Having a great business idea is only half the battle. You also need to be an effective leader. Even some of the most innovative entrepreneurs can be hindered by insecurity or impatience. Below are some red flags to look out for. But don’t worry if any of them sound like you. If you catch a flaw early on, you can prevent it from doing serious damage.

Self-doubt. Don’t second-guess yourself. If you don’t believe in your business, who will? Worrying is a waste of time and energy.

The final version of the InvestMaryland legislation the General Assembly passed Monday night would give at least $47 million to private venture investors and $17.5 million to the Maryland Venture Fund.

The program had been touted as a $100 million venture capital plan by Gov. Martin O’Malley, but concerns from lawmakers scaled it back to more in the neighborhood of $70 million to $75 million. It had also been proposed to divide its money in half between private investors and state programs, but changes made in the House revised that breakdown to two-thirds for private investors and one-third for state programs.

01 / SolarCity >>

For being the nation's leading installer of rooftop solar panels. In sum, SolarCity has placed more than 10,000 solar rooftops--10% of the total in the U.S. Its major clients include eBay, Walmart, and Intel; it has also signed a deal with Home Depot to become the chain's in-store vendor for home panels at 400 stores.

02 / Enerkem >>

For finding the hidden power of trash. Its proprietary thermo-chemical system uses pressure, chemicals, and 800 degrees of heat to recycle 15 different kinds of trash into renewable electricity, chemicals for plastic, and ethanol that can run cars. The Montreal-based company is currently building two commercial-scale plants that turn trash into fuel.

In the post 7 Ways to Write a Better ‘About Us’ Page, I asked readers to submit their About Us pages for a possible rewrite in a future post. (LOTS of you responded.) I’ll get to that post in a week or so, but in the meantime here are words and phrases you should remove from your website — not just from your About Us page but from many other pages as well.

Since the only (human) audience that matters is your customers, let’s pretend I’m a customer. Here are my reactions to the following words or phrases that appear on your website:

1. “Innovative.” Just about every company claims to be innovative. Most aren’t. You don’t have to be innovative to be successful. But if you truly are innovative, show me. Describe products you developed. Describe processes you modified. Give me something real — then I’ll know you’re innovative.

2. “Service provider.” Everyone who meets a need is a service provider. When I fill up my car the gas station is a service provider: I need gas, the station provides it. “Service provider” says nothing. If you sell gas, tell me you sell gas. If you design commercial office spaces, tell me you design commercial office spaces. If you’re an Internet Service Provider, fine — otherwise, use plain language and tell me what you really do.

We’ve all seen this problem: 99 percent of the project is complete, but a last-minute hiccup prevents you from getting it across the finish line as planned. Perhaps there was a missed communication with a delivery service, or your documents file format was incompatible with that the Web site or client needed. Maybe you were missing a cable to plug something in. Whatever the issue, it happens time and time again. Enough so that there’s a name for it: The Last Mile Problem.

It’s not always just a case of bad luck or terrible timing. As Dan Pallotta explains in the Harvard Business Review, it’s more systemic than that. Often, we just communicate badly and make assumptions that virtually guarantee a glitch at the last minute, when we assume things should be smooth sailing. Here are some of his suggestions for creating a more rigorous environment to avoid last mile problems:

Question everything. If someone says something that doesn’t make sense to you, don’t assume the other person has a handle on things and it will be all right. Dig in, and you might find that’s the weak link that almost torpedoed your project.

The Facebook application High School Memories lets people share recollections of their teenage years. It might surprise some users to learn that the app’s creator isn’t old enough for high school himself.

Cyrus Pishevar, a 13-year-old resident of Palo Alto, California, developed High School Memories after seeing how popular it was for his friends to “tag” photos of one another on the social network.

“The big idea is to make memories a social thing to do,” said Cyrus, who learned entrepreneurship from his dad, the founder of five startups. “When you type in your memories, it speaks more than just pictures can, especially when your friends help you through.”

It looks like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) might be joining the 21st century after all, and in the process, it may solidify social media as a legitimate media channel, and not a here today gone tomorrow fad that shouldn't be taken too seriously. The SEC is said to be considering whether to let fast-growing companies use social networks to raise funding using a new technique known as crowd funding.

On the surface, the idea sounds simple enough, tap into thousands of investors for small amounts of money, to help fund your business venture. If you're a small business owner, coming from a good place with a pure heart, and in need of funding, you're the ideal candidate to tap into a large pool of people and inspire them all to give you small amounts of money. Crowd funding works in a similar fashion, and the consideration is to allow social media networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to be the platform used to reach a lot of people in hopes of raising a lot of money.

It was credited with bringing US President Barack Obama into power in 2008. Crowdfunding attracted lots of relatively small campaign donations that amassed to make the biggest-ever election war chest for a presidential candidate.

In the current tough lending environment, UK businesses looking to find other avenues of finance can now implement the same strategy – or so the theory goes.

Growth creators
Luke Lang, co-founder of Crowdcube, which launched in March, says the business has taken the notion of crowdfunding ‘a step further’. Rather than backing social or arts projects – the main goal of similar sites such as Kickstarter in the US – Crowdcube offers ‘ordinary people’ a shareholding in high-growth businesses.

Venture capital investments surged during the first three months of 2011, driven mostly by sharply increased funding for Internet and cleantech-renewable energy startups, according to CB Insights, a New York information and data services firm.

Venture investors sunk a total of $7.5 billion into 738 deals throughout the country during the first quarter, a 27 percent increase in dollars (with no significant change in deals) over the same quarter of 2010, when CB Insights reported $5.9 million in 730 deals. The $7.5 billion invested also was 15 percent higher than the $6.5 billion that went into 735 deals during the preceding quarter—which represented a two-year high water mark in both deals and dollars invested.

Peoria must choose whether to set up a medical-device incubator, launch a virtual accelerator or do nothing.

It's a choice between initially committing $2.6 million or $1.7 million or nothing as

Peoria aims to draw high-paying jobs to the bedroom community.

The options, which should go before the Peoria City Council for discussion next month, come with a strong recommendation from the city's Economic Development Advisory Board to pursue the accelerator in partnership with BioAccel, a Phoenix-based non-profit.

A planned initial public offering from Zipcar Inc. this week is garnering strong interest from investors and may end up being priced above its forecast range, according to analysts.

Zipcar, a Cambridge, Mass.–based company that runs a popular car-sharing service in major cities and at universities across the U.S. and U.K., is currently expected to price its IPO late Wednesday, with shares to start trading Thursday morning on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol “ZIP.”

The company currently expects to sell about 8.3 million shares at a price range of $14 to $16 apiece. IPO analyst Scott Sweet of IPO Boutique said there was a “high likelihood” that the deal would be priced above that range.

KANSAS CITY, MO--(Marketwire - April 14, 2011) - The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation today announced a challenge grant of up to $800,000 to initiate a regional expansion of PIPELINE, the nationally acclaimed entrepreneurial "immersion" program for innovative, high-growth entrepreneurs. The grant follows on a close relationship between the two organizations since PIPELINE's inception and will foster increased collaboration between the Foundation's Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation initiative and the PIPELINE program, also headquartered in Kansas City.

As part of the "challenge" grant from the Foundation, Pipeline must raise at least $800,000 in matching funds from other sources.

"We have long admired PIPELINE and are impressed by its track record, growth and the national network it has developed right here in Kansas City," said Carl Schramm, Kauffman president and CEO. "PIPELINE is among the best programs in the country that is laser-focused on providing the mentorship and resources entrepreneurs need to build scalable companies. We invite others who share in the belief that we need more successful high-growth firms to join us as we ensure PIPELINE's regional expansion at a critical time in our economy."

RICH BENDIS IS A MENTOR IN THE PIPELINE PROGRAM AND HAS BEEN A NATIONAL JUDGE. THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST ENTREPRENEURIAL IMMERSION PROGRAMS I HAVE EXPERIENCED AND INNOVATION AMERICA CHALLENGES THOSE PROGRESSIVE CITIES, REGIONS AND STATES TO PARTNER WITH JONI COBB IN EXPANDING THIS PROGRAM TO YOUR AREA, AND GROW YOUR ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEM!

Ford has identified the 25 most electric vehicle (EV) ready cities in the U.S., based on the company’s latest research. The 25 cities are dotted all over the country from Hartford to Honolulu. A previous Pike research report highlighted 6 cities expected to be early EV adopters: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas and Houston.

Ford used measures such as a streamlined permit process, utility rate structures that support nighttime charging, incentives such as high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, preferred parking and tax incentives to determine the rankings. Ford also took into consideration specialized measures some cities are taking to support electric vehicles.

A number of cities are putting special parking in place for EVs. In Honolulu all parking facilities with 100 parking spaces or more must designate at least 1 percent for EVs by the end of the year. Los Angeles will have designated charging spots throughout California where EVs can park after paying a $17 application fee.

A Kalamazoo-based venture fund has raised $15 million to invest in lifescience companies that have a significant presence in southwest Michigan, said the fund’s managing director on Wednesday.

SWMF LifeScience Venture Fund intends to raise another $35 million, said Pat Morand, adding that six years ago, the fund raised its first $50 million.

While Morand is the managing director, three other individuals hold the position of director in the fund: William Johnston, William Parfet and Goran Ando, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.

Pop quiz: True or false?

• The different cell types found in a given individual's body contain different DNA.

• Mountains form by the piling up of pieces of rock.

• Some living parts of organisms are not made of cells.

More than half of the thousands of middle and high school students tested in nationwide examinations think the above statements are true (58 percent, 52 percent and 75 percent, respectively). They are not. Also false: Earth's plates are under the surface and are not visible (49 percent of students think is true); and air is carried through the body in "air tubes" (43 percent).

ORLANDO, Fla. – The Florida Economic Gardening Institute reached another milestone this week when its GrowFL initiative accepted the 200th company into the advanced technical assistance program. As the only program in the country to earn official accreditation in economic gardening, GrowFL provides client companies with a suite of economic gardening tools including sophisticated market research and recommendations to prepare second-stage companies to grow to the next level. Collectively, the 200 companies that have received assistance from the program generated $860 million in revenue and employed 4,725 workers in 2010.

The newest company to receive this free assistance is Telovations, a Tampa-based telecommunications company that provides business communications services in the cloud. Telovations has already been ranked 213th in Inc. magazine’s Inc. 500, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies.

WASHINGTON - Hispanics now outnumber African-Americans for the first time in most U.S. metropolitan areas, shifting the political and racial dynamics in cities once dominated by whites and blacks.

Census figures released Thursday highlight the growing diversity of the nation's 366 metro areas, which were home to a record 83.7 percent share of the U.S. population. The numbers from the 2010 count are already having a big effect on redistricting in many states, where district boundary lines are being redrawn based on population size and racial makeup.

Hispanics became the largest minority group in 191 metropolitan areas last year, their population lifted higher as blacks left many economically hard-hit cities in the North for the South and new Latino immigrants spread to different parts of the country. That's up from 159 metro areas when the previous Census was taken in 2000, when Hispanics were most commonly found in Southwest border states.

Champaign, IL -- Wednesday, April 6, 2011. World Tea Media awarded Tiesta Tea, a young startup company sponsored by the University of Illinois, the Best New Product in the category of Packaging for the 2011 World Tea Expo. The award commemorates the design and functionality of Tiesta Tea's tins.

"The design and functionality of the tins is superb," said Kim Jage, Executive Vice President of World Tea Media. "We loved the 'peek-a-boo' sides that offer a glimpse of the tea's special quality, while the packaging itself safeguards its freshness."

"No tea company has ever created tins with UV protected windows and a mechanical clasp on top," said Patrick Tannous, CEO of Tiesta Tea and former University of Illinois Chicago student in Communications. "I guess we were innovators."

We are talking about angel investors here, meaning people who invest their own money in early-stage startups for a share of the equity. These people are highly focused on investment areas they know, which have a large opportunity for growth, revenue projection of $20M or more in five years, and a high return that can be realized via an exit within five years.

Generally, the same criteria applies to venture capital investors, although they invest other people’s money, at a later stage, in larger amounts. Both are excited by innovative new products and services, and neither is normally interested in deals in the following domains:

* Consulting services. This type of business is usually based on the expert skill and reputation of an individual or small group. Such a business shouldn’t need a large investment to get started (no product to develop), and it probably won’t scale quickly (limited supply of experts). Accordingly, investors will decline.

If you ever find yourself having to persuade others of the goodness of your cause, you can do no worse than to follow the example of the actor, Kevin Spacey.

In Washington to deliver the 24th annual Nancy Hanks lecture on Arts and Public Policy, Spacey took time to advocate for continued federal funding of the arts, which, like many cultural and social programs, is on the chopping block. Spacey’s advocacy in Congress and to the Washington media was an example of how to present yourself and your case in ways that make people sit up and take notice. Watching Spacey on MSNBC’s Hardball was like taking a master class in persuasion.