In 2012, Mark Crawford, known for classy suits and a shoe collection that would make Michael Jordan jealous, made a leap of faith when he joined Invest Nebraska Corporation to manage the venture development organization’s deployment of more than $2 million per year.

He had spent the previous 15 years working on the East Coast in Boston and Washington, DC, as an analyst, associate, and managing principal for venture capital, mid-cap, mezzanine lending and leverage buy-out shops. At previous jobs Mark led private equity transactions in excess of $125 million and participated in many more.

Image: Photo courtesy of Invest Nebraska. 

As the presidential candidates shift toward the general election, voters will hear divergent plans to address the problem of “too big to fail” financial institutions. The real threat to Wall Street, however, doesn’t come from politicians, but from startups that are disrupting financial services at an unprecedented pace.

Almost every employee or team member can remember that one special boss in their career who was the role model of a leader, always commanded respect, and was able to get the most voluntarily from everyone all the time. Every entrepreneur and business executive I know wants to emulate that boss, but most don’t can’t even describe the attributes required.

Silicon Valley might be losing its sex appeal.

Workers in the tech industry are increasingly craving stability and — gasp! — work-life balance over the get-rich-or-die-trying startup culture. That's according to new statistics from recruiting platform Woo, which surveyed 5,000 tech professionals.

Workers in the survey lowered their salary expectations by 12.6% from Q4 in 2015 to Q1 in 2016, effectively shedding almost $20,000 in how much they expect to take home. (The Woo study relies on self-reported results.)

Image: JEFF CHIU/ASSOCIATED PRESS 

With college football season in full swing, it’s easy to get caught up rating your alma mater by tallying up the win and loss columns. Between BCS rankings and March Madness, we seem to be constantly ranking our universities on achievements in athletics. Maybe we should also rank our favorite institutions of higher learning based on how they contribute to the nation’s economic growth. After all, the core aim of universities across the country is to increase the intellectual capital of society.

Image: http://pitchbook.com 

A friend of mine asked me to share my opinion on where the current presidential candidates stand on entrepreneurship. It struck me that despite the 24/7 political coverage, there is surprisingly little information to be had on this topic.

True, there is some campaign talk on topics entrepreneurs should care about such as lower taxes, less regulation or immigration reform. There are plenty of red meat issues being provided by both sides of the political spectrum that are emotive and many of them are expressed through a prism of business and entrepreneurship.

Image: Photo courtesy of Jonathan Aberman

A researcher who studies human connection, Brene Brown did a TED talk in 2010 about her findings in the areas of vulnerability. When it went crazy viral, she started receiving speaking requests, many of them from the business community. It makes sense: as Brown says in a later talk, vulnerability is a force that brings about creativity, innovation and change.

You’ve worked hard to get your business where it is, and maybe you’re okay staying small. But I encourage you to consider what your brand would look like if it did grow. Maybe you could afford to hire more employees, taking a lot of the workload and stress off of your own back. Maybe you could offer more products or solutions to your customers. Maybe growing would help you establish yourself as a dominant leader in your industry.

Today, I’m in Pittsburgh—a city with a long and storied tradition of innovation. For many, Pittsburgh is most closely associated with a time gone by—the industrial revolution and related businesses that got their start near the turn of the last century, names and brands such as Carnegie, Mellon, Westinghouse, ALCOA and more. Following the rise and dominance of many companies in this sector, as the 20th century drew to a close, Pittsburgh came to represent the fall of a once powerful industry. Indeed, as a result of the decline in the steel industry and the downturn in the national economy, many once-prosperous Pittsburgh communities turned into the picture of urban blight. Until now.

The revitalization of former rustbelt areas is bringing new competitiveness to the United States and Europe. Former centers of industry have become centers of innovation: brainbelts. Over two years, we visited many of these areas around the world. We expected to find crumbling industrial sites, to drive through dilapidated neighborhoods, to meet with people struggling hard to keep their heads above water. But instead what we discovered blew those images out of our heads.

During the mid-2000s, when emerging markets were growing at breakneck speed, the cavernous gap separating industrial and developing economies began to close. This convergence took place against a backdrop of economic liberalization, built on the idea that the financial systems of all nations would dovetail.

That period is now over. Emerging nations are no longer growing as rapidly as they were, particularly in comparison with developed economies; further, the fissures among different systems have become more evident. In PwC’s 19th Annual Global CEO Survey, only 35 percent of the corporate leaders who responded said they believe the world is moving toward greater economic union.

For the first time since the worst months of the Great Recession in 2009, not one tech company went public last quarter.

Much like the water levels in Californian lakes and reservoirs in the past few years, the initial public offering market in tech has dried up drastically. Just two years ago, 62 tech companies went public. After high hopes in the beginning of 2015, the global economy’s slowdown—most notably seen in China’s dropping stock market—has stalled the march of tech companies listing their stocks for sale in a public market.

Image: http://www.newsweek.com 

Nearly a century after James Truslow Adams coined the phrase, the “American dream” has become a staple of presidential campaign speeches. Kicking off her 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton told supporters that “we need to do a better job of getting our economy growing again and producing results and renewing the American dream.” Marco Rubio lamented that “too many Americans are starting to doubt” that it is still possible to achieve the American dream, and Ted Cruz asked his supporters to “imagine a legal immigration system that welcomes and celebrates those who come to achieve the American dream.” Donald Trump claimed that “the American dream is dead” and Bernie Sanders quipped that for many “the American dream has become a nightmare.”

In my post last week, I looked at the transformation underway in the early-stage investment sector, looking at how the rise of angel investing has many benefits for both entrepreneurs and the cities and states that reap economic rewards from successful new ventures. We continue the conversation this week by looking at future trends in the investment field that might influence ways in which national, state and local policymakers are trying to encourage and support angel investors.

Michael Graham still recalls the side project that launched his career in security. An analyst at a major transportation company, he installed a series of open source network intrusion detection devices — a brand new technology set at the time — and started to rebuild the underlying OS to get them functional. His goal was to capture enough traffic to more clearly diagnose recent network issues. Two weeks later, the infamous computer worm Code Red struck. While the technology that tracked packages and planes was intact, almost the entire corporate network went down. While the company began working on isolating and containing the problem, he started digging into his project’s nascent early logging system. He found the contractor laptop — sitting two floors beneath him — from which the initial infection originated.

The nature of disruption is changing. In the past, disruption occurred at the level of discrete product and service technologies that competed to offer better value for customers (e.g., 2.5-inch vs. 3.5-inch disk drives; LCD vs. CRT television; online vs. brick-and-mortar banks). Today, it is occurring at the level of ecosystems.

The Internet of Things is a good example of this change. Every industry, no matter how traditional — agriculture, automotive, aviation, energy — is being upended by the addition of sensors, internet connectivity, and software. Success in this environment will depend on more than just creating better digital-enabled products; it will depend on building ecosystem-level strategies that encompass the many moving pieces that come together to create the new value proposition.

Being an entrepreneur isn't easy.

Whether you're just starting, recently got some funding, or gearing for a big launch, it's tough. Period. The temptation of giving up and throwing-in the proverbial white towel is ever present.

However, history is littered with examples of ordinary people who went on to do extraordinary things in their lives. Reading their words might make you feel if they could do it, it's possible for you too.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.in

Everyone dreams of owning their own business.

Whether it’s the allure of working for yourself, or the stream of TV shows that glamourize the world of entrepreneurship flooding the networks, startups are "en vogue".

If you’re committed to running your own business, then where should you start?

Well, start with the basics and walk through these simple eight steps used by some of the world’s titans of the industry. 

No one hits the gym hoping for so-so results. You go in wanting to get 100% out of every rep, run and hard-earned bead of sweat. Fortunately for you, scientists and researchers want the same thing. Here, 13 incredibly efficient strategies, courtesy of the latest research, to get the biggest benefit out of every one of your workouts.

1. Lift weights “If you just do cardio, you’re sabotaging yourself,” says Jacob Wilson, Ph.D., certified strength and conditioning specialist and associate editor of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. “Your metabolism will actually go down, making weight loss more difficult.

Image: http://motto.time.com

“We need to act more like entrepreneurs, but those guys are nuts.”

—a real quote from a Fortune 100 CEO

In 2007, a friend and client at a Fortune 100 company asked me if I knew of an entrepreneur who could come in and present to her executive leadership team. She wanted them to experience first-hand how entrepreneurs think. My buddy Mike Michalowicz—a serial entrepreneur and genuinely funny guy—agreed to spend some time with the team. The meeting, while enjoyable, left both sides of the table scratching their heads. Mike was struck by the cautious and guarded nature of the group, and the executives viewed Mike as a curious anomaly.