LANSING — Michigan's venture capital industry says a proposal from a Macomb County lawmaker to restore a tax credit for angel investors is "a great first step" toward expanding funding for entrepreneurs in the state.

Yet the bills, introduced during the Legislature's summer recess, could be tough to sell: A short-lived angel tax credit ended when Gov. Rick Snyder overhauled the state's tax system during his first term, and the Republican governor isn't keen on bringing it back.

Image: Rep. Jeff Farrington, R-Utica - http://www.crainsdetroit.com

Whether delivering a keynote or taking investors through a pitch deck, presenters are often prescribed a specific amount of time to speak. But those who frequently occupy the podium know that this can change at a moment’s notice.

Other speakers might go over their allotted time, start late, or drop out entirely. Sometimes the intended audience’s schedule changes last minute, setup time goes over, or, in the most dreaded scenario, technical difficulties eat up precious minutes.

Image: Flickr user Daniel Schildt

Some of our financial services clients complained that our graphics couldn't be seen on their corporate network. There is now a view email in browser link at the top right of the newsletter so hopefully that should help. Let me know.

Everyone's a tech company

Have you noticed recently how every old school company is trying to brand themselves a "technology company?"

There's a couple reasons for this. First, they'd love these economics.

Image: http://us1.campaign-archive2.com

You can’t survive as an entrepreneur without resilience, because you are going to fail at least once, maybe multiple times. That’s the nature of trying something that’s never been done before. Resilience means not giving up, and being energized by what you have learned. As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won't work."

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

House and Senate negotiators failed Sunday night to reach a compromise on a bill to restrict corporate noncompete contracts in Massachusetts, a big disappointment for the local startup community.

The failure leaves unresolved one of the most contentious debates in the state’s technology sector, pitting established employers against fast-growing startup companies and their investors. Although the Senate and House each passed a noncompete bill, the two sides were unable to come to agreement in time for the end of the Legislature’s formal session.

Image: DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFF

Energy is at the heart of the development and climate debate as the COP 22 in Marrakesh approaches. Economic actors are beginning to focus their efforts on bringing power to the African continent. EurActiv’s partner La Tribune reports.

The figures are well-known. The African electricity grid currently provides 160,000MW (the equivalent of Germany’s electrical consumption). Two thirds of this capacity is in North Africa and South Africa. The rest of the continent has access to just 53,000MW, which is the equivalent of Portugal’s electrical supply.

“In space, no one can hear you scream.” That was the tagline of the 1979 box office film success Alien. And it’s true. Sound waves propagate mechanically as a vibration and therefore need a medium — solid, liquid or gas — to travel through. Although interplanetary (and interstellar) space is not completely empty, gas molecules and dust grains are so sparsely distributed that they do not form a continuous medium that would enable sound waves to be transmitted directly.

But there are many locations in the solar system where it might actually be quite noisy. Such places will have a medium through which sound waves can be transmitted — for example, an atmosphere or an ocean. And we have only started to explore what they sound like.

Image: https://www.techcentral.co.za

Government agencies, health charities and other private partners have launched an international partnership to drive antibacterial research and development over the coming years.

The Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) is a joint effort of the HHS’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Wellcome Trust of London, the AMR Center of Alderley Park, Boston University School of Law and others. These supporters have pledged several hundred million dollars of funding over the next 5 years to push promising antibiotic candidates through the early stages of development and provide preclinical research expertise to projects chosen by the public-private partnership.

Whether you’re a budding or experienced entrepreneur, here’s an opportunity to consider. Virtual Reality headset company HTC is accepting applications for a new batch of VR startup companies that will begin in November 2016, according to Road to VR.

HTC has $100 million earmarked for its Imagination to Reality global VR accelerator program and is reaching out worldwide. Companies accepted into the program will work at HTC Hive X locations in San Francisco, Taipei, and Beijing. There’s also a hardware-only program in Shenzen, China.

Image: HTC has allocated $100 million to help developers get VIVE VR-related products to market. Applications open in November for a second batch of startups. The HTC program is part of a consortium with $12 billion in investment capital. - https://www.yahoo.com

In July 2013 I decided to launch a one day workshop, called AppJamming, to teach a group of primary school girls how to code.

Little did I know I was about to embark on a journey which now has led to First Code Academy, now operating in Hong Kong and Singapore, taught over 3000 students and 14 amazing full time team members (and many more, equally amazing, part time members). It is still early days, and over the weekend, I took sometime to reflect what I learned so far as an entrepreneur.

With startups playing a larger role in the American economy than ever before, it can be easy to lose sight of a simple fact: Becoming a successful entrepreneur is both extremely difficult and rare. The chance of an entrepreneur’s first or second startup ending in success is about 20%. After the first two attempts, the odds get slightly better, but are still pretty terrifying (30% chance of success).

More than three-quarters of American adults are active on social media, and the numbers total approximately 2.3-billion people worldwide. By living with and through our technology, it is easier than ever before to reconnect with friends, stay in touch with family and meet new people across previously unassailable physical distances. But this also means that the likes of identity theft is becoming a bigger problem.

Unfortunately, in stark contrast to real-world interactions, there are few reliable ways to be sure a person is who they purport to be on the internet.

Image: http://memeburn.com

Millennials make up more than one third of the workforce today, and they are changing the way we work. How many articles have you read about millennials’ demands for connectivity, collaboration, transparency and work/life balance? Often, the media uses a negative tone, and millennials are described as unproductive, distracted and lazy — usually with a mention about how they treat their mobile devices as distracting appendages.

Image: http://www.tennessean.com

No doubt you know how little venture capital funding goes to female founders, in part because so few VCs are women. And that women are less likely to start companies, less likely to scale their companies or have successful exits. So it is encouraging to find bright spots in the landscape such as this: at the five-year old Harvard Innovation Lab, a program open to students from any of the university’s schools, about half of the accepted founders are women.

BUTTE -- Technological innovation thrives in the bootstrapped startups and high-tech manufacturers of Montana.

One example is the Universal Technical Resource Services, INC (UTRS), an engineering service provider and consultancy.  In 2010, UTRS opened a new research and development facility in Butte to explore alternative methods of titanium production. Over the past 6 years, these engineers have refined and patented a chemical process that economically surpasses the Kroll Process, the current standard for titanium refinement.

Professor Ethan Mollick of The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has been studying our portfolio company Kickstarter in his research. Late last year, he published his research on how many projects actually ship after getting funding on Kickstarter (answer is roughly 90% ultimately ship). Now he’s back with another piece of research looking at the broader impact of Kickstarter on the creative economy. We know that over $2.5bn has been raised by project creators on Kickstarter to date but what we don’t know is what has happened with all of that money.

Tech employees already get free food, free dry cleaning and free beer. Now, they also get deals on housing. 

New hires at Google and other Silicon Valley companies are often offered home loans with no money down and a host of other financial planning services, Bloomberg reported this week. 

The help for tech employees buying houses, of course, is taking place in one of the least affordable and most competitive housing markets in the country.

And if people in the tech industry need this much help buying a home, it's hard to fathom how difficult it must be for everyone else. 

Innovation management involves the process of managing an organization's innovation procedure, starting at the initial stage of ideation, to its final stage of successful implementation. It encompasses the decisions, activities and practices of devising and implementing an innovation strategy.

"The Purpose Is Profit: The Truth about Starting and Building Your Own Business" is a simple story about a guy who finally followed the call of entrepreneurship and turned that skill into a business owner's dream (selling a multi-million business). He also experienced a business owner's nightmares (business failure) as well and using both experiences of success and failure to provide lessons on how to conquer the ups and downs of business.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com

Kickstarter has been in the business of bringing dreams to market since 2009, but according to a new study from the b corp and the University of Pennsylvania, it has brought a lot more to life than just projects and dreams. Earlier this week, the crowdfunding platform released findings from the Ivy League institution’s research. Among the most impressive results are that Kickstarter has created 8,800 new companies and nonprofits, (kick)started 29,600 full-time jobs, generated more than $5.3 billion in direct economic impact for creators and their communities alike, and employed 283,000 part-time collaborators to bring creative projects to fruition. So yeah, your donations have been doing some real good.