The Van Trump Report

Month: December 2020

How We Are Playing the Two Tech Unicorns… and Why We are Buying Airbnb

I asked the kids if our family investment fund had any interest in buying either DoorDash or Airbnb stock on the IPO. DoorDash will be going public tomorrow, December 9th. Airbnb is scheduled to go public the following day, Thursday, December 10th. To make a long story short we collectively decided to pass on DoorDash …

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Beyond the Cotton Gin…What You Might Not Know About Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney is known to American schoolchildren as the man who invented the cotton gin but that simple description falls far short of fully capturing what the “father of American technology” gave to the world.        Whitney was born into a farming family in 1765 in Westboro, Massachusetts. The oldest of five children, …

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How Mr. Pillsbury Transformed American Milling and the Wheat Industry

Most Americans are very familiar with the Pillsbury Company which has given us a host of iconic products, including the company’s Classic Yellow Cake Mix, every flavor of pre-made frosting, and those addictive Crescent Rolls. Pillsbury’s marketing efforts for its various brands also generated iconic characters like the Doughboy and Jolly Green Giant. The company …

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2020 AgriFood Tech Investment has Already Blown Past Last Year

Food technology has been a red hot investment space this year. In the first three quarters, investment in food tech reached $8.37 billion, which handily exceeds the total $7 billion raised in all of 2019. The bulk of capital has flowed to late-stage startups that included some of the year’s biggest deals, including Impossible Foods, …

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