Out of the 320 million Americans, fewer than 320,000 are Angel investors, investing in startups. Quick math, that is less than 0.1% of all Americans. The ratio only gets worse elsewhere in the world. Why? Investing in startups is complicated. Historically, it’s a skill learned in an ad hoc apprenticeship, with new Angels observing more experienced Angels for months or years. Few people have...
I categorize companies into three categories: A- Companies focused solely on profits, running extractive businesses, unconscious to the needs of their employees, their communities, and the world as a whole. Most of the S&P 500 and Global 1,000 are in this group. B- Companies that truly care about ESG: Environment, Social, and Governance. In short, companies whose management works on improving...
It’s been a long time since I mentioned my love of long-lived assumptions. This time it isn’t a story of a startup, but a story of an not-uncommon, but no everyday English word, milquetoast. The spelling makes it looks like an old loan Latin word borrowed from French 1,000 years ago. It’s not. It’s a fancy way of spelling “milk toast” a simple breakfast dish...
Luni’s backstory starts the episode, Why Africa at 29:00, Africa Eats at 38:30
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8 days into the new year, people are already telling me they are tired of summarizing 2020, so let’s skip that and talk about 2021. Happy 2021! With the new year I’ve taken a moment to not only think about my goals for the year but to think about all of the various activities and organizations I’m participating in. It appears I do a lot, but I actually have a narrow focus for my...
People who work with me think I don’t sleep. They see me working on multiple projects and getting more done than they think reasonable in any given week, month, or year. They conclude I’m one of those people who never sleeps. In reality, I sleep at least as much as they do. Maybe more. I’m just a better juggler. Look at my LinkedIn profile and you’ll find at least four...
Predicting the coming year is next to impossible. But some predictions of the coming decade and century are easy, obvious, and 99% likely to come true. I’m enjoying an early view into one of those: battery-backed solar. It is dim, drizzly, and chilly in Seattle, the opposite weather of every image you’ve ever seen for solar power. We will literally get less than six hours of daylight...
Sitting in my inbox today was an email whose subject asked “How stupid can one be?” The email seemed to answer the question itself. If interested in supporting me, I appreciate you forwarding this email along to help bypass the censorship of conservative/capitalist reports & opinions. With 100,000 followers on board, my team and I are committed to start changing the narrative in...
The last government antitrust breakup was AT&T back in 1984. It followed the model of Standard Oil back in 1911. Business and technology have changed a lot since the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was written and passed 130 years ago, in 1890. It’s time we update what we mean by trust-like behavior and how we remedy those consequences. Note that the breakups of Standard Oil and AT&T were...
Nine months ago this week I was recovering from what seemed to be a mild case of the newly named Covid-19. What have we learned since then, what we’ve failed to learn, and what does the end game of this pandemic hold in store? What we learned Exponential growth is not intuitive. The 70 national daily cases looked troublesome back on March 9th. Today, 70 cases in a single city would be...
