Tag: Entrepreneurs

Quote of the Day: Will Small Business Survive?

Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn
16101155
 

“I have run two small businesses in Kansas, and I have seen how government can crush entrepreneurism. That’s why I ran for Congress. It just so happens that there are a lot of people in south central Kansas who agree with me on that.” — Mike Pompeo

My initial reaction to Secretary Pompeo’s quotation is that he was not your average legislator. He actually knew something about running a business:

As a businessman, Pompeo is perhaps best known for co-founding Thayer Aerospace with some of his classmates from West Point. A specialized aircraft machinery manufacturer based in Kansas, Thayer expanded through investments from venture capital groups including Koch Venture Capital, a fund run by billionaire investors Charles and David Koch. . .

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JobMakers #44

Theresa Park on How Immigrants Revitalize U.S. Cities

00
Hosted by Denzil Mohammed
With guest Theresa Park

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Theresa Park, Deputy Director and Senior Executive Vice President at MassDevelopment, a group that offers financing and real estate solutions to drive economic growth across Massachusetts. An immigrant from Korea who moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, Theresa saw first-hand how immigrants built their lives from the ground up, and in so doing brought economic and cultural vibrancy to their new home cities. And when she went on to work for cities like Lowell and Lawrence, she herself was the one to reach out to immigrant-owned businesses, nurture their growth, and see their broad impact. In this week’s JobMakers, Theresa talks us through her experience with immigrant business owners, how she developed their trust, how she celebrates them, and the many ways they enrich their new homeland.

Guest:

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Green Shoots in My Community

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
1410
 

I live near Little Asia in Mesa. This commercial community has been flourishing, revitalizing a portion of a run-down part of town. The latest good sign is the opening of an H Mart. This is a Korean-American supermarket chain with everything from inexpensive to luxury items. The store opened as Arizona started recovering from the governor’s knee on disfavored businesses’ necks. The parking lot is full, every day. This entrepreneurial audacity is worth celebrating this Independence Day weekend.

H Mart entry sign You can see the lettering on the entry all the way across the parking lot. In huge block letters, this company set out its policy, before any state or local official edict:

NO MASK

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Front Seat Cat
Front Seat Cat
278
 

I received a Lands End catalog about ten days ago. It typically offers a 40 percent off code, but this time it was 50 percent. I decided to splurge and purchase a new swimsuit and a couple pairs of shorts. I’ve been ordering from Lands End for years, and upon dialing the 800 number, I […]
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Delayed Innovation

Aaron Miller
Aaron Miller
2111
 

Sometimes the best thing that can happen to an inventor is for him to be ignored.

Take for example German archery enthusiast Jörg Sprave. He pitched his bow designs to manufacturers for years. None purchased his plans. But Sprave did not idly wait for broader success. He continued to iterate until building something he wished he had thought of years ago. 

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San Francisco Unleashes Destructive Creation on Silicon Valley

James Pethokoukis
James Pethokoukis
1010
 

Hans Vestberg, CEO of Verizon Communications, speaks about the deployment of 5G wireless technology during the TechCrunch Disrupt forum in San Francisco.

Politicians kvetch a lot about Big Tech, but government officials everywhere would love their country, state, or city to have its own Silicon Valley. Alas, there’s no magic formula, no blueprint for top-down constructing a fertile ecosystem of technological innovation and entrepreneurship. As economist Enrico Moretti has noted, “If you look at the history of America’s great innovation hubs, we haven’t found one that was directly, explicitly engineered by an explicit policy on the part of the government.”

That’s just not how it seems to work in America. It’s more of an organic, idiosyncratic, indirect thing. As University of Washington historian Margaret O’Mara, author of “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America,” told me in a recent podcast, the story of Silicon Valley isn’t “a story of big government coming in with giant research labs and command-and-control” although Washington certainly played a critical role.

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Front Seat Cat
Front Seat Cat
67
 

Lest you think no one is working anymore, or is living in their parent’s basement like a bum, you are DEAD wrong! The entrepreneurial spirit is alive ….IT’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIVE! This is a real business. My husband spotted the truck in a nice town home community parking lot today – someone called needing something repaired…..So! For […]
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sawatdeeka
sawatdeeka
2514
 

If I were a student submitting an essay to Barkha Herman’s entrepreneur essay contest, I would propose . . . wait for it . . . a drive-through grocery stop.  So many times, I’ve been in town for hours and it’s getting late, but I still have a couple more errands. I’ve got an almost thirty-minute […]
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Aaron Miller
Aaron Miller
55
 

How should a failing company manage employee compensation? There is a common expectation that employees should share a company’s success by way of periodic increases to compensation. But, if so, shouldn’t employees also share by degrees in their company’s struggles? Do our laws allow such fluidity of compensation? It has recently been reported that the […]
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