Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1167

Chamath Palihapitiya – founder and CEO of a VC firm called Social Capital – recently penned an op-ed in The Information called: “ The Sunk Cost Fallacy and the Future of Silicon Valley .”

Chamath is one of the most outspoken voices in Silicon Valley and is openly critical about the way the industry generally functions today. Here are two excerpts from his op-ed piece:

“Chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes and heart disease are ravaging much of the U.S. and the world. Automation is eliminating the jobs of millions of well-meaning, law-abiding men and women. Weather patterns are increasingly unpredictable, disrupting water and food supplies and displacing millions of people. But despite this trail of breadcrumbs of big problems and big markets, we still find it difficult to fund potentially big solutions. Instead, we keep doubling down on the easy things.”  

“Easy short-term growth is now so highly valued in Silicon Valley that we often overlook technical innovation, sustainable long-term growth and meaningful progress in markets that matter. Every week adds to the corpus of press releases from companies with quick, fleeting growth overcapitalized beyond rationalization. And after too many years of this, Silicon Valley is now typecast as a monoculture of coastal dilettantes who float from one meaningless endeavor to another, tone deaf to real problems.”

Social Capital was founded in response to these criticisms. Their mission is to improve society by using technology to solve big problems – problems like the ones mentioned above.

Another firm with a similar mission is Obvious Ventures . They call what they do #worldpositive investing. Their goal is to only fund companies that deliver social and environmental benefits along with every dollar earned.

It’s interesting to think about how capital gets allocated and whether or not it will result in meaningful benefits to the world. Because this is not just about venture capital. You could substitute venture capital for many other asset classes and ask similar questions.

There is so much interest in cities right now and I think that is absolutely wonderful. Earlier today my friend Derek shared a video with me on Twitter called, The Future of Cities . It’s by YouTuber Oscar Boyson , who I recognize from some of Casey Neistat’s videos , but whose own videos I have never watched before.

I highly recommend you watch this video. It’s just over 18 minutes. If you can’t see the video below, click here .

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOOWk5yCMMs?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

It’s well-executed, a joy to watch, and packed full of information and ideas. There are soundbites from lots of well known urbanists (both living and dead). And I also love how Oscar crowdsourced ideas and content from cities all around the world.

The title of this blog post will make sense once you’ve watched the video.

A travel expense management company called Certify recently analyzed over 10 million ground transportation receipts across North America for the 3-month period ending last September (2016). 

And what they found was that, for the first time ever, Uber and Lyft exceeded traditional taxis and rental cars when it came to business expenses. Uber was at 48% and Lyft was at 4%. So together, these two platforms have more than half of this particular market.

If you compare this to Certify’s data from the same quarter last year, “ride-hailing services” previously accounted for 34% of receipts, whereas taxis and rental cars were at 22% and 44%, respectively. So Uber is up in a big way.

This may not be surprising for a lot of you, but I thought it would be valuable to check-in on what the numbers say. 

I’m hit with two thoughts. Firstly, it’s not a question of mobile apps superseding traditional taxis; it’s a question of one company taking over. And secondly, people seem to be favoring Uber over driving themselves around. I know I’ve been heading in that direction.

Those are two powerful trends.