The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Value Creation

I give raises when someone exceeds my expectations, usually when employees take something on that wasn’t originally in their scope of work. I’ve had people ultimately create a position for themselves by making a suggestion, implementing it and taking ownership over it. Suddenly, the value they create for my business has gone up, and I feel it’s only fair to increase their compensation. - Mark Krassner, Knee Walker Central

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you to sit down and visualize. Or meditate. Or do yoga every day for a month. (Although I have tried those things.)

I’ve been an entrepreneur for my entire (six year) career. After a few short-lived internships in college, I realized I’d do whatever it took to be my own boss until the end of my da

Image: http://under30ceo.com 

Alex Rampell wrote and sold his first software when he was 11, but he knew nothing about what to charge customers. Checks just showed up at his house for licenses to his products, which he started selling for $5.

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Google isn’t big on college degrees, although the search giant is inundated with applicants touting perfect GPAs from Ivy League schools.

Google’s chairman and head of hiring, Laszlo Bock, has given a few insights in the New York Times on how he sorts through a multitude of bright applicants.

The upshot is that Google values the skills and experiences that candidates get in college, but a degree doesn’t tell them much about talent or grit.

At Higher One, we learn from millennial students every day. Students are the reason Higher One exists and we love to find ways to make their days easier. We’ve recently been doing a ton of work with students around how they budget money. One of the most eye opening things we’ve learned is that students push off budgeting because it stresses them out. To them, thinking long-term around money and budgeting means having to have long-range vision (monthly and annual pictures) of their future.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

First published on MedCityNews.com. As early as February, analysts were saying that it would be a good year for healthcare IT companies looking for venture capital.

Communications and consulting firm Mercom Capital echoed that today with results from its first-quarter investment analysis which found that healthcare IT companies raised more VC money last quarter than in any quarter before.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Even in an off-quarter, biotech showed itself to be a key driver of New York's growing tech sector, and that momentum will need to continue in the face of stiff market headwinds. Venture-capital investment in medical and biotech startups dipped slightly in the first quarter of the year, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association, with data from Thomson Reuters.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

The continuing delay in agreement over America’s controversial immigration reform bill is hitting on highly skilled workers wishing to emigrate to the USA as well as the companies needing their expertise.

Demand for visas in the highly-skilled category soared by 39 per cent over the past year, but the statutory caps have remained static due to the delay in the bill. Employers desperate for skilled staff in the technology, science and engineering fields are looking to hire, particularly as many new foreign applicants have studied at prestigious American universities and are familiar with how the US works.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

U.S. companies pulled in $9.5 billion in venture funding in the first three months of 2014, the highest quarterly total since the second quarter of 2001. But the wealth was not spread evenly. The nation's three top venture markets, New York, New England and Silicon Valley, accounted for more than two-thirds of that figure. The D.C. region, meanwhile, saw a  worrisome dip in venture funding compared with the same period last year.

Image: Courtesy Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico Total VC investment in Q1: $271,000 (2 deals)  

We are excited to announce that we reached a big milestone today: there are now more than 300 million LinkedIn members in the world! More than half of these members come from outside of the U.S., while there are 100 million members in the U.S. While this is an exciting moment, we still have a long way to go to realize our vision of creating economic opportunity for every one of the 3.3 billion people in the global workforce.

Last year, I served as a judge for the Gensler Design Excellence Awards.  As I read through the entries from Gensler’s dozens of offices around the world, I was struck by one program requirement that was repeated from entry to entry in the office category. It was this: Design a space for our firm that will support chance meetings and the constant exchange of ideas among our employees.

Image: Flickr user Mycatkins. 

Kevin Laws is the chief operating officer at AngelList, the founders and funders network that has upturned seed-stage investing, but he thinks of himself as the "Chief Everything Else Officer." "I am a chief operating officer at a company where we are small enough that people kind of do what they want — or self-manage might be a better way to put it," he told me last week just after AngelList unveiled Maiden Lane, a new $25 million fund that will support the network's investment syndicates.

Image: Photo/Vicki Thompson - Kevin Laws, chief operating officer at AngelList, has been on both sides of the early-stage financing table. So listen up. 

ASU dominated the second annual Arizona Collegiate Venture Competition (ACVC) last month as four of its student startup companies placed in the competition, winning a total of $21,000 in cash prizes.

The competition, a statewide event in which select student startups from ASU, Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona pitch their companies, was held March 28 at the University of Arizona and was sponsored by Hool Coury Law and MAC6.

(CNN) -- With over 700 million active smartphone users, China's mobile market is insane in scale. But sheer numbers aside, what makes it really impressive? China has long been a mere manufacturer. Products, usually designed elsewhere, get assembled here. And when China's mobile industry creates, it's often churning out low-end handsets and that occasional shameless copycat app.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

They were long overdue at Gillette for something new but New York Magazine’s Kevin Roose explains why this innovation isn’t and why this is destroying American innovation.

Image: http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk 

Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, one of the world's most prominent VC firms, has one. Google Ventures, the investing arm of Google, has five. The design partner--a designer who helps manage and select investments--is becoming a mainstay role at venture capital firms. The latest example: Irene Au, former head of Google’s user interaction team (and before that, the head of UX at Yahoo), announced Tuesday that she is taking a position as an operating partner at the energy-focused Khosla Ventures.

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com/ - Irene Au 

The recently released 10th edition of Demographia World Urban Areas provides estimated population, land area and population density for the 922 identified urban areas with more than 500,000 population. With a total population of 1.92 billion residents, these cities comprise approximately 51 percent of the world urban population. The world's largest cities are increasingly concentrated in Asia, where 56 percent are located. North America ranks second to Asia, with only 14 percent of the largest cities (Figure 1). Only three high income world cities are ranked in the top ten (Tokyo, Seoul and New York) and with present growth rates, Tokyo will be the lone high-income representative by the middle 2020s.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com/ 

The potential for crowdfunding, as defined in the JOBS Act, to fundamentally change the nature of capital formation is tremendous, potentially opening up avenues to investment and borrowing that were previously only available to a small segment of the investing community, let along the general public. And one sector that could see truly revolutionary change is health care.

Greg Simon is the CEO of Poliwogg, a crowdfunding site committed to funding early-stage health care companies. Prior to working at Poliwogg, he held senior positions in both houses of congress, acted as a strategy consultant to tech CEOs, and co-founded a patient advocacy non-profit. He talked with Equities.com about how the JOBS Act, crowdfunding, and Poliwogg could bring a new class of investors to the health care industry and help fund a new generation of novel therapies in the process.

Image: http://www.equities.com/ 

For decades large companies have gone shopping in Silicon Valley for startups. Lately the pressure of continuous disruption has forced them to step up the pace.

More often than not the results of these acquisitions are disappointing.

What can companies learn from others’ failed efforts to integrate startups into large companies? The answer – there are two types of integration strategies, and they depend on where the startup is in its lifecycle.