Equity crowdfunding in the UK has exploded. According to Nesta, equity-based crowdfunding grew by more than 600% between 2012–13, from just under £4m to over £28m.

A new generation of investors is willing to get behind Britain's great startups and support the brightest and best entrepreneurs in the hope that they will be the next Facebook, Amazon or Google. For those early-stage businesses harbouring hopes of a future market listing, crowdfunding offers the opportunity to raise finance, grow sustainably and gain valuable experience of working with shareholders which will enable a smoother, more successful, transition to IPO in the long-term.

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The only major personality trait that consistently leads to success is conscientiousness.

"It's emerging as one of the primary dimensions of successful functioning across the lifespan," Paul Tough writes in "How Children Succeed." "It really goes cradle to grave in terms of how people do."

Image: Image credit: Sergeant Adrian Harlen flickr user UK Ministry of Defence 

He can be bold and brash, but Mark Cuban is one of those rare entrepreneurs-turned-investors who can steer a new startup toward success. He juggles an ever-growing portfolio of businesses that now tops 80 ventures and sits as a judge on TV’s Shark Tank, a reality show where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch experts for investment.

So, how do you convince the Dallas Mavericks owner, worth an estimated $2.5 billion, to invest to your next big idea? “I look for unique products and companies that can be game changers in some cases or strategic to a theme I like or to another portfolio company,” Cuban wrote in an email to Entrepreneur.

VENTURE CAPITAL FUNDS RAISED $8.9 BILLION DURING FIRST QUARTER 2014 FOR STRONGEST FUNDRAISING QUARTER SINCE 2007

Number of New Funds Hit 14-Year High

New York, April 14, 2014 - U.S. venture capital firms raised $8.9 billion in new commitments from 58 funds during the first quarter of 2014, an increase of 81 percent compared to the level of dollar commitments raised during the fourth quarter of 2013 and a nine percent increase by number of funds, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).  The level of dollar commitments during the first quarter of 2014 more than doubled the comparable period in 2013 and marks the strongest quarter for venture capital fundraising, by dollars, since the fourth quarter of 2007 when $10.4 billion was raised for venture capital investments.

Image: http://online.wsj.com/article/HUG1777216.html 

One of last year’s most successful VC firms is actually one small part of a huge corporation: Intel.

Intel’s venture capital arm saw more exits than any other tech VC heavyweight: Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, or even Google Ventures, according to new data from financial research firm PrivCo.

Image: Image Credit: Flickr / Darius Monsef 

MUMBAI: Top-tier venture capital firms in India are roping in successful entrepreneurs and executives as co-investors as they look to build a portfolio of seed investments. SAIF Partners and Sequoia Capital India are roping in top Silicon Valley engineers like Greg Badros and serial entrepreneurs like UnitedLex's Ajay Agarwal to help mentor these startups.

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Michael Mankins, partner at Bain & Company, on how to get the most out of meetings. For more, read the article, Your Scarcest Resource.

The Maryland Technology Development Corp. will receive $500,000 in state funding during fiscal 2015 to operate its well-received Rural Business Innovation Initiative program. Previously, RBI2 had been funded at a lower level through federal dollars or directly by TEDCO.

The new investment by the state will enable TEDCO to enhance the mentoring and business assistance offerings in rural Maryland and serve more startup businesses than in the past, according to a TEDCO news release.

It’s no doubt that the indispensable lessons we’ve learned from our moms are inextricably woven into our daily lives. But for some of Silicon Valley’s top CEOs and founders, it’s also woven into their leadership styles and company cultures.

In honor of Mother’s Day, seven business leaders share the leadership lessons from how to create balance to how to manage a team that they learned from their moms.

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Malaysia and South Korea are working on the “second wave” of the Look East Policy (LEP) for another 30 years, focusing mainly on high-technology and high-value areas, says South Korean Ambassador Cho Byungjae said.

“If we can say that the first phase of our LEP was more focused on our training and human resource development, this time we can say that the second wave is more focused on trade and industrial cooperation, particularly in green technology, information and communications technology, as well as, biotechology,” he told Bernama yesterday.

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We are immersed in the universe of information. “It from bit” – otherwise put, whatever is just made of bits – is the phrase coined by John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008), an American theoretical physicist who worked with Niels Bohr. In order to give sense to the information, we fill up it with knowledge that is the deeper understanding of how things work. To do this, we dig deep wells that we call "specialization." The deeper the well, the less the light that penetrates in it. There is a moment in time when the truth of a deep but narrow vision is no longer certain. It is then that the knowledge map used to dig the well should be abandoned and replaced with the creative ignorance, which intentionally comes after, not before, the knowledge. It often happens that the creative ignorant are outsiders, non-experts or those who no longer feel bound to share the ideas of the master who drew that map.

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Temple University is not yet widely seen as the kind of local leader of entrepreneurship or tech innovation in the way that its University City peers Drexel and Penn are. The college has had its tech transfer stories and trialed MOOCs, but relative to its large size, Temple is rarely listed as a force behind what’s changed in the last decade. There’s an effort to change that.

Image: http://technical.ly/ - Members of Temple’s Entrepreneurial Student Association host their annual Tower Takeover entrepreneurship expo. 

Bootstrapping.  The very word conjures visions of Ramen noodles, re-worn shirts, and sleeping on the floor.

But it doesn’t have to be torturous.  I’ve personally saved over $2,550 a month while living like a king using the tactics below.

That makes a big difference for a fledgling business (and fledgling business owner).

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Starfish along much of the North American Pacific coast are dying in great numbers from a mysterious starfish wasting syndrome. As yet the cause of the syndrome is unidentified, and it’s not clear whether it’s a due to an environmental change, disease or or something else.

Image: Ochre stars, the mussel police of the northwest Pacific. Credit: Rosario Beach Marine Lab, CC BY-NC-SA 

What can blue do for you? Perhaps a lot–if it’s in your company’s name.

When Blue Apron raised $50 million to deliver do-it-yourself meal kits last week, some questions arose: What is companies’ favorite color? Would Blue Apron’s founders have been able to seal the $50 million deal if the title slide of their presentation had read ‘Brown Apron: Fresh Ingredients, Original Recipes, Delivered Weekly to Your House’?

"We have dangerous confusions about what entrepreneurs do and how they do it." In this guest blog, Dan Isenberg argues that Entrepreneurship is the creation and capture of extraordinary value; it is not disruptive innovation per se, and innovation is neither necessary nor sufficient for entrepreneurship. 

Moderate aerobic exercise helps to preserve the structure and function of nerve cells in the retina after damage, researchers at the Emory Eye Center and the Atlanta VA Medical Center have found. The findings, from a study of an animal model of age-related macular degeneration, are the first to suggest that aerobic exercise can have a direct effect on retinal health and vision.

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I thought it was simple: Vacations are fun, Americans are stressed, and happiness raises productivity and sales. Therefore, people should take more vacations, right? But research doesn’t hold that line of thinking up. Not every vacation is equal.

According to a 2013 report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the U.S. is the only developed country that does not legally require a single paid vacation day. The government declares holidays for federal employees, but there is no law saying that employers have to pay for “vacation days.” The EU, on the other hand, legally requires 20 paid vacation days as a minimum. France requires 30. If you want to get more jealous, Austria, Belgium, and Denmark actually pay employees more when on vacation to offset the costs of travel. Seriously.

Image Courtesy of Sura Nualpradid / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

California's drought is far from over — but high-tech companies are stepping in to help.

The state is facing its driest year in decades, following an unusually rain-free winter. California's central valley, the fruit and nut basket of the world, is suffering the consequences. In response, startups are offering solutions such as drones, aerial imagery and data analytics to help deliver water to only the parts of farmers' fields that need it.

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Digital technology has enabled the creation of new industries and upended many more. In this video interview, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author Eric Ries explains how individuals with minimal funding can now challenge incumbent companies, and he argues that the response of most organizations to this threat is flawed because they continue to measure—and reward—the wrong performance. This interview was conducted by McKinsey Global Institute partner Michael Chui. An edited transcript of Ries’s remarks follows.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com