Here we highlight selected innovation related articles from around the world on a daily basis. These articles related to innovation and funding for innovative companies, and best practices for innovation based economic development.
As 2013 winds down, we asked several venture capital investors to reflect on the past year and give us their outlook for 2014. Next up in our series is Scott Kupor, partner and chief operating officer, Andreessen Horowitz.
Mr. Kupor speaks about the increasing strategic interest from Asian Internet companies, the need for engineering talent and why fears of a new tech bubble are overblown.
Image: http://blogs.wsj.com
Essentially, the purpose of venture capital is to give startups the funding they need to execute their visions and reach a mass audience.
Traditionally, venture capital is reserved for high risk, high reward, early-stage startups. A VC will provide money, as well as strategic advising services in order to bring a company to IPO or an acquisition event.
The trend we’re seeing today is that startups need less and less money to build out a first version and find product / market fit. This in turn leads to companies raising smaller and smaller sized rounds.
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A recent discussion on the economy turned to the number of jobs available globally for the more than 7 billion people inhabiting it. (Yes, food and clean water for 7 billion is also a huge order.) As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduces robotic warehouses and delivery drones, we are witnessing the automated elimination of jobs in the U.S. When you look at the unemployment and underemployment numbers, many of those folks were replaced by a machine or outsourcing.
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It’s hard to underestimate the power of an attractive or unattractive market in driving outcomes for companies, including start-ups. As Andy Rachleff, one of the founders of the venture capital firm Benchmark has said “When a great team meets a lousy market, markets win.”
For entrepreneurs, then, the challenge is to find an opportunity in an attractive market.
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Keene State College released its first placement survey of a graduating class this fall, with plans to annually track graduates’ post-collegiate career outcomes. Of the 235 graduates from the class of 2012 who generated usable responses from the survey, 94 percent reported being employed or engaged in further education.
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In a recurring comic bit, David Letterman used to place household items — a plate of jelly doughnuts, a six-pack of beer — in an 80-ton hydraulic press, gleefully watching as the items squirted, exploded and disintegrated.
That was but a light touch compared with the pressures Russell J. Hemley and his colleagues exert on molecules at the Carnegie Institution for Science here.
Image: Jinfu Shu
If you really want to impress a startup founder as a potential employee, or you want to be a smart investor, you need to know the right questions to ask. These are the questions that get past the hype of a founder “vision to change the world,” and into the realm of real business strengths, weaknesses, and current health.
Some founders try to deflect these questions by talking incessantly, so you often need to be calm, patient, and persistent to get the answers. My advice to founders out there is to not volunteer too much, but be open and honest in the face of direct questions like the following:
Y Combinator hasn't always been transparent about the 630ish companies that have trained with Paul Graham and friends since he dreamt up the accelerator in 2005. And perhaps that's why it was so intriguing to see Graham reveal some juicy Y Combinator stats on Twitter last week.
It came through two data sets. The first, a tally of the number of companies sold for or valued at $40 million or more, and sorted by Y Combinator funding year. The second was the percentage of companies that reached that status, based on the total number of companies funded in the year.
I feel for future campaign creators who want to crowdfund their big dream and are trying hard to get it right. There they are, diligently reading advice and unearthing content, the substance of which can vary considerably and sometimes patently contradict a sure-fire tip they read just a second ago.
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When it comes to creating an innovation economy, according to tech historian Leslie Berlin, Silicon Valley can be a model, but creating a carbon copy isn’t feasible. At The Atlantic’s Silicon Valley Summit conference today, Berlin, a Project Historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford, said that the creation of Silicon Valley can’t really happen anywhere else, and other regions shouldn’t try to simply re-create it.
Image: http://www.geekwire.com
What is San Diego’s economic DNA?
A new book on the region’s economic history says it’s technology and innovation.
That means San Diego has to be on the ever-changing leading edge. But that’s nothing new for the area’s leaders, says Mary Lindenstein Walshok, dean of the UC San Diego’s extension, who co-authored Invention and Reinvention: The Evolution of San Diego’s Innovation Economy.
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The Obama Administration thinks so. The President’s policies towards those in business for themselves displays a clear pattern: Restrict their choices so that entrepreneurs make “better” decisions. Unfortunately, this economic paternalism meshes poorly with the laissez-faire attitudes of most small business owners, who would rather have limited government intervention, even if it means making mistakes that they will later regret.
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Maybe you haven’t had the earnings you projected you would this year. Maybe some key invoices are still unpaid and you’re getting panicky. Fear not — you’re not alone. To learn how to navigate a cash-flow slump, we asked 10 entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following:
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One of the great fears with mobile phones is the potential for pandemic viral infection. The worry is that mobile phones are uniquely susceptible to viruses because they connect to the web, phone network and to each other providing numerous routes for infections to spread.
But data showing the actual level of viral infection is hard to come by. Estimates range from more than 4 per cent of Android devices to less than 0.0009 per cent of smartphones in the US. That’s a huge spread. So where does the truth lie?
When it comes to startups, a founder’s funding rounds, list of investors and accelerator pedigree are well-documented. What’s on their headphones – less so. We asked 14 founders to weed through their iPods and Spotify playlists to share what they are listening to as they build apps, run operations and design the future. Press play below to hear more.
Among the startups on the list is Berlin’s EyeEm, which saw a 900% increase in users from 1 million to 10 million this year. It also has exciting plans to monetize through the EyeEm Marketplace of licensed images.
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Back when I was working at the advertising agency JWT, one of our clients—a U.S. Marine Corps colonel—said something that has stuck with me ever since. “Look,” he said, “if I’m on a battlefield trying to defend a hill and I get a piece of intelligence, even if I’m not 100 percent sure that it’s accurate, I will make decisions based on that intelligence.” His point was that it’s better to have some information than none—and that you’d be a fool to disregard it just because it fell short of being definitive.
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Facebook is the cigarette of 2013, the "bad habit" many are trying to kick. And the doubts seem to be stemming from Facebook's younger users.
Mashable reached out to a few Millennials, in particular, to find out why they left Facebook — and why some returned. While the reasons for cutting the cord ranged from the practical to the existential, many former Facebook users cited the stress of maintaining their online appearances.
After the holiday leftovers have disguised themselves in countless sandwich renditions, it'll be time to put 2013 behind us and look to a new year.
Along with 2014 comes a new year for innovation, and where else to look for smart design than the budding projects on Kickstarter?
Image: http://mashable.com
Alternative finance intermediaries have been growing in size and impact in recent years in the UK as they attempt to provide much needed capital to individuals and businesses. This report presents the results from the first survey of the UK’s alternative finance sector. The research presents the size and growth of alternative finance activities such as crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending in terms of amounts raised, ventures funded and individuals contributing funds.
UK alternative finance intermediaries facilitated £939m in funding to individuals and businesses in2013. This was up 91% on 2012. This figure represents a broad range of distinct funding models such as equity crowdfunding or invoice financing, all or which serve different customers and are growing at different rates. Many of these are delivering finance to UK SMEs. In 2013 £332m of SME financing was provided by alternative finance intermediaries.
