Forerunner is software for NFIMBYs, or no flooding in my backyard

Mayors have the toughest job in the world, and leading a city is only getting harder. Even as populations swell in urban cores across the world, climate change is constraining the geographies where that growth can happen. Coastal communities that are popular with residents are also taking a gamble when it comes to rising sea […]

The next Theranos should be shortable

Matthew Wansley Contributor Matthew Wansley is Assistant Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law in New York A jury will soon decide whether former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is guilty of a federal crime. But the deeper public policy questions that Theranos raised remain unanswered. How did a startup built on a technology that […]

A new coalition for “Open Cap Table” presents an opportunity for equity transparency

Yifat Aran Contributor Share on Twitter Dr. Yifat Aran is a visiting scholar at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and an Assistant Professor in Haifa University Faculty of Law. She earned her JSD from Stanford Law School where her dissertation focused on equity-based compensation in Silicon Valley startups. The ownership of startups is often […]

Diversifying startups and VC power corridors

Jennifer Fan Contributor Jennifer Fan is an assistant professor of law and director of the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law. Startups have a seemingly intractable problem: a lack of diversity. Despite research showing that diverse founding teams have a higher rate of return than white founding teams, one characteristic […]

Air conditioning is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century. It’s also killing the 21st

When did indoor air become cold and clean? Air conditioning is one of those inventions that have become so ubiquitous, that many in the developed world don’t even realize that less than a century ago, it didn’t exist. Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that the air inside our buildings and the air outside of […]

How national security is being redefined by climate change

One of the most unfortunate fault lines in climate change politics today is the lack of cooperation between environmentalists and the national security community. Left-wing climate activists don’t exactly hang out with more right-leaning military strategists, the former often seeing the latter as destructive anti-ecological marauders, while the latter often assume the former are unrealistic […]

Is the best way to solve climate change to “do nothing?”

When it comes to climate change, it might seem that a book entitled “How to Do Nothing” would not only be irrelevant, but also downright obscene and even dangerous. Not to mention that after more than a year of pandemic living, many people are understandably fatigued at the prospect of continuing to keep their lives […]

Bill Gates offers direction, not solutions

Bill Gates has solved many problems in his (professional) life, and in recent decades, he’s been dedicated to the plight of the world’s poor and particularly their health. Through his foundation work and charitable giving, he’s roamed the world solving problems from malaria and neglected tropical diseases to maternal health, always with an eye toward […]