A recurring theme I hear and read about is how passion is an important trait when starting a new business. In Mark Cuban’s 12 rules for any startup, the number one rule is “don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love.” I don’t agree 100% with that statement, but I would say that passion about your business and industry is crucial for entrepreneurs. For me, even though I was not initially obsessed with meal delivery or healthy eating, I was obsessed with building a great startup and changing the industry I’d just dived into.

The startup journey is not all unicorns and schools of greatness. Being a “successful” entrepreneur is probably the hardest goal you’ll strive for in your life.

Not so long ago, I left prison with $200 and a fancy pair of Wrangler jeans. Prison is a mental grind, but being an entrepreneur is even tougher. Immediately, I had to start figuring out how I was going to make some scratch. This wasn’t 1917, and $200 would possibly last me three Starbuck’s trips and two meals at Wahoo’s (for the record, I actually turned that $200 into a six-figure business, but that’s another story).

Herndon, Virginia (PRWEB) October 30, 2015

The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) announced today the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund (CRCF) Request for Proposals (RFP) for FY2016. The solicitation opens on October 30, 2015 and Letters of Intent (LOIs) are due by Friday, December 4. Award announcements are planned for early June 2016.

The CRCF grows Virginia’s economy by supporting high-potential technology commercialization projects at Virginia's public and private colleges and universities, the private sector, and nonprofit research institutions. A single solicitation for $3.4 million will be offered in FY2016, with five programs available for funding: Commercialization, SBIR Matching Funds, STTR Matching Funds, Matching Funds, and Eminent Researcher Recruitment.

Few ideas in business conjure more vivid images of bold individualism than the do-it-yourself entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs go it alone, the mythology insists. They are swashbuckling mavericks, bucking the establishment. The image is irresistibly romantic and deeply entrenched.

It is also completely misleading.

Staying power. That’s the key phrase for entrepreneurs. Unicorns and deca-unicorns may be what wide-eyed students, business editors and investors like to hear about. Staying power, however, is the process by which most startups become viable, long-term businesses. Ask Victoria Taylor WG’86 about her staying power and her company’s 18-year trajectory.

Image: http://beacon.wharton.upenn.edu

"I see it as a huge wave that is breaking at the moment and I don't think any of us realize how large it is." Andrew Moore, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and a former vice president of engineering at Google, is describing for a World Economic Forum meeting in Dalian, China, the industrial revolution in which we are now living. It is a revolution that is being driven by artificial intelligence systems that draw on massive amounts of ...

Image: http://www.industryweek.com

On the global scale, startups mean big business as they contribute to innovation, job creation, and economic growth. Recent estimates put small and medium-sized businesses at more than 90% of global enterprises.

And even though we know growing a startup is often fraught with challenges, many have broken out to become some of the largest, most successful companies of our time.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is finally set to vote Friday on rules that would allow businesses to use Internet crowdfunding to raise money from non-accredited investors. It shouldn’t affect Colorado’s equity crowdfunding law or the entrepreneurs who want to use it, said Herrick Lidstone, attorney with Greenwood Village-based Burns Figa & Will, P.C. In fact, Lidstone said, Colorado’s law will be much easier for entrepreneurs and investors to navigate and it offers more opportunities for businesses.

Maybe healthcare is thinking about data from wearable devices in all the wrong ways.

Speaking Thursday at the 12th annual Connected Health Symposium in Boston, Dr. Robert Pearl, CEO of Kaiser Permanente‘s Permanente Medical Group, said that, from a physician’s perspective, Fitbits and other fitness trackers are good for one thing: “December.” In other words, they make great Christmas gifts, but don’t serve much purpose in medical practice.

Image: Left to right, Drew Schiller of Validic, Dr. Stanley Shaw of Massachusetts General Hospital and Dr. Christopher Alban of Epic Systems discuss wearable technology during the 2015 Connected Health Summit in Boston. - http://medcitynews.com

P.E.I. BioAlliance Inc. celebrating 10th anniversary attracting small companies with smart ideas

Bioscience entrepreneur and pioneer Regis Duffy is bullish about the future in P.E.I.

Recognizing added value in the diagnostic and biochemical marketplace early on, he believed P.E.I. could attract small companies with “smart ideas”, which would benefit from seed capital and, later, attract bigger players.

Image: © Guardian photo by Heather Taweel FILE PHOTO: Dr. Russ Kerr, right, CEO of Nautilus Biosciences and chairman of the Prince Edward Island BioAlliance board, shows samples to Rory Francis, executive director of the P.E.I. BioAlliance.

There’s a fascinating link between geniuses and eccentric behavior. Einstein picked cigarette butts off the street and used the tobacco for his pipe; Benjamin Franklin sat naked in front of a window every morning and let the air circulate over his body. He called it an “air bath”.

Their eccentricity isn’t completely without explanation; there are mental benefits behind some of their madness. Here are eight quirky habits from geniuses that will make you smarter:

When it comes to retirement, U.S. employees have a problem. According to the State of U.S. Employee Retirement Readiness 2015, a new report by El Segundo, California, financial literacy consulting firm Financial Finesse, fewer than one in five U.S. employees are confident they’re on track to retire. Of those that are not on track, more than three-quarters have never checked a retirement calculator about their needs, and only 47% have taken a risk tolerance assessment to determine how they should invest for retirement.

For the average small business owner, long hours at work means long hours at the desk until it’s time to stagger, hunched over, to the door and then try to stretch out on your way home. The medical community recommends high cardiovascular workouts for a half-hour, three to five times a week. But who has the time or inclination to go to a gym after a hard day of work? And who reading here has forked out money for a year of gym membership, only to go twice and then quit? And who has expensive exercise equipment serving as a clothes rack in the corner?

Total private giving to institutions of higher education, public and private, grew again in 2014, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 400 project, which tracks giving to the 400 largest nonprofit organizations in the United States. Over all, giving to groups in the survey in 2014 rose 5.1 percent from the previous year.

Here are the top 10 private colleges on the list, sorted by the amount they received:

Quitting school to operate a startup is all the rage these days. Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel even has a special fellowship that encourages young people to do that.

Most startup-minded students quit college, not high school, following in the footsteps of Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. 

But teenagers are getting into tech at earlier and earlier ages. Writing apps and participating in hackathons are standard ways of getting internships at hot employers like Google and Facebook.

Image: Flickr/quinnanya

The concluding day of Progressive Punjab Summit-2015 witnessed an absorbing session on startups where youth from adjoining technical universities flocked to listen to 17 innovation ideas incubated during three-day long startup accelerator held at IT park Chandigarh. Young innovators lecturing investors having more than 30 to 50 years’ experience in running and managing industries was the highlight of the technical session held on Thursday.

Ever since Napster and the dawn of the age of file sharing, the record business has been the canary in the coal mine for the culture industry. First the product went digital, with the MP3, then it became free, then the record stores closed and distribution went online with iTunes. Now, as music consumption shifts rapidly to streaming, the record companies are embracing a business model that doesn’t include record sales at all.

As a big asteroid flies by at a close but safe distance from Earth on Saturday (Oct. 31), astronomers will likely get a better radar view of the surface than ever before.

Asteroid 2015 TB145—discovered earlier this month, on Oct. 10—will fly by slightly outside the moon's orbit. In celestial terms, this is rather close, especially considering the asteroid's size; at an estimated 1,300 feet (400 meters) wide, this is the closest known flyby by a large asteroid until 2027. TB145 will fly by at 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers) from Earth, but poses no threat to our planet.

As an entrepreneur, there are only two reasons that could possibly explain why you haven't yet heard of Shark Tank. You're either living under a very large rock, or you're hanging out under a very small one.

This show has done wonders for a few small businesses and more importantly, contains some great advice for entrepreneurs. Some elements of the show are purely for entertainment purposes, but there are more than a few pearls of wisdom in the mix -- especially from Mark Cuban, who happens to be my favorite shark.

If you're an entrepreneur, at some point or another, you may consider hiring a business coach to help you build or grow your business. You've probably heard a lot of great stories of how business coaches have helped their clients through numerous blocks to reach great levels of success. But you've probably also heard some horror stories of unsuspecting entrepreneurs who pay their last five grand to a coach who ends up being incompetent and ineffective. So how do you navigate the world of business coaches out there to pick one that can actually help you?