Building a Startup

When I was a young associate in a VC firm in my mid 20s, one of the partners told me I should get an annual physical every year and if I did it in the fall, I should get a flu shot while I was having my physical.

I have done that every year since and this afternoon I will spend an hour with my doctor getting poked and prodded and a needle in my upper arm with whatever mixture of flu vaccine they are giving out this year.

Around the same time, my mother advised me that since I have her fair skin I should find a good dermatologist and have a full body scan twice a year. I have been doing that too ever since.

I have seen the statistics on the relative spending between preventative care and critical care but I don’t remember exactly what they are. I do recall that the vast majority of medical spending in the US is on critical care and a small amount is on preventative care.

That seems wrong to me. We should do more to make sure that we all make the effort and take the time to have regular check-ups, do the required scans (mammograms, prostate exams, etc), and get things that will prevent disease like vaccines.

I suspect that beyond good practice, there are startup and investment opportunities in preventative medicine. It is the kind of thing that personal mobile computing can make a big difference in.

Back in March 2009, USV hosted an event called Hacking Education. It was the beginning of our effort to invest in the transformation of the education sector.

A few weeks ago, USV held its annual meeting, roughly 15 years after we closed our first fund. And our partner Rebecca gave a presentation on our education portfolio, which is now one of the strongest parts of our entire portfolio.

As Rebecca was developing her presentation, I wrote an email to her that said:

when did we do Hacking Education? Was that ten years ago now? That may also be a useful reference, maybe at the start of the presentation

And so she went and pulled some photos of that event to start her presentation.

Today she wrote a blog post on USV.com featuring the big themes of her annual meeting presentation. And she posted a few of those photos, in which we are all looking quite a bit younger.

Rebecca concludes her post with these optimistic words:

Our education portfolio has become a core value driver in our funds. In part, we think this is because we have hit the tipping point in consumers’ interest in self-driven, direct-to-learner education because technology has enabled higher quality education to be delivered at a lower price point, a counter-balance to the inflationary trends we’ve seen to date. Appetite for products and services that reframe what it means to learn – and how to learn – is high, and quickly accelerating.

As Bill Gates famously observed, we overestimate what can be done in a year and underestimate what can be done in a decade. A decade after hacking education, we are working with a bunch of high growth companies that are helping to transform what it means to learn and be educated and we are very proud of that.

Although I am an avid Android fan/user, I am equally fond of Apple’s Airpods. I have used the original and V2 Airpods with great success over the last few years and can’t imagine using anything else to pair with my phone for audio.

I purchased the AirPod Pro a few weeks ago and have been using them exclusively and I am not quite sure if I want to stay with them or go back to the V2 Airpods.

I have never liked headphones with silicone tips. They create an odd feeling of pressure in the inner ear that feels strange to me. And I also don’t love noise cancellation when I am out and about, which is where I use the Airpods.

On planes and in the office, where noise cancellation is something I quite like, I use over-ear Bose headphones with noise cancellation instead of the AirPods.

I also don’t love the larger charging case, which I typically have on me while I am out and about.

And, I don’t think the Bluetooth pairing (which is how they connect to Android phones) works as reliably as the Bluetooth pairing on the V2 Airpods.

I am going to give the Airpods Pro a few more weeks before I make a final call, but I am leaning towards going back to the V2 Airpods right now.

I am curious to hear what others think about these two Airpod products. I wonder if I’m in the minority or the majority on this.