Happy Saturday! Here is your weekly dose of the world of Miles, learning, techno-optimism, business thoughts and ways to improve the world.
Overlooked Opportunities. The founder of Coinstar joined me on the Startups for Good podcast to talk about trisector business opportunities. How can you build a business in markets created by government services, data or other assets? Without government being a client but providing an enabling role. We went through some interesting examples like Propel whose founder was on the podcast. Also, I recently had Tony from Possible on the podcast. Can you innovate on the credit card model? They offer a credit card that charges a flat fee no matter your balance.
Overlooked People. Fascinating and thought provoking read from the founder of Pioneer and Tyler Cowen: Talent. Makes the case that one of our largest problems in the world is the misallocation of talent. The book offers concrete advice for how to improve your own talent selection. I’m curious if you find other examples of innovative talent searches. If you get good at it, you can get funded by the FTX Future Fund.
The Overlooked Solution. What problems can we solve with abundant clean energy? Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, yes. But also negative carbon technologies are much more attractive with cheap power. Isn’t food production much easier with cheap clean power? (Which goes hand-in-hand with using less agricultural land.) Cheap energy makes filtering, desalinating and/or transporting water much easier. With a lot of energy, wouldn’t we be able to transport or fabricate many more raw materials? I’m curious if you can think of other things that are non-obvious consequences of cheap clean energy.
Until next week,
Miles
P.S. A portfolio company of Purpose Built called Edvo shared a demo of their latest software. Check out how their collaborative virtual workspaces allow you to keep all your digital tools laid out and ready to go. That way you can switch from project to project without tear down and setup costs.