I use beauty as a way of helping people to receive difficult or upsetting ideas. The topical issues are merely a vehicle for making one aware of one's own perceptual shift-which is the real thrill.

The fact is that the amount of money startups raise in their seed and Series A rounds is inversely correlated with success

I also like to use a sensational headline. Many people read blogs in aggregators, which generally show only the headline. So you have to give people a reason to click through. Blogs need to be real and personal. Reading it should be like hanging out with you. I play music for my readers. I show them videos I like. I tell them what I did over the weekend. And I tell them what is happening in the technology, Internet, and VC markets.

Foursquare's adoption of a game dynamic when it launched is a particularly clever implementation of a social hook.

When I see people laughing at ideas and companies we have backed, I smile. It means we are going to make a lot of money on that investment.

All markets have boom and bust cycles, and I think venture capital market has even more exaggerated boom and bust cycles.

Venture capitalists are professional money managers. We are provided capital to invest as long as we can return it to our investors with a strong return in a reasonable amount of time. A strong return is three times cash on cash. A reasonable amount of time is ten years max.