SNS: Special Letter: Venture Investing in Deep Science
VCs and the Deep-Science Innovation Ecosystem
The Shifting Venture Landscape
Deep-Science Structural Headwinds
Injecting Dynamism Back into the Economy
About Steve Waite
About Doug Jamison
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Publisher’s Note: We addressed the issue of the often-fake business models of unicorns just a few issues ago (“SNS: Enablers And Vectors: Accelerating Innovation Deployment,” March 16, 2017), and the damage they have done to legitimate profitable businesses with real models, driven by customer money rather than investor funds.
In this week’s issue, SNS members and authors Doug Jamison and Steve Waite address a related, and more important, issue: when venture funds are drawn into stupid, profitless get-rich-quick social networking schemes, those funds are not available for startups in “deep science,” such as new chips, manufacturing technologies, computer architectures, new materials, and all the other things make us more, rather than much less, productive.
As you read in other media about the mystery of stagnant productivity growth in the US this week, consider why Boeing removed the Solitaire game from all of its computers way back during Windows 3.1 days, and ask yourself whether playing with Facebook or Instagram isn’t just the latest flavor of how to waste large parts of the workday.
As the Trump administration moves forward without a clue (or any personnel) regarding science and technology, the moment is right to heed the authors’ concerns about what can happen to a great country when it stops investing in real innovation – the hard, long-lasting kind – that pays the bills for generations to come. – mra.
