It’s hard enough to get a job at a venture capital or private equity firm; it’s even more difficult to join as a partner. I recently went through the process myself in joining HOF Capital, and I thought it would be helpful to share some of my process.

If you join a fund, you’ll invest your financial capital but also — and more importantly — your reputational capital. So start by sharing an institutional LP due diligence checklist with the fund and asking them to share their data with you. Also see Preqin’s Key Due Diligence Considerations for Private Equity Investors.

Whether walking through corporate hallways, participating in a meeting or having dinner with friends, we are surrounded by everyone with their heads down in the “smartphone prayer.” Are we losing the ability to connect, engage and trust?

We sprint through our day, shooting off email after email, running from meeting to meeting and posting messages via social media, hoping all of these messages stick and influence action. While living in a world of noise where we receive messages 24/7, it is easy to overlook the importance of connecting, engaging and building trust with our listeners to be influential Monday to Monday.

Hard work. Determination. Grit. Stamina. Drive. No doubt you’ve been taught that cultivating these virtues leads to success, and that seems to make sense on the surface. According to a State of the Workplace Productivity report by Cornerstone, 68 percent of employees surveyed said they felt there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done.

That sense of a time crunch may be a big reason why employees at companies such as Amazon and Google have been so vocal about how 18-hour workdays are normal and necessary to achieve success.

A venture-capital fund created by the state to nurture startups now needs a hand from Ohio taxpayers.

For the first time since its creation in 2003, the Ohio Capital Fund isn’t making enough money from its investments to cover payments on the money it has borrowed to finance its investments in startups.

The fund, managed by an affiliate of Cincinnati-based Fort Washington Investment Advisors, needed about $15 million in taxpayer money to make bond payments this year and may need help next year as well.

“This is the way the program is structured. No one thought it was going to be easy. No one thought there would be no risk,” said Steve Baker, head of private equity at Fort Washington.

On May 11, Scott Gottlieb, M.D., officially became the 23rd commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Dr. Gottlieb has previous FDA experience, having served as deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, among other positions, during the George W. Bush administration. More recently, he was a venture partner at the world’s largest venture capitalist firm, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), sitting on the boards of several pharmaceutical companies, including GSK, Daiichi Sankyo, and Vertex. He was also a clinical assistant professor and practiced medicine at the New York University (NYU) School of Medicine, and is a cancer survivor (Hodgkin’s lymphoma).

Image: https://www.clinicalleader.com

Like so many other people, I dread this question. But, the reason behind my trepidation isn’t necessarily what you’d expect. I don’t loathe this conversation starter because I dislike talking about how I make a living–in reality, it’s one of my favorite topics.

What’s the problem, then? Well, I get frustrated with the glazed-over look of confusion that without fail washes over everybody’s face as soon as I start chatting about my day job.

Houston—Like many living in the Houston area, Blair Garrou and his fellow partners at venture firm Mercury Fund were receiving a deluge of calls and texts asking how they could help people coping with the aftermath of Tropical Storm Harvey.

The result is an effort announced late Wednesday called “Entrepreneurs for Houston,” a group put together by Garrou; John Reale, Station Houston CEO; Jeff Reichman, founder of Sketch City; Carolyn Rodz, founder of the Circular Board; and Erik Halvorsen, director of the Texas Medical Center’s Innovation Institute.

Image: http://www.xconomy.com

New technologies that could revolutionize the way we live and work will be on display at a competition this month featuring scientists from Argonne National Laboratory.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Lab Accelerator pitch event offers the public a look at potentially groundbreaking technologies being developed by Argonne scientists, such as a reusable sponge that can absorb coastal oil spills and a system that uses sound waves to locate air leaks in buildings.

Image: Argonne postdoctoral researcher Ed Barry wrings out a sheet of Oleo Sponge during tests at Argonne. (Mark Lopez / Argonne National Laboratory)

Trenton, New Jersey, isn’t the industrial powerhouse it once was, even if the slogan “Trenton Makes, the World Takes,” first installed in 1935, still stands in 10-foot-tall letters across a bridge that spans the Delaware River to Pennsylvania. But a few minutes east of town, inside a warehouse belonging to Amazon, there are signs of another industrial transformation.

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com

Join us for a web panel discussion on how to successfully move a life science's organization from founding to exit. During this discussion, founders will provide guidance on how executive teams can partner business and science together to overcome the stumbling blocks along the way and achieve results. Learn what is real and what is myth!

Image: http://files.constantcontact.com

Google has announced that it’s more than doubling the number of markets in which its Launchpad Accelerator program is open to startups.

The internet giant first unveiled its Launchpad Accelerator for a handful of countries across Latin America and Asia back in 2015, and it has since expanded to 17 markets around the world, including Europe and Africa earlier this year. Now the program is landing in another 20 locations across five continents, including: (Africa) Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Uganda; (Asia) Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka; and (Europe) Estonia, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia; and (North / South America) Costa Rica, Panama, Peru and Uruguay.

Amazon has had made its first ever commercial drone delivery. And while its Prime Air setup is barely little more than a stunt, it is now at least a stunt that demonstrates the technology could finally be of some use.

At MIT Technology Review, we’ve been skeptical of some drone delivery experiments in the past—because, currently, they can amount to little more than gimmicks. Limited battery life and payload capacity mean that something about the size and weight of a burrito is the upper limit of what they can deliver.

When you think of working hard for what you want, does that thought carry a deeply unexpressed negative vibe of dread, or are your thoughts of succeeding soaked in desire?

If you want to be successful you must dream, yearn, want and, most importantly, you must consistently be in pursuit. Success is not just about money; it is about grinding for what you want, it’s about having the heart to grab the dream you envision in your mind. Success will always bring unexpected challenges and obstacles. How willing are you to face and overcome these challenges? Who you are, standing face-to-face with obstacles, defines the depth of your character, and it’s your character that defines how successful you will or will not become.

Whether you have some extra weight in your upper arms or rear end, it makes sense that targeting those areas with exercise—curls for your arms, lunges for your butt—would slim them down.

Weight-loss experts refer to this as “spot reduction.” But it turns out that in most cases, this kind of laser-focused weight loss isn’t possible. One study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that six weeks of intensive ab workouts did nothing to slim the exercisers’ midsections. A related study found that 12-weeks of one-armed workouts resulted in less loose skin in the trained arm, but zero fat loss.

In building successful businesses, I find that creating a new and innovative product or service is usually the easy part. The hard part is providing the leadership required to align and motivate all the constituents and players – from engineers, to investors, vendors, and ultimately customers. Great entrepreneurs are not just idea people and then managers, they are extraordinary leaders.

When it came to childhood obsessions, Silly Putty was probably up there with Furbies, Pogs, and Tamagotchis. You could bounce and stretch and snap that egg-shaped blob of viscoelastic putty all day — or at least until it got fuzzy after one too many trips under the couch. 

While your Silly Putty penchant was probably left in the '90s, there's a new goo on the scene that's about to blow your adult mind: the Scientific Magnetic Space Putty. Just like the putty of your past, it can be formed into a ball and ricocheted off walls or folded and popped between your palms. (You probably need that stress-relief now more than your younger self did, anyway.)

Image: http://mashable.com

Virtual offices bring together people from all corners of the world. And it’s creating a linguistic nightmare — even when people are speaking the exact same language.

If you’ve partnered with some freelancers or have clients living in the U.K., you may have already encountered this phenomenon. You’re having a normal conversation and suddenly the Brit on the other end has no idea what you’re saying. This goes beyond replacing Zs with Ss or spelling COLOR with a U.

Turns out, there are plenty of phrases and words in American English that simply do not translate to British English. These are phrases that Americans in business use every day — maybe a little too much — but are completely foreign to our friends over there.

Image: https://smallbiztrends.com

There’s a new force emerging in the business world that not many people are talking about yet, but I think will be on the radar pretty soon: women who have paid their dues in the corporate world and at the age of about 35 decide to strike out on their own and start a business.

This is a cohort of educated, motivated, and very business savvy people who have seen many of their ambitions dashed by banging their heads on the corporate glass ceiling long enough. Instead, they have grasped the opportunity to become entrepreneurs, defying some of the more common stereotypes we see in the media about what an entrepreneur should look like.

The idea of clearing one's mind isn't exactly a breakthrough. After all, there are numerous articles and studies on how meditative acts help boost creativity and performance. According to Walter Isaacson’s The Book of Jobs, Steve Jobs even asserted that the driving factor behind his creative inspiration was a clear mind through meditation.

As a young business owner back in the early days, I discovered the powerful effect that clearing my mind could have on my decision-making and creativity. By no coincidence, it was also around that time that paddleboarding became my hobby.

Commercial drones are being used to quickly scope out damage, map 3-D views of the flood zone and help with rescue efforts in the areas devastated by Hurricane Harvey.

Drone inspectors: Outside of disaster recovery, one of the fastest-growing uses for commercial drones is to inspect infrastructure, property and equipment. That's how companies and local government officials are putting drones to use, especially in badly flooded areas that are still too dangerous for people to venture into.