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< Archive / 2020

January, 2020

Brexit and me

This will probably be my last post about Brexit. I'll lose the ability to live in the country I grew up in three hours from the moment I'm sat at my desk writing this. You'll probably read this after it has happened. I'm doing fine and have the privilege of being ...
January 31, 2020

The worst mistake startups make

I co-founded two startups (once as CTO, and once as CEO). I was the first employee at two more (CTO and VP of Product Development). I’ve helped to source and invest in 24 more startups, and have advised 75. Right now I’m the Head of Engineering at ForUsAll, a Series ...
January 29, 2020

Trying something new

I'm running an experiment with Julien Genestoux, CEO of Unlock. You might remember that I was the VP of Product Development there until last August - I'm very proud of the technology we worked on, and I'm excited about what the team has worked on since. Starting with my next post, ...
January 24, 2020

After the debate

I'm still hopeful for a progressive candidate. There are two to choose from. I'm still planning on voting for Warren in the primary. America is a fundamentally conservative country by policy, but I don't believe this is the case by population. There's a reason why Bernie Sanders is America's most popular ...
January 15, 2020

On the Plaid acquisition

Yesterday, Plaid announced it was being acquired by Visa for $5.3 billion ($4.9 billion in cash, and $400 million in retention equity). It took me by surprise: I expected Plaid to continue to grow as an independent platform. Still, given that its Series C put it at roughly a $2.65 ...
January 14, 2020

41 Things

One. Today is my birthday. I’m forty-one years old. That one’s for free, phishers. Two. My first memory is walking down a street in Amsterdam with my parents. A cobbler’s sign with wooden clogs hangs high above us. On street level, I loop and soar my red plastic aeroplane. A bigger ...
January 7, 2020

Predictions for journalism 2020

NiemanLab is publishing its annual predictions for journalism. They're all worth reading, but here are a few highlights: Jennifer Brandel imagines a letter from 2073: What’s interesting is that, back then, people thought of news as something that was produced and distributed out of a place. That’s why they called it a ...
January 3, 2020

We all deserve freedom from surveillance

I came across this video from Skylark Labs today: automated identification of suspicious activity in a crowd via drone. Of course, neither the drone nor the system is really thinking: it's simply drawing on an existing corpus of data in order to draw conclusions. We already know that machine learning ...
January 3, 2020

Here's what I read in December

Books The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood. A sequel to The Handmaid's Tale that deepens the story and modernizes some of its themes. Deeply feminist, utterly gripping, absolutely essential. One of the best books I read this year. We the Corporations, by Adam Winkler. The history of corporate rights in America (and earlier), ...
January 1, 2020