VCs love to say things like “we are entrepreneur friendly.” It’s trendy, catchy, and looks good on a blog post. But, as I’ve said in my post Your Words Should Match Your Actions, one can “damage their reputations by having their words not match up with their actions.”

Now – this post isn’t about responding to emails. Nor am I trying to be preachy. I’m not trying to explain a new behavior. Rather, I’m making an observation about something I’ve experienced – both as an entrepreneur and investor – since my first angel investment in 1994.

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You have an idea for a product that is going to change the world. For years you work day and night, and over time, that hard work turns into a company. You have users, revenue and, finally, the business of your dreams. But as you get traction, you also have a patent troll letter. The timing couldn’t be worse. As you find yourself spending more and more time with lawyers and learning patent law, you understand why, “patents are one of the most painful parts of running a startup, and that’s saying something.”

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We are currently enjoying a much needed resurgence in the biotechnology industry. The industry has been the best performing sector in the stock market for the last two years and it appears it will be again this year. This performance has enabled companies to raise capital, either publicly or privately, in record amounts. We expect the industry to raise more than $4 billion this year. The performance of the stock of companies that have executed initial public offerings is quite impressive. The average stock prices of the 23 life science IPOs through July are up over 50 percent from their offering price (on average) with only four trading below their offer price.

NovoBioPharma, a global biopharmaceutical firm with locations in Cambridge, MA, Delaware, and Philadelphia, and UPstart at the University of Pennsylvania announced today that they entered into a synergistic collaboration in which NovoBioPharma provides critical guidance and strategic direction to select life science UPstart companies embarking on the commercialization of early stage opportunities.  UPstart provides support for Penn inventors interested in pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors through ventures formed in partnership with Penn. NovoBioPharma will assist companies within UPstart to develop scientific and financially sound development plans to take these entities from proof of concept and beyond. 

A white paper released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation finds that Kansas City and other areas viewed as "new" startup hubs actually have been fostering a culture of entrepreneurship for some time. Many of these cities have a history of strong technology sectors or experienced strong growth among technology startups over the past two decades.

The paper, "Path-Dependent Startup Hubs – Comparing Metropolitan Performance: High-Tech and ICT Startup Density," says that a strong regional or local culture of technology entrepreneurship is not a recent phenomenon, contrary to the opinions of many. The top 10 cities in 2010 also ranked among the top 20 cities two decades earlier.

Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you. This is an adage that I wish all the Kenyan youth could aspire to live by, but unfortunately, our mindset is a special kind of process and we have developed the ability to blame others, especially politicians for all the bad things that are happening to us, yet we forget that we put them there.

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Cities are the laboratories where the most innovative ideas for surviving in the future can be tested. These 10--from New York to Tokyo to Bogota--were just awarded City Climate Leadership Awards for their work. 2 NOTES / 0 PLUS / 450 TWEET / 363 LIKE / 133 SHARE With a few exceptions, national governments aren't going to make a big dent in climate change and associated environmental problems. They're too big, slow, and in many cases, don't even want to acknowledge a problem that's so politically inconvenient. Over the past half decade or so, it has become increasingly apparent that cities are leading the way--and ultimately, have the greatest chance at boosting our chances for survival in the face of declining resources and rising seas.

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When starting innovation, a lot of the same mistakes are made over and over again. Here is how you can recognize and avoid them.

In my new book The Innovation Expedition I point out six ways of committing innovation suicide. And how to avoid these pitfalls in practice.

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The California Senate and Assembly have both approved a bill by Assemblyman Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) aimed at creating greater opportunities for pioneering technology startup companies.

The bill, AB 250, was approved with overwhelming, bipartisan support this past week, according to a news statement from Holden’s office Tuesday.

Y Combinator, the seed accelerator known for its powerful alumni network, announced today that it will fund nonprofits in every new graduating class. Applications for the winter 2014 class opened today.

The accelerator first tested nonprofit funding with Watsi, a crowdfunding site for surgical procedures in the third world that was part of the 2013 winter class. "We had a hypothesis that many newly founded nonprofits could benefit from the same techniques we use to help startups," wrote Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham on the company's website.

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At a time when many Americans spend their days exercising nothing but their thumbs to exhaustion, others have grown obsessed with steps.

Each footfall, from getting the mail to getting in a run, is tracked on the way to 10,000 -- a not-so-magic number that's been turned into a fitness grail. Ten thousand steps is about five miles, depending on the stride, a distance that seems shorter when you start adding in every step from waking to sleeping. Still, many people barely log 3,000 steps per day.

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The introduction of a venture capital market in Jamaica appears to be on the horizon, with a major conference to be held in Kingston later this week and one of Jamaica's leading credit unions announcing plans to launch a venture fund later this year, among other developments.

For many, venture capitalists would be a welcome and long- overdue addition to the financial landscape, particularly given its potential to advance Jamaica's entrepreneurial ecosystem, drive innovation and boost small business growth.

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The National Angel Capital Organization (NACO) serves Canada’s angel investor community, with a mission to scale up its size and scope. To that end, it is set to release a report on the state of angel investing in Canada. While I don’t know what this report will say, I can guess it will argue investing levels are not even close to where they need to be to allow Canada to advance its early stage entrepreneurial investment opportunities.

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Entrepreneurship is easier said than done. As with most things in life, it has its own set of rules. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you run, whether you have venture funding or whether you are using your own savings. The rules still apply. Here are six rules of entrepreneurship that should remind you of the wonderful ride that entrepreneurship really is.

You will learn more from these six stories of entrepreneurial struggle than you would from six different books written on entrepreneurship. We’ll start with big stories first.

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I was recently asked these two questions on innovation culture: What would be your approach/steps to create an entrepreneurial and innovational culture?

What are the elements, processes and tools that a large organization can typically do to become a top 100 innovative company?

It is of course not possible to give a complete off-the-shelf answer to these questions as every company has their own issues, challenges, strengths and weaknesses, but I still think it is possible to outline a set of thoughts and ideas for becoming a top innovative company. Here are my suggestions:

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The question of whether employers should pay their college interns is a hot-button issue these days. Plenty of employers don't pay their interns; data compiled by online hiring platform InternMatch reveals there are about a million unpaid internships offered in the U.S. annually.

Still, having free interns may not be the best decision for your business. InternMatch found that not only are students more likely to accept paid internships over unpaid positions, but paid interns were happier and more engaged in their work.

Complaining about your smartphone's short battery life or the amount of time it takes to charge up are classic examples of the first world problems that can result in impatience and mild irritability.

While we've previously looked at ways in which you can improve your iPhone's battery life, we're now taking a look at how you can make the darn thing charge a bit faster.

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It's the end of summer and many students are coming out of a brief dip into the professional world — working alongside adults and performing entry level tasks, only to return back to classes in the fall. Some are paid, some are not — some provide both learning opportunities and a chance to build one's network, others less so. Across the board, most students will say that an internship is a better investment of time than sitting at home, or working a regular summer job.

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People start asking you what you want to be when you grow up as soon as you can talk, which is also about the time you start daydreaming about your future.

You might have envisioned your twenties filled with Martha Stewart-level apartment decor and a desk with a golden nameplate. Unfortunately, not all (if any) of your adulthood milestones will go according to plan.

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