How Facebook Can Help Rebuild U.S. Manufacturing

By Jeff Ferry

How could Facebook regain public and political support? Here’s a simple proposal: the company is investing $14 billion this year on capital spending. That’s a huge sum of money (and double its 2017 spend). The vast majority of it goes on the data centers Facebook is building in the U.S. and worldwide. And the vast majority of that money goes to the servers, storage, and networking gear crammed, floor to ceiling, into those data centers. Today, virtually all that money is going to Asian-manufactured IT equipment, simply because all that equipment is manufactured over there and almost none of it here. What if Facebook said it would spend a quarter of its data center budget on U.S.-manufactured equipment? If Facebook committed to spend one quarter of its IT budget on U.S.-made product, and was followed by other Internet giants, the U.S. might soon have some 3 million people working on manufacturing the products that make the Internet hum. [more...]

The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of Bitcoin

By Kerry Lutz

This wasn’t supposed to happen. As this article is written, Bitcoin is trading around $11,200. It’s up from breaking the $6,000 barrier, but this could well be a dead cat bounce. That’s down from nearly $20,000 in mid-December. After all, everyone knows that Bitcoin only goes up.... just like the stock market and housing prices. What gives? What’s happened in cryptocurrencies was completely predictable. In fact, I wrote an article about this very scenario back on December 25, 2017. Bitcoin and all of its Johnny-come-lately followers are in for some more tough times ahead. If it retraces 80-90 percent of its gains the past year, that will put it in a range of $3,800-5,600. Such a pullback would not be out of the realm of experience. When a bubble pops, it’s look out below. [more...]

When it Comes to Entrepreneurship, Age 40 is the New 20... and Always Has Been

By Carl Schramm

The truth is that the average entrepreneur is nearly 40 years old. There are more Baby Boomers (ages 53 to 71) starting businesses than millennials (ages 20 to 36) and even more entrepreneurs in Generation X (ages 37 to 52). What’s more, your odds of starting a company that experiences scale growth, becoming really profitable, only increase with age. The “Mozart Myth” leads us to believe that if you haven’t started your first company in your twenties then you’re never going to be an entrepreneur. But age, financial security, and experience — most often at an established company — are far more likely predictors of an entrepreneurial career. It turns out that corporations are often far more effective in training entrepreneurs than are most business schools or incubators. [more...]

Older Entrepreneurs Do It Better

People over 35 are more likely to start a business... and much more likely to succeed at it

By Carl Schramm

We all know today’s script for entrepreneurial success: A super-bright college student, impatient with classwork, drops out to pursue his big idea. Venture-capital funders chase after him, and he gathers smart pals around him to launch his startup.

Sensational growth soon follows for the company - and riches for its founders - and the youth-driven innovation economy notches yet another success. It’s a powerful narrative, and it has shaped lots of thinking about how to spark economic growth and prosperity. [more...]

In his new book, BURN THE BUSINESS PLAN: What Great Entrepreneurs Really Do, bestselling author and economist, Carl Schramm, applies his decades of experience in the world of entrepreneurship to offer a myth-busting guide packed with tools and techniques to launch any business. Illustrated with stories of real entrepreneurs who started successful businesses, he debunks some of the most commonly held beliefs surrounding startups and business development - starting with the supposed importance of a business plan.