Category: Tech Startups

The 2022 equity crowdfunding market was unable to top 2021’s record-setting year. But despite seeing lower investment volume, it fared quite a lot better than venture capital did in the same time frame. Founders looking to raise extension or bridge financing should take note.

Back in July, it looked like equity crowdfunding — a funding route that allows startups to raise from unaccredited investors through Reg CF and Reg A filings, among others — was on track for its best year yet. According to the Arora Project, more than $215 million was raised through the first half of 2022, surpassing 2021’s H1 total of $200 million.

At the time, Krishan Arora, the CEO and founder of the Arora Project, which curates and tracks these deals, and Nick Tommarello, the founder of crowdfunding site WeFunder, both said that they noticed growing momentum for the strategy in 2022.

penitus cogitare, cito agere – think deeply, act quickly

75 years ago, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) helped kickstart innovation in Silicon Valley with a series of grants to Fred Terman, Dean of Stanford’s Engineering school. Terman used the money to set up the Stanford Electronics Research Lab. He staffed it with his lab managers who built the first electronic warfare and electronic intelligence systems in WWII. This lab pushed the envelope of basic and applied research in microwave devices and electronics and within a few short years made Stanford a leader in these fields. The lab became ground zero for the wave of Stanford’s entrepreneurship and innovation in the 1950’s and 60’s and helped form what would later be called Silicon Valley.

75 years later, ONR just laid down a bet again, one we believe will be equally transformative. They’re the first sponsors of the new Gordian Knot

If I ask you to think of an elephant do you see an elephant in your head when you close your eyes?

I don’t. Regardless of how descriptive the imagery, story or text I can’t create any pictures in my head at all. 2% of people can’t do this either. This inability to visualize is called aphantasia.

I never knew this absence of mental imagery was even a thing until my daughter pointed out that she and I were missing something my wife and other daughter had. Ask us to visualize a rainbow or a sunset and we just see nothing. We can’t create pictures in our head of objects, people, places or experiences. Where others can visualize these things, we can’t. Not for people, memories, or images past or future. When people say visualize this in your mind’s eye I just thought that was a turn of phrase. It

It was an honor to host US Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen Hicks at Stanford’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation.  (Think of the Deputy Secretary of Defense as the Chief Operating Officer of a company – but in this case the company has 3 million employees (~1.4 million active duty, 750,000 civilians, ~800,000 in the National Guard and Reserves.)

She came to the Gordian Knot Center to discuss our unique approach to national security and innovation, and how our curriculum trains the next generation of innovators. The Deputy also heard from us how the Department can better partner with and leverage the U.S. innovation ecosystem to solve national security challenges.

Our goal for the Secretary’s visit was to give her a snapshot of how we’re supporting the Department of Defense priority of building an innovation workforce. We emphasized the critical distinction between a technical STEM-trained

An edited version of this article previously appeared in the Boston Consulting Group’s strategy think tank website.

I spent last week at a global Fortune 50 company offsite watching them grapple with disruption. This 100+-year-old company has seven major product divisions, each with hundreds of products. Currently a market leader, they’re watching a new and relentless competitor with more money, more people and more advanced technology appear seemingly out of nowhere, attempting to grab customers and gain market share.

This company was so serious about dealing with this threat (they described it as “existential to their survival”) that they had mobilized the entire corporation to come up with new solutions. This wasn’t a small undertaking, because the threats were coming from multiple areas in multiple dimensions; How do they embrace new technologies? How do they convert existing manufacturing plants (and their workforce) for a completely new set of technologies?