Kickstarter started as a way for bands to fund projects without asking for money from Grandma. Now it’s the go-to site for thousands self-funded projects and the company recently surpassed the facilitating of $60 million in funding of random music albums, films, and gadgets created by ordinary people.

At TechCrunch Disrupt NYC John Biggs sat down with Kickstarter’s Yancey Stickler along with several successful Kickstarter gadget makers: Dan Provost from Glif and Cosmonaut, Rafael Atijas of the Loog, and Sean Bonner from Safecast. It was through the magic of Kickstarter that all these gadgets were funded and later created. It’s rather scary to think of a world without the Glif, right?

Any seasoned investor knows that past performance is not indicative of future returns. That is as true with public stocks as it is with venture capital firms. But if someone were to ask you to rank the top VC firms today based on their probability of success, how would you do it? Remember, looking at past returns won’t help you.

Chris Farmer, a VC at General Catalyst Partners, has come up with a method which he calls InvestorRank. Just as Google’s PageRank orders search results based on how many links each page gets from other sites, InvestorRank looks at the connections between VC firms. Whenever two VC firms co-invest in the same deal, that creates a bond between them. If one VC firm follows another one in a later round, that boosts the rank of the earlier investor.

YouTube is celebrating its sixth birthday this month, and the Google subsidiary is doing it partly by sharing some big numbers that underscore its overwhelming dominance in the online video streaming space.

YouTube says global daily views have gone up 50 percent in the past 12 months, which means they currently handle a whopping 3 billion views per day.

To put that in some perspective: comScore said last week that the total U.S. Internet audience engaged in roughly 5.1 billion viewing sessions for the entire month of April 2011 (which also tells you something about YouTube’s global appeal).

Being part of a small business incubator may be the perfect way to turn your idea into an actual company. David Monkman, the president of the National Business Incubation Association, tells us what entrepreneurs should look for before joining an incubator.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans will not buy pure plug-in electric cars — no matter what the cost — because they do not have the same range as a traditional car powered by an internal combustion engine, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll.

The new poll indicated that American respondents said they would not want to own “an electric car that you could only drive for a limited nu

mber of miles at one time.” The poll backs up several reports that indicate a growing concern about whether electric cars can attract mainstream buyers when they are not able to travel as far as a typical electric car.

Most electric cars have limited range when compared to hybrid-electric cars — which use both an internal combustion engine and battery technology to improve mileage — and cars powered by internal combustion engines. Nissan’s Leaf, for example, can only travel around 100 miles before it has to recharge. The supercharged Tesla Roadster can travel more than 200 miles, but it has a mammoth price tag that most consumers wouldn’t be able to afford — around $109,000 before environmentally-friendly credits.

Inside the multi-million dollar video streaming giant, Hulu, CEO Jason Kilar has gone to extraordinary lengths to subvert his own power: he has no office, has a makeshift desk partly built from empty boxes, and personally takes each new hire out to lunch to learn what he or she thinks the company can do better. "You will not attract and retain the world's best builders in a command-and-control environment," Kilar tells Fast Company.

Last weekend, Hulu and fellow Internet prodigy, Groupon, were honored at the WorldBlu Live conference for their unusually strong commitment to worker empowerment. We sat down with these web successes to understand the driving philosophy, small-team orientation, and straight-up weird employee morale boosters that lie at the foundation of their innovative products.

The artificial heart, video calls, virtual fitting rooms, shirts made of plastic bottles, wallpaper that changes color depending on the mood of the person in the room… Until recently one could only come across such things in a sci-fi movie or novel. Nowadays, however, not only are they becoming a part of our everyday reality, but are also affordable to people at large.

World industrial leaders like Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Nissan, or Google avoid banal ways of operating and move their products onto new planes, making billions in the process. The secret of their success boils down to one word: innovation. This concept, old as mankind itself, yet particularly popular today, brings leadership in the world market and billions in dividends to those who have grasped its essence.

Why isn’t a single Ukrainian company on this list? How and when could it appear? How can Ukrainian business become more successful, and the Ukrainian economy more competitive? The participants of the annual nation-wide conference, organized by the Lviv Business School at the Ukrainian Catholic University, tried to answer these and other questions. This year The Day was an information partner to this conference, whose full name was “Intro 2011. Breakthrough Innovations: from Generating to Implementing.”

We all want to be innovators, to introduce a product that revolutionizes an industry. But history shows that product pioneers often get left in the dust.

Remember the Palm Pilot from 1997? The PJB-100 from 1998? Apple killed and improved both products. Just like Facebook killed Friendster and World of Warcraft now overshadows EverQuest.

Some of these paved the way for better products. Others, like the 1898 Lohner-Porsche Mixte-Hybrid, were just way ahead of their time.

Summer is here again, which heralds the return of white pants, barbecues, and that curious tradition known as summer Fridays. Facing the reality that people are going to leave early anyway, many offices close for Friday PMs.

It seems like a great way to savor the relaxed pace of summer. You daydream all year about the leisurely joys you’d pursue if you only had an extra 15 minutes in your days. Practice the flute again! Cook real meals. Exercise. Take long bike rides.

But here’s the funny thing. When summer Fridays roll around, and those extra few hours appear, people have a tendency not to do any of those things they’d claim they’d do.

The Freestyle, a vending machine offering up to 125 different drinks, is expected to transform the business. Why? Because of its ability to gather vast amounts of customer data each day.

Coke was aware that the US consumer wanted a lot more variety from Coke’s dispensers than it was providing. What the company didn’t foresee was exactly how much variety was being demanded.

The National Institutes of Health today announced an agreement with two non-profit organizations to accelerate the development of potential clinical therapies for rare blood cancers.

The cooperative research and development agreement, called The Learning Collaborative (TLC), has been established as a shared commitment to move therapies for rare blood cancers into clinical proof-of-concept studies so that promising treatments can eventually be commercialized. The agreement is among the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the NIH Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases program, and the Hematology Branch within the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

LINCOLN — Gov. Dave Heineman joined a half-dozen state lawmakers Tuesday to praise a package of bills designed to improve the state’s economic climate for entrepreneurs, inventors and small businesses.

Heineman said passage of his four initiatives, along with one sponsored by Lincoln Sen. Danielle Conrad, gives the state “one of the strongest public policy strategies” in the country to attract and grow technology-focused companies.

“It puts a laser-like focus on growing Nebraska’s innovation economy,” he said during a bill-signing ceremony.

Conrad, who chaired a study last year of how to better support entrepreneurship, said Nebraska has made a “paradigm shift” in its economic development efforts by now targeting innovators and small businesses, not just large corporations.

“This is about jobs, and this is the No. 1 issue Nebraskans want us to focus on,” she said.

Staebler, an Ann Arbor resident, left his position as a vice president of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. to become vice president for economic development at Wayne State, which is located in Detroit. He'll start his new position June 6, WSU announced today.

He will lead Wayne State's involvement in the Detroit startup incubator TechTown, coordinate the university's efforts to create startup companies and license technology to private companies and lead the university's efforts to spur economic development in Detroit.

Last week Intellectual Ventures revealed its list of major investors. On it were several major U.S. research universities and research organizations.

• Brown University
• Cornell University
• Grinnell College
• Mayo Clinic
• Northwestern University
• Stanford University
• University of Minnesota
• University of Pennsylvania
• University of Southern California
• University of Texas

You may be asking yourself, so what’s the big deal about a university investing its endowment in Intellectual Ventures?

After all, according to conventional dictates of what constitutes as “good investment,” Intellectual Ventures is a real and legitimate company led by a famous and well-established executive team. In fact, over the past decade, it has raised $5 billion from investors and has grown to employ 650 employees and at last count, has accumulated a patent portfolio roughly the size of IBM’s – 30,000 active patents. Sure, the company is the target of controversy and criticism due to its business model, but that hasn’t stopped universities from investing their endowments before (remember the public controversies over university investments in Nike, and South African mines, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, etc.?).

The residents of Joplin, Missouri, had 24 minutes of warning before a tornado hit their city on Sunday. That gave many people time to take cover, but despite the warning, 100 people were killed. Meteorologists would like to be able to warn people earlier and perhaps save more lives, and they have gotten better at predicting the conditions that produce tornadoes. But the swift and chaotic nature of tornado formation might defy our technological capacity to forecast them with greater precision anytime soon.

The National Weather Service and its Storm Prediction Center issue two forms of tornado alerts: watches and warnings. Watches alert people to the presence of storm conditions that breed tornadoes, and can now be called up to five days in advance (10 years ago, warnings came three days in advance, at best). But watches only tell us that tornadoes might be coming—they're not precise about when or where.

Hoffman believes an entrepreneurial venture will face competition by either innovating against no competitors or against slow competitors. If a startup faces a smart, aggressive competitor, they must be really sure of what they are doing. He elaborates on this point with the example of 'Friendster' losing its first mover advantage to 'MySpace,' due to a lack of marketing strategy.

I talk to job seekers all the time about what they can expect if they join a high-growth startup. Many of the folks I meet have never worked for a company that doesn’t earn profits (let alone revenues). Likewise, I often speak to groups of recent graduates without any work experience at all. I tell them the obvious stuff. The hours are long, the pay (at least initially) isn’t great, and chances are good that the company will fail within the first few years. You never know what will break from one day to the next, how your competition will react, or whether you’ve got enough cash in the bank to prove you’ve got a viable business. It’s decidedly not for everyone. There was a time when I wasn’t sure it was for me.

Before JumpStart, I’d only worked for high-growth or startup technology companies. Many of those companies no longer exist. In fact, during a brief period between the summer of 2000 and late 2004, I was laid off three times in four years. The first time was pretty straight forward. The company could not prove its business model, had burned through about $40 million in a year trying to do so (this was 2000, after all), and started shutting everything down. Ironically, that business model was very similar to the one that fuels Groupon and LivingSocial today. While I wasn’t pleased to be on the street, I had only been there for six months and I saw where the company was headed. I wasn’t surprised.

Startup Open, a competition that recognizes startups with high-growth potential, has launched its search for the 50 most promising new startups around the world as part ofGlobal Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) 2011. The "GEW 50" will be announced on Oct. 15, 2011, with those companies then competing for the top honors and prizes.

Startup Open is a featured competition of GEW, an initiative founded by the Kauffman Foundation to spur new ideas, ingenuity, and firm creation through local, national, and global activities in more than 100 countries. The competition, now in its second year, is open to entrepreneurs who have a "startup moment" between GEW 2010 and GEW 2011 (Nov. 22, 2010 to Nov. 20, 2011). A startup moment is defined as any action related to launching a new business, such as incorporating a company; officially opening the doors for business; completing a first sale; or securing outside funding.

Startup Open applicants will be judged on concept, growth projections, and knowledge of their industry.A handful of companies winning the top honors and prizes will be announced on Nov. 14 as GEW 2011 gets underway.

Startup Open applicants will have until Sept. 15 to submit their startup moment. For more information on how to enter and the 2010 winners, please visit www.startupopen.com.

A friend of mine, the CEO of a professional services firm,  recently gave me a copy of David Maister’s The Trusted Advisor (2000). Buy it here. Maister is the author of the best selling, Managing The Professional Services Firm (1993).

Maister, and his two co-authors, Charlie Green and Rob Galford, posit that the realm of a true trusted advisor involves three skills,- 1. Earning Respect; 2. Giving Advice Effectively; and, 3. Building Relationships. The authors are adamant that professional service firms which focus only on content and expertise will be relegated to a service-offering or needs-based relationship.

The book is detailed, practical and prescriptive. It’s not just about what you should do during your journey to becoming a trusted advisor, but actionable suggestions on how you might accomplish your goal.

As a new batch of graduates pounds the pavement looking for work, Gen Y remains painfully aware of workforce reality. After all, 75% of them did not have a job waiting for them after the caps were thrown in the air.

Yes, the economy still sucks. No, not enough of this year’s graduates learned from those from 2008, 2009 and 2010 – many of whom remain unemployed or under-employed. Yes, the job search process has never been more difficult. And yes, student loan debt has again reached record levels.

However, many in Gen Y – having seen promises made and broken by preceding generations (as well as by two political parties in a row) – now, finally, recognize that quick fixes do not exist.