What limits the rate of entrepreneurship?
What limits the rate of billion-dollar companies we can fund each year?
Schramm's Law is that "The U.S. economy needs to spawn something like 75-125 billion-dollar companies per year to maintain the post WW2 rate of growth." In 2013, when the venture capitalist Aileen Lee coined the term unicorn, there were only about four unicorns being produced every year. By 2021 this changed dramatically: 264 companies in the United States reached unicorn valuations, well above Schramm’s law. Will this result in the post WW2 rate of growth?
The venture capital market has been growing rapidly, primarily driven by large, later-stage funds and the expansion of non-traditional investors in VC. VC raised record numbers of capital in 2021, around $100B. Still, this is small in comparison to private equity which raised $500B. Technology can disrupt many of the old school businesses in the public markets meaning that VC should continue to eat up more and more of the market share.
Are we in the stone age of social networks?
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Our existing social networks feel like they are stone age tools: as if we’ve just invented the square wheel. What would the next generation of social networks look like that would enable us to do more useful things in the world? Many of the institutional structures in our society (universities, conferences, expert groups) are at their core, social networks, but they’re too exclusive, expensive, and don’t leverage technology. How can social networks be used to transform these existing institutions into creating more social mobility for all?
Is history written by the losers?
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Most people believe that history is written by the winners: my theory is that it is written by the losers. In any competitive system, you will have a lot more losers than winners and more often than not the way that they are treated is what transforms history: the most obvious example is Germany after WWI. The USA did a better job at letting the English lose The Revolutionary War with dignity, and years later these countries are allies. What are the ways that people can lose with dignity? What are all the historical situations where this applies?