Michael Seibel has been involved with Y Combinator (YC) - Silicon Valley's most prestigious start-up incubator - for about a decade, first as a start-up founder and now as chief executive of its accelerator programme. YC, based in Mountain View, California, funds technology start-ups and provides mentorship to company founders who join its programme. Economics Correspondent Chia Yan Min speaks to Mr Seibel, who will be in Singapore on Sept 14 as a guest speaker and grand finals judge at the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition, organised by the Singapore Management University's Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Start-ups will also be able to sign up for office hours with Mr Seibel on Sept 15.

Image: Mr Michael Seibel sees Singapore as a hub from which it is easy to reach founders from all over South-east Asia. He has found his interactions with firms from Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand eye-opening.PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL SEIBEL

A new European investment fund is turning to social media to find a batch of undiscovered entrepreneurs.

Based in Paris, OneRagtime launched last year as a European venture firm that was run by a combination of millennial partners and experienced investors. The firm has created a platform to connect startups, investors, partners and advisors. It assists startups using a combination of direct investment via a fund and assisting with crowdsourced fundraising.

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When a new generation enters the mix of society, they bring new habits, tastes and preferences. Brands need to learn about them and adapt in order to find long-term success. During their debut, Millennials brought about a new approach to the world, shaped by the rise of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000’s.

Next up is Generation Z. While many are quickly writing Gen Z off as Millennials on steroids, this is a rushed assumption that fails to understand how each generation came about. While Millennials were influenced by the good times of the 1990s and the ability to realize meteoric success through technology, Gen Z is influenced by the Great Recession and the overwhelming nature of technology.

On-demand air taxis just got one step closer to becoming a reality. Lilium, the German startup whose flying taxis can go from vertical takeoff to horizontal flight, has announced $90m (£69.59m) in funding, a big leap from the $10m it had already raised from London VC Atomico and Freigeist. The latest round of funding was raised by Tencent, LGT, Atomico and Obvious Ventures.

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Rives Taylor, a principal at the architecture firm Gensler and a 40-plus-year resident of Houston, is lucky.

His home in Houston Heights, an older neighborhood northwest of downtown, was spared from Hurricane Harvey’s flooding. Part of that is due to the natural topography of the area–its elevation is few feet higher than downtown–and that his pier-and-beam house is three feet off the ground. But what’s also remarkable about his neighborhood is that it isn’t connected to the city’s vast network of underground storm sewers. Rainwater flows directly into nearby ditches where it eventually seeps back into the earth.

You’ll be happy to know that I have complete confidence in the work I do. I have confidence in my ability to be an excellent trusted advisor to CEOs and business owners, to guide leadership teams to greater success, and to come up with creative ideas for solving intractable problems…among other things required of someone who has been called Yoda by a few clients.

I also have complete confidence in my inability to do anything requiring detailed work and extended effort, follow the rules and do things repetitively, and curb my short attention span and wanderlust.

In early 2017, an American couple returning to the United States from Toronto was stopped for a screening at the Buffalo airport by officials from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency charged with safeguarding U.S. borders. But beyond questioning Akram Shibly and Kelly McCormick and physically inspecting their belongings, the agents also demanded that they surrender their mobile phones and passwords. At that moment, the government crossed an important line.

When you’re a large legacy organization, shape-changing can seem almost impossible. But it can be done – if you’re willing to throw out the old, ineffective traditional structure and embrace a whole new model.

For author, advisor, and “foresight machine” Idris Mootee, sustainable large-scale change requires radically different organizational design. As the Global CEO and co-founder of Idea Couture, he has helped countless global leaders with corporate strategy and transforma

The mandate of each Fund Manager is to outperform. The safety quotient is dependent on the asset category being managed. A Venture Capitalist has a unique role versus Fund Manager of a private equity, listed equity or a debt fund. A VC has to first think of multi-bagger returns rather than the safety of capital.

Here I shall share 7 tips adopted by YourNest to choose its portfolio startup companies. But first, since we have touched on the safety of capital, let me share top 3 tools adopted by VCs including ourselves to invest safely:

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Who says beach towns have the monopoly on sand castles? 

The landlocked German city of Duisburg just claimed the world record for the world's tallest sandcastle. The city's sand castle, which stands at 55 feet or 16.68 meters, won the prize after a Guinness World Record jury judged the behemoth on Friday. 

The sand castle used 3,860 tons of sand and took more than three weeks to build. The structure was sculpted by a team of designers from 10 countries, incorporating imagery from around the world. 

AKRON, Ohio, Sept. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (NASDAQ: GT) has opened its first office in the Silicon Valley to connect with automakers, suppliers and mobility-related startups working on the next generations of vehicles and service models.

The company's initial focus areas for its Silicon Valley office are to optimize tires and service solutions for autonomous vehicles and ride sharing fleets; to utilize tire and vehicle data to plan for tire replacement and service; and to connect with leaders in the automotive industry to accelerate its own innovation platforms.

A robot arm, called 'Uneekbot' can stitch a shoe together in just six minutes. It's the brainchild of KEEN, a footwear company, looking to integrate automation and made-to-order shoemaking.

Image: http://mashable.com

Th New Zealand national government has pledged NZ$270 million (approximately US$194m) investment in ultra-fast broadband (UFB), reaching 190 more small towns by 2022. The investment will also enable an extension of rural broadband (RBI) to another 74,000 homes and businesses.

Communications minister Simon Bridges, “We’re also bringing the completion of the UFB network forward by two years. By the end of 2022, our UFB program will provide more than four million New Zealanders with access to world-class interne.” He adds, “We started UFB in 2010 with the original goal of connecting 34 towns to world-class fiber-to-the-premises.

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The power and influence of paid media advertising, including print ads, TV commercials, radio, and even online digital campaigns is waning, in favor of unpaid earned and owned messaging from your website, social media, key market influencers, and existing customer word-of-mouth. But startups need to remember that even zero paid media doesn’t mean that marketing is free.

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Need a creative booster? One of your best resources is just a click away. TED Talks provides a variety of inspirational and creative videos from some of today’s most successful people.

Whether you’re bursting with ideas or experiencing a creative block, these talks will help provide you with new approaches and perspectives on creativity. In author Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk, “Your Elusive Creative Genius,” she pushes people to find their own “creative genius” and to avoid getting discouraged from reaching their maximum potential. Internationally recognized sculptor Janet Echelman’s “Taking Imagination Seriously” TED Talk is about finding your true voice and letting your imagination do the work.

With the development of the digital economy, many millennials aspire to create start-ups.

Meanwhile, numerous countries want to be seen as “start-up nations”, and some big corporations dream about being a part of – or even leading – the disruption.

These trends reveal an underlying phenomenon: the rise of entrepreneurship. This concept bears several definitions, including this one, proposed by Howard Stevenson: “the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled”.

We live in a society that idolizes entrepreneurs. However, very few people understand that entrepreneurship is a handshake between joy and suffering, risk, and reward.

Most simply want to be “half-entrepreneurs,” ditching the formalities of corporate America for the freedom of independence. The trouble is, these half-entrepreneurs never fully untether the safety net of working for others, and often flee at the first sign of trouble.

August was a record-breaking month for Scottish tidal energy, after a power station managed to generate 700 megawatt-hours of electricity. Studies show that tidal power could supply nearly half of Scotland’s power needs.

The MeyGen project, located off the northern Scottish coast near the Orkney Islands, generated enough electricity with two turbines last month to power 2,000 homes.

A third turbine is installed off the Scottish coast, promising more record breaking figures from the site. (Atlantis)

Successful startups seem to follow similar paths to greatness, and unfortunately all too often that path leads them back down the hill much faster than they went up. Big company powerhouses, like IBM and Xerox, took fifty years to make the cycle, but new companies today, in the age of the Internet, often make the cycle in five to ten years, or even less. Consider MySpace and Webvan.

Thus it behooves every entrepreneur to start watching these things more carefully from the very start. By definition, most startups begin as a result of some innovation in product, process, or service. The problem is that innovations in most business areas are coming so fast these days that yours can be overrun while still be scaled across geographies and other products.

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When do you give up?

Never! But occasionally you need to re-evaluate if where you’re going is still where you want to be.

Recently I was giving a keynote about the importance of perseverance to a group of young entrepreneurs. At the end of the keynote one of the young men asked me, “You talk about perseverance and tenacity but when do you give up? There must be a point when you have to walk away.” The answer I gave was that we often equate not quitting with the incremental movements towards an objective rather than the commitment and perseverance to follow a long-term compass setting.