How Venture Capital Warps the World

Pivot to People: It’s Time to Build the New Economy

Today’s calls for ethical, humane, responsible, regulated and beneficial technology, compounded with venture capital’s virtue signaling in…

Philanthropy 2.0: What the Evolution of For-Profit Investment Tells Us About the Future of Giving

Gaps in philanthropic funding for era-defining science and discovery demand a new approach. In this piece, we look at how learning from venture capital is a game changer for catalytic philanthropy.

Philanthropy 2.0: What the Evolution of For-Profit Investment Tells Us About the Future of Giving

Gaps in philanthropic funding for era-defining science and discovery demand a new approach. In this piece, we look at how learning from venture capital is a game changer for catalytic philanthropy.

Social Capital - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Atmosphere

The problem Atproto is solving

Social Capital - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Atmosphere

The problem Atproto is solving

The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There

From two leading economists comes a groundbreaking new portrait of the hidden fortunes of Main Street business owners—ordinary Americans who built extraordinary wealth and are quietly rewriting the rules of money and power. Most people think the path to great wealth runs through Wall Street or Silicon Valley. We’re told you must be a Zuckerberg, a Musk, or a Jamie Dimon to get rich. But this story is wrong. Drawing on unprecedented data from a decade of research and vivid real-life stories of entrepreneurs—from a self-made hot-dog stand billionaire to the heirs of an auto dealer—Zidar and Zwick reveal a surprising truth: prosperity is more attainable, more widely distributed, and closer to home than we imagine. A multitude of Americans have built staggering fortunes by running often unglamorous businesses far from the spotlight. A quiet revolution in the business world—the rise of “pass-through” firms like S-corporations and partnerships—supercharged this wealth, channeling vast income directly to business owners rather than traditional corporations.Part economic detective story, part roadmap to riches, this book reveals: —The Hidden 1%: They might be a local beer distributor, a dentist with a regional network of practices, a commercial HVAC contractor with trucks around town, or a restaurateur who keeps opening new locations. For every public company CEO, more than a thousand private business owners each have transformational wealth.— The Blueprint for Wealth: Zidar and Zwick describe where Main Street Millionaires come from, how they grew rich, and how much money they make. Their stories suggest the American Dream is not dead and many paths to prosperity remain open today. — Power Brokers: Armed with their fortunes, Main Street Millionaires wield power in city halls, statehouses, and Washington, often bending policy to protect what they’ve built. They are both growing the economic pie and grabbing bigger slices for themselves.The Everywhere Millionaire celebrates the stories of entrepreneurs who seized opportunities while asking hard questions about how concentrated wealth and power shape society. It is an essential guide to seeing the economy as it really is and recognizing the surprising paths to prosperity—and influence—everywhere.

Funders of a non blitzscale future

Mid Tier Venture Capital (VC)

Cannibal Capitalism

Shortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2023 Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life-guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for each other, and gutting the practice of politics. In this tightly argued and urgent volume, leading Marxist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser charts the voracious appetite of capital, tracking it from crisis point to crisis point, from ecological devastation to the collapse of democracy, from racial violence to the devaluing of care work. These crisis points all come to a head in Covid-19, which Fraser argues can help us envision the resistance we need to end the feeding frenzy. What we need, she argues, is a wide-ranging socialist movement that can recognize the rapaciousness of capital - and starve it to death.

How dupes took over the world

The Verge’s Mia Sato explains the appeal and big business of dupes.

Hype, financial narratives, and self-fulfilling prophecies in surveillance capitalism

The rise of platforms has transformed our understanding of contemporary capitalism, with the critical literature describing how these firms leverage unprecedented digital powers to extract monopoly rents – perhaps even heralding a new form of Feudalism. This paper draws on the literature on financial narratives to examine the role that such stories play within the form of capitalism that they describe, and what this suggests for the role of “hype” in contemporary capitalism. The same stories that for critical scholars appear as menacing threats of “technofeudalism” or “surveillance capitalism” for investors appear as optimistic stories of promising future returns. By driving financial investments, narratives afford platforms very real social and political powers, enabling them to function as a form of self-fulfilling prophecies. The paper argues for a cultural inflection to the political economy of Big Tech – viewing capitalism as neither mechanistic nor rational, but as an expression of a complex interplay between narrative, technology, and economic power. This suggests the need for a critical hype studies, geared at deconstructing the narratives undergirding the technological waves of capitalist pursuits, and examining the broader role of hype in coordinating and directing flows of capital within contemporary financialized capitalism.

Founders Hub | Transform Finance

The founder playbook for building a company that lasts and stays true to why you started it. Research, case studies, and practical tools for incorporation, fundraising terms, board structure, ownership, and culture.

Venture Capital Status

Verified information detailing the global impacts of Silcon Valley, United States venture capital and their global tech fascist projects: The Network State, ZEDEs, military weapons start-ups, medical experimentation, eugenics, venture capital crypto, venture capital and Israeli zionism, venture cap

Highline Beta | Corporate Venture Studios & Venture Building

We build ventures and venture studios with corporate partners and family offices through rigorous process, entrepreneurial grit, and capital.

CanInnovate | Kyle Briggs | Substack

I write about innovation, entrepreneurship, intellectual property, and related policy. I comment on the incentives created by existing policy structures and recommend practical ways to enact positive change. Click to read CanInnovate, by Kyle Briggs, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.