Dinner with Dawkins and Hitchens

On Saturday night I had the great pleasure of pulling together a small dinner in which there were no Blessings or Grace recited. But we did have tri-tip, halibut, peach pie, Clos Du Bois PInot and probably the world's two most influential living atheists--Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. (The rest of my Top Ten list would include Pinker, Harris, Jillette, Shermer, Randi, Sweeney, Kurtz and PZ Myers!)

The dinner brought the two bestselling authors together for the first time--a chance for them to collaborate on responses to their common critics (see image right, courtesy Jurvetson). For example, just two hours earlier following his address at Kepler's Bookstore, Dawkins had been asked , "Weren't the worst atrocities of mankind perpetrated by atheists like Stalin and Hitler?"

Dawkins had responded that not only is there substantive debate regarding the faiths of Stalin and Hitler, but there are good and bad atheists and good and bad believers--there is no historical correlation between atheism and atrocity any more than there is correlation between faith and atrocity (and probably less so). A stronger correlation can be shown between heinous dictators and mustaches. Is a flexible worldview based on evidence and reason, Dawkins asked, more or less likely to incline someone to murder than a religious approach based on a holy book from a divine authority? "The question answers itself."

During dinner, Hitch (as his beautiful wife endearingly calls him) offered an additional rebuke: faith and church aligned the German and Russian populations behind Hitler and Stalin, while a skeptical , evidence-oriented population would have likely resisted the quasi-religions of their atrocious leaders.



The dinner capped off a successful event at Kepler's Bookstore in Menlo Park, where Dawkins once again filled the house. Watch the video of his address, and the Q&A session that followed.

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Buy Gringott's Bank Promissory Notes by Tomorrow!

As the Deathly Hallows beckon, wizards and muggles alike count down to Friday night with giddiness and panic (Stephen King says it best).

Celebrate the final three hours before the witching hour strikes with Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy and the rest of Hogwart's at Kepler's Midnight Magic and Wizardry. It's the ultimate Harry Potter gala! Practice catching the snitch amid Quidditch World Cup Booths featuring fortune tellers, henna artists, magicians, and jugglers. Prowl for treats in the Death Eaters Enclave (catered by Cafe Borrone). Hear Hagrid tell stories in the Gryffindor Common Room, and vie for prizes in the Potter Trivia Contest.

But the midnight stash of Potter books can be redeemed only by holders of the Gringott's Bank Promissory Notes, available here or at the store until Friday morning. (After midnight Friday, available inventory will be sold on a first-come basis.)

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Flock is Back, Baby!

OK, we had disappeared for a long time. Version 0.7 was chock full of cool web2.0 features but it was too complicated and buggy for anyone other than technical early adopters. With the mission of delivering powerful social functions to everyone on the web, we had to re-tool our team with folks who know how to make great software drop-dead-simple to use. And so we resolved not to release another version until we could make it impressively intuitive and reliable.

The day has come! This morning Flock releases Beta version 0.9, a major new release that (the early reviewers say) doesn't suck.


“Flock is a very elegant and well organized browser... virtually every Flock task can be completed in one or two clicks... an old IE user like me learned more advanced features and functions over 3 or 4 days, than I probably know about IE in years of use”.



“The look 'n' feel of flock remains as slick as ever, and is possibly the nicest ’skin’ for a browser out there. But this isn’t style over content and the UI’s most significant overhaul is its emphasis on improving discoverability”



“Flock 0.9 features a redesigned interface, and it feels significantly faster than the 0.7 version did: The first thing you want to do to fully utilize this browser is add the blogs, video, photo and social bookmarking sites you use. This is ridiculously easy to do in this new version."


The features I use most are the blog editor, the real-time search, and the news reader, but I also often find myself browsing the media bar. There are still some major features in the works for version 1.0 later this year, but version 0.9 is sufficiently better than other browsers to justify the switch.

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Return of the Devil's Chaplain!

This Saturday at 3pm, Oxford University Professor Richard Dawkins will return to Kepler's Bookstore to reflect on the world's reception to his blasphemous bestseller, The God Delusion. 

Like his last visit to Kepler's, I will have the great honor of introducing him. If you want a seat for Dawkins' talk, you probably have to come early and hear what I have to say, since last time (see image right) it was standing room only!

And if you missed last month's book signing at Kepler's by the brilliant Christopher Hitchens, bring your unsigned copy of God Is Not Great with you to Dawkins' event, because I hear you'll find Hitchens among the audience. I'm delighted to note that both God Is Not Great and The God Delusion became #2 NY Times Bestsellers the month following their authors' respective appearances at Kepler's (naturally).  

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I Want a DUMP Button

Last week my family made a post-school season pilgrimage to our nation's capitol. What a splendorous city of Parisian architecture, clean streets, warm air, Southern greenery, and magnificent monuments (soiled only by the requisite portraits of our President). We hit the major landmarks and monuments, but here are some highlights:

• The FDR Memorial.

Completed 10 years ago, this riverside walkway pays tribute to the 32d president through sculpture, water features, and stones engraved with Roosevelt's stirring words.  

• Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

See a bill printed start to finish in a quick, easy 45 minute tour. ($700 million printed every day!)

• The Spy Museum.

Spy history, gadgets and techniques.

• Simthsonian National Air and Space.

Always an inspiration. I wish we had set aside a whole day for it.

• Library of Congress.

In the largest library in the world, you won't see any books--they are safely locked away from the public, but anyone (not just Americans) can enter the reading room with a request. The foyer is incredible, graced with sculpture, murals and engravings such as "Ignorance is the Curse of God." (Isn't it the other way around?)

• "The Awakening".

Sculpture of a buried giant struggling to the surface, along the Potomac. Climbable!



Private attractions, if you know someone...

• Central Intelligence Agency
  

I wish I could tell you about it!

• National Public Radio

Thanks to my friend Barrie Hardymon (asst. editor for Talk of the Nation and principal contributor to Blog of the Nation),  my son and I got our daily dose of Neal Conan right there in the control room, standing beside the call-in screeners.

NPR broadcasts live with a 6-second delay, and so Barrie pointed out the DUMP button that radio hosts press to instantly delete 6-second spans containing objectionable expletives. After DUMPing the dirty words, NPR then broadcasts without delay while DSP software works for several minutes in the background to imperceptibly slow the transmitted conversation until it re-builds 6 seconds of latency.

"What happens if you need to DUMP it again before it's ready?" my 8-year-old asked. Barrie conceded that it is indeed a problem on rare occasion. "If you build up 12 seconds of delay instead of 6," the boy suggested, "you can press DUMP again if you need to." I thought it was a Capitol Idea!

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Bessemer Bamboozled?

Valleywag is delighting in a string of negative press accounts this week about Lifelock, a company we funded late last year. The online gossip column goes so far as to say that Bessemer and our co-investor Kleiner Perkins Caufied & Byers were shamefully bamboozled by the company's founder Robert Maynard.

Normally I don't respond to vicious personal attacks--after all there are so many, Who Has Time For This? But to the extent that anyone questions Lifelock's integrity and consumer utility, I feel obliged to weigh in as an insider with some answers...

Is Lifelock founder Robert Maynard a bad guy?

Robert suffers from bipolar disease, a serious mental health disorder that invariably leads to impaired thinking and erratic behavior when untreated. Sufferers of bipolar disease commonly have manic episodes that end with dire financial and legal consequences. Anyone experienced in bipolar (as I became years ago, when someone close to me was diagnosed) understands the negative behavior for what it is--a treatable medical symptom. It is no more a character flaw than President Roosevelt's polio.

With a diagnosis and proper treatment, Robert has built his third company responsibly. Self-aware, he recruited a professional team and an independent board of directors from which he disqualified himself. To protect the company, Robert retained no control through ownership, board participation, or office. During my time as an investor in Lifelock, Robert has impressed me as a brilliant, creative thinker whom other Bessemer entrepreneurs continue to call upon for advice. Robert is kind and thoughtful, and after 15 years as a VC, I haven't seen a founder more loved and respected by his company's employees. (A former U.S. Marine who champions liberal causes, Robert reminds me of another great entrepreneur, Dan Farmer.) Though it would be more profitable to distance myself from such a controversial figure, nonetheless I am proud to call Robert my friend.

Was Bessemer bamboozled?

Yes, many times. But not by Lifelock.

During our investigation of the company, the CEO was up front in every way, including disclosure of Robert Maynard's past, his bankruptcies, his medical condition, and the FTC order against his participation in the credit repair industry (where Lifelock doesn't play). I understood the baggage Robert Maynard has been carrying with him--he isn't the first entrepreneur treated for bipolar disease whose startup I have backed, and he may not be the last.

Furthermore, we feel anything but bamboozled. The Company's financial performance has more than doubled the revenue and cash flow forecasted in Lifelock's business plan. Customer churn is way below any subscription service I have seen, and persists at less than half the rate Lifelock had projected.

Was I embarrassed, as Valleywag insists?

Yes, many times. But not by Lifelock.

It's actually funny (and a little flaterring, really) to see Valleywag go after me so personally in their column, but I'm surprised they couldn't dig up any better dirt on me (really, they just missed the whole atheist angle). Yes, it's true that I'm a director of the "troubled Flock", and it's true that Flock is behind schedule releasing the best browser software in the world (which you'll all get your hands on later this year). It's not true that I'm leading a round in TechCrunch (but I'd like to, Michael, if I can).

Can consumers trust Lifelock?

As a veteran investor of Verisign, Postini, Counterpane, Cyota and several other security service providers, I know what a challenge it is to overcome the suspicions raised by sensational journalism, and the allegations of competitors who covet success. Lifelock embraces every practice we can to operate transparently and in the best interest of the customer--including ISO 27001 certification of our call center and data infrastructure--and surely we still have many lessons yet to learn. But even when we do, we will always have to endure conspiracy theories.

So rather than fight the storm of bad press, Robert Maynard simply resigned from the company this past Monday. It's a shame to lose the vision and day-to-day involvement of a great founder, but I share Robert's hope that his past will no longer be a lightning rod for Lifelock's detractors.

I subscribed my own family to Lifelock long before I invested. From 1995 to 2005, there were over 8 reported breaches of personal credential data for every American adult, and so it's reasonable to fear ID theft. As I've explained, nothing protects me better than Lifelock's rigorous maintenance of fraud alerts for my credit profiles.

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Venture Capital Really Heats Up

Apparently, the power grid along Menlo Park's Sand Hill Road has failed. As the mercury hits 93 degrees, thousands of VC's are roasting in their offices.