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Chris V. Nicholson on Muck Rack

Chris V. Nicholson

San Francisco
As seen in: Medium, The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg News, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, TechCrunch, Fox Business, Pacific Standard, Modern Medicine, District Administration Magazine and
Covers:  business, ecommerce, san francisco, startups, crowdfunding, technology, internet of things, maker movement
Pathologically curious. Overly sincere. @ycombinator founder. @emergent_vc grantee. @openai
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There is a tech bubble, but it's not what you think

There is a tech bubble, but it's not what you think

pando.com — By On January 20, 2014 The real bubble is one we collectively inhabit. Call it a Silicon Valley state of mind, a bubble of insularity, more the result of groupthink than excessive valuations. Tech is not so much an industry as a culture, one intent on itself, separate from mainstream America. The Bureau of Labor Statistics calls the Valley a "symbiotic cluster," which is probably less fun than it sounds. Differences between insiders and outsiders lead to persistent, mutual misunderstanding that have made a lot of headlines. Let's talk about where those differences come from.
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The hidden Kickstarter industry

The hidden Kickstarter industry

pando.com — By On December 25, 2013 The crowdfunding industry is largely hidden from the public eye. To the uninitiated, a crowdfunding project looks like one person's lonely slog through sleepless nights and white-knuckle days. The truth is that, while it may be sleepless and white-knuckled, it is rarely lonely. Kickstarter alone has helped projects raise $789 million since it was founded in 2009. Together with Indiegogo, Crowdtilt, and numerous other platforms, crowdfunding could raise almost that much again just in 2013, according to Deloitte. Except for a few startups' thin margins, all of that money will go to the marketing, manufacture and delivery of the products that crowdfunding backers support.
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With fluxspaces, San Francisco is using shadow real estate to grow inward

With fluxspaces, San Francisco is using shadow real estate to grow inward

pando.com — By On January 8, 2014 I'm in a fluxspace near Sixth and Shipley, a large, low-ceilinged room that sleeps three - all men, all hackers, all involved in information security. Their work is cryptography and penetration testing. That's simulating attacks on computer systems. When one hacker moves out, another infosec guy takes his place. On the table are empty pizza boxes; in the air, the smell of sawdust. A fluxspace is any part of a building that hackers and makers have illegally occupied so they can live and work together. It's grassroots rezoning.
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In Europe, Putting the Adventure Into Venture Capital

In Europe, Putting the Adventure Into Venture Capital

Bloomberg Businessweek — Market & Finance Illustration by 731; Map: Alamy The life of a European venture capitalist is usually pretty civilized, punctuated by trips to the converted warehouses of London's trendy Silicon Roundabout neighborhood or Berlin's stately Prenzlauer Berg district, where entrepreneurs swap ideas in Vietnamese restaurants and faux-dive coffee shops. Dmitry Chikhachev of Moscow-based Runa Capital lives a less posh existence. Visiting cloud-computing software provider Jelastic, one of his investments, means a flight to Kiev, Ukraine's dusty capital, followed by a 100-mile drive on post-Soviet roads to the provincial town of Zhytomyr-a city best known for its museum of Cosmonaut memorabilia.
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Investors Seek Ways to Profit From Global Warming

Investors Seek Ways to Profit From Global Warming

Bloomberg Businessweek — Markets & Finance Photograph by AFP/Getty Images Investing in climate change used to mean putting money into efforts to stop global warming. , , and other firms took stakes in wind farms and tidal-energy projects, and set up carbon-trading desks. The appeal of cleantech has dimmed as efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions have faltered: Venture capital and private equity investments fell 34 percent last year, to $5.8 billion, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Photograph by Getty Images Now some investors are taking another approach. Working under the assumption that climate change is inevitable, they're investing in businesses that will profit as the planet gets hotter.
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Bankers and Dealmakers Set Their Sights on Africa

Bankers and Dealmakers Set Their Sights on Africa

Bloomberg Businessweek — Photo illustration by Alis Atwell; Photographs by Getty Images One evening in July, Lazard banker Matthieu Pigasse was in Congo's capital city of Brazzaville trying to catch the last ferry across the Congo River for meetings in Kinshasa. In September, Lazard announced that Pigasse-who has advised on some of France's biggest deals, including the $50 billion utility merger that created GDF Suez in 2008-will head a team that now numbers a dozen bankers dedicated to mergers in the region. "It is the new frontier," says Pigasse. "The potential of the M&A market will be big in the coming years."
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A Linguist Preserves Languages With Digital Tools

A Linguist Preserves Languages With Digital Tools

New York Times — TEI, Sierra Leone - Jogue, yipe, simoi are three short words for foods in Kim, a language in Sierra Leone that Tucker Childs has been trying, for the past three years, to write down, record and understand. Kim is a dying language, and Dr. Childs a field linguist. From his base here in Tei, a small fishing village on the Waanje River, he canoes up the narrow waterways that cut across the river's floodplain, and hikes a few miles inland, to where the last Kim communities remain. Based on recordings taken there, he has devised an alphabet and compiled a dictionary and is finishing a book on the grammar.
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Experiments Bring Internet to Remote African Villages

Experiments Bring Internet to Remote African Villages

New York Times — ENTASOPIA, Kenya - The road from Nairobi winds 100 miles to this town deep in Masai country. The asphalt gives way to sand and dust, until finally it is just a dirt track climbing over broken hills and plunging back to desert flats. The going is slow. The outpost, with about 4,000 inhabitants, is at the end of that road and beyond the reach of power lines. It has no bank, no post office, few cars and little infrastructure. Newspapers arrive in a bundle every three or four weeks.
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