What every entrepreneur should know about financing right now
Over the past few years, we have seen an explosion of start-up activity as the traditional barriers to entry have come down. The ability to raise money no longer determines one’s fate. With lowered costs to build and run websites, acquire and retain users, virtually anybody can pick up coding and start a tech company. […]
Can you build “Silicon Valley” companies outside of the Valley?
The big debate among tech circles has always been if it’s possible to build a “Silicon Valley” company outside of the Valley. Is Silicon Valley a physical place or a state of mind? Can upstart ecosystems in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, or Seattle churn out tomorrow’s billion dollar tech companies? Considering a large proportion of Version […]
The rise of the female founder
We’re all too familiar with the very real gender gap within the tech community. Women are underrepresented as engineers, management, investors, and founders. A commonly cited statistic is that only 7 percent of U.S. venture capital deals go to women founders and CEOs. Business Insider recently crunched the numbers behind 26 of the top venture […]
The Hardware Renaissance is gaining speed
As I’ve written before, I’m bullish on hardware. Yet even I was blown away by how far the hardware renaissance has come over the past year. Version One recently spent a few days at Solid, Tim O’Reilly’s new conference that focuses on the intersection of hardware and software, where I led a panel on scaling […]
The challenge facing Bitcoin start-ups
There is not doubt that Bitcoin / the blockchain is a revolutionary technology. Once implemented, the blockchain might be able to disrupt many verticals that are built around managing the transfer of ownership by replacing a centralized approach with a decentralized (and hence usually more efficient) approach. While the blockchain can be applied to a […]