Digital Companion

While the insights of The Entrepreneur’s Essentials are original and draw on the life lessons of a quarter century of founding and running six companies, the rigor of my thoughts on entrepreneurship has been shaped by literally thousands of brilliant minds. Much of my thinking has been guided and inspired by professors, colleagues, and collaborators at my university alma maters and gatherings, from the Aspen Institute and Dialog to Austin100 and TED. Equally, the work of this book has been vitally informed by scores of books, hundreds of podcasts, and video lectures, and thousands of essays by both business leaders and academics. In place of a conventional bibliography, we have created the Digital Companion for readers to access a cross-section of the most important thinking of others on the themes of entrepreneurship, business, and the emerging digital economy that are explored in my slender volume. The content chosen to support the lessons of the book is organized both by chapter and by medium: to read, to listen, and to watch.

Update: you can now chat with my book with this custom GPT. All of my book’s content has been ingested into OpenAI.

— B.H.

Introduction

To read:

Man’s Search for Meaning: Viktor Frankl’s description of the emotional, spiritual, and social dynamics of his experience is humbling and beautiful, writes Sharath Patil in this review of Frankl’s masterpiece.

The world is awash in data: But data.world makes it discoverable, interoperable, and social – meaning an explosion of data-driven insights is at hand, technology journalism sage John Battelle wrote on the company’s launch in 2016.

To listen:

A book for every therapist: Four psychiatrists discuss the work and life of colleague Viktor Frankl in this podcast that seeks to inspire all to read of his journey in Man’s Search for Meaning.

To watch:

Surviving Auschwitz: Instead of giving up and accepting that he was doomed, as most did, Viktor Frankl decided to use his suffering as an opportunity to help others and himself. His work, profiled in this 10 minute video.

Chapter 1 - The Soul of the Entrepreneur

To read:

Jobs to create: McKinsey research warns that one-third of the U.S. workforce could be displaced by 2030

The Anthropocene: The science behind the Texas killer storm in 2021 that killed 246.

Inventor of the term ‘VC’: John Jay Whitney coined the term venture capital in the 1950s, originally the term was “adventure capital.” Read his profile from 1951 in The New Yorker magazine.

The evolutionary history of data: In this series across four parts at the data.world blog Data Prose, I explored the history of data by contouring its evolution along that of humanity.

George Bernard Shaw: The British playwright’s book Maxims for Revolutionists is available for free download.

Seize the future: Join others in Austin, who are doing so - seizing the incredible opportunity we have in front of us, as outlined in the Texas Startup Manifesto.

To listen:

Mark Zuckerberg on Zuckerberg: In this 90-minute interview Zuckerberg talks about a range of things, from news to data to privacy to China to his political ambitions.

Cisco’s John Chambers: In this revealing interview with Kara Swisher, CISCO CEO John Chambers shares his concerns and his vision for the future of venture capitalism.

To watch:

Peniel Joseph: Author of The Sword and the Shield makes the case that we poorly understand the Civil Rights Movement and all that Rev. Martin Luther King and activist Malcolm X had in common - including international engagement and collaboration.

Chapter 2 - The Paralyzing Fear of Getting Started

To read

The fearful Elon Musk: In this New York Times interview, Musk describes the “excruciating” personal toll and fear in launching Tesla’s Model 3.

The fears of founders: Don’t let fear stop you from living your dream, argues Vidhya Ravi, founder of Travesheets.co.

Founders on depression: A group of six founders share their struggles on depression with TechCrunch author Catherine Shu.

The rise of the Silicon Valley: A review of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America tracks the key players and events underpinning the Valley’s rise

To listen

Don’t fear failure: Every failure brings valuable lessons for entrepreneurs, argues salesforce.com’s Polly Sumner, the Chief Adoption Officer.

To watch

Margaret O’Mara discusses The Code: In this half-hour video, the author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, discusses the insights of her book.

Chapter 3 - Advice for the Middle Age Entrepreneur

To read:

The ‘old’ myth: Contrary to popular myth, the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that successful entrepreneurs are middle-aged, not young.

Experience and competence: 570 years of collective experience didn’t count for much in MIT test of “seasoned” executives charged with cyber security.

To listen:

Viktor Frankl on COVID-19: How the great philosopher found meaning in hardship and uncertainty, from his grandson Alexander Vesely.

To watch:

Startup at 46: In this discussion with my friend Cotter Cunningham we talk about his successful entrepreneurial journey that began when he was 46.

Break through the noise: Supercharge your persuasion skills with the six behavioral concepts that Robert Cialdini shares in this video.

Chapter 4 - The Importance of an Always Be Learning Life

To read:

Growth Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: The fs.blog explores Carol Dweck’s journey into how our conscious and unconscious thoughts affect us, and our ability to improve.

Homo Deus - A Brief History of Tomorrow: Yuval Noah Harari’s book is a “breathless, compulsive inquiry into humanity’s apocalyptic, tech-driven future,” writes The Guardian.

Post-pandemic: COVID has made crystal clear both how important our technology is to human flourishing, and how well we can deliver, argues famed VC Marc Andreessen.

To listen:

Nimble entrepreneurs: What sets them apart is not their mastery of any given field, but the speed at which they zip up a learning curve, says LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman in this Infinite Learner podcast.

Pandora’s box: Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE discusses the success of Pandora’s visionary founder Tim Westergren and offers three tips for founders looking to bring a more aesthetically beautiful future to the world.

Revisionist History: Malcolm Gladwell journeys through the overlooked and the misunderstood – and asks whether we got it right the first time in this podcast series. Sometimes the past deserves a second chance.

To watch:

Start With Why: People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe,” argues author Simon Sinek in this among many lectures. 

Mind meld: Two towering technology and business intellectuals, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, survey the future of everything.

What is Vedanta? Vedanta means the culmination of knowledge. It is the ancient Indian philosophy that answers the fundamental questions of life, explains A. Parthasarathy, my teacher in Mumbai.

On a lifetime of reading: Gary Hoover, founder of the book superstore chain Bookstop, talks about his business background, his love of reading, and his nearly 60,000 volume library

Believe in yourself: We can grow our brains’ capacity to learn more when we simply accept that in fact this is possible. It’s called the “growth mindset.” Take a listen to author Carol Dweck.

Chapter 5 - Bootstrap or VC?

To read:

Why launch a startup: For the big money and for the opportunity to control your own company, certainly. But new research from Harvard Business School’s Noam Wasserman shows that those goals are largely incompatible.

Startup upstart: As VCs from both coasts join the move to Austin, Texas, the city is the new land of unicorns and tech giants, writes TechCrunch magazine.

Pitchbook: PitchBook tracks every aspect of the public and private equity markets, including venture capital, private equity, and M&A.

The gems of GEM: This UK-US consortium paints a picture of the planetary level of entrepreneurial activity, examining entrepreneurial motivations, intentions, and attitudes around the world.

The VC Lab: The VC Lab program helps innovative fund managers launch impactful venture capital firms in 12 months or less, says founder Adeo Ressi.

‘For the good of humankind’: As a public benefit corporation, data.world seeks to maximize data’s societal problem-solving utility

The VC as ‘Sherpa’: The partnerships between entrepreneurs and VCs are akin to the relationship between the Sherpas and climbers who scale the heights of Mt. Everest.

To listen:

Founder’s Dilemma: Do you want investors who stay in the shadows (remain king), or ones who are hands-on (get rich)? Your call says Harvard’s Noam Wasserman in this Spotify podcast.

To watch:

Rich/King redux: So you want to be an entrepreneurial Superman, leap buildings in a single bound? Don’t try it until you watch this short lecture with Noam Wasserman of the Harvard Business School:

Chapter 6 - The Fallacy of Risk in Entrepreneurship

To read:

THE Classic: Now three decades old, The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clay Christiansen is reviewed as the “classic” book on disruptive technology.

Risk-averse Ted Turner: Malcolm Gladwell’s essay in The New Yorker explores the risk-averse nature of successful entrepreneurs and it is essential reading.

Netflix, Blockbuster, and ‘bad profit’: In this Lucky7 blog series, Brett Hurt explores the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ profits.

Building a culture of thrift: You can build a better business culture with bigger ripple effects if you are capital efficient, argues Brett Hurt in this Lucky7 blog post.

A father’s counsel: My father’s words: "Son, one day you may realize the value of keeping life simple…,” he said… “or you may not."

The new capital: Unlike angel investors, venture capital is a different ballgame, argues Bonobos Co-founder and CEO Andy Dunn. These folks are fiduciaries who probably own at least 10 percent of your business, and frequently more.

To listen:

Stewart Brand: The polymath explains why entrepreneurs don’t get visual arts, what libertarians don’t understand about government, and why we should bring back woolly mammoths.

To watch:

Our democracies: The fundamental scourge against democracies is the trap of systems that are too big too big to control, says former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.

The dilemma: Clayton Christiansen’s The Innovator's Dilemma is brilliantly explained in this four-minute visual.

Rethinking competition: You want to avoid competition and aim for monopoly control over any market that you enter, counsels VC megastar Peter Thiel.

The pillar of power: Venture capital is fast becoming “an enduring pillar of national power” in America, argues Sebastian Mallaby in the riveting 2022 book, The Power Law — Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future.

El Capitan: How do you prepare for a free solo ascent of El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park? Big wall climber Alex Honnold explains how it’s done. 

Chapter 7 - What’s In a Name?

To read:

The race for names: As competition over names intensifies, businesses are getting creative, says Cristine Laborio-Chaffkin, a senior writer at Inc. magazine.

Markets as conversations: The first markets were filled with people, buyers and sellers looked each other in the eye, met, and connected. Nothing has changed,  argues the brilliant book, Cluetrain Manifesto.

To listen:

No New Tale to Tell: Listen to this song by Love and Rocket, and think of this chapter and the deep exercise of discovering your company’s name.

To watch:

Next act for Tim Berners-Lee: The founder of the world wide web is building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video.

Chapter 8 - To Be Stealthy or Not?

To read:

Zero to One: The bigger the secret and the likelier it is that you alone have it, the more time you have to execute, argues Peter Thiel in a lecture at Stanford, the notes of which formed the basis of his popular book.

Data’s ‘last mile’: We are now embarking on the “last mile” of data’s evolution, I explain in this series of essays I wrote for Data Prose, our in-house publication. Our new digital ecosystem is fast evolving in complexity and diversity, but it remains primitive. 

Insight of Marc Andreessen: The market needs to be fulfilled and the market will be fulfilled, by the first viable product that comes along, explains the mega-VC in this essay on startup success and failure.

Who reviews? Almost 60 percent of shoppers cite product reviews as the eCommerce feature upon which they rely most, concludes this 2020 Bazaarvoice study, writes Kiri Masters of Forbes.

Chapter 9 - How, and Why, to Ask for Help

To read:

Founding Brothers: Creating the United States from 13 colonies required a combination of remarkable, collaborating men, argues Joseph J. Ellis in this book reviewed by the Guardian.

Startup Nation: The transformative experiences faced by Israelis are key to their nation’s success as a hub of innovation suggests this excerpt from the seminal the book by Dan Senor and Saul Singer.

Asking for help: It’s easier than you think, argues Wayne Baker, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

To listen:

Israeli innovation: Damian Katz, co-founder of Israel’s “Innovation Experience” business incubator explores the reasons behind Israel’s startup success in this PropTech podcast.

To watch:

I need help: Steve Jobs explains how as a teenager he cold-called Hewlett-Packard co-founder Bill Hewlett for help, even landing a summer job.

Chapter 10 - The Strength of Natural Network Effects

To read:

Cricket networks: It all began with the chirpy synchronizers writes neuroscientist Mark Humphries in this essay on Duncan Watts’s famous journey into network theory and practice.

Human networks: In this Nature magazine essay, Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks, Duncan Watts and Steven H. Strogatz explain their supercharged network theory and research.

The law of the pack: In this seminal 2001 essay in the Harvard Business Review, David P. Reed successfully predicted that the most successful businesses on the Internet would travel in packs. 

Nature’s networks: Science Focus magazine shares five examples of nature networking in ways entrepreneurs should mimic to create platforms greater than the sum of their parts.

Success formula: Startup durability = Network Effects + Economies of Scale + Brand + Embedding + IP, argues serial entrepreneur, investor, and network theorist James Currier.

Networking to success: The key factor in the success of companies as different as Microsoft and Wal-Mart is the success of the networks with which they do business, argue authors Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien.

Networks of networks: In the digital economy, networks are the architecture of the new order, argues Competing in the Age of AI - Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World, a complex but critical book. 

To watch:

Think platform: As AI is embedded in all facets of our networked commercial ecosystem, “platforms are changing the landscape of our economy,” says Harvard Professor Karim H. Lakhani in this compelling interview.

Chapter 11 - The Most Proven Way to Hire Well

To read:

How NOT to hire: Businesses have never been hiring as many people, nor have they ever doing it so badly, argues Wharton School Professor Peter Cappelli in this essay.

In defense of ego: Ego is the invisible line item on every company's profit and loss statement, argue authors David Marcum and Steven Smith in this excerpt from their boo, Egonomics.

To watch:

Building a workforce: Wharton School Professor Peter Cappelli explores effective ways to build a great workforce in this interview. 

Chapter 12 - The Importance of Reference Checking

To read:

Remembering Keith Benjamin: Brett Hurt memorializes his friend and mentor, the legendary and widely respected venture capitalist Keith Benjamin.

The invaluable co-worker: Intuit founder Scott Cook describes why there is no better way to learn about a candidate than talking to those who have actually worked in them.

You’re not born a CEO: Brett Hurt argues the principles for founders to become good CEOs in this First Round Review interview.

Chapter 13 - How to Leverage Advisors and Investors

To read:

The first advisor: Upon its founding, the first member of data.world’s Board of Advisors was data scientist and author Dean Allemang, author of the seminal Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist.

Chapter 14 - Seven Lessons Learned on the Journey from Founder to CEO

To read:

V2MOM: Salesforce founder Marc Benioff credits his company’s success to a system of internal alignment he developed that stands for “Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures.”

To listen:

Change the world: In this discussion with CEO coach Kirk Dando, Brett Hurt explains how he really does want to change the world for the better.

To watch:

Understanding corporations: The Corporation, a must-watch documentary, compares the way corporations are compelled to behave with symptoms of human psychopathy.

Audacious goals: Venture capitalist and author John Doerr describes in this TED talk how entrepreneurs succeed using the goal setting system “Objectives and Key Results.” 

Point of View: Fully articulating your Point of View, or “POV,” is critical to developing market leadership in your business category, explains marketing coach Roy Furr.

Chapter 15 - Call to Action for CEOs on Selling

To watch:

Focus on the present: The path to success comes through training your mind not to disrupt its focus by slipping between the past and future, explains author and teacher Swami Parthasarathy

Chapter 16 - Selling to the ‘Cool Kids’

To read:

The customer-centric CEO: Becoming customer-centric is an essential part of growth and a fundamental driver of success, argue marketing professors Noel Capon and Christoph Senn.

Selling the Wheel: Marketing is explored as an ancient parable in this Slideshare review of the fascinating story by Howard Stevens and Jeff Cox.

The most important customers: A small percentage of customers represent a very large percentage of company revenue. So treat them accordingly, argues technology executive Nello Franco.

Ego trip: Here’s how to turn ego from a consistent, costly liability into a fixed, appreciating asset. Yes, ego is your most important asset, argue the authors of Egonomics.

Cross the chasm: The concept of “crossing the chasm,” developed into a classic idea by author Geoffrey Moore, is foundational to any understanding of markets and marketing. 

To watch:

Product-Market fit: In this episode of The Only Thing That Matters on Chicago Founder TV, Brett Hurt describes how he created the Product-Market fit at Bazaarvoice. 

Chapter 17 - Action-Oriented Communication

To read:

Crucial conversations: Don’t dodge difficult conversations. Make those critical conversations meaningful, write the authors of Crucial Conversations.

Speak New York: If a panhandler says, “This isn’t Congress, people, you can pass a bill,” that’s a normal conversation, writes the New York Times.

Communication styles: If we don’t acknowledge differing styles, we risk confusing  the people in front of us, suggests this essay.

To watch:

Communicate fiercely: The key to communication is openness and directness, says Fierce Conversations author Susan Scott. 

Find the ‘why’: Author Simon Sinek advocates for finding the “why” in our conversations in this TED talk on modes of communication.

Virtually together: Meeting remotely is fast evolving beyond the familiar rectangles of video technology, as in this theater display from Microsoft Together.

Chapter 18 - Forming Your Company’s Values

To read:

Market morality: The marketplace is now our core moral experience, and we need to design new ways to accommodate this reality within the limits of the planet, argues philosopher Achille Mbembe.

Digital power: We live in a “technopolar moment” when technology companies are reshaping the global order, writes Ian Bremmer, geopolitical theorist and founder of the Eurasia Group.

A new business ideology: A new ideology for our new digital economy is nigh and only the institutions of commerce themselves can lead this, argues Brett Hurt in this TechCrunch essay.

New realities: The assumptions many businesses were built on no longer fit with the way they need to be run, wrote the doyen of business theory Peter Drucker in this seminal essay.

Organizing Genius: In a shrinking world demanding more collaboration, the  “hero CEO” is obsolete argues the late Warren Bennis is his seminal book reviewed in the New York Times.

Play Bigger: If you have a game-changing idea, make it a reality along with a new category of business that you create and dominate, write the authors of this foundational book.

The principles of data.world: The top five were Determination, Passion, Community, Integrity, and Curiosity, in this exercise mapped here.

Policing in America: Supported by data.world, this ongoing survey seeks to build reliable statistics about behaviors and attitudes towards policing at the local level in cities across America.

Build a better world: Capitalism must help individuals achieve better futures, drive innovation, build resilient economies, and solve some of our most intractable challenges, argues BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. 

Public benefit corporation: The “B Corp: movement seeks to address society's critical challenges by shifting the behavior, structure, and culture of capitalism.

The commitment of data.world: See what data.world means when it declares that social and public purpose is behind its decision to operate as a public benefit corporation. 

Doing well while doing good: Some 20 CEOs, led by Salesforce’s Marc Benioffm embrace  philanthropy as a win-win situation for the community and the corporation in The Business of Changing the World.

To listen:

Nurturing values: Brett Hurt explains the resources he uses to scale companies, build values, and communicate with investors in this podcast interview.

Pandemic wake-up: The turmoil of the pandemic was the  “ultimate growing-up experience” for business founders,” argues Airbnb founder Brian Chesky, in the podcast interview.

To watch:

CEO accelerator: This 10-week, 10-class set of CEO courseware was designed by the former Evite CEO Victor Cho. It is intense, innovative, and free. 

Chapter 19 - The Five Critical Ingredients to Build a Big Company

To read:

Bootstrapper’s Bible: Metabolize this manifesto to make your company more focused, more efficient, and more grassroots. All with author Seth Godin.

What is a TAM?: Measuring your Total Addressable Market is a crucial first step you must take. It’s a lot easier with this free how-to kit from Hubspot.

Sizing up GitHub: Stanford University’s Paul V. Weinstein explains why Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub is a perfect illustration of how value is ascribed differently in Silicon Valley than in the rest of the world.

Building the business model: When you get ready to build your business model, don’t leave home without this free, how-to primer from Isaac Jeffries. 

Building the business model II: Pitching, building, planning:  You name it, you’ll find an affordable guide to help you do at upmetrics.

Thiel on Thiel: And many more subjects if you stroll through his lecture notes on how to build bigger, better, faster businesses.

Measure what matters: There are different ways to set up your scoring for OKRs. Here’s how Google does it.

To watch:

A knight’s duty: As you figure our your purpose and mission, the 2 minutes and 19 seconds you spend with Peter O’Toole singing To Dream the Impossible Dream may make your dream possible.

Benioff on public benefit: Before his company Salesforce.com made a dime, Marc Benioff built the notion of public benefit and social responsibility into his company. Watch him explain how he did it.

How Doerr does it: Setting the right goals, and measuring them, is the key to avoiding failure and achieving success, says legendary VC investor John Doerr.

Chapter 20 - Capture the History of Your Amazing Journey

To read:

Warren Buffett: The ‘Sage of Omaha’ personally writes all his shareholder letters. Reading through a few of these since 1977 is enlightening.

The global peacemaker: In his years of globetrotting before dying in an airplane crash in Zambia, Dag Hammerskjold wrote down his negotiations with himself and with God.

On journaling: Gaining access to your own insight isn’t difficult; you simply need to commit to reflecting on a daily basis, explains McGill University’s Nancy J. Adler in this essay for the Harvard Business Review.

Chapter 21 - On Failure and Resilience

To read:

Peer at failure’s portrait: One thing failure gives you is a full, vivid portrait illustrating of what New York City real estate entrepreneur Daniel Neiditch calls, ‘the other side of trying.’

How to pivot: Just remember: The more you prepare, the less you need to prepare. And other insights about pivot strategy in a great read produced by the Founder Institute.

Leading through COVID-19: I share a series of five articles that chronicle the phases a leader goes through during a worldwide pandemic.

To watch:

On failure and success: Serial entrepreneur and RetailMeNot.com Co-founder Cotter Cunnihgam reflects on the pain of failure and the promise of great success with a well-executed pivot.

It’s the business model!: Forget the business plan. You need an effective business model to define the ways that you will convert innovation into economic value, argues VC powerhouse and Floodgate Fund Co-found Mike Maples.

Chapter 22 - Seven Critical Lessons Learned in Angel Investing

To read:

Uncertainty is your friend: Risky things are predictable, quantifiable, and insurable. Uncertainty is none of these. Which is why startup founders should seek out uncertainty, argues investor Jerry Neumann.

Asymmetrical commercefare: So, you want to build a legendary company? Here are the most powerful asymmetrical weapons you’ll need, courtesy of venture investor Mike Maples Jr.

At last – European innovation: Europe’s slothlike embrace of entrpreneureal innovation is changing with such success stories as Early Venture Capital, active throughout Eastern Europe and led by Cem Sertoglu.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Ubiquitous, mobile supercomputing. Intelligent robots. Self-driving cars. Neuro-technological brain enhancements. Genetic editing. It’s here now, says Davos founder and CEO Klaus Schwab.

To watch:

Beat ‘em with beta: Measure the volatility of an individual stock compared to the systematic risk of the entire market and peel away the secrets of high performers, suggest Investopedia’s Will Kenton.

Human and robots: What jobs will robots take from humans? Rather, asks author Byron Reese: “What are humans?” Until we answer that second question, we can’t meaningfully address the first, he says.

Chapter 23 - Conclusion: Entrepreneurs Must Lead Our Nation’s Healing

To read:

King’s Letter from Birmingham: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,” wrote Rev. Martin Luther King from the Birmingham Jail.

Center for the Study of Race and Democracy: Led by Dr. Peniel Joseph, one of the world’s leading incubators of thought on our racial reckoning is at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

White privilege: One of the most lasting myths about Reconstruction is that the “forty acres and a mule” proposal was simply too radical to ever succeed, argues Keri Leigh Merritt in, Masterless Men: Poor Whites, Slavery, and Capitalism in the Deep South.

America’s longest-running affirmation action program: An estimated $10 trillion, in today’s dollars, was transferred to white homesteaders, essentially for free.

Diversity in tech: It’s pretty bad but getting better. Check out the state of progress with the series by Crunchbase News, entitled Something Ventured - How entrepreneurs access opportunity in America.

The roots of violence: White America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence, argues Ta-Nehisi Coates in Letter to My Son.

To listen:

What’s White? Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Rutgers Professor Chenjerai Kumanyika explains in this podcast series.

The Destruction of America’s Black Wall Street: This Harvard Gazette review explores the seminal book on the economic devastation in Tulsa, Oklahoma – from which the city’s Greenwood District never recovered its status as America’s Black Wall Street.

Latino founders a rarity: Bain & Company consultants found that among the top 500 venture capital and private equity deals in 2020, fewer than 1 percent involved a Latino founder.

Venture capitalism’s gender divide: Female CEOs receive only 2.7 percent of all venture funding, while women of color get virtually none: 0.2 percent, finds this study by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son: “Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.”

To watch:

Capitalism’s ‘dirty secret.’: The market is the greatest social technology ever invented for solving human problems. So let’s use it, argues Venture Capitalist Nick Hanauer in this TED talk.

Bloody Sunday: Watch this historic video of the civil rights workers’ famous Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965.

Voter suppression in America: Everything thing you wanted to know about current and ongoing violations of voting rights, and the work of Stacey Abrams, is in this film.

Courageous Austin: Take a listen to the testimonials from these leaders who participated in the Beyond Diversity/Courageous Conversation project in Austin.

Disparity by design: Why is the ‘bad’ side of town usually on the East? Anthropologist and venture capitalist Stephen DeBerry explains how both environmental and man-made factors have led to “disparity by design.”