2024 New Year's Eve Letter

Dear family and friends,

I’m writing this letter from Cochin, Kerala in India, where I’m about to depart on the long journey back to Austin.  Cochin, or more commonly called Kochi today, is an appropriate place for me to close out the year as a Jew.  It’s home to the oldest synagogue in India, founded in 1568, and is a symbol for the deep ties between the Jewish community and Indian community for thousands of years.  India is now the largest country in the world with 1.46 billion people, surpassing China in 2023 as the most populous country on Earth.  And Indian Americans form the most financially successful minority group in the US, with many giants such as Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) at the helm of some of the most important companies in tech that will set the pace for humanity’s ultimate invention of AI.  

What drew us to India?  Our first Indian wedding - in Mumbai.  It was a three-day event and did not disappoint!  There were over 1,000 people in attendance to see Sanjana and Ishaan wed and the preparations were absolutely extensive and beautiful.  Rachel and I will never forget it (Debra and Levi stayed home for an easier, no travel stress, end to 2024.)

Wow, what a year 2024 has been!  From the re-election of Trump to the breathtaking pace of AI to the historic military achievements of Israel over terrorists throughout the Middle East.  It’s been dizzying, to say the least.  To be clear, we didn’t campaign for Trump and thought Harris would be a competent choice but I get it at the same time.  From our economic and border challenges to Biden’s cognitive decline and the last-minute candidate switch, the people have now spoken.  Republicans will control the Senate, Congress, the White House, and even the Supreme Court (which hopefully will do their best to not politicize that last bastion of independence).  Debra and I remain committed to our independent political views, finding policies to like in both parties and looking for common ground.  And we’ve doubled-down on No Labels going into 2025, which will continue to work for that path with the Problem Solvers Caucus and more.  No Labels’ CEO, Nancy Jacobson, is a true force of nature and has become a friend over the years.

On the family front, our big highlight of the year was our summer trip to Japan. 

The Future is Here, and Its Data Will Now Be Evenly Distributed

To paraphrase that zeitgeist-capturing insight of novelist William Gibson, data.world’s most important innovation, our AI Context Engine(tm), will diffuse the future of data-driven insight in ways that will transform our industry — and yours too.

On March 7th, we announced our most important innovation in data.world’s history with the introduction of our new AI Context Engine(tm). You can read the fundamentals in our press release. Here I want to explore below why this really matters — and how it will shape the future of enterprise data and analytics.

2023 New Year's Eve Letter

Dear family and friends,

I’m writing this end-of-year letter on the way back from Costa Rica, where we had a great family vacation to close out 2023. As we have in prior years, we are posting this letter instead of mailing holiday cards. Instead, we’ve made a large donation in your honor to AIPAC, which is more important than ever in its quest to achieve bipartisan support for Israel. Last year, we chose the ADL (and we donated generously to ADL again this year) because we felt like antisemitism was on the rise - unfortunately, how prescient that turned out to be. The biggest shock of 2023 is the world’s response to the horror of the 10/7 attack on Israel by the terrorist group Hamas that rules over Gaza with an iron fist. We’ll never forget 10/7, or the failure of so many to speak out against it. It was a year where a lot of what we thought we knew about initiatives like DEI have to be seriously rethought as we remake society into a truly more equitable and welcoming place for all. The way that my alma mater University of Pennsylvania (now ex) President Liz Magill, along with the Presidents of Harvard and MIT, couldn’t answer a simple question in front of Congress with moral clarity and courage will go down in history as the year that the oppressor-oppressed mind virus (i.e., “Common-Enemy Identity Politics” from Chapter 3 of “The Coddling of the American Mind”) was unmasked for the cancel-culture ideology it has morphed into versus the ideals of the content of our character so famously preached by MLK, Jr. We will always stand for the power of diversity in the United States - we believe it is one of our most enduring superpowers. At the same time, as an American Jewish family that is among the 16 million Jews worldwide in a global population of 8 billion, we’ve never felt more “woke” but it is of a different type that has been traditionally assumed. To learn more, the most shared and clarifying article I wrote all year was on 11/7 and 11/9 (a condensed version) about the global response to 10/7 is one you can read here.

Thankfully, 2023 was mostly a terrific year for our family and also for data.world. And it was a year of massive breakthroughs in AI that will shape society and accelerate our collective progress for decades to come. But the breakthroughs weren’t just in AI - they were in so many areas. If you commit to one new practice in 2024 as a result of reading this letter, I encourage you to adopt a balanced media diet. I recommend reading The White Pill, Future Crunch, and/or The Progress Network’s weekly newsletters about all of the amazing breakthroughs that will happen throughout 2024. This weekly practice will quite literally rewire your brain. Without balancing your media diet, you will get a non-stop barrage of negativity as gloom sells better than bloom due to the evolutionary wiring of our brains. As a primer, you should read Steven Pinker’s book “Enlightenment Now” - it’s a masterpiece and the chapter on inequality alone is worth it. We are on the edge of creating vast abundance throughout the world, as bleak as you may feel at times (and, again, Hamas’ attack on Israel on 10/7 was and is quite bleak for us). To get you started, here is the recap of 2023 from Future Crunch. Rachel and I got to see the founder give a very innovative TED talk at Rachel’s first TED (an incredible daddy-daughter highlight of 2023, to finally go together after talking about doing so for 10 years).

In the wake of Hamas’ gruesome slaughter, the banality of evil lurks in one simple word — “but”

In the wake of Hamas’ gruesome slaughter, the banality of evil lurks in one simple word — “but”

I’ve been writing a lot this year but have been neglecting my own blog here on Lucky7. Most of my writing has been at the data.world blog and on my Medium account. I’ve been primarily writing about AI as 2023 will no doubt go down as the year AI went mainstream, and for good reason (the productivity lift is now completely obvious). data.world couldn’t be better positioned for it either, and I can’t quite describe how exciting that has been as our CEO and Co-founder.

Today I turn my attention towards my post popular post of the year, which is on a sad subject. As a Jew, 10/7 was extremely disturbing to me. For humanitarians everywhere, it should have been as well. But then following 10/7 we saw something I haven’t seen in my lifetime. I wrote the following essay on it and published it initially on Medium on 11/7, the one-month anniversary of the horror of 10/7. And then on 11/9, the inverse of 9/11, I published a shorter form of it for the more time-constrained or younger reader. I’ve chosen to only include the full essay below.

But, first, let me say what was on my mind yesterday during Thanksgiving. There have been only leaders that have come forth since I published with extraordinarily clear moral convinction and no use of the word “but”. So, yesterday, I was thinking of the gratitude I have for Mayor Eric Adams of NYC, Congressman Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, and Einat Wilf, who used to serve in the Knesset in Israel and also as as a Foreign Policy Advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Here are three speeches from them that you should really watch to feel that same gratitude that I have for them:

Back to The Future of a Higher-Minded Austin With a New University Devoted to That Idea

I’ll give the benefit of doubt to the new University of Austin (UATX), which can bring together a young MAGA Republican and a student activist in Black Lives Matter and help them listen to one another, politely debate, and even find a bit of common ground.

It’s a hard thing to define, this “Austin ethos”, of culture, music, livability, and a progressive outlook, all coming together for decades to make our city such a unique place. But an even harder challenge, we are discovering, is protecting and nurturing these abstract but very real civic virtues to help us chart the future amid breathtaking change – from the metamorphosing skyline to endless transportation woes to the transformation of the economy.

As a native of this city, I’m proud that we’re a microcosm in many ways of the best of future-focused America. At the same time, I have a growing concern that we also are becoming a microcosm of our nation’s new failings, in particular with the collapse of civility, the instincts of polarization, and the us-versus-them attitudes that frame so many uncompromising debates. I hardly need to mention how this collapse into grievous division is smothering us nationally, or even internationally. While writing this essay, the Wall Street Journal posted a poll finding that just 58% of Americans believe that tolerance for others is very important, down from 80% just four years ago. Sadly, the mood here is similar to this malaise at our doorstep.

Elon Musk is Not a Bad Man or Entrepreneur, He’s Merely a Bad Wizard

And the spell of wizardry, an enchanting but false mythology of leaders beguiling us, is the real culprit we together should be focused on in 2023.

When it comes to the curious case of Elon Musk, and his ongoing sh*tshow in San Francisco, we’re referencing it all with the wrong movie. The film in question is Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which started streaming on Netflix on December 23rd and quickly lit up the highly challenged Twitter with its evil protagonist’s supposed resemblance to the “Chief Twit” himself.

The conservative pundit Ben Shapiro has led the viral assault on director Rian Johnson for his temerity in parodying the icon of innovation: “His take on the universe is that Elon Musk is a bad and stupid man, and that anyone who likes him — in media, politics, or tech — is being paid off by him,” he wrote on (where else?) Twitter.

2022 New Year’s Eve Letter

Dear family and friends,

As we have in prior years, we are sending this end-of-year letter instead of mailing holiday cards.  Instead, we’ve made a large donation in your honor to the Anti-Defamation League (unfortunately antisemitism continues to be on the rise).  If you haven’t read my newest friend Noa Tishby’s book on Israel, it is a real treasure.  It isn’t just about Israel (although that would be enough given its title and importance), it is also about Western values and the value of democracy itself.

2022 was an incredible year in so many ways but it was also a rollercoaster (if you let it be).  From a market that was at a peak at the end of 2021 to rising inflation, a rising Fed funds rate to try to combat it, the shocking Russian attack of Ukraine, but also with many truly amazing technological breakthroughs, including at data.world, and beautiful moments of humanity (including Ukraine’s improbably successful resistance) - wow, what a year it was!

On Amazon Prime: The second, expanded edition of "The Entrepreneur's Essentials"

I'm very proud to announce that my book, "The Entrepreneur's Essentials", is now available on Amazon, including Prime. All proceeds from my book will be donated to support and strengthen the next generation of courageous, creative female leaders.

Through an investment in The University of Texas at Austin's Kendra Scott Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute, proceeds will support the curricular and co-curricular programs that empower and equip thousands of female students annually. I hope this makes a big impact in the lives and entrepreneurial careers of women & people of color.

This has been a true labor of love. I've really put my heart and soul into this, and collaborating alongside of David Judson for over 13 months and weekends, with the amazing editing skills of Clarissa Fuselier (formerly of my prior startup, Bazaarvoice), made it all possible.

Four big learnings on health (Part Four: Exercise and X3)

Note: I originally wrote this on Medium on Jan. 17, 2021. I then forgot to mirror it here! This is still my daily workout but one thing has changed since then: in the original below I’m talking about doing a long elbow plank, but I switched to a long straight arm plank to make it more challenging. I put a lot of additional padding underneath my yoga mat by folding a thinner yoga mat into four. I’ve built up to a 14-minute, 30-second straight arm plank each time I do this workout now (five to six days per week). That is the only thing that has changed below. Oh, and even with the pandemic subsiding in the US and gyms being deemed safe again for the fully vaccinated, I still have no reason to return with this terrific, very effective, home workout. Now, back to the original post:

I was debating whether to title this post “The Ultimate Pandemic Workout”, “Maximum Efficiency with Maximum Results”, or something else, but stuck with the thematic of my four-part series on health.

In the first three Parts, I covered:
1. Nutrition (and my vegan power breakfast smoothie recipe)
2. The Cooper Clinic
3. OsteoStrong

Two and a half years ago I had a really traumatic injury the day before the TED 2018 conference in Vancouver. I wrote about it on Facebook:

An open letter to tech CEOs and leaders on the importance of diversity

Dear fellow tech CEOs and leaders,

I’m writing to you on this chilly Sunday in Austin because 2020 has truly been an eye-opening year for me as a long-time tech entrepreneur and CEO. I’ve been founding tech companies and movements since I was 24-years old, and I’ve never thought more about the power of diverse teams than I have this year. 2020 is truly one for the history books on so many levels, including my own personal growth as a leader.

Let me be upfront. My goal in this letter is to help you see what I’ve concluded, and I apologize that it took until 2020 to work so hard for this:
I believe that the more success you earn, both by grit and luck, and the more educated you become on the very real history of racial inequities in our country, the greater moral imperative you have to strive for a much more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce in tech.

This has been building for a long time within me, and I feel extremely fortunate to have had the learning experiences I’ve had. My realization about the importance of diversity in tech is the result of many friends and institutions investing in me, and then me taking the time to invest in myself. In this open letter, I’m going to do my best to share the resources that have most helped me and I believe will help you. I’ll also go beyond theory and give you a prescriptive call to action. I’ve put so much time into this because I believe it is critical to do so for those that are fortunate enough to be in a position of leading (and that is a much bigger tent than you may think).