Economic Development Archives - Startup Economist

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

Published in Regional Development

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Baltimore Is Not Waiting for Permission to Be a Startup City

Monday, 06 April 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Samuel Morse’s first telegraph message, sent from Washington to Baltimore’s Mount Clare Station in 1844, asked, “What hath God wrought?” Nearly two centuries later, Baltimore is still wroughting. The city gave us the first commercial railroad, the first dental school, the bottle cap, the Linotype machine, rubber surgical gloves, and the national anthem has now

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Published in Regional Development

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I Wrote the Book on Startup Ecosystems. Austin Technology Council’s CEO Wanted the Full Story.

Thursday, 19 March 2026 by Paul O'Brien

I have a lot of conversations about the economy. In conference rooms, in government offices, at accelerator demo days, at city halls from Austin to Zagreb. Most of them end the same way: everyone in the room nods, someone says, “this is exactly what we needed to hear,” and then little changes. We need to

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Published in Austin, Economic Development

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I Wrote the Book I Needed to Read Twenty Years Ago

Tuesday, 17 March 2026 by Paul O'Brien

There is a moment, somewhere between finishing a manuscript and holding the printed thing in your hands, when you realize the book was never really about the subject. It was about you. Not in the self-indulgent sense, not a memoir dressed up in economics. But in the sense that everything I have spent the last

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Published in Economic Development, Featured, Startup Ecosystems

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Founders Can’t Scale What Government Won’t: Policy Infrastructure Entrepreneurship Needs

Wednesday, 11 March 2026 by Paul O'Brien

At SXSW 2026? We’ll be convening a Tech + Policy Meetup at Cosmic Saltillo, Sunday, March 15th at 2 pm – RSVP Here If you work in economic development, run a government affairs office, manage a legislative portfolio, or sit in any room where startup policy gets discussed, tune in. The people with the most

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Published in Economic Development

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The Best and Potential States for Startups: A Policy-First Look at Who’s Helping Founders

Monday, 09 March 2026 by Paul O'Brien

If you ask most people which states are best for startups, they’ll rattle off California and New York because that’s where the money has historically pooled, understandably now too, Texas. That’s a bit like saying Las Vegas is a great place to build wealth because rich people go there. The concentration of capital in a

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Published in Economic Development

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What if the Poorest Places Are Actually the Best Places to Start a Startup Right Now?

Friday, 06 March 2026 by Paul O'Brien

I was asked this past week, by someone in a very economically challenged city, how they can start something without the resources so many others have when starting out. Data on this is more encouraging than the startup world wants to admit so the question drove me to want to help make sure everyone knows

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Published in Economic Development

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