Economic Development Archives - Startup Economist

Time to Double Down on Las Vegas Startups

Wednesday, 06 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Let’s just get this out of the way from the start, with an apology on my part, there is no getting away from the fact that my brain is going to drop gambling words in this article because it’s cute when talking about Las Vegas. I’m sorry. What we’re here for is much more serious,

Published in Regional Development

22 Comments

San Marcos Startups Sit on Top of Texas’s Biggest Problem

Friday, 01 May 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Humans have lived in San Marcos, Texas, longer than they have lived almost anywhere else on the continent. An archaeological fact, I might concede we can’t be sure, but that fact doesn’t matter to what got my attention; it should matter to entrepreneurs, investors, and economic development professionals. People have been here for 12,000 unbroken

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Published in Regional Development

4 Comments

Universities Are Sitting on the Next Great Companies. Here’s How to Launch Them.

Wednesday, 29 April 2026 by Paul O'Brien

You Can’t License Your Way to Commercialization The Texas Innovation Conference & Awards at TCU didn’t change university tech transfer overnight but that’s not a criticism, it’s almost a compliment. What it did was harder and rarer: it put the people who actually need to be in the same room, in the same room, and

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Published in Conferences / Events, Education, Startups

2 Comments

Kansas City Startups: Where the Heartland Builds the Future

Monday, 27 April 2026 by Paul O'Brien

The challenge for Kansas City (to start out with what to fix), isn’t proving it can generate innovation (the evidence for that fills museums and SEC S-1 filings), the challenge is converting a genuinely impressive foundation of history, talent, capital, and civic infrastructure into a repeatable engine for scaling the kind of companies that put

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Published in Regional Development

25 Comments

The UK has the Most Startup Accelerators Per Capita; And…?

Friday, 24 April 2026 by Paul O'Brien

This is one of those articles that you don’t really want to write but you know needs to be written. An observation that will frustrate some, anger others, and more likely than not, draw ire toward me because there is no way to point this out without criticism, here we go. Grab yourself a cup

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Published in Regional Development, Startup Ecosystems

35 Comments

The Entrepreneurship in Texas Biosciences

Wednesday, 15 April 2026 by Paul O'Brien

On the heels of my return from Phoenix Biosciences Core and a talk about the Arizona startup ecosystem, Texas announces ARPA-H funding, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health supporting transformative biomedical and health breakthroughs. It didn’t luck into it with a last-minute pitch deck and a prayer. Four major cities put aside their egos, formed

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Published in Biosciences, healthcare, Regional Development, Texas Startups

29 Comments

Phoenix Not Copying Silicon Valley is the Winning Lesson

Monday, 13 April 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Ninety percent of startups fail, and the standard response from the startup industry encouragement because we “learn from failure.” The work I do in legislative affairs and ecosystem development is oriented precisely to improving that number, and a recent trip to Phoenix reminded me that the cities doing interesting things are not the ones trying

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Published in Regional Development

24 Comments