Aside from all the decision-making, financial burdens and day-to-day responsibilities of entrepreneurship, the central dilemma of owning a business springs from the dissonance of managing a healthy work-life balance. You’re fully invested in your organization, so the more work you put in, the more rewards you’re likely to see and the more passion you're likely to feel about that work. The problem is, that combination leads many entrepreneurs to work with their heads down, indefinitely, until the stress of overwork finally catches up with them.

Marvin Minsky is one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence, and over the past 60 years he has made key contributions in mathematics, robotics, computer graphics, machine perception, and machine learning. I was lucky enough to be invited to meet recently with Minsky at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, and I took a videographer to capture the conversation.

Dropbox, AirBnb, and Reddit: just three of the companies that began at startup incubator Y Combinator and have grown to have huge impact and valuations. Now the influential Silicon Valley institution is hoping to broaden its influence.

Most of the nearly 1,000 startups that have been through Y Combinator’s three-month boot camp have built Internet businesses of some kind, and more than 40 of them are now worth $100 million or more.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com/

The close of Women's Small Business Month is a good time to take stock of the state of women-owned firms in the U.S.

As we know from a previous report from National Women’s Business Council, there were 9.9 million women-owned businesses, or 36% of all nonfarm businesses, according to the most recent U.S. Census data count in 2012. That represents a 27.5% increase from five years prior.

Growth is magic. It makes it easier to fund new investments, attract great talent, and acquire assets. But the environment for growth has been difficult since 2008, and while there are signs that the Great Recession is at last receding, significant challenges remain. Real-GDP growth in the United States remains below historical averages; the economies of most European countries are still sluggish; and growth in emerging markets, particularly the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—is slowing down.

What is one of the most powerful tools an entrepreneur can leverage to provide him or her with a competitive advantage? Knowledge, which is driven by our willingness to constantly learn, adapt and change.

In today's content driven world, there is no shortage of information, resources and inspiration available every day to equip entrepreneurs with the knowledge they need to be successful. Unfortunately, all of this information can get overwhelming.

"Raising money is like ordering dinner," says startup founder Geoff McQueen about attracting investors. "If you’re only a little bit hungry, you should only buy an appetizer."

McQueen was writing about his company, professional services platform Affinity Live, achieving its first round of funding. While the amount raised is a relatively modest $2 million, the main gain for the company is getting some experienced business people on board.

California has a long history of boom and bust cycles, but over the past 25 years or so, California’s cycles appear to be becoming more volatile, with increasing frequency, higher highs, and lower lows.  The fast-moving business cycle may not provide the time necessary for many people to recover from previous busts, and may be too limited in its impact. Even now, 22 of California’s 58 counties have unemployment rates of 7.5 percent or higher. Eleven California counties have unemployment rates of at least nine percent.  And these, we are told, are the best of times.

Chemical changes in brain cells caused by disturbances in the body’s day-night cycle may be a key underlying cause of the learning and memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease, according to a University of California, Irvine study. The research on mice, led by UCI biomedical engineering professor Gregory Brewer, provides the first evidence that circadian rhythm-altering sleep disruptions similar to jet lag promote memory problems and chemical alterations in the brain.

Image: http://scienceblog.com 

The ongoing drought in California is now well into its fourth year and the crisis is taking a heavy toll on area residents and businesses. Back in April, Governor Jerry Brown signed an executive order requiring cities and towns to reduce water consumption by 25 percent or face hefty fines. These restrictions have far-reaching ramifications on industries such as agriculture and food processing which rely on heavy water use. While not as significantly impacted as these sectors, pharmaceutical companies based in California have their own drought-related challenges to contend with. Most notably, the water shortage has made it increasingly difficult for pharmaceutical companies to secure the wastewater discharge permits necessary to manufacture drugs in the state.

Pinchas Gutter has many stories to tell about his life during World War II. His entire family was killed in the Nazi death camps, and he can hardly remember his sister with the “golden hair.” Now 82, he and survivors like him won’t be around much longer to talk of their experiences, which is why one university has made a virtual replica of Gutter so that those in the future can meet him and engage him in conversation.

Image: Photo: USC Institute for Creative Technologies A hologram of Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter interacts with classroom students during a demonstration of the New Dimensions in Technology project. 

We can all think of the names of some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Warren Buffet and many more.

In my interviews and studies of these successful entrepreneurs, I've come to notice several key traits that most share in common with each other. What makes them successful? Why do these people succeed at business when so many do not?

Image: http://entrepreneurs.about.com 

There is a lot of confusion and misinformation out there about crowdfunding and equity crowdfunding. I wanted to take a moment to try to clear up some of it with some simple information.

To understand regulated crowdfunding, you must know what crowdfunding is and what the different types are. What is crowdfunding and what is all the hype about?

Image: http://www.business.com 

Burlington, VT — At Gov Pitch 2016, an event benefiting United Way of Chittenden County and hosted by Comcast and Fresh Tracks Capital, one of Vermont’s premier business incubators, House Speaker and gubernatorial candidate Shap Smith outlined an agenda to support entrepreneurship and spur job creation as Governor.

In these early days of the Internet of Things (IoT), much of the focus has been on industrial applications, such as improving operations with autonomous machines, or standalone consumer products, like a Fitbit. But from our research, we’re seeing a more human-centric category of IoT activity starting to emerge. It’s less about automation and more about personal augmentation; less about individual devices and more about “living services” that let people program and connect smart devices however they want.

On the global scale, startups mean big business as they contribute to innovation, job creation, and economic growth. Recent estimates put small and medium-sized businesses at more than 90% of global enterprises.

And even though we know growing a startup is often fraught with challenges, many have broken out to become some of the largest, most successful companies of our time.

Image: http://www.fastcompany.com 

Baby boomer managers can be credited with creating employee support programs. Generation X managers can be credited with making the workplace more informal, making the term "business casual" commonplace. What will the next breed of managers bring to the workplace?

MassChallenge’s international expansion continues with today’s announcement that theBoston-based startup accelerator will launch a new outpost in Jerusalem next year.

The move establishes a stronger connection with Israel. MassChallenge has had a “feeder program” for three years that has so far brought 32 Israeli startups to Boston and London to participate in the nonprofit’s accelerator programs in those cities.

Knowing all too well how hard it is to start a single new business, I’ve always wondered how several well-known entrepreneurs, including Richard Branson and Elon Musk, have managed to successfully lead dozens of startups to success, and thrive on the process. These special people are called serial entrepreneurs, because they have figured out how to do it over and over again.

With a net worth of approximately $79.4 billion, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates is the wealthiest person in the world.

Gates has been a public fixture ever since he and Paul Allen started a computer revolution in the 1980s. He has all of the toys you would expect from the world's richest man, from a private jet to a 66,000-square-foot home he nicknamed Xanadu 2.0.