A Bourbon Startup Goes Bust This week’s article is a case study of how bad decisions and poor timing can turn the entrepreneurial pursuit of a $10B market into a $250M hole in the ground.   Thanks to a friend, I’ve recently become a fan of bourbon, and have spent some time becoming educated about this sector. Because of this newfound interest, I became intrigued when reading about the demise of a well-funded “start-up” in the bourbon industry.  Garrard County Distilling Compa

Or Should Canadians Pay More In Taxes To Improve Healthcare? A common complaint Canadians have is that the wait-times for non life-threatening healthcare services and treatments can be quite long, often too long. Three-plus hour wait-times in the emergency room; six months wait-times for an MRI; or, waiting several months for a heart procedure that’s been deemed “non life-threatening” by a doctor. These situations give the affected patients and their families much stress and

It’s A Multi-Combatant Cage Match -   Amodei v Altman v Musk v Google v China Most people will have used A.I. for searches, in lieu of “Googling” something; they have used A.I. for research, or as a work tool. What we are using today are “A.I. applications”, an early form of A.I.  Common examples include Claude by Anthropic, Chat GPT by Open AI and Gemini by Google.  These applications are an early step in the ultimate goal of developers of A.I technology, which is to create

“HENRY’s” - they call them I recently read about a term being applied to people in the late Gen Z or Millennial age cohorts (late 20s to mid 40s), who are earning a substantial income but have yet to accumulate significant wealth. That term being “HENRYs”, or “high earners, not rich yet”.  In this context, a substantial income is between $100,000 and $500,000 per year. An annual salary/income in this range may seem like a lot, and it is, when we consider that the average sala

Should It Be A Meritocracy Or A Form Of Socialism ? There’s a similarity between successful rock bands and successful tech companies. Apart from the common goal of creating and offering something that people get excited about, and want to spend money on, both successful rock bands and successful tech companies will generate huge financial rewards for those people that make things happen within those organizations.   I make this connection because in my work career I was part

Paying A Living Wage For those of you who read my article from last week, (which can be found here )  you’ll recall that I’ve been fortunate to be spending two weeks in Italy, in Rome and Milan.  We have been thoroughly enjoying our Italian experience, which of course has included dining out at  restaurants and enjoying the local cuisine.  During this time, I have been reminded that there is no tipping per se, in Italy and most of Western Europe, the way we are used to tippin

It Really Does Bring The World Together This week I was fortunate to have my first Olympic experience.  We attended the Canada vs. USA women’s hockey game on February 10th at Milano Santa Giulia Ice Hockey Arena, in Milan, Italy.  I have seen many Winter and Summer Olympic games events on TV, but never in-person, until now.  One more item crossed off my bucket list.   Even though Canada lost 5-0, and was outplayed by the US team for the entire game, I thoroughly enjoyed the e

It’s Important In Business & Your Personal Life Early in my career a Board member gave me some advice that I didn’t quite understand at the time. He said, “life is about the stories you can tell - the better your stories are, the more people will listen to you; you have to have good stories!”.  My initial reaction was, “Stories?!...Who cares about stories?! Who has time for stories?! Just articulate the value proposition and people will have to say yes!” Boy, was I wrong . An

The Story Leaders Must Convey To Get Their Teams To Believe I recently read an article that described the importance of a leader’s narrative - the story they share about themselves, the story they tell their team about the mission they are on collectively, and how they communicate and conduct themselves. A leader’s narrative is made up of all these things, and more, and these things form the leader’s identity.  It is the team’s belief in this narrative and identity, or their

Out of Many, Comes One I recently binge-watched the show “Pluribus”, produced by Apple TV+ studios, and created by Vince Gilligan, who also created the hit shows, “Breaking Bad”, and “Better Call Saul”.  As binge-watching would suggest, I was quite enamoured by Pluribus, because of the premise of the show, the storyline, and the excellent portrayal of the lead character, Carol Sturka, by actress Rhea Seehorn.  The cinematography in Pluribus is beautiful and consistent with wh

I recently read an article that argued the minimum wage in the United States should be $25/hour.  If an employer were to pay that amount per hour to employees, who worked a full forty-hour work week, and worked year-round for 50-52 weeks, that would equate to an annual earnings of $50,000.  With over thirty years in business, having hired hundreds of staff during that time, ranging from clerical and admin staff, to professional engineers and vice president level staff, that n

I hope everyone enjoyed the Holidays, and got to spend time with family and friends.  I was able to do so and was really happy to spend time with our two sons and their friends.  I took the opportunity to take a break from writing and did not publish an article last week.  During that break I did spend time thinking about and coming up with an outline of topics I want to write about in 2026.  My list of topics is not etched in stone, and so if there are any topics of interest

What A Year! I’m writing this article on December 21st, which is the shortest day of the year.  This time of year (November and the first half of December) are particularly tough because it gets dark so early in the day, around 4:30pm…and then later in the day while it may only be 6:30 at night, it feels like it’s 11PM.  Why is that?  It’s partially due to the end of Daylight Savings Time, or the “Fall Back”, which brings on the darkness an hour earlier.  That plus the fact t

Should This Be A Thing ? In the past week I read two articles about artificial intelligence that got my attention.   The first was about a recently released song that made its way to number 1 on the Billboard Country Charts. This song, entitled, “Walk My Walk” was generated entirely by AI, was credited to a fictional artist named “Breaking Rust”, who didn’t exist two months ago and whose avatar is depicted as white.  The ethnicity of the avatar is important because it turns o

In My Humble Opinion The other day I was scrolling through my Twitter feed and I came across a post from Rolling Stone magazine that listed their top 24 bands of all time.  When it comes to music, these “Greatest Of All Time” lists always generate lots of debate and discussion about who made the list and why. They are very subjective, and usually based on the author’s own taste/favourites in music.   This Rolling Stone magazine post got me thinking that while I advertise my S

What It Takes…Not Only To Succeed But To Cope I’ve always been a fan of the concept of “grit”.  Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance toward long-term goals; the ability to stick with something difficult over a long period, even when progress is slow or setbacks happen.  The concept has been around forever, and was popularized by psychologist Angela Duckworth, in her book entitled “Grit”, published in May of 2016. This book by Duckworth is a fantastic read and I

What Are The Dangers of AI & How Do We Protect Ourselves? Artificial Intelligence is front of mind these days. Much of the current news is dominated by stories about how much money is being spent developing AI (the tools, agents and infrastructure), and how much influence the AI phenomenon has on the stock markets.  We are fortunate that there haven’t been many stories about AI being used to scam people; or, being used to cause physical harm, apart from the one allegation whe

There Aren’t Any NINJA Loans, But There’s A Lot of Incestuous Dealmaking Happening Every day we read about the latest industry explosion, that is Artificial Intelligence.  We hear about its possibilities, and the endless ways in which it can improve our lives. We also read about the risks to our society that may result from AI and what we should do to prevent real harm from occurring.  There is confusion on how AI will be  used  and how AI should be  used . Amid this confusi

Why I Am Never Satisfied I am reading Howard Schultz's first book, "Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built A Company One Cup at a Time”.  Schultz was the long-time CEO of Starbucks and was the driving force behind taking the original four stores that sold coffee beans and equipment in Seattle, and turning that into what Starbucks is today.  In the book, Schultz comments that after every one of his accomplishments, rather than celebrating and enjoying the achievement, he

The Stock Markets Are Outperforming Expectations In 2025 Because of These Ten Companies Happy Halloween to all those that read my articles posted under “Pontifications From Paliwal” ! I write for my pleasure, and to clarify and articulate my thoughts on various topics. But, I’d be lying if I didn't admit that I do look at what my viewer counts and engagement levels are on my posts; it feels good to know people are reading and enjoying what I write.  Thank you all for reading