Kill Process (which is about to be released) is a departure from AI for him (even though it’s not AI it’s amazing, so you should read it also). ...

While listening to Harry Stebbings interview Boris Wertz on the 20 Minute VC , I heard Boris refer to his free ebook A Guide To Marketplaces . So I read it. It was a quick read, but very useful for anyone who is interested in marketplaces. Boris lays out all the terminology, explains different types of marketplaces, dynamics of building a marketplace, and metrics you should pay attention to. If you are building or investing in marketplaces, make sure you grab a copy and read it.

We are starting to work on the teaching materials for the 3rd edition of Venture Deals , which is coming out in the fall of 2016. If you have either taught or taken a class using Venture Deals and are willing to talk to our publisher at Wiley about what kind of teaching materials would make the book even more useful, please send me an email . As part of this, we are doing a refresh of the Ask the VC website so if you have suggestions for that, just toss them in the comments.

Neon Fever Dream by Eliot Peper was outstanding. But you can’t read it yet as it’s still in draft form. Eliot’s last book Cumulus was published a few weeks ago and has gotten awesome reviews. He’s turned into a writing machine and already had a draft of Neon Fever Dream ready to go when Cumulus was finalized. I first met Eliot several years ago when he emailed me a few chapters of the first book he was working on about a fictional tech startup in Boulder. With it he was pioneering a genre that I referred to as “startup fiction” – kind of on the edge of Cyberpunk and near-term science fiction that I love dearly, but set in the immediate present. Uncommon Stock was the first book that FG Press published and I spent plenty of time with Eliot as chief cheerleader and mediocre editor and, when the book was finished, loved it. ...

Last week I was on vacation and off the grid. Amy and I decided to stay home, rest, just hang out, and read. Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right was first on the list. I have a very cynical attitude toward politics, especially in the context of big money, so I was fascinated by this book. I’d read snippets about it and had read the New Yorker article Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama by Jane Mayer in 2010 that was the inspiration for her to write this book. ...

If you are a looking for an awesome sci-fi book to read, download Cumulus by Eliot Peper right now. And, if you want some independent confirmation from others not named me, this just happened. Eliot nails a dystopian future set in Oakland that incorporates the evolution of all the tech we are currently using. The early reviews are outstanding – including ArsTechnica’s Cumulus is your new favorite surveillance-fueled dystopian novel and Tech.co’s Startup Thriller Book ‘Cumulus’ Warns of a Dystopia Under Surveillance – and match my experience of the book. ...

If you are interested in understanding the business implications of blockchain technology, William Mougayar ‘s new book – The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology – is a must read. I’ve known William for about five years. I almost invested in his company Engagio (there’s now a different company by that name) but decided not to. However, our friendship developed and he’s been an amazing host anytime I’ve been in Toronto. ...

Every entrepreneur out there should grab a copy of The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future by Steve Case and read it. If you don’t know Steve, you’ve probably heard of him. He’s had a remarkably entrepreneurial journey starting with co-founding AOL in the 1980s. While AOL has now been absorbed into Verizon (after having been bought, spun out, and bought again) at its peak around 2000 nearly half of all Internet users in the US accessed the internet via AOL and everyone over the age of 40 knows how to say “You have mail.” ...

I read The Three-Body Problem last week and loved it. It was a little hard to get into it at the beginning and that ended up being pat of the beauty of it. I’m not going to summarize it here – I encourage you to read it – but want to talk about the thoughts it simulated. About two-thirds of the way through the book, I had a thought while laying in bed next to Amy that we don’t have any idea how the universe works. I blurted out something like “We don’t know how the universe, whatever that means, works.” Appropriately, Amy asked “Tell me more” which is how many of our funnest conversations unfold. ...

A cliche I’ve heard many times is “Wall Street Always Wins.” The first week of 2016 in the public markets has been an entertaining reminder of this. In 1998, when I started ending up with lots of shares in public Internet companies, I came up with a formulaic approach for any public equities that are distributed to me (either from our funds or other VC funds). The approach was mathematic, dispassionate, and easy for me to execute. Over the past 18 years this strategy served me well. ...