by Mike Goodrich | Dec 17, 2019 | 2019, Social Capital and Social Entrepreneurialism, Social Capital Series
You know who’s not good at fighting fires? Arsonists. – Anand Giridharadas In the late nineteenth century, New York City had a huge pollution problem: horses. Specifically, horse poop, which littered the streets. The...
by Mike Goodrich | Dec 3, 2019 | 2019, Social Capital and Social Entrepreneurialism, Social Capital Series
In order to properly frame this question, we first need a working understanding of a few shared terms. First: what is a market rate of return? Here’s a definition from My Accounting Course (emphasis added by me): Definition: Market rate, or the going rate, is the rate...
by Mike Goodrich | Nov 12, 2019 | 2019, Entrepreneurialism, Social Capital and Social Entrepreneurialism, Social Capital Series
Social capital is an area ripe for controversy. Not that social capital, in and of itself, is bad or wrong — few would say that doing well by doing good is a bad thing. Most people involved in social capital want to find ways to both succeed financially and...
by Mike Goodrich | Oct 29, 2019 | 2019, Social Capital and Social Entrepreneurialism, Social Capital Series
The first in a series of First Avenue Ventures blog posts on Social Capital. Social capital is a concept not easily nor well-defined. In this series, we define social capital as the use of capital (for our purposes, we examine it primarily as financial capital)...
by Mike Goodrich | Oct 18, 2019 | 2019, Birmingham, Business Lessons, Entrepreneurialism, Small and Medium-Sized Businesses
I just finished Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped: the Battle for Uber, which I strongly recommend, particularly for fans of corporate intrigue and Silicon Valley excess. The story focuses on the rise and fall of Travis Kalanick, the hard-charging founder and CEO of Uber, who...
by Mike Goodrich | Sep 24, 2019 | 2019, Birmingham, Entrepreneurialism
Change usually has a downside, and the Opportunity Zone[1] tax law is no exception. A couple of pieces published in The New York Times highlight a negative perspective coming to the fore of this new tax law. In “How a Trump Tax Break to Help Poor Communities Became a...
