Artivest
"Private equity has offered outperformance over public markets generally and in particular when initiated in weak markets and weak U.S. economic growth regimes. This dynamic is the stuff that diversification is made of."
Artivest
"Private equity has offered outperformance over public markets generally and in particular when initiated in weak markets and weak U.S. economic growth regimes. This dynamic is the stuff that diversification is made of."
Richmond Times-Dispatch
James E. "Jim" Ukrop is a founding member of NRV, which has backed more than a dozen start-ups. "We look for companies that are solving big problems, and we provide capital, counsel and connections."
DG South
With investors having poured over $23 Billion into financial technology (or fintech) start-ups around the world, and estimated market revenues of at least $4.7 Trillion, all eyes are turning to fintech. Richmond's own WealthForge is listed among nine Southern fintech start-ups to bet on this year.
Charlottesville PR Web
In less than 18 months of operation, Moonlighting has become the preeminent destination for Freelancers and Small Businesses looking to get discovered quickly in the emerging, new on-demand economy. Freelancers, or 'Moonlighters,' can find project work and part-time gigs for themselves and hire other fellow freelancers to fuel their own small business.
Entrepreneur
Starting a new business is not an informal process, and should never be treated like a hobby between friends. Unfortunately, as a startup advisor and angel investor, I’ve seen too many ventures with great potential get destroyed or set back by legal and other shortcuts that should never have been allowed to happen. The path to true success does not allow for shortcuts.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Chief executive officers Shane Emmett and Peter Harrison, representing Richmond-area companies Health Warrior and Snagajob, have been announced as Mid-Atlantic region finalists for the 2016 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award.
Emmett founded Health Warrior — a Richmond-based manufacturer of snack bars made from chia seeds — in 2010 along with college friends Dan Gluck and Nick Morris.
Starting Monday (5/16), new rules will permit anyone, not just the moneyed, to risk $2,000 a year or more investing in small companies in exchange for a stake in the business. Companies can raise up to $1 million a year this way.
FastCo.Exist
Collision Density - how often are you going to run into someone with whom you can do something creative or interesting?
Who was right, Jane Jacobs or Alfred Marshall and Michael Porter? The renowned urbanist, Jacobs argued for decades of the importance of density and diversity of economic actors in cities as a primary driver of innovation. Economists Marshall and Porter, on the other hand, have argued that clustering of similar industries in industrial parks and regions is the best way to stimulate innovation, job growth, and economic development. Depending on the time, location, and industry, perhaps they are all right. Increasingly, however, it appears that more innovation and entrepreneurship is happening in the dynamic, diverse urban areas as opposed to suburban tech parks.
Richard Florida, for example, has been documenting the recent migration of venture capital investments from suburban tech parks into urban areas and innovation districts. This, he has found, is even happening in Silicon Valley,where more investment is going into startups in San Francisco than in the Valley. One argument for this trend, which is very consistent with Jacobs’s reasoning, is the idea of "collision density."
The term has its origins in physics where it is used to reference the rate of interactions among atoms in a physical system. Last year, I first heard someone reference the idea of fostering more of this "collision density" between the innovators and entrepreneurs. I must admit that I had never heard of it being applied to the entrepreneurial ecosystem before. After some research, it seems it really has yet to be used in any peer-reviewed academic journals about entrepreneurship—but it's very important to the idea of a thriving, smart city.
I suspect this is not a surprise. When artists, designers, technologists, investors, community activists, engineers, and entrepreneurs mix together, more innovative ideas are likely to emerge than just a group of engineers discussing the potential for blockchain, peer-to-peer models, distributed renewable energy, and so on. I say this despite somewhat agreeing with the Guy Kawasaki’s infamous statement that while engineers add to the valuation of a startup team, MBAs detract from valuation.
So, I believe that startup cities are those that amass a significant amount of potential to facilitate collision density between different kinds of thinkers. Collision density is naturally much higher in cities than in suburbs and suburban tech parks because cities house a much higher rate of diverse actors in smaller, more compact spaces. As the tools of innovation are becoming more democratized, and cities are increasingly home to dozens, if not hundreds, of accelerators, coworking spaces, fab labs, and the like, combined with proximity to artists, designers, schools, and users, entrepreneurs are able to regularly mingle with and create mashups of ideas, some of which may turn into commercializable innovations.
This is part of series of articles based on The Emergence of the Urban Entrepreneur, by Boyd Cohen and Pablo Muñoz, with a foreword by Richard Florida. It will be published in May.
A recent World Bank study suggested that meeting places (like coworking spaces) and other networking assets (like meetups) combine to increase collision density in a city. They even went as far as to recommend formulas for measuring collision density either as "collisionable hours per year" or "collisionable hours per square foot."
This suggests that not all cities are created equal when it comes to the potential they offer to support increased collision density. Of course, many initiatives that could support increased collisions occur from the grassroots innovation and entrepreneurial movement in a city. I believe that the number and diversity of meetups in a city will contribute to the growth of collision density and result in more innovative startups and collaborations. For example, on a random April day in my hometown of Barcelona, there were 56 different meetup activities on the Meetups.com calendar, including an expat breakfast, a makers gathering, a meeting for female entrepreneurs, a free code camp, a startup networking meeting, and of course a range of artistic and creative activities from tango classes to improv music jams and even a science talk about "Charles Darwin and evolution by natural selection."
Richard Florida long ago drew the world’s attention to the importance of attracting creative mobile citizens to startup cities. I would argue that Florida’s formula of "talent, tolerance, and technology" can equal collision density, which may be one of the secret sauces to creating a vibrant urban entrepreneurial ecosystem. City administrators would be wise to pay close attention to this phenomenon in the global competition for urban innovation talent.
PR Newswire
Health Warrior, a natural food brand with top-selling Chia Bars and Superfood Protein Bars, today announces the launch of its Movement For Good Tour. Created to further the Health Warrior mission to inspire healthy diet and exercise habits, the brand has teamed up with national non-profit KaBOOM!, selected for its dedication to ensuring that all children have the balanced and active play they need to thrive.
Beginning May 14, the Movement For Good Tour will visit supermarkets across Southern California including Whole Foods Markets, Vons, and Pavilions.
RichTech
MAXX Potential, a unique approach toward workforce development, MAXX Potential is filling a much-needed void in our ecosystem. The company finds and invests in aspiring technologists, by giving them a debt-free way to achieve their career goals while also instilling the values of continuous learning and hard work.
Southern Living
Kim Mahan's Twitter bio reads, 'I invest in people and make lots of things, including mistakes.' Virginia-based MAXX Potential takes tech job candidates and gives them more than training; it also gives them jobs so students can make money while they're learning.
Telegraph.co.uk
Stockholm is the second most prolific tech hub in the world on a per capita basis, behind Silicon Valley. How did that happen and where does it go from here?
A Crowded Space
Josh Breinlinger
We don’t often think about how to buy clothes in a retail store - but the expectations are learned over years of shopping. We all know when we walk into almost any clothing store in the US – we can browse around, someone will probably greet us and ask if we need any help, we can try on any items we wish, we can pay via cash or credit card, we most likely can’t negotiate much, and we are probably able to return any unworn items without too much trouble as long as we save the receipt. Why do we know all that? Because these are accepted policies that we’ve learned for clothing stores. From the first time we went shopping with our parents - this is what we were taught.
Richmond BizSense
A local start-up that's caught the eye of local and global investors is taking over more space in Shockoe Bottom, moving into part of the former Wolf Fording building. The space will likely be used for operations and manufacturing.
Sophisticated minds are often drawn to unsolvable puzzles. Organizations that pride themselves on intellectual capital can be easily tempted into overly complicated investments when a tantalizing riddle presents itself.
McKinsey&Company
We estimate there are today more than 2,000 start-ups offering traditional and new financial services. Here's how banks should respond.
Bloomberg
Jim Ratliff worked for 14 years in the mines of eastern Kentucky, drilling holes and blasting dynamite to expose the coal that has powered Appalachian life for more than a century.
Today, he rolls into an office at 8 a.m., settles into a small metal desk and does something that, until last year, was completely foreign to him: computer coding.
Forbes
As part of a CMO Insight Series, this interview showcases Former CMO of VISA and new CMO of HP Inc. Antonio J. Lucio's "insight regarding what it takes to be a true global marketing leader and the importance of generating deep insight into the world’s people, customs, and cultures, through reading, travel, and learning."
TechRadar
While Tesla has yet to introduce its own wireless charging solutions for its electric fleet, Evatran is readying a Plugless Power solution for Tesla's most popular electric vehicle (EV), the Model S.