Above the Crowd

Many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley believe that the financial services industry in the United States is “ripe for disruption. ” The basis of this argument is really two fold. First, they believe that the current offerings from the financial incumbents are lacking. They would argue that credit card fees are too high, that there is a lack of true competition amongst American financial institutions, and that the ACH process is borderline asinine. They also believe that today’s technologies, most notably the smartphone, should allow for remarkably simpler one-click paperless transactions that have transaction costs that are a fraction of the status quo. Consumers want faster, simpler, and cheaper transactions, and entrepreneurs want to give it to them. The problem […]

While I attempted to bury this issue last week , this Sunday, Thomas Friedman again used his pulpit in the New York Times Opinion section to beg for a VC Bailout.  Last week he merely suggested that the government invest along side venture firms.  This week, he went even further astray and suggested that the government “Call up the top 20 venture capital firms in America, which are short of cash today because their partners — university endowments and pension funds — are tapped out, and make them this offer: The U.S. Treasury will give you each up to $1 billion to fund the best venture capital ideas that have come your way.”  As a practicing venture […]