Only in Silicon Valley is it rational to chase
unicorns. In the go-big-or-go-home
culture, pursuing
a billion dollar valuation (not revenue or profit, mind you, but
valuation), seems to have pushed out the idea of knuckling down to build a business
that adds meaningful value to the lives of customers, employees,
shareholders. How’s that Twitter
investment been working out for the IPO investors since it went public in 2013?
(Answer: down
30% - they would have done better to put money into a boring
S&P index fund.)
The inspiring thing about educating university researchers on
commercialization and entrepreneurship is that their innovations really help
people! The University of Minnesota has an
amazing pipeline of potential startups, as do other research universities. I’m
a whole lot more excited about software
to ensure food safety and protein
scaffolding to enable medical diagnoses and treatments (both billion dollar+
markets) then I am about the
next Uber for this, that or the other marginal benefit.
