If you really want to impress a startup founder as a potential employee, or you want to be a smart investor, you need to know the right questions to ask. These are the questions that get past the hype of a founder “vision to change the world,” and into the realm of real business strengths, weaknesses, and current health.

Some founders try to deflect these questions by talking incessantly, so you often need to be calm, patient, and persistent to get the answers. My advice to founders out there is to not volunteer too much, but be open and honest in the face of direct questions like the following:

The news that, after what seems like forever, new Internet domain names will be allowed has sparked conversations among college CIO’s and communication specialists about the limits of the “.edu” domain. The news has also provoked serious talk about what might be gained by trading in those three letters strongly linked to higher education for Web addresses like “yourgreatuniveristyhere.com” or even something that ends in “.weberstate” or “.brownuniversity.”

Some observers worry, though, that an influx of new names might dilute the power of “.edu,” which has been the online way to say “a legitimately accredited institution of higher education in the United States.”

There are no rules to naming a startup. And most entrepreneurs do assume that the name they choose will change before their businesses really start to gain momentum.

Consequently, it doesn’t shock us that some of our favorite startups were sired by picking names out of hats, by throwing out odd proper nouns that might be cheap domain names and by haphazardly removing vowels.

Ever wonder what a “Twitter” is, or who the “Hipmunk” is? We’ve asked nine startups to share the story behind their names.

The startup scene in Barcelona, Spain isn’t something we hear a lot about. Athena is an incubator programme looking to change that.

“The investment scene in startups in the Barcelona are is still in an early period,” explains General Partner, Victor Zabrockis. “Most funds or accelerators here are still very conservative and with some successes on the Spanish Internet scene we see a growing interest in helping entrepreneurs getting startups off the ground.”

It’s hard to believe that summer is just about over. It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur, with the economy and technology offering plenty of new opportunities to earn money and strike out on your own. In August, hopefully you did a little review, checking into your options regarding additional tax savings for the rest of the year, as well as looking into your costs to make sure that you are on track.

For September, it’s all about getting ready for what’s next. Here are some items for your September entrepreneur to-do list:

With the economy stagnating and unemployment high, where are the jobs of the future going to come from? A few years ago, it seemed as though the Green Economy could be a big part of the answer.

New clean-energy sources could address environmental, economic and national security problems all at once. In his 2008 convention speech, Barack Obama promised to create five million green economy jobs. The U.S. Conference of Mayors estimated in April 2009 that green jobs could account for 10 percent of new job growth over the next 30 years.

Alas, it was not to be. The gigantic public investments in green energy may be stimulating innovation and helping the environment. But they are not evidence that the government knows how to create private-sector jobs.

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices invites applications from U.S. states to participate in a Policy Academy on "Making" our Future: Encouraging Growth Opportunities in Manufacturing through Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Investment to Assist States in Developing and Implementing Economic Development Strategies aimed at spurring innovation and entrepreneurship in ways that encourage the growth of advanced manufacturing industries. The Policy Academy is designed to assist states in developing and implementing economic development strategies aimed at spurring innovation and entrepreneurship in ways that encourage the growth of advanced manufacturing industries.As part of the application process, states are expected to identify a core team of five to eight members who represent a cross-section of policymakers from relevant state agencies and stakeholder groups. Multiple awards are anticipated. Applications must be submitted to the NGA Center through the governor’s office by September 15, 2011 in order to be considered. For more information regarding eligibility and how to apply, contact Erin Sparks at the NGA Center for Best Practices. Funding for the Academy is provided by the U.S. Department of Commerce NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program and the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration.

"Where change is happening quickly, who best sees the openings, opportunity, and necessities of change? It's not always the CEO," Thomas Friedman tells Fast Company. Friedman, a New York Times columnist and best-selling author, co-wrote a new book, That Used To Be Us, which argues that empowering innovation from every worker must become a priority for employers, the military, schools, and policy makers, if America is to retain (regain?) its superior international standing. From the use of iPhones by bootcamp trainees to shopfloor innovation at DuPont, That Used To Be Us shows that the future of work is already upon us, presenting interviews with global influencers from every corner of society to paint a world blindsided by the need for creative production--and prescriptions on how to learn from those ahead of the curve.

The principle driving forces behind the need for a more inventive worker is "access to more automation, more software, more machines and more people, and more talent of an above average quality," says Friedman, noting that even "cheap genius," is a click away. The implication is that workers who just fulfill their job description are finding themselves left behind in the recession. "If I have to make tough compensation choices between lawyers, a significant factor now for me is their ability to invent," Nixon Peabody partner Jeff Lesk told Friedman, in his response to a question about which lawyers he was retaining at his law firm.

Last week on MBA Mondays, I talked about valuing an internet marketplace business. In that post, I talked about using 1x gross marketplace transactions and 20x EBITDA as multiples to determine value. In the comments, I was asked about multiples for other sectors. That's a good question so I figured I'd show how to calculate multiples for various sectors.

For this exercise we will focus on the software as a services (SAAS) sector. The first thing you need to do is find a universe of publicly traded companies to use for your model. I found this blog post and used a subset of the companies on the list.

The next thing you do is create a spreadsheet with a bunch of companies on it. I decided to use five SAAS companies in my model; Salesforce, NetSuite, Constant Contact, Taleo, and RightNow. The spreadsheet with these five companies is here.

The start of another school year is upon us. As such, nearly 100,000 aspiring MBA’s will be matriculating in the next few weeks to begin a two year program that leads to that golden business passport – an MBA.

A little over 20 years ago, I entered the hallowed halls of the Wharton School to begin my MBA. With now 21 years’ experience post-MBA, I thought that I would share five of the lessons that I learned at business school that proved to be most valuable in the business world.

Next time, I will share some of the business and leadership fundamentals that are equally important in the “real” world, but that are rarely learned at business school.

In the highly competitive world of attracting and retaining the best and brightest employees, it’s understood that salaries, health care and vacation time top many perk wish lists. As things like raise freezes, bonus cutbacks and fewer stock options have become economically necessary, though, it has become harder to keep people motivated.

Last month Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that almost 20 percent of surveyed companies restored all pre-recession perks and only 40 percent brought back some of those that were cut. Yet even with some companies reporting this “benefit bounceback,” a sea change has occurred and the perks are returning — but in different ways.

“Entrepreneurship often happens when people are on their way to something else”.

This quote by Aldrich and Kenworthy (The Accidental Entrepreneur 1999, p. 18 *) is excellent, mainly because it is absolutely true – especially in these times of immense speed and connectivity. Like the hitch hiker, the entrepreneur is often starting new things but what marks them out is their openness to fresh ideas and ability to remain flexible in their thinking. To demonstrate the point, watch this stunning 10 minute presentation by entrepreneurial artist Janet Echelman: http://www.ted.com/talks/janet_echelman.html

Confidence in ourselves and in our skills allows us to push our limits, achieve more than we otherwise would, try even in those borderline cases where a less confident person would bow out. But is there such a thing as being too confident, a flip side to this driver of success? Absolutely. It’s called overconfidence: when confidence trumps accuracy. In other words, we become more confident of our abilities, or of our abilities as compared with others’, than would be wise given the circumstances and the reality. And this surplus of belief in ourselves can lead to some not so pleasant results.

• Group: International Commercialization Alliance
• Subject: 2012 International Commercialization Forum

The 2012 Forum Steering Committee has started planning the March 20-21 event to be held in Toronto. We would like to invite you to submit suggestions for 1) leaders of intermediary and other commercialization organizations from around the world to invite 2) keynote speakers and 3) topics to be discussed in breakout sessions. The more suggestions, the better!

Thank you.

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Years of discussion and wrangling by lawmakers, lawyers, biotechnology businesses, and others over reform of the patent system are expected to end today, when the Senate is scheduled to vote on a motion to end debate on the America Invents Act of 2011 and then vote on the bill itself.

The bill to be taken up by the Senate is word for word from HR 1249, the patent reform measure passed by the House of Representatives on June 23. Last year, the House used a similar maneuver when its then-Democratic leadership persuaded a bare majority to pass verbatim the Senate version of President Obama’s healthcare measure, over the strenuous objections of Republicans. In both cases, the maneuver avoids the additional time required by a conference committee to hammer out a compromise bill amenable to both chambers of Congress.

“Will the dogs eat the dog food?” This rather crude expression weighs heavily on the mind of all good startup founders, no matter how confident they appear. We all know the products they give away, and the ones purchased by family and friends don’t count. The real milestone, proving the business model, is that first product sold for full price to a total stranger, leaving him happy.

So what can you do to expedite this event, or even improve the odds that it will happen at all? Of course, one sale isn’t really enough, so you need to get the first customer to recommend you to a second, and make sure rate of sales ramps up quickly enough to keep the business alive and growing.

A new social network, called Jig, aims to be a place where users do more than just share personal news or play games. It's a hangout where they can help solve one another's problems.

Jig was founded by Joshua Schachter, the creator of the social bookmarking site Del.icio.us, which in the early 2000s popularized the idea of tagging, as well as the notion of publicly sharing links people found interesting. Schachter's new site is pitched as halfway between a social network and a marketplace for advice and help, whether restaurant recommendation or diet tips.

How long does it really take to drive from point A to point B? Though mapping applications have long given a guess along with directions, a group at Microsoft Research has built a system that gives a much more accurate estimate based on real-time road conditions and the user's driving habits. The system also predicts which route will be fastest for each user, and will adjust its suggestions if a person's driving habits change over time. The researchers presented their work last week at the 17th Association for Computing Machinery conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in San Diego.

The research is based on data from GPS sensors installed in more than 33,000 taxicabs in Beijing, China. Yu Zheng led the study at Microsoft Research Asia. His team previously analyzed that data simply to find quick routes around the city, since cab drivers are intimately familiar with changing driving conditions. Their newest application, however, integrates several additional factors.

Friday brought two numbers that should have everyone in Washington saying, “My God, what have we done?”

One of these numbers was zero — the number of jobs created in August. The other was two — the interest rate on 10-year U.S. bonds, almost as low as this rate has ever gone. Taken together, these numbers almost scream that the inside-the-Beltway crowd has been worrying about the wrong things, and inflicting grievous harm as a result.

Written on the whiteboard on the first day of my entrepreneurship class at Tufts was a sobering statistic: 80 percent of startups die in their first four years. There exist a variety of factors that can kill a business. Luckily, Boston is full of programs and organizations designed to help entrepreneurs navigate through the startup process. The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance’s Sustainable Vision VentureLab, led by James Barlow, is a five-day intensive incubator program for companies doing business in emerging markets (it ran August 26-30). I initially thought that it would be an abbreviated version of a conventional business class curriculum, somewhat similar to what I had experienced in the five-day boot camp organized by MassChallenge: what are the best ways to structure a company, to manufacture, distribute, and market product X in market Y, and how to go about getting VC funding?

On the contrary, it is a back-to-basics introspective program that emphasizes the human element of a business, such as being able to communicate your value proposition in an effective and clear manner. This may sound elementary. The reality is that this is the foundation for any business. James compared it to humming a song in your head. When vocalized you can clearly hear the tune and the words, even though the person across from you may be shooting you a puzzled look. This is a problem many entrepreneurs unknowingly struggle with. Having become so familiar with the intricacies of their businesses, they have lost the ability to break it down into its simplest and most coherent forms. When hearing these entrepreneurs pitch, the listener finds himself unable to understand the core of their idea, akin to listening to a hummed song.