Did you hear the news? Fossil fuels and deep sea oil rigs are all the rage these days when it comes to ESG investing. Forget doubling down on electric vehicles, renewable energy, solar etc… All we have to do to save the world is invest in Environmentally, Socially, Governance responsible companies…like Exxon. It looks like...
News flash: The crypto and blockchain crowd have rebranded to web3. They probably thought it sounded better and didn’t want all the baggage that hundreds of scam ICOs, STOs and skirted securities laws brought with the term blockchain. In a way, it was a bit like Facebook changing its name to Meta. Crypto’s biggest players...
Written by Matt Ward and Gerd Leonhard Adam Smith, with his landmark book The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, is recognized by most as the father of capitalism. In 1970, Milton Friedman built upon Smith’s legacy with the Friedman doctrine, outlining the basics of what we recognize today as shareholder capitalism — which argues that a...
“The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation.” — Alex Rampell, a16z The only question, will you win that race? And for Fortune 500 companies with everything on the line, that’s a costly question indeed. Yet so often, incumbents fail to innovate and fall hard. Worse...
“There’s nothing new under the sun.” We’ve all heard it… but what then is creativity, what is inspiration? Is it the artist or entrepreneur creating something completely unique, or combining previously separate things in new and innovative ways? Does it matter? Whoever said creativity was the key to success? The starving artist is a trope for...
Surprise, surprise… Uber got shit on by public markets. How long would you be willing to trade a dollar for fifty cents… Is the era of unsustainable, unprofitable growth over? Or is another WeWork in the cards? And what exactly is the future of transportation and ridesharing? I recently interviewed Jarrett Walker (a world-renowned urban infrastructure...
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s how the old mantra goes. And when it comes to human nature, that’s exactly how we work. We avoid change and go with the flow. If it hasn’t killed us yet (from an evolutionary sense), we’re probably on the right path. And that’s why the WeWork saga...
Facebook, Linkedin, Zynga… they all had it easy. They all grew on the backs of existing services, spamming users with mass invites and notifications until a loyal following was suckered into using the product. And thanks to the inherent network effects, for every new user, the product was incrementally better for you as well… and...
This started as a thought experiment, a devil’s advocate to the question: Is mobile a done deal, or is there more to the story? We’ve had Google vs. Apple. Are we in for another heavyweight slugfest? I think so… Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know tensions are at an all-time high between...
In the eyes of experts, when it comes to blockchain, there is often no middle ground — it will either be boom or bust, nothing in between. I for one have become a big proponent of blockchain technology, especially the crypto-economics used to jumpstart powerful network effects. But with so many opinions and noise floating...