Yesterday President Obama said We started taking shortcuts. We started living on credit, instead of building up savings. We saw businesses focus more on rebranding and repackaging than innovating and developing new ideas that improve our lives. But contrast that with this, from November of last year: The Securities and Exchange Commission this week issued […]
VC, entrepreneurism, startup economy
Why Bankers Will Continue to Make Just as Much as They Used To
I can understand the brouhaha over banker pay. Bankers make a lot of money. And the seeming unwillingness of the banks to lie low on the compensation front for even a quarter or two makes me wince. Case in point, this New York Times article: After Off Year, Wall Street Pay Is Bouncing Back Even […]
There’s lots of bad economic news, so much that not much of it breaks through the clutter for me anymore, but this did: Tufts accepts 26 percent of pool, suspends need-blind admissions: The admissions office … stopped practicing a need-blind admissions policy toward the tail end of the process, a decision that affected five percent […]
Echoing Green: Funding Social Entrepreneurs
I volunteer some of my time to Echoing Green, who provide seed funding and support to social entrepreneurs. EG’s approach is to find social entrepreneurs who take a businesslike approach to building sustainable organizations aimed at creating social change. I met them a few years ago and they asked me to be a reader: to […]
More Capping
Another voice in my crusade (such as it is) to stop paying exorbitant salaries to everyone on the government dole. In the hubbub surrounding President Obama’s decision to cap salaries of commercial-bank CEOs at $500,000 (if they receive future federal funds), the salaries of college and university presidents have been flying under the radar. Some […]
Money to Grow
The quote from Shane’s book yesterday could be taken to imply that somehow it is the venture capitalists that create jobs. Correlation, not causation. As the title tried to convey, it is growth companies that create jobs, and since venture capitalists try to invest in growth companies, their investments are a good proxy for growth […]
To Encourage Growth We Need to Invest in Growth Businesses
My friend John K. and I disagree about how to create jobs by encouraging more startup formation. I think the disagreement comes from John wondering how to create more startups and me wondering how to create more jobs. There’s a difference, as explained pretty well in Scott Shane‘s article in The American, The Startups We […]
Return on Venture Money is Not the Bottleneck
I think the bottleneck to increased startup formation is people, not exits or tax rates. If exits were the problem, then LPs would stop putting money into venture funds as expected returns diminish. Fred Wilson (and many others) have said that lack of money is not the problem. I believe them. So exits can’t be […]
Let’s Not Pretend There’s No Problem and There’s Nothing We Can Do About It Anyway
I don’t agree with government sponsored venture capital, as I’ve said before*. So I wasn’t enchanted by Tom Friedman’s NYT Op-Ed proposing that the government give bailout money to the top VC firms to invest. On the other hand, I thought it a constructive proposal, an addition to the debate. One of the primary concerns […]
Start a Company. Now.
My fundamental strength as a venture investor is having a clear view of what the future will look like (at least as regards my little niche of the industry.) My fundamental weakness has always been not being entirely sure how we get from where we are today to that future. I suppose there’s a name […]