Day to day, month to month, progress for bike advocates in North America is slow and hard-won. New projects still take enormous political capital to build, and when they’re built, they’re often piecemeal parts of an infrastructure network that will take decades to complete. Because of that, the number of bicyclists grows by fractions of a percentage at a time.

Image: Cyclists on Portland’s car-free Tilikum Crossing bridge (AP Photo/Timothy J. Gonzalez)

Having a 5-year-old son who's suddenly into science and technology has made me realize that Peter Thiel was onto something with his famous quote: "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters."

My son talks all the time about inventions he wants to build when he grows up. A time machine. A teleporter. A car that can fly and bypass traffic. A spherical shield made up of lasers.

Image: Screenshot / YouTube A rocket from SpaceX, Elon Musk's company that aims to disrupt NASA. OK, that's thinking big!

Federal employees can breathe a sigh of relief now that President Obama has made next year’s 1.3 percent pay raise official, with a Dec. 18 executive order. What will the raise mean for your paycheck? The answer depends on where you live. For the first time since 2010, the raise will be split between a 1 percent across-the-board hike and a locality increase that hovers around 0.3 percent but will be bigger for employees in expensive regions such as California’s Bay Area and Washington, D.C.

In the VC insider baseball world a discussion has gone on about “VC platforms” over the past 5 or so years. While firms define platforms differently, let’s just say they are the services that a VC offers outside of investment capital and partner time on boards or providing intros. Examples of VC platform services include: recruiting, marketing, design support, inside sales reps, consulting, accounting services and so forth. Each VC has their own take on which services to provide and mostly they’re free but some smaller VCs charge portfolio companies for use of these services but usually at a cheap cost.

The country's plan to pump $19 billion into science and technology over the next five years could "make Singapore a 'go to' destination as a global innovation and entrepreneurship hub".

This is the view of Professor Gerard George, dean and professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University (SMU).

To mark the end of the SmartUp3 competition, Eden Shochat who sold Face.com to Facebook, spoke to "Globes."

“It seems that you shouldn’t ask me this question,” responded Eden Shochat to the rumored assumption that he should be a role model for many Israeli high-tech entrepreneurs. Shochat may be correct, and the four Israeli entrepreneurs who listened to his conversation with “Globes” editor-in-chief Hagai Golan at the final ceremony for the SmartUp3 competition would have replied in the affirmative. Shochat (38) is a technology entrepreneur and investor who is best known for his part in the founding of facial recognition software developer Face.com that was sold to Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) for around $100 million in 2012.

Image: http://www.globes.co.il 

Allan Wille’s company is coming off yet another banner year. The way it’s looking, that’s not about to change in 2016.

Fresh off a $6.2-million series-A financing round in February, his Ottawa-based business dashboard software provider Klipfolio increased its customer base by 60 per cent from last year to 4,000 clients. The company expects to roughly double its growth in the new year.

India will revise its long-term capital gains tax structure for venture capital investments in the budget for the coming financial year, revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia told a conference on start-up businesses on Saturday.

Domestic venture capital funds have been seeking parity in tax structure with stock investments. Long term capital gains tax is nil for the latter, compared to 20 percent for venture capital.

The CEO of the Investment Industry Association of Canada (IIAC), Ian Russell, called on provincial regulators to “scrap equity crowdfunding”.  Russell, it appears, is not enthusiastic about the financial innovation.  On the digital pages of the Financial Post, and on the IIAC blog, Russell claimed;

Image: http://www.crowdfundinsider.com 

Even though new federal regulations hold out the promise of opening up crowdfunding to the masses, advocates of this new source of funding for startups and other small businesses say a state crowdfunding law is still needed.

The problem, said securities lawyer Jim Verdonik of Raleigh’s Ward and Smith, is that “the new federal rules are flawed in many ways.” Verdonik, who is among those pushing for a state crowdfunding law, has self-published a book on crowdfunding, “Crowdfunding Opportunities and Challenges.”

I cover a lot of startups, and there often seems to be this notion that they kind of sprang out of nowhere, fully formed. The reality is, though that they take a lot of time, and a lot of pivoting, to become what they are. Accelerators are an extremely important part of that.

Looking to start a business? If you’re anything like me, when I started out I was terrified. First off, I had watched way too many episodes of Shark Tank and thought that raising capital for my business was luck of the draw. After all, I had seen many business owners and startups pitch their idea or concept. It seemed like two entrepreneurs with similar cash-flows, business acumen and proof-of-concept would get two wildly different reactions from the sharks.

We all know the proverb. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. The underlying message is clear, it’s better to teach someone to do something than to do if for them.

At JumpStart, we’ve found this proverb can also be applied to the important work of economic development. Give a community the tools to build a prosperous, sustainable economy and its residents will benefit for decades to come.

Venture capital in 2015 hit dotcom boom levels. Why are VCs celebrating?

Venture capitalists disbursed $58.8 billion into U.S.-based companies last year, according to data released on Friday by Thomson Reuters, PwC and the National Venture Capital Association. That’s the second-highest figure ever recorded by the trio, which has been doing this for decades.

SETTLING back into the work routine can be difficult after the festive period but there are ways to boost your productivity to ensure you hit the ground running in 2016.

For small business owners there is no so such luxury of easing themselves back into workplace activity.

Growing a business from scratch is no mean feat and requires constant drive and focus to ensure success.

Image: Inside Glasgow's Entrepreneurial Spark 'hatchery'. Picture: John Devlin 

Mo Rastgaar, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan Technological University, and his team have developed a drone catcher that can pursue and capture rogue drones that might threaten military installations, air traffic, sporting events, and even the White House — as startled Secret Service officers discovered when one crash-landed on the White House lawn last January.

Image: Mo Rastgaar’s drone catcher speeds toward a rogue drone. (credit: Michigan Technological University) 

A flexible adaptive material invented at Rice University combines self-healing and reversible self-stiffening properties.

The material, called SAC (for self-adaptive composite), consists of sticky, micron-scale rubber balls that form a solid matrix. The researchers made SAC by mixing two polymers and a solvent that evaporates when heated, leaving a porous mass of gooey spheres. When cracked, the matrix quickly heals, over and over. And like a sponge, it returns to its original form after compression.

Image: Rice University postdoctoral researcher Pei Dong holds a sample of SAC, a new form of self-adapting composite. The material has the ability to heal itself and to regain its original shape after extraordinary compression. (credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)   

Did you know that Facebook is now worth more than $250 billion? Even the new kids on the block, Snapchat, are worth $20 billion. These are phenomenal figures, and a representation of how powerful the tech industry is.

There’s one thing that all of these companies have in common. Most of them started out in someone’s bedroom. Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook in his dorm room. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in their garage. Never before has it been possible to create something on your laptop, and get a billion dollar valuation.

Priority will be given to programmes like Start-Up Mission to generate more employment

In India entrepreneurship is no longer being looked down in the guise of a frugal or flexible innovation and the government will take steps to make capital easily available and ease rules to enable startups to flourish, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, said.

The government aims to bring a bankruptcy law to improve the ease of doing business in the country, Sitharaman said at the inaugural session of Start- up India programme.

Image: http://www.thehindu.com 

This week I’m in Honolulu visiting the Blue Startups accelerator and the companies in their latest cohort. As I end my meetings most of the companies ask something that almost every startup asks, “how can I get VCs to invest in my startup?”

It’s a good question. And a complicated one. Here are three reasons that can keep companies from receiving investments.