Entrepreneurship: The Illegal Move Economics Can’t Explain
Thursday, 17 July 2025
- Published in Economic Development, Startups
We Already Know How to Do This: Stop Reinventing Startup Development Organizations
Friday, 11 July 2025
Recently, someone asked me, “How do you make a training center for entrepreneurs to be self-sustaining and not just dependent on investors?” And I nearly threw a stapler. Not because the question isn’t valid, because it is, but because we’ve been answering it for decades. The model exists. It’s tested. It’s been done over and
- Published in Economic Development, Startups
Stop Pitching Your Startup Like It’s a Science Fair Project
Monday, 07 July 2025
Nobody cares about your startup. And it’s not because they’re stupid, or you’re too early. It’s because you’re saying the wrong damn thing. I’ve learned through my own startup, as well as working with hundreds of founders through incubators, that the answer to your frustration with this is always the same. The problem founders always
- Published in Startups
Why is “Are startup founders different?” Still a Meaningful Question??
Thursday, 03 July 2025
It’s always amusing when mainstream media stumbles into a conversation the rest of us have been having for, oh, I don’t know… decades? This week, The Economist decided to pose the bold question: “Are startup founders different?” as if it’s some new frontier of behavioral science. Imagine walking into a neuroscience conference and breathlessly announcing
- Published in Insights / Research, Startups
Why Most Startups Fail to Get Enough Attention
Wednesday, 18 June 2025
Most startups don’t die because they lacked funding. They don’t die because of bad code, poor vision, lack of a business plan, or the boogeyman of “not having product-market fit.” They die because no one noticed they were alive in the first place. We romanticize startup failure as some noble rite of passage (cue the
Building a Tough Tech Venture Studio
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
Welcome to the frontier of innovation that doesn’t get VC Twitter likes or SXSW panels, the mud-covered, steel-reinforced, and sometimes radioactive frontier of “Tough Tech” (my word, I’m trying to come up with something to distinguish not-consumer, not-university, not just-apps). This isn’t SaaS, crypto, or your fourth AI wrapper for ChatGPT, this is the real
- Published in Economic Development, Startups