My guest blog post for Forbes Velocity was published today. In it, I write about how neither the Legislative Body or the Executive Branch seem to understand that focusing on making funding more easily available to entrepreneurs will ultimately drive economic growth and job creation. There just aren’t enough entrepreneurs in D.C.!
Archive for the ‘Government’ Category
Jul
21
Washington, D.C. Needs More Entrepreneurs
Jul
16
Here’s To Secretary Chu And The End Of Energy’s Dark Ages
I wrote a guest blog for Forbes Velocity earlier this week about Secretary Steven Chu and the effect he is having on energy innovation, entrepreneurs and the relevance of the Department of Energy in general. The post is entitled, Here’s to Secretary Chu and the End of Energy’s Dark Ages. Enjoy the read!
Jun
02
Innovation and the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship
Last month, fellow CMEA partner Faysal Sohail and I were among the few Venture Capital delegates invited to attend President Obama’s Summit on Entrepreneurship. This gathering of talent and potential from the Muslim world, was an event set in motion by President Obama’s “New Beginning” Cairo Speech last June.
Faysal Sohail and Jim Hornthal at the Presidential Summit
The Middle East represents a huge market opportunity, and recent transactions, like Yahoo’s acquisition of Maktoob , create role models — one vital part of an entrepreneurial eco-system. While nothing succeeds like success, it takes a lot more than a few financial hits to push back the decades (centuries?) of resistance to risk and the consequences of failure (2nd cousin to risk).
John Dickerson has been writing in Slate a series or articles about America’s Greatest Idea – Risk. Cultural acceptance of failure is a huge challenge. Even in the United States, tolerance has it’s own ‘micro-climatology’. From region to region, city to city, or even block to block, the willingness to take on the seemingly impossible runs from scalding hot to ice cold. After all, who is willing to take a bet with their careers? It is one thing to be wrong and lose money (which, while we never like it to happen, is a fact of life in the venture business). It is another to be willing to take that bet with an even more dear “currency”; an individual’s time and career.
Fellow venture investor John Doerr likes to characterize entrepreneurs as those “individuals who do MORE than anyone thinks possible with LESS than anyone thinks possible.” It takes a similarly optimistic support system of angels, mentors, and venture investors to support and nurture these rising stars, and to also be there to pick them up when they fall down. A failure can be worth two successes, especially for the individuals and teams that are able to learn from their mistakes. This scar tissue has been vital to the success of most of our high tech heroes. Our ability to transplant this model in other parts of the world is vital if we as a nation are to prosper and be secure.
The Presidential Summit was an important first step in this long journey. I hope that we have the patience to see this all the way through. Job creation is not just an important issue in the US. The unemployment rates in the Middle East are staggering, and getting worse. It is in our national interest to do what we can to nurture the job creation that comes with successful entrepreneurship. Giving youth something worth living for is a far better prescription for our own security than enabling the seeds of insecurity and intolerance to take a greater hold, making them even harder to dislodge. It is our responsibility to spread the seeds of creativity and innovation as far as the winds of change will carry them.
May
25
Social Good with Market Returns — A Report from the Skoll World Forum
Last month, I was fortunate to attend the 7th Annual Skoll World Forum, with around 800 of the world’s most impactful and influential social entrepreneurs and key partners who gather at the University of Oxford to exchange ideas, contacts and information. One of the highlights was a panel that confronted the conventional wisdom that social returns come at the expense of financial returns. Or, to put it more simply, could you have your cake and eat it too?
This was the position of David Chen, from Equilibrium Capital, who maintains that forward looking investors (owners, not traders), can help solve market problems and have a positive impact on the environment and society while generating market rates of return. However, there is often a role for public policy in facilitating and encouraging innovation in key sectors.
The US economy is no stranger to these practices. The creation of the 30-year mortgage was a reflection of the public policy to make home ownership more affordable. Rural electrification, the interstate highway system, the Telecommunications Act, and the internet are further examples of how effective public policy can stimulate huge market growth.
This lesson has not been lost on the Chinese. Taking note from Tom Friedman’s editorial last fall, the US is at risk from trading our current addiction to Middle East oil for a future addiction to solar panels made in China. Fortunately, we are not completely asleep at the wheel. The DOE is doing it’s part with innovative loan guarantees to support emerging technologies.
The question is, are we doing enough? Free markets are great if no one is pulling strings. When nation states sit at the table, the stakes increase, and so does the governmental ante. Do we have the political will to take a long term, patient view of the horizon? If we don’t, then “We’re Number Two” may sadly become our future rallying cry.
May
06
Watch Tom Baruch at The White House on May 7th
Watch Tom Baruch at The White House last Friday as part of the Energy Innovation Networks Meeting.
The conference on Energy Innovation Networks was held on Friday, May 7, 2010 from 9:00am-4:00pm in The White House’s EEOB South Court Auditorium. Tom participated in a panel discussion titled “Jumpstarting Commercialization and Early-Stage Companies”.
Mar
31
The Mood in Washington, D.C.
Jim Watson
Spending the day running around our capital often makes me wonder how we manage to get anything done regarding “the work of the people.” “Democracy is messy” and more often than we can predict, stuff happens! I visited D.C. this week after the health care bill passed, and it allowed me to see how fast moods change on both sides of the aisle.
Republicans like Senator Hatch used the word bipartisan multiple times as if to say, “We now have to work together on Financial Reform (instead of voting no),” and Speaker Pelosi was jubilant in victory and quoted, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” from the Declaration of Independence in our meeting to point out how important she felt health care reform is to the country. (more…)
