Lending Club Founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche is disrupting traditional banking by getting investors to lend directly to consumers online.

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One of the most provocative viral YouTube videos in the past two years begins mundanely enough: a one-year-old girl plays with an iPad, sweeping her fingers across its touch screen and shuffling groups of icons. In following scenes, she appears to pinch, swipe and prod the pages of paper magazines as though they, too, are screens. Melodramatically, the video replays these gestures in close-up.

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The most successful venture capitalists carry one slogan around in their heads as they review new investment opportunities: "Bet the jockey and not the horse." This means that the quality of management is the key ingredient in a successful early stage investment strategy. This is not new news to anyone even casually familiar with private equity investing. In fact, it makes me curious about the avalanche of criticism in the media aimed at directors of public companies who award lush employment and option contracts to key managers. The fact is, the quality of management makes just as much difference in a public company as it does in a private, emerging growth firm…a make or break proposition. If the company has $1 billion in gross revenues and $100 million in margin in today's environment, it is likely to be headed in one of two directions…on the way up to $2 or $3 billion, with a consequent effect on shareholder value, or exactly in the opposite direction. As Dick Foster and Sarah Kaplan have pointed out, very few public companies are able to stand still these days. The gifted managers are continuously involved in the process of reinventing their firms. Intense global competition means today's good times, left unattended, are tomorrow's death spiral.

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November 6, 2013

Long live open innovation!

Calling all entrepreneurs, researchers, and innovation enthusiasts.

Québec International, in collaboration with En mode solutions and IDTEQ, cordially invites you to come and experience open innovation in a resolutely new format for this 3rd Edition!

This original, creative, productive, and results-oriented event capitalizes on the intelligence and experience of experts in the search for solutions to the very real problems encountered by companies and organizations of all sizes.

Is entrepreneurship going viral? A recent Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation survey shows that it just might be – and that's a good thing for the U.S. economy.

The new paper "Getting the Bug: Is (Growth) Entrepreneurship Contagious?" released today by the Kauffman Foundation presents the results of a survey of 2,000 Americans across the country, asking whether they knew entrepreneurs – both in general and specifically "growth" entrepreneurs whose ventures add more employment and wealth to the economy – and if they themselves were entrepreneurs.

The University Economic Development Association (UEDA) announced its 2013 Awards of Excellence winners during its Annual Summit held tonight in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Awards of Excellence Program recognizes UEDA members who are transforming their campuses into engines of economic prosperity through leading edge initiatives in five categories: 1) Community Connected Campus: initiatives that promote the physical development of quality connected campuses and their surrounding communities; 2) Research and Analysis:  initiatives that enhance the capacity of colleges and universities to provide new forms of research and tools for community, economic and workforce development practitioners; 3) Leadership and Collaboration: initiatives that support the development of collaborative economic development strategies and the leaders required to implement them; 4) Innovation and Entrepreneurship: initiatives designed to support startups, high-growth companies and clusters within a region; and 5) Talent Development: initiatives that promote the development of 21st-century skills.

Online health information company WebMD has snapped up Avado, a startup that develops cloud-based software to let physicians and patients interact.

The companies declined to disclose financial information, but said Avado’s technology will be integrated under the WebMD brand and that the founders will join the company to continue developing the technology and business relationships.

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There’s lots of talk among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs about the importance of finding “smart money”—the venture and angel investors whose sheer acumen supposedly allows them to outperform the market and shepherd startups to success.

Trouble is, venture returns for the last 10 years actually lag behind those of the broader S&P 500. The average venture firm “can’t outperform a grandmother investing in an S&P Index fund,” as veteran journalist Tom Foremski comments wryly. The truth is that every high-tech startup faces a minefield of tough decisions, and no investor can really know the right way across it.

Image: www.xeconomy.com

We’ve seen tremendous growth in the number of new startups in recent years, but the pool of VC funding is not keeping pace with this growth. This can put cash-starved startups at a disadvantage when it comes to negotiating company-favorable investment terms from VCs.

But regardless of how eager founders may be to secure the funds needed to scale quickly, they should think very carefully before agreeing to any of the following three funding terms, which could limit their economic upside and control in the company they built.

Image: www.xconomy.com

It is lonely at the top.

A good leader is a good follower.

Lead by example.

These are some of the clichés we encounter when it comes to leadership. It’s tough to attribute these sayings to one person alone. Just the same, these power phrases exist to motivate us to become good leaders. Sometimes, however, we take these sayings for granted, repeating them over and over until these words lose their meanings. Then they exist only as a bunch of motherhood statements without any rhyme or reason

When seeking out sources of motivation, people often turn to insightful quotes from those they admire. These excerpts and sound bites offer inspiration and a valuable look into the mindsets of successful figures. That’s why books and articles written about famous billionaires, from Warren Buffett to Oprah Winfrey are often popular, because we want to find out what got them to where they are today.

As the nation moves from a tangible goods-based economy to a service-based economy, a few states are trying to keep revenues robust by taxing technological services such as software upgrades and cloud computing. But a backlash from the high-tech industry has quashed most efforts.

As a result, the U.S. has a patchwork quilt of state taxes on technological services. Some states that have tried to impose such taxes have failed spectacularly, and most have not tried at all.

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Donn Rubin may be getting nervous about his bet with Robert Coughlin, although losing this particular wager could be good for entrepreneurs in St. Louis. The two bio tech leaders – CEOs of BioSTL and MassBio respectively – have a friendly bet riding on the outcome of World Series 2013.

If the Red Sox win, Rubin will send a case of local craft beer and some St. Louis barbecue to Coughlin. If the Cardinals win, Coughlin will send Rubin some of Boston’s finest “chowdah” and will introduce him to a few Boston venture capitalists.

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It’s that time of year again, time for 500 Startups to announce yet another batch of startups that just started its Accelerator program. If you’ve been following along, you probably know what to expect: Lots of female founders, a decent number of international companies, a startup music video, etc. etc.

Image: techcrunch.com

For $99, genetic testing startup 23andMe will analyze your DNA, telling you how to live smarter and longer--and what disease might kill you. But there's another inner frontier to explore in personalized medicine: the bacteria in your gut.

For $89, Ubiome, a startup founded by Jessica Richman--a doctoral candidate at Oxford who did stints at Google and McKinsey after graduating from Stanford in 2009--will send you a kit that harvests the organisms that live inside your body. For additional fees, you can also gather bacteria from your mouth, nose, skin, and genitalia.

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We hear a lot about technology and globalization these days, especially how they are hollowing out the American middle class. But there has been an immense positive impact from the globalization of entrepreneurship, making Silicon Valley’s formula of technology-based start-ups an international instrument for economic development.

I live amid this trend, living and breathing it daily. As someone who mentors entrepreneurs, I constantly hear the question from founders located across the United States or around the world: Should we move to Silicon Valley?

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"We must build on existing progress - in music, film, gaming, TV, advertising or design - and ensure the foundations are laid for long-term success," is the message from Matthew Fell, Director for Competitive Markets at the CBI.

This year’s party conferences took place in centres of both historical and present importance to the British economy. Take Manchester and Salford — once at the heart of the industrial revolution as a global centre for textile manufacturing — now home to one of the UK’s leading creative hubs with MediaCityUK alone creating 20,000 jobs in Salford Quays.

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Plenty of university professors aren’t just focused on helping students learn and get good grades--they’re also dedicated to helping students boost their burgeoning entrepreneurial spirit. As academia bleeds into private industry, it’s worth considering how the job market will be affected.

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The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Robin Feldman, Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Innovation Law at University of California Hastings, today released the findings of the survey “Patent Demands & Startup Companies: The View from the Venture Capital Community.” Among its objectives, the study sought quantitative data on the frequency of patent demands (sometimes known as patent assertions); whether those demands are made by entities whose core business involves the licensing or litigation of patents; and, the dollars spent in response to demands. The survey was distributed to members of the NVCA and the CEOs of member firms’ portfolio companies.

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When you consider that each of our stories are largely unique and that a great portion of success is situational, trying to come up with a one-size-fits-all plan for succeeding is probably close to futile. And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, we are able to uncover puzzle pieces that might fit into our own stories. It’s been just a little over two years since the passing of Apple’s co-founder, but the legacy of Steve Jobs and in particular the marketing lessons he instilled in Apple are alive and well.