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A Quiet Revolution in Clean-Energy Finance

Harvard Business Review

Between 2006 and 2008, more than $1 billion venture-capital dollars were channeled into startups focused on solar, wind and biofuel technologies. In the last year, however, early-stage investments in clean energy production technologies have fallen substantially (see the table at the end of this piece for more detail).

Energy 10
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Why Do Smart People Do Such Dumb Things?

Harvard Business Review

Consider, first, rampant excesses in a most unlikely part of the financial scene — the market for microcredits to the world's poorest people. In a memorable, hour-long PBS interview with Charlie Rose during the 2008 crisis, Buffet gave a master class in how the world got into its economic mess and what we can learn from it.

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Robo-Advisers Are Coming to Consulting and Corporate Strategy

Harvard Business Review

Robo-advisors, which were introduced in 2008 , are steadily eating up market share from their human counterparts much the way that Amazon and Netflix have taken share from Walmart and Regal Cinemas. Further, venture capitalists are jumping in with both feet. $4 will grow to U.S. $5 5 trillion to U.S. $7 300 billion today.

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Could a Four-Year-Old Do What Carl Icahn Does?

Harvard Business Review

He is no Jim Simons , using his mathematical genius to outsmart the market in (to an outsider) incomprehensible ways. Venture capitalist Mark Andreessen, a target of Icahn’s attacks as a board member at eBay, recently likened the 78-year-old to a six-year-old. He did have a horrific 2008. Wait a while. In 2009 it was $1.3

Hedge 8
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Don’t Build Your Startup Outside of Silicon Valley

Harvard Business Review

There are three pieces of data that are particularly shocking to internet, software, and biotech entrepreneurs who are on the verge of committing their firms to starting firms in secondary startup markets (and, in particular, outside of the San Francisco Bay). Raising venture capital isn’t the be all and end all of entrepreneurial success.

IPO 8
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Scaling Up is a Problem of Both More and Less

Harvard Business Review

Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz kicks off an inspired post on scaling by quoting the rapper Dorrough, who tells anyone with “a dollar in your pocket, a twenty in your wallet” to focus on one thing: “Get big. Sales doubled in 2013. It intends to open two more warehouses and add 300 more employees in 2014.

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Big Companies Can Unleash Innovation, Rather than Shackle It

Harvard Business Review

Here's why: the innovation revolution spurred by venture capitalists decades ago has created the conditions in which scale allows big companies to shift from shackling innovation to unleashing it. It worked with a local partner to create India's first financing plan for medical devices.