Sunday Reads and Listens...Tuscany Casetta Edtion

Buongiorno…

I am in Tuscany for a few days at my favorite home away from home - Casetta.

I have been coming here with Ellen since 2010 because Brad and Amy Feld invited us here and we fell in love with it. We became great friends with Xenia (the owner). So many of our friends now come stay as well.

This trip was organized by my pal Brett Wilson who invited me along on a trip he organized with his Swift Venture partner John Hughes. Our Social Leverage Emerging Manager fund is an LP in Swift which is an AI focused fund. They also founded Tubemogul back in 2006 and I was their seed investor. Tubemogul went on to IPO in 2013 and was later acquired by Adobe. Also joining us on the trip is Jason Loptatecki who was early at Tubemogul by way of acquisition and now founder of Arize.com a fast growing machine learning and AI company (think Datadog for AI and Swift is of course an investor), and Farhad Massoudi the founder and CEO of Tubi - the largest free movie and TV streaming service in the US.

I am having a blast as usual and learning a ton about AI and machine learning from Jason, Brett and John and of course love talking media with Farhad. I crashed this trip on my way to South of France for my twice yearly empty nest ‘euphoria’ cycling trip with the guys.

We are here to rest, learn, cycle and eat.

Obviously, use the link to Casetta above and just email Xenia if you would like to visit. Casetta is just 20 minutes from Florence and an hour from coast which is also spectacular.

I am not sharing any links this week because in Tuscany I am reading the roads, the landscape and the light only. I actually just took my first nap since last year when I was here.

Have a great Sunday.