WITH TOM STILL
When Gov. Tony Evers declared 2021 to be the “Year of Broadband Access” in Wisconsin, that line in his annual State of the State speech likely resonated with people statewide, especially those living and working in rural Wisconsin.
What do these companies have in common? Pinterest, Uber, Dropbox, Slack, WhatsApp, Airbnb, Square, Stripe, Google, and PayPal. (Hint: It’s more than just tech.) The first eight companies on the list were born during the Great Recession of the late 2000s and the latter two during the DotCom bust nearly a decade earlier.
It is tempting to look skeptically at the COVID relief package passed by Congress. The bill has 5,593 largely unexplored pages dog-eared by billion-dollar helpings of pork; it will cost about $1 trillion at a time when the federal deficit is already huge; and it was plagued by partisan gamesmanship, start to finish.
Part of the fun of writing a regular column is looking back to see what ideas and even predictions stuck. That same hindsight can also be a curse, especially if you’re wrong. With the year nearly done, it’s time to review selected columns by date.
If you are among the half of all Americans who are leaning against or not sure about getting a COVID-19 vaccination, relax: Chances are pretty good you can’t get a shot until spring anyway.
Wisconsin’s small-business economy is diverse. It is creative. It is under stress due to the unrelenting nature of COVID-19.
Richelle Martin has a simple goal in mind for how some people may view women like herself who are venture and angel capital investors: “I want it to not be weird anymore.”
A techie’s Thanksgiving season prayer to the Great CIO in the Sky: As we (un)gather this Thanksgiving week over socially distanced meals, let us count the blessings of our digital age — using zeros and ones only, of course.
Among the long list of uncertainties surrounding the presidential transition is how the nation weathers a growing cybersecurity storm over the coming months.
Wisconsin is making progress in attracting early-stage capital for its young companies. The question is, how could it do a lot better?
Tom Still is president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. He is the former associate editor of the Wisconsin State Journal.
