Inside a cramped committee room on the cactus-dotted campus of Arizona’s Capitol, Kelsey Lundy stepped to the podium to detail new legislation and the higher costs it would impose on struggling borrowers.

But Ms. Lundy is not a lawmaker, a government employee or even a statehouse intern.

She is a lobbyist for one of the nation’s largest lenders.

That lender — controlled by the Fortress Investment Group, one of Wall Street’s most powerful private equity firms — wrote the bill. Months later, in 2014, the state’s legislators passed the law, making it easier to charge interest of 36 percent to borrowers living on the financial margins.

Be careful. We are likely nearing the end of the recent boom in innovation, and tech investors are overreaching, says Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Elad Gil.

Gil, who’s spent years in key posts at Twitter and Google, and who’s currently invested in or advising private companies including AirBnB, Square, and Stripe, argues that as they search for the next technology wave, investors have begun to apply lofty software-company-level valuations to industries that are traditionally less profitable and more asset-intensive, and that also have vastly different business cycles and distribution.

When I started my first international company I was in my late teens, and it's safe to say that mostly I had no idea what to expect. As an entrepreneur, no two days are the same and routine seems to go out the window. 

For those thinking about dipping their toes in the water and creating a start-up, here are a few things that no one may have told you yet.

Image: http://www.smh.com.au

How do you justify spending thousands of dollars in building a product and quitting just midway through the entrepreneurial journey?

Wantrepreneurs find excuses, whatever the situation. On the other hand, entrepreneurs build businesses.

It’s a well-documented fact how some of the most successful startups have evolved over the years and they are a very different product from when they first launched.

Enemies of patent reform have a hard time making up their mind about the court system. On the one hand, their supposedly “conservative” allies claim that the court system is a better place to pursue reform of the patent system, because courts are less likely to make sweeping changes to the system that might hurt it, and are already too happy to give proponents of reform what they want. On the other hand, when they think conservatives aren’t listening, trolls are all too happy to explicitly endorse sweeping legislation from the bench to protect their parasitic business models.

Employees from the likes of General Electric, Walmart, and Toyota— 4,000 companies a year, in fact—wend their way to a 60-person company based underneath a parking garage in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The visitors are coming to see firsthand how Menlo Innovations, a software development company, is reinventing the way we work.

More than half of U.S. workers aren’t satisfied with their jobs. But even when you hate your job and you know it’s time to make a change, it can be difficult to know what to do next. So, it’s easy to stall, do nothing, and remain unhappy. That’s a mistake, says career coach Barbara Sher, author of the best-selling Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want, and several others.

"Your heart has taste buds, just like your mouth," she says. What you may need is bit of space and a few exercises to get back in touch with what you really want to do. These six exercises can help.

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Venture Capital Investment Market 2016-2020" report to their offering.

The report forecasts the global venture capital investment market to grow at a CAGR of 35.86% during the period 2016-2020.

The report has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.

Michigan State University's Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is getting a $4.5 million boost from businessman Robert Burgess.

The gift for the institute, which is part of the East Lansing school's Eli Broad College of Business, was announced Wednesday.

Burgess made a $2 million gift to the institute in 2005 which, in honor of his gift and service, will be renamed the Burgess Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The institute in part seeks to advance research on entrepreneurship, venture capital and private equity.

The European Commission proposed on Thursday measures to boost the size of the EU market for venture capital in a bid to diversify access to capital for smaller companies in Europe.

Venture capital funds invest in riskier, emerging firms that are usually shunned by banks and other more conservative investors. The industry is seen as important to foster innovation but remains a small player in Europe with a market of 5 billion euros ($5.55 billion), five times smaller than in the United States.

A radical demographic shift is transforming the nature of consumer markets. Until the turn of the century, population growth powered more than half of global consumption. As population growth slows, that will fall to only one-quarter in the next 15 years. Per capita spending will be the engine of consumption growth. In this new world, companies need to know which consumers have the purchasing firepower, where they are, what they want to buy, and what drives their spending.

MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwired - July 13, 2016) - The National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) released the sixth annual Report on Canadian Angel Investing Activity. The data collected paints a vibrant and buoyant Canadian Angel Market. The report, which is based on a survey of 32 Angel groups across Canada, reveals that these groups made 283 investments, amounting to over $133 million, with an average deal size of over $1 million. The largest Angel deal was $22.7 Million.

Focusing a negotiation on price puts both sides at risk of leaving out other interests that are more important.

So you are ill? Not to worry, because we have great news for you! We happen to know the cheapest doctor in town!

And you plan to go skydiving when you feel better? Fear not, we know someone who can offer you a great deal and pack your parachute for half the standard price…. And they even offer a full money back guarantee!

Our guess is that you are unlikely to take us up on either of our offers, despite them being the cheapest deals. As it turns out, negotiations are not about price. And when they do include a price, then that price is for something in return. And everyone cares about what they get in return, including you.

Author and life coach Tony Gaskins once said, “If you don’t build your dream someone will hire you to help build theirs”. This mantra undoubtedly echoes in the heads of all entrepreneurs.

But is this motto all it takes to succeed? For the lucky few maybe, but for most, it’s all about trial and error.

Former Chief Executive of Public Trust and author Tim Sole addressed the issue of persistence in his book Make Success Your Friend, “Laziness is the habit of resting before you become tired and success is often found between tiredness and exhaustion. If you give up a goal knowing that there is something you could have tried but did not, then you gave up too soon.” However, persistence alone cannot get you to where you need to be.

Image: http://ventureburn.com/

Every new venture that survives the first five years starts to drift away from their entrepreneurial thinking, and assumes they have achieved the path to longevity. In fact, even within Fortune 100 companies, almost 90 percent have encountered growth stalls or flirted with failure, or worse, in the last 50 years. No company can afford to lose the agility, flexibility, and innovation of a startup.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

BOSTON -- Jumping 13 spots from its ranking in 2014, the University of Massachusetts ranked 30th worldwide in rankings released Tuesday of universities granted U.S. utility patents in 2015.

The 62 patents awarded to UMass last year represents a 55 percent increase over the 40 awarded in 2014 and is the highest number issued in a calendar year since UMass began its technology transfer program in 1995, according to Abigail Barrow, interim executive director of the university's Office of Technology Commercialization and Ventures.

New York was recently rated the #1 city in the world for high-potential women entrepreneurs – in the Women Entrepreneur Cities Index (WE Cities), a report by IHS and commissioned by Dell. The research ranked 50 cities that had already been deemed to have a vibrant entrepreneurial community – NYC ranked #17. These cities were then rated on 77 indicators across five categories – markets, talent, capital, technology, and culture. Two thirds of the indicators had a gender component. 

The NSF Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) program within the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP) is an umbrella for two complementary subprograms, Accelerating Innovation Research (AIR) and Building Innovation Capacity (BIC). Overall, the PFI program offers opportunities to connect new knowledge to societal benefit through translational research efforts and/or partnerships that encourage, enhance and accelerate innovation and entrepreneurship. The subject of this solicitation is PFI: AIR-Technology Translation (PFI: AIR-TT). The PFI: AIR-TT solicitation serves as an early opportunity to move previously NSF-funded research results with promising commercial potential along the path toward commercialization. Projects are supported to demonstrate proof-of-concept, prototype, or scale-up while engaging faculty and students in entrepreneurial/innovative thinking.

Your childhood dream of being a pilot just became appealing again. 

Employment review site Glassdoor has released a list of 11 unexpected jobs that pay $100,000 or more. 

Career paths highlighted include special agent, geophysicist, regional sales executive and software architect. The highest paying job on the list is reservoir engineer, which has a total median pay of $143,000. Equity research associate is the lowest paid career highlighted, with a median pay of an even $100,000. 

The path from being a great technician — someone who does a job extremely well — to becoming a highly successful entrepreneur can be a rocky one. It requires bridging an often wide gap between technical knowledge of discreet tasks and a high-level vision that drives the long-term value of an entire company.

One business owner who has excelled at bridging that gap is Matt Curry. After years in the automotive industry learning every aspect of the business from the ground up, Curry started his own repair shop in Virginia in 1997.