In that miracle masquerading as the NFC Championship game last Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks taught entrepreneurs and all of us in the startup world five of the most important lessons about starting and building successful companies.

1. Nothing ever goes as planned.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

His name was David. He was 10 years old and, to put it bluntly, compellingly weird—especially in the buttoned-down, groomed normality of suburban Long Island in the early 1960s. At the time, Michael Wigler was a ninth-grade student in Garden City, and he liked to hang out at the home of his girlfriend. That’s where he encountered David, her younger brother. Half a century later, he still can’t get the boy out of his mind.

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"If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again."

This 19th-century saying by British educational writer William Edward Hickson has been adapted for use by technology entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere today.

They call it "fail fast, learn quickly".

The emphasis is on learning quickly, rather than failing, for it would otherwise be insane to seek out failure, said innovation management guru Scott Anthony.

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In 1997, Jay Walker founded Priceline.com — the Web site many people use to get cheaper airfare by "naming your own price." Patenting the solution, and allowing others to use the patents for a fee, helped drive Walker's success. But, Walker argues in an interview, many patents remain underused. Now, the man who smoothed transactions for buyers and sellers of airplane tickets wants to do something similar for a key part of the nation's information economy. Walker is developing something called the United States Patent Utility. Here’s what that means.

How did you get into this space, and why are you interested in patents after having worked on Priceline?

I think the old phrase that "necessity is the mother of invention" applies here. As you probably know, I have quite a few inventions to my name and quite a few patents to my name.

How many patents?

Image: Priceline.com founder Jay Walker. (Patent Properties) 

New, small businesses sharing desk space and supplies, mentoring, and educational opportunities and programs, are thought to have notably contributed to the United States’ recent economic rebound. Incubator facilities and programs designed to assist these early stage companies, are thought to be a big part of it.

By lightning everyday business costs and resource burdens, incubators are yielding high economic return. NYU’s School of Engineering incubator program, for example, is said to have generated $251.2 million (projected to be $719.8 million in 2015)in direct and indirect job creation, taxes and spending, in just five years alone.

When 17-year-old Eddy Zhong's 14-year-old little brother couldn't find a teen-focused accelerator program or summer camp focused on entrepreneurship, Eddy Zhong decided to found one.

He dropped out of school two months ago (he plans to get his GED) to launch the business venture called Leangap, a startup accelerator just for teens.

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I don’t know if anything other than Girl Scout cookies is sold door to door anymore. But once, I had the idea of a business right next door to a door-to-door salesperson training office – and I couldn’t resist.

You know that guy next door has just had it with people getting all fired up, leaving their training, and walking right though his door, ready to get that first sale!

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The past two weeks have brought new signs that global warming is not only continuing, but may in some respects be accelerating. Three independent agencies in the United States and Japan made the announcement that 2014 was most likely the warmest year on record since at least 1880, and very likely for several millennia before that.

The only major land mass that featured relatively cool temperatures for the year — but still warmer than average — was parts of the U.S. and Canada.

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I am truly amazed by how afraid some inventors are. They fear that someone is going to steal their million-dollar idea. They assume that every company is eagerly lying in wait, ready to rip them off.

This ugly point of view rears its head everywhere I look, from conversations on LinkedIn groups to YouTube comments. These entrepreneurs are quick to declare that companies will steal your idea. Why would they pay us for our ideas, they ask.

Google's expected investment in the commercial space-flight venture SpaceX took on substance Tuesday, when the startup announced a fresh $1 billion investment courtesy of the search giant and Fidelity. The two new investors will now own just under 10% of SpaceX. This funding will further research into space transport, reusability, and satellite manufacturing.

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The leveling off of Samsung’s mobile business last year sent a message to the consumer electronics giant: Today’s tech users want more than just huge, plasticky phones. They want beautiful gadgets that are a pleasure to use.

Enter Samsung's new design chief, Lee Don-Tae. He just joined the technology giant this month to whip its products into (hopefully beautiful) shape.

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A report from Mercom Capital Group LLC found that venture capital funding for health care information technology sector more than doubled in 2014. VC funding came in at $4.7 billion in 670 deals, compared with $2.2 billion and 571 deals in 2013. "In the five years since we started tracking funding data, the sector has raised $8.8 billion in VC funding and anther $3.6 billion in public market and debt financings, bringing the total to $12.4 billion — largely driven by the HITECH and Affordable Care Act," Mercom CEO and co-founder Raj Prabhu said in a statement. "However, the enthusiasm in the sector shown by the VC community was not quite matched by the public markets when you look at market performance of companies that went the IPO route in 2014."

Greg Moran, CEO of Chequed.com in Saratoga Springs, New York, said his company has been lucky to find success in seed and venture capital funding. Chequed.com, a candidate-recruitment software developer, has raised $4 million in seed and venture capital funding since launching in 2008. Moran said the company is now in a fundraising round looking to double that number.

The power and influence of paid media advertising, including print ads, TV commercials, radio, and even online digital campaigns is waning, in favor of unpaid earned and owned messaging from your website, social media, key market influencers, and existing customer word-of-mouth. But startups need to remember that even zero paid media doesn’t mean that marketing is free.

The case for zero paid media as the new marketing model was highlighted in a recent book, “Z.E.R.O.” by Joseph Jaffe and Maarten Albarda, both experienced marketers working with new companies, as well as larger firms.

Stunned researchers in Antarctica have discovered fish and other aquatic animals living in perpetual darkness and cold, beneath a roof of ice 740 meters thick. The animals inhabit a wedge of seawater only 10 meters deep, sealed between the ice above and a barren, rocky seafloor below—a location so remote and hostile the many scientists expected to find nothing but scant microbial life.

Image: Credit: Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling Project

As I touched down in San Francisco I could feel that there was something different about this city. It was a short flight, coming from my Los Angeles hometown, but there was obviously a different air in San Francisco. Colder, yes. But also, more innovative. As I headed to the city, I got into a discussion with the driver about the difficulty of finding a nearby cab when I needed one. The cab driver let me out at the hotel and said, “Someone should just make an app for that.” I was definitely in Silicon Valley.

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When you picture a a duck, what do you see?

What’s the first thing that comes to mind?

If you’re anything like me—a hopelessly devoted child of the 90s—you think first of Gordon Bombay, Charlie Conway, Julie “The Cat” Gaffney, and everyone’s favorite fat guy, Goldberg. You know, thatgroup of Ducks. The capital “D” Ducks. If you’re a true fan, you may even catch a glimpse of Dean Portman stripping in the penalty box circa D3.

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“Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.” –Katharine Hepburn

I used to be terrified of public speaking, social engagements, and looking into anyone’s eyes when exceeding a glance. Turns out, shyness will not get you very far in the business world. Sure – it’s absolutely adorable when you are hanging with your posse or on that awkward first date; nevertheless, when you are running a company, it’s a hindrance. When I began my company, Pretty Girl Movement, LLC., I knew that I needed to overcome my obstacle and learn to freaking talk to people.*

Several years ago the National Science Foundation surveyed the small businesses that had won its innovation research grants (through the SBIR program) to see how they were progressing five and ten years after their awards. While there were unquestionably many successes, of those companies that failed, or where the SBIR-funded projects didn’t go well, the most common reason was that companies made products no one wanted.

In other words, for what was typically regarded as a grant to fund risky R&D, the biggest reason for failure was market failure . Perhaps similar reasons exist when education innovations don’t get widely disseminated?

It’s not an Earth-shattering concept that healthy confidence is an asset in the workplace. But it can also deliver bottom-line benefits to both the individual and the organization by allowing you to excel in a number of areas necessary for greater financial success.