5 Tips for Raising Your Girl Geek

As geek parents, we often have rosy colored notions about our children growing up. We actually want them to be geeks. From the earliest of ages we dress them in WoW gear, teach them to quote Star Wars and wonder when is too early to start reading The Hobbit. We nurture them in the way of the Geek, hoping that, when the time comes for them to choose their path, they won’t stray far.

But being a geek kid isn’t easy; and being a geek girl might even be harder. Here are some things to keep in mind if you are raising a geek girl that might help her–and you–get through the school years.

The Book Factor
Problem: My geekiness manifested, first and foremost, in books. At a very young age I had a proclivity for reading science-fiction and fantasy books. While most girls were reading the Babysitters Club books, I was devouring Madeleine L’Engle and C.S. Lewis, soon followed by a host of others. Geek girls often discover a great method escape in SF/F, mystery, horror, and other non-realist genres at early ages, which unfortunately, can make them stick out like a sore thumb during study hall. I remember getting teased for reading King Lear for fun, and seriously contemplated hiding the book under a cover, or not reading it at all. Which would have been a mighty shame.

Suggestion: Try to get involved in your daughter’s reading, if you’re not already. I was born to non-geeks, so my parents really had no interest in what I was reading. If you can’t be involved, look into reading clubs–or start one–that support the genres your daughter is into. Look to libraries and gaming stores if there’s nothing available at school. And above all, even if you don’t get the stuff she reads, reiterate that reading is awesome.

 

The Pop Culture Factor
Problem: Geek girls don’t watch the right shows. They don’t go to the right movies. They don’t listen to the right music. And unfortunately, pop culture provides the clues by which kids sort each other out; it’s almost as obvious as the clothes they wear. When I was younger, I loved “The X-Files”, Westerns and They Might Be Giants. I quoted Monty Python and the Holy Grail with my handful of guy friends, but certainly didn’t win points in the cool crowd. Often girl geeks fall into this odd no-man’s land. We are passionate about the things we like, but share them with very few. Especially in a high school or junior high-school setting. That can lead to teasing, isolation, and ultimately, depression.

Suggestion: If you are a geek, yourself, it’s fine for you to reach out. I mean, it is your fault she’s the way she is, right? But don’t be too pressing, because even if your geeklet gal speaks Klingon fluently, she needs to find her own brand of geek. If she’s into medieval stuff, consider the SCA. If she’s got a sci-fi lean, consider taking her to a convention. Maybe she’s a budding film-maker? Enroll her in film classes. Not to mention, there’s always the Internet. For me, that was my saving grace, discovering like-minded people, even if they were far away. And if teasing is a problem, help to equip her with witty ripostes and bolster her self esteem with praise.

The Boy Factor
Problem: There are more boy geeks than girl geeks. At least, that was my experience. And many geek girls discover more friends among guys than girls. This can lead to feeling of self-consciousness and a lack of connection with other girls. While this isn’t always a bad thing, I definitely had trouble making gal friends as I got older, and assumed there were so few geek girls that it wasn’t worth the trouble. Good, enduring relationships between girls are important, not just for your daughter’s social growth, but emotionally as well. Not to mention, having tons of guy friends can be an issue when dating starts…

Suggestion: Start with family. I had some great gal cousins growing up, and though they weren’t exactly geeks, our friendships were strong. If you’re daughter doesn’t have gal friends as school, you can encourage her to meet people at your church or other extended network. Also, teach her about all the wonderful girl geeks in history, like Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie and Felicia Day. Go fictional, too. There are plenty of geek gals in literature and movies, like Agatha Clay, Meg Murryand Kaylee Frye. Help make her proud to be a girl geek!

The Smart Factor
Problem: Many young geeklets tend to be smart. Whether it’s math, science, English or art (or all of the above), young girl geeks will excel in something. And coupled with the geeky tendencies and often bookish nature, this doesn’t exactly contribute to popularity (not that they want to be popular, but you know what I mean). Personally, I recall the utter mortification as my English teacher in ninth grade read aloud my essay to the whole class as an example of excellence. I melted down into my seat, withering from the stares and snickers.

Solution: You know you’re on shaky ground when your girl geek starts to be embarrassed of being smart. If grades and enthusiasm are waning, it’s time for parental intervention. But not too much. And not too little. Really, you know your daughter best, and it’s important to talk about what’s going on at school. While the “grades will help you in college” argument won’t always work, home incentives–like movies or gadgets–might. And nothing replaces flat-out support. If you sucked at a subject in school it might worth dragging out your report card to share, and let her know you wish you had worked harder. Either way, just continuing support and praise of her performance will help steer her in the right direction.

The Self-Image Factor
Problem: There wasn’t always a culture of geek girls. We didn’t always have pride, solidarity and ironic 16-bit graphic t-shirts. And even some girls don’t realize they’re geeks at all. As such, they feel like they never fit in. Even though they assert they don’t want to be the crowd, they can’t help but feel on the outskirts. This can lead to a poor self-image, which is never a good thing. While popularity isn’t important, self-worth always is.

Solution: Encourage your geek gal to get involved, even if the interests aren’t up her alley. You never know: she might love homecoming. She might take to soccer, or softball. I enjoyed being on the Yearbook committee when I was in high school, which had a great cross-section of folks, geek and non-geek. Geek doesn’t mean you have to shun what everyone else does; it just means that you have your own slant on it. And it also means you’re smart enough to think outside the social box. If anything, being a geek means the rules don’t apply!

No matter how geeky your daughter is, fostering her sense of self-worth is the most important thing. Every girl is different; every girl responds differently to parental intervention. But just being there, however corny that might seem, makes all the difference in the world. I know, even though my mom wasn’t a geek, she always took the time to talk to me when I was having a tough time at school. Even when I begged her to be homeschooled, she kept encouraging me to stick with public school. In the end, I wouldn’t change my school years for anything. Every step I made along the way made me who I am today, after all: a very proud geek gal.

Traders Profit With Computers Set at High Speed

It is the hot new thing on Wall Street, a way for a handful of traders to master the stock market, peek at investors’ orders and, critics say, even subtly manipulate share prices.

It is called high-frequency trading — and it is suddenly one of the most talked-about and mysterious forces in the markets.

Powerful computers, some housed right next to the machines that drive marketplaces like the New York Stock Exchange, enable high-frequency traders to transmit millions of orders at lightning speed and, their detractors contend, reap billions at everyone else’s expense.

These systems are so fast they can outsmart or outrun other investors, humans and computers alike. And after growing in the shadows for years, they are generating lots of talk.

Nearly everyone on Wall Street is wondering how hedge funds and large banks like Goldman Sachs are making so much money so soon after the financial system nearly collapsed. High-frequency trading is one answer.

And when a former Goldman Sachs programmer was accused this month of stealing secret computer codes — software that a federal prosecutor said could “manipulate markets in unfair ways” — it only added to the mystery. Goldman acknowledges that it profits from high-frequency trading, but disputes that it has an unfair advantage.

Yet high-frequency specialists clearly have an edge over typical traders, let alone ordinary investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission says it is examining certain aspects of the strategy.

“This is where all the money is getting made,” said William H. Donaldson, former chairman and chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange and today an adviser to a big hedge fund. “If an individual investor doesn’t have the means to keep up, they’re at a huge disadvantage.”

For most of Wall Street’s history, stock trading was fairly straightforward: buyers and sellers gathered on exchange floors and dickered until they struck a deal. Then, in 1998, the Securities and Exchange Commission authorized electronic exchanges to compete with marketplaces like the New York Stock Exchange. The intent was to open markets to anyone with a desktop computer and a fresh idea.

But as new marketplaces have emerged, PCs have been unable to compete with Wall Street’s computers. Powerful algorithms — “algos,” in industry parlance — execute millions of orders a second and scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously. They can spot trends before other investors can blink, changing orders and strategies within milliseconds.

High-frequency traders often confound other investors by issuing and then canceling orders almost simultaneously. Loopholes in market rules give high-speed investors an early glance at how others are trading. And their computers can essentially bully slower investors into giving up profits — and then disappear before anyone even knows they were there.

High-frequency traders also benefit from competition among the various exchanges, which pay small fees that are often collected by the biggest and most active traders — typically a quarter of a cent per share to whoever arrives first. Those small payments, spread over millions of shares, help high-speed investors profit simply by trading enormous numbers of shares, even if they buy or sell at a modest loss.

“It’s become a technological arms race, and what separates winners and losers is how fast they can move,” said Joseph M. Mecane of NYSE Euronext, which operates the New York Stock Exchange. “Markets need liquidity, and high-frequency traders provide opportunities for other investors to buy and sell.”

The rise of high-frequency trading helps explain why activity on the nation’s stock exchanges has exploded. Average daily volume has soared by 164 percent since 2005, according to data from NYSE. Although precise figures are elusive, stock exchanges say that a handful of high-frequency traders now account for a more than half of all trades. To understand this high-speed world, consider what happened when slow-moving traders went up against high-frequency robots earlier this month, and ended up handing spoils to lightning-fast computers.

It was July 15, and Intel, the computer chip giant, had reporting robust earnings the night before. Some investors, smelling opportunity, set out to buy shares in the semiconductor company Broadcom. (Their activities were described by an investor at a major Wall Street firm who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job.) The slower traders faced a quandary: If they sought to buy a large number of shares at once, they would tip their hand and risk driving up Broadcom’s price. So, as is often the case on Wall Street, they divided their orders into dozens of small batches, hoping to cover their tracks. One second after the market opened, shares of Broadcom started changing hands at $26.20.

The slower traders began issuing buy orders. But rather than being shown to all potential sellers at the same time, some of those orders were most likely routed to a collection of high-frequency traders for just 30 milliseconds — 0.03 seconds — in what are known as flash orders. While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, a loophole in regulations allows marketplaces like Nasdaq to show traders some orders ahead of everyone else in exchange for a fee.

In less than half a second, high-frequency traders gained a valuable insight: the hunger for Broadcom was growing. Their computers began buying up Broadcom shares and then reselling them to the slower investors at higher prices. The overall price of Broadcom began to rise.

Soon, thousands of orders began flooding the markets as high-frequency software went into high gear. Automatic programs began issuing and canceling tiny orders within milliseconds to determine how much the slower traders were willing to pay. The high-frequency computers quickly determined that some investors’ upper limit was $26.40. The price shot to $26.39, and high-frequency programs began offering to sell hundreds of thousands of shares.

The result is that the slower-moving investors paid $1.4 million for about 56,000 shares, or $7,800 more than if they had been able to move as quickly as the high-frequency traders.

Multiply such trades across thousands of stocks a day, and the profits are substantial. High-frequency traders generated about $21 billion in profits last year, the Tabb Group, a research firm, estimates.

“You want to encourage innovation, and you want to reward companies that have invested in technology and ideas that make the markets more efficient,” said Andrew M. Brooks, head of United States equity trading at T. Rowe Price, a mutual fund and investment company that often competes with and uses high-frequency techniques. “But we’re moving toward a two-tiered marketplace of the high-frequency arbitrage guys, and everyone else. People want to know they have a legitimate shot at getting a fair deal. Otherwise, the markets lose their integrity.”

In Chrome, Hints of a Real Rival to Windows

Sundar Pichai, vice president for product management, said that Google’s free Chrome operating system would be fast and get users onto the Web in a few seconds.

SAN FRANCISCO — If at times you’re frustrated with your PC — and who isn’t? — Google says it is working on a solution.

Many people easily lose patience with PCs that are slow to start up and prone to crashing, vulnerable to virus attacks and constantly in need of fiddly updates. Hoping to turn that irritation to its advantage, Google is developing an operating system — the underlying software that handles the most basic functions of a computer.

With the software, Google is mounting a blunt challenge to the dominance of Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs about 95 percent of PCs. Google promises that its Chrome operating system, which will be available on computers in the second half of next year, will put an emphasis on speed, simplicity and security.

Google faces enormous hurdles. Computing giants likeI.B.M. and Sun Microsystems have spent years trying to dethrone Microsoft, with little to show for it.

But if it gains traction, Google’s plan could undermine not only Windows but also Microsoft’s other multibillion-dollar franchise, Office. Google is trying to put the Web browser at the center of people’s digital lives, relegating complicated operating systems like Windows to a secondary role.

“I’m not saying the shareholders should take their money and run, but this is the beginning of the end of Microsoft as we knew it,” said Jean-Louis Gassée, a venture capitalist who has battled Microsoft in posts at Apple and his own computer company, Be.

A spokesman for Microsoft, Frank Shaw, declined to comment on Google’s announcement or the competitive threat.

The new software’s primary mission will be to run Google’s Chrome browser, which will serve as a quick on-ramp to Web sites and online applications like Gmail and Facebook.

“We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the Web in a few seconds,” Sundar Pichai, a vice president for product management, and Linus Upson, an engineering director, said in a blog post announcing the project late Tuesday. “We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better.”

The plan is part of Google’s bet that a huge shift in computing is under way. In Google’s view, Web connections will become so fast and browsers so powerful that most of the programs that currently run on PCs will be replaced by online applications. That would eliminate the need to install, upgrade and back up software.

Analysts say advances in technology make that vision more realistic today than when the browser company Netscape unsuccessfully championed it a decade ago.

But Microsoft still has many advantages. It has been able to keep its software partners churning out games, media software, tax preparation software and other applications that rely on Windows. And it puts time and money into making sure that a vast array of devices like printers and cameras work well with its software.

While Google’s new software will be free, other free products have failed to dent Microsoft’s armor. A handful of companies offer the free Linux operating system as an alternative to Windows, but Linux has not gained enough market share to weaken Microsoft. (The Chrome operating system will have Linux at its core, and like Linux it will be open source, meaning outside programmers will be able to modify it.)

What’s more, Google’s operating system remains in its earliest stages of development, and there is no guarantee that the company can deliver on its promises. Other software projects from Google, like its Android operating system for mobile phones, have had only limited success in the market so far.

Yet with Google’s latest effort, some argue that the right company has hit on the right idea at the right time.

“Google has a reasonable stab at redefining the desktop,” said Mark Shuttleworth, the chief executive of Canonical, which makes a version of Linux called Ubuntu.

Rather than buying bulky desktop computers, consumers have been turning recently toward small, low-cost laptops known as netbooks, which serve as little more than gateways to the Web. Google says its operating system will be initially aimed at netbooks, which are generally not powerful enough to handle the latest version of Windows.

Google’s fundamental business model, too, may play to its advantage. The company says it believes that making Chrome free to PC makers will be worthwhile because more people will spend more time online, using Google’s search service and its other Web-based applications like Google Docs, a Web rival to Microsoft Office. That will help Google make more money from advertising, which accounts for nearly all of its $22 billion in annual revenue.

That approach essentially reverses some of the dynamics used by Microsoft to crush Netscape. At the time, Netscape charged $50 for its Web browser, and Microsoft undermined its leadership by making its own browser, Internet Explorer, free. Now it is Microsoft that faces free rivals to both Windows and Office, its two biggest cash cows.

Under its model, Google could even afford to pay computer makers to install its software on their machines, essentially subsidizing their cost.

“If hardware is free and software is free, the only way you make money is off of services, and that is Google,” said Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation.

Microsoft, while slow to act, has not stood still. It is in the process of creating many of the same online applications as Google, although it has been less willing to make them free.

In addition, Microsoft has blunted the popularity of Linux on netbooks. When they first appeared two years ago, the vast majority of netbooks came with Linux. Today, Microsoft’s older Windows XP software sits on more than 90 percent of netbooks in the United States, according to NPD, a market research firm.

But neither of those efforts can deliver the level of profits that Microsoft has enjoyed as it dominated the world of computing for the last two decades.

“There are answers for Microsoft, but all of them entail a significantly less profitable business model,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School.

via:NYT.COM

 

Google Plans a PC Operating System

I saw an article in NYT, it really wonder'd me, but still i want to conform it.So i went to the google blog and saw an article posted by Sundar Pichai, the brain behind Google Chrome. I m sure that this will rock the cyberspace. But there is a headach to Steve Ballmer's Microsoft.Inc. There is a question that will this Google Chrome OS will take the market of Microsoft Windows. This is like throwing a nuclear bomb on Microsoft. The rivalery business of Microsoft vs Apple is now turn'd to Google vs Microsoft.      

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/technology/companies/08operate.html?ref=technology

this article was posted from GOOGLE Blog  on 7/07/2009 09:37:00 PM

Posted by Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director

It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

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Introducing our new venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz

What marc andreessen wrote in his blog about his new venture ANDREESSEN HOROWITZ"

A NEW MILESTONE IN MARC'S WORK, HE HAD SHARED HIS EXPERIENCE IN HIS BLOG: 

"My partner Ben Horowitz and I are delighted to announce the formation of our new venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, and our first fund -- $300 million in size -- aimed purely at investing in the best new entrepreneurs, products, and companies in the technology industry.

Between the two of us, Ben and I have started three companies directly, created many new products and services, run operating businesses at high levels of scale, angel invested in 45 tech startups in the last five years, and served on a broad cross-section of company boards with some of the best entrepreneurs and investors in the industry. Through all this, we have worked closely together for 15 years, and we could not be more excited to extend our partnership into venture capital.

In undertaking this new mission, our core principles include:

• Technology and its advancement is absolutely central to human progress. Entrepreneurs who create new technologies and technology companies are improving the standard of living of people worldwide and unlocking amazing new levels of human potential.

 

• While broad investor psychology whips wildly between euphoria and depression, technology change not only continues but is accelerating. In fact, we believe that technology change cascades -- each new generation of technology continues within it the seeds for even more profound advances to come. And, technology change creates continuous opportunity to build important and valuable new companies.

 

 

• A technology startup is all about the entrepreneurial team and their vision. Our job as venture capitalists is primarily to support entrepreneurs by helping them build great companies around their ideas.

 

 

• The process of building a new technology company is changing rapidly. For example, many of the best new technology companies require far less money up front to build the first product, but far more money later to scale into today's enormous global market, as compared to historical norms. We intend to not only embrace these changes but drive them forward as hard as we can.

 

 

• Building a great company is a team sport -- including the selection of the best possible set of investors and advisors for a specific opportunity. We have been lucky enough to work with many of the industry's best investors, advisors, mentors, and coaches over the last 15 years, and we look forward to continuing to be a great partner to all of them.

 

 

• Trust is essential to building a great company. Trust requires the highest standard of ethical conduct, which we will strive hard to achieve and maintain.

 

 

• While there are many exciting new entrepreneurial opportunities in fields like energy and transportation, there continues to be gigantic opportunity in information technology -- which is where we will focus.

 

 

• And, while there are many extremely bright and capable entrepreneurs all over the world, there continues to be a special magic to Silicon Valley -- which is where we will focus.

 

We will hang our hat as a firm on the fact that both of us have extensive direct entrepreneurial and operating experience. We have built companies, from scratch, to high scale -- thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars of annual revenue. In short, we have done it ourselves. And we are building our firm to be the firm we would want to work with as entrepreneurs ourselves.

Here are some more specifics about how we will operate:

• We have the ability to invest between $50 thousand and $50 million in a company, depending on the stage and the opportunity. We plan to aggressively participate in funding brand new startups with seed-stage investments that will often be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But we will also invest in venture stage and late stage rounds of high-growth companies.

 

• We also have the ability to participate in a variety of investment structures, including but not limited to buying founder shares, investing in public stocks, and contributing to leveraged buyouts. We do not have a goal to do any of these things specifically, but rather we will be maximally flexible to suit our investing strategy to the opportunity.

 

 

• Ben and I will be the only General Partners in the firm, at least to start. We may add a small number of additional General Partners in the future, but we are not assuming that will be the case. We will also build a professional staff to support us in our efforts and to help our portfolio companies in various ways. However, we will not have associates or other General Partner-track junior positions.

 

 

• Ben and I will go on boards of companies in cases where we are investing serious money -- generally, $5 million or more, although there could be exceptions in both directions. We will generally not go on boards of raw startups -- in fact, in many cases, we don't even think today's raw startups should have boards.

 

Here are some more specifics about what kinds of entrepreneurs and companies we are looking for:

• Above all else, we are looking for the brilliant and motivated entrepreneur or entrepreneurial team with a clear vision of what they want to build and how they will create or attack a big market. We cannot substitute for entrepreneurial vision and drive, but we can help such entrepreneurs build great companies around their ideas.

 

• We are hugely in favor of the technical founder. We will generally focus on companies started by strong technologists who know exactly what they want to build and how they are going to build it.

 

 

• We are hugely in favor of the founder who intends to be CEO. Not all founders can become great CEOs, but most of the great companies in our industry were run by a founder for a long period of time, often decades, and we believe that pattern will continue. We cannot guarantee that a founder can be a great CEO, but we can help that founder develop the skills necessary to reach his or her full CEO potential.

 

 

• We believe that the product is the heart of any technology company. The company gets built around the product. Therefore, we believe it is critical that we as investors understand the product. We are ourselves computer scientists and information technologists by experience and training; therefore, we plan to focus on products in the domain of computer science and information technology.

 

 

• Here are some of the areas we consider within our investment domain today: consumer Internet, business Internet (cloud computing, "software as a service"), mobile software and services, software-powered consumer electronics, infrastructure and applications software, networking, storage, databases, and other back-end systems. Across all of these categories, we are completely unafraid of all of the new business models -- we believe that many vibrant new forms of information technology are expressing themselves into markets in entirely new ways.

 

 

• We are almost certainly not an appropriate investor for any of the following domains: "clean", "green", energy, transportation, life sciences (biotech, drug design, medical devices), nanotech, movie production companies, consumer retail, electric cars, rocket ships, space elevators. We do not have the first clue about any of these fields.

 

 

• We are primarily but not entirely focused on investing in Silicon Valley firms. We do not think it is an accident that Google is in Mountain View, Facebook is in Palo Alto, and Twitter is in San Francisco. We also think that venture capital is a high touch activity that lends itself to geographic proximity, and our only office will be in Silicon Valley. That said, we will happily invest in exceptional companies wherever they are.

 

Finally, one personal note -- my role as an active Chairman of Ning will continue unchanged, along with my board roles at Facebook and eBay.

If you have read this far, thank you very much for your interest in our new firm -- we will keep you updated over the months and years to come by blog!" -MARC ANDREESSEN