Given how many folks are looking for work these days (and desperate for their resumes to stand out in the pile), a startup like Vizualize.me was inevitable. Its algorithms and templates take your boring, vanilla C.V. and automagically transform it into a Feltron-esque personal infographic at the push of a button. "In the age of data overload, the text resume is slowly becoming a living anachronism," the company's press release intones ominously. "The average resume is now over 2 pages long with more than 1000 words." Who wants to deal with that?

When I started on the entrepreneurial journey over two years ago, I had this naive notion that I could do everything on my own and that I needed to keep my ideas a secret.

Three websites and a startup incubator program later, I learned some lessons I wish I knew at the beginning as an entrepreneur.

9 Lessons I Learned About Starting a Startup

Lesson #1: An idea is worth nothing.

A company consists of many moving parts at any point in time — an idea is simply a starting point. Given an idea, it snowballs into many different ones and you can go in a 100 different direction. The outcome depends on many variables, akin to what makes predicting the weather an inexact science. Imagine you have an idea for a building — the HOW, WHERE, and the CONTEXT are much more important than the WHAT. It’s very easy to have ideas — you can have a 100 ideas a week.

It seems that Venture investors are none-too-happy with current IPO activity. According to a study sponsored by Deloitte and the National Venture Capital Association released yesterday, over 80 percent of venture capitalists from around the globe believe “that current IPO activity levels in their home countries are too low”. Low enough, in fact, that it has investors worrying over whether or not it can sustain the venture capital industry.

While it seems that investors and VCs tend not to agree on anything (ever?) and it’s thus a bit surprising to see 87 percent of U.S. investors agreeing that IPO activity is too low, it’s also important to keep in mind that this survey was given to investors in the spring. This was before Pandora and LinkedIn went public and bubbletalk was on the tip of everyone’s tongue; in fact, 2011 seems to be a pretty good year for IPOs and investors are encouraging startups to raise. (Before a potential bubble burst, of course.) So then, perhaps VCs should consider IPO rehab for their addictions? What do you think?

Earlier this month, I attended the Laurence A. Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship’s conference, “Building a Fan Base: Lifting Your Business to Stardom.” The conference was held at World Cafe Live so I assumed it would be a different kind of party.

And it was. The mash-up of music and a panel discussion made me want to shout.

The moderator, Mark Loschiavo, executive director of the Baiada Center, posited “jazz as a metaphor for entrepreneurship.” He drew parallels between musicians and entrepreneurs. To grow a business worth shouting about, entrepreneurs must move beyond customers to a fan base. Fan is broadly defined to include partners, investors, suppliers, mentors and advisers.

During the past 25 years I've seen a lot of innovation task forces come and go. Some of them looked good at the beginning and died a slow death. Some of them looked bad at the beginning and died a quick death. And some of them actually succeeded.

And so, at the risk of giving your task force one more task to do, please take a few minutes to review the following guidelines.

They will save you time. They will save you headaches. And they may even save your company...

20 TIPS FOR INNOVATION TASK FORCES

1. Quit now if you're not really into it.

2. Make sure everyone else on the task force really wants to do the work.

Waterloo - The Hon. John Milloy, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, announced June 20 that the provincial government will invest $72.6 million in the Global Innovation Exchange facility at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Waterloo campus. This is the largest single capital investment in the university’s history.

This signature, $103-million project is an integral part of Laurier’s Campus Master Plan. The GIE will allow the university to meet the growing demand for enrolment in Laurier’s business and math programs, and expand the university’s ability to deliver integrated and engaged learning opportunities to students at the local and global levels.

Once again charter and magnet schools in Texas hold the reigns as the top public high schools in the country.

Newsweek released its ranking of the best public high schools in America, using a panel of experts and reaching out to more than 10,000 high schools in the country.

Newsweek asked schools to submit four-year graduation rate, percentage of 2010 graduated who immediately enrolled in college, various test scores, student to teacher ratio, and stats about advanced placement courses.

n a European University Association report on 'Global university rankings and their impact', published last week, 13 global ranking systems were scrutinised, including the high-profile Shanghai Academic and Times Higher

Education lists.

Such rankings only cover around 3% of the world's universities (17,000) and the ratings reflect university research performance "far more accurately than teaching," because the indicators used to rank teaching are "all proxies, and their link to the quality of teaching is indirect at best," according to the report.

Going international is a big growing up step for US startups, and an important one. The Internet is global and most fast-growing startups like Twitter, Zynga and Foursquare see most of their growth outside the US.

Unfortunately, the common practice by which startups go about translating their product is through crowdsourcing: getting your own international users who already use the product in English to translate it for you. Facebook was the first big startup to do this and they've been endlessly imitated since then.

In a recent blog post on internationalizing startups, Andreessen Horowitz Partner John O'Farrell endorses this approach. The post is a great read for startups that want to go global, but on this particular point, he's just dead wrong.

Google just had one billion unique visitors in May, according to comScore.

Wow.

By the way, this is one for the "bubble bubble" people: in 1998, there were around 100 million people online. Now there are billions. A reason why internet company valuations are high is because the market is big.

Whether you don’t like writing about yourself, you’re not sure what goes there or because the whole thing just makes you feel plain awkward, writing the business About Us page is a task that intimidates many small business owners. You think you know what you want to say, but then you get to that blank WordPress page and you suddenly forget how long you’ve been doing this, why you love it or, sometimes, even the company name. But your About Us page doesn’t have to be something you dread. Instead, craft a page that you’re proud of and that helps communicate exactly who you are and what you represent to your customers. It’s easy!

One lesson we’ve all learned from the social media revolution is that people like doing business with people they know. And that’s the power of crafting a good About Us page. You give your customers a look into who you are, who your company is, and you build the trust they need to move forward with your business.

I was reading Mark Suster's latest blog post (actually its a presentation embedded into a blog post) and I came across this slide.

I don't know what the source of this data is and I don't know if this is just M&A exits or if it includes IPOs as well. It really doesn't matter for the basic point that Mark is making with this slide.

Based on the NVCA statistics on the venture capital industry, there are on average 1,000 early stage financings every year. I suppose a few of those 1,000 financings are for the same company, but I doubt that many are. So we can use 1,000 as an approximation of the number of companies that get funded in a given year.

It's hard to believe the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is just two years old: already we have seen the potential of high-risk, high-reward research to both our energy and economic future. The Fiscal Year 2010 Annual Report highlights the creation of ARPA-E, how the agency's investments are supporting transformational technologies in energy, and a synopsis of the projects it has funded to date.

Recruiting some of the best minds in science and technology, as well as tapping the market expertise of business communities, ARPA-E has funded 121 projects in amounts ranging from roughly $400,000 to $9 million, with an average award value of $3 million. These clean energy technologies have the potential to transform our Nation's energy future. For example, ARPA-E-funded efforts are enabling batteries for transportation -- beyond lithium-ion -- that could make electric cars cheaper and go much farther distances than today’s batteries.

LANSING, Mich. — In a state that has long suffered from one of the nation’s highest jobless rates, new GOPGov. Rick Snyder wants to import — literally — fresh competition for some of the best job openings the state has to offer.

Mr. Snyder, a newbie politician but an experienced entrepreneur, is looking overseas to incubate a stronger economic culture by actively seeking highly skilled immigrants to work and create businesses in his state, which has been slammed in recent decades by job losses in its traditional manufacturing base.

Entrepreneurs are usually highly creative and innovative, but many innovative people are not entrepreneurs. Since it takes a team of people to build a great company, the challenge is to find that small percentage of innovative people, and then nurture the tendency, rather than stifle it.

A while back I read a book titled “The Rudolph Factor,” by Cyndi Laurin and Craig Morningstar, which is all about finding the bright lights that can drive innovation in your business. The story most specifically targets big companies, like Boeing, but the concepts are just as applicable to a st

China prepares to open bullet train service from Beijing to Shanghai by July 1, this nation’s steadily expanding high-speed rail network is being pilloried on a scale rare among Chinese citizens and news media.

Complaints include the system’s high costs and pricey fares, the quality of construction and the allegation of self-dealing by a rail minister who was fired earlier this year on corruption grounds.

But often overlooked, amid all the controversy, are the very real economic benefits that the world’s most advanced fast rail system is bringing to China — and the competitive challenges it poses for the United States and Europe.

Every entrepreneur has their own idea of what it takes to become successful. GulfNews has pulled together a short list of traits they believe entrepreneurs need to succeed. What do you think it takes to succeed?

1. Timing is nothing

Dubizzle founders, J.C. Butler and Sim Whatley, wish they had had the wisdom to launch more and test less. “Regardless of whether it’s features or categories or expansion, it’s better to get something out the door and test the response to it, rather than to spend all your time trying to perfect something and change it later anyway. Especially when it came to our recent regional expansion, we would have loved to have been in all these 14 countries years ago.”

It wasn’t as if everyone was avoiding the word “building,” it’s just that the Life Sciences Research Institute (LSRI) is so much more.

Dalhousie President Tom Traves called it a “business and incubation centre,” a “one-stop life sciences shop.” Colin Latham, chair of the LSRI steering committee, dubbed it a “research village.” And Martha Crago, Vice President Research for Dalhousie, referred to it as a “potent anchor” and a “district of discovery.”

Whatever you want to call it, the Life Sciences Research Institute is unique for Halifax—a beautiful, light-filled facility where scientists, students and entrepreneurs will work together. The idea is that through collaboration and discussion, they will be able to move research seamlessly from the lab to the commercial sphere.

It seems that the economy’s engine is starting to churn again.  More importantly, technology and Internet companies seem to be coming alive as well.  Startups founded a few years ago are now taking center stage with a series of high profile IPOs. The last time we experienced a wave of startup growth, minority entrepreneurs were largely left out of the picture.  In a time and country where the number of minorities is growing significantly each year, we cannot watch this happen again.  As a member of DreamIt Ventures, a Philadelphia-based startup accelerator, it is my job to make sure history does not repeat itself.

DreamIt operates accelerators for startups.  We work with great and talented entrepreneurs to help them build great companies. Our accelerator was designed to be the startup program thatthe founders wish existed when they started and sold their first companies. It creates a collaborative environment in which fellow entrepreneurs can share ideas, inspire each other, and push each other to higher levels of success. Accelerator participants receive excellent coaching and mentoring from experienced entrepreneurs.   They receive legal and accounting services when needed without having to burn precious cash.  For the startups’ founders this also means an opportunity to refine their business models and ultimately pitch their companies to an investment community of angels and venture capitalists.

Back in March, Brian Halligan (our CEO at HubSpot) wrote a great post around his observations on why Sequoia wins at the VC game. Brian's assessment was based on HubSpot's experience raising our Series D and was spot-on. Sequoia is agile, yet disciplined. They are aggressive yet reasonable. They've taken the classic venture capital playbook and out-executed just about everyone. Incredibly impressive.

With all of their success though, Sequoia has a right to stay paranoid (#8 on Brian's list). The VC industry is undergoing some massive changes and is in the process of being disrupted by a new breed of investors that are attacking the edges of the market and competing with a new, differentiated approach. Google Ventures, a co-investor alongside Sequoia in HubSpot's Series D, is one such firm. Google (GOOG) has a history of reinventing industries and questioning conventional wisdom – and they're trying to do it again with their approach to venture capital.