A reader asks: I have a website and can’t afford a lawyer to draft up essential legal notices. I have decided to cut and paste all necessary legal language from a similar website for my site. Is there a problem with this?

Answer: Given the staggering number variables that can play into this, it’s unwise to simply cut and paste terms of use, disclaimers and other legally binding documents on your own website. Covering them all would take several columns, but here are four things to consider:

It may be copyright infringement – Simply cutting and pasting content from one website to another is often copyright infringement. In this case, you’re not copying pure facts, you are copying the creative expression. For example, there may be specific language that is necessary for terms of use that have independent legal significance. Those sections may have been drafted by an attorney (or not) and the rights to the copyright may be with the website or with the original attorney, depending on their contract.

Entrepreneurs have started up the fewest new U.S. businesses in more than a decade, according to government figures that could spell more bad news for job creation.

Through the 12 months ended in March of last year, 505,473 new businesses started up in the U.S., according to the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's the weakest growth since the bureau started tracking the data in the early 1990s. It's down sharply from the record 667,341 new businesses added in the 12 months that ended in March 2006.

Weak start-up growth has dire implications for jobs because small and midsize businesses have driven employment gains in the U.S. for years. Between the recession that ended in late 2001 and the start of the most recent recession in late 2007, businesses that employed fewer than 500 workers added nearly 7 million employees, according to data collected by payroll provider ADP, which tracks employment trends.

Maybe it’s just a biofuels thing this year, but it seems like the feds are giving cleantech grant money to companies and institutions that are based anywhere but in the nation’s capital of venture capital.

The U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced six recipients of $36 million in total grant funding via the Department of Energy’s Biomass Program on Friday. That non-dilutive funding went to organizations working to make the production of “drop-in” biofuels and plant-based chemicals better, and to ultimately bring affordable alternatives to petroleum-based products mainstream in the U.S.

Despite the region’s reputation as a cleantech hotbed, not one Bay Area organization or business scored a piece of this funding. They also missed out on a previous grants round from the same program, announced in May, which doled out $47 million to eight companies in the sector.

LinkedIn valued at over $8 billion; Facebook is currently at over $70 billion and was even the star of a movie. Start up conferences and competitions abound, as do rich valuations and venture capitalists throwing money at early stage companies.

It’s a far cry from 2009. (And, as I’ve argued before, even further from 1999.) Are we seeing a bubble? Sure, we probably are. But that doesn’t mean that it’s either a good or bad time to start a company.

I have my biases. When funding is scarce and hope for innovation is low, engineers are cheaper and available since the alternative career paths aren’t as bright. Smart people are willing to create opportunity because the downside is so low.

Located at the Iowa State University Research Park, BodyViz creates incredible 3D MRI/CT scan visualizations, unlocking medical imaging for doctors, specialists, surgeons as well as educational institutions.

BodyViz has been awarded the prestigious Prometheus Award for Startup Company of the Year by the Technology Association of Iowa, was awarded first place in the John Pappajohn Iowa Business Plan Competition, and has been featured on the megahit reality television show The Biggest Loser.

Leveraging expertise developed at ISU’s state-of-the-art Virtual Reality Application Center (VRAC) on Iowa State

University’s campus, BodyViz was created by VRAC Director James Oliver, VRAC Associate Director, Eliot Winer and world renowned surgeon, Dr. Thom Lobe.

BodyViz has extensive visualization features that enable users to quickly and effectively view and interact with their patient's data in a never-before-seen 3D manner that is changing the way medical and educational professionals view their world. This virtual reality visualization software is affordably priced, lightweight and simple to use on laptops, PCs or on large stereoscopic 3D projection systems.

For more information on BodyViz, visit: www.bodyviz.com.

Dr. Janice Presser, CEO, The Gabriel Institute

Special to InnovationDAILY

I was talking to my friend, Natalie, th

is morning. She's a fabulous consultant, definitely the person you would want for an innovative project that needs crisp organization, reliable follow up, and a good measure of common sense. I had received an email from someone who really could use services like hers, so I forwarded it to Natalie, thinking she might already know the players. I was right. She did. In fact she knew them well enough to say straight out, "No amount of money is worth working with a bad team."

The same holds true when you're on the buy side of the equation. 'Talent experts' constantly remind us that they have access to vast pools stocked with potential employees and consultants. Unfortunately, they fail to mention that sharks also swim in those pools, and that it's very hard to tell the difference between the fish who school in orderly fashion and the predators who bloody the water wherever they go.

Recruiters and staffing agencies provide a needed service. They really want to help you find quality people, and many will even forfeit their fee if there's a breakdown. But if they can't prevent this kind of hiring mistake, here are some things you can do to protect the integrity of your team:

Immigration remains a hotly debated issue across America and may prove a key sleeper issue in the looming 2012 presidential campaign, as my colleague Josh Green wrote yesterday. He notes that "whites are far more pessimistic about their prospects and their children's prospects--and many mistakenly believe that illegal immigrants are the primary culprit." He adds that "widespread misconceptions about the economic effects of immigration" stem "from a lack of information that's largely due to both the Democratic and Republican parties' unwillingness to pursue immigration reform, after years of failed attempts."

Nonetheless, a wide body of research shows the ways that immigration powers the twin engines of American innovation and entrepreneurship. Foreign-born founders and entrepreneurs stand behind anywhere from a third to a half of Silicon Valley high-tech startups, and comprise huge shares of computer scientists and software engineers.

There are a couple questions that everyone dreads in an interview.

"What is your greatest weakness?" "Where do you see yourself in five years?" and "Tell me about yourself." It's the default question (and the first) in most interviews, and to many candidates, it can feel like a trap.

So we spoke with executive headhunters and career coaches about how best to answer this question. "They want to gauge how the person thinks," says Eileen Finn, president of executive search firm Eileen Finn & Associates in New York.

As noted yesterday in part 1 of this article, the June issue of Harvard Business Review puts a spotlight on product innovation with four separate articles:

• “P&G’s Innovation Factory”: How Procter & Gamble (PG) has gone from achieving 15% of the profit and revenue objectives in 2000 to 50% today by setting up an “innovation factory” (p. 64)
• “The ambidextrous CEO”: How the “ambidextrous CEO” at Misys (and elsewhere) handles the tension between innovation and core products (p.74)

Last night I taught a class via Skillshare (disclosure: Founder Collective is an investor) about how to raise a seed round. After a long day I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but it turned out to be a lot of fun and I stayed well past the scheduled end time. I think it worked well because the audience was full of people actually starting companies, and they came well prepared (they were all avid readers of tech blogs and had seemed to have done a lot of research).

I sketched some notes for the class which I'm posting below. I've written ad nausea about venture financing so hadn't planned to blog more on the topic. But since I wrote up these notes already, here they are:

1. Best thing is to either never need to raise money or to raise money after you have a product, users, or customers. Also helps a lot if you've started a successful business before or came from a senior position at a successful company.

The two young entrepreneurs did everything right to launch a startup company in Baltimore: They developed a bright idea. They won a local business competition. They networked.

But when it came time for Nick Miller and Adam Zilberbaum to take their business to the next level, the creators of Parking Panda — a smartphone app that helps people rent out their parking spots — took their fledgling company this month to the Big Apple.

What lured them away? A business accelerator that offered the pair $25,000, three months of office space in Times Square and the chance to schmooze with New York's high-profile entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

As a member of the local Angel group selection committee, I’ve seen a lot of startup presentations to investors, and I’ve never seen one that was too short - maybe short on content, but not short on pages! A perfect round number is ten slides, with the right content, that can be covered in ten minutes. Even if you have an hour booked, the advice is the same.

I’ve published these points before, but based on interest, it’s time for an update. Remember the goal is an overview presentation that will pique investor interest enough to ask for the business plan and a follow-on meeting, not close the deal on the spot. If you can’t get the message across in ten minutes, more time and more charts won’t help.

Every startup needs both a business plan and an investor presentation, completed before you formally approach any investors. The approach I recommend is to build the investor presentation first, by iterating on the bullets with your team, and then fleshing out the points into a full-blown text-based business plan document. Here are the ten slides you need:

You’re in business for yourself and it’s supposed to mean freedom. But sometimes it feels like you traded one boss for hundreds of them, because in a way, you work for each client. Without a plan for how to handle this workload, it can be impossible at worst and overwhelming at best.

So what happens when you find yourself in the role of the Irritated Consultant or the Frustrated Executive?

As a small business owner, it’s easy to be on either side of that coin. On any given day we are both paying for services and providing them. Think about it: You’ve paid someone to design your brochure; it doesn’t come back when you wanted; and you slip into the Frustrated Executive role, replaying in your mind everything that you told them and wondering how they managed to mess it up. On the flip side, someone pays you to set up their website, and 15 edits later you’re the Irritated Consultant, trying to figure out why your clients are taking advantage of you. Ultimately, both situations boil down to a communication issue.

In the ever-expanding search for returns, private equity sponsors are increasingly turning to new asset classes, geographies and investment focuses. In the past several years, we have seen established funds leveraging their brands to open offices in Asia, India and the Middle East; target specific sectors like retail, social media and healthcare; and raise debt (distressed or otherwise) and hedge funds.

Amid all the action, the asset class that seems to be among the hottest right now is growth equity. In many respects, growth equity is the old new thing. Successful funds such as Summit Partners, TA Associates and General Atlantic LLC cut their teeth on and then defined the success of growth equity investing. As credit became widely available, several growth-focused funds jumped into the land of leveraged buyouts and rode deal volume and easy credit terms into the middle market a few years ago. Recently, however, many of those growth funds have returned to what they know best.

3:37 p.m., June 10, 2011--The recipients of the University of Delaware Research Foundation’s latest round of grants will shed new light on a variety of topics relating to the environment, energy and health, from developing new techniques for assessing the integrity of aging bridges, to sorting out the causes of rapid weight gain in infants -- a risk factor for adulthood obesity.

Chartered in 1955 as a private corporation to support University research, UDRF annually awards funding to early-career faculty for high-priority science and engineering projects. Eleven grants of $35,000 each were awarded in the latest competition. The foundation provides $25,000 toward each project, which is matched by $5,000 each from the provost and the awardee’s college dean.

i2E Inc. is working to expand its reach beyond its dependence on state funding, which is helping to fuel its growth and ability to boost the fortunes of the emerging companies it works with, CEO Tom Walker said this week.

While most of the not-for-profit corporation's funding comes from the state through the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology, i2E has been able to grow over the past two years by finding other resources, Walker said Wednesday.

i2E Inc. is a private Oklahoma corporation focused on wealth creation by growing the technology-based entrepreneurial economy within Oklahoma.

Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner.

Demystifying the VC term sheet: Conversion Rights – Attorney Scott Edward Walker continues his ongoing series breaking down the often confusing language of venture capital term sheets, look at what conversion rights are and issues founders should keep in mind while negotiating them.

Improving IPO market could make it easier to secure financing – The successful IPOs of ZipCar and LinkedIn signal that a long-closed (well, mostly so) exit window for venture capitalists is finally open again. Robert Ackerman, founder and managing partner of Allegis Capital notes that this should make firms willing to invest in more companies – something that’s likely welcome news to startups in search of capital.

10 reasons to start a company (and 10 not to) – It’s a boom time in the startup world, which always seems to nudge entrepreneurial fence sitters into action. But before you make the jump, it’s good to assess your reasons. Investment banker Megan Lisa Jones runs down 10 ways to know if you should start a company – and 10 that should send you running the other way.

If this isn’t a classic American story, I don’t know what is. A self-taught inventor named Gary Cola has developed a process for manufacturing steel that results in the creation of a product that’s 7% stronger than the strongest steel – and 30% lighter. The steel is also incredibly ductile – meaning that it can crumple a great deal before reaching a breaking point. Even better? His heat-treating process only takes 10 seconds. Compare that to conventional steel manufacturing, where heat-treating can take hours or even days.

To test his steel process, Mr. Cola worked with Dr. Suresh Babu at Ohio State University, who specializes in refining steel applications. Dr. Babu and his students vistited Mr. Cola’s setup in Detroit, and tested samples of the metals. The tests confirmed Mr. Cola’s claims, and the research findings were recently published. The group at Ohio State is currently expanding its research scope into the steel to develop new applications and improvements to the process.

Experts across Northeast Ohio have been working for years to use technology to create growth and jobs. Impressive energy, money and intellect are being poured into clusters of activity such as flexible electronics, renewable energy systems, biomedical and biotech products, new materials and polymers.

Through concerted foundation, educational, business and government support, the Greater Cleveland region has strived to create an effective "ecosystem," or economic sys tem, for putting technology to work

"I know all the principals in the Cleveland regional ecosys tem very well and think it is the most robust region in the U.S. at this time," says Richard Bendis, president of Innovation America.

Technology is like a banana. Yes, you heard me right, a banana. Just like technology, a banana has very distinct phases. Understanding these phases and taking action on them could be the difference between your company being king of the jungle or being caged in a zoo scraping flattened Junior Mints off the ground for sustenance.

Eating a green banana

You know the drill. You head to the grocery store, snake up and down the aisles pretending that you are the one in control of your choices and not the marketers. When you finally hit the produce section, it’s a welcomed reprieve from the cardboard, plastic, and aluminum. When you get to the bananas, you say, “Hmm, these look a little green. No biggie. They’ll be ripe within a day.” So, you grab a bunch and off you go.

They say that all humans are basically the same, regardless of ethnicity, gender, or religion. What happens next is a ritual that transcends all of mankind – a self-indulgent lie that occurs millions of times every day in all corners of the Earth: You talk yourself into trying to eat an unripe, green banana. You struggle to peel it, but you succeed. As you take that first bite, you realize something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong. You were expecting a fine wine and you got vinegar. You try to stay composed, but you can’t control yourself. You burst into a fit of fury and curse the heavens. The anguish is unbearable. You wish you were never even conceived.