CLEVELAND, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Recognizing the importance and impact of angel investment to the Northeast Ohio high-tech economy, JumpStart Inc. recently announced a new $1 million commitment to support the operations of the North Coast Angel Fund (NCAF) through 2022. With this announcement, the Cleveland-based venture development organizationwho helped underwrite the creation of NCAF in 2006has now committed a total of $4.1 million in operating support to the angel fund over 16 years.

As part of the planning process for Raleigh's 2030 Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2009, the City developed a map intended to highlight areas that "demonstrated a need for economic development intervention."

Seven years later, that map is getting an upgrade.

"One issue with the map," said Raleigh Planning Director Ken Bowers, "Is that is has fuzzy boundaries."

When I interview James Levine, appropriately enough it’s a walk-and-talk affair. Levine practically coined the phrase "sitting is the new smoking," so a couch or table conversation would not have felt right. And Levine hates sitting still. He takes any opportunity to fit a little more movement into the day, even if it means putting aside modern conveniences. Levine is someone who wouldn’t buy a Roomba if he could push around an old Hoover instead.

If you think the boss should have all the answers, you might be confused about what it means to be a good leader. As a general rule of thumb, every person hired should be smarter than the manager at what they’ve been hired to do, says Ian Siegel, cofounder and CEO of the employment platform ZipRecruiter. "If every manager at the company keeps doing that, you’ll end up with an elite team," he says. "That’s the dream."

Image: Photo: Flickr user University of Essex 

"The right word may be effective," Mark Twain once said, "but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause." Bold words for a writer—but Twain was dead-on.

In public speaking—or just about any verbal communication, really—timing is crucial. A pause can be much more than just a chance to catch your breath. Deployed the right way, it adds drama, weight, and clarity to your message. But if it's done wrong, your presentation may sound plodding or confused. Here are three ways to master the art of the pause in order to add impact.

Image: Photo: Flickr user ebrkut

- Announces New Investors in Accelerator -

ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND, March 24, 2016 – At its first Demo Day on March 23, Relevant Health, a health technology startup accelerator in the Washington, DC metro area, hosted a group of more than 150 investors, industry leaders and top technology company representatives to experience first-hand the progress of the accelerator’s seven health tech startups. Coming from Bethesda, Rockville, Washington, DC, Baltimore, New York City and Latvia, the startups are developing a wide range of health tech products and devices to meet the healthcare needs of a diverse patient population. The new accelerator is supported by BioHealth Innovation (BHI), ProductSavvy and Montgomery County Economic Development.

Relevant Health also announced yesterday its new line-up of investors, including: Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Maryland Department of Commerce, and the newly formed Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation, as well as other private angel investors.

As strange as it may seem, only a small percentage of Americans can legally invest in most startups today. Under long-standing rules governing who qualifies as a so-called “accredited investor,” only quite wealthy individuals (those make at least $200,000 in annual income or have $1 million in assets, excluding their home) can buy shares in a fast-growing, privately held company.

Angel investing is about a lot of things: Supporting startups, building companies, and, of course, creating a return for investors when they exit the investment.  There are three basic types of exits of angel-backed companies. The positive exit results from a startup acquisition or IPO; the negative exit happens when a company goes out of business; and then there’s the dreaded “stall,” where your money is stuck in limbo for the foreseeable future. In this case, the company has been in business for a while and has reached cash flow break-even, but isn’t growing or moving toward a positive exit. After several years it’s apparent that something needs to be done if investors want liquidity, but what?

Jim Goetz reigns atop the Midas List in 2016. A new group of challengers are looking to close the gap.

Goetz, a partner at Sequoia Capital, continues his run atop the list of 100 best venture investors due to his once-in-a-lifetime bet on WhatsApp. The VC spent months fighting to simply get a meeting with founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton and had to pass a battery of questions for the chance to put the first venture money into the messenger app in late 2012. Once in, he wouldn’t let go. Goetz solely handled all three of the startup’s funding rounds before Facebook FB -0.42% came calling to acquire WhatsApp for an eventual $22 billion less than two years later. That’s how you turn $60 million into $3 billion and return a nearly half-billion fund six times over.

As I approach the 10-year anniversary of HubSpot, the marketing and sales software firm of which I’m CEO, I’ve been reflecting back on the decisions I’ve made — both right and wrong. There has been a fair share of both. I’ve also been considering how my decision-making process has evolved as the company moved from an early-stage startup to a growth-stage scale-up. Understanding my own evolution in decision making and the tools I use today may help spare other scale-up leaders some unwanted headaches.

Innovation is the key to long-term business success, both in startups as well as established organizations. Yet every business and every entrepreneur I know struggles with this challenge, focused on hiring the right people and implementing the right process. Yet, in my experience the key seems to be more a discipline of innovative thinking from everyone, driven from the top.

When starting a company, you'll likely experience as many lows as you will highs. You need to make sure your founding team is ready to face those challenges as a united front and come out stronger on the other side. Finding the right match and establishing this kind of unstoppable team is no small feat. While there's no tried-and-true formula, here are three guidelines to choosing the right co-founders and building a strong partnership.

Erik Iverson, president of business and operations for the Infectious Disease Research Institute in Seattle, has been hired to head the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

Iverson will succeed Carl E. Gulbrandsen, who since 2000 has been managing director of WARF, the licensing and patenting organization for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He will start July 1, following Gulbrandsen's retirement on June 30.

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) general partner Harry Weller, a prominent East Coast investor that sits on a number of advisory boards for influential technology companies, is the only D.C. venture capitalist to make Forbes magazine's prestigious 2016 Midas List.

The list ranks VCs based on the savvy nature, timing and ultimately the profit accrued from their investments—other factors including first-day market capitalization of IPOs and the opinions of a panel of experts are also considered by Forbes. While the list is well known and widely publicized, some journalists have been critical of the Midas List's ranking system because it values startup investments that have yet to return money to investors.

Chip maker Intel has signaled a slowing of Moore’s Law, a technological phenomenon that has played a role in just about every major advance in engineering and technology for decades.

Since the 1970s, Intel has released chips that fit twice as many transistors into the same space roughly every two years, aiming to follow an exponential curve named after Gordon Moore, one of the company’s cofounders.

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com

Keeping up with the latest digital trends is increasingly important as businesses fight to maintain competitive advantage and ensure strategic objectives are met.

The digital space is evolving both locally and internationally as consumers become more discerning about the products and messaging they choose to engage with.

These top trends provide businesses with further insight into the digital landscape and are worth examining as they relate to the growth and reach of your enterprise.

Wanderlust is a brilliant and terrible thing. Brilliant, when you’re on a boat in the Med plotting your next destination, and terrible, when you’re sat in an office mashing out articles all day. We get it, and that’s why we love 360 degree video.

Essentially, 360 degree video encapsulates a scene in its entirety, and isn’t simply limited to the scope of a forward-facing lens.

Cruise Automation had quietly raised money via AngelList.

General Motors GM -1.50% earlier this month said that it had agreed to acquire Cruise Automation, a San Francisco-based developer of autonomous vehicle technology, for what Fortune reported was more than $1 billion in cash and stock. The deal was a giant step toward mass-produced self-driving cars but, what we didn’t realize at the time, is that it also was a huge milestone for equity crowdfunding. In short, it is the equity crowdfunding market’s first-ever $1 billion exit.

Innovation is the key to long-term business success, both in startups as well as established organizations. Yet every business and every entrepreneur I know struggles with this challenge, focusing on hiring the right people and implementing the right process. Yet, in my experience the key seems to be more a discipline of innovative thinking from everyone, driven from the top.

It's no mere hypothesis that collaboration in the lab can advance science. Exciting discoveries tend to be based on collective research conducted over time. With pipelines in need of new discoveries, it's no wonder that so many life sciences organizations are investing in lab design that facilitates interaction. But what's been observed less — until now — is the influence of energizing interactions and experiences that take place outside the laboratory walls.