From Seoul to Shanghai to Brussels in three weeks. The assumption that held the entire trip together — that I knew what a mature digital ecosystem looked like — did not survive the first forty-eight hours. The Assumption Europe is catching up on digital infrastructure. The gap is narrowing. This is
The founding team gets assessed at the start and taken for granted ever after. Then the project runs long — as they always do — and one by one people's lives move in directions the original agreement never accounted for. What nobody planned for, and nobody measured, is the question
Twenty-five years ago today, I incorporated this company. The world I incorporated it into had itself only recently been rebuilt — the Wall had fallen a decade earlier, and the assumptions that followed that moment are still working their way through our economies, our institutions, and our businesses today. Some
The Assumption Your bank deposits are safe, we were told by politicians. It's codified in some law provisions but until when does it hold? The Einlagensicherung guarantees €100,000 per depositor per bank. Above that, voluntary funds extend protection further. Above that, the state stands ready. Three layers.
The Valley of Death has a well-documented address: the gap between R&D funding and commercial revenue. The last three autopsies examined the conditions that create it. This edition moves inside it — specifically, the assumption risk that accumulates quietly while the technical curve advances and the commercial curve
India rewrote a definition. Europe launched another fund. One of these will matter in 2035. Two weeks ago we examined why capital conditions have structurally shifted and will not reverse. Last week we examined why Germany’s capital went into the wrong category. This week: what happens when the instrument
Germany didn't miss a PayPal moment. It funded the one startup category where its structural advantages are worthless. Last week I wrote about structural shifts in innovation funding — why the 2021 capital environment isn't coming back and what that means for how founders should think about
AI mega-deals are pulling venture numbers upward. The deal count — the one that actually tells you whether founders like you are getting funded — quietly fell 20.6% in 2025. Innovation funding is a tale of two worlds right now. Most business plans were written for a third one that
The Prototype Feedback Problem The Assumption The prototype works. The technical validation is done. Structured feedback sessions have taken place, notes are filed, the team has reviewed them. You are, by any reasonable measure, doing everything right. The assumption driving the next phase: usability feedback is an input to the
What every fintech founder must understand about ownership — before their users find out the hard way. The assumption If you deposit assets on a crypto exchange, you own those assets. This belief underpinned a trillion-dollar industry. It was held by retail investors, institutional allocators, venture funds, and — if their
Why "build the minimum thing and learn fast" is the sentence that sends deep tech founders into the wrong valley entirely. The Assumption Somewhere between 2011 and 2015, the startup world reached a consensus. Eric Ries had published The Lean Startup. Y Combinator was producing a generation of
Why simple answers feel true — and what the complex reality is actually costing us. The Assumption A widely circulated narrative — recently amplified by IMF data — goes roughly like this: China's state subsidies, undervalued currency, and export-led growth model flooded Western markets with artificially cheap goods. That price