Category: Entrepreneurs and Innovation
-
The Airbnb Dilemma: Regulate or Not?
Airbnb, the website that allows homeowners to rent rooms and houses for short periods, no longer occupies an obscure niche in the Virginia lodging marketplace. The company is capturing a disproportionate share of growth in lodging industry rooms and revenues, and it depresses the ability of hotels to raise rates during periods of peak demand,…
-
Celebrating Creativity at the Makerfest
After watching too much cable TV news, I get really depressed about America. But I’ve found a tonic: Attend an art show, craft fair or a makerfest to connect with real people doing real things. The creativity, imagination and craftsmanship on display are a delight to behold. Yesterday I spent a half day at the RVA…
-
A Patch in Time Saves Nine
The WannaCry and Petya cyber-assaults on banks, airports and other businesses in Europe in May used a vulnerability in Microsoft software to infect machines and spread around the world. Microsoft had issued a patch to close the back door months earlier, but many users never installed the update. Ironically, when Microsoft creates a software patch,…
-
Entrepreneurial Monks Peddle Natural Burials, Monastic Immersion
The order of Trappist monks living in Holy Cross Abbey in Clarke County has dwindled from 68 to 10, and those ten are aging — the youngest is 59 years old. The remaining monks know they must change to survive. And for a group that traces it origins back to 1098 France, committing themselves to cloistered lives…
-
Tech, Carilion Launch VTC Innovation Fund
Virginia Tech and Carilion Clinic have teamed up to form a $15 million venture capital fund in the hope of accelerating the growth of biotech companies taking root around Blacksburg and Roanoke, reports the Roanoke Times. The VTC Innovation Fund aims to close seven to 10 deals over the next 10 years. By leveraging its money from…
-
Scary Thought of the Day: Our Landfills Are Mountains of Dog Poop
Here’s a clever business idea that, astonishingly, does not require downloading an app: Jacob Paarlberg spotted a pressing need in American society — how to clean up the poop of the nation’s 70 to 80 million dogs. Each day untold tons of doggie waste ends up in landfills — comprising an unbelievable 4% of total volume!…
-
Hmm, hmm. Oreo-Infused Hornswoggler Beer!
Let me start by saying, I love the name of Hornswoggler. If there’s anything that could move me to drink craft beer, it’s a name like that. And let me also say that, regardless of what the nutrition scolds have to say, I love Oreo cookies. But Oreo-infused beer? That just doesn’t seem right to…
-
How to Roll Back Regulations in Virginia
A case study in regulation run amok: To earn a living blow drying customers’ hair in Virginia, one must acquire a license from the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation. To acquire such a license, one must attend an accredited cosmetology school, the average cost of which is $14,887 nationally, not counting the time…
-
The Self-Employed as a Political Constituency
The maker movement is transforming the American economic landscape. The number of people who make a self-employed living making stuff is still small — almost imperceptible in a U.S. labor market of 160 million — but it is growing. In 2014 more than 350,000 manufacturing establishments in the U.S. had no employee other than the…
-
A Free Market Alternative to Payday Lenders
by James A. Bacon Most everyone recognizes that payday lenders create a poverty trap for poor and working class Virginians. While the lenders do provide a valuable service by extending short-term loans for emergency situations, the annualized interest rates are extremely high, and borrowers often find themselves rolling over their loans from month to month…
-
Are Smaller Metros Becoming Competitive with Big Metros?
by James A. Bacon The flight of promising startup companies from smaller cities to big ones “is beginning to change,” AOL co-founder Steve Case said yesterday during an entrepreneurship event in downtown Richmond yesterday. Regions such as Richmond can avoid losing startups to bigger metros, he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “if you build up the…
-
Virginia Manufacturing Output Up, Jobs Down
by James A. Bacon Manufacturing output in Virginia increased 3 percent between the 4th quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of 2015, yet manufacturing employment decreased more than 14% during the same period. Put another way, Virginia added $1 billion in manufacturing output, even after adjusting for inflation, but lost more than 40,000 manufacturing jobs,…
-
Hooville the Best Small City in Virginia to Start a Business?
Source: WalletHub From the data geeks at WalletHub comes a new list of the best small cities in the country to start a business based on 15 metrics encompassing business environment, access to resources, and business costs. Here are the Virginia cities listed: The Virginia results are, shall we say politely, counter-intuitive. Northern Virginia’s “small…
-
What Charlottsville Needs Is… More Charlottesville
There is nothing else in Virginia like Charlottesville’s Tom Tom Founders Festival, which launched a week-long series of events yesterday. Food trucks, craft beer, music concerts, an art bus, murals, films in the park, street dancing, a capella performances, craft cocktail competitions, a chili showdown, crowdfunding pitch night, and celebrations of arts, innovation and entrepreneurship — it’s all…
-
Yeah, It Makes Sense for Virginia to Invest in Cybersecurity
by James A. Bacon Normally, it’s a terrible idea for government to pick economic winners and losers. Politicians latch onto fads and enthusiasms arising from the private sector but allow wishful thinking to override investment discipline when it comes to allocating government capital. Bacon’s dictum is that if “everyone” knows a sector is hot, and “everyone” is investing…