startups Archives - Startup Economist

New Mexico Didn’t ‘Find’ Startups, It Built the Future: From Nukes and UFOs to Quantum Capital

Monday, 08 December 2025 by Paul O'Brien

If you still think of New Mexico as a quiet desert between Texas and Arizona, you’re about 80 years behind. This is the state that built the atomic age, test-flew the rockets that defined the Cold War, turned a supposed UFO crash into a tourism engine, and is increasingly the heart of quantum computing. New

Published in Regional Development

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There Is No “Era of the Bootstrapped Startup,” There’s Math, Memory Loss, and Better Advice

Tuesday, 02 December 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Every few years, someone declares a new epoch in entrepreneurship. We’ve had the “Era of Lean,” the “Rise of the Micro-VC,” the “Democratization of Innovation,” and (God help us) the phase where every city believed a coworking space with a yellow logo and a couple late career bankers counted as a “startup ecosystem.” With AI

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Published in Startup Ecosystems, Startups, Uncategorized

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New Jersey’s Creative Class Isn’t Just Showing Up, It’s Becoming the Payoff for Its Startup Economy

Wednesday, 05 November 2025 by Paul O'Brien

In a few weeks, I’ll be in New Jersey, a part of the world that holds a very special place in my heart, as does nearby Philadelphia, thanks to family, foundational memories as a child and with my own kids, and now as roots to call a home. With that trip in mind, I could

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Published in Regional Development

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Startup Investors, Let’s Get to Know Portland, Oregon

Wednesday, 29 October 2025 by Paul O'Brien

If cities were startups, Portland would be the one that never hired a PR firm, preferring instead to let its product (culture) speak for itself. For investors, that confidence has been both its charm and a challenge. Portland is inventive to the point of eccentricity, independent to the point of obstinacy, and so allergic to

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Published in Regional Development

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Willy Wonka Inspired a Generation of Founders

Wednesday, 29 October 2025 by Paul O'Brien

He was no wizard. Magic is the soft word we use when we can’t explain how someone bends the laws of reality. Willy Wonka bent them with sugar, steel, and science. His factory wasn’t a place of spells, it was a cathedral of chemistry, a machine that turned the imagination of children into industrial-scale production.

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Published in Startups

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How Real Ecosystems Outperform Hype: Startup Ecosystem Infrastructure

Friday, 24 October 2025 by Paul O'Brien

What if the problem isn’t that cities can’t build startups, what if the problem is they’re building the wrong kind of systems? In the frenzy to claim, “innovation district,” many regions forget the fundamentals: connections, capital-fit, customer access, and context. In a recent panel for Founder Institute, I brought together three ecosystem practitioners, Levi Velez

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Published in Economic Development

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It’s Not the End of the World. It’s the End of Pretending.

Monday, 20 October 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Every generation believes it’s living through the end of the world. With all that’s on social media and in the news now, ours might finally be right, but not in the way we think. And you reader, entrepreneurs, investors, and economic development leaders, are the people we need rising to the challenges. R.E.M.’s It’s the End

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Published in Economic Development

26 Comments