The majestic sun dropeth down over the horizon later, the weather is warming, and the vaccines are distributing! You know what that means? Return to office is almost upon us! Or…is it? Just this week San Francisco announced the city entered the “Orange Tier”. The Orange Tier, you see, is a new phase which no […]
There is change afoot in how startups fill up their gas tanks in Silicon Valley. Recent cycles have shown venture capital as the popular weapon of choice to finance startup ambition. The success of venture financing has led to great power accumulating in the few hands that deploy it. Through multiple waves of innovation across computing, the internet, mobile, and now decentralized networks equity has proven to be a powerful tool for growth. But the pendulum is swinging back. Capital, after all, is a commodity.
Did you know that as of 2020 90% of assets on S&P 500 corporate balance sheets are intangible assets? In 1975 it was only 17% or roughly $122 billion dollars. The 90% intangible asset figure today represents over $21 trillion dollars. Numerically it’s astounding. Basically, over time, reality has become…perception. At least from an accounting standpoint.
Reflecting back on meme stock mania it’s clear that it was the breakout moment for FinTech darling Robinhood. Even after all their success to date this was different. They had 3M app downloads in January alone! Yet lost in the criticism of how they handled trading restrictions, the tense testimony on Capitol Hill, and all the rest of the noise is the reality that their breakout moment almost broke them. That’s the thing about breakout moments.
It was Plato who said “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” More or less those were his words. Plato did not know English though. He also appreciated that he did not know how good of a philosopher he was. He knew he didn’t […]
There was an internet war of words. Not necessarily a memorable one. One of the many that occurs on the digital battlefield each week. It might have been between VCs and the media and their coverage of some startup. One can’t be too sure. The specific tweet with the observation couldn’t be located, ok? Still, […]
We’re approaching the mid point of February in the year of our lord 2021 / 1 A.C. and we’ve vaccinated approximately 10% of the U.S. population with an initial Covid vaccine. If you think that opening line is boring, life is pretty boring now isn’t it? 3% of the population stands fully vaccinated. We’ve had emergency FDA authorization for the Pfizer & Moderna vaccines for about two months and America stands 5th worldwide in vaccinations per citizen.
…Is that any good? We’re at war with a virus. But it really doesn’t feel like it.
By now you know the story. Or at least a lot of it. An army of Redditors from the wallstreetbets forum, for the briefest of moments, brought Wall Street hedge funds to their knees. They engineered a decentralized yet coordinated short squeeze of brick & mortar stocks from a bygone era like GameStop, AMC, and others.
The mathematics of company building dictate that once a company gets big enough you’re going to deal with some people problems. If you have more than 365 employees and each of them has one bad day a year, you’ll have affected teams across the company pretty much EVERY day. One really bad day every 5 […]
Have you ever noticed the most curious trend with some of the smartest people? You ask if something is possible hopeful for an affirmative response. Five minutes later…they’re still talking! You don’t know which way is up or out of the hole you’ve been verbally burrowed down.