Browsed by
Tag: #Sustainable

Eco-Friendly? Sustainable? Things that Make You Go ‘Hmmm.’

Eco-Friendly? Sustainable? Things that Make You Go ‘Hmmm.’

And thank you, C+C Music Factory.

‘Sustainable,’ ‘circular economy,’ and ‘environmentally conscious’ are definitely practically de rigueur among entrepreneurs these days and we are totally on the same page. In fact, we’ve been composting for years. But are products et al that people call sustainable, truly sustainable – or eco friendly. There are just a few points/examples of things that make you go hmmm that we’d like to share as a sort of nudge to you, and/or to provoke something of a head-scratching moment. Pay attention: science can sometimes be something of a shifting target:

  Read More...

The Earthquake in Chile: A Parable for a Green World

The Earthquake in Chile: A Parable for a Green World

The reference is to a novel by Heinrich von Kleist, where nothing happens the way one would expect, and all things are not what they seem.

Jenny Fielding, Managing Director of Techstars New York City Accelerator, which recently selected its latest batch of cohorts, penned a piece (New World, New Focus. How Application Trends at Techstars NYC Point to a Changing World) about the shift in focus of the entrepreneurs, given the current climate. And always important for founders to look to what the problems are, find the white space, and take it from there.

Speaking of climate, much attention has been given in the past few years to climate change. As always, important to look around, see what the problems are and find the white space. Glaringly obvious this past week were the events in Texas, when a devastating cold snap caused the windmills to freeze and the power grid to fail. Read More...

Dumb Things Founders Do, Say or Believe

Dumb Things Founders Do, Say or Believe

Summer break is over. Time to get real again. Speaking of which, we’d like to offer a few observations which may help your pitch or strategy and which will hopefully help you move the needle just a bit. Or at least to get real. We do actively mentor at accelerators, and attend pitch events and demo days and host semi-monthly investor breakfasts for entrepreneurs. We don’t claim to have seen and heard it all, but there are a few things you might want to take note of – and a few claims and phrases we’d rather not hear again:

“We have 30+ years experience in ecommerce.” A team of maybe four young co-founders pitching, say, an ecommerce play and claiming to have 30+ years of experience between them. Note to self: most of your team looks as though they’re under 30. Ecommerce itself has only been around for some 20+ years, when most of your teams were still in diapers or hadn’t made his or her debut yet on the planet. Stop it. You’re not fooling anyone. Read More...