The “unicorn club” of private companies worth $1B and above has become way less exclusive, and there are now currently 111 unicorns with a cumulative valuation above $400B. We put together a periodic table of unicorns to spotlight the sectors producing billion-dollar companies.

PART 1: Pebble Technology had an interesting goal.  It wanted to design and build a watch that could connect to iPhone and Android smartphones using Bluetooth.  It wanted to allow the watch to alert a wearer with a silent vibration for incoming calls, emails and messages.  The traditional path for Pebble Technology would have been to raise funds, first through angel investors and then—if it was lucky—through venture capital groups.  It would build its Pebble watches.  It would market them.  And finally it would have attracted a large enough customer base to make its time and effort worthwhile (for the company and its investors).

Small business in the city of St. Louis has heavily benefitted from the use of accelerators. The state of Missouri has the fourth highest amount of business accelerators in the U.S., with accelerators focusing on technology firms, agribusiness, biotechnology, women-owned startups and financial firms.

Now, two St. Louis natives are looking into another profitable and booming industry—sports technology.

As an angel investor, I get requests almost every day to review a new product or website, and provide feedback on its potential success. Yet I can’t remember the last time any entrepreneur asked me to assess personal potential, despite the fact that most investors will admit they invest in the person more than the product. It is people who drive successful businesses.

Many people seek entrepreneurship because it allows them to be the boss. You get to make all the business decisions, from general company strategy and positioning to the management of your human resources. It’s an appealing position on paper, but in practice, managing people is far more challenging than most aspiring entrepreneurs realize.

The way Hod Lipson describes his Creative Machines Lab captures his ambitions: “We are interested in robots that create and are creative.” Lipson, an engineering professor at Cornell University (this July he’s moving his lab to Columbia University), is one of the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence and robotics. His research projects provide a peek into the intriguing possibilities of machines and automation, from robots that “evolve” to ones that assemble themselves out of basic building blocks. (His Cornell colleagues are building robots that can serve as baristas and kitchen help.) A few years ago, Lipson demonstrated an algorithm that explained experimental data by formulating new scientific laws, which were consistent with ones known to be true. He had automated scientific discovery.

Much has been written about open innovation as if it were a new idea, or that tech startups are the secret to its success. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and organizations that do it well — like Bayer, Campbell Soup, and the U.S. Agency for International Development — share at least three key approaches, as well as embrace the importance of effective communications.

I had a chance to explore the topic when I moderated a panel at the Chief Innovation Officer Summit in San Francisco last month, and here’s what the experts said:

Growing companies seeking to raise up to $50 million have a new financing option, starting Friday: a process that will open some private businesses to a wide pool of new investors.

More than three years in the making, the regulatory change, an expanded version of a rule known as Regulation A, is intended to let promising companies — the kinds typically backed by venture capitalists and wealthy angel investors — raise money by selling equity stakes to people of more modest means.

Over the past two years, the “patent troll” debate has moved from patent law circles to the public eye. Stories of coffee shops receiving letters claiming infringement and demanding settlement money to avoid costly litigation are everywhere, and Congress is presently considering several pieces of legislation. In the midst of such turmoil, one question should drive the discussion: How much can Congress alter our patent litigation system before it undermines innovation in the United States and the past and future innovations that rely on it?

The innovation economy in America's heartland is booming and on track to keep up its momentum, according to Silicon Valley Bank's Annual Innovation Economy Outlook survey of technology and life science executives.

Looking at the results regionally by Illinois respondents, the survey details how these executives plan to keep fueling growth and strengthening a Chicago-based innovation ecosystem that rivals regions perhaps better known as tech hubs.

As entrepreneurs develop their companies, startup competitions help them spur innovation and access VC funding.

Many startup competitions go beyond just traditional tech; regardless of your industry, if you have a good idea, somebody will want to listen.

Understandably, the opportunity to obtain additional funding is a primary motivator for many startups that enter competitions.

Starting a business requires a mastery of skills: In addition to technical knowledge and familiarity with your industry, there is also a strong mental component. We’ll never know how many businesses never get started because the would-be founder lost his or her nerve at the last minute. Perhaps even more tragically, certain seriously flawed businesses exist because the founder was unable to get beyond a certain fear or block.

The following are three of the biggest fears that you must face and overcome if you ever want to be a successful entrepreneur.

As the mainland authorities invite private investors into the medical sector, a huge amount of capital has flooded in - some of it going to online services and mobile phone apps. At the end of last year, the mainland had more than 2,000 apps related to the industry in a market worth an estimated 3 billion yuan (HK$3.8 billion). And more is to come - by 2017 the market is expected to swell to 12.5 billion yuan, according to China Medical and Pharmaceutical Material Association.

Fifteen years ago, Li Tiantian set up Dxy.cn a website that provides academic information to doctors. Li gave up his pursuit of a PhD degree in neurology and a job as a doctor at a top hospital in Harbin in Heilongjiang province. The website has become the mainland's largest medical portal and has received US$70 million investment from Tencent, China's internet giant. Li has created four apps, and is opening a brick-and-mortar clinic soon.

Image: Li Tiantian set up leading medical site Dxy.cn. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Silicon Valley gets all the glory, but the real hotbed of American entrepreneurship appears to be a few hundred miles to the northeast: Montana.

The state leads the nation in business creation, according to a new report from the Kauffman Foundation, which produces an annual analysis and ranking of start-up activity in every state. This year, the organization expanded its study to include the 40 largest metro areas. Austin, Tex., took the top spot in that ranking, followed by Miami. San Jose, Calif., a tech industry center, came in third.

Image: Customers enjoy a beer in the taproom on the main floor of Meadowlark Brewing & Meeting House. Credit Lynn Donaldson for The New York Times

A list released this week by the National Academy of Inventors and Intellectual Property Owners Association shows that Drexel ranks in the world’s top 100 for patents granted in the United States in 2014.

Standing officially at 61st on the list, Drexel is ahead of such prestigious institutions as Yale University and Ohio State University (tied at No. 65) and Carnegie Mellon University and Dartmouth College (tied at No. 81).

It seems like every entrepreneur I meet these days is quick to proclaim themselves a visionary, expecting that will give more credibility to their startup idea, and improve their odds with investors. In reality, I’m one of the majority of investors who believe that startup success is more about the execution than the idea. Thus, unless the visionary highlights a cofounder who can take the vision and execute, I assume the worst.

One of the exciting and frustrating things about convergence, particularly in healthcare, is that it’s tough to predict how the hybrid technologies will find their way to market. The process of reaching that goal is filled with unexpected obstacles, twists and pivots.

Clinical trials offer a great example of how bipharma companies are making use of digital health devices and online social media to make drug development more efficient. In an interview with MedCity News at the BIO2015 conference in Philadelphia this week, Dr. Eric Topol called attention to the work being done applying digital health to reduce the cost of clinical trials, which would clear the way to lower drug prices.

We recently invited 28 industry leaders to share their ideas on how to best handle open innovation. We were curious to find out as much as we could. What are their experiences? What do they think would work best to involve talented university students and startups in an innovation competition? What’s the best way to initiate cooperation with a large enterprise in an innovation topic? We were curious to know who the relevant people are that need to be involved, and if there are any specific tools or circumstances that need to be considered before starting an open innovation campaign. But not only that: what can be done to ensure ideas only come but also get implemented.

Marcela Sapone and Jessica Beck met at Harvard Business School, fresh out of stints in the finance world.

"I was working really long hours and coming back to an apartment that was a total mess," Sapone tells Business Insider.

Beck and Sapone knew how grueling working crazy hours could be, and what kind of toll it could take.

Image: Hello Alfred Alfred cofounder and CEO Marcela Sapone and cofounder Jessica Beck. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies met in early June to discuss various topics concerning, of course, small businesses. One of the primary topics the Committee addressed was the growing enactment and use of state-based crowdfunding (i.e. “Intrastate crowdfunding”) and how the SEC can, and should, support those efforts by modernizing Rule 147.

Image: http://www.crowdfundinsider.com