Insights / Research Archives - Startup Economist

What It Means to Run Down a Dream

Tuesday, 03 March 2026 by Paul O'Brien

I once crossed paths with Bill Gurley, author and venture capitalist, so long ago and so briefly that I couldn’t reconstruct the details if I tried. The startup ecosystem was smaller then, known names were less frequent, and it was easier to recognize people; it was a lot like my experience in Austin as it

Published in Insights / Research, Startups

14 Comments

Startup Cities Need to Measure and Expect Outcomes, Not Activity. Here’s How.

Wednesday, 25 February 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Cities love to count things that are easy to count: events, meetups, demo days. “Startups Launched.” Celebrating press releases. If activity were the same thing as value creation, every city with a monthly pitch night would be a company building machine. It isn’t. The discipline gap in startup ecosystem development is measurement, not dashboards full

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Published in Economic Development, Insights / Research, Startups

12 Comments

The Startup of You

Saturday, 14 February 2026 by Paul O'Brien

There are moments in life when everything you thought was solid shifts. A job changes.A parent gets sick.A child grows up faster than you expected.A diagnosis lands hard.A technology appears that compresses decades of mastery into seconds. You sit there and realize the ground was never the ground; it was this hacked together scaffolding. And

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Published in Insights / Research

20 Comments

What Sinks Startups AND Democracies: The One Thing Founders and Voters Are Starting to See Might Save Us

Monday, 19 January 2026 by Paul O'Brien

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

entrepreneurship government policy public policy

Published in Economic Development, Insights / Research

17 Comments

The IP Trap: How Licensing Knowledge Became a Tax on Progress

Thursday, 08 January 2026 by Paul O'Brien

A couple of weeks ago I published Universities Aren’t Commercializing Innovation, They’re Taxing It with a challenge I knew would find support from most but anger from a few. Founders forwarded it privately. Economic developers chimed in with encouragement. Researchers beyond the 25 universities that benefit from commercialization sent me flowers. Intellectual property stifles innovation.

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Published in Insights / Research

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Universities Aren’t Commercializing Innovation, They’re Taxing It

Friday, 19 December 2025 by Paul O'Brien

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

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Published in Insights / Research, Startup Ecosystems

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The Great Startup Delusion: What Web3 Failures Teach About Confusing Business with Innovation

Monday, 15 December 2025 by Paul O'Brien

There’s a nasty little lie that keeps getting passed around the economy like a like a VC quote on LinkedIn: that every new business built on a new technology is a “startup.” It’s how we got here, misunderstanding the difference between a startup and a business. The bloated graveyard of Web3 ventures, now being backfilled

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Published in AI, Insights / Research, Quantum, Social Media, Startups

28 Comments