Author: Thomas Thurston

This author has written 119 articles
Blog / Data Science / Innovation / Innovation Risk Management / Quant Innovation / Venture Capital / WR Hambrecht

Clayton Christensen and the Predictive Nature of Profit-Seeking

Clayton Christensen was exceptional, both personally and professionally. He impacted the world on many levels, and today I’d like to focus on how a narrow aspect of his work has proven to be amongst the most profound: profit-seeking. At its most basic, Christensen restated what we already know – businesses want to make money. (Although that’s sort of like saying…

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2 March 2020
Blog / Data Science / Innovation / Innovation Risk Management / Quant Innovation / Venture Capital

Augmenting Innovation Decisions With Data Science

As a venture capitalist/data scientist, I’ve spent over a decade arguing that other venture capitalists and innovators can improve their decision making (a lot) through data science.  While the idea seems like a no-brainer today, 11 years ago it was heresy. Reactions to my work were historically hostile and emotional, and that’s putting it politely.  Words like “data science” and…

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11 March 2019
Blog / Data Science / Innovation / Venture Capital

China, Unicorns and the Battle for Global AI

Guest Post by Angelina Cheok Back in 2015, China’s economy appeared to be at a crossroads. Its slowing growth seemed to herald a death knell for the country’s start-up boom, while the outlook for its tech sectors look equally grim. Think tanks, academics and journalists like the Harvard Business Review and Foreign Policy published scathing critiques of China’s inability to…

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23 October 2018
Gender Bias in Venture Capital: Bad Business
Venture Capital

Gender Bias in Venture Capital: Bad Business

Venture capitalists are being called out for gender bias. A recent Fortune article reported that female founders received only 2% of venture capital dollars in 2016. Some high profile VCs, and VC-backed startups, are facing a litany of sexual harassment charges. An interesting study of VC decision making even found (unintentionally) how male and female founders were treated differently in subtle ways.…

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3 October 2017
Innovation in Australia: A Yank’s Perspective
Australia / Innovation

Innovation in Australia: A Yank’s Perspective

As an American venture capitalist who recently moved to Australia, it’s been fun to notice differences in how the US and Australia innovate. I’ll be the first to admit I’m no expert on Australia. For what it’s worth, however, I thought I’d share some novice observations in the hope that it’s somehow helpful to other cross-border innovators pondering these same…

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8 September 2017
Some Ideas Are Better Than Others (and I don’t mind saying so)
Data Science / Innovation / Innovation Risk Management / Venture Capital

Some Ideas Are Better Than Others (and I don’t mind saying so)

Some ideas are better than others. This is a challenge for business strategists, who are voracious consumers of ideas (books, seminars, case studies, articles, blogs, biographies, etc.), but who aren’t typically trained to judge an idea’s quality. This leaves strategists vulnerable to bias, persuasion, poor heuristics and psychophysiological reactions (called ‘intuition’). Everyone from the doorman to the chairman has an…

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29 August 2017
Venture Capital and Statistics: Art Meets Science
Data Science / Venture Capital

Venture Capital and Statistics: Art Meets Science

Venture capitalists usually try to avoid statistics, arguing that picking startups is more art than science. When asked why they don’t use statistical decision tools, most VCs say there either isn’t enough data to build reliable models, or picking startups is simply too intangible and complex to be reduced to math. There’s some truth to both arguments… but they’re getting…

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13 June 2017

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