Starting a business in the United States is a complex process, so it is easy to overlook U.S. immigration requirements. Entrepreneurs may be unaware of the consequences until they're faced with a harsh reality when trying to pass through immigration inspection at an airport. The best way to ensure compliance with immigration regulations is to plan as far in advance as possible and to know when it is necessary to obtain a visa.

Books, articles, speeches, television shows and movies can spark creative ideas and provide helpful inspiration for entrepreneurs. That’s right -- an excuse to watch some cinematic masterpieces!

Break out the popcorn, get comfy on the couch and watch these movies to get inspired and enlightened:

For a long time, it was believed that people are born with a given level of intelligence and the best we could do in life was to live up to our potential. Scientists have now proven that we can actually increase our potential and enjoy ourselves in the process. We now know that by learning new skills the brain creates new neural pathways that make it work faster and better.

Image: Image credit: V | Flickr

While much is made of the dreaded "middle child syndrome," middle children are actually the "stealth leaders" of the birth-order pack, according to Katrin Schumann, coauthor of The Secret Power of Middle Children. I spoke to Schumann about some of the qualities middle children tend to develop that prime them to be trailblazers, entrepreneurs, and fantastic team leaders.

There are three skills you need to be financially successful: making money, keeping money, growing money. James Altucher is mostly only good at making money.

"I’ve had several instances where I’ve started a business, sold it, made a lot of money, and then basically lost everything I made, whether it was $50 million or $5 million or whatever," he tells Fast Company. "I always have a tendency to lose everything I made."

Y Combinator (YC), the Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator and seed fund, has answered a question it says it gets asked a lot: What is the fundraising and valuation status of all startups that have come through its doors?

Launched in 2005 by Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris, YC initially ran two programs — one in California, and one in Massachusetts. The latter of these closed in 2009.

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QB3@953, a San Francisco, USA-based incubator created by QB3, a University of California research institute and biotech accelerator, has announced an agreement with UK pharma company GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK).

Together the companies will identify and facilitate collaborations to translate early drug target concepts into medicines that benefit patients. It formalizes an existing relationship between QB3@953 and GSK’s Discovery Partnerships with Academia team.

Is the U.S. market for consumer wearable devices headed toward the trough of disillusionment on the Gartner Hype Cycle? A new report suggests that explosive growth in demand for fitness bands, smartwatches, smart glasses (think Google Glass) and the like peaked in January and has been headed downward ever since. 

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Neil Seeman channels Ayn Rand in extolling the virtues of “accidental” entrepreneurs in the Weekend Report on Business (August 22, B5), and presents himself as the glorious embodiment of this subspecies. Seeman also asserts that entrepreneurial heroism is mostly a familial trait, and has nothing to do with “taxpayer-funded programs.” This has to be true, he adds, because “one of Canada’s most well-respected seed investors” said so.

I have been blessed to own several businesses in my time, working across industries and sectors, from sports to hospitality and property development.

I have a family of entrepreneurs. My mother has a financial planning business, my dad had a recruitment business, my uncle owns a large logistics company and family in Australia own retail stores and supermarkets. So the path to becoming an entrepreneur was a relatively easy decision and was met with loads of support and encouragement.

While most people are conditioned to see through the marketing hype surrounding “revolutionary!” and “game-changing!” new technologies, few have the same healthy skepticism when it comes to outsized claims about allegedly dire privacy risks that now routinely accompany many of the very same innovations. Taken at face value, these supposed privacy risks suggest that government should intervene to protect society. A closer look, however, reveals that privacy concerns are often misplaced or unnecessary, and they rapidly dissipate as people come to better understand and appreciate the products and services in question.

As the world's ice sheets melt in response to warming air and ocean temperatures, global sea level is increasing. This is already putting cities from New York to Shanghai at risk of almost routine flooding from even relatively minor storms.

The question facing scientists and policy makers is how much sea level rise they need to plan for in the coming decades, and recent findings are concerning.

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On the surface of a living cell at any given time, hundreds of tiny bubbles are popping into existence, surrounding and incorporating proteins, hormones, fats, and the occasional bacteria or virus. But until now the details of this activity were inferred – you couldn’t actually see it. The problem wasn’t just that the structures taking part in this bustling activity are too small, but that our bodies work on an invisibly fast time scale—important changes are taking place over fractions of a second.

Every entrepreneur I know can’t find enough hours in a day to do the good things they want, and yet they often find themselves saying “yes” to new requests. Perhaps because they are optimists by nature, or they just hate to disappoint others, they end up hurting their health, credibility, and effectiveness by not being able to deliver on everything they promise.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/90037546@N00/3527930354

Growing up, I had it all laid out: I would graduate high school with top grades, continue on to a prestigious college where I would major in biology or some other science and then, I would get accepted into the med school of my choice.

BENGALURU: In his annual letter to shareholders in April, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned of a wave of disruption in the traditional banking sector originating from startup hubs such as Silicon Valley. "Silicon Valley is coming," he warned.

With malware joining missiles among the threats to America’s security, leading technology innovators such as Apple Inc. and Google Inc. are being recruited to join traditional defense contractors on the front lines. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is visiting Silicon Valley Friday as part of a continuing effort to bridge the divide between the Pentagon and a tech community wary of excessive surveillance and privacy violations.

Image: Defense Secretary Ashton Carter gestures during a speech Thursday, April 23, 2015, in Stanford, CA, U.S. Photographer: Ben Margot/AP Photo

Apple will be releasing a new version of its Apple TV set top box in September, according to Buzzfeed sources. The new Apple TV is rumored to have a revamped processor, a remote with a touch-pad, its own App Store, and Siri voice control.  

Politicians and pundits love to talk about the character-building experience of working your way through college. But how realistic is that ideal? As one way of answering that question, here’s a thought experiment: Let’s say you’re planning to attend your state’s best-known public university (at the in-state rate, naturally) and you’re hoping a minimum-wage job will cover the cost. How long would you have to work at that job to recoup a year’s worth of tuition and fees?

We have the privilege of meeting with thousands of entrepreneurs every year, and in the course of those discussions are presented with all kinds of numbers, measures, and metrics that illustrate the promise and health of a particular company. Sometimes, however, the metrics may not be the best gauge of what’s actually happening in the business, or people may use different definitions of the same metric in a way that makes it hard to understand the health of the business.