Twitteretter

I have written about a certain class of coronavirus entrepreneur in post 43. However, there is a second kind. These are the entrepreneurs who also seize on an opportunity, but who will develop new technologies which will improve our position as a society against challenges such as the coronavirus. These are the entrepreneurs who will develop new vaccines, new tests, new treatments, new digital means to monitor pandemics. They take a much bigger risk than the previous kind. Their investment is much larger, headily large in many cases, and the chances of success much lower. Many will fail and lose their shirts. A few may hopefully succeed. If they do, they will make huge amounts of money, lead successful companies and, from my observation of the general public, be resented by many. There will be complaints about the prices they charge for their development which will ignore the investment and the risk they took. I am on their side, cheering every effort, hoping they become filthy rich Le...

The current coronavirus lockdown will have negative consequences for the economic prospects of most people, catastrophic for some. However, every crisis brings opportunity, and some people will make a lot of money out of it. Some financial investors, and specially coronavirus entrepreneurs. As soon as PPE, tests and other critical goods became desperately scarce, entrepreneurs jumped into the fold, manufacturing them or, more often, providing access through intermediation. They are making money and governments and consumers are paying much higher prices for these goods, with the subsequent impact on public and personal finances. We are outraged by this. This outrage is incongruous. We have long accepted a system in which making money is prioritised over anything else and where many have enriched themselves by exploiting people’s need for energy, health and sustenance. These entrepreneurs are behaving rationally in economic terms, we need to change their context to change their behaviou...

Why does US have a much greater number of tech start ups than Spain? Some commonly cited reasons are skills and entrepreneurial spirit. This is the myth of Silicon Valley. It no longer holds true. Spain has many high quality, highly educated individuals, and many have entrepreneurial spirit. After years of international ‘entrepreneuring’, I have concluded that the biggest difference is access to capital. US is full of family offices, angel investors and venture capitalists who will fund tech start ups. In Spain, there are very few. And funding is critical to both the success and dimension of any new business. A great Spanish idea with a hugely entrepreneurial founder will most likely not reach the mass needed to succeed globally due to lack of finance. This, I think, is because US is full of people who have made fortunes in technology. They understand tech and that investing in tech is highly profitable. In Spain, money has been made differently, and that understanding is lacking