Times of Entrepreneurship Stories
Will Cells and Robots Be Pittsburgh’s New Coke And Steel?
How A Black Founder Turning Pitching into a Winner’s Game
Jim Gibbs, co-founder of PIttsburgh-based Meter Feeder, started to ask himself why he was begging venture capitalists, when he was the one making them money.
What You May Have Missed
Cybersecurity Best Practices for Small Business
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has compiled an objective list in an environment where small businesses should be careful not to be oversold on what they need.
Cybersecurity for Small Business is Booming, but Are You Getting Ripped Off?
News With A Future Spin 📖
Yikes. “Two expeditions to the Thwaites Ice Shelf (in Antartica) have revealed that it could splinter apart in less than a decade, hastening sea-level rise worldwide.” We’re not talking small numbers here. Sea levels could rise between two and 10 feet. Read the story here.
COP in the Headlines. More than 30,000 people are registered to attend the global climate conference, according to Quartz. The agenda may include how to distribute funding, with wealthier countries paying more to compensate less developed countries for damage done to the climate. A story Times of E published early in the pandemic reveals one of the big obstacles to progress is changing government regulations that scare investors off. The Egyptian regime has been a horrible human rights offender; British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, in prison for protesting the government, el-Fattah is using COP to win attention for prisoners; he said he will stop drinking water unless he is freed.
Does It Make Sense To Invest in Stocks? Burt Malkiel, the author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, offers some worst-case guidance on the Wealthfront blog in a piece also published in The Wall Street Journal. Everybody’s big fear is stagflation and a stock market that merely bumps along. The right tactic for that environment, Malkiel says, is dollar-cost averaging: Invest small amounts over time. Read the piece here.
Living the dream💭
One of the hidden drivers of the current anti-China backlash is a growing awareness of the enormous wave of Chinese industrial espionage that U.S. companies have been facing. Ben Buchanan’s book The Hacker and the State, includes a wealth of detail. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 4, apropos to this week’s story about Pittsburgh:
Some of the targeted firms did large amounts of business in China, including deals announced with great fanfare. For example, on July 24, 2007, the CEO of Westinghouse Electric Company entered China’s Great Hall of the People in Beijing ready to sign a multibillion-dollar agreement committing his company to a deal with Chinese state-owned enterprises. At the time, Westinghouse was the world’s leading nuclear power firm, responsible for half the globe’s nuclear power plants. Its AP1000 nuclear reactor was a wellknown model that the company had spent fifteen years designing; in China, Westinghouse would build four of them. The two sides had negotiated for more than two years and the July agreement represented a significant milestone: while some provisions would be left for later discussion, the major parts of the deal were done. But even as the partnership unfolded, APT1 (Editor’s Note: a state-backed hacker group) began hacking the company. On numerous occasions, they targeted Westinghouse’s computers and servers. Among other things, they stole information on the design and construction of the AP1000 nuclear plant, sparing the Chinese company the effort of doing its own research and development.
Rathskellar💭
A Time-Saving Hack
Switch to Gmail. Users of Google’s email service have five times fewer hacks than other email providers, according to Rotem Iram, CEO of cyber insurance company At-Bay. At-Bay insures 25,000 mid-market companies. At-Bay is working on a ranked list of email providers, based on how secure they are according to its claims experience. Switching will cost you time now, but save you major time if you avoid a hack.Follow the two-minute rule If you can do a task in under two minutes, like sending an email, do it now.
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This story and others on Times of E are made possible by a sponsorship from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private, nonpartisan foundation that provides access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity – regardless of race, gender, or geography. The Kansas City, Mo.-based foundation uses its grantmaking, research, programs, and initiatives to support the start and growth of new businesses, a more prepared workforce, and stronger communities. For more information, visit www.kauffman.org and connect with www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn.
