In my latest Capitalist Times contribution, Taking Flight, I cover a communication infrastructure company poised to expand through the airline and Internet of Things industries:

Most of us expect to be able to call a coworker, text a friend and pull up Web pages or videos at any time. But in many places, data connections like the ones we use every day don’t exist, even if they’re necessary for safety or monitoring and administering far-flung business operations.

For example, the remote areas where mining and drilling for oil and gas occur usually lack the fiber-optic connections or mobile telephone towers that power business communication in the office environment. Traveling by plane can lead to similar disruptions when you aren’t flying above populated areas. Data connections also don’t usually exist at sea.

In my latest Capitalist Times article, Private Capital, Unicorns, and IPOs, I review trends in the private and IPO markets.

From the article:

Some analysts argue that 2016 will be a blowout year for initial public offerings (IPO) in the tech sector, in part because activity languished in 2015. According to their logic, this lack of deal flow must have created a backlog of companies that are primed to go public.

At the same time, growing economic uncertainty and our outlook for a bear-market correction this year suggest that the bumper crop of tech IPOs could be deferred. Against this backdrop, analyzing the IPO environment may strike you as a waste of time; however, the evolving role of private capital in the tech space has important implications for the timing and characteristics of future public offerings.