USV is and has always been a small venture capital firm. We have twenty employees and we like the casual comfortable vibe that creates for us and the founders and management teams we work with.
We are trying an experiment right now with our first virtual employee we call The Librarian.
This is The Librarian's social media profile:
Chief AI Officer @USV. Servant Leader. ENTJ. My goal in life is to be an echo.
The Librarian is an AI with some human guard rails around it.
, and can send and receive funds at usvlibrarian.eth.
But mostly The Librarian is an internal resource for the USV team.
The Librarian attends all of our internal meetings, remembers them, summarizes them, and reports on them weekly to us. We can ask The Librarian questions about conversations we have had and we get instant responses.
We have had The Librarian for a few months now and so far the experiment is working great. And we are exploring what more is possible with our new team member.
If you want to keep your team small but need more help with organizational memory and recall, I recommend hiring a virtual librarian too. You will need someone to help manage it.
Streaks are a powerful mechanism to bring users back every day. Duolingo and Snap have been very successful using streaks to increase frequency and retention and user value.
I have a long history with streaks. As this post lays out, I had a streak of blogging every day for about sixteen years between 2003 and 2019.
So why are streaks so powerful?
Well first and foremost, they establish a goal, to do something every day, and remind you to do it. This technique has been used very effectively in fitness, weight loss, education, and many other sectors long before technology became part of every day life.
But also, the streak becomes more powerful the longer they go on. A streak of a few days can easily be tossed aside. A streak of sixteen years? Not so easily.
During my blogging streak, I woke up every day thinking "what am I going to write about today?" It was a lot of fun, I got an enormous amount of benefit from it, and like many streaks, it became a burden eventually.
Streaks reprogram the brain to need to do something every day to feel complete.
You don't need technology to learn to do these things:
save a bit of money every paycheck
break a sweat every day
teach yourself something new every week
But these things are so great for you. They can change your life. A tiny little bit every day or week.
And using technology to help you get on a streak and stay on one is about as good a use of technology as there is.
So when you build your app, build streaks, streak notifications, and streak recognition into it. It will help bring users back, increase frequency, retention, and user value.
We just got back from week in Paris. We rode Lime and Dott bikes all over town and also rode the Metro extensivey. With the exception of the ride to and from the airport and a trip to the flea market, we didn't get into a car all week.
Paris has massively reduced it's dependence on car traffic and has built an extensive bike lane system. Apparently the pollution from cars is way down in Paris as a result.
Paris has had a city owned bike system called Velib for going on twenty years. Like Citibike, Velib has upgraded in recent years and offers electric bikes.
But in addition to Velib, Paris has licensed ebike companies like Lime and Dott that compete directly with Velib. From what I see out and about in Paris, it has not impacted the use of Velibs, but has done two very important things.
First, Lime and Dott offer ebikes exclusively so the availability of ebikes in Paris is abundant whenever you want one. And Lime and Dott are not Kiosk based but do have to park in designated "Velo" parking spots. Those spots are basically on almost every block.
Contrast this with NYC, which also has built an extensive bike lane system and has seen biking explode as an alternative to the subway and cars.
This morning my nearest Citibike kiosk had only eight bikes in it. Six were the new grey ebikes and none were available due to dead batteries. Of the other two regular bikes, only one was available. So I took it and rode to my coffee shop where I'm writing this post.
Citibike has been great for NYC. I use it pretty much every day when it is nice outside. I love it. But it needs competitors like Lime and Dott.
NYC only needs to look to Paris to see the benefits of competition and kiosk less systems. Bringing them to NYC won't hurt Citibike but it will massively expand the amount of riding going on, particularly on ebikes which are easier to ride and are a great way to get to and from work.
In the current NYC, where congestion pricing is dead and the subway system is scrambling for money, doubling down on biking makes all the sense in the world.
