The Wall Street Journal’s recent piece about “Silicon Valley invading Toronto” is, in my view, describing a generally positive outcome. We are one of the largest cities in North America (the exact ranking depends on where you draw the urban boundaries). We have more enlightened… Read More
Bloomberg recently published a good summary of Zillow’s business and their move into algorithm home buying and flipping. (They are trying to avoid the “flipping” moniker because of the negative connotations associated with it.) Zillow started buying homes directly from owners last spring. They charge… Read More
The Economist recently argued that Silicon Valley’s innovation hegemony is waning and that it is a product of two factors: there appears to be more innovation happening elsewhere (good news), but that innovation in general also seems to be harder to achieve (bad news). Here… Read More
Below is a list of the US metro areas that saw a billion dollars or more in venture capital investment last year (2017). It is taken from a recent CityLab article by Richard Florida where he talks about the “geographic inequality of high-tech venture capital.” It’s… Read More
Emily Badger of the New York Times published an interesting piece yesterday talking about the tech industry’s current obsession with trying to fix cities. And there are certainly many problems to fix. Staying true to tech and engineering parlance, there’s lots of talk of optimization.… Read More
The Equality of Opportunity Project has a recent paper out called: Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The importance of Exposure to Innovation. Vox also has a summary of the findings, here. The overall goal of the project is to “use big data to identify new… Read More
The Q3 2017 Moneytree Report from PwC and CB Insights was recently released. It tracks venture capital trends in the US and globally. Last quarter, US venture capital-backed companies saw $19 billion in total funding across 1,207 deals. Perhaps most notably for the US, funding… Read More
Social Capital (Silicon Valley VC firm) recently published an interesting series on (economic) bubbles: what they are, how they form, when they are useful, and so on. It’s worth a read – you can start here. Here’s a taste: “Prices in markets turn out to have two roles:… Read More
“There is no higher God in Silicon Valley than growth. No sacrifice too big for its craving altar. As long as you keep your curve exponential, all your sins will be forgotten at the exit.” –David Heinemeier Hansson Snap Inc. went public last week. Offering price… Read More
If you’re a very talented person, you have two choices: you either move to New York or you move to Silicon Valley. This is the message that Peter Thiel delivered to a conference being held in Chicago earlier this month. Not surprisingly, it pissed a… Read More
