June 21, 2016

Science™ Says One Key Warning Sign of a Low-Quality Startup Is Being Named After Its Founder

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I’m reading James Surowiecki’s piece about startup companies, and couldn’t help but laugh when I got to this:

New work by the MIT economists Scott Stern and Jorge Guzman shows that in 15 U.S. states between 1988 and 2014 there was no long-term decline in the formation of what they call “high-quality” startups. Stern and Guzman have figured out the characteristics of startups that are trying to become high-growth firms, which include being chartered in Delaware, registering for patents, and not being named after the company’s founder.

Hmmm. Can we all think of an entrepreneur who (a) names all of his startup companies after himself, and (b) runs about the lowest-quality businesses imaginable? Sure we can. In fact, I’d like Stern and Guzman to rerun their correlations after removing all Trump businesses from their dataset. They might find out that he’s personally responsible for the entire effect.

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We see the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

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You may be wondering: What does it take to publish an investigation? And what does my donation actually fund? The answers are one and the same: It takes people, resources, and time. And that’s what your donation funds directly.

Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re covering underreported scandals out of Washington, DC, or the most important news of the day. And right now, each donation will be doubled thanks to a $50,000 match. So when you make a donation, it’ll go twice as far.

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