The great British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that entrepreneurs are necessarily optimistic, with the fear of failure “put aside as a healthy man puts aside the expectation of death.” There is, however, a big difference between optimism and chicanery. …

We live in an era of big promises but results that fall far short of expectations. Take the failed construction startup Katerra. Founded in 2015, the company claimed it would use the approaches of digital and mass production industries, including glued and laminated “mass timber” products and modular design, to…

2021 was a great year globally for venture capital and startups. Initial public offerings (IPOs) raised a record $594 billion in 2021 globally while VC funding is on track to hit a record $454 billion invested through the first three quarters of 2021 This is up from $332 billion for…

Share prices for video service startup Zoom, social media startups Snap and Pinterest, e-commerce startups Etsy, Purple, Wayfair, and Peloton, and many others are up more than three times from pre-pandemic levels. Even Uber and Lyft’s share price are up more than 50% despite the lockdowns reducing demand for their…

Digital transformation was supposed to give us higher productivity, a better quality of life, and perhaps higher unemployment. Yet, productivity growth in most Western countries was slower in the 2010s than in any previous decade, and unemployment was at record lows before the pandemic. Optimists will of course say differently…

Only four Western and two Chinese AI companies report income, and all have big losses. CrowdStrike and c3.ai both did IPOs and had losses equal to 30% and 40% of revenues respectively in 2019, and 13% and 40% respectively in 2020. Nest’s losses were 85% of revenues in 2017[1] and…

Small Impact of Lockdowns on Startup Unicorn Profits: Only 7 of 69 Are Profitable in 2020, Up From 6 in 2019 Seven of 70 Unicorn Startups were profitable in the first three quarters of 2020 and only three of them were profitable in 2019 (See figure). Zoom, Etsy, and Green…

The sharing economy was supposed to change the world. Driven by the diffusion of smart phones and new services, many expected that cars, rooms, bikes, scooters, and household items such as musical instruments, designer bags and sporting equipment would be shared at a huge level, thus reducing private ownership, and…

By Understanding the Technology Business schools claim that it is not the technology, it is the business model but to understand the two most critical aspects of the business model, the value proposition, and customers, one must understand the technology. What does the technology offer that is better than the…