As an entrepreneur who founded and runs a successful and growing business, Getaroom, I see many entrepreneurs with great ideas but no clue how the business will be profitable. For certain websites or apps, if the idea is good enough you can get lucky and sell the business after you get a spike in interest. However, most companies require considerable planning and need both a competitive advantage and a solid business plan in order to succeed. For my company, I focused on a big market and found a profitable and attractive niche.

Just a quick look at any of the crowdfunding platforms shows that the concept of funding projects via the web is impacting a huge number of industries. Whether it’s film, print, music or philanthropy, crowdfunding has enabled consumer capital to flow into initiatives easier than ever before. Of all the categories being touched by crowdfunding, the concept has the largest potential to impact the nearly $800 billion consumer electronics space.

Why hardware + crowdfunding = success I spent seven years in the hardware industry, first as an entrepreneur and later at a large technology company. It’s through this lens that the true impact of crowdfunding becomes clear to me.

Real estate brokers say millennials are buying homes — and expensive homes — like never before thanks to wealthy parents and the tech boom, Wall Street Journal's Lauren Schuker Blum reports. The younger generation also thinks houses are a safer investment than the stock market.

"In the last two months, half the folks I sold homes to were young entrepreneurial types — and they were all buying homes for over a million dollars," Washington D.C.'s Michael Rankin of TTR Sotheby's International Realty tells WSJ. He says those kinds of buyers didn't exist a few years ago. 

A sheet of thin plastic that emits light with an intensity that precisely reflects the amount of pressure applied to its surface hints at a new breed of flexible computer interface. Its creators say future iterations of the interface could be used for robotics, car dashboards, mobile displays, or even “interactive wallpaper.”

Described today in Nature Materials, the new light-emitting “electronic skin,” as its inventors call it, is an extension of previous work from the lab of Ali Javey, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Javey’s group has developed processes that draw heavily on traditional silicon manufacturing techniques to uniformly and reliably integrate various organic and inorganic components on top of plastic.

Electric vehicles take too long to recharge. To charge a Tesla Model S just halfway takes five hours at a typical home or public charging station. But in its effort to make electric vehicles more practical, Tesla Motors is quickly reducing the charging times. Last September, it unveiled a network of “supercharging” stations—designed exclusively for its Model S and future electric vehicles—that could charge a battery halfway in 30 minutes. In May, it announced an upgrade that cut that time to 20 minutes. Now Tesla’s chief technology officer, JB Straubel, says the company eventually could cut the time it takes to fully charge the battery to just five minutes—or not much longer than it takes to fill a gas tank.

Daniel Isenberg, founding executive director of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Projects, is an expert in entrepreneurship.

"Real entrepreneurs are growth obsessed: they cringe when you call them 'small.' In fact, I don't think you can call something entrepreneurshipunless it is driven by big vision, big aspiration and a burning desire and ability to grow," Isenberg says.

Isenberg published this quick test to determine whether or not you have what it takes to be a true "scale up entrepreneur." Mark down whether you agree or disagree with each of the following statements. If you agree with 16 or more, "The sky's the limit," says Isenberg.

The plight of youth unemployment in developed economies is so severe it has prompted the OECD to call for more government intervention, possibly including paying companies to hire young people. The influential economics and trade organisation also said on Tuesday (16 July) that governments should not roll back minimum welfare schemes and should reallocate, where possible, budgets towards programmes designed to get people back to work.

To be an entrepreneur, you have to be navigate lots of unknowns, and the path is fraught with risk. Once you are past a certain mental age, you know too many of the things that can go wrong, so you never start. Sort of like the old saying that if we didn’t have young men to fight our wars, we could achieve world peace in no time.

People who are young, or young at heart, don’t know all the negatives, or don’t worry about them. The result is that they achieve things that no one else ever thought possible. That’s the definition of a true entrepreneur. Many people, including Mike Michalowicz, in his highly irreverent book, “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur,” have identified specific reasons for this:

It often happens that entrepreneurs ask that question when attending events and meetings. They want a quick, accurate and succinct answer so they can move forward with their dreams. Unfortunately, it all starts with the advertising presented to us by the mass media where the major ‘icons’ of the entrepreneurial market (Facebook, AirBnB, Twitter, etc.) are characterised as the starting point, raising millions of dollars in investment rounds.

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup Founders dilemmas in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. People may jump into the lifestyle to be their own boss, achieve great wealth, start a new trend, or all the above. The dilemma is that these goals are usually mutually exclusive.

For example, is the person who starts a new trend likely to be the one who controls it through the growth phase? In a famous study of 212 new ventures a few years ago, Harvard professor Noam Wasserman found that half the Founders were no longer at the helm after three years, and over time 80% were forced out. That’s not an attractive statistic if you crave control and power.

Whether it’s your product, company or rock band, choosing the name is inevitably the hardest part. Hunched over the screen typing URL after URL into GoDaddy, you cross your fingers that your seven-hundredth attempt will finally unlock that magical, unclaimed word that fits your new startup to a T.

SEE ALSO: 10 Creative Solutions for a More Productive Workspace

Instead of repeatedly bashing your head against the wall, here’s a simple approach to naming things that uses a score of free online services to make the process a bit less painful. We've left out the auto-refreshing random word generators, too.

Whether you already have a great business idea or are looking for inspiration for a business startup, consider taking some time to get away from it all. Take a short break to mull over your idea. Clear your head and work out the details for your next venture in a beautiful and relaxing environment. It will bring clarity and energize you for the challenges ahead.

But not everyone is the same, so the ideal getaway for you might not be the same as for someone else. To help you choose, we’ve created a list of possible destinations where you can contemplate your startup. Below is are 15 places you may want to consider that you can view as a slideshow or as a single page.

Researchers at Stanford have found that making bankruptcy laws less punitive motivates the most promising entrepreneurs to start successful businesses. The new study introduces the concept of a “failure barrier” and how lowering it can yield powerful and positive economic results.

Experts in Stanford’s Department of Management Science and Engineering (MS&E) studied entrepreneurial activity in Japan before and after the nation reformed its bankruptcy laws in 2003. The laws went from being a mechanism for punishing poor managers and forcing debt recovery, to a more forgiving set of policies that allowed executives to keep their jobs and reorganize their failed firms.

A Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation study released today found that, while the Kansas City region has many entrepreneurial strengths, those assets could be tapped further to help young companies attain even greater success.

The study, "Leveraging Regional Assets: Insights from High-Growth Companies in Kansas City," says that more mentoring between experienced and startup entrepreneurs could add fuel to the region's business engine. The study's conclusion is based on interviews with 22 Inc. 500|5000 information technology, biotechnology and business services firms in the Kansas City area. Founders were asked about their views on the strengths and viability of Kansas City's entrepreneurial ecosystem

Today, 16 diverse business accelerators from across the country gathered at Washington, D.C. accelerator, 1776, to pitch their programs as part of the inaugural Accelerator Demo Day--jointly organized by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Global Accelerator Network (GAN) in an effort to help foster high-growth entrepreneurship nationwide.

Accelerators serve a valuable role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and provide a mentoring and networking component to help start-ups avoid pitfalls and give them the skills necessary to raise capital.  Today's event builds on SBA's broader efforts to foster and support high-growth entrepreneurship in local communities across the country--efforts which include $5 million in the agency's proposed FY 2014 budget to launch a Growth Accelerators initiative aimed at increasing the likelihood of success for first-time entrepreneurs. A continuation of the Start-Up America Initiative, the new initiative would provide matching grants to university and private sector accelerators to start new accelerators or scale an existing model.

Millennials can be a tricky bunch. The majority of us were raised alongside our favorite companion, the Internet. This has made us a bit different from other generations. For one thing, we have an addiction to instant gratification (see Instant Messaging and Instagram), but the way we approach work is also different from other generations. According to LinkedIn’s Global Head of Talent Acquisition – Campus, Tey Scott, millennials respond to different management techniques in the workplace.

Despite our many defining characteristics, what I think really sets millennials apart from others is the way we approach work and how we interpret the phrase “Work Hard, Play Hard”.

Subcommittee on Research and Technology | 2318 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 | Jul 24, 2013 2:00pm Improving Technology Transfer at Universities, Research Institutes and National Laboratories

Witnesses Dr. Brian R. Wamhoff, Vice President of Research & Development, Co-founder, HemoShear, LLC

Dr. Elizabeth Hart-Wells, Assistant Vice President for Research, Associate Director of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, Purdue University

Dr. Erik Lium, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Office of Innovation, Technology & Alliances, University of California, San Francisco

We’re all conditioned to avoid conflict and say yes, even to counterproductive requests and assignments. Janet Kestin and Nancy Vonk of creative leadership lab Swim argue for the power of no and explain why and how saying that little word can lead to longer-term success. 

It was pretty much a typical Friday at Ogilvy Toronto. The whole creative department was crazy busy, when another big project dropped out of the sky. Scanning the stressed-out teams overdue for a decent weekend break, this was not the best news ever. At least this assignment was a gem, and I quickly decided the best art director for the job was Luke*--my go-to miracle worker.

After working with dozens of startup founders, I’m still amazed that some seem to be able to do the job easily and effectively, always in control, while others always seem to be struggling, out-of-control, and fighting the latest crisis. I am more and more convinced that it is the right founder behavior that leads to success, rather than some exceptional intelligence or training.

In that context, startup founders should carefully review the points made by Denny F. Strigl, former CEO of Verizon Wireless, in his book aptly named “Managers, Can You Hear Me Now?” He outlines the behavioral habits he has seen in managers who are successful, versus the bad habits of ones who struggle. These habits apply even more directly to entrepreneur startup leadership:

Today Startup Canada unveiled the beta website for its new campaign to profile 1000 Canadian entrepreneurs.

1000 Startups is an easy-to-search website built by Startup Canada’s volunteer team to cast a spotlight on Canadian entrepreneurs. In addition to sharing stories and advice, this new platform leverages Startup Canada’s network of more than 55,000 followers and its bustling social media channels to amplify the news and announcements of participating startups. In the words of Startup Canada co-founder Cyprian Szlankiewicz, “Startup Canada’s communications team will become their communications team.”