The Renaissance Man
What the Six million dollar man has to do with Florence and business…
After an August hiatus, the final portion of travel this Summer was in none other than the Renaissance City of Florence.
On the topic of Renaissance, I once heard about the story of “The Six Million Dollar Man” about a former astronaut, Colonel Steve Austin. Austin was severely injured in the crash of an experimental lifting body and he is rebuilt in an operation where his right arm, both legs and the left eye are replaced with bionic implants that enhance his strength, speed and vision far above human norms. He can run at speeds of over 60mph and his eye has a 20:1 zoom lens and infrared capabilities while his bionic limbs have the equivalent power of a bulldozer.
The reason I personally love this story is that sometimes complete destruction can be followed by a reconstruction that is far more powerful than the original. Which is often true in business and why abject failures can often lead to the greatest success.
Florence, moreover, Italy is not known for its start-up ecosystem. It trails behind most European countries for its share of start-up investment. VentureBeat wrote an article two years ago on “The Italian Startup Dilemma” attributing Italy’s investment dearth to too much bureaucracy, lack of a start up network hub and strong risk avoidance.
Though the startup ecosystem needs a lot of work, walking through any city in Italy is an artistic haven. Tourism shall always have potential for innovation. Musement, a travel app that gives visitors the ability to find and book activities, is a good example and recently completed investment to expand its global reach. As Italy is after all the home of Michael Angelo and Da Vinci, it may yet still see a start-up renaissance…
Back home, I had a chance to visit London.AI an AI meetup at the Facebook headquarters in London. It was a privilege to meet some incredible talents in AI and machine learning predominantly from UCL where DeepMind was first born. If that room was anything to go by, there will be more and more AI spinouts from London universities in the short to medium term — see this month’s handpicked articles below for an example of a recent success.
In closing, a quote from Da Vinci who has the perfect justification for travel addicts…(Thank you Leo..)
“For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return”
Sincerely yours,
Kajal
t: @kajalnyclon | w: transatlanticpost.com
TELEPORT CITIES: QUALITY OF LIFE COMPARISON
As I regularly write about cities and startup ecosystems, discovering teleport’s comparison tool was a delight. For those of you thinking about moving cities for any reason, not just for building businesses, take a look at this tool. It allows comparison on metrics such as safety, tolerances, startups and travel connectivity. I used it to compare cities I have personally lived in London, New York and Zurich.
STITCHFIX PLANS UK EXPANSION
Katrina Lake (35) CEO of Stitchfix who earlier this year IPO’d the company which now has a market cap of $4.3 billion has announced plans to expand to the UK. The Transatlantic expansion comes off the back of a doubling in value of its shares since the IPO as it looks to tailor the service for British customers.
LONDON UNIVERSITY AI SPINOUTS
Each month I’ve been writing about university entrepreneurship programmes and this month having visited London.AI and meeting some outstanding talent from across London universities, stories of successful spin-outs will no doubt become more commonplace. To highlight one recent success story, SLAMcore from Imperial College has raised capital for its AI technology for robots to help prevent crashes. Its system allows robots to understand and navigate unfamiliar surroundings such as inside buildings or dense urban areas.
ABOUT THE TRANSATLANTIC POST A monthly editorial at the confluence of Transatlantic entrepreneurship, start-up policy and city ecosystems. With occasional British satire. Written and edited by Kajal Sanghrajka, Churchill Fellow and Founder of Growth Hub Global. For previous editions see the archive..
