What are startup junkies really addicted to?

When you think about the term “startup junkie”, what comes to mind?  “Junkie” is someone who has some kind of addiction but “startups” aren’t a clearly defined drug that you buy on the corner.  Startups aren’t really a definable thing at all.  They are more like a messy, unpredictable process.  Are startup junkies addicted to uncertain processes and outcome?  Most startup junkies are actually addicted to something other than the difficult task of starting and growing a profitable business.

 

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Startup experience doesn’t help social entrepreneurs

There is no evidence that prior founding experience is translating into superior performance for social entrepreneurs.

All of the conventional wisdom and research says entrepreneurs with prior entrepreneurial experience outperform entrepreneurs who have never launched a new enterprise.  Investors know that it’s often wiser to bet on someone who has started something before.

 

 

 

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Our Alarming Culture of Pill People and Future Trends in Healthcare

Futurist Thomas Frey: How many pills do you take on a daily basis?

According to a 2010 study by Colorado State University, about 68% of American adults take multivitamin supplements. At the same time the average American fills 12 prescriptions a year.

 

 

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The future of 3D printing and the retail business

Recently, Marc Andreessen made some bold statements about the future of the retail business:

“Retail chains are a fundamentally implausible economic structure if there’s a viable alternative,” he says. “You combine the fixed cost of real estate with inventory, and it puts every retailer in a highly leveraged position. Few can survive a decline of 20 to 30 percent in revenues. It just doesn’t make any sense for all this stuff to sit on shelves. There is fundamentally a better model.”

 

 

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The search for data scientists grows frantic as startups produce more data

There are nowhere near enough “data scientists.”

It is currently accepted that the people who understand Big Data – the enormous datasets of information being collected with nearly every click of every computing device on the planet – will rule the roost in the future. If you can predict behavior by measuring and monitoring people’s machines down to an almost atomic level, you can make both your customers and your shareholders much happier.

 

 

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Startups can learn a lot from ‘end-ups’

End-ups are old companies and institutions that want to be become more like start-up, and startups want to become more like end-ups.

At the DLD Conference in Munich, John Maeda, President of RISD, sat onstage with the co-founder and CPO of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia. They discussed the unique creative culture at Rhode Island School of Design, where Joe went to college, and where John currently serves as president. Joe shared some of his secrets of being a successful designer-founder. He asked John what it’s like to run a 136-year-old institution like RISD.

 

 

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