Startups Archives - Startup Economist

Founder Burnout or the Wrong Fuel?

Sunday, 15 March 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Days into SXSW, eyes look weary and voices are starting to gravel. Leading up to major events like this one, there are always a host of livestream events, blog posts, and newsletters (my own included) offering suggestions to make the most of the experience; now I’m awake in the middle of the night thinking about

Published in Startups

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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

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Published in Insights / Research, Startups

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How Streaming Shows That AI Is Making the Product a Commodity, Here’s How Startup Founders Survive

Sunday, 01 March 2026 by Paul O'Brien

I find myself more oriented to media than most. I am a huge live music fan extending well beyond concerts and festivals into even musicals and Broadway. My career started in advertising by way of Yahoo! when “online” was little more than a concept. I was among the first with Netflix, familiar with The Pirate

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Energy Is the Startup Resource That Actually Matters

Friday, 27 February 2026 by Paul O'Brien

And no, I don’t mean your Series A. Some wonderful conversations lately about energy. That it connects all things… that it’s the origin of the universe… that matching frequency is how people find partners, close friends, and love. There’s a word that gets thrown around startup ecosystems like cocktails at a launch party – passion

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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

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Founders, Stop Trying to Be Perfect

Monday, 23 February 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Perfection is the fastest way to look inexperienced. Not because ambition is bad and not because polish doesn’t matter but because the very definition of a startup makes perfection impossible. A startup is not a smaller version of a big company, it is a temporary organization searching for a scalable, repeatable business model. That language

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The Second Time Around

Monday, 16 February 2026 by Paul O'Brien

In my last piece, The Startup of You, I wrote about how the real venture we’re building isn’t the company, it’s ourselves. As our long weekend comes to an end, my parents boarded a flight home after visiting; and as my daughter steps into new projects and fresh chapter of her own, my mind turned

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Published in Startups

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