The Smörgåsbord Standard: Sweden Startups and Why the Rest of the World Should Be Taking Notes
Monday, 01 June 2026
My dad’s side is Irish, and I have leaned into that identity for most of my life. Then André Persson shared an article, and I started thinking about my mom’s side of the family; Swedish emigrants who brought something with them to the United States that I have never fully examined. What exactly did Sweden
- Published in Regional Development
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The Workforce Lab: Milwaukee Startups are Uncovering the Future of Work
Tuesday, 26 May 2026
I’ve been turning some attention to more sector specific specialties, and having just covered the future of work in the context of energy, thought I’d take a look at it explicitly in terms of working out how we’ll work. Doing so, Milwaukee surprised. This is the city that invented the typewriter, commercialized the motorcycle, built
- Published in Regional Development
Building the Energy Future While the Rest of America Argues About It: America’s Energy Belt
Monday, 25 May 2026
Startup ecosystems do not happen at the city level, no matter how many branding exercises a mayor commissions or how many innovation districts get ribbon-cut in the same news cycle. They happen at the regional level, with sector specialization that compounds across geography where varied strengths and weaknesses are found throughout; the people writing the
- Published in AI, Data, Economic Development, Energy
The Hidden Policy Crisis Behind America’s Startup Decline
Friday, 22 May 2026
Research across Cato, Brookings, Mercatus, Kauffman, the SBA, and the Congressional Research Service increasingly points to the same conclusion Cato Institute policy analyst, Solveig Singleton, published a paper this week titled Addressing Civil Investigative Demand Overreach at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and I fear that approximately zero people in the venture community read it.
- Published in Economic Development, Startup Ecosystems
The Year Apple Was Founded, a Supercomputer Changed Science, and Nobody Called Any of It a “Startup”
Thursday, 21 May 2026
A birthday note for everyone who loves someone who never stopped building things The year I was born, two college dropouts sold a Volkswagen bus and a programmable calculator to fund a company they built in a bedroom and later a garage. They didn’t have a pitch deck. They didn’t have a term sheet. They
- Published in Economic Development
Iowa Startups Built the First Computer in a Basement. Now…
Monday, 18 May 2026
That statement needs to be explained; wasn’t ENIAC in 1945?? Some say Charles Babbage created the concept of a programmable computer in 1822. This is one that doesn’t make the articles of the history of the computer, and it should. Between 1939 and 1942, in the basement of the physics building at Iowa State College,
- Published in Regional Development
Houston Startups: Why the Bayou City Is One of America’s Most Consequential Startup Regions
Tuesday, 12 May 2026
I’m in Houston next week, with Rice and The Ion, discussing Venture Studios, given the clear role the city plays in energy, and Houston startups. The fourth-largest city in the United States, Houston is home to the world’s largest medical complex, the command center for every American crewed space mission since Gemini IV, the undisputed
- Published in Regional Development, Texas Startups







