Akhilesh Bali was 23 when he founded Mithaimate.com with a few friends. “We were very naïve. We had never heard of things like a ‘corporate business plan’. And while for some a business plan is something that is just on paper, in retrospect I think it does force you to think about your business in a certain way and plan properly when you think of scaling up,” he says.

Image: Akhilesh Bali founded his second start-up, LimeTray, after graduating from the ISB. Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mint  

Whether you have taken or planning to take the crazy plunge of entrepreneurship, here are some refreshing reasons on what being an entrepreneur teaches you.

1. You are more capable than what your boss or employer think of you.

“All that’s fine, but let us stick to the job at hand ” – perhaps a common retort to new ideas from you. It doesn’t matter even if you report to the CEO, remember you are still a part of a “balanced scorecard” and a KRA metrics that may make your boss look good.

About 10 years ago, a young artist named Jeremy Boyle was selected to be an artist in residence at a contemporary art museum in Pittsburgh called the Mattress Factory, in the city's historic Mexican War Streets neighborhood. Boyle said he wasn’t sure what kind of installation to create for the room-size space in the museum, and eventually settled on what he named “The Studio Project,” which is described as his “ultimate studio” for making art. But it didn’t stop there. Boyle had no place to live. The museum curator suggested, partly in jest, that Boyle might move into the space of the permanent exhibit at the museum, which was created  in 1988 by another artist, Allan Wexler. It was called “Bed Sitting Rooms for an Artist in Residence.” Perfect! Boyle took up residence inside the museum for 9 months.

Image: Pittsburgh Allegheny K-5 elementary school (All photos Deborah Fallows) 

American campuses have never been more international.

In 2013-14, colleges in the United States enrolled a record 886,052 foreign students, an increase of 8 percent over the previous year, according to the latest "Open Doors" report from the Institute of International Education.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Success is relative and defined by our individual goals and accomplishments. Not by comparing ourselves to others or by what others think success is for us. When you look at people who you believe are successful, what do they do and have in common? When you look at your own successes, what are the things you did to accomplish those successes?

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

It’s a list that includes an Australian author, a former United States federal prisoner, a CEO of a multinational consumer goods company, a Harvard business school professor, a millionaire entrepreneur and more.

These nine TED talks are sure to inspire, stimulate and generate thought about how to successfully run a business. They’re a must watch for SMEs and entrepreneurs.  

Two years ago, I was hired by the four cofounders of mobile Ad-tech startup ClicksMob to lead their company.

They hired me because I shared their vision of growing the company exponentially, and because they believed I was better positioned to run it than they were. Shortly after beginning my position as CEO, I discovered I was pregnant. It’s been a wonderful journey being a mother and chief executive, and I’m due any day now with my second in 14 months.

Image: Chen Levanon, CEO of ClicksMob 

The good news is that the rate of entrepreneurship is down a bit, to pre-recession levels, according to the latest Kaufmann Index of entrepreneurial activity. The bad news is that it’s still high, the opportunity for change is huge, and the cost of entry is at an all-time low. It’s a jungle fight for survival out there for aspiring entrepreneurs of all ages and demographics.

Just the other day, I had the somewhat unpleasant job of presiding over the shutdown of one of our investee companies. Not that it was a first – I’ve ‘lost’ a dozen or so companies in the last 15 years of investing, out of 50-odd companies that time and money has gone into, and I’m reliably informed it’s a good ratio.

At the same time, the returns from the ones that survived and made it big have made us, I’m told again, among the best-returning funds in the country. Which made me wonder whether we were good in any way – or just the one-eyed in the land of the blind. But more on that later.

Image: http://www.medianama.com 

Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, has pledged an investment in the Unitus Seed Fund – an impact fund that focuses on social, economic and technological development in India....

The 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI), released today in partnership with the GEDI Institute, shows that entrepreneurship is generally on the rise around the world but that there is much room for growth.

The GEI, measuring the entrepreneurial ecosystems in 130 countries—from Albania to Zambia—measures global entrepreneurial capacity at 52%. It is being launched at policy summits and roundtable discussions around the world as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Image: http://www.gew.co 

As Philadelphians, we've always had a complicated relationship with Boston. We share a number of important similarities - history, a Northeastern location, and strong "eds and meds," among others. These similarities have bred a healthy competitiveness and, at times, a sense of rivalry - whether it's over our sports teams or who gets to claim Ben Franklin.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Americans include two health-related issues among the 10 most important problems facing the U.S., according to a recent Gallup survey. Healthcare in general ranked fourth on the list, with Ebola coming in at no. 8. But is Ebola really among the biggest health problems for Americans? Not when we look at the chances of actually being infected. 

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

You open a new document or turn to a blank page, stretch like a cartoon character before a concerto, and then... nothing. The inspiration isn't there. You just don't feel like it right now.

Maybe you'll feel like it later today. Or on Thursday. But really, Sunday nights are your most creative time. So it can wait. Until later becomes now, and you have nothing to show for it.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Simultaneously fantastical and frightening, autonomous drones represent the awe-inspiring possibilities of technology. The future seems have arrived in the small beating wings of these sentient additions to our skies, capable of transmitting unprecedented flows of information from all corners of our natural and human-built environment. But before we let autonomous aerial vehicles fly in our cities, we must answer critical questions about the role we want them to play. How can we use drones for good? In this week’s Forefront, we take you to the labs where top researchers are figuring out the technology can help us create more sustainable, connected cities.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

What are the most important moments of the day? The 20 minutes you commit to planning. 

You're thinking, Planning? Yuck.

I know for some people it's a dreaded word, but don't worry. I'm not talking about writing a business plan or setting annual goals. I'm simply talking about dedicating 20 minutes to prioritizing and organizing your day. 

How you start your day sets the context and your mindset for the rest of the day. 

Yet, most people start the day with procrastination by hitting the snooze button, telling their subconscious that they don’t even have the self-discipline to get out of bed in the morning, let alone do what’s necessary to be happy, healthy and successful.

On Monday President Obama released a statement about the importance of net neutrality to ongoing innovation. And I couldn’t agree more.

The Open Internet is a Proven Platform for Innovation 

For the last twenty-five years, the open Internet has been the fundamental enabler of new business and innovation around the world. No other technology has so radically changed how we live and work in such a short amount of time. But it’s only in the last few years, with the proliferation of mobile broadband and the near-ubiquity of always-on residential broadband, that we have started to glimpse the Internet’s true potential for creative disruption.

I think there comes a time in every entrepreneur's career where we all ask ourselves: "what do I really want out of this?"

Do I simply want to go to a job every day?

A job that's all mine, where I make the rules, the hours etc or I delude myself into thinking I do.

The problem with this is that this job becomes totally reliant upon you being there, doing the work. There are no sick days, holiday leave, weekends away. Well not at the beginning anyway.

Image: Free Digital Photos

Of all the praise heaped upon Oculus, the virtual-reality company that Facebook acquired for $2 billion earlier this year, perhaps the most significant has been this: non-nauseating. I can testify to that after my visit last month to the groovy downtown Manhattan offices of Relevent, a marketing agency that has created a virtual-reality demo for HBO to help promote its hit series “Game of Thrones.” Without much small talk, Ian Cleary, Relevent’s vice president of “innovation and ideation,” escorted me into a steampunk cage the size of a phone booth, made of iron and wood. He fitted me with headphones and the Oculus Rift, as the company’s flagship product is called, a blocky set of black maxigoggles with an internal screen positioned inches from the eyes. I promptly lost awareness of the screen, and after a few seconds, a bass speaker under the floorboards began to boom. All I knew next was that I was shooting up, as in an outdoor elevator, to a windy summit and then trudging through lightly packed snow — crunch, crunch, crunch — onto a vertiginous ledge of ice.

Image: The Oculus Rift, virtual-reality goggles. Credit Jens Mortensen for The New York Times