Being broke sucks. I’ve had extended periods in my life where I have been living on the edge of financial ruin, so I know how stressful and overwhelming it can be.

When you’re broke and hating your job, things are much worse. It's hard to leave ANY job, regardless of how insanely miserable it is. This is the reason I still need to work at my loathsome job as a financial planner.

I’ve been on both sides of the table, but there are seven hard questions I’d ask my deal lead at a firm from which I’m considering taking venture investment.

There are certainly more questions to ask, but the responses to the following questions will give you a good sense of who you’re dealing with.

Working with a VC is not unlike marriage: it is a relationship that contemplates long-term commitment, is sure to involve myriad struggles and uncertainty and is very hard and painful to exit.

It can be tough to remember what to bring when packing for a business trip.

So we came up with 10 travel gadgets to bring on your next trip that will get you through security faster, keep you productive, and connect you to the internet no matter where you are.

Some days are just golden right from the start. You get up bright and early, you have a good breakfast, your coffee is perfect, and you get through your most important work first. By lunchtime, you’re feeling great: you’ve covered significant ground and you want to push yourself to get even more done during the afternoon.

Other days don’t go quite like that. In fact, for many people, these days are the more typical ones: You hit snooze repeatedly and get up late. You rush breakfast (or worse, skip it altogether), and you spend the first hour of your workday trying to find that really important file, or answering emails. By lunchtime, you feel as though you’ve not accomplished anything – and you can’t see the afternoon getting any better.

The European Commission has vowed to make the application process for technological innovation funding easier and more efficient.

On Monday, Research, Innovation and Science Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn announced new measures aimed at reducing the paperwork required to take advantage of European research grants under the Seventh Framework Programme, or FP7. The goal of the measures is to reduce red tape and encourage more small and medium-size companies as well as high-tech startups to take advantage of innovation funding.

LinkedIn is a great tool to help you grow your company, find job candidates, attract key employees, even find a buyer for your business. Whatever your objective, LinkedIn can be a remarkably effective tool, yet is misunderstood and underutilized by most CEOs/entrepreneurs I talk with. Like any other tool, it becomes more effective the more you use it. But even a minimal effort with LinkedIn can position you to reap real-world results.

You do not need to know anything about “social media” to use LinkedIn. You do not have to tweet while waiting at the airport or post photos of your board meeting or family vacation. There is no doubt, the more effort you put into this business communication tool, the better results you will get. My objective here is to give you the very basics required so others can identify you as a potential partner, seller, employer, buyer, etc.

We just finished reading a fantastic interview with Bill Gates from 1994 in Playboy.

At the time, Gates and Microsoft were on the cusp of reaching their absolute apex of power. The Internet wasn't huge yet, and Gates' wealth was still mind boggling.

(His wealth is still mind-boggling, but somehow we're used to it.)

We've culled through the interview and pulled out our 15 favorite quotes.

Google's announcement yesterday that co-founder Larry Page would return as CEO caught the tech world by surprise. Mostly because that's usually what a company does when it's in trouble -- and Google hardly needs saving.

Still, it's hardly an unusual move. Restoring power to a founder has shown itself to be an effective way at kicking the company into a higher gear, or transitioning to new long-term leadership.

Perhaps the most successful story is Steve Jobs at Apple, who rescued Apple from the grave and turned it into the world's top tech brand.

SecondMarket, the online marketplace for buying private company stock, just released their 2010 data.

Naturally, Facebook ranks #1, making up 39% of all pre-IPO completed transactions.

Which other companies are hot on secondary markets? SecondMarket asked their users to vote on the most exciting private companies. Here are the results.

Venture capital investing rebounded after a grim 2009 with venture capitalists investing $21.8 billion in 3,277 deals in 2010, which was up 19 percent from the dollars invested the previous year and reflected a 12 percent increase in deals according to the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). However, the big story arising from the full year and fourth quarter MoneyTree results was that the superstars in the startup world appeared to be reaping the rewards of big valuations while the others are pretty much left to suffer.

Venture capitalist’s investments rose 19% in dollars and a 12% rise in deals over last year according to MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association. That translates into $21.8 billion in 3,277 deals in 2010.

Double-digit increases were seen across almost every industry, although fourth quarter investing declined in both first-time dollars and deals when compared to Q3 2010.

The Software industry regained its status as the single largest investment sector for the year, rising 20% over 2009 to $4.0 billion in 2010, and Biotechnology investing increased modestly while The Medical Device industry fell 9% in dollars and was flat in terms of deals in 2010.

The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences organizes regional groups of 10 people who commit to "showing up each month, stuffing $100 each into a paper bag, and giving that bag to the person we think has the best chance at achieving something awesome." The Toronto chapter is up and dispersing grants, with no strings attached.

Think about it for a minute: What does happiness mean to you?

For most, being happy starts with having enough money to do what you want and buy what you want. A nice home, food, clothes, car, leisure. All within reason.

But happiness is much more than money. It's being healthy, free from pain, being able to take care of yourself. It's having good times with friends and family.

Furthermore, happiness means being able to speak what's on your mind without fear, to worship the God of your choosing, and to feel safe and secure in your own home.

The name “investment bank” somehow always sounded like a place where I could somehow deposit my investments, and maybe even earn a little interest. Then I learned that these banks really negotiate investments and collect fees on the transactions, sort of like commercial banks do with loans to businesses. None normally work for or provide funds for early-stage startups.

Many investment banks even call themselves “boutiques.” As near as I can tell these are smaller ones, who don’t sell clothes, but typically sell companies and securities in a particular set of industries. All investment banks have to be staffed by licensed specialists, called broker-dealers. Very confusing.

The Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming out of the pharmaceutical industry that officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines.

The new effort comes as many large drug makers, unable to find enough new drugs, are paring back research. Promising discoveries in illnesses like depression and Parkinson’s that once would have led to clinical trials are instead going unexplored because companies have neither the will nor the resources to undertake the effort.

I Come from a family of scientists and educationists. The word ‘catering college’ in my scholarly home elicited uninspiring visions of a cook labouring away behind some stove or a waiter taking orders. My father, Late Dr Snehamoy Chatterjee, was an Emeritus Scientist of Epitomology at the Indian Centre of Agriculture. He had high hopes from me, destined to flourish in physiology and zoology. So, my decision to switch to the nearest hospitality and catering institute nearly gave him a heart attack.

We have come a long way since then. Today being known as a chef or a restaurateur is a social compliment. The world looks up to the two occupations as something between a wizard or some practitioner of magic with secret ingredients and recipes, and a suave person of the world who can patronise the food connoisseurs. Welcome to the world of food entrepreneurship.

This past week was a remarkable one in the technology business. At the start of the week, Steve Jobs passed the leadership of Apple to Tim Cook and at the end of the week, Eric Schmidt passed the leadership of Google to founder Larry Page. Apple and Google are two of the most important technology companies in the world and the leaders in the mobile business which is certainly the next frontier in tech. These two moves have me ruminating on the role that CEO transitions play in the development of great companies.

I have been involved in many CEO transitions in my time in the tech/startup/venture business. They are a time of great opportunity and great risk for companies. Getting the right person in the corner office at the right time is absolutely critical and not particularly easy.

Jan. 20--Creative industries are a vibrant part of the region's economy and should be recognized as an economic development focus, a study released Wednesday by the Cultural Alliance of Greater Milwaukee said.

The study, funded with a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce and others, showed there are 49,146 workers in creative industries in the seven-county area. Those workers include graphic designers in ad agencies and actors in theater companies as well as receptionists and accountants.

Accelerators are becoming an increasingly important part of the startup ecosystem all around the world. Seedcamp here in Europe and TechStars and Y Combinator over in the US have set the standard for others to follow. Most of them offer startups the chance to exchange 5-10% of their equity for a small investment (typically sub $50k), a three month intensive mentoring programme and increased visibility amongst the investment community. Typically they have one or two programmes operating on an annual cycle.

Startupbootcamp (which is affiliated with TechStars) was new on the scene in 2010 and ran its first programme in Copenhagen in the autumn of 2010. They had a bunch of good mentors there including my friends Tommy Ahlers, Richard Anson, Michael Jackson, Hazel Moore, Morten Wulff, and last but not least Alex Farcet, who is the driving force behind the whole shebang. It is too early to know how successful the companies will be, but initial reports from the companies who participated and investors who have seen the companies are very positive.

Every entrepreneur, by definition, is successful. The dictionary defines entrepreneur as someone who assumes the risk for founding and managing a business. The degree of entrepreneurial success, however, can be measured in performance outcomes such as market share, longevity, sales revenue, and number of employees. It is universally accepted that the United States has the strongest entrepreneurial climate in the world. At any given time, 1 in 10 Americans are involved in starting a new business, and 5 percent of U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 64 are principal owners in a venture that is less than 42 months old. Research shows that the prime age for startup entrepreneurs is 25-44 years of age, a cohort that accounts for 30 percent of the U.S. population.