As the European Union prepares its plan for a Digital Single Market, policy-makers must take full account of the fastest growing segment of that market – the app industry, writes Sophie Mestchersky.

Sophie Mestchersky is Director for European Policy and Government Affairs at the Application Developers Alliance, an industry association.

The app industry has a deep partnership with today’s ubiquitous device: the smartphone. And, like the smartphone, apps are now part almost every business and everyone’s daily activities. 

If you’re a savvy social media user then you’ve already figured out that the knowledge a tool like Facebook is able to gather about your social connections is not only valuable to you. For you, Facebook’s ability to depict your network of friends and the varying strengths of those relationships supports all your mutual information sharing. For others — third parties — this “social graph” makes it possible to make personalized recommendations to you, and everyone else. For example, TripAdvisor leverages Facebook’s social graph to ensure that, when you are looking for reviews of hotels, restaurants, and so forth, any reviews posted by people you know appear right at the top.

A white-haired clergyman leans forward in deep, intent conversation with a lady with a shaved head. To the right, three shiny-suited investment bankers cluster around a banking reform activist in his twenties. Over the course of the evening, 60 people drink red wine and laugh together in the heart of London as they watch an improvisational opera singer sum up the findings of the day: the characteristics of a financial system they would collectively be proud to put their name to.

May 19, 2015 | 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. | NCBiotech | Research Triangle Park

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It seems like everyone is calling themselves an entrepreneur these days, chasing the glory and status of being the next big success story.

The truth of the matter is, there are hundreds and thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs who think they have a winning idea but never manage to put it into action and go on to growing a successful business. I call these people "wantrepreneurs"

Startup means struggle and that means fun. There have been tough times and these were the most rewarding ones in terms of learning. Even if there were moments of doubt, they were very brief and never overshadowed the drive to solve the problem. 

When I started I had no idea how difficult this journey was going to be. I was inexperienced. And that helped a lot. Sometimes being inexperienced is good. We wanted to change the world. We dreamt of doing something which nobody had done before. I’m happy that we achieved it in the world of Ethical Hacking.

Intuitively, many entrepreneurs and businesses believe that the key to faster growth and success is more products, features, and markets. Since we all have limited resources, and can’t add more hours to the day, the result is usually more things done poorly, rather than a few key things done better than anyone else. The message here is focus, reiterated by every advisor and investor.

You put your campaign up on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, and it’s just been overfunded like crazy. Great, right? Well, yes, it’s the greatest thing that could happen. But it comes with a lot of problems.

When we first set out to raise funds for our piece of hardware on Indiegogo, we were hoping to reach our goal and we dreamed of surpassing it. However, when our campaign closed at nearly $1.3 million (becoming the most funded European campaign on Indiegogo at the time), we were shocked. None of us had expected such success, or the delays that come from being too successful.

Image: richard rodriguez/Flickr

Last year, the Coolest Cooler became the most successful Kickstarter crowdfunded campaign, raising more than $13 million, surpassing other impressive products such as an innovative smart watch and a massively popular video game console. The wild success of the campaign did not go unnoticed by media, bloggers and tech junkies everywhere.

Exposing yourself to risk and failure can help push you up the career ladder. Just make sure someone’s watching.

During his 48-year career from owner of a small student newspaper to the head of a  multinational conglomerate with over 400 companies,  Virgin CEO Richard Branson copped the misses along with the hits,  noting that every error in judgment, whether a foray into cosmetics or a push into the high stakes cola market, brought with it valuable lessons. “I’ll never again make the mistake of thinking that all large dominant companies are sleepy,” he blogged about his failed attempt to break the Coca-Cola and PepsiCo duopoly.

The U.S. now ranks not first, not second, not third, but 12th among developed nations in terms of business startup activity. Countries such as Hungary, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Israel and Italy all have higher startup rates than America does.

We are behind in starting new firms per capita, and this is our single most serious economic problem. Yet it seems like a secret. You never see it mentioned in the media, nor hear from a politician that, for the first time in 35 years, American business deaths now outnumber business births.

Nobody knows us better than our family and friends, right? Who else could predict how we’ll react to good and bad news, or whether to pick the pie or ice cream for dessert?

Facebook, for one. Researchers at the University of Cambridge and Stanford University studied how Facebook Likes matched up with people’s own answers on personality tests, as well as those of their close family and friends. With enough Likes of objects, brands, people, music or books, the computer was better at predicting a person’s personality than most of the people closest to them—with the exception of spouses. (They still know us best, it seems.)

It's a dumbbell. That's how Paul Singh, founder of Crystal City-based Disruption Corp., described the state of the startup market. He told me it's never been easier to raise your first million dollars, but the next step is where most founders drop the ball. A dumbbell, in case you've never been inside a gym (no judgment), is shaped like so: there's a weight on one side, a weight on the other, and a thin bar connecting them. That first weight, according to Singh, represents "thousands of seed-funded companies, lots of micro-funds, lots of accelerators, lots of early-stage VCs."

Everyone wants to be a superhero, but let's face it. Some people just aren't cut out for the job, for any number of reasons. They don't look good in spandex, they drive a Nissan Versa, they're allergic to bee stings and perfume, etc.

But let's say you're struck by a bolt of mystical lightning, or trapped in an irradiated fog mist, and wham!—all of a sudden you have superpowers. Is this an opportunity you should be taking seriously?

Image: http://www.fastcodesign.com

National Geographic Explorer Shah Selbe underscores volunteering's profound effect on who you are and what you end up doing. He also describes how being honored for his leadership in Engineers Without Borders by his employer, Boeing, served as an opportunity to get the aerospace giant to support the nonprofit's charitable work.

Code for America Founder and Executive Director Jennifer Pahlka explains how fellows in her organization enrolled in California's food-stamp program to understand what recipients actually go through. Pahlka also says user data revealed the human dimension of the problem being addressed.

DFJ Operating Partner Heidi Roizen warns against viewing interactions with others as "transactions," where the only objective is meeting your need. Instead, such encounters should be viewed in terms of relationships, especially because you're likely to see the same people again, Roizen says.

Congress did the world’s three billion Internet users a favor by blocking President Obama’s plan to end U.S. protection of the open Internet. Now it is time to embrace the American exceptionalism that made today’s Internet possible.

In March 2014, the Obama administration said it would give up the U.S. contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, when the current term expires in September. The plan ran into a buzz saw of criticism, including from Bill Clinton, whose administration built...

According to the just released 11th edition of Demographia World Urban Areas (Built-Up Urban Areas or World Agglomerations), there are now 34 urban areas in the world with more than 10 million residents, the minimum qualification for megacity status. Tokyo-Yokohama continues its 60 year leads the world's largest urban area. Before Tokyo-Yokohama, New York had been the world's largest urban area for 30 years. London's run, preceding that of New York, was much longer, at more than 100 years. Beijing, which was the first of today's megacities to reach 1,000,000 population, held the title for 75 years before London, according to census and urban historian Tertius Chandler.

Aaron Patzer had come to a crossroads. He knew he was onto something with Mint—but he realized he couldn’t be a successful CEO and also run product for the company. "He's one of the very few founders I've seen who knew it was time to let go and hand things to someone new," says First Round Partner Rob Hayes, who worked closely with Mint. "He wound up hiring this great guy Aaron Forth, and it helped move the company to the next level. That moment when a CEO gives up their core competency to someone else so they can focus on running the company is the moment they become a great leader."