The State of California recently unveiled a plan to increase minimum wage in the state to $15/hour by 2023. Currently, America’s national minimum wage is $7.25/hour, which hasn’t increased since 2009. The concept of minimum wage is complicated, and I don’t want this post to... Read More

Bots. They are everywhere in startup land. It feels like a gold rush — a bot rush. And, there is a backlash, as well — a botlash. Whether it’s more and more people using Slack and other messaging apps and come across these new bots... Read More

I caught up on Lefsetz’s blogs from the past two weeks yesterday. A few stuck out, like always. In particular, he wrote something about his history of Springsteen concerts, which you can read here. His recounting touches on all sorts of nostalgia triggered by following... Read More

The last big wave which helped generate huge returns for technology investors was largely driven by phones. Building apps and services on top of phone sensors, connected to the network, gave us new media apps like Instagram and Snapchat, new communication tools like Whatsapp and... Read More

Where is the early-stage financing market for startups today, mid-March 2016? In my opinion, and depending on where specifically you sit, right back where it left off. After a few bumps over the last 9 months, with little shocks in July 2015, a bigger shock... Read More

This post is not about taking a side on a political issue or for a particular candidate, or drawing a line between what’s right or wrong. Before this could be twisted by others, let me say I do not condone the messages being used in the... Read More

Late last night, around 10:30pm (“late” for parents), my brother (who is visiting from the NYC area) and I were standing in my kitchen as he was getting an UberX to head back to the city. There’s never really surge at that time. He started... Read More

I haven’t written here in a while (for my usual pace). Lots going on. So, I need to get back into it. The world isn’t quite right when I’m not able to collect and organize my thoughts here. And, luckily, I woke up before everyone... Read More

Third installment of our new podcast, “While You Were Away,” a sort of Rap Genius for tech Twitter conversations. Joel Andren (who hosts this podcast) does a terrific job stalking Twitter to see conversations unfold and learning from them. 1/ Startup in SF – Worth... Read More

Second installment of the new podcast, “While You Were Away,” a sort of Rap Genius for tech Twitter conversations. Joel Andren (who hosts this podcast) does a terrific job stalking Twitter to see conversations unfold and learning from them. 1/ Startups vs Regulation, relating to... Read More

Oil and water do not mix. When one attempts to mix them, they separate. Despite the laws of basic chemistry, it turns out oil and water do, in fact, mix in the Haystack portfolio. Oil and water have been in the news lately. Regarding oil,... Read More

For years, I’ve been wanting to do a simple podcast. However, while I always used to organize them, I didn’t want to do that this time around. I planted a few seeds with friends but nothing clicked. Then, my friend Joel Andren tweeted he wanted... Read More

At the start of 2015, I was lucky to head down to LA for The Upfront Summit. It was a blast, so I was excited for this year’s event, and 2016 was even better. I just got back to The Valley last night after two... Read More

A while back, I wrote a post here on the “5 Challenges Facing The MicroVC Model.” Since then, I’ve added more and more, and now we’re up to nine. Some LPs I talk to frequently have joked “if there are so many challenges, why do... Read More

I try to help anyone coming through the network gear up for financings. Lately, the famous “gap” between seed and larger VCs for Series A has been exposed again. This “gap” has been written about ad nauseam, so I won’t do that here. Instead, let’s... Read More

Investment Criteria For Haystack #3 For my third fund, Haystack III, which is still a small fund (but larger relative to my previous funds), I wanted to share a simple and straightforward guidepost for founders, seed syndicate partners, angels, and larger VC firms as to... Read More

As Paul Graham usually does with his essays, he makes a deep point with relative ease. Today’s essay, which many of you have read (and if you haven’t, please read it here) is even more intense. I had a sense he would be writing about... Read More

A few days ago, I wrote an opinion post on my blog, based on my point of view on what I’ve read and my experiences working in India, about the debate going on India currently between’s Facebook’s desire to push FreeBasics and the impassioned response... Read More

Earlier this week, I tried to boil down the top trends that defined the startup and investing landscape for 2015. Next up, I want to think about what will shape our experiences in 2016. This isn’t going to be a post about pontificated predictions like... Read More

It’s easy to think of Facebook as the world’s largest social network. It takes a bit more imagination to envision Facebook as the world’s dominant global nation-state, a new type state where citizens can connect and communicate across political borders and where the network’s CEO,... Read More