Blog: The Ripple
We love what we do, so ClearCreek writes and publishes pieces for a somewhat irregular blog about emerging companies and the capital markets. Or we did for a while anyway, then we did less, and apparently we stopped entirely. But we kept the old posts below. Any errors are ours exclusively while the occasional sharp insight is probably borrowed. We hope you find them of interest, and we always welcome feedback.
Posting Purgatory
ClearCreek has published a semi-regular blog and newsletter since July of 2009. However, when we applied for (update: and received) our broker-dealer license for ClearCreek Securities, there was an unfortunate consequence:…
Patient, Know Thyself
While political pundits might consider 2013 the year of the “no,” biotechies might think about it as the year of the “know.” Who can know what, what knowledge is patentable, and knowing how it can be used were all issues which found a newly devoted audience, including seven people in long robes…
Weedconomics
The intersection of theoretical economics and practical reality are often akin to the collisions between the Roadrunner and ACME products. Often these two forces align over time, but the blackboard simplicity of supply and demand curves rarely work out so cleanly in real life, particularly when there is transformational change…
Airwaves of Disruption
Disruptive technology is often seen as binary: you are or you are not. However, it’s more often a matrix: a technology can be anywhere from slightly to very disruptive to a user base that also varies in size. Even a small disruption in a large industry can ripple into a sizable wave…
A Cold Shower for Startup Communities?
Like many people, we are big fans of startup communities. We’d like to think that the benefits of these groups, and their economic and social impact, is self-evident. But we’re even bigger fans of contrarian reasoning, and having one’s beliefs challenged is thought-provoking, so this post naturally caught our eye…
The Film Industry’s SOPA Story
SOPA – federal legislation that would either protect or constrain content on the internet, depending on your corner – was recently killed thanks in no small part to the entrepreneurial online community. But the best post we saw on the issue talked less about legislation and more about business models…
The Changing Landscape of Early-Stage Financing
Funding options and pathways for early-stage companies are changing – more rapidly now than at any time in the past quarter century. We’ve detailed many of the changes individually…
Entrepreneurs as tax dodgers
It’s a little early for April Fools, and perhaps it is just my long exposure to entrepreneurs, but there is actually an argument circulating which labels entrepreneurs as tax cheats. This is because entrepreneurs…
Electric Car Policy — Stop Go Stop
The cleantech industry has been considered both highly promising for investors and a hopeful area of growth to counter the economic contraction of other industries. But one of the peculiarities of cleantech is the intersection between federal dollars…
The Things They Carried
Amid financial and regulatory oil slicks is an ongoing debate about carried interest, which Warren Buffet once characterized by asking why his receptionist was paying a higher tax rate than he was. She did so because investment funds…