VW: Will it go from Naughty to Nice in 2016? – CNBC Comment December 22, 2015 Volkswagen’s Supervisory Board has taken bold steps in the final weeks of 2015 to put the diesel cheating scandal to rest. But with three days to go before Christmas, I expect Santa has made his list, is checking it twice, and is sending a sleigh full of coal to the carmaker’s Wolfsburg headquarters. That’s because [...]
SpaceX is about to launch its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket – but will it be successful this time? December 21, 2015 Elon Musk's SpaceX is getting ready to launch its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station, after a series of delays. It's the first time the rocket is being used in a mission, and will be a crucial test for SpaceX – when it launched the older version of the Falcon 9 in [...]
Top business books of 2015: From Walter Isaacson’s Innovators to The Untold Story of Bitcoin, here’s your Christmas reading list December 19, 2015 It’s been another roller-coaster year for businesses in 2015. From plummeting oil prices to an impending interest rate hike, authors have done their best to educate their readership on… well, pretty much anything. Here are our favourite reads of 2015. You’ll find a little bit of everything for everyone – from advice on time-management to inspiration on becoming the next big entrepreneur. Innovators: [...]
Hyperloop: Elon Musk’s crazy transport system just came a step closer to its 2020 launch goal as it’s about to be tested in Nevada December 9, 2015 Hyperloop, the ambitious (some may say crazy) project to build a high speed transport system that would shoot people from A to B in pods travelling almost at the speed of sound, will begin testing its technology as soon as spring 2016. The brainchild of Tesla and Space X entrepreneur Elon Musk, work will begin on testing [...]
The self-made mastermind: Malwarebytes founder Marcin Kleczynski on giving away software and what it’s like making half a million bucks at 18 November 29, 2015 After I’d met Marcin Kleczynski, I came across someone who has known and worked with him for several years. A few seconds in and he said to me: “when you meet Marcin, the first thing you think is ‘I might be talking to the next Mark Zuckerberg… but this one’s a lot nicer’”. It’s hard [...]
In praise of Simon Danczuk MP: A Great British contrarian who can’t be silenced November 26, 2015 Disruption is in vogue. Airbnb, Uber and BlaBlaCar are all cases in point. Their tech-savvy founders are turning conventional wisdom on its head to deliver services to customers in new ways. This is laudable and exciting. It is also about more than making money. Take Elon Musk, arguably the most daring entrepreneur of our time. [...]
Astronaut Chris Hadfield says Moon settlement is 15 years away and Mars colonisation is possible November 11, 2015 Moon settlement will be a reality in 15 years, according to astronaut Chris Hadfield, who also said colonisation of Mars is possible. “We are on the cusp of rewriting space travel all by visualising perfection and deciding what the next thing is we need to do to make it happen,” he said in a speech [...]
Tesla share price surges 10 per cent on open as firm reports jump in revenue November 4, 2015 Shares in Tesla Motors leapt up 10 per cent on market open today, after the firm reported revenue of $936.8m (£607.5m) for the third quarter of 2015, up 10 per cent from $851.8m in 2014, late last night. The company recorded net losses of $229.9m during the three months to 30 September, widening losses of $74.7m reported in the [...]
Banks and alternative finance: Liberum’s Cormac Leech how both industries should act October 29, 2015 Elon Musk once commented that “money is low bandwidth” – it’s highly susceptible to being overhauled by the internet. I was reminded of Musk’s observation by Cormac Leech, director of fintech at Liberum. It’s easy to get those inside the alternative lending industry to talk about how it’ll “change banking forever”. But what does someone [...]
Back to the Future 2 Day October 21, 2015: Seven of tech’s biggest entrepreneurs and what they were doing back in 1985 October 21, 2015 It’s not just the technology that’s different on Back to the Future Day (the day which Marty McFly travels to from 1985 in the second instalment of the film). The world’s best known entrepreneurs who have changed the way we live in the last 30 years were living very different lives back in 1985 when [...]