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Soon in Print: Startup Ecosystems

Innovation Isn’t Real Estate: Why Startup Hubs Waste Money

Thursday, 21 August 2025 by
The garage myth keeps fooling policymakers Innovation is not a real estate play, and your innovation district is likely disappointing entrepreneurs. Yet cities, universities, and corporations keep pouring millions into gleaming new “innovation spaces” and “hubs,” mistaking glass walls and free Wi-Fi for entrepreneurship. To some extent, understandably; startup folklore inspires us with stories of
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37 Comments

Bogotá, Colombia; Latin America’s Next Startup Ascent

Friday, 15 August 2025 by
Colombia has always been a country in motion; politically, culturally, and economically. But motion isn’t the same as progress, and progress isn’t guaranteed. For generations, Colombians have adapted to change not because they wanted to, but because they had to. It’s in this crucible of necessity that the country’s entrepreneurial spirit was forged and potential
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Regional Collapse We Keep Pretending Isn’t Happening

Thursday, 07 August 2025 by
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.
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28 Comments

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

Wednesday, 06 August 2025 by
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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15 Comments

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

Tuesday, 29 July 2025 by
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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Botswana’s Startup Paradox: Why Africa Searches for Venture Capital

Wednesday, 16 July 2025 by
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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43 Comments

Why Venture Capital Avoids your Startup Ecosystem

Monday, 14 July 2025 by
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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