When you think of founders who have been massively successful in bringing new and novel technologies and companies to market, you don't normally think of a nomad who has been living out of a single backpack for over a decade. You don't think of someone who talks like a modern-day Peter Kropotkin. You don't think of someone who walks through life with a childlike wonder for bugs, plants, and animals.

But that is exactly who Vitalik Buterin is.

I had the pleasure of attending the premier of Vitalik: An Ethereum Story on Wednesday night at the Angelika Film Center in NYC.

This film is nominally about the Ethereum blockchain and developer ecosystem. But it is actually an opportunity to spend just under ninety minutes with Vitalik learning about him and how he lives, thinks, and how he became who he is.

I have been in and around the blockchain sector for almost fifteen years. I am a fan and a holder of Bitcoin. I am a fan and a holder of Solana. I am a fan and a holder of Ethereum. I am a fan and a holder of many other protocols, tokens, and communities. I am all in on all of this.

But I will say that Vitalik has a special place in my head and heart. He doesn't just talk a good game. He lives his beliefs and leads from there. He is a very special human. And this film does a great job of showcasing that.

This film was funded by an Ethereum crowdfund on Mirror.xyz and is now being streamed onchain at ethereumfilm.xyz. If you want to stream it, you go there, mint an NFT for $20, and can stream it on your computer or on your TV if you connect an HDMI cable or airplay to AppleTV. The proceeds of the NFT sales will go towards getting a distribution deal with a major streamer so that this film can reach the general public.

Here's a trailer if you want to try before you buy:

I think the general public needs to know about Vitalik. The narrative around crypto, blockchains, and web3 is mostly about speculation and scamming. Vitalik is the opposite of all of that and his story can help the mainstream understand this sector and the potential of it.

So if you want to meet a very special human being, take some time this weekend and stream Vitalik: An Ethereum story. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Code is a mobile app built onchain that allows anyone to send anyone else money anywhere in the world and it is entirely self custodial. Code uses the Kin token that came out of the Kik mobile messaging app. The Code team are the same folks that built Kik and Kin. I've been working with them for almost a decade and a half and it has been a wild and fun ride.

You need the Code app to do anything with Code but once you have it, it is slick. You can download Code here or by scanning this QR code:

One of my favorite features of Code is the tip card. Here is mine:

If you have Code on your phone, you can also go to https://tipcard.getcode.com/X/fredwilson

Anyone who has the Code app can scan that card and tip. Everyone who has Code has a tip card. Your tip card can go in your social profile on TikTok, Twitch, etc. You can send it via a messaging app. Or, like I just did, you can put in in a blog post.

Micropayments has always been one of the most exciting onchain use cases for me. And as we are seeing all over web3 now, tipping is leading the charge for micropayments. I think that's awesome.

A friend of mine stopped by the USV office the other morning and asked me about startup mortality rates. Her business sells to startups and big companies in roughly equal measure and she told me they were seeing a rising rate of startups closing up (and thus churning as customers). While churn is never good, you really can't beat yourself up too much about your customers going out of business. She wanted to know what we are seeing.

Our portfolio has been relatively free of startup mortality in the last couple of years but it is something we expect for, plan for, and underwrite for.

I have always said this, on my blog and in person, about what we have seen at USV and what I have seen in other early stage venture funds I've worked on and invested in:

1/3 are good investments

1/3 turn into something but you wish you hadn't made the investment

1/3 are zeros

Another friend of mine asked me a similar question via email this week and pointed me to something out of Nate Silver's book, On the Edge.  Nate breaks down risk in data driven ways and uses as examples poker, venture capital, crypto, etc.  The book quotes some figures from Marc Andreessen wherein he outlines that a16z's funds perform as follows (note: he also broadly says these are 'top decile' fund performance numbers, too): 

• 25% of investments make zero return (i.e. 100% write offs)

• 25% produce a return greater than zero but less than 1x (i.e. are losses)

• 25% produce a return between 1x-3x

• 15% produce a return between 3x-10x

• 10% produce a return of 10x or greater

If you bucket the first two as "zeros" or near zeros, the third one as "something you wish you hadn't invested in" and the last two as good investments, you get to roughly the same 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 that I like to use.

Of course, these are numbers over a very long period of time. Startup mortality rates rise and fall based on the vibrancy of the overall fundraising market and at times will be higher and at times will be lower.

But if you look at the data over a very long periods of time, you see that a small percentage of investments produce all of the returns. And that has always been the case for the fortyish years I have been in early stage venture capital.

Maybe that will change but it hasn't yet.