By Dr. Janice Presser, CEO, The Gabriel Institute

Ask any entrepreneur what it costs to make a hiring mistake and you'll likely be met with a groan and a 'double eye roll'.  Everyone knows the costs:

• The recruiting fees
• The job postings
• The time you spend interviewing
• Your turnover rate causing increased UC contribution costs
• The lawyer's fees for the employment contract, figuring out how to break the contract, and sometimes additional fees--plus the tax on your time and patience--required to defend yourself against wrongful termination!

Think of these these costs as 'direct damage':  a real strain on any entrepreneur's budget, but not an unexpected cost of doing business.  Bad hires happen.  But wait.....have you considered the 'collateral damage'?

No hiring decision happens in a vacuum.  You need your team to be whole. You have a missing part.  You seek to fill it in a way that capitalizes on the assets of your existing team members - and makes up for their deficits.  That's why prudent employers engage search specialists, scour resumes, do 360-degree interviews, personality tests, reference checks, and even credit checks (where allowed by law).  But somehow, bad hires still happen, and when they happen to you, you're naturally disappointed.  Or worse.  Because if you've pegged your hopes and plans on the wrong person, it's the collateral damage that costs so much more than the hiring failure.

I have a few different friends who are trying their hands at entrepreneurship; some have met with investors already, while others are closing in on their meeting date with anticipation and uncertainty. Based on hearing some of the things they were doing to prepare for their meeting, I thought it would be wise to roundup some of the best pitch advice I've come across not only for them but for the other first time entrepreneurs out there who may not know what typical VC pitches are like.

Pitches range in length from 5 quick minutes to a half hour or more, but what I have consistently seen while researching this topic is that no matter what length the pitch is, the key is to keep things simple and understandable while not patronizing the VC. But don't take my word for it, here is advice from six venture capitalists on various aspects of the all important pitch.

The World Economic Forum (the folks behind the yearly Davos meeting) surveyed 133 nations recently to work out how well each is networked up. Measured by a number of criteria, the U.S. slipped from third last year to fifth in 2010.

Before you get all defensive and "The U.S. is a big nation, facing unique hurdles to national broadband" on me, the WEF's index is actually measured against a large list of different criteria, including such esoterica as availability of venture capital funding, and maths and science education. The complex scoring system is consistent year on year though, so the U.S.'s slip from third to fifth place is significant. Top this year is Sweden, followed by Singapore, Denmark and Switzerland. Finland, Canada, Denmark and Norway make up the rest of the top ten, with the U.K. sliding in at 13th place.

"Chairwoman Velazquez, Ranking Member Graves, and all of the members of the Committee, thank you for holding this hearing on business incubators and their role in job creation. I am pleased to discuss how angel investors support innovative start-up companies, some of which work with business incubators and accelerators.

"My name is Peter Linder, and I am pleased to represent the Angel Capital Education Foundation, a national source of education and research about angel investing, and the growing community of sophisticated private investors known as “angel investors” who invest money and expertise in high potential start-up companies. I am a long-time angel investor in the Philadelphia area, having invested in 17 start-up companies as an individual and another 14 businesses through the Mid-Atlantic Angel Group Fund, which brings together 90 angel investors to invest in and support promising businesses.

"I also a member of ACEF’s sister organization, the Angel Capital Association (ACA) the professional alliance of angel groups in the United States and Canada, with 150 member angel groups in 44 states. More than 6,500 accredited angel investors belong to our member angel groups. ACEF and ACA work together to build the skills of angel investors so that they are better mentor capitalists to start-up companies and to increase the number of angels participating in high quality groups in the United States."
 
- Peter Linder

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I have spent the majority of my adult life investing my own and other people's money in entrepreneurs. That's why I know the U.S. has a serious problem on its hands.

Although the stock market has tentatively rebounded, funding for the one area in which America has a distinct competitive advantage--that is, new company formation--is in scary decline. That may be a familiar refrain by now, but that doesn't make the ramifications any less real. Or less dangerous.

America was built on entrepreneurship: Coca-Cola ( KO - news - people ), Kellogg ( K - news - people ), Ford Motor Company ( F - news - people ), the list of household names goes on and on. Judge a business-plan competition at almost any American university and you'll hear about the next Googles and Intels. Our culture breeds dreamers who eagerly work 70 hours or more a week to improve our professional and personal situations.

The EU has stepped up its investment in the venture capital industry and will make a €1 billion fund available by the end of 2012, European Investment Bank (EIB) Vice-President Matthias Kollatz-Ahnen told EurActiv in an interview.

Kollatz-Ahnen said the EIB has mandated its long-term investment arm – the European Investment Fund (EIF) – to increase its relative stakes in venture capital funds to ensure that they are large enough to support the development of innovative new technologies.

The €1 billion fund, known as the Mezzanine Mandate for Growth (MFG), has already approved a number of deals and will be fully operational in around 18 months' time.

File this under both Startup Adivce and Sales & Marketing Advice

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I was over at Robert Scoble’s blog Sunday night reading about the “Death of the Great Startup Launch.”  I’m not 100% sure that I understood his core thesis but I *think* it was that startup events such as Demo force such a zone of secrecy about what you’re working on (with a threat of being kicked out of the event for leaking your story) that they kill the ability for most companies to dazzle people with a great company launch and doesn’t allow journalists to triangulate with others in the market before going to press.  Oh, and Demo charges the startups $18,000.  Robert’s article is worth reading.

It got me thinking, which for me is always the sign of a good blog post. I think Robert’s right. Too many startup execs place too much emphasis on the big stage launch. There are many problems with this:

- Your chances of being selected aren’t great
- When you are selected you share the stage with 49 other companies (in the case of TechCrunch50. It is a great show but would be 10x more valuable if it were TC20)
- Most people pay attention to the first 5 companies. Maybe 10. By company 22 it’s hard to remember what any of them did.

Two Problems for Entrepreneurs

There are two small and seemingly innocuous provisions buried in the over 1,300 pages of this bill that almost certainly will hurt startups, particularly those at the earliest stages. Both have been opposed by the Angel Capital Association and the National Venture Capital Association. The first (sections 412 and 413) would change the definition of “accredited investor.” The second (section 926) would delegate at least part of the oversight for private placement filings—known as Regulation D—from the federal level to states.

These may be small provisions, but they will have no small effect. According to a study last year by the Kauffman Foundation, so-called “gazelle” firms (ages three to five years) comprise less than 1 percent of all companies, yet generate roughly 10 percent of new jobs in any given year. Even more to the point, remove startups from the job creation totals, and only six years from 1977-2005 saw net positive job creation. In the other 28 years of this span, without startups there would have been net job losses. The jobs attributed to startups reflect both the innovation entrepreneurs bring and the net growth to GDP that’s been heavily documented by both the Kauffman Foundation and NVCA.

Public-health problems and environmental degradation caused by recycling of old computer equipment could skyrocket in the next two decades, as increasingly wealthy consumers in countries such as India and China ditch their obsolete hardware.

Within six to eight years, developing countries will be disposing of more old computers than the developed world, suggests a study published today in Environmental Science & Technology1. And by 2030, these nations will be disposing of two to three times as many computers as the developed world, perhaps resulting in up to 1 billion computers being dumped worldwide every year — up from a global total of around 180 million units per year now.

What this means, says study author Eric Williams, an environmental engineer at Arizona State University, Tempe, is that even if the flow of obsolete computers exported from the developed world for recycling is completely shut off, the developing world will still have to cope with a massive amount of domestic electronic waste.

Here's a video from Tom Peters, the author of The Little Big Things, in which he discusses that companies need innovation in all parts of an organization--not just research and development. What are some examples of companies that have innovated throughout different departments? Take a look at the 2 min clip below.

Technology company CEOs will be in Washington on Wednesday to meet with senior Obama officials and congressional leaders to talk up the importance of innovation to the economy's recovery and job growth.

The CEOs are members of TechNet, which represents firms such as Cisco, Apple and Microsoft. They plan to advocate for a three-pronged approach to innovation policy:

• improving the nation's education system and support
• fostering a globally competitive business climate
• driving investment for clean technology and "21st century energy solutions"

An eight-year-old girl lies in an operating room in Children's Hospital Boston, propped up on one side, ready for surgery. She had been complaining of pains in her side, and a scan revealed a blockage in her left kidney.

In most hospitals, she'd get a six-inch slice down her abdominal wall, giving surgeons access to her kidney during open surgery, and would then spend four to five days recovering in the hospital. But this Monday morning she is about to undergo a robotic surgical procedure. In about three hours, she'll leave the operating room with a one-inch incision covered by a regular Band-Aid. She'll most likely return home the next day.

Surgeon Hiep Nguyen, a specialist in pediatric urology and robotic surgery, says the da Vinci robot has greatly expanded the complexity of the minimally invasive surgeries he can perform. It offers three-dimensional vision and articulated tips on the surgical tools that go inside the patient, which allows for smaller, finer movements than traditional laparoscopy. At a recent talk in Boston, Nguyen described complex reconstructive surgeries--fashioning a urethra from an appendix, for example--that just a few years ago would have required open surgery.

Robert Litan says proposed 'protections' for angel investors in Dodd bill are unnecessary and will hurt America's job creators  

Just say no to Section 926 of the comprehensive financial reform bill outlined by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Senator Dodd, says Kauffman Foundation Vice President Robert Litan.  

In an opinion piece  published today in the Huffington Post, Litan honed in on provisions in this section that would raise the costs of seeking angel investors--individuals with substantial wealth or income who invest in startup firms--and require companies seeking angel investments to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which would have 120 days to review it. Currently, startup companies can raise money quickly from accredited angel investors without state or regulatory approvals. The Dodd provisions also would double the net worth or income thresholds for investors to be "accredited."  

Litan says the provisions "are both unnecessary and unhelpful at a time when policymakers should be looking for ways to make it easier to finance new businesses, especially the potentially high-growth, job-creating companies capable of attracting outside investors."

Thirty years ago the "Japan Inc." partnership between government and industry created an economic powerhouse. Today, those same players are actively blocking innovators in Japan from creating similar success in the fast-growing, new digital economy.

According to allegations in a case to be decided March 30, 2010 by the Tokyo District Court, government bureaucrats have engaged in seemingly corrupt practices to keep up-and-coming ecommerce companies from challenging fossilized brick-and-mortar incumbents.

In June 2009, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor & Welfare imposed new regulations on the sale of non-prescription pharmaceutical products commonly known as "Over-The-Counter" products. (In Japan OTC are those products needing no prescription such as mild pain relievers, cold remedies and items like pregnancy tests). The suit by Kenko.com and Wellnet Corp., two Japanese online drugstores, alleges that Health ministry bureaucrats colluded with brick-and-mortar chain drug stores to ban online sales of OTC products.

Nine local projects designed to expand the state’s “knowledge economy,” a cluster of high-tech, biotechnology and design enterprises, were awarded $150,000 in grants from the federal government and the city of Providence Wednesday.

Six of the projects will be funded with $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration and three with $50,000 from the Providence Economic Development Partnership.

Many of the projects are designed to link researchers and entrepreneurs in the hopes of developing new business ventures. They were selected by the Innovation Providence Implementation Council (IPIC) set up by the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce.

A surprising number of Silicon Valley investors and bankers gathered in the bucolic confines of the Four Seasons Hotel off of Highway 101 in Palo Alto, California to attend the Agriculture 2.0 Silicon Valley Event.  I would hazard to say that the closest many of these folks have gotten to agriculture and soil is the Whole Foods produce aisle or perhaps a vineyard.  (I actually had a brief but wildly successful stint as a commercial organic farmer, but that's another story.)  

It's a testament to the power of the greentech meme that more than 250 Silicon Valley types came out to learn about sustainable farming, water, GMOs, seeds and biodiversity. In the audience were investors from Mohr Davidow, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, USVP, Redpoint, Rockport, Khosla Ventures, DFJ, Foundation Capital and many more.

Metrics strategy is a vital topic relative to innovation. Depsite how important metrics strategy is, it's a challenging one for many businesses when it comes to innovation. Going back through my own experiences and secondary research on innovation metrics, here are a few starting thoughts on developing your metrics strategy:

Begin developing your innovation metrics strategy by determining what factors drive ROI. Specifically identify which factors increase positive business returns and which reduce necessary investment. Starting with the end result in mind will better align the overall innovation effort toward delivering a positive return on investment.

The conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley since the dot-com bust has been that if a startup is not strong enough to be taken public by Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, then it shouldn’t go public. As venture-backed companies begin to emerge from the recession-forced cocoon, we’re finding that conventional wisdom may no longer apply.

Most CEO’s and venture capitalists defer to the giants in the public offering industry simply because of their brand power. For 7 percent of the deal, the major banks will field a team to prepare and sell the company’s securities. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting the B team or the C team, you still have the Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, or Bank of America/Merrill Lynch name behind you

Admittedly, the big banks do have something to offer, but these days so do the smaller banks.

The Obama administration put together this awesome motion graphics piece to visualize how the Recovery act is actually helping the economy (embedded below). Regardless of whether or not its working or not, this piece does a great job of getting the stats across, and it looks sick.

Of course, I’m a sucker for radial gradient backgrounds behind minimalist typography and graphics. I’ve loved it ever since I saw the Did You Know 3.0 video about a year ago. They’ve since updated that video, but I like the 3.0 version better.

Personally I just find the style more appealing than this video, which has great visual elements, but in a style I don’t find aesthetically appealing as much as the minimalism. But that’s just me.

Too tipsy or tired to drive yourself home? GM's Electric Networked Vehicle (EN-V) can help. The concept vehicle platform, an extension of the Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility (P.U.M.A.) prototype that was developed by Segway last year, is like a personal form of public transportation.

GM explains:

EN-V, which is short for Electric Networked-Vehicle, maintains the core principle of personal mobility -– freedom –- while helping remove the motor vehicle from the environmental debate and redefining design leadership. EN-V is a two-seat electric vehicle that was designed to alleviate concerns surrounding traffic congestion, parking availability, air quality and affordability for tomorrow's cities. "EN-V reinvents the automobile by creating a new vehicle DNA through the convergence of electrification and connectivity. It provides an ideal solution for urban mobility that enables future driving to be free from petroleum and emissions, free from congestion and accidents, and more fun and fashionable than ever before," said Kevin Wale, President and Managing Director of the GM China Group.