This study identifies the importance assigned to the various criteria used by the Portuguese Venture Capitalists (VCs) to evaluate and select early stage venture capital projects. The data was collected through a questionnaire answered by 20 Portuguese VCs. We use descriptive statistics techniques and non-parametric tests to identify the most valued criteria and test differences in the importance assigned to the criteria of several types of VCs and investments. The study reveals that the personality and experience of the entrepreneur and of the management team are the most valued groups of criteria. VCs with a majority of private share capital value more the personality of the entrepreneur and management team than the companies with a majority of public share capital. Additionally, the VCs that did not yet internationalize consider the personality of the entrepreneur and management team and the financial aspects, to be more important than the VCs that have already expanded abroad.

WHEELING, WV, May 17, 2011 -- Wheeling Jesuit University is hosting the May 19 meeting of TechConnectWV, the non-profit, statewide high-technology economic development group.

Ryan Wall, Director of the University's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center (IEC) is a newly appointed member of the TechConnect Board of Directors. He invited his fellow board members to meet at the National Technology Transfer Center so they can tour the IEC and hear from University Vice President Jim Holt in regards to IEC plans.

The meeting takes place in the National Technology Transfer Center, Room 116/118 and Holt is scheduled to speak at 12:30 p.m.

My daughter's just about finished with college and has started the job search. It's both exhilarating and frightening at the same time, of course. Yet it's yielding a few surprises: First, there actually are jobs out there. Second, they're not exactly, well, jobs.

Most of the entry-level jobs she’s running across in her field are "1099 jobs." In other words, you don’t become a full-time employee with benefits. Rather, you simply enter into a contract with your employer to provide work. Maybe you have regular hours and maybe you don’t; maybe you have a workstation and maybe you don’t. In any event, you are a contractor, not an employee -- so at the end of the year you get a 1099 form from the IRS, not a W-2.

To make visiting inmates easier, Pinellas County, Fla., brings prisoners and their friends and family together via a "mobile inmate video visitation bus", reports the St. Petersburg Times. The bus, outfitted with video chat capabilities, stops at four locations each week where people with appointments can speak to (and see) someone in jail for 40 minutes. This program is just one of this year's "Top 25 Innovations in Government," as selected by Harvard's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Since 1985, the center has highlighted the most effective government programs to help ward off doubt about government's effectiveness.

In the past, it was more difficult to invest in startups because most deals were regional. If you didn’t live in the Bay Area, you didn’t hear about the startups that were looking for funding. Now, thanks to the Internet, incubators, demo days, and blogs that cover the scene, access to startup funding opportunities are no longer restricted to those who are physically in the room. It’s all about knowing how and where to look for the next big idea.

So with all this access, how can you get in and get the word on the right opportunity? Good deal flow is important, and can separate the good investors from the bad ones. If you don’t have access to the best deals, how can you compete and get a good rate of return? Anyone can find businesses that need capital, but what you are looking for are startups that have not been picked over yet. This is when networking and relationships can help you out.

While unemployment remains high, some sectors are hiring at a breakneck pace. New startups are cropping up in cities across the U.S., with hotspots emerging in New York, Chicago, Austin, Seattle and, of course, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. If you’ve been limiting your job search to more established companies, you might just be missing out. For every Twitter, Groupon and Zynga, there are dozens of smaller-stage companies emerging and hiring everyone from programmers to interns.

However, when it comes to hiring decisions, startups are a breed of their own. With their unique value systems, knowing a startup’s particular “fit” criteria can mean the difference between a second round of interviews and being shown the door. Equally important, of course, is understanding how well the startup fits you.

SecondMarket, a firm that facilitates investments in private companies, released a report Tuesday that discloses which companies buyers are most interested in.

Interest was determined by how many investors on the platform listed each company on their “watch lists.” When SecondMarket investors and potential investors add a company to these lists, they get relevant articles about them in their SecondMarket profile newsfeeds. It’s somewhat analogous to “liking” a Page on Facebook.

Crowd-sourced funding, as it stands now, is kind of like the reality show Shark Tank, without the sharp teeth--and without the really big bucks.

Small businesses and entrepreneurs use written pitches and videos to appeal to members within a site’s online network and set a target amount they’d like to raise. By sheer virtue of the number of donors, who invest a few hundred dollars or $1,000 or so each, startups are often able to meet their targets and get off the ground.

But the impact of these crowd-funding sites could grow.

AUBURN - The Auburn Research and Technology Foundation, through its operating agreement with Auburn University, has established the Auburn Business Incubator. The full-service, mixed-use business incubator is designed to help with commercialization of university- and community-derived technologies and services through new business ventures.

The Auburn Research and Technology Foundation is a university-affiliated, nonprofit corporation formed to support the mission of the university, particularly in the areas of research and economic development, and is developing and operating the Auburn Research Park.

"This new incubator fills a void in the local economic development infrastructure for supporting the transition from concept to business development and commercialization," said John Weete, executive director of the foundation and research park. "Formation of the incubator reflects the collaborative initiatives between Auburn University, the City of Auburn and the State of Alabama. Key in making this happen are John Mason, Auburn University vice president for research and Mike Hubbard of Auburn, speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives."

In the race to see who will own social media, LinkedIn can if nothing else claim to be the first to publicly sell out. But there’s more to business networking than an opportunity for Reid Hoffman to join the ranks of the über-rich. Savvy business people increasingly see LinkedIn as a critical place to find new employees, recognize existing ones, troll for sales prospects, and build their own digital brand. Here are some tricks you can tap to buff up your own LinkedIn profile:

* Create a custom URL. This helps your profile rank more highly in Google and LinkedIn search results, according to LinkedIn spokesperson Erin O’Harra. “And it’ll be a lot prettier to put on a business card,” she adds. Click the “Edit” hyperlink at the bottom of your blue profile box next to “Public Profile” and your current URL. On the next page, click “Customize your public profile URL” and type in your preferred URL. Try “firstnamelastname” and if that doesn’t work, “lastnamefirstname.”

Did you ever wonder how a new entrepreneur knows how to “do the right thing” for his business? Most experts believe that the essence of doing the right thing is ethics. Translating that into business value, a study by Wirthlin Worldwide concluded that 80% of customers still base a good portion of their buy decision on their perception of that firm’s ethics.

Ethics are generally defined as a set of societal standards that encompass the norms of the community. These norms are not genetic, and they have to be learned. At the base of these are moral values, but in my view most of the rest are gleaned from experience, parents, and formal education.

As part of a $10-million grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Georgia Tech’s Research Institute will look at open-source cybersecurity options for possible government use.

Part of what the researchers hope to do is to fight the misconception that open-source software is more vulnerable to attack because the source code is public.

“If someone wants to get into your software, it’s irrelevant” whether or not the code is open source, says Joshua L. Davis, a research scientist at Georgia Tech who is the lead investigator on the project.

Addis Ababa, May 17, 2011 (WIC) - With their low-carbon profiles, rich natural assets, and promising policy initiatives, the world's 48 least developed countries are fertile areas for the growth of a green economy, according to a report released May 9 at the Fourth United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries in Istanbul.

The report, Why a Green Economy Matters for the Least Developed Countries , was jointly issued by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) , the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) , and the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS)

In Pirates of Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs tears into a potential Apple employee by asking him, "Are you a virgin?"

The frightened interviewee stammers, intimidated by the question, but eventually says, "No."

Jobs lays into him and says, "You're still a virgin, you just think you're not."

Applying for a job at Apple today is unlikely to land you in a similar situation, since the company is much bigger and Jobs is no longer in the office on a day to day basis.

However, getting a job at Apple isn't going to be easy. You're going to have to answer highly technical questions, and talk about your personal life a little bit.

You’ve started blogging. You’re now spending your time mining your analytics, answering your customers’ most common questions and doing your best to provide a great resource for your industry. You’ve got that part down.

Where you’re stuck is in how to market your blog, because you’ve been watching what everyone else is doing and you’ve picked up some bad habits. Not only are you annoying people, it’s also not working.

Well, of course it’s not! Below are some common bad promotion habits that newbie bloggers (and some old-timers!) pick up and how you can help break them. Because let’s face it – just because everyone you know is doing it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

SAN FRANCISCO — Sam Lessin sold his Web start-up to Facebook for millions last year, and Facebook promptly shut it down. All Facebook wanted was Mr. Lessin.

That is what it has come to in bubbly Silicon Valley. Companies like Facebook, Google and Zynga are so hungry for the best talent that they are buying start-ups to get their founders and engineers — and then jettisoning their products.

Some technology blogs call it being “acqhired.” The companies doing the buying say it is a talent acquisition, and it typically comes with a price per head.

BOSTON, May 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems (CSE) today announced that it will develop a sustainable energy research and building innovation center at 5 Channel Center in Boston's Innovation District. The 50,000-square-foot applied research facility and building technology showcase will serve as a unique factory of innovation in support of established and start-up companies that are developing and demonstrating the next generation of energy efficiency technologies. It will also house Fraunhofer's technical R&D labs and the TechBridge start-up accelerator group to support clean energy businesses in the Innovation District.

"The new building for the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy (CSE) will literally be a living laboratory, attracting building technology pace-setters from around the nation and the international business community to demonstrate the future of sustainable buildings," said Dr. Roland Schindler, executive director of the Fraunhofer CSE. "The CSE facility will help develop the City of Boston's Innovation District and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a hub of sustainable energy technology and research."

"We have secured our first anchor partner and are currently in the process of identifying additional companies who may be interested in joining our effort," explained Nolan Browne, the center's managing director.

Two robots have gathered a treasure-trove of data from beneath the ice shelf.

So you're thinking about starting your own business?

Susan T. Spencer, small business consultant and author of Briefcase Essentials, says not so fast.

Not everyone is cut out for entrepreneurship, so Spencer recommends a little self-test to see if you've got the right stuff to grow a small business. Answer Yes or No to the 10 questions, then calculate using the the Success Key below.

1. Passion and Drive - Can you keep your nose to the grindstone for 10-12 hours a day, 7 days a week for the first two years?
2. Diligence - Do you have the ability to research a business opportunity or idea thoroughly and objectively determine which businesses suit your skills?
3. Persistence - Can you take “No” for an answer and keep moving forward without taking that “No” personally?