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Why Cities Should Invest in Startups: The Key to Economic Growth

Wednesday, 25 June 2025 by
Why Startups? Let’s Distinguish Why City Officials Should be Focused on Strategic Investment in Innovation-Driven Ventures (and why most are failing despite trying) It’s one of the most misunderstood yet consequential distinctions in economic development today: the difference between startups and small businesses. Cities talk about “entrepreneurship” like it’s a monolithic idea, but if we’re
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58 Comments

Startup Ecosystems Fail Because of Investors

Wednesday, 28 May 2025 by
Yes, I meant what I said in that headline… let’s see if I can back it up. In my conversation with Bryan Hancock on Executive Connect, I pulled back the curtain on the startup mythology that’s selling cities, founders, and investors a false bill of goods. We don’t need more accelerators. We need people who
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9 Comments

Why Most Investors Are Wasting Their Time Ignoring Emerging Fund Managers

Wednesday, 12 March 2025 by
The most prevalent reason why I always raise my hand to speak, moderate, or host an event, is that while written content reaches millions or podcasting helps people see or hear your tone and passion, it’s only through live events that one can read the reaction of an audience, and in real time nuance the
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20 Comments

What the Best Angel Investors Do Differently in Startup Investing

Tuesday, 28 January 2025 by
The rush to become an angel investor mirrors the increase in the appeal of the “celebrity entrepreneur” we’ve seen over the last couple of decades.  To flourish, the investor community must consolidate more (i.e. become an LP in a fund vs doing our own thing) and those who remain independent must level up their value-add. I
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23 Comments

How Funding Startups is Like Betting on Horses

Monday, 09 August 2021 by
Last week, a bit of a controversial, but thought-provoking, perspective about Venture Capital caught the attention of a lot of my readers and followers. There has been a horrific rash of *VC Bad* propaganda and misinformation lately, sparking my thought that people are being misled about the what Venture Capital is and does. That, entrepreneurs are frustrated
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15 Comments

The Future of our Economy Lies in Property Development and Startups Finding Common Ground

Thursday, 17 December 2020 by
“Perhaps one of the most important financial decisions a forest landowner will make is determining when to harvest timber.” That, the opening of a PennState article exploring the financial decisions land owners consider in this use case, including how to determine and calculate when to maximize financial returns, prompted a thought about investing in property
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22 Comments

Do Startups Not Need to Be Profitable?

Wednesday, 14 August 2019 by
We’re in this really weird era as Silicon Valley creeps out to the rest of the world, in which investors elsewhere, traditional business owners, and the like, keep advising everyone to, “focus on customers,” “it’s all about revenue,” and questions such as this. Startups never needed to become profitable. Venture Capital investors fund EXITS Grants fund
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