Posted inInnovation

She Stepped Away From an ExxonMobil Career for a Venture to Save River Communities in Nigeria

Achenyo Idachaba-Obaro harvested the reedy stems of the water hyacinth from a dam near Ibadan with a particular mission in mind. With deceptively beautiful blue flowers, water hyacinths are a blight in the water channels of the West African country. Fast-growing, choking, they keep fishers from their traditional livelihoods.  But Idachaba-Obaro, an entrepreneur, was noodling […]

Posted inInnovation

Two MIT Profs ID’d An Aging NY City As The Next Innovation Hub. Their Data Is Proving Right

Times of E’s series: Deep Dives into Secondary Cities was sponsored by Armory Square Ventures (ASV). ASV is a returns-oriented, mission-focused technology venture capital firm based primarily in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. It is an optimism engine for secondary cities and a community catalyst for regions outside Silicon Valley.  _____________________________________________________________________________ ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Little […]

Posted inEditor's Note

Welcome to New Builders Dispatch!

We report on and advocate for the founders and innovators making a difference in their communities. We focus on telling the stories of underrepresented founders, through the written word and through events. And we’re broadening to cover the innovative companies and people in the up-and-coming smaller cities in the middle of the United States. If you […]

Posted inUncategorized

Google Lobbies in Many Ways

A note from our editor, Elizabeth MacBride: I wrote a few weeks ago that the military-industrial complex, having retreated from Afghanistan, would soon be looking for a new story to sell its wares. I predicted it would be China. Today, in the Wall Street Journal, we saw Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Google, lobbying for the Pentagon […]

Posted inEditor's Note

Editor’s Note: Is Venture Capital Really a Tool for Broad Economic Development?

Earlier this month, the National Venture Capital Association and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise released a report on job growth in U.S. venture-backed firms. The headline finding: Employment at VC-backed firms grew faster than employment at non-VC-backed firms between 1990 and 2020. This is like saying the world’s hot-dog eating […]