Recently I attended the west coast premiere of General Magic.  It’s a documentary movie about the rise and fall of a startup building one of the first PDAs in the early 1990′s.  Similar to Apple’s Newton and predating the PalmPilot, General Magic incorporated all of the key ideas of today’s modern smartphone into a single product long before the technologies (for both the device and the networks) were ready to support a great user experience.Unfortunately, General Magic’s product failed - the price was way too high, wireless networks were in their relative infancy, and the device was slow.  It ..read more

Recently we announced a search for three new investment associates at Shasta Ventures.  One of the key hires we’re looking for is someone who would like to help us find the most exciting new opportunities in Emerging Platforms: robotics, space, AR/VR, and the connected home.  Shasta Ventures has built a strong portfolio in emerging technologies with early investments in companies like Fetch Robotics, Accion Systems, Survios, Nest Labs, and Vector Launch Systems.  We’re looking for someone who is equally passionate about finding and helping to build the next great technology platforms after mob ..read more

Earlier today, Noon Home came out of stealth mode and launched the best, most capable home lighting switch available anywhere in the world at any price.First and foremost, Noon works as a switch - to turn on the lights, you press it, and to turn off the lights, you do the same thing.  Everyone in the world has been trained to toggle light switches on and off since the moments we each grew tall enough to reach a switch.  Touching a switch will be something billions of people continue to do every day for decades and decades to come.  It’s an overlooked, daily ritual baked into our psyches.Now, f ..read more

My first full-time job was in the space business.  In 1992, I had just earned my master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and moved to a suburb of Philadelphia to work at the Astro Space division of General Electric (now part of Lockheed Martin).I worked on two satellites – Echostar, and AsiaSat-2.  Both were direct broadcast satellites, meaning that they were designed for broadcasting digital television signals from geostationary orbit.  Geostationary orbit is a circular path around the earth about 22,000 miles high where a spacecraft appears to stay ..read more

United’s recent handling of the forced disembarkation of a passenger in Chicago will go down in history as a textbook example of the power of social media.The only company I’ve ever publicly complained about on a regular basis is United.  I fly over 100,000 miles per year on United, and I have traveled well over one million lifetime miles on the airline.  I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of crews.  It’s great set of individuals, but I’m convinced that United’s senior management has led to a customer culture at United that is far inferior to competitors such as Alaska, Southwest, and the soon-to ..read more

Earlier today, Starship Technologies announced Shasta’s investment as part of a $17 million round.  It’s the first time I’ve led a Shasta investment outside of the U.S., and all of us at Shasta are thrilled to be working with the Starship team.I’ve been interested in robotics for years and previously led Shasta’s seed investments in Fetch Robotics and Airware.  Quadrotor drones are perfect for surveying and gathering data, but I’m skeptical that flying robots will work well for delivering physical goods.  On the other hand, I’m convinced that ground-based autonomous transport - both for passen ..read more

I was taken by a recent VR article titled “30 Days of Raw Data Fitness Challenge” - the author created her own fitness challenge for her husband, where he had to play Survios’ Raw Data on an HTC Vive system every day for 20 minutes for 30 days, and wear a fitness tracker while he played.  The result?  He lost five pounds.As part of our VR lab at Shasta, we’ve introduced over 100 people to the HTC Vive VR system for the first time.  We’ve found that we have to regularly replace the headset foam.  Why?  Because people become so active, moving around in the VR experiences, that they start to swea ..read more

Where were you on March 27, 2014? I was in San Francisco, on a very steep street, walking into a nondescript blue apartment building.Arriving in a basement studio apartment high in the hills south of downtown San Francisco, at 492 Clipper Street, I donned a backpack and a 3-D printed, ill-fitting head-mounted display.  I looked like a leading character out of the original Ghostbusters movie.Nathan Burba and James Iliff shared a wireless demo of “Zombies on the Holodeck”, an early VR first-person shooter where you fight off a zombie onslaught.  I was blown away by their early demo, and called ..read more

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