## May 23, 2023

Back in 2014, USV got subpoenaed by the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) over our web3 investing activities. We hired a law firm, answered the subpoena, and that ultimately landed me in public testimony in front of [...]
[Read more](https://avc.com/2023/05/the-freedom-to-innovate/)

## May 19, 2023

This is the second post in a row where I am bringing back an old tradition. This time it is Fun Friday, something I haven’t done in about five years. Like last week, the catalyst is our portfolio company Blackbird [...]
[Read more](https://avc.com/2023/05/fun-friday-upside-pizza-club/)

## May 12, 2023

It has been a long time since I did a Funding Friday here at AVC. I used to do them every Friday. We have funded a lot of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and bakeries here over the years. Here are [...]
[Read more](https://avc.com/2023/05/funding-friday-crowdfunding-restaurants-via-blackbird/)

## May 10, 2023

There has been a lot of discussion about how AIs can make art and possibly replace artists, but I think the opposite is more likely to happen. Artists have been using AI to make art for a while now and [...]
[Read more](https://avc.com/2023/05/ai-art/)

## May 4, 2023

I was approached by a company this week that has trained a large language model on all of the blog posts I have written here at AVC. There are 9059 of them for those that are counting. They wanted to [...]
[Read more](https://avc.com/2023/05/aivc-2/)

## Apr 26, 2023

Ten years ago, a small group of folks in the K12 Computer Science Education community in NYC decided to put on a “mock job fair” for high school students who were taking computer science classes in the NYC public schools. [...]
[Read more](https://avc.com/2023/04/the-annual-computer-science-fair-2/)

## Apr 23, 2023

I am the Chair of the Etsy Board and have been an investor and board member at Etsy since the mid-2000s. It is a company that I love and get great joy from being part of. Last year Etsy quietly [...]
[Read more](https://avc.com/2023/04/etsy-lens/)

## Apr 17, 2023

USV’s current thesis is: Enabling trusted brands that broaden access to knowledge, capital, and well-being by leveraging networks, platforms, and protocols. That last word is powerful but unfortunately less understood than the other words in that sentence. Protocols have [...]
[Read more](https://avc.com/2023/04/what-is-a-protocol-and-why-does-it-matter/)

## Apr 12, 2023

Six months ago, I wrote about Direct Air Carbon Capture and ended with this: I remember hearing that “we’ve spent hundreds of years taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into our atmosphere and we are going to [...]
[Read more](https://avc.com/2023/04/noya/)