(openPR) - Peter Thiel – founder of the New York-based hedge fund Clarium Capital, co-founder of PayPal, and an early investor in Facebook – has established a foundation to give 20 $100,000 grants to teenagers who would drop out of high school and pursue an ambition of becoming world visionary entrepreneurs.

Harrisburg, PA, August 12, 2011 - Peter Thiel – founder of the New York-based hedge fund Clarium Capital, co-founder of PayPal, and an early investor in Facebook – has established a foundation to give 20 $100,000 grants to teenagers who would drop out of high school and pursue an ambition of becoming world visionary entrepreneurs.

Raising capital is one of the most significant business challenges faced by entrepreneurs. The fundraising process for technology startups is typically a slow and painful one, especially for those raising a business from infancy. In many cases, fundraising efforts detract from the time that could or should be spent growing the business.  Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs fail to raise capital because of easily avoidable mistakes made when approaching and meeting with potential investors.

The three most common mistakes include:

Not ready for prime-time. Some entrepreneurs might have a great idea for a business, but then try to pitch investors before the concept is fully developed. Before attempting to gain investment capital, the entrepreneur should create a mockup and develop a model of the screen interfaces. They should then talk to potential customers to validate the concept and ensure that product solves a problem. Entrepreneurs also need to develop the right business model for their company. By choosing and adapting the appropriate model, they can forecast product consumption and have the capability to scale the business during the growth phase.

It was just a lunch. On the day after being elected in 2005, the two of us met over local Italian fare with the hope that our cities, too often divided, could come together and start acting like a single unified region. That simple lunch not only turned into a media frenzy covered by seemingly every news outlet around, but launched a partnership not seen in our region for over 30 years.

This beginning developed into a strong collaborative foundation that over the past five years, has, indeed, become the new normal—not only for our two cities, but for our regional partners as well. Together we have secured significant investments through public, private and philanthropic partners including Living Cities and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to strengthen economic opportunity along our transit corridors.

Because recent indicators reveal distinct signs of economic decline, we have formed a dynamic private/ public partnership that includes regional mayors, CEOs, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development and the Target Corporation, to shape an economic development initiative that will take us to a new level of regional prosperity.

Ours is a region that gave rise to 3M, Control Data, Medtronic, and dozens of other success stories. We are home to one of the finest public research universities in the world as well as a host of small colleges.

We know that there are good ideas ready to launch and companies ready to be born that will grow our economy. We propose to accelerate innovation and entrepreneurship and put the entire strength of this region squarely behind the most promising of those ventures. It is a business proposition, pure and simple. We know that as they grow, these companies will create new markets for local goods and services, provide meaningful employment, add vitality to our neighborhoods and expand our tax base, which will, in turn, give rise to more good ideas and the cycle begins again.

As mayors, this is the work we were elected to do. That we have the opportunity to work together at the heart of such a forward-thinking region is indeed a privilege.

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Monday morning, Google announced plans to acquire Motorola Mobility for around $12.5 billion, or $40 per share. Google cites Motorola’s commitment to Android and its success based on that commitment as a motivation behind the purchase, but the company mentions another reason fueling the acquisition: patent attacks being levied at Android. Make no mistake; that’s the real reason this deal went down.

Just last week, it looked like Motorola was considering seeking royalties related to patents it holds that Android might violate, in an effort to strengthen its position relative to more successful Android hardware partners like Samsung and HTC. It seems likely that talks were underway at that point, so perhaps CEO Sanjay Jha was hinting at this development when he said that investors could soon expect to “see a meaningful difference in positions of many Android players. Both, in terms of avoidance of royalties, as well as potentially being able to collect royalties.”

Google is delving into the Android hardware business and plans to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. The news is a shocking turn for the fast-growing Android ecosystem, which was built on Google’s operating system but didn’t include any actual hardware built by the company. Soon Google will have a hardware platform it controls and could offer the sort of integrated hardware-OS package that Apple is famous for. Google said it will run Motorola as a separate business, but the acquisition raises a lot of questions about how partners will react.

Larry Page, CEO of Google, said the move will supercharge the Android platform but doesn’t change Google’s commitment to keeping the operating system open. The acquisition, however, appears to be a bid to bulk up Android’s patent strength, which will benefit from Motorola’s deep portfolio of mobility patents. Apple, Google’s rival in the smartphone sector, is suing Motorola, but the deal does provide much more protection because it provides Google with more patents — a weak flank for the search giant.

WALTHAM, Mass.--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--InnoCentive, Inc., the pioneer in open innovation and crowdsourcing, today announced a collaboration with Popular Science, a leading science and technology publication, to connect organizations that have important science, technology or engineering problems to the people and global communities who can best solve them. As part of this strategic alliance, InnoCentive and Popular Science have launched the Popular Science Open Innovation Pavilion, located on both InnoCentive.com and PopSci.com, in addition to a new $25,000 Challenge, which asks problem solvers from around the world to design an innovative science lesson plan for students in grades 6-8.

One of the key distinctions between an entrepreneur and an operating executive is an entrepreneur’s almost seamless agility in the face of changing circumstances versus an operating executive’s intense execution focus on a plan. World-class entrepreneurs learn how to combine both.

WTF?

Driving home over the mountains from a Coastal Commission hearing, I had time to ponder an email I received from a city official as the road wound through the Redwood trees. The Coastal Commission had found that a zoning change his city requested didn’t conform to the Coastal Act, and we denied it. I felt sorry for him because he had put together a project that depended upon the property owner, developer, unions, hotel operator, local neighbors, city council, weather, wind speed, phase of the moon and astrological sign all aligning just to get the project in front of us. It was like herding cats and pushing water uphill. Reading his email I was sympathetic realizing that if you substituted customers, channel, product development, hiring, board of directors, and fund raising, he was describing a typical day at a startup. I felt real kinship until I got to his last sentence:

“Now we’re screwed because we had no Plan B.”

On January 31st, 2011, the White House announced Startup America, a public/private initiative to rally efforts to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship in the U.S. by expanding access to capital, creating a national network for entrepreneurship education, enhancing the commercialization of federally-funded innovations and getting rid of tax and paperwork barriers for startups. Given the importance of new firms to America’s economy and the national urgency to create jobs, I take a look this week at what Washington accomplished—leading up to the summer break—in response to the President’s call for action.

On the policy front, the Startup America Partnership set out to create the right policy environment for entrepreneurs to flourish, and 2011 has indeed seen a number of developments in Washington that seek to move America in this direction. First, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently updated its FAQs to clarify that entrepreneurs may qualify for a National Interest Waiver under the EB-2 immigrant visa category if they can demonstrate that their business endeavors will be in the interest of the U.S. The document also clarifies that an H-1B beneficiary who is the sole owner of the petitioning company may establish a valid employer-employee relationship for the purposes of qualifying for an H-1B nonimmigrant visa. In May, DHS also expanded the number of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) graduates of U.S. universities who can extend their work training in the country from 12 to 29 months. These represent important steps in the right direction, but as I will allude to later, to expand access to the nation's pool of talented high skilled graduates in the science and technology fields, we need real "entrepreneurs’ visas" and green cards for those with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math.

Chances are that we’ve all known a person who seems like they’ve got some sort of magical touch, because everything they touch turns to success. But that isn’t the case for the vast majority of us. Most people have to put a lot of dedication, time, and effort into something before we can consider it a success. The same can be said for leadership. Some people are born to be leaders while others have become leaders due to the choices they’ve made and the actions they’ve taken.

Once you have established yourself as an entrepreneur, you are aware that a lot of planning, development, and effective marketing have all got to take place, and you need to be prepared for all sorts of changes to come up at any given time. No matter what position you decide to hold in the company, trying times are sure to be had. By ingraining the following traits within yourself, you will stand a much better chance at success in the long-run!

When we were last with Dick and Jane on Finance Fridays, our fearless entrepreneurs were figuring out how to split up their founders equity and account for an investment from Jane. While they’ve been hard at work on their product, they’ve also incorporated the company, now named SayAhh (thanks Mac!) as a C-Corp in Delaware. They’ve done a bunch of other mundane things, such as establishing a business checking account and depositing Jane’s $50k in seed capital, but like all good early stage entrepreneurs, they’ve spent most of their time obsessing about their product, talking to a few potential early customers about what they needed, and coding away on their MVP.

This is the second part of my three-part series exploring some of the aspects entrepreneurs need to consider when designing a crowdfunding platform. The context for my posts has been a close look at the French crowdfunding market place and in-depth interviews with ten owners of French crowdfunding platforms. In my first post I presented a few factors that I felt made it more difficult for French crowdfunding platforms to achieve the same levels of explosive growth that are being experienced by crowdfunding platforms in the US. In this article I take a closer look at the different models that are being tested in the French market. I spoke to: Smiti Arbia from carnetdemode.com, Nicolas Bailly de touscoprod, Alexandre Boucherot d’Ulule, Hortense Garand from babeldoor.com, Michael Goldman from MyMajorCompany, Nicolas Guillaume from Friendsclear, Angel Ramos de revenonsalamusique.com, Vincent Ricordeau from KissKissBankBank, and Yannick Robert from Mywittygames.com.

“Confidence is contagious; so is the lack of confidence” ~ Vince Lombardi

Great advice from one of the most respected NFL coaches of all time and two-time Super Bowl winner (1966-67)!

The past few years have been challenging for all of us, but have also brought so many silver linings. I have witnessed nothing short of miraculous resilience in people in the face of desperation, unexpected change and tragedy. I’ve seen people endure by being resourceful and digging deep to find solutions, options and positivity.

It’s a well-accepted axiom in the investor community that entrepreneurs learn more from their failures than their successes. Thus a well-explained startup failure often can actually improve your odds of funding in the next go-round. Yet, there is no doubt that the best strategy is to learn from someone else’s mistakes, so you can enjoy the millions that someone else lost in learning.

Certainly there are innumerable possible mistakes to be made, but there is a thread of common ones that I see across the range of all startups. Ryan Blair, a serial entrepreneur who admits to his share of million dollar mistakes, as well as some multi-million dollar successes, sums these up nicely in his current bestseller “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain:”

You throw open your wallet all the time as a small business owner. The printer is out of paper – out comes the wallet. You’re a little short on payroll – out comes the wallet. It’s time to retire – out comes the… whoops.

It’s easy to forget about the future when you’re spending so much time, money, and energy dealing with the problems that have your attention right now. Jim Blasingame, a contributor at Forbes refers to small businesses as a teenager with a hand constantly extended, asking for more and more money. Except, as Blasingame points out, small businesses have dozens of hands that clamor for your cash.

As women, we face more obstacles than most men do during our careers.

Whether we are managers, supervisors or underlings, we face the glass ceiling, gender issues, pay issues, etc. — the list goes on.  I’ve often wondered how women who own businesses are treated.  Are they treated differently because they are the owners?  Are they greeted with skeptic looks when networking?  What’s it like to be a woman entrepreneur nowadays?

Women entrepreneurs have opportunities now like never before.  But, the success they achieve does not come without barriers and challenges.  Of all the women entrepreneurs I spoke with, the biggest challenge, across the board, is the fact that women are more emotional, caring or compassionate than our counterparts.

The recent events in the American economy, namely the downgrading of the US credit rating by S&P, may affect hi-tech and biomed companies.

These companies depend on the American economy in several critical ways: the US is the main market for their products; they need to raise capital, most of which comes from American venture-capital funds; and to make an exit, they need an active capital market, or high-growth companies with money available to invest in acquisitions. These are almost exclusively American companies.

‘When the IPO market is weak, the sector suffers’ “Current events in the US are definitely not good for us,” Genesis Partners partner Dr. Eyal Kishon said. “When our companies don’t sell, when the relevant investors don’t want to invest, and when the IPO market is weak, the entire sector suffers.”

In the global economy, when Europe sneezes, the United States catches a cold. Ewww. No one knows why Europe can't just cover its mouth -- and its sovereign debt.

The rest of the world should consider dragging its sorry assets to Silicon Valley, which remained an oasis of calm last week. As fears of an impending debt crisis engulfed global markets, and a Standard & Poor's downgrade put the stink on America's credit rating, stock indexes turned into fever charts, with the Dow Jones industrial average reversing field by 1,063, 949 and 943 points on consecutive days.

The sky was falling everywhere, including much of the South Bay, where foreclosure rates in Santa Clara County remained depressingly high, and 10.3 percent of the people kept at the grim job of looking for a job. But the sky didn't fall on the heart of Silicon Valley.

The explosive success of companies such as Google, Apple, PayPal and Facebook means there is a generation of computer geeks turned multi-millionnaires, who have money to invest and are keen to plough it back into the industry they understand.

Europe, by comparison, has lagged far behind. Funding has been thin on the ground and smaller scale, prompting a succession of Britain's most talented entrepreneurs to pack their bags for West Coast America.

However, that is starting to change and will accelerate rapidly as Europe yields its own success stories, technology investors claim.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I’ll say this right up front: The patent system in both Europe and the United States is the biggest threat to innovation in the world today.

Rather than competing with each other on price and features, the biggest tech companies want to fight it out in court where some Luddite judge—rather than the market—can decide who wins and loses. By claiming that another company has violated some vague patent, one vendor can use the legal system to either block rival products from the market or demand hefty kickbacks (a.k.a. licensing fees) from their makers.

Entrepreneurship is a vital driving force for job creation and economic growth. The benefits however are not just economic. Entrepreneurship also plays a role in the attainment of an individual’s goals and the realisation of social objectives.

Entrepreneurship leads to the setting up of SMEs. It is organisations this size that make up the vast majority of European businesses. Their size is also attributed with giving these companies the flexibility to react quickly to economic downturns thus making the economy more resilient to market turbulence which could be instrumental in weathering a crisis.