Whether you are starting off in business or are an experienced entrepreneur, you want to make sure that you are continuously learning and connecting with other entrepreneurs. Here’s a list of 30 websites on entrepreneurship.

Mixergy.com

This is a site that is a mix of several mentors who are experienced in the field of business. I guess that’s where they get their name from – a mix of synergy. The site colors and layout is wonderful so is Andrew Warner’s frank and open style of communication.

Entrepreneur in Making

This website prides itself as being a source of information and inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs, who want to break out of the 9 to 5 cubicle jail, live their dreams and be their own boss. A nice, clean and simple blog.

The managing director of a major Silicon Valley venture capital fund says investors in the United States are looking north and liking what they see.

Rob Chaplinsky, whose Bridgescale Partners recently opened an office in

Toronto, says his company is actively pursuing Canadian companies, and is supporting start-ups by sponsoring activities and events in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. --- California Capital Partners, LLC (CalCap), is the manager of venture capital funds specializing in investing in small- to medium-sized technology-based business with high growth potential.

Understanding the financing challenges of a growing company, CalCap’s managing directors – industry veterans Mark Mansfield, John R. Nelson and Philip B. Smith – have a cumulative 75 years of senior management and investment experience. With the myriad of issues for entrepreneurs to consider, from financial plans to elevator pitches, the 10 tips below will provide even savvy start-ups with some candid, effective insights into what it takes to get venture capital funding.

The University of Missouri System said Friday it will invest up to $5 million to accelerate commercialization of the university’s intellectual property and spur start-up companies.

The Enterprise Investment Fund targets entrepreneurs currently working to commercialize a university-developed technology or are interested in licensing a technology and forming a start-up company to take innovations from the laboratory to the marketplace, university officials said.

Universities bring about 70 percent of research to the market, while private industry brings about 30 percent, said Mike Nichols, vice president of research and economic development for the University of Missouri System. This is a complete reversal from the mid-1970s when industries conducted the majority of research that led to new product commercialization, he said.

BRUSSELS, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- The global effort to combat climate change resulted in a significant boost in green economic activity, a U.N. review of patents found from Brussels.

The U.N. Environment Program in a review of 400,000 patents selected from a pool of 60 million found a boom in green technological activity.

Achim Steiner, the executive director at UNEP, said the patent review provided a unique look at the field of clean energy technology.

You don’t need to have a big company to embrace sustainability.  Smart and committed small businesses are adopting sustainability practices, too. They are incorporating recycled goods in their manufacturing supply chains.  They are requiring their transportation fleets to be more efficient.  They are reducing their energy consumption in day to day operations.

Incorporating sustainability into your business is an important step.  But it is equally important to communicate your commitment internally among your team, and externally to business partners, suppliers, customers and other stakeholders.

there was a recent twitter meme about how some VC's require unanimous partner approval and some prefer a dissenting vote (good to have a skeptic in the mix? if everybody likes it is it too obvious?). I wonder how USV views this?

There are actually quite a few models for how VC firms make investment decisions. Our firm does things on a unanimous basis but we never vote. Other firms actually vote, usually by signing an investment memorandum. Some firms require a majority to approve. Other firms require a supermajority to approve. Some firms create deal teams that must be unanimous and then require a simple majority of all partners. And some firms have a managing partner who effectively has a veto over all investment decisions.

All of these models work and they are often a reflection of the firm; its size, the stage of investments they make, the level of involvement of all the partners in the investments, etc.

LAS VEGAS — There are many cities across the country that are beginning to see the first glimpses of the end of the recession.

This is not one of them.

The nation’s gambling capital is staggering under a confluence of economic forces that has sent Las Vegas into what officials describe as its deepest economic rut since casinos first began rising in the desert here in the 1940s.

Even as city leaders remain hopeful that gambling revenues will rebound with the nation’s economy, experts project that it will not be enough to make up for an even deeper realignment that has taken place in the course of this recession: the collapse of the construction industry, which was the other economic pillar of the city and the state.

As part of efforts to address record-high levels of long-term unemployment, President Obama plans to announce a new national public-private partnership on Monday to help retrain workers for jobs that are in demand.

The national program is a response to frustrations from both workers and employers who complain that public retraining programs frequently do not provide students with employable skills. This new initiative is intended to help better align community college curriculums with the demands of local companies.

“The goal is to encourage community colleges and other training providers to work in close partnership with employers, to design a curriculum where they want to hire the people coming out of these programs right away,” said Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

We have had no shortage of social media-related book reviews this year (or last year, like Anita Campbell’s review of The Digital Handshake).  Now, thanks to the suggestion of a Small Business Trends book review reader, we were made aware of another book that is useful for those learning how to use social media effectively.

Enter Amber Mac.  A former media strategist with Razorfish and more recently a producer of tech programs at Citytv and G4techTV, Mac has written a guide on optimizing your communication called Power Friending: Demystifying Social Media to Grow Your Business.  I received a review copy, and felt that among the social media books available, it is probably one of the most accessible for small business owners wishing to improve the management of their online communications.

If you’re interested in job creation—and who isn’t these days?—you should talk to someone like Morris Panner. In 1999, Panner and some others started a Boston software company called OpenAir. By 2008 they sold it for $31 million. The firm had then grown to about 50 workers. It turns out that entrepreneurship (essentially, the founding of new companies) is crucial to job creation. But as Panner’s experience suggests, success is often a slog.

What’s frustrating and perplexing about the present job dearth is that the U.S. economy has long been a phenomenal employment machine. Here’s the record: 83 million jobs added from 1960 to 2007, with only six years of declines (1961, 1975, 1982, 1991, 2002, 2003). Conventional analysis blames today’s poor performance (jobs are 7.6 million below their pre-recession peak) on weak demand. Because people aren’t buying, businesses aren’t hiring. Though true, this omits the vital role of entrepreneurship.

Recently there has been a food fight in Silicon Valley over the behavior of certain Angel investors. Perhaps you’ve seen some of it playing out in the blogosphere. Riveting stuff to be sure. What gets me though is that a lot of the angst seems to center on whether leading Angel investors are acting like VCs or Angels. My first thought was “well, who cares?” But, on reflection, I thought it was revealing of a continued disconnect in the usage of these terms, and what they actually represent.

I think that it is important to clear this matter up because as I have mentioned many times over the last four years, the VC industry is bifurcating. One part of the industry focuses on raising and managing larger funds, and providing expansion capital for software businesses and capital for intellectual property driven businesses that require significant capital investment to get to market. These funds seek exits of $200M or more, to allow them to deploy large amounts of capital and generate venture returns. This part of the industry is well established.

Dolphins living in Shark Bay, Australia have developed a rare, and extraordinary new behaviour.

The dolphins have become shell-collectors, using their snouts to pick up and transport large conchs.

The dolphins seek out the shells to hunt fish that are sheltering within.

It is likely that the dolphins originally chased the fish into the conchs, and have now learnt to bring the shells to the surface, where they can flush out and eat their prey.


We were lucky enough to witness a dolphin being innovative
Marine biologist Simon Allen

Dolphin innovators collect shells

The foraging tactic is "quite spectacular", say researchers, who have published photographs and details of the behaviour in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

One of the most interesting discussions at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference was the debate between the “super angels” and VCs. No, I’m not referring to “AngelGate” or the question of which investor group squeezes entrepreneurs the most. Despite what they say, all investors are in the game for personal financial gain; it’s not about nurturing entrepreneurs or doing good for the world. The most interesting discussion—for entrepreneurs—was about whether a startup should raise lots of venture capital and go for the billion-dollar exit, or raise less money and be happy with a few million.

This issue is much more important than it seems: it affects the way you grow your company, and the focus you place on products and customers. When you go for the billion-dollar exit, you have to start with a master plan for owning a significant slice of a multi-billion-dollar market. You need to develop grand products for grand markets. This is good—you need a vision and a long-term focus. The problems begin when you start raising capital and racing to grow at all costs. And that is where the real chasm between the “super angels” and VCs is developing.

The VC market may be shrinking in the U.S. but there are still opportunities in Europe. So says Fergal Mullen, a General Partner in Highland Capital Partners, which is a VC firm with $3 billion of committed capital in more than 200 companies. Mullen heads up Highland’s activities in Europe. I talked to Mullen about why the fund is expanding in Europe (Highland just added a new partner to bolster its Geneva office) and the special issues VCs face there.

Although the economies of Europe and the U.S. are similar in size, there is a huge discrepancy in the VC markets. The European VC market is only about one sixth of the size of that in the U.S. Mullen says that traditionally the U.S. VC market has been over-invested, while Europe’s is under-invested. As a result, a massive correction has been happening in VC funding in the U.S., including a 50-60% drop in the last year alone. Europe, in comparison, still has considerable space to grow, and according to Mullen, the VC market there should be of the order of $8-10 billion, rather than the current $6 billion.

This video has been making the rounds, but in case you missed it, it's a real thrill. I watched it in full-screen mode, like my friend Jim Leftwich suggested. My palms got sweaty and the soles of my feet ached, like they do whenever I'm on the edge of a cliff or other high place without a barrier between me and a plunge to death.

Wars in the past have been fought over oil. Wars in the future, experts say, will be fought over water. And it seems that the opening skirmishes are taking place on campuses, over water in little blue bottles.

Dasani. Deer Park. Aquafina. They may be clear, clean-tasting, and free of the sugary syrups that contaminate nearly every other drink in a disposable bottle. But they have inspired environmentally minded students to start anti-bottled-water campaigns with tag lines like "Just Tap It," which conveniently both advertises the tap-water alternative and carries a vulgar, attention-grabbing connotation.