Weekly Roundup is a McNair Center series compiling and summarizing the week\u2019s most important Entrepreneurship and Innovation news.<\/p>\n
Anne Dayton, Research Manager, McNair Center<\/i>
\nThe 115th Congress has passed 3 bills this legislative session relating to entrepreneurship and innovation. The tally seems abnormally high considering that only 10\u00a0bills have been passed in total since Congress first convened on January 3rd, While this wave of legislation might appear to indicate that Congress has set its sights on promoting entrepreneurship and innovation, the McNair Center\u2019s Anne Dayton notes that out of the three bills passed by Congress, only one substantiates effective policy.<\/p>\n
Out of the three bills passed, Dayton highlights the TALENT Act<\/a> as likely to \u201cmake a real world impact.\u201d The TALENT Act essentially codifies and formalizes the Presidential Innovation Fellows <\/a>program, an initiative originally introduced by President Obama. The bill falls under House Majority Leader McCarthy\u2019s Innovation Initiative<\/a>\u00a0for spurring higher rates of innovation in the private sector.\u00a0For more insight into the work done by Innovation Fellows, check out Julia Wang\u2019s<\/a> post for the McNair Center on President Obama\u2019s efforts to generate an \u201cinnovation nation.”<\/p>\n The other two acts, Promoting Women in Entrepreneurship <\/a>and INSPIRE<\/a>, aim to support women in entrepreneurship but are unfortunately, according to Dayton, \u201cdevoid of meaningful changes to public policy.\u201d If you\u2019re interested in how policy can increase women in STEM and innovation-based fields, check out this post from McNair\u2019s Tay Jacobe<\/a>.<\/p>\n Notwithstanding the results of the recent legislation, Dayton acknowledges that \u201call three acts passed Congress with bipartisan support\u201d; hopefully these unified efforts are a function of \u201ca shared interest in furthering innovation in government and expanding access to careers in entrepreneurship and STEM\u201d among U.S. politicians.<\/p>\n Katie Benner, The New York Times, Reporter<\/i><\/p>\n Bill Gurley is a general partner at prominent Silicon Valley VC firm, Benchmark. Gurley spotted Uber early on, claiming a 20 percent stake in the successful ride-hailing app six years ago. Since Benchmarks original investment in Uber in 2011, the startup\u2019s value increased 1,100-fold. Despite the startup\u2019s huge successes, Uber has run into a host of problems in recent weeks, including legal disputes, stiff competition from rival ride-sharing app Lyft and negative press attention for employee allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination.<\/p>\n In light of the startup\u2019s series of blunders, Gurley decided to take a more hands-on approach in advising Uber\u2019s damage control strategy and will reportedly assist in the search for a COO for the startup. Since joining Benchmark, Gurley has been involved in the firm\u2019s profitable investments into GrubHub, OpenTable and Zillow. However, with a successful public offering, Uber could become Gurley\u2019s greatest tech investment yet.<\/p>\n Gurley is famous in Silicon Valley for his often unorthodox and unpopular advice to successful tech firms. During the dot com boom, he advised tech startup Net Gravity to go public as soon as possible, rather than to delay their IPO for further funding rounds. According to Gurley, \u201ctaking on too much venture funding…can fuel a lack of discipline\u201d and lead to the absence of \u201crigorous financial and operational controls\u201d among startups.<\/p>\n Diane Mulcahy, Harvard Business Review, Reporter<\/i><\/p>\n Harvard Business Review\u2019s Mulcahy reports on the potential of the gig economy going forward. In a traditional economy, companies demand employee attendance – in other words, the five day, eight-hour workweek. Under a gig economy, however, companies value employee performance over attendance and allow employees to disconnect their work from the office space. Options that allow employees to work remotely or in co-working spaces cut real-estate costs for employers and provide productive and flexible work environments for employees.<\/p>\n According to Mulcahy, \u201cthe most impactful lesson that traditional companies can learn from the gig economy is to judge all workers, including employees, on their results, not on when and where they do their work.\u201d Perhaps entrepreneurs and startups might take a hint from the benefits of the gig economy. For most firms, and especially small businesses, labor is the most costly input into the production process. In fact, according to a study from\u00a0CBRE<\/a>, the average U.S. company spends roughly $12,000 per employee per year on office space alone. A survey of 8,000 employees conducted by McKinsey\u2019s Global Institute <\/a>reveals that employees who work outside of the typical office lifestyle report higher levels of satisfaction and productivity.<\/p>\n Mikey Tom, PitchBook, Contributor<\/i><\/p>\n PitchBook\u2019s Tom covers MuleSoft\u2019s <\/a>IPO from last Friday. The IPO secured the VC-backed startup a market cap slightly above $3 billion. Mulesoft is 2017\u2019s first large tech enterprise to go public. The San Francisco-based company develops software platforms that integrate data, devices, and APIs (application programming interfaces). Although 2016 was a slow year for public offerings (in comparison to M&A deals<\/a>), Tom predicts that 2017 could reverse this current trend in VC exits. Tom predicts that the market\u2019s \u201cwarm\u201d reception to Mulesoft public offering could signal a shift in the \u201cpublic market\u2019s appetite for enterprise.\u201d Just last week, tech unicorn Okta filed for its IPO. Okta provides identity management technologies, a hot sector in the tech industry right now.<\/p>\n Josh Constine, TechCrunch, Reporter<\/i><\/p>\n Music-streaming startup Spotify has come a long way since its founding in 2008. In 2012, Constine<\/a> wrote an article for TechCrunch explaining how Spotify\u2019s success has always hinged on the cooperation of record labels; as a result of Spotify\u2019s limited bargaining power in negotiating with artists, the startup pays huge royalties to their record labels. Despite limited leverage over record labels, the popular company now boasts over 50 million paid subscribers. In his latest post for TechCrunch, Constine notes several ways that Spotify has fundamentally shifted the power balance between streaming platforms and record labels.<\/p>\n First, Spotify has become a vehicle for music discovery, with its Discover Weekly<\/a> feature shaping a many listener\u2019s music preferences. Going forward, Spotify might take further advantage of the selection process for these recommended playlists to gain bargaining power when negotiating with artists. Currently, Spotify attributes a large proportion of the total royalty payments for many large record labels. If record labels want to rethink their partnership with Spotify now, they will potentially jeopardize a substantial stream of revenue. What\u2019s more, Spotify has recently made moves to diversify its service offerings to include videos, limit content access by offering a tiered subscription system for new releases, and own the rights to the music it streams so that it can eliminate royalty payouts completely for some artists.<\/p>\n According to Constine, if Spotify successfully capitalizes on these strategies, the startup may achieve lower royalty rates and negotiation power before going public.<\/p>\n Dr. M. Christine Stock, Guest Author, VentureBeat<\/i><\/p>\n In her post for VentureBeat, Dr. Christine Stock sends a clear message to health tech startups: start inviting physicians \u201cinnovation process.\u201d According to Dr. Stock, who is a tenured professor of anesthesiology at Northwestern University, doctors want to be involved in the process that will transform how medicine is practiced going forward. The current model of implementation leaves physicians out of the development process.<\/p>\n Dr. Stock comments that \u201cmany new technologies work well after the period of adaptation,\u201d but \u201cleaving end-users (physicians) out of the product development process leads to unanticipated problems such as unintuitive and frustrating workflow, taxing documentation requirements and nonsensical and inaccurate cut-and-paste progress notes.\u201d To increase the productivity of physicians during the rollout period and more effectively promote the well-being of their patients, tech startups should openly communicate with physicians. Through\u00a0feedback from medical professionals, tech innovators might realize that flooding doctors with a flurry of new digital tools often leads to poor workflow and patient dissatisfaction on the consumer end of the chain.<\/p>\n Dr. Stock also notes on areas of the medical field that urgently demand innovation from the startup sector, including patient ownership of personal medical information and creating an open platform for EMR (electronic medical records) systems, so that healthcare providers can easily access medical records from and communicate with providers using different systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Weekly Roundup is a McNair Center series compiling and summarizing the week\u2019s most important Entrepreneurship and Innovation news. Here is what you need to know about\u00a0entrepreneurship this week: Congress Turns Its Attention to Entrepreneurship and Innovation \u2014 But Does It Take Effective Action? Anne Dayton, Research Manager, McNair Center The 115th Congress has passed 3…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":1008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[422,60],"tags":[335,281,26,366,278,247,240,75,238,27,367,244,242,272,368,181,161,94,241,365,40,32,111],"class_list":["post-1308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mcnair","category-weekly-roundup","tag-barack-obama","tag-co-working","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-gig-economy","tag-health-care","tag-innovation-initiative","tag-inspire-act","tag-ipo","tag-kevin-mccarthy","tag-mcnair-center","tag-mulesoft","tag-presidential-innovation-fellows","tag-promoting-women-in-entrepreneurship-act","tag-silicon-valley","tag-spotify","tag-startup","tag-startups","tag-stem","tag-talent-act","tag-uber","tag-vc","tag-venture-capital","tag-women"],"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":["https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/weekly-roundup-entrepreneurship.png",1175,585,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/weekly-roundup-entrepreneurship-200x150.png",200,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/weekly-roundup-entrepreneurship-400x199.png",400,199,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/weekly-roundup-entrepreneurship.png",1175,585,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/weekly-roundup-entrepreneurship-1024x510.png",800,398,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/weekly-roundup-entrepreneurship.png",1175,585,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/weekly-roundup-entrepreneurship.png",1175,585,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/weekly-roundup-entrepreneurship.png",1175,585,false],"twentytwenty-fullscreen":["https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/weekly-roundup-entrepreneurship.png",1175,585,false],"yarpp-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/weekly-roundup-entrepreneurship.png",120,60,false]},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":" Weekly Roundup is a McNair Center series compiling and summarizing the week\u2019s most important Entrepreneurship and Innovation news. Here is what you need to know about\u00a0entrepreneurship this week: Congress Turns Its Attention to Entrepreneurship and Innovation \u2014 But Does It Take Effective Action? Anne Dayton, Research Manager, McNair Center The 115th Congress has passed 3 bills this legislative session relating to entrepreneurship and innovation. The tally seems abnormally high considering that only 10\u00a0bills have been passed in total since Congress first convened on January 3rd, While this wave of legislation might appear to indicate that Congress has set its sights…<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"McNair Center<\/a>, Weekly Roundup<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"Meghana Gaur","url":"https:\/\/www.edegan.com\/articles\/author\/meghana\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","yoast_head":"\n
\nIn Silicon Valley, a Voice of Caution Guides a High-Flying Uber<\/a><\/h3>\n
\nWill the Gig Economy Make the Office Obsolete?<\/a><\/h3>\n
\nMuleSoft Stock Soars after Latest Tech Unicorn IPO<\/a><\/h3>\n
\nHow Spotify Is Finally Gaining Leverage over Record Labels<\/a><\/h3>\n
\nA Physician\u2019s Open Letter to Health Tech Startups<\/a><\/h3>\n