Paul Graham’s Legacy

Last week there was a press release you might easily have missed. A Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAO) called OrangeDAO is cooperating with a small seed venture fund called Press Start Capital to establish the OrangeDAO X Press Start Cap Fellowship Program for new Web3 entrepreneurs. Successful applicants get $25,000 each plus 10 weeks of structured mentorship plus continued access to the more than 1200-member OrangeDAO network. In exchange, OrangeDAO and Press Start get to invest in the resulting companies, if any, produced by the class. 

Big deal, it’s Y Combinator Junior, right?

Wrong. It’s Y Combinator on steroids.  

This second-generation YC has […]

By |October 27th, 2022|2022, Business, Economy, Education, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Industry, strategy, Venture Capital|143 Comments
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10 years later Fukushima Daiichi still melts down my heart

Ten years ago this month, 22,000 Japanese citizens died in a huge tsunami that also caused the second-worst nuclear accident in history at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility. Because I know about nuclear safety, I wrote a total of four columns about the accident in the month that followed. You can read them in order here, here, here and here.

When I wrote within hours of the accident that none of the 11 reactors would ever operate again, I was the sole voice on the planet saying so out loud. Read the comments and you’ll see I took some flak for […]

By |March 26th, 2021|2021, Business, Government, Health, nuclear safety|134 Comments
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The Incentive Game

My friend Bob Litan, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is worried about COVID-19 herd immunity. Specifically, Bob worries that the only way our population can reach the 60-70 percent immunity rate required to protect us all from the novel coronavirus is if some people are paid to take the shot. And Bob may be correct: a Gallup poll last month concluded that 35 percent of Americans would refuse to be vaccinated.

Uh-oh.

Bob thinks the way around this problem is to pay people, giving them an economic incentive to do the right thing. This got me thinking about the whole concept of […]

By |September 3rd, 2020|2020, Business, Economy, Finance, Government|61 Comments
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Jeff Bezos Can’t Lose

Big technology companies have been recently coming under increased scrutiny from federal regulators. Several tech companies are reportedly under investigation, but this column is only about Amazon, which seems to be in regulatory crosshairs in part because President Trump doesn’t like Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns one of Trump’s least-favorite newspapers, the Washington Post. Ironically, Trump’s goal of breaking-up Amazon would only make Jeff Bezos at least $35 billion richer.

It’s simple: Amazon is worth a lot more in pieces than it is as a single company.

Bezos is no fool, so he knows […]

By |May 11th, 2020|2020, Business, cloud computing, Companies, e-commerce, Economy, Government, Internet, investing, strategy|99 Comments
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Red Hat takes over IBM

So IBM is buying Red Hat (home of the largest Enterprise Linux distribution) for $34 billion and readers want to know what I think of the deal. Well, if I made a list of acquisitions and things to do to save IBM, buying Red Hat would have been very close to the top of that list.  They should have bought Red Hat 10 years ago when the stock market was in the gutter. 

Jumping the gun a bit, I have to say the bigger question is really which company’s culture will ultimately dominate? I’m hoping it’s Red Hat.

The deal is a good fit for many reasons explained below. And […]

By |October 29th, 2018|2018, Business, Companies, strategy|130 Comments
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