PJ Parson is a partner at Northzone, best known for backing Spotify when it expanded to New York in 2012. But his path to venture capital wasn’t linear—it ran through small-town Sweden, jazz musicianship, tour guiding in Italy, ski resorts in France, McKinsey, fish farming, and eventually private equity. His story is about how unconventional experiences shaped his ability to see opportunity, manage chaos, and eventually help build New York’s second wave of tech.

This conversation is about the hidden arcs behind venture capital: not just finance, but music, culture, resilience, and the willingness to reinvent yourself.

SECTION I — Origins and Early Adventures

00:00 – Small town Sweden to Dayton, Ohio PJ describes growing up in Sweden, then spending a formative exchange year in Dayton, Ohio. The contrast opened his eyes to the wider world.

00:42 – Three gap years of adventure Instead of rushing to university, PJ spent three years as a tour guide in Italy and ski guide in France. What began as playing music for tourists turned into managing excursions and eventually running large resorts with hundreds of guests per week.

03:00 – Learning history by necessity Thrown into leading tours of Rome, Florence, and Pisa, PJ immersed himself in Renaissance and Roman history—discovering a love of learning outside the classroom.

SECTION II — University and Discipline

07:30 – Stockholm School of Economics After years of adventure, PJ enrolled at Sweden’s top business school. His vision deficiency exempted him from military service, but the maturity gained from his gap years helped him thrive academically.

09:00 – Trial by fire in microeconomics A professor failed him twice before finally passing him on the third attempt, teaching him the value of rigor and persistence.

SECTION III — McKinsey: Survival and Structure

11:00 – Entering consulting almost by accident PJ applied for a McKinsey internship with little knowledge of consulting. His charisma and conceptual thinking got him in, despite average grades.

17:00 – “You’re a mis-hire” After just one project, McKinsey tried to fire him. PJ pushed back, arguing for another chance—and survived. He stayed five years, learning the discipline of structure, detail, and execution.

SECTION IV — Private Equity and Fish Farming

20:00 – Leaving McKinsey for private equity In 1993, PJ joined one of Sweden’s early private equity firms. But he quickly found the work too removed from real operations.

22:00 – Becoming a fish CEO Sent to fix a struggling fish distribution company, PJ became CEO. He turned around the business by slashing working capital, introducing just-in-time methods, and building simple internet-based systems in the mid-1990s.

25:00 – Buying the company for $1 When the firm gave up, PJ took over the company himself—proving his ability to lead a turnaround.

SECTION V — Lessons Before Venture

27:00 – From chaos to clarity Running ski resorts, surviving McKinsey, and saving a fish company all taught PJ the same lesson: leadership is about managing complexity, staying calm in chaos, and finding leverage in systems.

29:00 – Toward venture capital These experiences set the stage for his later career in private equity and eventually Northzone—where he would back Spotify and help shape New York’s tech scene.

Closing — The Arc of PJ Parson

PJ’s story shows that venture capital isn’t just about finance. It’s about lived experience: music, travel, management under pressure, and the ability to reinvent yourself. From Swedish jazz roots to Spotify in New York, his path reflects the eclectic, global, and resilient spirit that defines the New York tech ecosystem.

Welcome to my series on OG NY Tech

Celebrating 30 years of the New York tech ecosystem, from 1995 to now.

Kevin Ryan joined DoubleClick in 1996, just months after it was founded—and helped turn it into the most important New York technology company of the internet era. From there, he went on to co-found or incubate a generation of defining NYC companies: MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, and dozens more through AlleyCorp.

This conversation is about how New York tech actually formed: not in garages, not via hype cycles, but through media, advertising, distribution, discipline—and people who stayed when it got ugly.

🎙️ Episode Chapters — Kevin Ryan

DoubleClick, the Internet Crash, and Building New York’s Second Tech Act

SECTION I — Before “New York Tech” Existed

00:00 – Books, tapes, and recording everything The conversation opens not with startups, but with New York itself—books about the city, recording devices, and the instinct to document moments that don’t yet feel historic. A fitting entry point for someone who repeatedly found himself early to structural change.

03:00 – From Europe to Yale to Wall Street A childhood split between Rome, Geneva, and Ohio. Yale economics and art history. Investment banking. Business school at INSEAD. Disney Paris during the launch of Euro Disney—scaling from 1,000 to 20,000 employees in under two years. Operations before tech. Execution before mythology.

SECTION II — Media, Cartoons, and the Pre-Browser Internet

07:30 – Running Dilbert… before browsers existed At United Media (a division of E.W. Scripps), Kevin builds one of the earliest commercial websites—for Dilbert and other syndicated content—before Netscape, before Mosaic adoption, before “the web” meant anything to most people.

09:30 – Why this mattered Syndication economics are collapsing. Newspapers are consolidating. The internet quietly offers a way to bypass gatekeepers and go direct to audiences—if anyone can figure out how to monetize it.

11:30 – The first banner ads Ads are hard-coded. Prices are invented on the spot. Netscape and IBM buy week-long placements. Measurement barely exists. But something clicks: distribution plus software beats content alone.

SECTION III — 1995–1996: Silicon Alley, Barely

15:30 – How small it really was In 1995 New York internet events fit in a room. Everyone knows everyone. Media companies flirt with AOL, Prodigy, and Pathfinder. Most incumbents wait for “the next internet.”

16:30 – The innovator’s dilemma, live Kevin proposes building a real internet division inside United Media. Leadership declines—too small, too uncertain, too reminiscent of the CD-ROM bust. A textbook example, unfolding in real time.

SECTION IV — DoubleClick: The Right Abstraction

18:00 – Meeting the founders Kevin meets Dwight Merriman and Kevin O’Connor—recent arrivals from Atlanta with a radical idea: dynamic ad serving. Smarter, measurable, programmable advertising.

19:30 – Knowing what you don’t know Kevin immediately understands the business importance—and immediately knows he can’t build it himself. The partnership works because the abstraction is right and the roles are clear.

21:00 – From CFO to President to CEO Joined in mid-1996 as CFO. Becomes President within months. Later CEO. The company grows from 10 people to 2,000 in four years. IPO in 1998—just 24 months after founding.

SECTION V — The Boom, Then the Collapse

24:30 – 1998–2000: Peak Silicon Alley DoubleClick becomes New York’s most valuable tech company. Tens of billions in valuation. The center of gravity for online advertising globally.

25:30 – The crash everyone misremembers In 2000–2001, 70% of DoubleClick’s customers go bankrupt. Competitors give away product to survive. Markets panic.

Kevin’s contrarian take: The market wasn’t wrong in 2000—it was wrong in 2001. Buying the leaders at the peak would still have paid off long-term.

28:30 – Survival math Half the staff is laid off. Businesses are sold. But ad volume keeps doubling. Product quality compounds. Competitors die. The “fat get thin; the thin die.”

SECTION VI — Why He Stayed

31:00 – The CEO decision Kevin becomes CEO as conditions worsen—not improve. Morale is low. The job is brutal. But the fundamentals are undeniable: internet advertising isn’t going away.

33:00 – Looking past the stock price If you ignore the ticker and look only at usage, share, and technical advantage, the outcome is obvious. That conviction carries the company through.

SECTION VII — Leaving, Then Starting Again

35:00 – Exiting DoubleClick After nine years, DoubleClick is sold to private equity (and later to Google). Kevin leaves—not out of failure, but boredom. Ad tech is solved.

36:00 – AlleyCorp: Incubation as craft From 2005 to 2008, Kevin and Dwight incubate six companies at once, investing their own capital, acting as chair and technical backstop.

37:30 – The hits

• MongoDB — open source, enterprise software, ten-year overnight success
• Business Insider — hiring Henry Blodget, betting on redemption and velocity
• Gilt Groupe — fashion, logistics, and scale at internet speed

Also: Panther, ShopWiki, Music Nation—some wins, some misses. The math still works.

SECTION VIII — MongoDB and the New York Enterprise Myth

44:00 – “You can’t build enterprise software in NYC” MongoDB disproves it. Slowly. Painfully. No revenue for years. Then compounding takes over.

46:00 – The long curve After 10+ years, MongoDB goes public at ~$100M revenue. The vast majority of value is created after year eleven.

47:30 – What people get wrong New York doesn’t lack technical talent. It lacks patience myths. Enterprise outcomes reward persistence more than hype.

SECTION IX — From Builder to Platform

50:00 – After 2013 AlleyCorp evolves from pure incubation to investing at scale. One LP becomes many. Fifteen to twenty investments per year. Fewer incubations. More pattern recognition.

52:00 – Having good ideas Good ideas aren’t brainstorms. They’re friction noticed repeatedly: Business news that doesn’t update. Wedding registries that sell plates instead of experiences. Databases that don’t match modern data.

CLOSING — The Actual Arc of New York Tech

54:00 – What this story really shows New York tech didn’t emerge from imitation. It emerged from media, ads, logistics, finance, and people willing to stay through down cycles.

55:00 – The hidden continuity From Dilbert on pre-browser internet to MongoDB at $30B+, this is one continuous story—not reinvention, but accumulation.

Howard Morgan started as an engineer and professor in the early computing days, and ended up building three (four? five?) huge and import investment groups. Renaissance... Idealab... and listen for more on the early computing gods through to Bitcoin and AI.

🎙️ Episode Chapters — Howard Morgan

Computers Before PCs, Venture Before “Venture,” and the Hidden Origins of Quant Finance

SECTION I — The Long Arc: From Mainframes to the Internet

00:00 – Recording everything

Louis Armstrong’s house in Queens, tape recorders running 24/7, and the idea that capturing everything matters—an unexpected entry point into a life spent documenting and building the future. 

02:00 – Why keep doing this?

Why founders and investors in their 70s, 80s, and 90s keep starting new firms: curiosity, youth by proximity, and the refusal to stop building. 

04:00 – 1995 is arbitrary (but useful)

Why the mid-1990s are a convenient marker for New York tech—even though the real story starts decades earlier. 

06:30 – Browsers before browsers

Early web commercialization: Mosaic, Spyglass, Quarterdeck, browser history, and the moment when the web quietly crossed from research to product. 

SECTION II — Becoming a Computer Scientist (1960s–1970s)

07:30 – City College, 1962

Discovering computers via a desk-sized machine with punch tape—and deciding, very early, to go all-in. 

09:00 – Dick Hamming’s intervention

A Bell Labs legend redirects a physics student toward computers, operations research, and what would become modern computing. 

10:30 – Speedrunning academia

Three years of high school, three years of college, three years to a PhD—becoming the youngest assistant professor at Cornell. 

11:30 – The first computer-printed PhD thesis

Punch cards, justified text, and convincing the university that this was the future. 

12:30 – Making computers less stupid

Early spell-checking, syntax correction, semantic error handling—and the belief that computers should fix mistakes, not punish users. 

SECTION III — The Office of the Future (Before It Was Obvious)

14:00 – Databases, UX, and email (1970s)

Large databases measured by the ton, early email, and building user-friendly systems long before “UX” was a term. 

16:00 – Windows before Windows

Multi-window systems, color vs. black-and-white debates with Alan Kay, and building what Xerox PARC would later popularize. 

18:00 – Personal computers as an experiment

DARPA hands out minicomputers to see what researchers will do—and accidentally invents networked personal computing. 

19:00 – The wine list incident

Creating one of the earliest online interest groups—and being told to shut it down before Congress notices. 

SECTION IV — From Research to Venture (Late 1970s–1980s)

21:00 – First taste of company-building

Commercializing Unix, meeting Jim Simons, and realizing that investing—not academia—might be the real lever. 

23:00 – Jim Simons before Renaissance

How a math professor accumulates capital, discovers computing’s power in markets, and dreams of a money-making machine. 

25:00 – Founding Renaissance (1982)

Splitting time between quant trading and venture investing—before either category really existed. 

27:00 – Early deep tech investing

Encryption hardware, LCD panels, Unix tools, QA software—companies that look like modern “deep tech” decades early. 

SECTION V — Quant Changes Everything

31:00 – The great split

Venture returns at ~25% IRR, quant at ~38%—and the decision to spin venture out of Renaissance. 

33:00 – Medallion Fund mythology

Capacity limits, extreme fees, internal-only capital, and quietly becoming the most successful hedge fund in history. 

35:00 – The quant ecosystem forms

D.E. Shaw, Two Sigma, AQR—time series, statistics, and data replace “market intuition.” 

38:00 – Alternative data before it had a name

Clickstream analysis, URL bars, and predicting Amazon revenue before earnings calls. 

SECTION VI — Idealab and the Internet Boom

42:00 – Why Idealab mattered

Company-creation as a system: projects before companies, cheap experimentation, and speed as advantage. 

44:00 – The 2000 peak

Raising $1B+ at a $9B valuation, surviving the crash, and why Idealab outlasted its peers. 

46:00 – Citysearch, GoTo, Overture

Search, local discovery, and the foundations of modern internet advertising. 

SECTION VII — New York Tech Comes Into Focus

48:00 – Returning to New York

From Philly and California back to NYC—just as New York tech finally coheres as a scene. 

49:00 – New York New Media Association

Meetups, early angels, and the connective tissue that becomes the New York startup ecosystem. 

50:00 – Deals you miss, deals you hit

DoubleClick envy, Half.com’s sale to eBay, and why timing always beats intelligence. 

CLOSING — Perspective from the Long View

52:00 – Seeing it all (except the iPhone)

Why most of the future was visible decades early—and why consumer mobile computing still surprised everyone. 

54:00 – The hidden history of New York tech

Before startups were cool, before venture had a name, before quant was dominant—New York was already shaping the future. 

Welcome to my series on OG NY Tech -- celebrating 30 years of NY tech ecosystem, from 1995 to now.

Fred Wilson's USV is kind of a 'nuff said, to borrow NYC comic book language. Hear the very early days and listen past through into the epilogue to hear Fred on music scenes and the process of discovery.

🎙️ Episode Chapters

SECTION I — The Core Interview: Building New York Tech (1990s → Now)

00:00 – Opening & framing OG New York tech

Why this conversation exists: 30 years of New York tech, the OGNY moment, and why Fred Wilson’s career offers a uniquely New York lens on venture, media, and culture. 

03:00 – Fred’s origin story (engineering → venture)

Growing up everywhere, landing in New York, fleeing engineering, and discovering venture capital as the overlap between money and technology. 

07:30 – Venture capital before the internet

What 1980s venture actually looked like: PCs, networking, and a financial world that barely knew what to do with software. 

10:30 – The 1995 New York “New Media” scene

Journalists, artists, media kids, and early internet builders collide—AOL, CD-ROMs, web artists, and why New York’s tech scene grew out of culture, not semiconductors. 

13:00 – Starting Flatiron Partners

Leaving Euclid, early internet bets, and the unlikely move that gave Flatiron real firepower: institutional backing from Chase and SoftBank before the bubble mentality fully arrived. 

18:00 – “You’re investing in a website?”

A defining venture lesson: the best investments often sound ridiculous at first. Why laughter and disbelief are leading indicators of outsized returns. 

21:00 – Three core investing principles

Contrarian ideas people hate, founders driven by obsession rather than business plans, and why it’s often a mistake to monetize too early. 

26:00 – Missionary founders (Etsy, Duolingo)

Accidental entrepreneurs, aesthetic conviction, and building scale before business models—why belief comes before revenue. 

30:00 – New York culture as an investing advantage

Why art, music, and creative subcultures shaped investments like Etsy, Kickstarter, and SoundCloud—and why Silicon Valley logic didn’t fully apply. 

34:00 – Blogging, influence, and burnout

The rise of AVC: daily writing, community, learning in public—and why politics and online toxicity eventually broke the spell. 

47:00 – Big funds vs. artisanal venture

A candid reassessment: mega-funds may have “won,” even if small, craft-driven venture remains more personally meaningful. 

52:00 – Cult classic vs. blockbuster

Impact, legacy, and why some investors (and companies) choose influence over maximum scale. 

SECTION II — Epilogue: Music, Taste, and Discovery (Pre-Game Chat)

55:00 – Music as a life pattern

Classic rock, indie, and the joy of discovering what’s next rather than replaying the canon. 

57:00 – Being early, not right

Why showing up to small shows, supporting emerging artists, and sharing discoveries mirrors great investing behavior. 

59:00 – Taste as practice

Curiosity, openness, and cultural participation—not optimization—as the quiet through-line connecting music fandom, blogging, and venture capital. 

Alan Patricof's been at it since he graduated from Columbia Business School just a couple years apart from Warren Buffett. And you might as well think of him in that same legend league, in Alan's case for Venture Capital. We start from the very early days and go right through today.

🎙️ Episode Chapters — Alan Patricof

Inventing Venture Capital in New York, Then Walking Away (Repeatedly)

SECTION I — The Core Interview: A 70-Year View of Venture

00:00 – A living timeline

Setting the frame: Alan Patricof at 91, still working, still curious—why this is less an interview than an oral history of American venture capital. 

03:00 – Pounding the pavement (1950s Wall Street)

No recruiters, no security desks: walking every building on Wall Street, floor by floor, asking for a job. How finance careers started before finance careers existed. 

05:30 – Learning investing the slow way

Investment counseling, portfolio construction, and why balanced, family-office style investing shaped everything that came later. 

07:30 – Development capital before “venture”

Real estate, bridges, electronics, finance companies—proto-venture investing before the word venture capital meant anything. 

10:30 – Family offices and private deals

Discovering the overlooked power of private company investing while everyone else focused on public stocks—and why this felt more human. 

13:00 – Becoming a board member at 34

New York Magazine, Datascope, Lin Broadcasting: early board roles, founder relationships, and the addictive pull of building instead of trading. 

15:30 – What separates great founders

The pivot instinct: knowing when to abandon the original market and redirect a product without abandoning conviction. 

18:00 – “You invest in the jockey”

Why founder psychology matters more than ideas, and why you can’t actually diagnose this until you’re already in business together. 

SECTION II — Inventing Venture Capital (1968–1980s)

20:00 – Starting Patricof & Co.

Nine family offices, a tiny first fund, and the realization that venture could be a service business as much as a capital business. 

22:00 – Warburg, Pincus, and the early peers

The handful of firms inventing venture in parallel—and how indistinct the lines were between VC, merchant banking, and private equity. 

24:00 – Surviving the 1970s

Why venture almost died: inflation, stagnation, and the need to do M&A work just to keep the lights on. 

26:00 – Going international before it was fashionable

London, Paris, New York—building venture infrastructure in Europe when the concept barely translated (literally “capital risk”). 

27:30 – The birth of Apax

Unifying global activities under one name and accidentally creating one of the world’s largest private equity platforms. 

SECTION III — Iconic Deals Before Tech Was “Tech”

29:00 – Apple, almost casually

A phone call, a small allocation, a $315k check—and a reminder that early venture often felt mundane in the moment. 

31:30 – Why nobody held forever

Ten-year funds, capital recycling, and why paper fortunes usually stayed theoretical. 

33:00 – Beating the bushes for deals

Fifteen deals a year, maybe one investment—finding companies meant showing up physically, not scrolling inboxes. 

35:00 – Office Depot and firm-building

Delegation, partnership, and why building institutions matters more than personal deal mythology. 

37:00 – AOL’s forgotten origin

Online games, modems, bankruptcy, and the pivot from play to communication that reshaped the internet. 

40:00 – Doing the messy work

Hands-on restructuring, capital engineering, and why early venture often looked more like salvage than storytelling. 

SECTION IV — Walking Away (and Starting Again)

44:00 – Why Apax stopped feeling like venture

Scale, later-stage gravity, and the quiet moment when a firm becomes something else. 

46:00 – A detour into global development

World Bank, IFC, Trickle Up, and applying venture logic to poverty, SMEs, and economic development. 

48:00 – Founding Greycroft

Writing “no private equity” into the mission, timing the internet perfectly, and building another major platform from scratch. 

50:00 – Venmo, Huffington Post, and the Web 2.0 wave

Media, payments, identity, and why New York finally started producing global tech brands. 

52:00 – PrimeTime Partners

Aging, longevity, and investing with personal urgency—spotting demographic inevitability before it became fashionable. 

SECTION V — New York, Finally

54:00 – Why New York couldn’t win earlier

Crime, cost, culture, and why founders simply didn’t want to live here in the 70s and 80s. 

56:00 – Media as New York’s wedge

Audible, publishing, advertising, and why content and distribution cracked the door before infrastructure followed. 

58:00 – The tipping point

From DoubleClick to Datadog: why everyone now needs a New York presence—and why this time feels durable. 

CLOSING — Perspective from Repetition

01:00:00 – The rare skill

Not spotting waves once, but having the courage to leave institutions when they stop matching your values—and doing it again. 

Ben Lerer tells us what ideas led to the creation of a whole new type of media company in the 2000s -- Thrillist -- and the age of newsletters and bloggers in New York, and how the powerhouse seed-stage venture firm Lerer Hippeau came from it all.

Dennis Crowley tells us how he got to New York and the early internet culture in the media/Wall Street world: and how it all led to Foursquare -- the art of the game

🎙️ Episode Chapters — Dennis Crowley

From Punk Zines to Foursquare: How New York Taught the Internet to Find Itself

SECTION I — The Core Interview: Growing Up Inside the Internet

00:00 – Setting the frame: OG New York tech

Why Dennis Crowley belongs in the canon of New York founders, and why 1995 feels like a plausible “Year Zero” for the consumer internet.

03:00 – Suburban modems and early online culture

Dial-up life, BBS culture, AOL, Prodigy, and discovering the thrill of connecting machines to people before the web had pictures.

05:30 – Punk zines, skating, and DIY publishing

Photocopied fanzines about video games and skate culture; disposable cameras as “screenshots”; learning layout, editing, and distribution before the word “creator economy” existed.

09:00 – Music as an operating system

Native Tongues hip-hop, skating culture, and the aesthetics of the early ’90s shaping taste, rhythm, and community instincts.

11:30 – Syracuse and discovering the graphical web

First Ethernet connections, Mosaic, Marc Andreessen in the newspaper, and realizing the web could become a mass medium.

13:30 – Early digital storytelling

Scanning photos, building homepages, blink tags, animated GIFs, and using the web as a proto-blog long before social media had a name.

15:00 – Advertising school meets the internet

Majoring in advertising, minor in information studies, and becoming the “internet kid” inside traditional agencies.

16:30 – Jupiter Media and the dot-com boom

Moving to New York in 1998 as a research associate, learning how the internet economy actually worked, and living inside nonstop startup parties.

20:00 – Studying the plumbing of the web

Infrastructure research: ecommerce systems, personalization engines, early customer-service analytics, and measuring how badly websites handled users.

23:00 – The crash arrives

Dot-com collapse, layoffs, evaporating optimism, and the sense that the entire New York tech experiment might be over.

SECTION II — Dodgeball: Inventing Location Before Smartphones

25:00 – Discovering Indigo and city software

Falling in love with Palm Pilots, mobile city guides, and the idea that cities deserved real-time digital maps.

26:30 – Teaching himself to code

“Learn to code in 30 days” books, hacking together early prototypes, and turning curiosity into functioning software.

28:00 – Layoffs, eviction, and personal collapse

Job loss, housing instability, breakups — and how downturns compress life into creative pressure cookers.

29:00 – Montauk, Harry Potter, and the Marauder’s Map

The idea spark: phones as real-time maps of where friends are, long before GPS or push notifications were normal.

30:30 – Building primitive location sharing

Email hacks instead of SMS, self-reported locations, and inventing “check-ins” without calling them that.

31:30 – 9/11 and leaving the city

Being in the West Village on September 11th, the emotional shock, and temporarily abandoning New York.

33:00 – Snowboarding exile and reflection

Retreating to New Hampshire, teaching snowboarding, video games as therapy, and deciding what comes next.

35:00 – NYU ITP: art school for the internet

Returning to New York through NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program — a collision of artists, hackers, designers, and urban technologists. 

38:00 – Dodgeball reborn at ITP

Partnering with Alex Rainert, remixing Friendster ideas into mobile social networking, and making phones socially alive.

41:00 – The Lower East Side as a living network

Bars as incubators, bloggers as amplifiers, Dodgeball driving physical crowds in real time — a proto-network effect.

43:30 – Media flywheel

Blog coverage → mainstream press → CNN → cultural legitimacy, all happening inside New York’s dense media ecosystem.

45:00 – Why venture capital didn’t show up yet

Scarce funding, dismissive investors, and the feeling of building something culturally obvious but financially invisible.

SECTION III — Google, Loss, and Reinvention

48:00 – Google acquires Dodgeball

A chance lunch, repeated demos in one afternoon, and a long acquisition process that finally closes.

50:00 – Life inside early Google New York

Watching Google scale the building footprint, seeing other acquisitions (Docs lineage), and learning how platforms actually grow.

53:00 – Identity crash after leaving Google

Losing Dodgeball as a personal identity, feeling professionally unplaceable, and facing creative emptiness. 

55:00 – The sunset press release

Google announces Dodgeball will be shut down — triggering urgency and emotional ignition. 

56:00 – Birthday party epiphany

At Lockhart Steele’s party, deciding to rebuild — this time with a launch deadline: South by Southwest. 

58:00 – Everyone says no (again)

Investors skeptical, legal fears, déjà vu rejection, and the persistence muscle getting tested.

01:03:00 – The breakthrough: real-world rewards

A San Francisco café accidentally invents the Foursquare business model — check-ins unlocking real benefits. 

01:05:00 – Overnight momentum

From ignored to oversubscribed almost instantly as the flywheel becomes visible.

CLOSING — What This Episode Is Really About

This isn’t just the origin of Foursquare.

It’s a story about:

• how creative subcultures feed technical invention
• how cities shape product behavior
• how failure metabolizes into insight
• how timing matters more than genius
• how the internet learned to inhabit physical space

And how New York — messy, artistic, media-dense, socially entangled — uniquely incubated a category that Silicon Valley later industrialized.

Albert Wenger tells me about his 20 years at USV, and how NY went from apps-mostly to deep and infra.

🎙️ In the Know — OG NY Tech

Guest: Albert Wenger (Union Square Ventures) Theme: 30 years of New York tech — personal origin story, early ecosystem formation, iconic USV bets, and future-facing frameworks (crypto + AI).

00:00–03:00 — Cold Open & Framing

• Playful cold open bumping into Fred Wilson; teasing a broader oral history of OG New York tech.
• Framing: 2025 ≈ 30 years since the “start” of modern tech (1995 milestones: Netscape IPO, Amazon founded, Yahoo incorporates, etc.).
• Establishes the podcast arc: reconstructing how New York became a real tech ecosystem.

03:00–07:30 — Discovering the Web (MIT Years)

• Albert discovers the web via Mosaic browser in an MIT lab.
• Describes the visceral “I’ve seen the future” moment and early intuition that newspapers would be disrupted (timing optimistic, direction correct).
• Nice color on early internet UX and accidental discovery.

07:30–10:00 — First Startup: W3 Health

• Doing a startup and a PhD simultaneously (strongly not recommended).
• W3 Health tackled patient data interoperability — still largely unsolved today.
• Learns he’s not a great CEO; brings in operators.
• Finishes dissertation, graduates MIT (1999), moves permanently to NYC.

10:00–13:30 — Fintech Detour + Bubble-Era Incubation

• Joins internet bank (Telebank → E*Trade Bank).
• Raises $25M for incubator LC39 at the peak of the dot-com bubble.
• Near-merger with a European internet vehicle collapses when the bubble bursts.
• Returns ~90¢ on the dollar to investors — rare mercy in that era.
• Early relationship with Brad Burnham (board member).

13:30–18:30 — Nuclear Winter & Almost Buying a Trucking Software Company

• Post-bubble funding freeze (2000–2002).
• Almost acquires TMW Systems (trucking software in Cleveland); deal collapses over tax issues.
• In retrospect, a lucky escape.
• Meanwhile Brad + Fred form Union Square Ventures (first fund raised ~2003–2004).

18:30–28:30 — Delicious: Social Tagging, Early Web Culture

• Meets Joshua Schachter; Delicious becomes one of USV’s earliest investments.
• Social bookmarking + tagging as foundational internet primitives (proto-hashtags).
• Yahoo acquisition happens quickly; secondaries didn’t exist yet, forcing early exit.
• Pushback on Yahoo bureaucracy; avoids west-coast relocation; first real liquidity moment.
• Theme: influence vs financial outcome — cultural impact exceeds exit value.

28:30–34:30 — Angel Investing → Tumblr & Etsy

• Starts hanging around USV; angels into Tumblr and Etsy.
• Etsy thesis: highly engaged sellers + low fees rejected by West Coast VCs.
• USV style crystallizes: large networks of engaged users, differentiated by user experience.
• Pattern recognition over fashionable narratives.

34:30–41:30 — New York vs Silicon Valley Narratives

• Stereotype debate: “taste vs engineering.”
• MongoDB as proof that deep infrastructure can emerge in NYC.
• LP skepticism toward NYC as a tech hub in mid-2000s.
• USV flies constantly to SF while nurturing NYC companies.

41:30–50:30 — Foursquare: When Too Much Money Breaks a Company

• Andreessen Horowitz forces entry by dramatically increasing valuation.
• Overcapitalization causes bloat, loss of product discipline, slow execution.
• Facebook clones features; Instagram ultimately captures the category.
• Lesson: capital velocity can destroy product velocity.

50:30–55:30 — Tumblr, Pinterest Miss, and Product Geometry

• Pinterest originally incubated in NYC; misread as “too similar” to Tumblr.
• Key insight missed: flow (Tumblr) vs stack/board (Pinterest).
• Small UX topology differences create massive outcome divergence.

55:30–01:04:30 — E-commerce, Network Effects & What USV Avoided

• Vertical e-commerce lacked strong network effects.
• USV generally avoided pure “sell stuff online” models (Etsy exception).
• Preference for compounding networks over margin arbitrage.

01:04:30–01:09:30 — Tech “Mafias,” Google’s Gift to NYC

• NYC historically lost talent after acquisitions forced westward relocation.
• Google’s NYC engineering presence reverses brain drain.
• Alumni effects begin to seed local startups.
• Bloomberg’s closed culture inhibited entrepreneurial spinouts.

01:09:30–01:12:30 — Crypto: Stablecoins as the Quiet Killer App

• Stablecoins transforming cross-border trade, especially emerging markets.
• New rails replacing old banking infrastructure.
• NYC initially constrained by regulatory friction and legacy finance antibodies.

01:12:30–01:16:30 — AI: The Four Futures Framework

• Two axes: speed of AI improvement × openness of models → four futures.
• Possibility of massive closed-model monopolies vs open chaotic ecosystems.
• Crypto potentially essential for machine-to-machine economies.
• Existential risk acknowledged without theatrics.

01:16:30–01:19:30 — Physical AI & Deep Tech in NYC

• Portfolio example: Veeam (robotics / physical AI) founded by MongoDB alumni.
• NYC strength in biotech + robotics + applied AI despite weaker infra dominance.
• Convergence of AI, physical systems, and biology as next frontier.

01:19:30–01:22:30 — Looking Forward: Bubbles, Cycles, Curiosity

• Comparing AI hype curve vs dot-com timeline.
• Reminder: dot-com valuations were far more extreme than today’s AI multiples.
• Closing reflections on curiosity, long-term compounding, and ecosystem evolution.

Owen Davis tells us how advertising powered early NYC tech and the big transition post-dot-com-crash to both consumer and enterprise tech superstars from New York.

John Borthwick tells us the roots story of media and art and agencies at the heart of the early NY tech ecosystem and some of the players, and takes it through predictions for what to expect today.

--

Pablos Holman and Amol on Deep Future

Amol Sarva: [00:00:00] On today's episode, I'm excited to have my pal, Pablo Coleman from the future. Are we rolling? We are rolling. Right on. Bob, are we rolling? Bob? And we're gonna talk about, I don't know I think we should talk about a little bit of origin story before we get to the fund and the new book that's coming out.

And I'm excited to be the first interviewer Yeah. That you've chosen to speak to 

Pablos Holman: about your freshly. Finalized manuscript. We're gonna turn the tables. I'm gonna have you on my podcast sometime too. Yeah, that'd be great. Apparently you have, we should 

Amol Sarva: have done right now, apparently you have hundreds 

Pablos Holman: of listeners, I dunno, hundreds or thousands here.

Here. Not hundreds of thousands 

Amol Sarva: Here on this podcast we have the two of us who will listen to it be recorded. Hey, I'm 

Pablos Holman: cool with that. I once had a radio show in Alaska and we had a full studio and we broadcast. But we had no antenna. The station had no antenna, but we had 24 hour a day broadcasting. So imagine like how esoteric and weird the DJs for a radio station are that have no listeners.

Yeah. Like we had the best [00:01:00] parties. 

Amol Sarva: Yeah. Wow. Then I guess let us begin then with the origin stories. Cool. You were born in Alaska? Apparently. I was born in 

Pablos Holman: Alaska. Yeah. It's hard to find an Alaskan who's escaped from Alaska, but I'm one of 'em, I've literally never met anyone who's from Alaska.

I know. Yeah. They make it about as far as Seattle and then they really feel like they've traveled and then they usually go back to Alaska. Very few Alaskans make it this far. So you made it to the great capital of Seattle across the I left Alaska, I went to Silicon Valley and then ended up, yeah, after the.com collapse, I retreated to Seattle.

And but that was good. And Seattle was really good for a long time. Now I'm over it. 

Amol Sarva: I, part of part of what's really cool about that experience, or at least that I quite admire, is you got to work with some of the real. Intellectual rock stars of the tech world. Certainly yeah, in the, I guess it would've been the two thousands, roughly.

Yeah. 

Pablos Holman: Yeah. After Silicon Valley I went to work I went to Seattle and I started Blue Origin or helped start Blue Origin with Jeff Bezos. Yeah. [00:02:00] And so that was great for me and an inflection point where I took all of the experience of bringing computer technology to life and trying to use the computers to bring other technologies to life.

And so that's what. What I think of as deep tech. 

Amol Sarva: Yeah. But how'd you even so what was the Silicon Valley tour of duty then that I 

Pablos Holman: started out computer hacking when I was a kid. So when I was in Silicon Valley, it was really about trying to, use the, that skillset to bring new technologies.

And, in the late, in the, like late eighties and early nineties, it was really just take computers into every industry for the first time. But then, once we started putting Muggles on the internet in 94, then I realized, oh shit, this is not gonna go ve]]> https://i0.wp.com/amol.sarva.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/amol-in-Saito-Slow-Down-World.jpg?fit=1024%2C1536&ssl=1 false no 0:00 No no https://amol.sarva.co/podcast/ai-x-bio-x-ny-highlights-from-our-conference/ Thu, 01 May 2025 21:56:18 +0000 https://amol.sarva.co/?post_type=podcast&p=6936 So you missed the all-day all-science+technology collection of superstars gathered by LifeX and Bits in Bio at Fenwick in New York? Wondering what the frontiers of foundation models in bio, longevity, startups and more are pushing?

Now you can use the cheat code and just listen to this synopsis of the big highlights and discussion points.

Here's what he's been thinking about the last month.

This doesn't look LIKE me but it does sort of resemble what I could possibly look like. It was the first draft. Some better prompting got us to the final image.

Metabolic Health is the biggest medical breakthrough of the moment. Dive in!

Dive into metabolic health!

Metabolic Health is the biggest medical breakthrough of the moment. Dive in.

Metabolic Health is the biggest medical breakthrough of the moment. Dive in!

Let's understand the cellular mechanisms and some of the most promising and widely used drugs in the world with one of the foremost researchers in the field, Matt Kaeberlein, formerly of University of Washington and now founder of longevity company Optispan

Mapping all the ways the GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic do and might work means we need to understand the biome and the efficacy of surgical interventions. We talk to Professor Randy Seeley who directs University of Michigan's Nutrition Obesity Research Center

Dr. John Buse has been at the forefront of diabetes research and endocrinology since before the first GLP-1 results started to become known. He studies the body's systems that seem to be at the core of how Ozempic and diabetes operate -- let's learn about the endocrine system and map out these system-level interactions

We have one of the world's experts on the liver - the place your body stores lots of energy from food, and distributes it onward to other systems, Dr. Waj Mehal of the Yale School of Medicine.

We lay out a map of the systems in digestion and metabolism, weight loss and exercise -- plus the different pathways that GLP-1s like Ozempic are using, and what else expected or unexpected is going on in our bodies

Get up to speed on the cellular biology with a fantastic overview from PhD scientist and founder of breakthrough pharma platform Cambrian Bio

After recording this episode, friends pointed out that I didn't cover big important parts of personal history that are covered here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey

He has a lot to say on the incentives and structure of an organization and how that creates teamwork and innovation, or doesn't.

Here on In the Know, Money Mark talks creativity and collaboration.

More on Mark and creativity

Find out if Stephen is a fox or a hedgehog.

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More at amolsarva.com

Listen in on this hourlong conversation with the panelists and the audience from Austin in March 2019.

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More at amolsarva.com

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More at amolsarva.com

Samar talks about Goodco's journey from TechStars to acquisition by German media giant Axel Springer. He emphasizes tapping into his team's needs, and having conversations on their values in their personal and professional lives in order to maintain a healthy culture during a period of growth.

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More at amolsarva.com

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More at amolsarva.com

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More at amolsarva.com

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More at amolsarva.com

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More at amolsarva.com

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More at amolsarva.com

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More at amolsarva.com

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More about amolsarva.com

We find out how important the right sound environment and equipment is on this one -- the sound quality is awful. Sorry guys.

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More about amolsarva.com

My topic this week: should I do a podcast? What to call it? And if I do, what kind of recording equipment do I need? We hear Felix's take. Enjoy!

In the Know is hosted by Dr. Amol Sarva, co-founder of Knotel, Knotable, Halo Neuroscience, Peek, Virgin Mobile, and a supporter or investor in nearly 100 startup companies. Every week, Amol bumps into interesting people and interviews them on solving the challenges in creating a large, impactful idea. More about amolsarva.com