Hindsight is 2020: Opp Now's most popular stories, issues during last year

Eighty percent of all new websites die within their first 6 months, according to WebMetrics research. Ninety percent are dead within a year. Only one percent make it to 18 months.

Well, we guess we've made it to the one percent. During an otherwise dismal year, Opportunity Now has experienced a banner 12 months, reaching our second holiday season with our weekly readership increasing by as much as an order of magnitude compared to last year.

All credit goes to expansion of our editorial contributors, with such big-name writers and thinkers like Mark Lisheron, Randal O'Toole, Pierluigi Oliverio, Pat Waite, Tony Francois, among others, joining our masthead. Our college (and newly-graduated) web editor team (that's you, Simon, Will, Tanner, Candice, and Susie) does the hard work of researching and producing our weekly content updates--all the while braving the disapproval of their woke professors and roommates.

And of course none of this would be possible without the generosity of our donors, who have flocked to contribute to Opp Now and fund our expansion and breakneck growth. We are deeply indebted to you all.

As an end-of-year special, we are re-posting our top ten individual stories, as measured by reader pageviews, nearby. We don't claim this list marks some magical divination of local readers' concerns, but it does provide interesting insight into stories that got clicked on the most, linked to the most, received the most attention on social media, and prompted the most online discussion, as those are the elements that generally drive pageviews.

Because many of the top posts addressed similar themes, it may also be useful to note the top 5 issues our readers responded to most, and they closely resemble last year's list. They are:

* Flawed land use policies and regulations

* Increased race-based rhetoric and race-baiting from local progressives

* Broken and unfair tax system.

* The failure of government to enforce the rule of law

* Systemic left-wing bias by major local media

We founded this site because we noticed that free market perspectives were often missing from important local policy discussions and media coverage, and that those perspectives deserve to be heard.

This year's rapid growth suggests that a growing portion of Silicon Valley agrees with us.

Thank you for your support, your comments, your interest, your arguments, your agreements,  your disagreements. But mostly, you have our gratitude for your engagement in a fair-minded, courteous, and wide-open debate about how market forces can help our community achieve greater prosperity, equity, fairness, and sustainability. 

Because the opportunity is now.

Your Opportunity Now Team

Jeff Cristina and Christopher Escher, co-founders