USV Microfiche #6

Human-powered and AI-curated, Microfiche offers a 90-second sprint through the past month at USV. From early conversations to signed term sheets, we cover the full spectrum of our work. Perhaps due to the holidays, this month our focus was especially tuned to health care—and, of course, to our newest favorite restaurant, Leon's.

Early Conversations

Join our conversation around some ideas we've been throwing around. We’d love to hear why we’re wrong.

The Need for Remutualization: Co-op models once anchored essential services—like health insurance and utilities—firmly in local hands. Today, crypto protocols can revive that trust, embedding transparent governance and shared incentives directly in code. By removing gatekeepers and intermediaries, communities can shape and refine their own rules over time. The result is a radical reimagining that ensures equity, accountability, and resilience define how we deliver these critical systems.

The Sweet Spot for Micropayments: Micropayments excel when costs and value are predictable—like paying for storage, computation, or inference near marginal energy costs. But they falter in uncertain scenarios, like pricing an answer without clear quality metrics. Bundling solutions often bridge the gap, delivering value on average. The challenge? Pricing for personalization remains an open problem, demanding innovative intermediaries or future zero-knowledge breakthroughs.

Your Health, Your Data: HIPAA grants patients the right to access and transfer their health data, but this right is often underutilized. AI agents could change that by streamlining the collection and organization of medical records, making data portability a practical reality. Acting as advocates, these agents would empower patients to take rightful ownership of their health information, enabling better decisions and shifting power in healthcare toward individuals.

Places you Never Want To Go but Want to Know What’s Going On: In a world where the flow of information outpaces our ability to process it, AI-powered curators can emerge as our lifeboats. By filtering out the noise and prioritizing what matters most, these agents could redefine how we consume content. So long as they're only working for us.

Meme coins as Entertainment: Our team has never agreed on meme coins. This week we talked about them as a form of entertainment akin to video games or musical chairs. They offer a global, decentralized game where the primary rule is to avoid being the last one holding when the music stops. This perspective highlights the speculative nature of meme coins, where economic risks are akin to playing poker. The allure lies in their universal appeal and the excitement of high-stakes trading.