Only 10% of State and National Governments Distinguish Startups from New Businesses
Tuesday, 20 January 2026
A practical startup economic policy framework for governments that want venture-scale companies Governments around the world love the word entrepreneurship. They put it in press releases, name departments after it, fund “innovation hubs,” and cut ribbons in front of coworking spaces that end up being networking clubs for service providers seeking customers. What almost none
- Published in Startup Ecosystems
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What Sinks Startups AND Democracies: The One Thing Founders and Voters Are Starting to See Might Save Us
Monday, 19 January 2026
We trained a generation to build tools, not understand consequences. Technology keeps revealing just how dangerous that gap has become. American courts have been undergoing an experiment by way of a study that might (should) heavily influence everyone in appreciating how important it is that decision makers are well informed. Finally seeing more light with
- Published in Economic Development, Insights / Research
The California Tech Tax Is a Kill Switch. Texas Keeps Innovation Compounding.
Wednesday, 14 January 2026
California is flirting with a policy idea so aggressively stupid it reads like parody, except it isn’t. It’s drafted law; it’s real. And even if it never passes, the damage is already done. The proposed “Billionaire Wealth Tax” ballot measure is not merely a tax and it’s far more than California’s tech tax; it is
- Published in Economic Development
Universities Aren’t Commercializing Innovation, They’re Taxing It
Friday, 19 December 2025
Everywhere I go lately experiences at some point, the same conversation. Different city, different state, different accents and startup hype, but the same whisper once the doors close and University administration is out of the room. I was just in Phoenix, sitting with startup operators and ecosystem builders, and within minutes we were right back
- Published in Insights / Research, Startup Ecosystems
Why Riyadh and Saudi Arabia Are Rapidly Becoming a Global Startup Powerhouse
Wednesday, 17 December 2025
Riyadh didn’t become a startup ecosystem overnight. It’s rooted in a long history of adaptation and reinvention; a story about shifting from desert trade routes and tribal politics to oil wealth and now trying to crack the code on innovation-led diversification. To understand why Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh startups in particular, is increasingly attractive to
- Published in Regional Development
Chicago Startups Industrialized Innovation
Thursday, 11 December 2025
This is a city that burned to the ground and responded by inventing the skyscraper. It turned its geography into the nation’s freight yard, its politics into a machine, and its universities into research engines. It engineered futures markets, modern cellular telephony, and now wants to industrialize quantum computing. If you’re trying to understand how
- Published in Regional Development
New Mexico Didn’t ‘Find’ Startups, It Built the Future: From Nukes and UFOs to Quantum Capital
Monday, 08 December 2025
If you still think of New Mexico as a quiet desert between Texas and Arizona, you’re about 80 years behind. This is the state that built the atomic age, test-flew the rockets that defined the Cold War, turned a supposed UFO crash into a tourism engine, and is increasingly the heart of quantum computing. New
- Published in Regional Development







