It’s an unusual move for a U.S. startup to go public in Canada, rather than taking venture capital money. But that’s exactly what Frankly Inc. did last year, engineering a reverse merger to list on the TSX Venture Exchange. (For my interview with Frankly CEO Steve Chung, see here.) But what exactly is the TSX Venture Exchange, and what does an entrepreneur need to know about it?

For starters, the TSX Venture Exchange is part of TMX Group, parent of the Toronto Stock Exchange. But it’s the junior exchange, designed to help small and early-stage companies gain access to capital. The roots of the exchange lie in Canada’s natural resources – oil and gas, mining, etcetera – a Wild West sector subject to booms and busts. But in recent years, TMX has worked to bring in more companies in other industries, especially technology.

Owning a company sounds glamourous. The press features. The recognition. The financial independence. The passion for the job. The scheduling freedom.

When you’re a student entrepreneur, people often treat you as if you were an anomaly. After all, you are double-timing class with being a CEO. From the outside, that looks pretty cool. And from the perspective of a student entrepreneur, it can be. I love my job at Spire & Co., a resource to help young woman live their smartest, most confident lives. I love my business. I love the people I get to work with on that business. And I love doing it while being a student.

Social media has changed the way we communicate and has created an opportunity for entrepreneurs and businesses to connect directly with their audience and customers, helping to increase engagement as well as build and maintain relationships.

No other way.

Whether you see yourself as an independent musician, a painter, or a developer selling your own software. These days, you must learn the craft of entrepreneurship.

Yes -- tough call. But look: most new businesses fail. Scores and scores people who always let their 'trade' take precedence over the business side.

Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

NEW YORK — For the first time, the head of the Small Business Administration today gave a "State of Entrepreneurship" address. And just like the annual, bigger speech her boss (a.k.a. POTUS) gives each year, the answer was predictable. "From Main Street to Wall Street, the state of entrepreneurship is strong," Maria Contreras-Sweet told a group of entrepreneurs, economic officials and media at the Nasdaq Marketplace in New York City — a spot she called "the promised land for entrepreneurs."

Snowboarding’s new mod is getting a lot of attention. Drone builder and Youtuber Valplushka has been touted as introducing the sport to the world in one of his posted videos. That’s not exactly true. A YouTuber by the name of Kaspars Balamovskis posted an arguably more awesome adult version of the same thing just the day before, with the intention of testing a drone specifically for board sports. But regardless of who came up with the idea first, the fact of the mater is that droneboarding is officially here, and with it a new age of action sports.

Image: http://www.digitaltrends.com

The Average Startup, statistics tell us, receives $1.5M in funding and gets itself in trouble by trying to scale too quickly. The Average Startup has just over 5 employees. Ultimately, The Average Startup fails before it reaches maturity.

In fact, when you get down to it, almost every last detail about The Average Startup is public knowledge at this point. In many ways, The Average Startup is probably the most transparent and understood company in the world.

A farmer in Australia who lives "in the middle of nowhere" got a creepy treat over the weekend when he came upon a dead snake dangling like a titanic trophy from the web of a daddy longlegs.

Turns out, the spindly spider may have given the snake a run for its money.

Image: A daddy longlegs (also called a cellar spider) seems to be surveying its kill. Credit: The Aussie Farmer

Running an idea management program is more than just giving employees a suggestion box to submit ideas. In fact, according to research, having even an average suggestion box program can actually have detrimental effects on your organization’s employee engagement.

Image: http://www.innovationexcellence.com

Which are the most innovative companies in the world? There is no way of absolutely measuring levels of innovation but three eminent groups compile different lists using different methods and of course they get different results. Forbes publish a list based on a measure of how much investors have bid up the stock price of a company above the value of its existing business based on expectations of future innovative results. Their top 15 companies in 2015 are:

So you didn’t get accepted into an accelerator? Do this instead.

One of the questions I get asked regularly by founders is what they have to do to raise a Series A round of investment in the $3-$10 million range. I always encourage them to consider applying to an accelerator program since one-third of all Series A rounds in 2015 were in companies that graduated from accelerators. But what about the companies that don’t get accepted into accelerator programs? The acceptance rate is fairly low (Techstars accepts 1% of all applicants), so startups should have a backup plan when it comes to securing Series A.

There is much discussion online and also in small, private groups, about why the price of technology companies – public and private – are falling. Valuing any company can be difficult because it requires a degree of forecasting future growth & competition and ultimately the profits of the organization.

And two big changes have happened that are widely known – in the past quarter the value of some very high profile companies such as LinkedIn and Twitter have fallen substantially plus Fidelity (usually a public market investor) has written down the value of many of it’s later-stage private-company investments and made the downward valuations known.

If the terrible headlines and stock prices are to be read like tea leaves, then the tech industry is about to face a major reality check. 

Investors have already labeled this period "The Great Reset." Why?

There wasn't a single IPO in January for the first time since September 2011.

California’s innovation economy is considered to have the recipe for success. It has the technology industry base, talent, universities, entrepreneurs, and risk capital necessary to fuel economic growth. But what is the exact role of innovation in driving a successful economy, and can California continue to rest on its laurels to maintain its dominant position?

This is the subject of a recent study “California’s Innovation-Based Economy: Policies to Maintain and Enhance It,” which conducts one of the most thorough analyses of the landscape of research and development (R&D) spending in California. It also demonstrates the key role of R&D in the state’s economy, and proposes ideas for spurring businesses to continue and intensify their research activity.

Image: http://www.thenextsiliconvalley.com

The market for mobile apps keeps growing infinitely like a hydra on steroids. The use of mobile devices is limitless. For every use the mobile has been put to, there must be an app. Each original app spawns hundreds if not thousands of copycat apps. Interestingly, apps get downloaded with such an astonishing frequency that even rookie developers get their 15 seconds of fame. But what does it take to be a top app development service?

Willpower is a common tactic in the American mindset. Need to overcome an obstacle? Cure an addiction? Finish a project? The sheer force of mental focus and discipline is what it’s going to take.

Until you get hungry.

Willpower is a real thing; only it’s not dualistic. There isn’t a small you inside of you propelling your body and thoughts forward. Walter White was right: Life is chemistry. If we’re not supplying our bodies with the right chemicals, we’re not going to follow up on our big plans.

MyFitnessPal is an app and service that lets its users track their exercise and their diet. According to the app’s owner, Under Armour, 160 million people are doing just that, which makes for a lot of data. And what better way to figure out how diet relates to weight loss than to look at this data?

"We wanted to ask the question: What are successful users doing that the rest of us aren’t?" Under Armour’s Rebecca Silliman told Co.Exist. "What can we learn from people who have set and hit a weight goal?"

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com 

Asking the right questions can mean the difference between success and failure. Unfortunately, asking questions can also feel uncomfortable.

"It can be embarrassing to admit that you didn't understand what someone said, or that you don't get it," says Heidi Grant Halvorson, associate director of Columbia Business School’s Motivation Science Center and author of No One Understands You and What to Do About It. "You might fear it will make you look incompetent, but that’s not true. Research has found that people who are inquisitive are generally judged to be more intelligent and engaged."

Image: DuMont Television/Rosen Studios via Wikimedia Commons 

Knowledge@Wharton: You’re the associate director of the Cyber-Physical Systems Program, which is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. What is that?

Sokwoo Rhee: Cyber-Physical Systems is pretty simple, actually. Cyber means connectivity, Internet and software. Physical means sensors, actuators, anything you can touch — cars, chips, radios, etc. So when you combine anything with a networking software component with anything that is physical — those are cyber-physical systems. That’s really what the Internet of things is about. There’s a slight difference between CPS, that’s what it’s called, cyber-physical systems, and IoT. CPS puts a little more emphasis on security issues, and risk management issues and robustness and reliability issues. That’s really the only difference — generally, it proves the same.

In his nearly four years as chief executive officer and chief operating officer of Italian telecommunications operator Wind, Maximo Ibarra has pushed the company to become one of the leaders in the Italian mobile market, particularly in the consumer segment. Despite starting his tenure during an economic downturn in Italy and amid rapidly increasing competition in the industry, Ibarra focused on providing innovative products to serve hyperconnected customers, developing Wind Factory, an initiative within the company that builds cross-functional teams to bring new ideas to life. In this interview with McKinsey’s Rik Kirkland, Ibarra explains how he has worked to redesign strategic functions throughout the company to keep up with the pace of technology. An extended and edited transcript of Ibarra’s remarks follows.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com