In 1985 I was running the largest merchant banking unit in my bank, something called the New York City Division. It was what all my peers aspired to do, but I found it sort of boring to be doing things like helping ITT do its next acquisition or helping Ron Perlman at Revlon reshape his juggernaut. I was asked to go up to talk to our Vice Chairman, who said the Management Committee wanted to…
My dear friend Frank is the guy who mentored me in the handling of private equity investment. He was a venture capitalist long before it was even known how cool it was to be a venture capitalist. Frank is a Marshall Scholar who attended the London School of Economics just when America was entering the 1960s. He did a stint in the Army like any good red-blooded American male did in those days, but luckily…
I am more focused on personal healthcare than I can remember ever being. One obvious reason is watching my brother-in-law struggle with his various maladies and the healthcare system’s back-and-forth about how best to handle it. I’ve seen the importance or specialist expertise in immediately fixing problems. I’ve seen specialists contradicting one another as to the state of their patient, perhaps overly focused on their specialty without adequate consideration of the bigger patient issue. I’ve…
One of those great conflicts that regularly afflicts me (and probably other liberal-minded sorts) is how to balance the Good Samaritan aspects of the ethos I try hard to consistently espouse and the lifestyle we live and like to maintain. I long ago determined that I am no Sister Teresa that insists on living my life with no creature comforts. I look to Pope Francis, someone who most would agree chose, even as Pope, to…
Tonight I am entertaining Kim’s family for the second night. They are here to honor the death a few days ago of her and their sibling. Unfortunately, since everyone grieves differently, some in the family are simply not ready to convene, so its all a bit of a broken play. Kim is at her final dress rehearsal for her show, which plays tomorrow and Saturday. She is going through a lot this week, so I…
With the AWS cloud storage outage that occurred yesterday, we are probably all wondering if we should be paying more attention to the AI and data center buildout issues that are being written about every day. I am also seeing more articles about how the data center demands on both power grids AND water supplies are starting to impact communities. Data centers use staggering amounts of both electricity and water and both are starting to…
AI is changing every day. I remember back in 1996 when one of my friends brought out a new toy on one of our motorcycle rides to Vermont. He had been a Naval Officer in the past and considered himself quite the navigator. This gadget he had acquired was something he called a Global Positioning System and it was about the size of an old Nokia cellphone. On it, on a dimly lit screen was…
I’ve always kept an eye on Echostar, the company that built out the Dish Network. That started about 35 years ago when I met my friend and VC mentor, Frank. Frank ran a venture capital business in the DC Beltway area and was wired into the Department of Defense technology vortex that spun out of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the U.S. Department of Defense’s primary research and development organization focused on breakthrough technologies…
Let me begin by stating that I value this hilltop VERY highly and we have no intention of leaving it soon. I am not so very voyeuristic about my home’s value that I tune into what my friend Steven calls Zillow Porn so very often. I am aware that Zillow has valued my home very much lower than I feel it deserves, but I understand the limitations of a vast algorithmically-driven service like Zillow and…
Today, Kim and I are flying north to join our friend Frank for a birthday celebration by going with him into the California Gold country for a few days. This feels like an appropriate way to celebrate his 88th birthday because, as a Marshall Scholar, Frank is not only a font of knowledge about California history but also one of the most brilliant global macro economists I know. Given the importance of gold to both…