How many potential scientists - and scientific discoveries - are we losing by teaching science in boring ways? If crowdfunding site Experiment is anything to go by, it might be a whole generation.

“You can fund a dinosaur fossil excavation, a (sic) historical study of medieval monasteries, or an experiment on the International Space Station. If it helps unlock new knowledge, then we can fund it,” says the site. Anyone can begin a project. The only caveat is that they have to openly and consistently share their progress, data, and results with backers for the duration of the project -- warts, setbacks and all.

Image: http://bigthink.com

Title III crowdfunding will join the other two variants of investment crowdfunding, Title II and Title IV (Reg A+) this coming May to create a more vibrant capital ladder for companies seeking to raise capital using the internet. While no exemption is perfect, both accredited crowdfunding and Reg A+ have seen growing utilization across the US.  Title III is viewed by some within the industry as critically flawed while others believe it will emerge slowly as participants adapt and find ways to accommodate the most challenging aspects of the exemption.  Several of the existing investment crowdfunding platforms have already messaged their intent to add Title III to their portfolio of options for issuing firms. Now we have some insight into what type of participation we may expect this coming May.

Image: http://www.crowdfundinsider.com

More and more, pharma companies are making real bets in digital health, and reorganizing their businesses to put some power behind those efforts. The space is, in some ways, quieter than it was this time last year, but there’s reason to believe that quiet is a calm before a storm of activity, driven more by pharma’s tendency to keep early-stage projects close to the chest than by a lack of activity. The executives we spoke to for this report talked about initiatives with real potential for broad commercialization.

Yale University’s endowment apparently knows a thing or two about investing in venture capital.

The $25.6 billion endowment has gained an average of 93% per year on its VC investments over the past 20 years thanks to buying early stakes in tech companies that went on to become dominant in their fields, including Amazon AMZN 0.54% , Google GOOGL -0.27% , Facebook FB -2.68% , and LinkedIn LNKD -3.55% , the university revealed in its latest annual report. The investments were made through top VC firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark, and Greylock Partners, Yale said.

This weekend I’m co-hosting the Reboot.io VC Bootcamp at my house in Boulder. It starts tonight and goes through mid-day Sunday. It’s an experiment with Jerry Colonna and about 15 other VCs to see if the Reboot.io bootcamp construct works with VCs, where the tag line for the experience is:

Practical Skills + Radical Self-Inquiry + Shared Experiences = Enhanced Leadership + Greater Resiliency

It’s either going to be valuable to this group or not. We’ll know more on Monday. The only way to learn is to try.

Nearly 40% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes, with about 1.7 million of those cases expected in 2016 in the United States (according to the National Cancer Institute). These patients are hoping for better treatments and, hopefully someday, cures. They could also be valuable resources, helping experts develop better therapies, if only staff at research centers like Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston could study their unique cases. Even patients with the same diagnosis, such as breast cancer, have different genetic makeups, both in their healthy cells and in their tumors. These differences provide clues to new genetic factors that may cause the disease, why some patients respond especially well to certain treatments, why some tumors are so resistant to treatment, and how people of different ages or ethnicities are affected.

Image: Flickr user Tim Sheerman-Chase

Last year, I moved to Europe to work in a growth stage venture capital fund. Having invested in tech companies in India and the US before, I expected the European tech ecosystem to be much smaller in comparison. However, the last year has been eye-opening. The European tech industry has more scale and intricacies than you might think.

By now, we all know the varied challenges created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — device tax introduction, reimbursement contraction, provider and payer consolidation,  and pricing compression, just to name a few. But several years ago, the ACA’s potential impact was only speculation. We were looking into our educated crystal balls, but we didn’t have the data to see what trends would develop, or what those trends could lead to in the coming decade. Now, part of that picture is starting to take shape.

Baseball season is here and with it comes stadiums full of unique, caloric delights that are bound to encase your heart in a meaty shell of delicious fat.

Stadiums across the U.S. seem to be competing for top dog when it comes to the classic ballpark frank. Menu items range from churro dogs — a churro wrapped in a doughnut and topped with ice cream, chocolate and caramel sauce — to corn dogs that are 18-dinches long.

Image: http://mashable.com/

Architect Amy Slattery pondered some tough questions before she struck out on her own. Her approach could help other potential entrepreneurs.

Image: Amy Slattery - http://www.bizjournals.com

Many people don't believe we can run an online business alone, are you one of them?

I believe, we can be a solopreneur (solo entrepreneur) because many bloggers started as a solo blogger/entrepreneur. It's true they need Virtual Assistants, personal secretaries and many have in house content writers and marketers but that's because they have tone of work and they can't do it alone. 

What do you think? Are you a solopreneur? Do you think solo entrepreneurship is a myth?

Equity crowdfunding has been up and running for a year in Texas, but the number of closed deals has been pretty slim.

Since February 2015, just $1.2 million has been raised for 24 deals, about 20 percent of what was sought, according the Texas State Securities Board. The projects range from a hair salon to a snore center expansion, drilling in the Permian Basin to building a senior living facility in Cedar Hill.

Xconomy Texas —  San Antonio —  Most research institutions or universities have at least one success story, a medicine or therapy developed there that made a big impact. Some have many.

For the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, a 70-year-old nonprofit biomedical-focused institute with 56 researchers on staff based in Oklahoma City, OK, what first comes to mind is Alexion and its blockbuster monoclonal antibody treatment, Solaris. Alexion (NASDAQ: ALXN) is a New Haven, CT-based company and researchers at the Oklahoma foundation made scientific discoveries that led to the development of Solaris, a treatment for rare disorders, says Stephen Prescott, president of the foundation.

Image: http://www.xconomy.com

With the availability of high-speed Internet and social media access around the world, it’s easy for entrepreneurs to assume that the world is just one big homogeneous market, and project their business will scale accordingly. Nothing could be further from the truth. Large businesses, as well as small, still fail often by not addressing the very real cultural, economic and political differences.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Two new videos let you relive SpaceX's incredible rocket landing at sea, giving two different perspectives of the historic event — including a stunning rocket's-eye view.

On Friday (April 8), SpaceX brought the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket down for a soft landing on a robotic "drone ship" in the Atlantic Ocean during the successful launch of the company's Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station. SpaceX soon released two videos, which were captured by cameras aboard the booster stage and a monitoring "chase plane," respectively. We combined the two short clips into one awesome video of the SpaceX rocket landing here.

Image: http://www.space.com

April Fool’s Day was this week. Did anyone have a good prank played on them or come across a good corporate April Fool’s?

My favorite this year was from my alma mater, the University of Oregon. Go Ducks!

We try to think a little differently at the University of Oregon and specialize in helping the world run a little faster (and more comfortably), and with some of Nike’s founder behind the football team, why shouldn’t they have the world’s most advanced field, say, an LED field?

Image: http://www.innovationexcellence.com

PHOENIX – Arizona’s bioscience industry continues to grow, but a small venture-capital stream and declining research funding pose challenges, according to a new report by the Flinn Foundation, a Phoenix-based organization that supports research and business activity in the sector.

Despite increases in wages and number of businesses, Arizona saw a lower percentage of national bioscience investment in 2015 than in 2002 – when the organization began tracking these economic indicators – although the industry’s share of venture capital increased slightly from 2014. Most of that money went to expanding or late-stage companies instead of startups.

Reinventing Michigan’s economy as a more nimble player in the entrepreneurial arena takes money, a lot of it. Fortunately, Michigan is seeing a growing amount of venture capital cash invested in the state’s start-up firms.

The annual report from the Michigan Venture Capital Association offers some fairly impressive reasons for optimism about the backing entrepreneurs can find now.

Image: Michigan Venture Capital Assn

A new law will make it easier to attract much-needed private investment to Arizona by removing unnecessary state regulation of venture-capital funds, backers say.

The legislation, SB 1005, essentially exempts venture-capital managers from state laws requiring registration of “investment advisers,” which includes professionals who advise individuals such as financial planners and some stockbrokers.

Image: Hunter Marrow/Cronkite News Service

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