Leading forecasters estimate that the world economy will grow by between 2.8 and 3.8 percent this year—about one percentage point lower than last year’s consensus forecasts. Yet as monitors of the global economy lower their expectations for 2015, executives are increasingly focusing on opportunities presented by diverging growth rates among regions, countries, and even sectors. This means an essential element of strategic and financial planning for 2015 and beyond is taking closer account of critical regional trends and risks, with sensitivity to key economic indicators and government policy responses.

Crowdfunding sounds like an appealing idea. It gives the middle class a way to participate in formation of companies, as venture capitalists do when they back entrepreneurs or well-connected investors do when they participate in initial public offerings. And it provides a way for small businesses to use technology to raise capital. But while this type of financing has the potential to boost a certain type of small business, it has limits that businesses and investors should keep in mind.

Image: Stuart Phillips shows some of the 10,000 pint containers that Red Wagon Creamery purchased with the help of money raised through crowdfunding. (Red Wagon Creamery)

The following seven pieces may apply to anybody that plans on raising capital, but are especially useful to those raising capital outside of Silicon Valley

Despite the fact that there’s more capital available to seed-stage startups than perhaps at anytime in history, it’s still not easy to raise startup seed capital. Fundraising can be complicated and tricky, particularly for first-time founders who have never had much exposure to the process before.

The University of New Mexico recently joined more than 145 U.S. research universities and 250 businesses and organizations in sending letters of concern to the U.S. House and Senate judiciary committees and the New Mexico congressional delegation regarding pending legislation, Innovation Act HR 9, before the House Judiciary Committee.

The pending legislation to address patent litigation abuses, which is already being largely addressed by the 2012 America Invents Act, is so broadly drawn that it would further weaken the nation’s patent system and hinder the flow of new technologies from university research to the private sector.

“If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes,” Bill Maris says one January afternoon in Mountain View, California. The president and managing partner of Google Ventures just turned 40, but he looks more like a 19-year-old college kid at midterm. He’s wearing sneakers and a gray denim shirt over a T-shirt; it looks like he hasn’t shaved in a few days.

Behind him, sun is streaming through a large wall of windows. Beyond is the leafy expanse of the main Google campus. Inside his office, there’s not much that gives any indication of the work Maris does here, Bloomberg Markets will report in its April 2015 issue. The room is sparse—clean white walls, a few chairs, a table. On this day, his desk has no papers, no notepads or Post-its, not even a computer.

Image: http://www.bloomberg.com

When I wrote Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors with Mahendra Ramsinghani, our goal was to help entrepreneurs understand how to create an excellent board of directors, manage it effectively, and get optimal value out of it. This was challenging to do, as the topic of boards can be boring. Based on the feedback we’ve gotten, including consistently positive reviews on Amazon, I feel like we accomplished that goal.

Browse through the business section at your local bookstore or favorite e-commerce site, and you’re sure to become inundated with a variety of titles. Reading takes time, and for entrepreneurs, time is the most precious resource of all. So how do you choose which books will fill your hunger for entrepreneurial success?

No, the title is not an error. While small business owners are often warned to focus on “walking the walk,” a new study by TinyHR suggests that talking may be equally important. The New Year Employee Report polled employees for their employee wish list for the workplace. While you might expect bigger salaries or smaller workloads to dominate the list, surprisingly, three of the top five answers expressed a wish for better communication, particularly between bosses and employees.

Bubbles float 40 feet to the ocean's surface. Flapping fins propel through the water. Flashes of light illuminate coral reefs. Underwater, exploring these reefs, is where Dylan Vecchione feels most at home.

He's not a marine biologist. He's not a professional SCUBA diver. He's an inquisitive 16-year-old who's standing up for dying coral reefs off the coast of Hawaii.

France’s business department and government investment vehicle BPIFrance have launched the SME France’s business department and government investment vehicle BPIFrance have launched the SME Accelerator programme, which aims to increase the size of small businesses to middle-sized ones to create market leaders and success stories. The programme is 61 percent funded by BPIFrance. The first round, set to benefit at least two firms, was launched on 5 March. The second round will be launched in the autumn, targeting businesses with between EUR 10-40 million of turnover that are independent of larger groups. Participating SMEs will be supported with audits, and insight from appropriate members of a panel of over 50 successful mid-sized businesses over a 2-year period.

A popular approach for aspiring entrepreneurs these days seems to be to corner anyone who will listen, with a pitch on their current “million dollar idea.” The initial monologue usually ends with the question “How much money do you think this is worth?” In my opinion, ideas are a commodity, and are really not worth much, outside the context of a visionary leader who can execute.

Patent trolls are encroaching into the life sciences.

Formerly focused on the high-tech world, companies that buy up patents and then profit from them are now starting to find the biotech and medical device space more lucrative.

The best advice so far? Ante up your budget for a good patent attorney.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

With the Detour iPhone app, Groupon founder Andrew Mason wants to make location-aware audio tours where technology seems to fade into the background.

Andrew Mason, the founder of Groupon who was fired as its CEO two years ago, has moved on, literally and figuratively.+

Image: Groupon founder Andrew Mason has a new startup, Detour, whose iPhone app sells location-aware walking tours.

When it comes to entrepreneurship at the UW-Madison, John Surdyk is smack-dab in the middle of the action, right where the ideas start.

Surdyk is director of INSITE, the Initiative for Studies in Transformational Entrepreneurship, a “knowledge center” in the School of Business set up to encourage and facilitate the art and science of starting a company.

Image: John Surdyk is the director of the INSITE program at the UW-Madison School of Business. INSITE stands for Initiative for Studies in Transformational Entrepreneurship.

Every entrepreneur realizes that change is now the norm, and they have to adapt their business quickly to survive and prosper. In fact, the best entrepreneurs seem to see breakthrough changes coming even before they really happen, and are able to turn them into huge new opportunities. In the trade, this rare capability is called the ability to see around corners.

Serial procrastinators know one of the hardest things about getting things done is getting started.

Research by Chicago Booth PhD candidate Yanping Tu and Dilip Soman of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management published in the Journal of Consumer Research shows the key to motivating yourself to start working on a task may be picking the right due date. It turns out meeting our deadlines requires changing the way we think about time.

Obsessed with mobile growth? Join us February 23-24 when we reveal the best technologies and strategies to help your company grow on mobile. It all takes place at our 5th annual Mobile Summit at the scenic Cavallo Point Resort in Sausalito, CA. See if you qualify here.

It’s a popular sport nowadays, discussing if tech is going to kill or create jobs. The answer is simple if you ask me. If we care more about tasks than about people, then tech will replace people. If we care more about people than about tasks, then tech will leverage people.

Think about it this way: I work in your company, I wash the dishes. You buy a dishwashing machine. You can either say “David, good luck!” or you can say “let’s rock!”

The University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Institutional Advancement decided to introduce a crowdfunding platform to Pitt’s fundraising system because millennials don’t donate in the same way older generations do, said Al Novak, vice chancellor of the office.

“My generation and those before me are very to open taking phone calls from alma maters. They’re still willing to open mail and will look at the brochures,” said Mr. Novak, 55. “But the millennials grew up with a PDA (personal digital assistant) in their hand. We need to meet them where they are and where they’re comfortable being engaged.”

 

As a startup closing your first round of funding, everyone is excited by your potential, investing in “the dream”. The plan is always to move smoothly from financing round to financing round, increasing your valuation all the way through IPO or being acquired.

But in reality, it never works out this way.