1/ Zoom kicked off an interesting discussion around the value / costs of business travel. As per usual I think folks have taken one data point and jumped to a dodgy conclusion.

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3/ Our industry (VC/Tech) is already justly criticized for being in a bubble. Giving up on travel and just dialing in from on high is a bad idea with both PR and real world consequences. we may as well just rename California "Elysium"

4/ Video is still far from a great experience Zoom managed to earn an $18B market cap with a product that is good enough but still not seamless.

5/ You can't discount the value of IRL interaction. On video you can miss subtle offscreen cues like significant glances between non-speakers, voice cues that can be distorted over the line and general "reading the room".

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7/ Zoom calls are scheduled, formal things. They eliminate much of the chit chat, coffee grabbing down time and casual engagement of pre & post meeting. If you think there is valuable information to be gleaned here as well as relationship building, then video isn't a substitute.

8/ Travel physically stimulates different parts of the brain, causes growth, clarity and diversity of thought. You can easily see this with kids. Any parent can tell you if you take a 4 y/o on a trip by the time you get back they'll have grown 5X more than had they stayed at home

9/ Whenever we travel we use it as an opportunity to meet 10-15 new founders in a new city / new environment. These are founders and an ecosystem its hard to imagine I would ever encounter from afar. Not traveling directly equates to missed opportunity.

10/ Zoom squashes serendipity. As Pasteur said "In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind". When you take serendipity (chance) out of the equation, no matter how prepared the mind, opportunities will be missed.

11/ Finally, there is nothing like atrocious GoGo inflight wifi and a 6 hour flight to make one bunker down and cross something important but not urgent off of a "to-do" list.

fin/ Video calls certainly have their place (we use @trysquadapp for our internal calls since we have a distributed team) but its hard to imagine and a little bit sad to think about giving up the serendipity and human connection of travel.