Posts by J.C. McKissen
Guest Post: St. Louis tried to give Amazon more than $7B. Here’s what it should do with that money instead.
Amazon has started giving feedback to the more than 200 cities that didn’t make the initial cut for the company’s planned second headquarters (HQ2). I know that because I read about it in The Wall Street Journal. I also know that because I work in economic development in the St. Louis metropolitan area, and St.…
Read MoreChanging the minds of people who think good ideas can’t come from the middle states
“Isn’t it true that in the south, half the schools don’t even teach science, it’s just God and guns?” That was a real question asked by host Daniel Moss during the January 11th episode of “Bloomberg Benchmark,” an economic and financial podcast. Moss, an economics editor for Bloomberg in addition to his role as podcast…
Read MoreWhy you don’t want your city to become Silicon Valley
For the last few years I’ve heard and read that St. Louis just might be the next Silicon Valley. I haven’t just heard that about St. Louis. I’ve heard the same thing about Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Denver, Houston, Columbus, and just about every decent-sized city in America. Of course, Silicon Valley has a lot going…
Read MoreTen years after the housing crisis, this St. Louis startup is trying to make real estate more transparent
This fall marked the ten-year anniversary of the implosion in the housing market. If you weren’t old enough to be a homeowner then, you should know that the Great Recession really, really wasn’t a fun time to live through. Not only did people lose their homes, many others lost their jobs, and the recovery that…
Read MoreThe Midwest doesn’t have enough early-stage capital – here’s one (radical) solution
Every founder, funder, and entrepreneurial support organization in the Midwest says the exact same thing: There just isn’t enough early-stage capital. Even a city with a relatively well-developed (by non-Silicon Valley standards) venture capital scene, like St. Louis, still faces a severe shortage of seed and pre-seed funding. That problem led several organizations to create…
Read MoreHow St. Louis is Becoming a Hub of Innovation (Again)
According to recent research by the University of Virginia, all but a very select group of cities are struggling to figure out how to create jobs in a time when companies are less dependent on human beings and traditional industries face technology– and trade-driven disruption. St. Louis is one of the metropolitan areas trying to establish an economy that can…
Read MoreMissouri Technology Corporation still investing in innovation despite tough budget
Journalistic ethics require me to disclose a conflict where one exists. And there is a conflict of interest when I write about the Missouri Technology Corporation (MTC), a public-private partnership created by the Missouri General Assembly to invest in entrepreneurs and startups. The conflict? In 2015, my wife, Megan McKissen, was hired by St. Charles…
Read MoreHelp heal America’s divide: support entrepreneurs and startups in the middle of the country.
Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist and author of The Rise of the Creative Class and The New Urban Crisis, calls it “spatial inequality.” Different pundits, academics, and politicians use other terms to describe the same idea, but at its core, they are all talking about the same thing: For the foreseeable future, American politics…
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