20VC: USV's Albert Wenger on Automation Replacing Humans, The Universal Basic Income and The Instalment & The Deployment Phase

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4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Albert Wenger is a partner at Union Square Ventures, one of the world's leading VC firms with investments in Twitter, Twilio, Zynga, Soundcloud, Tumblr, Lending Club and many more. Before joining USV, Albert was the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo and an angel investor (Etsy, Tumblr). He previously founded or co-founded several companies, including a management consulting firm and an early hosted data analytics company. Albert also writes a fantastic blog at Continuations.com and did a brilliant Ted X Talk here!

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Albert made his way into the wonderful world of VC?

2.) Albert breaks down the differences between the instalment and the deployment phases of technology? At what stage USV choose to invest and why?

3.) How much of a role does valuation play in Albert's investment decision making process? At what level does speculation become irrational exuberance?

4.) Why does Albert want to limit network effects that are provided to winning companies? What does Albert think makes a contestable market? What are the characteristics?

5.) Why is Albert such a protagonist for the basic income guarantee? What are the challenges? How will this affect human's relationship to automation? What will mankind do with this increased abundance of time?

6.) Why does Albert believe that every individual has the right to be presented by a personal bot? What are the prominent use cases? How does it invert the power relationships between networks and their participants?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Albert’s Fave Book: Beginning of Infinity

Albert’s Fave Blog or Newsletter: Azeem Azhar: The Exponential View

Albert’s Most Recent Investment: Clue: Period and Ovulation Tracker

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Albert on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Snapchat here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the 20-minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings on Snapchat,
0:05.4	and I'm immensely excited for the week ahead on the show, as we're featuring one of the world's
0:09.8	most successful venture funds of the last decade. It is, of course, Union Square Ventures in New York,
0:15.0	with investments in the likes of Twitter, Twilio, Zinger, Lending Club, SoundCloud, and a recent interview of ours actually, Circle Up,
0:24.0	just to name a few. And joining me today from USV, I'm thrilled to welcome Albert Venger,
0:28.6	who's a partner at USV. And prior to USV, Albert was the president of Delicious,
0:33.4	through the company's sale to Yahoo, and an angel investor at Etsy and Tumblr.
0:38.2	He also previously co-founded or founded several companies, including a management consulting firm
0:43.2	and an early hosted data analytics company. I also have to add a personal recommendation on behalf of Albert,
0:50.0	and that is if you haven't checked out his incredible blog blog continuations.com, then that really is a must.
0:55.7	And he also did the most fantastic TEDx talk in New York, which you can find on YouTube.
1:00.6	And both those links will be in the show notes, so do check those out.
1:03.5	And talking of checking things out, a key element of will someone or won't someone check out your business card, site design or logo is down to design,
1:11.9	and that's where Design Crowd come in. Design Crowd is an online marketplace for custom,
1:16.3	graphic, logo and web design that helps startups, entrepreneurs, web developers, and agencies
1:22.1	outsource design projects with over 500,000 registered designers. They bring their creative
1:27.4	flair, which I clearly don't have, to your project and allow you to go from launching a project to design completion in just three days, whilst also avoiding the usual exorbitant agency fees. This is perfect for entrepreneurs and small businesses using Design Crowd to outsource their logo, site or print design.
1:45.6	So check them out at designcrowd.com forward slash VC,
1:49.1	and enter the promo code VC100 for an incredible $100 off.
1:53.8	But without further ado, I'm delighted to handover to Albert Venger, partner at Union Square Ventures.
1:59.1	Three, two, one, zero.
2:04.8	You have now arrived at your destination.
	...

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