Every entrepreneur I know has their favorite excuse for a previous failure – an investor backed out, the economy took a downturn, or a supplier delivered bad quality. These things outside your control do happen, but based on my years of experience as a startup advisor and angel investor, I still see too many shortcuts leading to failure that are inside the entrepreneur decision realm.

Every decision you make in the business world has some sort of risk attached. The key to being successful in the long run is taking calculated risks that minimize negatives and maximize positive outcomes. Have you mastered taking calculated risks, or are you still working on it?

Foolish vs. Calculated Risk Taking

All risks are not created equal. There are big differences between foolish risks and calculated risks. The key is to learn how to decipher one from the other.

Bad hires are expensive based on an interesting survey performed by CareerBuilder revealing that 41 percent of companies estimate that a bad hire costs more than $25,000; 25 percent of companies said a bad hire costs more than $50,000. And the higher the position, the higher those numbers become. Besides such costs, which are extraordinarily high — and which can be avoided — there are other contributing elements: ones measured not in dollars but in lost productivity, impact on team morale, and total time wasted in recruiting, onboarding, and training the new employee. Certainly there are several other negative factors as well. Many would agree that an improved hiring process could minimize if not eliminate altogether such avoidable expenses.

The CrowdfundingHub, based in the Netherlands, has published a report on the state of the crowdfunding industry in 27 different European countries. The organization worked with 30 different individuals across Europe to produce the report. The release, coordinated with an event that took place last week, highlights the status of crowdfunding in each of the countries providing a unique insight into the pan-European ecosystem.

Image: http://www.crowdfundinsider.com

Last year was the year of the "unicorn" — private technology-driven startups that reached a valuation of $1 billion or more.

But tech and startup investment is going to be defined by a very different beast in 2016 — the cockroach.

"Everything is about resiliency now to weather the storm," says Tim McSweeney, a director at technology-focused merchant bank Restoration Partners. "Unicorn, it's a mythical beast, whereas a cockroach, it can survive a nuclear war."

Image: Amazon Chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos samples cooked cockroach at the 110th Explorers Club Annual Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, March 15, 2014. - http://www.businessinsider.com

Things may have changed a lot in Silicon Valley since Steve Wozniak first conceived the idea the Apple computer, but he hasn't lost any of his fervent enthusiasm for new technology.

Mashable sat down with the Apple co-founder this past weekend at Silicon Valley's first Comic Con for a wide-ranging conversation covering everything from his trouble remembering faces (and how augmented reality might eventually help) to the state of Silicon Valley today to his favorite apps.

Image: ASSOCIATED PRESS/JEFF CHIU

American universities awarded 54,070 research doctorates in 2014, the highest total in the 58 years that the National Science Foundation has sponsored the Survey of Earned Doctorates, a new edition of which was released Friday.

But while more doctorates are being awarded, the figures also point to transitions and concerns in graduate education.

Increasingly, the pool of doctoral degrees coming out of American universities is dominated by science and engineering Ph.D.s. Their numbers were up 2 percent in 2014, compared to the prior year, while all other research doctorates were down by 2 percent. With those changes, science and engineering Ph.D.s make up 75 percent of all doctorates awarded in 2014. 

Image: https://www.insidehighered.com

May 11, 2016

5:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

The MITRE Corporation

McLean Campus, MITRE 2

7515 Colshire Drive

McLean, VA 22102

Please join us at the MITRE Corporation on the evening of May 11, 2016, for an event that will bring together cyber technology providers, entrepreneurs, investment companies, and others interested in hearing about the latest in available cyber technologies and products.

Reasons to attend:

Discover emerging technologies that could be game changers Hear pitches and get demos on innovative technologies from MITRE and other regional companies Learn about U.S. government's need in the cyber domain Network with individuals, investors and companies impacting the region's technology ecosystem Check-in and hors d'oeuvres begin at 5:00 p.m., program begins at 5:30 p.m.

The MITRE Corporation is located near the Metro Silver Line McLean station.

Contact the MITRE Technology Transfer Office at 703-983-6053 or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for questions.

Nationally recognized entrepreneur and venture capital investor Paul Singh is coming to New Mexico as part of his North American Tech Tour.

While in New Mexico, he will visit Taos, Los Alamos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Singh is currently an entrepreneur in residence with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He has overseen investments in more than 500 businesses in 35 countries, founded Disruption Corporation and was a partner at 500 Startups, a “super angel” fund headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Spend some time with your friends around the braai and everyone, at some stage, wants to do their own thing and venture off into Entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, less than 6% of the population ever will. Why is that?

Business is relatively simple and there are enough examples of success out there to make it a worthwhile risk to undertake. Most people however know of the other part of the equation and the failures and difficulties. Perhaps that holds them back. Either way business IS simple but not always easy. The biggest factor in its success is you, the owner, and that’s sometimes the hardest part.

US-based investor Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVC) is all set to launch India-focussed $50 Mn (INR 332.6 Cr.) early-stage investment fund to back enterprise software internet and mobile-focused startups.

The VC firm is led by serial entrepreneur and investor Anjli Jain. Besides focusing on startups operating in the education sector, the firm will also back early-stage ventures in the internet of things (IoT), ad-tech, ecommerce, wearables, and gaming segments. It will invest between $100K to $5 Mn in startups, while its accelerator could invest between $5K to $100K in exchange for equity in the ventures.

Facebook recently hosted its 50th hackathon. It was the stuff of Silicon Valley lore: Employees from across the company took a break from their regular projects to develop mind-blowing ideas about artificial intelligence over an intense 24-hour period. Late-night thinkers enjoyed a 1AM meal to refuel.

Inevitably, not all of the final pitches were winners but, to Facebook, the potential for uncovering groundbreaking innovations is worth pulling a couple hundred engineers away from their everyday tasks. After all, its past hackathons have given rise to wildly popular features, such as its instant messaging feature Facebook Chat and Instagram’s time-lapse tool Hyperlapse.

During a time when many retailers are struggling, business is booming at Target. But it wasn’t too long ago that the discount retailer’s future didn’t glow so bright. When CEO Brian Cornell took the reins two years ago, he inherited a company that had been struggling for years, taking far too few risks, and sticking too close to the core.

Since then the world has fallen in love with a far edgier Target, which has expanded its offerings through collaborations with such power brands as Lilly Pulitzer, Toms, Neiman Marcus, and SoulCycle, and updated product lines that break the status quo, like its latest gender-neutral kids home brand Pillowfort. But Cornell didn’t start right out of the gate making any big changes like these. Instead, he took time to carefully contemplate his approach, listen to his team, and ask questions.

Whenever I hear or see the word “innovation,” a feeling of nausea washes over me. Unlike other cliché buzzwords (synergy, paradigm shift, value-add, etc.) that I have forced myself to accept, I’m afraid “innovation” is one I may never be able to stomach.

The word is the corporate equivalent of Valleyspeak linguistic fillers such as “like”, “totally”, or “bro.”  It is devoid of meaning but used liberally by executives, journalists, and even politicians.

I wanted to depart from just focusing on extolling innovation within this post – a sort of sound off, of sorts.

It seems in all I keep reading that we are being extorted to disrupt our enterprises before someone else does.

The constant threat of both those ‘known to us’ and those ‘unknown competitors’ who can simply raise money based on a disruptive concept, provide a different business model and then attack tomorrow leaves us with not a comfortable feeling does it?

When it comes to going public, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

The first quarter of 2016 saw no technology IPOs on U.S. markets, according to a report released last week by research firm Dealogic. The last time this was happened was seven years ago, in the months following the collapse of Lehman Brothers as the Great Recession was getting underway.

Image: http://venturebeat.com

What do Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and a gazillion other digital platforms have in common? They all treat usernames like a baby treats a diaper instead of the precious and lucrative resource they are.

Because usernames are dished out using an archaic first-come, first-served model, early adopters snag the dictionary-friendly handles. Everyone else gets smacked with alphanumeric nonsense. Soon perfidy and confusion take over as the black hats win and power users settle for names like “boogie2988”, “Rclbeauty101”, and “realDonaldTrump” even while “boogie”, “beauty”, and “trump” languish.

Image: http://venturebeat.com

There’s a new twist in America’s 20-plus-year outsourcing narrative. U.S. companies have historically looked to India for cost-effective programming talent, and more recently to Eastern Europe for mobile development. But these days, more and more IT jobs are being outsourced in a new direction: south.

A number of trends in Latin America have created a growing pool of IT talent. The continent’s 400 million-strong population has seen Internet usage grow by 1644.3 percent over the last 15 years, with an Internet penetration rate in 2015 of 61 percent (the global average is 45 percent). There’s also a growing number of startups (a.k.a. “TechnoLatinas”) in the region. Programs like Startup Chile have backed over 1,000 startups, while Colombian business development bank Bancoldex has raised $500 million to spur economic development through young companies.

With spring upon us, businesses and college students are thinking about summer internships. 

According to Glassdoor, an intern can expect to earn on average a salary that's on par with a $33,120-a-year job, or about $2,760 per month.

But for interns at tech companies, the pay can be much, much higher.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

Knowing something bad is coming is more bearable than uncertainty

People like to know what’s coming for them, even if it’s bad, a new study suggests. A small study published Tuesday found that people are more stressed out when there is the possibility they will experience discomfort as opposed to when they knew for sure something bad is coming.

In the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, people were shown a bunch of rocks and were asked to guess whether a snake was underneath them. When a snake was under the rock, the men and women received an electric shock on the back of their hand. The researchers measured how stressed the individuals felt and looked at physical markers of stress like pupil dilation and sweat. They found that most of the men and women felt more stressed when they were uncertain, compared to when they knew definitively the shock was coming.