There are a few lessons I’ve learned in life. The first was about reading hard things. I started my career as an ASIC/FPGA designer, and I often designed chips that had to connect to other integrated circuits. These ICs often had specification documents that described how they worked that were over 100 pages long. I […]
Author Archives: robmay
The Counterintuitive Effects of Cancel Culture. How Banning Things Makes Them Stronger
They say sunlight is the best disinfectant. I think about that every time I hear about another protest against a speaker or an idea. If you really want to kill stupid ideas, you should actually let people discuss them publicly. Otherwise, they get pushed to the far corners of the internet filled with other nutjobs* […]
The CUP Theory of AI Defensibility For Services As Software Business Models
I’ve written a bit about “services as software,” one of the models I like best in a world of AI. The gist of the model is that you take a services business where humans used to provide the service and you either use robotics ( if it’s a physical service) or algorithms (if it’s a […]
When AI Fails: Welcome To The Real World
In the early days of Talla, one of our data scientists, Daniel Shank, attempted to replicate a popular paper out of Google, on “Neural Turing Machines.” He spent a ton of time trying to get it implemented in the real world, and never could. He gave a public talk about it here, which is interesting […]
The Lily Pad Problem – Why We Mishandled Coronavirus
There is a problem you sometimes see on IQ tests that reads something like this: If the number of lily pads on a pond double every day, and it takes 30 days for them to cover the entire pond, on what day is the pond half covered? Many people answer 15 days, as that is […]
Why Technologists Keep Guessing Wrong On the Outcome of Technologies
An article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday highlighted that Uber and Lyft haven’t lived up to their promises. Ride sharing was supposed to make traffic better but study after study has shown that it has made traffic worse. The thing no one is talking about is, this is a bigger trend in tech – […]
Beyond AI: Why I Joined The Board of NECSI
Several years ago I read the book “Logic of Failure.” The book is about how poorly humans deal with complex systems. To give you a simple example, when I was in college I had a roommate who didn’t understand how a thermostat worked. There is a time delay between changing the thermostat and changing the […]
Startup Marketing In 2020
I’ve done two enterprise software startups, and the biggest change between them was the shift in the customer acquisition landscape. In the early days of Backupify (2009 – 2011), if you were a company doing SEO, lots of content marketing, re-targeting, and social media marketing, you were cutting edge and not everyone did those things. […]
Defining The Services-As-Software Business Model For AI
My angel investment in Botkeeper has been one of the most influential in my thinking on how AI strategy is evolving. When new high impact technologies come along, they often shake up status quo business models and because no one understands what business models might emerge on the other side, it’s a wonderful time to […]
Why I Became a VC and Joined PJC
Today I’m excited to announce that I’ve officially joined PJC as a General Partner. I’ve thought about becoming a VC for a long time. In fact, back in 2011 I was talking to my head of Sales at Backupify and we were discussing “doing what you love.” I talked about how what I really loved […]