NYTimes: “Americans filed 5.7 million applications last year to start new businesses, according to the Census Bureau, the most in the two decades the government has kept track. New business applications through the first half of this year continued to climb. The strong run of business creation is one of the most surprising and welcome economic developments of the post-pandemic era. New businesses help drive innovation and productivity growth. Although many fail or remain small, some could develop into giants that spur job growth for years to come. “The sustained high rate of both main street and growth-oriented entrepreneurship over the past five years is a piece of super good news about the future of the economy,” said Scott Stern, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
Noam Brown: “2023: LLMs struggle with 4th grade word problems 2024: LLMs can do high school math 2025: LLMs get a gold medal at the IMO Now, GPT-5.6 solves famous frontier math/stat questions. The IMO is today and 5.6 one-shotting a perfect score isn’t even news. Where will we be next year?”
Sandeep Goyal: “For years, marketers believed the key to strong branding was simple: Tell better stories. Storytelling helped brands build emotional connections with audiences. But in today’s digital world, attention is limited and competition intense. Customers don’t just want stories anymore. They respond to stories that help them make decisions. In fact, better decisions. This is where storyselling is becoming more and more powerful. Storytelling entertains audiences. Storyselling motivates action. Brands that succeed today are not simply sharing narratives. They are building stories that guide customers towards solutions, clarity, and measurable results.”
WSJ: “What many of the new winners have in common: they’ve embraced a new model of investing. Today, high-growth companies remain private for much longer—often well over a decade—locking the public out of key, wealth-creation phases of their growth. Many of these investors are investing patiently in private companies and writing check after check, helping the companies scale and establish an edge over rivals. Paying up for stakes in the hottest startups is a riskier strategy than venture capital’s traditional approach, one that can lead to disappointment if companies fail to live up to lofty expectations. Today’s venture capitalists often don’t have the influence to guide or shape companies the way they once did because of heightened competition. Instead, many are willing to invest in companies later on, sometimes years after they were started, betting that there’s more growth ahead.”
