In 1996, two PhD candidates at Stanford University began to collaborate on a research project called Backrub, which delved into the mathematics of the World Wide Web. In the same way that citations are used to rank papers in academic publishing, BackRub kept track of the number of links to a particular website and used an algorithm to rank those links in order of importance.

The following year, Larry Page and Sergey Brin renamed their project Google. Fast-forward to today, and what started as a humble dissertation project has evolved into the world’s most valuable public company.

It’s well known that the United States has the largest economy in the world. In reality, however, the U.S. is made up of many much smaller economies, each with unique inputs, advantages and challenges. You see this diversity in the way changing fortunes in one industry can boost or bust an individual state, in the way regions vote in presidential elections and even in the type of home you can get for a in one place versus another.

If you want a snapshot of the state of the tech bubble in Silicon Valley, take a look at the 2016 CNBC Disruptor 50 list. The fourth annual ranking profiles the most innovative private companies in the world that are shaking up industries and causing major paradigm shifts that affect every corner of society (see methodology here). This year 28 of the total are Silicon Valley upstarts. The rest are from other U.S. cities, and five are found abroad.

Image: http://www.cnbc.com

Within the field of finance, perhaps nothing is more intriguing than a startup. In fact, HBO created a hit TV show called "Silicon Valley" in which a genius but shy developer creates a music app called Pied Piper.

Once the app was discovered to contain a revolutionary data compression algorithm, venture capital firms flocked to invest in the new startup, as its uses extend way beyond a simple music app.

The fictional company made it appear easy to land funding from venture capitalists. So how hard is it in reality?

Wheezing unicorns may get a breath of fresh air from initial public offerings.

Unicorns, those technology start-ups like the cloud computing firms Twilio and Nutanix that have a valuation of $1 billion or more, risk running short of cash as venture capital dries up. The recent revival of I.P.O.s could offer them new hope. Company valuations may drop, but that beats the alternative of a suddenly thinning herd.

After 17 years in sales and marketing with AT&T, I decided it was time to strike out on my own. It was 2002 and I'd come up with a new twist on an older real estate technology. But just two years later, I'd pretty much run through all my savings trying to put it into action. I was running on fumes, and my new company needed some funding fast.

Or maybe it was even worse than that. I met my future CFO, Paul, during a charity golf event. I asked him to peek at my books, business plan, and just-finished product.

Image: :Flickr user kizzzbeth

The most powerful word in negotiations is "fair." It’s so powerful that I call it the "F-word." Here’s why it’s so powerful, when to use it, and how.

FAIRNESS ON THE MIND As human beings, we’re powerfully swayed by how much we feel we’re being respected. People comply with agreements if they feel they’ve been treated fairly and lash out if they don’t.

Image: Flickr user toffehoff

Every year, venture capitalist and former securities analyst Mary Meeker and her team put together one of the most anticipated PowerPoint files — the Internet Trends report.

At this year’s Code conference, she delivered 213 data-dense slides in 24 minutes and 40 seconds. Yes, you read that right.

Each year after the report is released, I’m approached by many well-meaning fans asking for a comment because they think she’s breaking every rule in the book by not simplifying her slides. In contrast, I love her delivery and her slides. (I can hear you gasping.) Because it's Mary being her genuine, whip-smart self, delivering incredible insights backed up with proof.

Startups don’t last forever -- they either mature into sustainable businesses, get merged into another business or acquired, or sadly join the 50 percent or more that fail in the first five years. Very few startup founders even want to stick around for the long haul, since their passion and expertise is in creating a new business, not managing people issues and repeatable processes.

Let us guess. Your mornings go something like this: Alarm blares, you hit snooze. Alarm blares, you hit snooze. And then, once you’ve looked at the clock to realize that you’re ridiculously late, you jump up in a blind panic, spray some dry shampoo through your hair and dart out the door.

More than half of Americans regularly hit the snooze button, according to a survey from the French tech firm Withings. And apart from potentially ruining your morning, hitting snooze can interfere with your sleep quality down the line—leading to even more snooze button hitting, says Dr. Peter A. Fotinakes, medical director of the St. Joseph Hospital Sleep Center.

No one wants to walk with a walker, but age has a way of making people compromise on their quality of life. The team behind Superflex, which spun out of SRI International in May, thinks there could be another way.

The company is building wearable robotic suits, plus other types of clothing, that can make it easier for soldiers to carry heavy loads or for elderly or disabled people to perform basic tasks. A current prototype is a soft suit that fits over most of the body. It delivers a jolt of supporting power to the legs, arms, or torso exactly when needed to reduce the burden of a load or correct for the body’s shortcomings.

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com

Rule Breaker Investing is back with Great Quotes Vol. 2, and host David Gardner is sharing four of his favorite quotes.

Find out what Walt Whitman can teach us about investing, how The IT Crowd is pushing geek culture into the mainstream, what Warren Buffett's 3 I's of every business cycle (innovators, imitators, and idiots) can teach us about the hype cycle, and how one of David Gardner's own quotes can show us how to make money in the stock market even when it goes down one out of every three years.

TOKYO -- When Toyota Motor took its new ultracompact three-wheeled electric vehicle for a test spin on the streets of Tokyo recently, it was to offer the public a glimpse of its vision of the future -- both in the way people travel in cities and how products are made.

What sets the i-Road apart from other vehicles, aside from its specs, is that it will not be churned out en masse on a typical assembly line, but on-demand using 3-D printers. The idea is to give buyers the freedom of customizing their vehicles. Using a 3-D printer means the carmaker can tweak colors and shapes unit by unit. Someone wants wood-grain paneling? Fire up the printer.

Image: http://asia.nikkei.com/

The rate of entrepreneurship in the U.S. rose last year, ending a decline that began in 2010, according to a study by the Kauffman Foundation, which researches entrepreneurship.

Kauffman counted 310 new entrepreneurs per 100,000 adults, up about 10 percent from 280 in 2014. The 2015 figure translates into about 530,000 new business owners each month.

Entrepreneurship slowed as a result of the recession, not only due to caution from would-be entrepreneurs, but also because loan and investor money has been harder to come by. Other loan issues have held back entrepreneurs: Home-equity lines of credit that many people used in the past to start companies have shrunk as bankers grew more leary.

If you’re like pretty much every business owner I’ve ever met, you can’t stomach the idea of abandoning your business. But if an accident or illness knocks you off your feet, and you’re not prepared for it, you can go from six-figure monthly revenues to squat overnight. And yet, you’ll still need to pay your mortgage, business vendors and payroll. Can you do it? If you don’t have a backup plan, turn the page -- you’ll find the three financial steps you should take today to protect you tomorrow.

A question I often get as an adviser is whether or not to join a business incubator or accelerator as a way to move forward faster and smarter and increase the odds of business success. The simple answer is always yes, but like any other resource, finding the right one depends on your implementation stage, your own expertise, and what’s available in your geographic area.

IT PAYS to listen very closely when entrepreneur Jack Delosa talks.

The Pyrmont resident has been listed in the BRW Young Rich List since 2014 and founded The Entourage, an education institution for entrepreneurs.

He has also worked with big names including Sir Richard Branson and knows lots about business success and failure.

Image: Jack Delosa says people like Sir Richard Branson can teach us lots about being comfortable with failures.

It's not just millions that big name entrepreneurs bring to a fledgling business but also timely tips, motivational messages and access to clients often very different from the assistance institutional investors provide

When Dhruvil Sanghvi, co-founder of logis tics analytics startup LogiNext, looked for funding last year, it came from two serial entrepreneurs: Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and MAIA Intelligence founder Sanjay Mehta.Sharma put in $10 million, but for Sanghvi, a serial entrepreneur, what was more valuable than the money was the experience and expertise Sharma and Mehta brought to his business.

Too many entrepreneurs tell me they are looking for an investor, and can’t differentiate between venture capital (VC) investors versus accredited Angel investors. They argue that the color of the money is the same from either source. They fail to realize that the considerations are quite different for each, which can make or break their investment efforts, and ultimately their startup.

Too often, it seems, the mark of a “good” scientist is the ability to give an excruciatingly embarrassing and incomprehensible scientific presentation – the sort of presentations that litter academic conferences.