Dive Insight: The BIA hopes U.K.'s biotech sector can become "the third global biotech cluster" in the world, after Cambridge and San Francisco. The U.K. already is leading the biotech industry in Europe, but still has a ways to go to come close to markets in the U.S. 

Last year, one-third of all venture capital funds raised were in the U.K. and British companies accounted for 27% of all money raised from European biotechnology company IPOs in 2015, according to the BIA.

The management of Busbud, a Canadian startup whose app allows users to buy bus tickets in 10,000 cities across 63 countries, has so far raised $10 million in venture capital. And the company expects to pursue a Series B round, just not yet.

The Montreal-based company recently secured a loan from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which started in 1983 and as of the first quarter of this year had US$44 billion in assets and US$18 billion in loans.

Image: David Burridge, Busbud’s vice-president of finance and corporate development, says now the company has taken on venture debt, it can afford to be more selective on the deal it takes. - Image: Christinne Muschi for National PostDavid Burridge

As the temperatures of the world’s economic climate change, so do the rules of start-up funding, and the UK is among the countries affected.

According to a recent KPMG report, venture capital (VC) funding for UK-based start-ups was down for the first half of 2016. There are concerns that this trend may continue in the face of rising interest rates, China’s economic slowdown, and the EU referendum on the prospect of a Brexit.

Image: http://startups.co.uk 

Minnesota small businesses will soon have a new way to seek investment funding thanks to the state’s MNvest law.

The law was passed last year by the Minnesota legislature and signed into law by Gov. Mark Dayton. The new rules for equity crowdfunding through the Internet go into effect June 20.

Under the law, Minnesotans can buy securities offered by a Minnesota business with the potential to share in the company profits or get a financial return on their investment. The MNvest law applies only to Minnesota-based businesses soliciting funds from Minnesota residents.

Delaware startups soon will be able to tap into a new source of investment capital similar to the crowdfunding model popularized by websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

The General Assembly has approved a bill to legalize “equity crowdfunding” in Delaware – a measure that clears the way for state residents to buy stock in local startups through an online platform.

“This is very cool and could be a big benefit for entrepreneurs,” said Vincent DeFelice, who works with promising startups at University of Delaware’s Horn Program in Entrepreneurship.

For too many small businesses, customer service is still seen as a “burden.” Entrepreneurs don’t realize that this burden is actually costing them over $200 billion in repeat sales, according to a recent study by the W. P. Carey School of Business. The report also indicates that customer problem experiences continue to increase, up four percent to 54 percent since the last study.

Everything about China is big, including its cancer problem. In some wealthier cities, like Beijing, cancer is now believed to be the most frequent killer. Air pollution, high rates of smoking, and notorious “cancer villages” scarred by industrial pollution are increasing death rates around the country. Liver cancer in particular is four times as prevalent as it is in the West, in part because one in 14 people in China carry hepatitis B, which puts them at risk. Of all the people worldwide who die of cancer each year, some 27 percent are Chinese.

Imagine the workplace during flu season. Some people get sick and display clear symptoms—a warning sign to coworkers to avoid contact and for that individual to stay home. Others are infected, but never or only belatedly exhibit the tell-tale signs of sickness, meaning they can infect coworkers without knowing it. If healthcare professionals had the ability to test in advance whether a person is likely to spread a disease following infection, they could recommend specific measures to treat the person or limit exposure and perhaps keep an outbreak from growing into an epidemic or pandemic.

Image: http://www.darpa.mil 

Roger Schank, an experienced computer and cognitive scientist with long experience in artificial intelligence research, is continually offended when media present simple tools like chatbots as examples of AI. “Key word analysis that enables responses previously written by people to be found and printed out, is not AI,” as Schank sees it. And he complains, “We are in a situation where machine learning is not about learning at all, but about massive matching capabilities to produce canned responses.”

Image: https://medium.com 

Niklas Östberg, an energetic 35-year-old Swede, is the CEO and cofounder of Delivery Hero. Based in Berlin and financed with venture-capital money, the company is built around an online platform that matches restaurants with hungry customers. Delivery Hero has grown to operate today in 33 markets across five continents, processing 14 million takeout orders each month and offering customers recommendations, as well as peer reviews of restaurants.

Aside from the general machinations with which every city must deal—schools, utilities, crime, etc.—the single effort, the single desire that seems to unite modern cities is the idea that local prosperity and economic invigoration can be realized through nurturing a movement that lures and retains tech companies, engineers and founders. The idea, of course, is that this will lead the way to more tech jobs, more local economic productivity, and more brains flowing into the metro, with the chance that the next Facebook or Microsoft takes root. No city, save the Bay Area, feels totally secure with its tech credentials. Tech-minded civic leaders are constantly searching for ways their city can continue to work at building out tech, and climb the ladder of significant tech metro areas.

As the home of Silicon Valley and global success stories from Apple to Uber, you'd think that if there was one ranking the U.S. was sure to top it would be a list of the most entrepreneurial countries. After all, entrepreneurship is as all American as apple pie, huge food portions, and loud talking, right? (Take it from me, an expat, we're known for all these things.)

Would you model your small business after a drug rehab clinic? When a colleague recently asked me that same question, my first thought was, “Wait, what?” I did a double take. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized just how many aspects of any small business could be improved by studying a rehab clinic’s best operational practices.

The Duke of York has insisted age is “no barrier” to becoming a successful entrepreneur, as he urged people of all ages to come forward with their ideas to his project helping start-up businesses.

The Duke said that anyone who has spotted “a problem that needs to be solved” has the germ of a business idea, but many people are put off because they do not know how to take the next step.

Image: The Duke of York talks to entrepreneurs at Buckingham Palace CREDIT: DAVID ROSE FOR THE TELEGRAPH

Ted Leonsis thought he'd won. He was in his mid-20s and had already sold his first company for tens of millions of dollars. 

Then he got on a plane with mechanical issues and, while preparing for a crash landing, realized how little he'd really accomplished to that point.

"I had at a young age a reckoning," Leonsis, the billionaire owner of the Washington Wizards and a former AOL exec, recalled in a Facebook Live interview with Mashable on Wednesday, which you can watch below.

Image: AP PHOTO/ALEX BRANDON

Urbanisation and today’s “digital” lifestyle promotes stress and a sense of alienation. Does nature hold the key to our inner peace and development?

Jasper wondered what was happening to him. It had been quite some time since he felt like his usual self. Ever since he had been promoted from managing director of a small-town bank branch, to a role in Treasury at its London head office, his mental state hadn’t been the same. He was anxious and restless. He missed his old country house, his daily walks with his dog in the woods, and being surrounded by nature. In London he was lucky if he managed a short walk in the nearest park, a subway’s stop away. And even then this only served to make his nostalgia for the woods more poignant.

Babson President Kerry Healey and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh just announced that the school would be launching the first global entrepreneur-in-residence (GEIR) program to be offered by a private university. The program, which will kick off in the fall, will help a select number of international entrepreneurs graduating from institutions throughout the region remain in the U.S. to work on their viable ventures.

“Babson believes that entrepreneurship is the most powerful force for social and economic good in the world today,” Healey said in front of 100 High Street in the Financial District, where the school will be expanding its Blank Center for Entrepreneurship.

Image: Mayor Walsh and Kerry Healey. Image via Olivia Vanni.

The Angel Capital Association’s latest research effort, the American Angel Campaign, highlights how woefully undiversified the typical angel investor is. The median angel made just two investments in 2015, the research effort’s initial analysis reveals, and had made only ten investments in his or her lifetime. This is a huge problem. As super-angel David S. Rose and others have highlighted, “A majority of all new, angel-backed companies fail completely, so if you invest in only one company, the odds are that you will LOSE ALL YOUR MONEY.”

Over the course of an hour, @MashBusiness covered an array of questions, ranging from the best ways to prepare yourself for delivering an effective speech, to ways to eliminate those pesky pre-speech jitters. 

Several public speaking experts shared their expertise on the topic including: Adam Grant, Wharton professor, op-ed writer for The New York Times and author of Originals and Give and Take; Amber L. Wright, corporate trainer and public speaking coach; Brian Tracy, chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International; Chris Anderson, curator of the TED conference and author of The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking; Chris Widener, author, leadership and influence expert; and Lauren Ferraro, public speaking coach to CEOs and senior executives. 

Americans tend to think of themselves as very entrepreneurial. After all, there’s Silicon Valley — home of Google, Facebook and Apple – and the rise of legendary entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Many more want to join their ranks: Sixty-six percent of American millennials want to start their own businesses, according to a recent Bentley University study. And deeper in the collective American consciousness lives the ingenuity and business acumen of the likes of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, inventors who changed the world.