“I’ve probably revised this investor pitch deck 200 times,” a founder told me recently. She’d met with more than 50 potential investors before closing a seed round last month. This might sound excessive to some, but her experience is not unusual.

Entrepreneurs often spend hundreds of hours raising funds from angel and venture capital investors. While these activities are clearly important, analysis of new data on startups suggests that founders should also dedicate significant time to something that many people overlook: recruiting great mentors. This simple strategy can increase a company’s odds of success more than almost anything else.

The European Commission is preparing to unlock territorial copyright protection for TV, film and music, as part of its Digital Single Market (DSM) blueprint, unveiled on Wednesday (25 March). But it will also include key exemptions for the audiovisual sector, officials told EurActiv.

Andrus Ansip, Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, announced yesterday (25 March) that the forthcoming strategy will be divided into three sections, and published on 6 May.

Image: Adventures in copyright. (opensource.com/Flickr)

Next month, unmanned computers all over the globe will face off in a dress rehearsal for a Las Vegas hacking tournament run by the U.S. military.

The $2 million “Cyber Grand Challenge” pits hacker-fighting software against malicious code programmed by Pentagon personnel. During the 2016 finals in Vegas, the humans who built these cyberbots might as well go play blackjack. 

At stake in the cyber challenge is a chunk of change and perhaps societal gratitude. That's because the research and development gleaned during the two-year competition could lay the groundwork for a world where machines are in charge of cybersecurity.

MARK COLVIN: In the age of the immersive videogame, in which the player can wander for days in an imagined city or landscape, it's extraordinary to think that the first commercially successful screen game was just over four decades ago.

It was Atari's 'Pong', a minimalist tennis game that people mostly played in pubs at first.

Atari went on to be a huge influence on home gaming, and its co-founder Nolan Bushnell is often labelled the "godfather of gaming".

To become a successful leader, you have to ditch the conventional “think before doing” logic and instead start acting like a leader in order to start thinking like a leader.

“I’m like the fire patrol,” says Jacob, a thirty-five-year-old production manager for a mid-sized European food manufacturer. “I run from one corner to the other to fix things, just to keep producing.” Following a buyout of his company by a private investor, Jacob’s responsibilities had changed – although his job title had not.  He was now being asked to manage two plants.  With a new location, a distant boss and few peers with whom he could exchange ideas about modernising the plants, he was not best placed to step up to the leadership challenge.

Technology innovation is coming thick and fast in Auckland as more start-ups eye the lucrative international marketplace.

The city's innovation ecosystem has suddenly expanded. Grid AKL, the innovation hub established in Wynyard Quarter by Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (Ateed), is operating at full capacity; Lightning Lab has moved into the Grid to fast-track the brightest early-stage digital companies; and a new specialist incubator Astrolab wants to turn university and Crown Research Institute research and intellectual property (IP) into commercial reality.

Image: http://www.nzherald.co.nz

You are not alone if you are thinking about changing jobs or starting a new business and throwing in the corporate America towel.

But how do you build the life you want when you've got bills to pay, food to put on the table and a household to support? You need to plan before you make the leap.

“You can only learn what you need to know about your job and about yourself by doing it—not by just thinking about it.” That may be a strange way for someone who thinks about (and teaches and writes about) business for a living to start a book. And it certainly represents a fork from the increasingly well-trod intellectual path that celebrates mindfulness and introversion. But to Herminia Ibarra, it represents a truism: “Simply put, change happens from the outside in, not from the inside out.”

Pittsburgh technology companies raised $437 million in investment last year, including $333 million from venture capital firms that put the money into 37 local companies, according to the annual report from Innovation Works, a publicly funded early-stage venture fund focused on economic development and based in East Liberty.

Image: Robin Rombach/Post-Gazette Amey Kanade, product manager at EyeSee360, holds the 360 Fly video camera. The prototype camera is the latest product from EyeSee360 and produces 360-degree video.

There’s no place like home. Especially if you’re a small business. This is how a vast number of start-ups begin, with one of the most famous being, of course, Apple. The garage initially used by Steve Jobs at his family’s modest ranch-style home in Los Altos, California, was even granted historic site status in 2013.

The Guardian has estimated that 80,000 workers in the UK are commuting only as far as the bottom of their garden.

Image: http://www.blogtrepreneur.com

President Obama hosted the 2015 White House Science Fair today to celebrate the student winners of STEM competitions from around the country.

In addition to Senior Advisor Valarie Jarrett tweeting that for the first time ever there were more girls than boys at this year’s event, POTUS announced over $240 million in new private-sector commitments to inspire and prepare more students from underrepresented groups to excel in STEM fields. The commitment is a part of the president’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign that has resulted in over $1 billion in financial support for STEM programs.

Image: http://www.blackenterprise.com

The complaints probably sound familiar to many on the D.C. tech scene: As far as the region goes, there's not enough local venture capital, there's not enough talent, there aren't enough big technology companies. Things are getting better, sure, but there's just not enough. Steve Case, who begins part three of his Rise of the Rest tour in May, more or less agrees with these sentiments. If Silicon Valley is the standard, the Greater Washington still has a ways to climb — in terms of seed-stage, venture-stage and growth-stage capital, the area could use quite a bit more, he told me Monday. There's also still a need for big, innovative companies to anchor the local ecosystem.

Image: JOANNE S.L AWTON "It just takes time, but the dynamics, the macro factors all play into the hands of D.C. more than most areas," says Steve Case of the region's potential to tap into the so-called third wave of the Internet. 

PITTSBURGH, PA – The latest edition of the Fourth Economy Community Index was announced today, recognizing the top ten large-sized Fourth Economy Communities. These communities—with populations between 150,000 and 499,999—were selected because they represent regions that are poised to achieve sustainable economic growth while attracting people and investment.

The best and brightest teams can be rendered uninspired, stumped, scared and maybe even lazy when faced with a huge, blank whiteboard titled, “Our Next Big Thing….”

Amy Schumer: Class Clown of 2015 Subscribe Cuba Libre Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us This is because brands, organizations and corporations unwittingly or not create blocks to creativity. One reason Motivate Design developed the What If Technique™, a new way to help organizations and people unstick their thinking and reframe problems as opportunities by flexing their creative muscle, was because organizations tend to build creative thinking roadblocks. This corporate lore (as we call it) — knowledge, beliefs, or traditions employees learn through the ways their organizations operate — strangles innovation.

If there are any men left who still believe that women are the weaker sex, it is long past time for them to think again. With respect to that most essential proof of robustness—the power to stay alive—women are tougher than men from birth through to extreme old age. The average man may run a 100-meter race faster than the average woman and lift heavier weights. But nowadays women outlive men by about five to six years. By age 85 there are roughly six women to every four men. At age 100 the ratio is more than two to one. And by age 122—the current world record for human longevity—the score stands at one-nil in favor of women.

Is it time to leave the incubator? For biotech and other startups outgrowing their lab space, renting or building a first laboratory facility is a huge leap. Big costs and key challenges face these growing companies: First is making the most of available funding. A close second is creating a place investors or prospective customers can visit and get a feel for the company’s process and prospects. Third, startups need to plan an exit strategy – in most cases, even before they move in to that first lab.

With startup hubbub in full frenzy this week — famed startup accelerator Y Combinator’s biggest-ever class pitched to investors Monday and Tuesday — venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, of Andreessen Horowitz, took to Twitter to set the record straight on what he called a common trope in discussions about startup companies.

Image: http://blog.sfgate.com

Meeting hosts often think that presenting to a room full of people is the best way to share ideas. Westerners in particular, with their Greco-Roman oratorical roots (think Aristotle and Cicero), tend to craft a verbal case and then declare their views to the audience. But sometimes it’s better to have a conversation, where other voices are considered and different views are exchanged.

How do you decide which approach to take? Map out what you’re trying to accomplish. Before hitting “send” on your next meeting request, carefully consider what your goals are.

Sam Altman, the president of top startup incubator Y Combinator, isn't shy of voicing his opinion when it comes the current market's outsized valuations and high cash burn rates.

On Monday, at Demo Day, Y Combinator's big startup pitching event, Altman reiterated his concerns over these issues.

If you listen to large tech companies, they will tell you they are in dire need of another bailout from scary “patent trolls” who burden them with frivolous lawsuits. This tech bailout will come in the form of a bill that would weaken 225 years of U.S. patent law to help big companies always win, and guarantee that small innovators and inventors will always lose.

The United States’ patent law system is at the foundation of American global success, found in breakthrough discoveries from Edison to the computer chip to recombinant DNA. Do we really need to “fix” the legal system that has enabled America to become number one in the global biotech, software, hardware, medical devices, energy, genomics, and nanotechnology industries? Patent filings are down an astonishing 40% in 2014 as a result of the first patent troll “fix” a few years ago and recent court decisions that have given away our nation’s competitive edge.