Are you currently trying to secure funding for a startup business? You’ve most likely explored and exhausted various options, including crowdfunding and gaining financial help from friends and family. And if you don’t happen to be overly talented at putting cash into a personal savings account to assist you with your venture, then it may be time to explore a new option—angels.

The European Tech venture capital landscape continued to be dominated by its main hubs in 2014 as the UK and Germany were the only European countries to top 100 deals and $1B in funding during the year.

There were 225 investments made into VC-backed Tech companies in the UK in 2014, up 80% versus 2011. Germany, anchored by a booming tech community in Berlin which sports hot startups like Soundcloud and Delivery Hero also has grown drastically in recent years. There were 154 total deals in Germany in 2014, up from just 85 in 2011, an 82% increase.

A new diet known by the acronym MIND (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) could significantly lower a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) — even if the diet is not meticulously followed, according to a paper published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

This finding comes from a longitudinal study by Rush University Medical Center and Harvard School of Public Health of 923 volunteers (144 of them developed AD) shows that the MIND diet lowered the risk of AD by as much as 53 percent in participants who adhered to the diet rigorously, and by about 35 percent in those who followed it moderately well.

Image: Martha Clare Morris, PhD, with brain-healthy fruits (credit: Rush photo group)

Inspired by Mark Zuckerberg, the young entrepreneurs I meet often think the best way to succeed is to drop out of college and launch their startups immediately. They've got no time to waste.

But if you really want to build a company that changes the world, I recommend a contrarian approach: Get a job at a well-known company for a year or two, like another famous college dropout, Steve Jobs. Before Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, he worked for Atari, the video game maker that invented Pong. The two years he spent there influenced everything from the components he later used in Apple's computers to the culture at Apple, where work was about having fun.

Being a successful competitive swimmer requires laser-sharp focus, hard work and unwavering discipline, which can also be said of running a multi-million dollar company. This is why, even though my days as a swimmer at Stanford University are behind me, I’m able to continue applying the skills I learned then on a daily basis as the CEO of the company I co-founded, Revel Systems.

I grew up in a home where both mom and dad were active union members, and it gave me a clear message about working life: there is labor, and there is management. Labor’s job is to make stuff happen. Management’s job is to oppress labor.   I was fine with that worldview for a long time. But eventually, I grew up and, somewhere along the line, I became management. I even got to like being management. The funny thing is that my parents, the union loyalists, are the ones I have to thank for that. Here’s why: they didn’t just teach me that oppression was a bad thing. They also made me realize that it can be just as bad for the oppressor as it is for the oppressed.

Maybe you’re like Bill Gates, who takes a full week out of the office every to read books, and then goes on for another 12 months of business and life adventure fueled with inspiration. If you’re reading these lines, you’re likely interested in the emerging markets and what they offer in terms of startups and entrepreneurs. For your Christmas reading list, here are three suggestions to start 2015 with more brainpower.

When NASA released the photograph of the earth as seen from space, known as the blue marble, it gave new impetus to the environmental movement, showing our planet as a small dot in a black void. Seeing is believing. Visualization can be a very powerful tool in sharing complex knowledge. The visualization of social network analysis (SNA) can give us significant new perspectives, not available from looking at a series of data points. For instance, Valdis Krebs examined data on the trust levels of various news sources around the world and how these were perceived by ideological groups. The data table originally provided by PEW Research Center tell part of the story, but the SNA conducted by Valdis clearly shows how conservative media are completely separate from all other media. A similar study of pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian news outlets showed that only one was trusted by both sides, but Haaretz.com is getting squeezed by taking a moderate position. Seeing this polarization may help to understand it.

Image: Value Network Analysis (example) by Patti Anklam

Fresh out of Babson College, I did what any smart finance major would do – I started a rock band.

I founded Lansdowne, a Boston-based country-rock band, and I treat it like the business that it is. Like any creative startup founder, I'm perfecting my product so people will consume and evangelize it. I'm de-risking my business and I'm looking for funding sources to grow and sustain it.

Image: http://bostinno.streetwise.co

Last year was a banner year for venture capital investing. Venture investors put over $48 billion dollars into the financial ecosystem, according to data that indicated lesser amounts in previous years – about $30 billion in 2013 and $27.5 billion in 2012. (The figures are from Thomson Reuters data provided for the PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree Report.)

While much attention has been focused in recent years on startups raising money from venture capital and private equity funds, another source that should be considered are local community banks (CBs). Photo credit: ptmoney.com Photo credit: ptmoney.com

Over the years I have found these banks to be a valuable and reliable avenue to obtain debt for ventures that meet their lending criteria. In my experience, CBs usually have a two part test before they lend money. First, they look for strong collateral that is located in their geographic area, such as real estate, inventory, receivables, or equipment, and will lend up a percentage of the value of these assets. This percentage can vary but frequently centers around 80%. Second, the business should have sufficient cash flow to adequately and easily service the debt.

For entrepreneurs, there are few tasks more important than raising the capital they need to keep the doors open as they continue their long march toward a profitable venture.

A recent article from Josh Kopelman at First Round Review provides a treasure trove of tips and information on raising this kind of capital, especially in Silicon Valley.

What really stood out to me about Kopelman's article was his sharp assessment of the statistical barbelling currently dominating the world of venture capital and the resulting "Series A gap," which is creating a whole new set of challenges for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ecosystems across the U.S.

HERSHEY, Pa. -- When Penn State students Taylor Mitcham and Mitch Robinson decided to attend Penn State, neither one of them knew much about the University or planned to become business owners. Today, both are immersed in the entrepreneurial community at Penn State as they create their own start-ups.

The students spoke Thursday (March 19) at the Board of Trustees Committee on Outreach, Development and Community Relations about their experiences and how the University has helped to guide their entrepreneurial careers.

Image: Taylor Mitcham demonstrates her waterless car wash system with a buff and shine. Image: MomentImagery.com

Venture capitalists poured a record $2.3 billion into cybersecurity companies in 2014, a year marked by frequent reports of hacks on high-profile companies. Yearly investment in cybersecurity startups been on the rise for several years now, and is up 156 percent since 2011, according to CB Insights. The trend will likely continue, as 75 percent of CIOs surveyed by Piper Jaffray said they would increase spending on security in 2015.+

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

SBIR projects are less likely to fail if research teams are smaller, have more experience and include women investigators, according to a new working paper by Albert N. Link and Mike Wright. The authors also found that larger SBIR awards lower the chances that a project will be discontinued before completion. While the study focuses on projects supported through federal SBIR programs, the findings could have implications for other kinds of public R&D support.

The goal of the Seed Accelerator Rankings Project (SARP), now in its fourth year, is to encourage a larger conversation and research about the seed accelerator phenomenon, its effects, and its prospects for the future. The last few years have seen the emergence of hundreds of groups titling themselves ‘accelerator.’ But not all such programs meet the definition of accelerator, and even for those that do, there are often significant differences in program structure and goals. For an entrepreneur considering an accelerator program, finding data regarding the performance of programs is difficult, and there is much confusion and debate regarding how ‘performance’ should be measured for an accelerator.

The Minister of State for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Shri Y.S. Chowdary today announced launching ofBIRAC AcE Fund. The Equity Fund is aimed at addressing the pressing needs of accelerating the growth of entrepreneurs, in the field of Biotechnology. This fund will be operated by Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) a Public Sector Undertaking under the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India with Incubators and Business Accelerators, as its partners. Speaking on the occasion of the third foundation day of BIRAC in New Delhi today, the minister expressed hope that this major step taken by the Government would dramatically change the landscape of the Biotech startup ecosystem in the country. He said that this is important and a major decision wherein the Government will be a partner in Equity Funding for Start Ups. The Minster also mentioning several budgetary provisions that are aimed at encouraging self employment and start ups said that a help-desk is proposed to be set up in his ministry for people wanting to know of these schemes.

LinkedIn recently announced changes to restrict access to its developer application programming interfaces (APIs), stating, “It’s a matter of members’ trust.” The new LinkedIn rules specify that, starting in May, the only actions you can take without being a vetted partner are signing in with LinkedIn and sharing your profile, publishing posts to LinkedIn, and publishing posts to your LinkedIn company page.

The privacy-related changes, which include restrictions on information access and information sharing, underscore the challenges of protecting user privacy while attempting to mine useful data for insights. Can both be done?

Being a tech professional is a good career with plenty of high-paying jobs.

But it’s an ever-changing job market. One day a skill is hot and the next it’s not.

Tech-job-hunting site Dice.com recently published its 2015 Salary Survey, which named the highest-paying tech skills. Dice surveyed 23,470 IT professionals in the fall of 2014 to come up with this list.

Of course, skills alone won’t always lead to a high salary. Work experience counts, too.

Image: Flickr/TechCrunch Disrupt Europe/Dan Taylor/Heisenberg Media

In public, companies try to trot out any hint of a success story—real or imagined. At SXSW this week, Google took a different tack: It talked all about its failures.

Google has plenty to crow about: It has controlled the web search and search advertising business for years, it racked up $66 billion in revenue last year, and it gets an average of 5,000 job applications a day. It has upset countless industries, from mobile phones to TV.

Image: At SXSW this week, Google talked all about its failures. Credit: iLighter/Wikipedia