Fred Wilson (AVC)
avc.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures, blogs about startups, investing, and technology trends.
What HN saysCommenters call it excellent and list it among personal blogs worth following, though one disputes his advice on how to become a VC.
1.1KHN people shared it
394linked it in comments
2.2Kstories submitted
39Kstory points
6 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1The Treadpad33 people · 22 points · first shared 2008 · 3 comments on HN
- 2Airbnb11 people · 265 points · first shared 2011 · 57 comments on HN
- 3Venture capital returns8 people · first shared 2014
- 4What A CEO Does7 people · 131 points · first shared 2010 · 39 comments on HN
- 5Finding And Buying A Domain Name7 people · 61 points · first shared 2011 · 30 comments on HN
- 6What Is Going to Happen in 20167 people · 29 points · first shared 2016 · 1 comments on HN
- 7What Is Going to Happen in 20177 people · 26 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 8Store of Value vs. Payment System7 people · 6 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 9Venture Capital Returns7 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Airbnb7 people · 2 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 11Finding and Buying a Domain Name (2011)7 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 12Employee Equity: How Much? (2010)7 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 13Twilio's Seed Pitch6 people · 328 points · first shared 2016 · 74 comments on HN
- 14The 40% Rule6 people · 253 points · first shared 2015 · 44 comments on HN
- 15The Bubble Question6 people · 247 points · first shared 2014 · 91 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
robmay · 2021-05-27
Not sure if you mean "individuals" compared to companies or organizations, or actually just solo bloggers, so I'll include a few that have more than one individual author but are "personal".
https://marginalrevolution.com/ - on economics but so much else
https://avc.com/ - Fred has some of the best startup insights
https://abovethecrowd.com/ - Gurley doesn't blog much but when he does it's great
kcovia · 2014-08-21
http://www.avc.com is excellent. It's Fred Wilson's person blog (Union Square Ventures).
tejasm · 2014-07-09
I follow the following:
Buffer - open.bufferapp.com - great insights on culture, work priority and personal development for developers
HubSpot - http://blog.hubspot.com/ - great tips on marketing for developers
Mark Suster - http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ - Amazing insights on views from developer and VC sides
Fred Wilson - http://avc.com/ - not particularly technical but a lot of startup advice. Also, MBA mondays are great.
mikeocool · 2013-02-14
Not sure if this is the same thing the OP is talking about, but there is a 'Recommended Content' section with a bunch of ad-type links at the bottom of each post's comments on http://avc.com
GFischer · 2010-11-10
I don't think this is the best advice for everyone:
"How would I become a VC? By being one: pull some of my own money, invest it in startups, and build my track record. That’s how. I can’t imagine any other way."
I can definitely imagine another way - the way I suppose the people that went to the event being discussed ("how to become a VC.") might have in mind: learn the ropes from someone experienced, learn what's needed (lots of legal, economical and technical stuff I didn't even know existed before reading stuff like the A VC blog http://www.avc.com/ ), learn from their mistakes and successes (and no, I don't think the Internet is a good enough substitute for the actual experience).
bootload · 2010-01-20
"... So now we have the best of both worlds. We can back first-time entrepreneurs and have mentors and role models for them and we have those role models in their second, third, and fourth startups and that's the magic--that creates a sustainable startup economy that Silicon Valley has had for four decades now. We're three or four years into our second decade and I think it's going to be a great period for New York. ..."
I read the article half way, looked at some of the phrases and guessed http://www.avc.com / Fred Wilson who's been pushing NY as a Startup alternative for a number of years now. Will this idea crumble when finance recovers?
thesausageking · 2021-08-03
I stopped reading VC blogs when I realized how self-serving they are.
Fred is a fantastic writer and really pulls you in. However, he also uses his platform to do things like shill a shady ICO from one of his portfolio companies:
https://avc.com/2017/05/kin/
dang · 2021-04-22
Sorry, but this strikes me as classic hindsight fallacy. Here's Fred Wilson in 2011: https://avc.com/2011/03/airbnb/, and the original email thread between him and PG from 2009: http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html. PG went all the way to using an exclamation mark (has there ever been another?) and even that wasn't enough.
Anyone who thinks VCs would have been happy to fund a Couchsurfing knock-off in 2008 is looking at this history through many filters, for example the fact that startup fundraising became much easier in the subsequent decade.
wpietri · 2021-02-10
Exactly. Here's VC and prominent cryptocurrency enthusiast Fred Wilson saying exactly that: https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/
While I agree with him that Bitcoin is a terrible currency, I think the "store of value" thing is nonsense as well. Stores of value need to have relatively stable value. Bitcoin is hugely volatile. That's great for speculation, but nobody with any sense would use it as the equivalent of a savings account.
gz5 · 2020-03-23
Disasters are also opportunities. Inventing and re-inventing, in a hurry, can force us to put in 'good enough' solutions, which end up iterating into true innovation and paradigm changes.
This is not a "schools are broken" rant. There are schools, staff and teachers which do tremendous, underappreciated work. With 4 kids between the ages of 9 and 19, I have seen it first-hand.
There is always room for improvement and improving remote education would make learning opportunities available to many more people, and be a great experience for many.
The 'conversation' theme in this post for example:
https://seths.blog/2020/03/the-conversation/
And the 'collaboration' theme in this post:
https://avc.com/2020/03/teaching-online/
theflyinghorse · 2019-11-26
> Wrong.
Sure, we can say that there has been some benefit to the middle class in the West through reduced price on some of the goods but certainly not on big bill items such as housing and education. It's great that I can buy a cheap jacket and keep some of my income, it sucks that my housing expanses went from 1/5 to 1/2 of my income (as an example).
Overall an American worker who lost his well paying manufacturing job and replaced it with a job at walmart lost massively.
Elephant Chart I think tells the whole story[1].
1. https://avc.com/2016/08/elephant-chart/
mooreds · 2018-12-08
Here is a VCs thought on going public, for what it is worth: https://avc.com/2016/11/going-public/
My guess is
* liquidity for employees and investors
* access to even greater amounts of capital
* access to capital that might not be as fickle as private investors
sabalaba · 2018-10-05
A CEO's job is to set the overall vision, recruit amazing talent, and make sure there's money in the bank.
If a company wants to change the world, they can't forget #3. In fact it's probably the most important because #1 and #2 are not possible without #3.
So, how does one raise $149.5M and fail? The Fatal Pinch.
https://avc.com/2010/08/what-a-ceo-does/
http://www.paulgraham.com/pinch.html
pilingual · 2018-08-05
“Whenever someone tells me that they can't figure out how to raise the first $25,000 they need to get their company started I stand up, walk over to the cereal box, and tell this story. It is a story of pure unadulterated hustle. And I love it.”
https://avc.com/2011/03/airbnb/
Edit: if you were to create something really capital intensive like rockets, Boom is a great story for that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11346947
rrecuero · 2017-08-16
1 - In the short term, I don't think ICOs are a solution for every kind of company. Just for protocols and networks.
2 - Great investors provide more than just access to capital.
My point of view is similar to Fred Wilson's. More here http://avc.com/2017/06/icos-and-vcs/
radiusvector · 2017-04-13
As impressive as it may sound, this is pretty shocking for the state of the industry.
An innovative, new upshot getting sucked up/ blatantly ripped off by an established player with more muscle, money (and in this case - users) to throw at the problem is not a great incentive for entrepreneurs.
Consolidation at this level resembles communism more closely than the kind of free market innovation we should be seeing.
http://avc.com/2017/02/the-end-of-the-level-playing-field/
mbesto · 2017-04-13
> An innovative, new upshot getting sucked up/ blatantly ripped off by an established player with more muscle, money (and in this case - users) to throw at the problem is not a great incentive for entrepreneurs.
> http://avc.com/2017/02/the-end-of-the-level-playing-field/
These two things aren't the same. The former is complaining about larger companies copying features (where no legislation exists) and the latter is complaining about incurring legislation that impedes competition.
So what do you want? Legislation or not? You can't have both.
> is not a great incentive for entrepreneurs.
There are plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs to create new technologies, but the gold rush for creating the next big social app may indeed be over.
AndrewKemendo · 2016-10-10
What's the difference between early...
One of the reasons hard raises can turn into great performers is that they often mean you are doing something others aren’t doing, you are early to an opportunity and others don’t see it. That certainly was the case with USV 2004. That’s the contrarian bet in action.
and way too early...[1]
Beware of "way too early". It hurts and it keeps hurting.
[1] http://avc.com/2009/04/only-ten-years-too-early/
bambax · 2016-07-28
> our research showed that quality of leadership received virtually no mention when people described meaningful moments at work, but poor management was the top destroyer of meaningfulness
Spolsky:
> Administrators [code name for managers] aren’t supposed to make the hard decisions. They don’t know enough. All those super genius computer scientists that you had to recruit from MIT at great expense are supposed to make the hard decisions. That’s why you’re paying them. Administrators exist to move the furniture around so that the people at the top of the tree can make the hard decisions.
http://avc.com/2012/02/the-management-team-guest-post-from-joel-spolsk…
tedmiston · 2016-07-21
Ars, The Information [1] (slightly controversial because of their paywall), and I also really like Fred Wilson's short blog posts [2].
[1]: https://www.theinformation.com
[2]: http://avc.com
crystalmeph · 2016-06-28
Microsoft Smartscreen says it's been reported as a phishing site. However, if I strip out the URL parameters and just go to http://avc.com/2016/06/best-seed-pitch-ever/, there's no problem. It's only when you go to the full linked URL http://avc.com/2016/06/best-seed-pitch-ever/?utm_source=feedburner&… that there's a problem.
hammock · 2016-05-27
There was a great article that gets posted here often about how it's ok to be unprofitable if you have high growth, and it's ok to have low growth if you have high profits. Anyone have a link?
Edit: found it. http://avc.com/2015/02/the-40-rule/
ChuckMcM · 2016-05-21
There are some great web sites on how venture capital works, I can recommend https://hbr.org/1998/11/how-venture-capital-works for the basic model (this was pre-dot-com bubble bursting so it got tweaked) and Fred Wilson's summary (http://avc.com/2014/05/vc-fund-economics/) is a good followup.
edit: Wright->Wilson, thanks gist.
snowwrestler · 2016-04-26
Fred Wilson just does not seem to be a fan of Apple in general. He rage-quit their shares entirely during Steve Jobs' illness and blogged about it. Some sample posts:
Fear and Loathing Is Not a Great Brand Image (2007) - http://avc.com/2007/11/fear-and-loathi/
Does Apple Have A Blind Spot About Flash? (2009) - http://avc.com/2009/02/does-apple-have-a-blind-spot-about-flash/
Selling Apple and Google Today - http://avc.com/2009/01/selling-apple-a/
Android and iOS (2013) - http://avc.com/2013/08/android-and-ios/
ivankirigin · 2016-04-13
mikeyouse · 2016-04-07
http://avc.com/2012/09/indeed/
> Indeed has always been the quiet one. Nobody really talks about them. But as I have said a number of times on this blog, they are the most complete company in our portfolio. They have it all. Two world class entrepreneurs as founders. A solid management team all up and down the company. A product that is beloved and services more than 80mm people worldwide every month. An engineering team that has kept the service up with literally no down time that I can ever remember. A business model that, like Google's, is the best on the Internet. Revenues, profits, customer satisfaction, shareholder value. They built a fortress and I am just so happy to have had a front row seat watching them build it.
frabcus · 2015-11-18
I highly recommend a four year vesting period for any startup ownership, as described by Fred Wilson here:
http://avc.com/2010/11/employee-equity-vesting/
Everytime I've seen a company do something else, somebody leaves early on with too much stock. Then on the next round it has to be negotiated down anyway. The amount always ends up similar to what a 4 year vest would have been!
So if you've done one full year of work, and so has she... And you each "own" half, that means you would keep a quarter of your half that has vested if you walk away. i.e. 12.5%
Hmm, that still sounds like quite a lot to be honest, but it really depends on how much you've actually both built. Maybe you haven't done a year of full time startup work.
My view is, BTW, not from Silicon Valley, but UK companies.
cinquemb · 2015-09-16
Tell that to very prominent VC's in NYC that have been blowing this horn for years in contradiction to your sentiments…[0].
I think public schools (and schools in general as an institution) face the same problem universities are facing: the obsolescence on such a mechanism to effectively and efficiently disseminate knowledge as more and more resources are allocated for signaling of such rather than acquiring/pursuit of it.
[0] http://avc.com/
dankohn1 · 2015-06-17
On the SaaS platform, Fred Wilson recommends and invested in Eshares, which seems relatively low cost. I don't have personal experience with them.
http://avc.com/2015/01/broken-cap-tables/
hkmurakami · 2015-05-16
I believe that derives directly from what people like Fred Wilson or Mike Arrington have been saying:
"As I was reading Josh Kopelman‘s excellent post on the seed boom and Series A bust, I got thinking of some words of wisdom Mike Arrington once shared with me. He said “numbers always ruin a good story.”
What Mike meant by this is you can raise a seed (or Series A) on a story. But at some point, you will have numbers; users, user growth, revenues, and revenue growth. You will also have a burn rate. And those numbers will become the thing you are judged on and your nice story will be “ruined” by the numbers."
http://avc.com/2015/03/numbers-can-ruin-a-good-story/