Steven Pinker is the author of several books, including Enlightenment Now, which published earlier this year and immediately became Bill Gates’s “new favorite book of all time.” Pinker spoke with Entrepreneur at OZY Fest in New York City this past weekend about capitalism, the complementary and potentially evolving roles of businesses and governments and how entrepreneurs should approach problem-solving. Read more>>
Monthly Archives: July 2018
Space is open for business
For 50 years, space innovation meant scaling Apollo-era technologies into ever larger, more durable satellites parked above their terrestrial clients in geosynchronous orbit. Exotic space-ready parts, militarized defenses and layered redundancies ballooned into multi-billion-dollar systems designed to last 40 years or more beyond their conceptions. Read more>>
How Emotional Marketing Can Drive Business Growth
An image of an elegant Vermicular-brand Japanese rice cooker flashed on the screen at the Wharton Customer Analytics Conference. The speaker, Ridhima Raina, asked the audience how much they thought it cost. Raina said, “I checked this on Ebay this morning and it was $1,000.” Raina asserted that the main reason Vermicular can charge so much for its rice cooker compared to other brands is that the product spikes on what she called “Elements of Value.” Read more>>
What to Do with Too Much Advice
We recently announced the launch of a new version of Startup School. As part of that, we created a library of the best advice we’ve written and created in the past. This is a powerful collection, and it got me thinking about the nature of advice. Specifically, it made me consider an issue that frequently confronts founders: what to do with too much advice. Read more>>
From robot insects to human-sniffing sensors, this rescue tech could save lives
What We’ve Learned from Creating an Advisory Board
Last year we decided to formalize an advisory board. Through the creation and implementation of this process, we’ve learned a lot. One of my friends in Entrepreneurs’ Organization had helped other companies put together advisory boards, so he was a great resource for learning how to find prospective advisors and what kinds of backgrounds to look for. Read more>>
Why Venture Capitalists Should Invest Like Poker Players
Partners in venture funds review over 100 different opportunities to pick one winner and build, over a five-year investment period, a portfolio of 15-20 start-ups. They screen against multiple criteria, yet the industry as a whole has a pretty weak track record. Statistically, according to Correlation Ventures, over 60 percent of all companies that VCs invest in return less than the invested capital. We asked: Can this model be improved? Read more>>
Liberty, equality, technology: France is finally poised to become a tech power
Once America had an unassailable advantage, an economic flywheel that spun off innovation and Fortune 500 companies like a perpetual-motion machine. Enter Brexit. Enter Donald Trump. Enter their implicit and explicit rejections of immigration, including serious barriers to and discouragement of legal and skilled immigration, such as H-1B visa holders and international students. Read more>>
Three Questions All Aspiring Entrepreneurs Should Ask Themselves
The idea of owning your own business sounds appealing to many. But it takes more than simply having a great idea or the desire to be your own boss. You also need the skills and drive to make it on your own. Research has shown that a key component for entrepreneurial success is self-efficacy—the belief that you can succeed. Read more>>
The state of the IPO market
Sixteen months ago, I predicted 2017 would be “the best year for tech IPOs since the dot-com heyday almost two decades ago.” Well, that was not exactly what happened. Despite strong public markets, where we saw the NASDAQ jump 28 percent and the Dow by 25 percent — there were 59 VC-backed IPOs, which was an improvement over the 41 we had in 2016 (2018 NVCA Yearbook) — last year was far from the torrent I expected. Read more>>
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