If you’re not reaching, engaging, and monetizing customers on mobile, you’re likely losing them to someone else. Register now for the 8th annual MobileBeat, July 13-14, where the best and brightest will be exploring the latest strategies and tactics in the mobile space.

Jacob Mathew’s interest in social enterprise started with creating cross-subsidization business plans for social enterprises, when he enrolled with the Dasra Social Impact programme. In 2005, he set up Idiom Design and Consulting, a business design firm based in Bangalore. His interaction with social enterprises began when Idiom designed Mother Earth, started by Neelam Chhibber, his wife. By 2009, he had quit Idiom to exclusively work with social enterprises. SpringHealth was one of the first ones Jacob worked with to put his experience with Idiom into practice, and eventually became a board member.

Every six months or so, an article pops up with the headline, "Do you really need a PR firm?" These articles set off myriad phone calls from clients who say, “I read that if we have a great product, we will immediately get PR.”

While there are some exceptional products that have grown organically (like Instagram), the technology space is so crowded that being heard above the noise is increasingly difficult.

There’s no perfect time to startup a business and you’ll always be able to find excuses not to. But when you’re a student, you have a lot fewer excuses than many older people do.

You’re unlikely to have kids for instance, or a home and car to pay off. You also have immediate access to a wealth pool of incredible minds, a potentially lucrative market base and, depending on the course you’re pursuing, a heck of a lot more free time on your hands than anyone in the working world.

Startup investing and fundraising is moving from the boardroom to the deal room (online) as new laws for equity crowdfunding in the U.S. have come into effect over the last two years.

Prior to this, traditional fundraising has been a fractured process that takes place across hundreds of private emails, calls and in person pitch meetings. But now, early stage venture capital is being disrupted and moving online in a more public way.

Expert says the UAE government has shown great commitment in increasing awareness about open innovation as a part of its efforts to promote innovation at the core of government performance. An international expert on innovation has commended the UAE’s “high level of success” in adopting innovation and making the concept a part of community culture.

Entrepreneurs face many challenges -- some externals and some internal. Overcoming setbacks is all about understanding what you're up against and crafting a plan to get through it. Here are some tips on dealing with setbacks in your entrepreneurial career.

You're not productive enough

Sometimes it seems that for all the advances technology has wrought, it comes with a serious downside. You may know that downside as Facebook, Angry Birds, or simply a check-in with your favorite blog.

Are you a Hank Aaron or a Ty Cobb? A Barry Bonds or a Hugh Duffy? Do you consistently get on base or do you swing for the fences? The answer will tell you a lot about whether entrepreneurship is right for you, and if so, what style will best suit you. Understanding your attitude towards risk and reward is essential for a happy life as an entrepreneur.

Hank Aaron is the Major League Baseball career home-run leader, and Barry Bonds holds the single-season record.

It may start as a fantasy of owning your own business or being able to work from home and set your own hours, but as your plans develop, you might find yourself wondering, am I entrepreneur material?

Consider these qualities drawn from real-life entrepreneurs in order to see if you fit the bill.

Image: Steve Jobs. Photo by Flickr user Ben Stanfield

Conventional wisdom has long blamed age-related hearing loss almost entirely on the death of sensory hair cells in the inner ear, but research from neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins has provided new information about the workings of nerve cells that suggests otherwise.

In a paper published July 1 in The Journal of Neuroscience, the Johns Hopkins team says its studies in mice have verified an increased number of connections between certain sensory cells and nerve cells in the inner ear of aging mice. Because these connections normally tamp down hearing when an animal is exposed to loud sound, the scientists think these new connections could also be contributing to age-related hearing loss in the mice, and possibly in humans.

If you’re not reaching, engaging, and monetizing customers on mobile, you’re likely losing them to someone else. Register now for the 8th annual MobileBeat, July 13-14, where the best and brightest will be exploring the latest strategies and tactics in the mobile space.

If you’re not reaching, engaging, and monetizing customers on mobile, you’re likely losing them to someone else. Register now for the 8th annual MobileBeat, July 13-14, where the best and brightest will be exploring the latest strategies and tactics in the mobile space.

Through my own experiences growing VerbalizeIt and as a mentor to startups involved in the Techstars network, I’m often asked how to approach the capital raising process.

Should we raise capital? If so, how much and from whom?

As a data-oriented individual, I wish there was a magic formula that we entrepreneurs could use to answer these critical questions. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing and we instead lean on the advice and experiences of others to make an informed decision.

Some people look at Silicon Valley and see a world filled with fortune-seekers come to strike it rich.

Yes, the Valley has its share of mercenaries. But you’ve never heard of the companies they founded or ran, because those start-ups couldn’t attract or retain good talent, win solid investment backing, or earn customers’ good will.

The Department of Health and Human Services' new chief technology officer wants to infuse the roughly 90,000-person agency with some Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial spirit.

In her first few weeks on the job, CTO Susannah Fox issued a list of proposals intended to address a “continued need for culture change at HHS."

Entrepreneurs and young professionals looking to launch their career or their startup in an active technology hub have a wide variety of alternatives to the costly traditional hotspots like New York, Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley.

The country’s hottest up-and-coming tech scenes in 2015 are typically found in mid-sized cities eager to make a name for themselves, offering big-city resources like universities, access to talent, and satellite offices of tech industry titans along with lower costs of living and a greater work/life balance.

Raising rounds of venture capital is the goal for many companies: An influx of cash is certainly the fastest way to jump-start your growth and start hitting key milestones more quickly. But venture capital isn't a silver bullet, and it's not the right fit for every company.

To better understand the benefits and drawbacks, I polled nine successful entrepreneurs from YEC to get their thoughts on some of the biggest pitfalls to be wary of, and advice on how to avoid them entirely.

Managers. We all have to deal with some version of them. Even the companies claiming they have a flat organisation structure. There’s always someone you report to. There’s always someone who, if you’re lucky, you look up to. And if you’re not, well, that’s an entirely different story altogether.

I didn’t always work at a startup. My first job was at a big corporation and the development team at my location consisted of 100 odd people, divided into teams that reported to a team lead (TL) and TL’s that reported to a project lead (PL) and PLs that reported to a… well, you get the drift.

Innovation tourism: it’s a thing. The tourists are entrepreneurs looking for the right economic microclimate to start a business; corporate scouts looking to expand their company’s reach or improve their supply chain; policy makers trying to figure out the right balance of rules and infrastructure to create a thriving economy; investors searching for the next crop of opportunities. These well-intentioned professionals travel the world in pursuit of the secret sauce of innovation. Typically, tourism involves guided tours, pitch events, conferences with lots of panels, and well-planned visits to companies, universities, and government agencies tasked with increasing entrepreneurship and innovation.

One of the simplest questions I get from aspiring entrepreneurs, and ironically one of the hardest, is “How do I start?” I want to tell them to just start anywhere, but I realize that most have no idea where anywhere is. They just aren’t prepared for the life they want, and are really asking me how to learn to be an entrepreneur. It takes more than passion and a course on business basics.