The staff at the Freakonomics podcast does an amazing job of uncovering interesting business ideas. Two weeks ago the episode was “A No-Lose Lottery“. The idea is incredibly simple, but feels enough like a lottery that it is illegal in most countries. It goes like this: Create a savings account, where the savers are guaranteed to not lose their savings (if not earn a small interest...
I love uncovering hidden assumptions. One in particular gets written about every day in one form or another. The high-speed growth of a handful of startups, of Bitcoin, and other “overnight successes“. Learn a bit of history, and you’ll discover that the steep adoption curve of any success is really just the middle of the story. The beginning of the story is the (often long)...
Here we are in 2017 and only now are we uncovering who the Angel investors really are. The Angel Capital Association (ACA), Wharton School of Business, and Rev1 Ventures sponsored research to let us all know. The results are not surprising. 78% male 88% white Average age: 48 Standard check: $25,000 Most live in CA or in and around NYC The men don’t care about gender (and thus don’t...
In October of 1929, the public stock market crashed. Black Tuesday. Bad day on Wall Street. At least for the 16% of rich Americans who had investments in those public companies. As often happens after a financial crisis, the federal government decided to step in to protect a re-occurrence. The result of that, was the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the...
When ideas are 100 years old, we tend to not only not know their origins, but also think of those ideas have been around forever. So it is with the large, organized philanthropic organizations today known as private foundations. The first of these was the Carnegie Corporation of New York, established in 1911, by Andrew Carnegie, who invented the idea of giving away one’s fortune. That...
Since 2012 we’ve been waiting for equity crowdfunding. Five years later, we have it, but it’s not working. Back in 2014 we managed to pass the Washington Jobs Act. Three years later, its never been used, caught in the trap of overly onerous regulations. Finally in late 2015 the SEC made it through their rules process for the national JOBS Act, and companies have been using those...
There is no higher God in Silicon Valley than growth. No sacrifice too big for its craving altar. As long as you keep your curve exponential, all your sins will be forgotten at the exit. It’s through this exponential lens that eating the world becomes not just a motto for software at large, but a mission for every aspiring unicorn and their business model. “Going viral” suddenly takes on a...
As much as I advocate for doing good by doing business, there are some problems of the world that can’t be solved by for-profit companies, or at least not completely solved by for-profits, which instead need government aid and philanthropists. The 2017 letter from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation showcases five areas where the foundation has made incredible progress: vaccines...
Its been years since I posted anything on crowdfunding. The JOBS Act is finally up and running. Regulation A+ and Regulation CF fundraising is happening. Is it working? Blogger Scott Purcell has some statistics from 2016, taken from the SEC. I don’t know Scott and don’t know of FundAmerica, but the numbers are from the SEC, and thus should be trustworthy. In short, the answer is...
Every SOCAP leaves me wondering what its like outside the West Coast, and specifically outside of San Francisco and Seattle, which seem to be leading the way into the world of impact investing and conscious companies.
How does your city compare?
