As manufacturing and agricultural jobs that were once done by humans are increasingly done by machines, many workers have moved to the service sector.

But now even service jobs can be replaced with technology. Today,

People do things for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with money. And if we have to pay people a bit more to do the really boring things then that's not a bad thing at all -- will speed up automation of those things!...Also by letting them work on things that benefit society but aren't paid, such as cleaning up the environment, taking care of sick or elderly, teaching children, etc.

Hence getting hyper-millions in later stages is easier than getting $500k in the seed-phase for 10 or 20 percent of the company. Why is it so hard to be enthusiastic about an idea when you see it? Reason no. 1: fear of being the only one who didn’t smell the fail – in later stages you might be wrong but all others were wrong, too. So you might lose big money but still you are a proud investor.

Startups can be particularly lonely because there’s a huge cognitive dissonance — everyone has to pretend they’re always killing it — to fuel the hype machine for investors, customers, and press. However, most of the time—given the failure rate of startups—most people’s businesses are dying, slowly and painfully. It’s not founders’ faults — this dissonance is built in the game. We’re trying to will something to existence. “Fake it until we make it” is almost part of the job description.

Highlights from USV Team's personal blogs this week:

See you next week.



Jonathan