OurCrowd is perhaps the leading investment crowdfunding platform in the world. Founded in 2013 by the ubiquitous CEO Jon Medved, OurCrowd has set up shop in one of the hottest startup markets in the world.  But while  nominally based in Israel, OurCrowd has chosen a decidedly global path in assisting promising companies raise capital while providing unique investment opportunities to an audience previously denied easy access.

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It's no secret a lot of people don't like the newly-coined term for billion dollar technology companies - "unicorns." It came about when technology startups with a billion dollar valuation were "rare" and "special," just like the mythical beast.

But one of the issues critics have with the term "unicorn" is that technology companies with valuations over $1 billion (£700 million) are now fairly common, with 13 in London alone - and countless more in Silicon Valley.

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Every January, there are a slew of articles about how to commit to New Year’s resolutions. But many of these stories simply scratch the surface when it comes to habit formation, focusing on performance, appearance, and external motivation. In her latest book, Better Than Before, author and happiness guru Gretchen Rubin explains that the secret to developing successful habits cuts deeper, beginning with acute self-awareness and a willingness to let go of one’s identity.

Think of the last piece of big news you got. How did you feel about it? Happy? Sad? Angry? Worried? Excited? Grateful? A little bit of all of the above? Experiencing multiple emotions at once may make it seem like you don’t actually know just how you feel about something—that you’re ambivalent, or indecisive, or wishy-washy. Psychologists would say it just means you’re emotionally complex. And according a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, emotional complexity varies a lot between countries.

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We all know that to keep our hearts healthy, we should avoid fatty foods like red meat, dairy and cheese. But a new study points out that to really protect against heart disease, you also need to eat more healthy fats

MORE Women’s Heart Attacks Look Nothing Like Men’s: Report Drinking Soda Can Make You Store More Unhealthy Fat Health experts have given us a very clear message about fat in recent years — they warn us that animal fats can build up within our heart vessel walls and lead to plaques that can cause heart attacks, strokes and other heart problems.

In tough times, it is tempting to look back instead of looking forward. Hold on tight; wait for things to return to normal.

For Alberta in early 2016, we face job losses, budget cuts and credit rating drops — emphasizing the extent to which our economic vitality depends on oil and gas. It is tempting to long for the past and hope that a rebound in the price of oil is imminent so the good times can return.

Once you strip away all the business guru rhetoric and the MBA case studies, there are really only three ways to innovate a new product that can succeed in the marketplace:

You can build it, buy it, or collaborate to get it.

By “build it,” I mean developing in-house the products and services that customers want, and then relying on your own resources to gain market share and profits.

The multinational systems designer, integrator and consultant has issued its third Analytics Trends report, which was released on 13th January. The study picks out items of importance for business operation in the accountancy and financial sectors and beyond.

Security As IT systems become even more integrated in the day-to-day running of businesses across the spectrum, cyber-security is a major issue. The report found that more companies are going on the offensive and employing predictive approaches in the way that they deal with monitoring threats and assessing risk intelligence data.

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Do you want to really have a great handle on your cash flow? Do you want to minimize surprises in your business and reduce stress in your life? Then you need ways to improve your cash flow and create a forecast for your small business. That’s what my smartest clients do; they are always looking ahead, and you should be too.

It's no secret a lot of people don't like the now widely used term for billion-dollar technology companies, unicorns.

The word came about when technology startups with a billion-dollar valuation were thought to be rare and special, just like the mythical beast.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com 

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--UCLA Anderson School of Management, in association with the UCLA Library, is launching the UCLA Anderson Venture Accelerator. The Anderson Accelerator will encourage multidisciplinary collaboration among aspiring Anderson and UCLA entrepreneurs, students in the Undergraduate Minor in Entrepreneurship and campus researchers, with mentoring from alumni, experienced entrepreneurs and the business community.

There's no shortage of discussion in the startup world about accelerators—why to work with one, how to get in, life after demo day, whether they're sort of a scam, and so on, ad nauseum. But the bottom line—from my experience and in the opinions of many entrepreneurs—remains that if a good one lets you in, you do it.

One of Guy Kawasaki’s recurring pieces of advice to entrepreneurs is to create a mantra, not a mission statement.

A mantra is three or four words that captures the essence of your organization e.g. Wendy’s: healthy fast food or FedEx: peace of mind.

Guy even created a helpful mantra that sums up his career as the chief evangelist at Apple, now chief evangelist at Canva, a venture capitalist, an advisor, a brand ambassador, a speaker and an author: empowering entrepreneurs.

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Every entrepreneur takes risks when starting out. Most entrepreneurs do not initially make it big. Most of the time, they dedicate many hours before becoming successful, often experiencing many failures along the way. It is important that potential entrepreneurs recognize the risks and learn ways to avoid them. Careful planning can often mitigate many of the risks of starting a business.

As a serial entrepreneur, you could say that change haunts me in my sleep. It’s rare that a week goes by when I don’t find myself lying awake at least one night, staring at the ceiling as my head spins with ideas about a new company I want to start.

Ask any entrepreneur, successful or not, what it was like becoming an entrepreneur.

You’ll get a variety of answers. For some, it started naturally. For others, it was irresistible. For many, it was by necessity.

But nearly every entrepreneur will also admit that it was hard. There’s nothing easy about starting your own business.

Every 30 or 40 years, Americans become incredibly pessimistic. They begin to believe the nation is falling behind in competitiveness and innovation, that their children will not be as well off as they themselves have been, and that some other country will own the future.  They fear that the United States will go the way of the British Empire in the 20th century.

This may be the country’s greatest advantage, because it causes it to maintain a level of humility and to constantly reinvent itself.  But the fears are completely unfounded.

Image: Things are only going to get better. (Tsering Topgyal/AP)

When Susan Tynan joined LivingSocial in 2011, she was struck by its CEO, Tim O’Shaughnessy. She had known him a little bit back when they worked at another startup; O’Shaughnessy, though quite young then, was rapidly rising through the ranks. But now, as O’Shaughnessy addressed hundreds of employees at the first all-staff meeting Tynan attended at LivingSocial, she was struck by what a forceful and charismatic leader he had become. He communicated the company’s progress and mission with great clarity and precision. The whole staff listened, admiring and rapt.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) boss, Christine Lagarde, has called for a second look at how GDP is measured. Speaking at the just ended World Economic Forum, Ms Lagarde said: “We have to go back to GDP, the calculation of productivity, the value of things – in order to assess, and probably change, the way we look at the economy.”

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The biggest, fastest-growing cities in the world all struggle with public transit. But necessity is the mother of invention, even when it comes to moving vast numbers of people through a 21st-century city—and many of these cities are either experimenting with new transit ideas or have pioneered transformative technology that’s now being adopted worldwide. Here are a few examples.