Return visit to Prague
What a joy to be in Prague last month. I loved seeing friends, sights and the sounds of my second home. And the food! Thank you for the warm hugs and kind welcome back. I needed that more than I can put in words.
B I J A N
Latest posts
Some Thoughts on Employee Stock Options in 2026
Even though I stepped back from my role at Spark, I still spend time with founders and the people who work for them. This post comes from those conversations and from what I keep seeing in my social feeds. It’s a pattern, not a single encounter. Here’s my take. The tech industry loves to say the team is everything. Founders say it in board meetings. VCs say it in pitch decks. Everyone says it in…
Snowy days
The snow came and looks like it s going to stay for awhile. I went out one morning and made these with my Rolleiflex and some Kodak film.
AI, Democracy, and the Responsibility of Leadership
Since stepping out of government and no longer working as a full time investor, I have spent a great deal of time in conversation. With members of Congress. With policy leaders. With technologists and founders. Across these conversations, there is real and substantive debate underway about artificial intelligence, its risks, and its promise. But there is also uncertainty about how to talk about it…
Japan, 2025
Lauren and I had always wanted to visit Japan. We booked a trip for May 2020, but the pandemic canceled it. At last, we made it there last October and it was everything we hoped for. Over three weeks, we moved between Tokyo and Kyoto and smaller places like Kiso and Matsumoto. The attention to [ ]
A little web app
I built a little web app to scratch a personal itch. An easy way to format photos the way I prefer them onInstagram. Drop in photos, get them back with a clean white border inside a square.Plus a toggle to add a film rebate look. Your photos never leave your browser. Nothing is uploaded or [ ]
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When Silence Becomes Intolerable: A Judge of Conscience Speaks
I’ve known Judge Mark Wolf for several years. We’re neighbors in Massachusetts. Over coffee, I’ve come to understand how deeply he cares about justice and the rule of law. When I served as Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Lauren and I hosted Judge Wolf for lunch in Prague. We talked about democracy and what it means to protect institutions that can seem abstract until they’re under threat. Lauren…
When We Stop Pretending
Václav Havel was born on this day. The playwright turned president saw that change begins when ordinary people decide they’ve had enough. Havel wrote about this in The Power of the Powerless . He watched people in communist Czechoslovakia go through the motions. They hung state slogans in shop windows not because they believed them, but because it was safer than facing consequences. They applauded…
Shared Values: What Holds Us Together When Leadership Divides Us
Values matter. During my time as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic, I saw what shared values look like in action and what happens when leadership fails to honor them. When President Biden took office, just a handful of NATO allies had met their 2% GDP defense spending pledge. By the end of his administration, [ ]