Entrepreneurship

I haven't posted about Submedia in a long time. Recent subscribers might not know about the company I left academia to cofound, based on a technology I conceived of, developed, wrote the patent for, and took to market with a co-founder friend from college. We filed for the patent in 1998, got our first funding in 1999, and launched in 2001. I was documenting some of my professional work and uncovered some media coverage from the early days I hadn't seen in a while. Some of it I may not have looked at in a decade or more. Below are some screen shots. I link to the full articles on my media page. For more background, check out my post Videos and a short history…

I don't understand how people associate Elon Musk with sustainability or invention. He didn't start Tesla. Sustainability would come with fewer roads and cars. Musk is building more roads, including underground with the Boring Company, and as many cars as he can. For comparison and context, Eli Whitney invented a new type of cotton gin. As I understand, his goal was to decrease the need for labor in picking cotton. It's tempting to see technology as good or bad, but it's a tool. Like sharp knives and fire, tools augment the values and goals of the people and culture using them. Whitney may have, in his heart, wanted to help slaves. The result of the cotton gin was to transform an institution declining from exhausting…

I can tell by how much people throw out and how many Amazon.com boxes litter the streets that people buy a lot that they don't want. I presume Amazon's people have found how to control people to buy junk. People like the act of buying things. Maybe also receiving packages and opening them. They probably regret many of the things they buy, but they liked that feeling and the site designers figured out how to manipulate you to buy. My idea is a browser add-on in which you tell it what sites you buy too much from and it hijacks the buy button so when you click it, it asks if you want to donate the cost of what you were going to buy to…

I haven't posted a great business idea in a while, but I got one. Context: you probably heard how supermarket chains in the U.S. discard produce that doesn't fall within their constraints of size, color, not being bruised, and so on. After shopping at farmers markets enough, grocery store produce looks plastic and fake. It lacks flavor. You've probably also heard of companies that buy the rejected produce and use it where appearance doesn't matter, like in smoothies, or ship it to people at a discount. I hope they've changed their operations, but last I checked they delivered the produce in too much packaging. Many people like to choose their produce and buy it while buying other food. My idea: Create a food equivalent of…