VK One

 

A few days ago, Vinod Khosla got into a war of words with Marc Andreessen. Or was it Elon? It was an argument over OpenAI and “open” AI. It might have felt like a bunch of capitalist leviathans butting their big heads, but for me, this was classic Vinod.

Always speaking his mind, and batting a 1000 percent for the companies he has backed. Standing his ground, giving his reasons like the rat-a-tat of a Tommy gun, argumentative and not giving an inch.

I couldn’t resist diving into the recent spat between Vinod and other tech leaders. It took me back to the late 90s when I interviewed the legendary VC for a Red Herring cover story.

Here’s my take on the man.

As a reporter for Forbes and Red Herring, I wrote about broadband and everything that powered the network. Not surprisingly, there was no getting away from Vinod. He had so many big bets on so many parts of the network that I was constantly calling him as a reporter. It was as if he had a cheat code for the broadband future.

When I joined Red Herring, then-editor Jason Pontin (now at DCVC) assigned me to do a cover story about Vinod. And I did. The inside headline of the story was “Vinod’s Time” but the cover rightfully dubbed him “The Number one VC on the planet.” And he, thanks to a string of multi-billion dollar exits and public offerings, was outshining his colleagues at Kleiner Perkins.

It was one of the most grueling assignments, but also the most satisfying. While reporting for the story, I talked to countless people and of course, got to spend time with Vinod. Not a lot of what we discussed made it to the magazine. We talked at length about Dynabook, Go Computing, and 3DO. We also discussed Nexgen.

Of course, only a few people remember those startups, because Silicon Valley only remembers the outcomes, not the process. Anyway, there is one comment that made it into the story.

“To be ahead of the market you can’t be a follower. You can’t be following what is hot. You have to have your own belief system. But to me risk is a religion, and I think if you want to go after the big market, you need to take it.

That quote has stayed with me. It is not only my personal mantra, but also a reminder of what makes a really good entrepreneur and very good capitalist, venture or otherwise.

These days, it is pretty common to hear venture capitalists wax eloquent about “AI”. But before the “official” launch of “OpenAI” and its sudden rise to prominence, most of the new experts were busy diddling around with crypto and web3. Buzzword bingo is a popular sport for the investor crowd.

Despite the growing ranks, very few real venture capitalists really roam the proverbial Savannah that we call Silicon Valley. Vinod was, and is one of those. His early bet on OpenAI is a worthy testimonial.

My favorite part of writing the story about Vinod could be summed up in two lines. I wanted to figure out a way to emphasize his impact (beyond just financial returns). So, I came up with an analogy that would make sense to non-technology people: the number of jobs created by the companies he started or funded.

In the 24 years he has spent in the United States he has helped create 40 companies, business which have produced a total of 150  billion in market value. Directly or indirectly, his efforts have created six jobs for every day he has lived in the United States. 

This might have seemed like such a throwaway line to the editors — I had to argue hard to keep it in — but it meant a lot to me. Both as an immigrant and one who believes in capitalist ideology. I thought that was the best way to illustrate a success story. Especially because I had grown up in a quasi-socialist society where the rich hoarded their wealth.

I believed (and I still do) that a capitalist’s true mettle was not in the amount of wealth they accumulated, but in how much downstream wealth they helped create and propagate. That meant a thriving ecosystem where everything was growing. Of course, society seems to have lost sight of that ideology since. Capitalism has metastasized into what it wanted to replace. That’s a topic to consider later.

Anyway, back to Vinod. Social Media is the best thing that has happened for him because nothing (and no reporter for sure) can capture his true essence than what he shares on Twitter.

Happy Sunday!

March 17, 2024. San Francisco

On my Om

18 Mar 2024 at 01:10

Old Tools, New Ideas

 
Photo by Om Malik

I have become a big fan of vintage fountain pens. When I saw this lovely Ebonized Pearl WASP Clipper, I immediately fell in love with it. This is quite a rare find. Most collectors won’t even take it out of the cabinet. I don’t buy things to put them in a case. For me, it is all about enjoying them, as often and as long as I can.

Indulge me, on the pen though. This is the largest WASP made; collectors call it OS or Oversize. It is very rare to find these in Ebonized Pearl celluloid. Sheaffer seldom produced WASP pens in the same celluloids as their Balance pens. Ebonized Pearl WASPs are quite unique.

In 1933, Sheaffer created a sub-brand called Vacuum-Fil. It was intended for the initial release of the vacuum filler in 1934 as a means to work out the design and manufacturing process. The first Sheaffer Balance with a vacuum filler appeared in the 1935 catalog. Vacuum-Fil was renamed the WASP Pen Co in 1936.

This is one of the finest restoration jobs I have ever seen. The pen looks brand new and is a pure delight to write with. I have inked it up with J. Herbin Vert de Gris. The Fine-Medium nib is a great way to show off this understated ink. Perfect combination for my morning writing rituals. Or as I like to say, Old Tools, New Ideas!


“I am searching for a good pair of pants. I never found a pair of pants that I just love. If they’re not right, which they never are, it’s a sadness.”

David Lynch (via)


So “Archive” is the new “email bankruptcy?” #


Etc.

If you are short of ideas and want to avoid generative AI, here are 100 ideas for writing a blog post. Many are personal, fun, and surprisingly easy (or difficult). Go ahead, check it out.

Gerry Levin was once the master of the universe. When he died this March, the world barely noticed. “Gerald Levin died. The world will remember him as the architect of the Time Warner AOL merger. But I think of him as a grieving father,” writes Jeffrey Zeldman.

This is disaster class. I mean, CTO of a major disruptor can’t answer a small, simple question. More importantly, hasn’t been trained to evade answering such questions. via


I can’t stop listening to Nils Frahm’s new album, Day. This is my favorite track.


March 17, 2024. San Francsico

On my Om

17 Mar 2024 at 15:40

Why I redesigned my home page?

 

tldr: I have rearranged my internet homestead into three sections — the front of the book (blog posts), the feature well (essays, long analysis & interviews), and the back of the book (my podcast, obsessions, travels, recommendations & photography). If you are interested in digging into the why of this change, read on. I think it is worth your time, but I also understand if you don’t give two hoots about it. 


The best part of the Internet is that it is always evolving. It is nothing, if not a reflection of us the people, who use, evolve and shape the network. Just as the network shapes us. This truth about constant change has helped me embrace and evolve with it. And a lot of that is reflected in what I write, both here and elsewhere. 

My blog is where I think out loud. In my mind, it’s my web homestead. If you show up here often, or if you have been for a while, you know the what and why of my thinking. Whenever I think about my own blog and blogging in general, I can’t help but notice that the art and craft of “internet writing” has been changing. 

My blog was a representation of me. That is why in the early days, like many others, I put a lot of effort into how the “blog” looked to my visitors. Most of my readers came to the posts via RSS and never really visited the site, unless of course they wanted to comment and be part of the community. 

I am a big believer in having beautiful, elegant tools and environments and their impact on my creativity. Whether it is vintage pens, the right notebook, the proper camera, or the optimal computer, I care how they work and look. That combination makes me happy and that is what makes me do my best work. 

And having a beautiful website is exactly the same. It was and still is one of my favorite obsessions — how to build a beautiful destination. It was always trying to find a balance between posts, blogrolls, and other “stuff” in the website design templates. And I tinkered endlessly. Matt (Mullenweg) joked that I changed web designs more often than most dudes changed their wardrobe. No words have ever been more accurate.

Since those days, the “blogs” as we knew them have been atomized. Now, even the individual post itself is (wrongly) conflated with the platform it is published on — a Medium, a Substack, or a LinkedIn post. The blogrolls have vanished(Hopefully not for long, if Dave Winer has anything to do with it.) The platforms have taken over, and blogging is everywhere: social media, newsletters, and communities – they do what we all used to do on a blog. Of course, all this has made the web a bit homogenous. 

But ultimately, the ideology of blogging is still the same. Whether you post a piece on Twitter or on LinkedIn, you are doing what I have been doing for a long time — blogging. But, I have also evolved. Sure, I still use RSS to keep tabs on things. However, I also use social media, and I subscribe to newsletters. I use Feedbin to read, listen, and view all that is relevant for my information diet. I even have a blog roll that keeps evolving based on who (and what) I am reading. 

And of course, I still blog. In other words, I write posts. I ponder on things. I link to good work around the Internet. I curate as much as I create. In my early days as a blogger, my day job was writing for magazines. My features and interviews, what is now known as long reads, were published by them. Today, my essays and interviews find home on my website. 

When I started blogging, it focused primarily on broadband and the Internet. It was about the potential of the “network” and the people who were working to take it to all places and to connect others. And very occasionally I wrote about non-tech topics on my blog. But it was not often — because the young, spouting Internet was a big enough story in itself. It was what I loved and obsessed about. (I still do.) 

Since those early days, I have grown, both as a writer, as a professional, and as a man. My other interests — books, music, photography, and analog objects like paper, ink, and pens— are as important to me as my ongoing interest in the network and its impact. It is not a surprise that I write about them too. 

And again, no surprise, my web homestead is a bit bigger and cluttered. I mean, I have nearly 24 years’ worth of “stuff” around here. So I started to think about coming up with a better way to organize the home page (and my website) not just for the visitors, but also for myself.

** 

To do so, I went back to my roots. When working for the magazines, I learned to think of what I wrote in terms of where it would sit in the publication: the front of the book, the feature well, and the back of the book. Much as I liked writing cover stories and doing deep interviews, I absolutely loved writing for the “front of the book.” 

Writing the front of the book pieces took longer because of the limitation of space and perceived topicality. You had to make an impact quickly with fewer than 500 words & maybe a graphic, even though there is a good chance no one would remember reading these pieces. 

For me, there has always been a clear parallel between the front of the book and a good blog post. A good blog post is short, pithy, dense with information, and topped off with clear, clever writing. I think my blogging and my magazine writing started to influence each other around 2001.

As an aside, my favorite piece that I had ever written for Red Herring magazine was a comparison of the per-square-foot revenues of data center operators and big box retailers. I still try to think of such analogies when writing for my blog (and elsewhere).

And then there was the “back of the book” where you wrote about things that were marginally tangential to the magazine’s core focus — such as travel or new devices and objects. Of course, there were reviews of devices and books. But it was part of giving a more comprehensive feel to the magazine. 

The three-bucket system made a lot of sense when it came to reorganizing the blog (and streamlining the publishing process). So, I have rearranged my internet homestead into three buckets — the front of the book (blog posts), the feature well (essays, long analysis & interviews), and the back of the book (my podcast, obsessions, travels, recommendations & photography).

From a reader’s perspective, nothing has really changed except that there is a modified new home page. When you arrive at the website, you get the latest from all three categories. If you receive my writings via email or RSS or social media, there is no impact. You don’t visit the homepage and you don’t need to, though if you do, now there is a quick and easy way to glance at the latest. (If you want to get my latest writing in your inbox by signing-up here. It is free and simple.)

But if you are a newcomer or a casual visitor to the website, then you get a very good idea about me – the person behind the blog and my various interests—with a quick scan. I believe this reflection of “self” or a person will be important in the times ahead. The rise of generative AI means that there will be more indistinguishable content on the internet, and the only way to stand out — is by reminding people that you are human.

I hope you are going to come along with me on this journey until it is time to hit the proverbial archive button.

March 16, 2024. San Francisco 

On my Om

16 Mar 2024 at 17:29

Why both Vision Pro & Quest are Good & Great?

 

If you have been a regular reader, then you know very well how I feel about Vision Pro, which is the best entertainment device I have ever owned (outside of my iPad.) And you also know that I think it is a two-horse race between Meta and Apple. (You can see my comments in this CNBC story.)

Hugo Barra, who was the Head of Oculus from 2017 to 2020 and a lifelong virtual reality enthusiast, makes the argument in his essay about the Vision Pro and how it compares with not only Meta’s Quest devices, but also with other headsets that are available on the market. 

“The Apple Vision Pro is the Northstar the VR industry needed, whether we admit it or not,” he writes. Barra, like many others, doesn’t think it is anywhere even close to being a finished product. Except:

The Vision Pro launch has more or less done exactly what I had always hoped for, which is to build a huge wave of awareness and curiosity that elevates the spatial computing ecosystem and could ultimately lead to mass-market consumer demand and a lot more developer interest that VR/AR has ever had. Now it’s up to the industry to create enough user value and demonstrate whether this is in fact the future of computing.

Hugo’s 11,500-word long analysis about the evolving VR market, Vision Pro, and the battle between Apple and Meta should be at the top of your reading list. Highly recommended. This could be the best piece you could read today. Visit Hugo’s Blog.

On my Om

13 Mar 2024 at 15:59

My most used apps have “AI” inside

 

At present, these are my most used web/desktop/mobile apps.

  • Readwise: Save, read, comment, remark, and share. I couldn’t ask more for this Pocket and Instapaper replacement. 
  • Lex.Page: is my new Google Docs.* 
  • MacWhisper: I use this to capture all the audio on my conference calls. It transcribes and creates notes for future reference. 
  • Sudowrite: Shhh, this is my creative co-pilot. **
  • Descript: I am working on doing podcasts. This is a good way to get a better handle on the audio, and hopefully get good at this whole “podcast” malarky. 
  • Poe: My AI playground. Really, just a place where I go to do work, but mostly to waste my time with various AI bots. 
  • Feedbin: Not just my RSS reader, but also a place for me to aggregate my newsletters.
  • Arc Internet: The best browser on the market right now. Fast, clever, and none of the Chrome-crud. 
  • Photoshop: Firefly and other AI tools have turned this into a must-use app for me as a photographer. 
  • MacGPT: OpenAI, except on my desktop. 

Honorable Mentions:  Topaz Labs AI & Google Labs’ (AI Search.)

Legacy Apps & Services that I still use a lot: Apple Mail, Apple Music (Classical), Plex, VLC, Twitter, Safari, and Apple Notes. Frankly, they all need some AI-Botox ASAP!

Quick Thoughts: Apart from #7, all of them have “AI.” Except #10, all of them have a workflow built around “AI.” The same goes for Topaz & Google Labs (AI Search.) Google Labs’ experiments with search are much better than Perplexity, which I am told is raising even more money at extremely high valuations. 

The point is that we all like to talk about AI, but ultimately it is all about what AI can do for me. It is about the “workflows” and how they make me productive, efficient, and faster. They are not about replacing me and my skills, but instead, they are augmenting my capabilities. As I have said before, AI means “augmented intelligence.”

What else should I try? Do you have any suggestions? 

Nostalgia is a curse in life and tech.

Disclosures: * Lex is funded by True Ventures, where I am “partner emeritus.” ** Sudowrite is run by two close friends. I have an indirect investment in the startup.

On my Om

12 Mar 2024 at 16:53



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