Issue #1: Innovation Nation (7/6/20)
Topics: The Racial Wealth Gap, Food Allergies, Rich People, Facebook's Regulatory Risks, 4 Day Work Weeks & Productivity, VCs Are Tiny, Web Scraping Demo, Competitions, Job Openings - and More!
1. Hot Off the Presses: My Latest Writing
Freedom from Fear: Achieving Racial and Economic Inequality in America
If it took America 245 years to get rid of slavery and it takes another 228 years for America to get rid of the racial wealth gap, how can we as a nation claim to live up to our founding ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? We can’t.
Read the Full Article on Medium.
2. 5 Things I Learned This Week
Over 200,000 people visit the ER each year due to food allergy reactions - that’s a visit every 3 minutes). (Reuters 2010)
One-third of US GDP ($7 trillion a quarter) comes from the top 10% of American households. (Business Insider 2020)
40% of Facebook’s valuation faces regulatory risk (CNBC 2019)
Microsoft Japan tried out 4 day work weeks. It boosted productivity by 40% (NPR 2019)
The VC industry is really tiny compared to Hedge Funds and Private Equity firms. (Ian Sigalow)
3. Demos, Demos, Demos
How to Web Scrape in 8 Minutes (Using Python)
This weekend, I tried out this tutorial and it worked pretty well. It took me a little more than 8 minutes as I had some problems running pandas / numpy (I had an older version installed which I needed to uninstall so I can reinstall the latest version).
It’s the first time I messed around with Jupyter notebooks and I must say, it was super exciting to use. It makes data science super easy and accessible.
4. Cool Tools
Republic: Invest as little as $10 in private startups
WeFunder: Invest as little as $100 in startups
Influenster: Market your brand to influencers (campaigns start at $7,000)
5. What I’m Reading
Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nicholas Naseem Taleb
A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics by David Moss
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
6. What Should I Ask?
I’ve got the following meetings this week. What sort of questions would you like me to ask?
Sentropy Technologies: A company that provides helps detect and fight online abuse using machine learning.
Georgetown Ventures Labs: A co-working space for Georgetown startups.
Sun Kissed Skincare: Sustainable natural skin care products inspired by Bahamian and South Sudanese cultures.
Notedd: A newsletter and website for women of color, by women of color.
SoaPen: An alumni of the Halcyon Incubator, SoaPen makes soap pens that make hand washing fun for kids.
7. Opportunities
For Entrepreneurs
7/12/20: Application deadline for the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (Up to $20,000)
7/13/20: Deadline for the D-Prize Competition on Poverty Intervention (Up to $20,000)
7/23/20: Registration deadline for the 2030 Climate Challenge ($10 million in total available funds)
7/26/20: Deadline for the UNICEF Innovation Fund for Blockchain Startups (Up to $100,000)
For Professionals
The Beeck Center is hiring for two fellowship positions: (1) Unlocking Local Data Fellow and (2) Public Interest Technology Workforce Fellow
Closing: Photo Story
Two years ago, I applied to and was accepted into the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program. We had a bunch of sessions online as well as in-person at Babson College. One of the exercises we had to do was called Ideaspace. You start off with “Grounded Ideas” i.e. where your business is at, then proceed to “Blue Sky” where you can envision your company at say 10x it’s current form, then you proceed to “Spaced Out” where you envision your company at 100x. This exercise was great at helping you step away from the daily fires and start helping you craft a long-term vision for your company and what you really want to do versus what you need to do.