economic development Archives - Startup Economist

Regional Collapse We Keep Pretending Isn’t Happening

Thursday, 07 August 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Something’s gone wrong in the way we structure governance; so wrong that it’s now normalized for elected leaders to turn to govern through coercion rather than consensus So wrong that the people who actually build and sustain the economy (workers, founders, educators, families) are often the last ones consulted about how that economy is governed.

Published in Economic Development, Regional Development

25 Comments

Why Startups and Cities Fail Without a Clear Narrative: ACES for Ventures and Ecosystems

Wednesday, 06 August 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Most of you don’t fail because they lack a great product, brilliant founders, or access to capital. You fail because you haven’t worked out how to tell your story. You fail because your narrative doesn’t build trust, urgency, or credibility; three things that must happen before you ever get to the sale. This isn’t just

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Published in Startup Ecosystems, Startups

8 Comments

Startup Detroit: From Cranks to Code; How the Motor City Is Revving a New Engine

Tuesday, 29 July 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Steel-Belt Beginnings & Motown Beats: Why Detroit Built Everything from Ford to Funk Long before it became a symbol of rust a city off track, Detroit was a strategic settlement founded in 1701 by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac at Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, a riverfront trade nexus between French Canada and the Great Lakes.

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Published in Regional Development

5 Comments

Botswana’s Startup Paradox: Why Africa Searches for Venture Capital

Wednesday, 16 July 2025 by Paul O'Brien

This is a country with the continent’s most stable democracy, solid credit ratings, one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa over the past fifty years, and the world’s largest diamond producer. Having just released our research into why venture capital avoids regions of the world, my attention turned to Africa because the continent is arguably

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Published in Regional Development

39 Comments

Why Venture Capital Avoids your Startup Ecosystem

Monday, 14 July 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Working with cities throughout the world, developing startup ecosystems, every one of them echos the same in their effort to encourage entrepreneurship, “we’re focused on bringing investors to the table.” What they’re doing is typical, ironically, of founders, who hear a problem and the focus on the solution (which by the way founders, is wrong).

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Published in Featured, Startup Ecosystems

118 Comments

Startups Are Not Small Businesses: A Texas Startup Policy Blueprint for Unlocking Capital

Tuesday, 08 July 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Published in collaboration with the TexCap Policy Institute, this new white paper is more than another call for “more startup support.” It’s a public policy intervention – one Texas desperately needs if we want to lead the nation in innovation, venture capital, and the next generation of job creation. We titled it plainly:Startups != Small

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Published in Economic Development

18 Comments

Building a Tough Tech Venture Studio

Tuesday, 17 June 2025 by Paul O'Brien

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

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Published in Economic Development, Startups

91 Comments