original essay

Ontario needs a fresh approach to boost startup investing and close its innovation gap (published by yours truly in the Globe and Mail 2018)

Link to Globe and Mail website: Ontario needs a fresh approach to boost startup investing and close its innovation gap – The Globe and Mail Seven years ago, there was a lot of hand-wringing over Ontario’s heavily service-based economy and the “innovation gap.” In the flush of promise-making that preceded the 2011 provincial elections, the Ontario Liberal party pledged a tax credit to investors in homegrown tech startups. The details were vague, but the general idea was that investors would receive a 35-per-cent tax credit on eligible startup investments – or something to that effect. It doesn’t matter, because nothing…

bookstech startups

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell

Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 10 years in jail; Adam Neumann got a billion-dollar payday and has returned from the ashes to found a cryptocurrency startup. Both founders are liars; Holmes’ lies were dangerous, but of the two founders Neumann may have been more brazen. Theranos was a sham, but Bad Blood by Carreyrou describes it as a busy place where top-class scientists signed ironclad NDAs and strove to make Holmes’ lies come true in a toxic and stressful work environment. Neumann is 2000’s “hustle culture” personified: he is a hustler incarnate. The incredible thing about WeWork is that Neumann…

books

Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre

We’re all doomed, was my internal head-shaking reaction, when I read this very unsettling book. Ben Goldacre is a British physician with a wicked sense of humour. In Bad Pharma he takes aim at the unholy and uneasy alliance of pharma companies, regulatory bodies, journal editors and even physicians who conspire to sell drugs to patients. If the drugs are efficacious and safe, so much the better. If not: we have a pill for that. Goldacre credibly presents the strategies deployed to pass off good results as bad. The first eye-opening point for me was: why are drugs always compared…

bookspolar exploration

Cold Rush: the astonishing true story of the new quest for the polar North by Martin Breum

In which history repeats itself! In 2007, Russia sent submarines to plant the Russian flag on the ocean floor underneath the North Pole. The statements initially released for external consumption pooh-poohed the notion that Russia has making a territorial claim, but internally the messaging was very different. Fast forward to 2021 and the closest human approximation to Orwell’s “Squealer” in Animal Farm, Sergey Lavrov, declared ““It has been absolutely clear for everyone for a long time that this is our territory.” China has also shown interest in the Arctic’s potential for mining and mineral resources despite having no obvious claim…

tech startups

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

What annoyed me is that Theranos has been singled out as a bad apple, an exceptional case. It is not. The “fake it ’til you make it” ethos is a poisonous Silicon Valley mantra, and I’ve heard repeated with glee all over Southern Ontario. Tech founders boast of their guts and guile at faking demos to scam investors (quietly developing a functional product only when the money is safely in the bank). Elizabeth Holmes has been pilloried – rightly – but the notion that Theranos was exceptionally brash or dishonest is probably untrue. Also: Theranos investors were credulous fools. Unlike…