Blog
Notes on newsletters
Email newsletters unlocked a new way to pay for content, but is this a tool or a network? You can write all you like, but how do you get readers? And is the take rate 10% or 90%?
When big tech buys small tech
‘Big tech’ buys hundreds of startups, but what are they, what does that mean for competition, and how does this fit into the broader market? How many more Instagrams are there, and how many DAOs?
Blockchain says it posted $1.5 billion in revenue this year
The auspiciously named Blockchain.com recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, which may as well be a century in crypto years. The U.K.-based private company has another reason to celebrate too: Its revenue just surpassed $1.5 billion year to date, according to vice chairman Nicolas Cary and chief executive Peter Smith, who shared the figure exclusively with Fortune.
Privacy on the internet: who cares?
The world of technology cannot, and should not, stand apart from ethics and the norms of civil society. On the internet, one of the most central normative questions we have wrestled with is the relationship between software applications, derivative data stored and shared in the cloud, and privacy -- notably, consumer privacy.
Reimagining the future of buy-to-let. Why we invested in GetGround.
Real estate is the world’s largest asset class: UK buy-to-let alone is £1.2T. Yet it remains completely un-securitised and inefficiently managed. Individual investors often find themselves lacking a clear view of property yield, while having to manage an ever-changing landscape of regulations and tax laws.
Metaverse! Metaverse? Metaverse!!
‘Metaverse’ is the buzzword of the moment, yet it doesn’t really exist as more than a label on a whiteboard, and many of the ideas it tries to combine might not happen, or not like that. This might be the new ‘information highway.’ But however it works, some kind of break-out of new devices, new experiences and new kinds of popular culture seems pretty easy to believe in.
Stepping out of the firehose
What does a mailbox with 351 thousand unread emails say about Bauhaus, the Arts and Crafts movement, and the Metaverse?
A decade of the Tim Cook machine
In all the enthusiasms, arguments and panics around tech, Apple is the $2tn elephant in the corner, mostly silent and serenely indifferent to the news cycle. It just ships - and it ships market-leading products, with metronomic precision, at massive scale, on a decade-long strategic roadmap. It also likes lecturing its peers. But is there another Jesusphone?
Why We Invested in Lightyear
About a year ago, via our friend and co-investor Taavet Hinrikus, we learnt about a promising pair of ex-Wise (formerly TransferWise) executives who were under the radar, on a mission to democratise retail investment in Europe. At the time, in “stealth mode” the project was called Gandalf. As longtime consumer fintech geeks and Tolkien fans, we were doubly intrigued.
Mainframes, ML and digital transformation
‘Digital transformation’ sounds like a parody of meaningless tech marketing, but actually captures some pretty interesting and important shifts in big company tech. It’s not as exciting as crypto or AR, and it takes a decade or two, but it’s just as big as smartphones.
Ads, privacy and confusion
Privacy is coming to the internet and cookies are going away. This is long overdue - but we don’t know what happens next, we don’t have much consensus on what online privacy actually means, and most of what’s on the table conflicts fundamentally with competition.
Do App Store Rules Matter?
We’ve been arguing about Apple’s app store rules for a decade now, but whatever your opinion of them, it should now be clear that something is going to change.
Why we invested in Zerion
Evgeny, Vadim, and Alexey have blown us away at every turn, with a powerful vision of creating the one-stop shop for DeFi. With a sharp eye for product and growth, they are rapidly bringing that vision to life.
Unleashing the potential of the extended workforce. Why we invested in Utmost.
We are living through a fundamental shift in the structure of work: the rise of the non-employee. This presents new challenges: how do you manage an increasingly heterogeneous workforce in a unified, holistic way?
Integrative SaaS: A new OS for the workplace?
There has been a proliferation – and fragmentation – of new work software in the cloud. End users can now pick and choose products that work for them, pioneered by the likes of Slack and Dropbox. But maintaining a coherent workflow across large teams is a struggle. So what should the “connective tissue” between SaaS applications look like?
Antitrust posturing
Late last year the US congress's antitrust committee held a series of hearings, and produced a 400 page report, on competition issues around big tech platforms. The report, co-authored by the new FTC nominee Lina Khan, essentially claimed that these companies are collectively the new Standard Oil, crushin
The Potential of Real Time Trade Finance. Our investment in Hokodo
By now, most of us have used or been offered a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) option when we shop online. BNPL not only makes checkout experiences faster, but also drives consumers to spend more money.