With Valentine’s Day coming up, I started thinking about how much dating and finding angel investors have in common. I came up with six tips that apply to dating and finding angel investors.

Get ready to kiss a lot of frogs

Like finding the right mate, finding the right investor is, to some degree, a numbers game. You may be lucky enough to know or be introduced to your perfect match early on. However, chances are, you’ll need to talk to a lot of people to find Mr. or Ms. Right.

I’d just finished a leadership program with a group of caring, committed professionals. They asked great questions, made important decisions, and then it happened. A middle level manager approached me and asked a question.

It’s a common question. I hear it every time I speak—in the Q&A, in the comments afterwards, in emailed follow-ups.

Love him or hate him, the Republican candidate and New Hampshire GOP victor Donald Trump can sometimes say something extremely powerful.

The above quote is an example. It sums up the kind of mindset every entrepreneur needs to have: Never set out to do something with hopes of being second best.

Image: Donald Trump

ICF today announced the Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2016 via live Web video from the think tank’s New York headquarters. The fourteenth annual Top7 list includes cities from four nations.  Three communities are located in Canada, two in Taiwan, one in Germany, and one in New Zealand.  In alphabetical order, they are:

The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation on Wednesday that would require the National Science Foundation to award grants only for research projects that the agency can certify as being in the national interest.

The Republican-written measure (HR 3293), passed on a nearly party-line vote of 236 to 178, would set a series of broad yardsticks by which the "national interest" could be defined, such as improving American economic health or strengthening national defense.

Today’s college freshmen are more likely to participate in a student-led protest than each of the nearly five decades of classes that preceded them, according to survey results released on Thursday. That includes the college freshmen of the late 1960s and early 70s, an era storied for its on-campus political activism.

A senior Google executive, Jeff Huber, will become the CEO of Grail, the high-profile company launched in January to develop and commercialize cancer blood tests.

According to Forbes, Huber’s wife, Laura, died from colon cancer last November, leaving behind two teenage children. “That’s a big part of why I’m taking this up,” Huber told the magazine.

Grail was unveiled in January by DNA sequencing giant Illumina, along with investors Arch Venture Partners, Sutter Hill, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, who in total put $100 million behind the venture. 

Can you tell me, off-the-cuff, the names of the “innovators,” i.e., the first developers, of the personal computer, the PC operating system, the linking site, the big-box general store, or the cell phone? No? I can’t either.

Do you recognize the names of Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Walton, and Steve Jobs? They built iconic companies and became fabulously wealthy.

I'm not sure about you, but I'm getting tired of Steve Jobs. Sure, he was an innovation icon. But, in my view, the media and pundits are creating unrealistic expectations hyping and promoting the Jobs/Branson/Musk iconography.  

2016 is not shaping up to be a great year for Internet unicorns -- but if recent history is any indicator, not all is lost.

The venture capital industry has seen startup valuations soar in recent years. According to Fortune, there are upwards of 170 companies valued at more than $1 billion -- commonly referred to as "unicorns" -- in the world today. But lately, market turbulence and company underperformance have fueled the flames of anxiety among VCs as valuations drop and exit opportunities appear fewer and farther between.

Starting or growing your business takes a certain amount of capital. It’s not always easy for people, especially new and younger entrepreneurs, to raise money in conventional ways. Business loans can be difficult to secure unless you have a proven track record or substantial collateral to secure the loan. More and more people are now seeking innovative ways to raise capital.

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO , Feb 10, 2016 (Marketwired via COMTEX) -- The Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust (the Trust), a private nonprofit focused on encouraging innovation, technology transfer and commercialization and foster creation of jobs in the global knowledge economy, today announced plans to develop Science City on 68 acres in San Juan. The Trust is seeking a development partner to lease, finance, develop and manage the Science City project on a long-term basis. The site is cleared to create a state-of-the-art, mixed-use, transit-oriented, sciences, technology and research community, with supporting residential, retail, and lodging uses. Potential partners can download more information on the project and the RFQ at http://prsciencetrust.org/science-city-development. Click here to Tweet this release http://ctt.ec/rfVjR.

Five years ago, in 2011, the first wave of the oldest U.S. baby boomers reached the common retirement age of 65. Since then, another 10,000 each day continue to reach this stage in their lives. The U.S. Census Bureau calculates that by 2020, 55.9 million people in the U.S. will be age 65 or older, and by 2030, that number will reach 72.7 million.

How will all these aging boomers thrive in the 21st century? According to many experts on aging, it's increasingly by staying in the workforce, at the very least on a part-time basis. As noted by Gallup in their "Many Baby Boomers Reluctant to Retire" report, "Nearly half of boomers still working say they don’t expect to retire until they are 66 or older, including one in 10 who predict they will never retire."

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

I have been developing, testing, writing, and publishing recipes for more than 35 years, and it’s safe to say that  othing I’ve ever done touches the challenges presented by my current situation at Purple Carrot, my meal kit startup. Not only am I doing all of those things here, I’m at least indirectly responsible for sourcing our ingredients and then packing and shipping them. Furthermore, they’re being cooked by (presumably) very nearly all of our customers, who now number in the thousands. And these customers know how to email.

(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) Feb. 11, 2016 —The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation today announced the appointment of Victor W. Hwang as vice president of entrepreneurship. Hwang will relocate from California to Kansas City to lead the Foundation’s renowned entrepreneurship programming. He starts on Feb. 29.

Prior to joining the Kauffman Foundation, Hwang was co-founder and CEO of Liquidity, a Silicon Valley-based venture-backed nanotech firm that makes filters for safe drinking water. He also is the CEO and co-founder of T2 Venture Creation, a venture firm that builds startup companies and designs the ecosystems that foster entrepreneurial innovation.

Companies that successfully adopt digital technology don’t view it as an extra; digitization becomes central to what they are because they transform their value propositions and evolve every level of the organization so that it becomes data driven, customer obsessed, and highly agile. In this episode of the McKinsey Podcast, recorded in November 2015, principals Karel Dorner and David Edelman talk with Barr Seitz about why, decades into the digital revolution, companies are still trying to define what digital really is and struggling to make the most of it. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

Most time-strapped executives know they should plan ahead and prioritize, focus on the important as much as the urgent, invest in their health (including getting enough sleep), make time for family and relationships, and limit (even if they don’t entirely avoid) mindless escapism. But doing this is easier said than done, as we all know—and as I, too, have learned during years of trying unsuccessfully to boost my effectiveness.

It’s no secret that obesity, which plagues more than 600 million people worldwide—more than one in three adults in the U.S. alone—leads to serious health problems: cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even several types of cancer. But obesity has also been established as a risk factor for cognitive decline, particularly in middle-aged and older people.

SEATTLE (Feb. 10, 2016) -- A new technology commercialization program will launch this spring to help Washington's life sciences innovators move their promising ideas into the hands of providers and patients, thanks to a $1.8 million "ecosystem" award from the state's Life Sciences Discovery Fund (LSDF).

Led by the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association (WBBA; currently undergoing a name change to Life Science Washington), the program will address key gaps within the state's "commercialization ecosystem" -- the resources needed to advance technologies from the concept stage to the market.

The meetings industry is worth over a billion dollars. Of the money dedicated to hiring speakers, 85 percent is paid to those whose content is valuable and relevant to business audiences. Corporations hire speakers whom they believe will help them make more money. Here are three tips to help you redirect some of that money into your pocket.