One of my past jobs was about simplifying complex things; the “crypto” movement desperately needs A LOT of simplicity right now. Let me give it a try. Basics first, and some proposals at the end. What is crypto? I don’t like the usual answers. To me, it’s an incentive framework. The killer app…

I have studied Mark Zuckerberg’s latest keynote about Facebook’s rebranding as Meta, and the push towards the Metaverse (Full 80-minutes Keynote here, or an 11-minute summary here). …

Gene editing, its true potential and the dangers ahead Join us on April 15th at 10:00am PT (San Francisco) for this free Cota Access online event to discuss the CRISPR gene editing technique, its true potential, and the dangers ahead. CRISPR-Cas9, or simply CRISPR, a genome editing technique, has generated…

Have you ever received an email from noreply@ your-company-of-choice dot com? Of course. How many times? Hundreds of times? Thousands of times? Truth is, companies don’t want to hear from you. They just want you to pay and shut up. Companies don’t want to hear from you. They just want…

Going Viral: The Future of Human Health, Pandemic Resilience and Biowarfare Join us to discuss the most important topic of last year, of this year, and possibly every future year to come. COVID-19. Viruses. mRNA Vaccines. Synthetic Biology. Pandemic Resilience. And the very real threats and opportunities around Biosecurity and Biowarfare. Register for this event here. We have two rockstar speakers…

The problem Bitcoins are created out of thin air from a computing process called “mining”, a term inspired by how precious metals are extracted from Earth’s crust. In reality, this “mining” is a computationally intensive task with an artificial level of difficulty, required to reach consensus on which “block” in the blockchain…

I am a big fan of Stripe, and I was recently thinking that there’s a non-obvious opportunity for them to fix one of the most annoying thing ever: customer service. I tried to imagine what an internal memo on the subject should look like. Wrote it. And decided to share…

This is what happens on the Internet today. I can only call it insanity. You know what it is. It has happened to you, too. But the more I see it, the harder it is to believe that this is what the Internet has become. Try to visit this page…

Fred Wilson, a VC (Venture Capitalist) I quite like and admire, talks about Mentors, in particular about the two mentors that shaped his professional life. Here’s two important passages (bold is mine): Angela Merkel, LeBron James, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos … Nobody gets somewhere on their own. Everyone has help. …