We assessed over 800 incubators, 400 got accepted and more than 300 were actually benchmarked. You’ll see what qualities make a top incubator and how they perform in comparison to average incubators. You’ll also discover how your incubator compares on a wide range of data points, so you can spot weaknesses and improve performance.

What were you doing when you were 14? Hanging out at the 7-11 and drinking Slushies in the parking lot? Poking around in the local mall?

Well, as reminder of how much you wasted your teenage years, 14-year-old student Jordan Casey has just launched his third company, Eventzy. During a talk last week at the Web Summit in Dublin, Casey said the company is in beta but will open to the public early next year. It will offer tools to make it easier for users to manage events they are hosting and attending, he said.

Image: Jordan Casey, 14, just launched his third company. Image Credit: Web Summit

A few years ago, Greg Jorgensen started supplementing his pay as a full-time programmer with some freelance jobs. Over time, he built up a network of clients by getting referrals from programmers, web site design firms and recruiters. After he got a five-year contract from one web-based firm, Jorgensen realized he could work from anywhere, as long as he had a good Internet connection.

Image: GREG JORGENSEN

OKLAHOMA CITY — Sonic Drive-In announced the opening of a new culinary innovation center, where the fast-food chain will test equipment and recipes to develop beverages, snacks, entrees and desserts. Sonic has invested more than $1 million in the new facility, which includes a culinary kitchen for creative development, a replicated Sonic restaurant kitchen to test products, a 40-seat dining room for presentations and consumer research, and a six-seat bar area for drink innovation.

Image: Chef Claes Petersson, vice-president of product innovation at Sonic, gets to work in chain's new culinary innovation center based at the company headquarters. - http://www.foodbusinessnews.net

PHILADELPHIA – November 5, 2014 – DreamIt Ventures today announces the launch of DreamIt Athena, its accelerator track focused on providing female startup founders hands-on support to hone their ideas, develop strategies, and turn their ideas into scalable, fundable companies. This is the first program run by a top-tier startup accelerator that focuses specifically upon providing women the resources needed to build their companies.

Someplace, Mitt Romney must be smiling.

Romney, who lost the 2012 presidential election to Barack Obama, weathered no small amount of campaign heat over the alleged “vulture capitalist” practices of his private equity firm, Bain Capital. Romney was accused of building Bain’s portfolio on the backs of the working poor, a charge tied to the company’s merger and acquisition business far more than its venture capital investments....

There is a footnote on Page 3 of the new book by Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, and its former vice president of products, Jonathan Rosenberg, that should set readers’ expectations suitably low. The authors are describing Schmidt’s first years as C.E.O., when the board of directors was consumed with worry about its most formidable competitor, Microsoft. Back then Google employees, the authors write, referred to their archrival by a secret code name: “Finland.” It seems like a fresh if somewhat inexplicable detail, until the eye wanders down to the bottom of the page and this disclaimer: “In fact, ‘Finland’ is a code name for the code name we actually used. If we used the actual code name in this book, it wouldn’t be much of a code name, would it?”

My husband, who is 34, recently quit his federal government job, where he worked on climate-change issues for four years. He left because we decided to move to New York for my work and because he was itching to explore other options.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

I’m always intrigued when I meet successful people, entrepreneurs or otherwise, to understand their fitness habits.

Over time this has lead me to identify three different types of fitness activities that serve three very different but important functions to an entrepreneur.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Steve Jobs was 52 when he announced the iPhone. That was in 2007. Years later, the Apple co-founder introduced the MacBook Air, App Store and iPad. Tim Cook, who was 51 when he took over from Jobs, is building on his legacy. They both shattered a myth that the young rule the technology industry....

As Ebola continues to threaten lives around the world, the White House is considering recruiting the world of robotics to offer assistance.

For years, robots has been used in disaster zones to mitigate crises that are too dangerous for people to work on. Multiple robot models braved the Fukushima nuclear disaster so human workers didn’t have to risk their lives.

Image: http://readwrite.com 

A few years ago a venture capital firm hired me to help one of its start-ups negotiate a critical deal. I expected the VC partner who was on the start-up’s board to be deeply involved in the strategic discussions. But the VC in question—ordinarily a hands-on dealmaker—was conspicuously uninvolved. His advice and support would have been useful to the founders, especially with respect to opening doors with governments and potential partners overseas, so one day I asked him about his seeming lack of interest.

Image: PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND GOW LANGSFORD GALLERY ARTWORK: SARA HUGHES, UNITED WE FALL, 2008, VINYL INSTALLATION FOR THE STAIRS AND LOBBY, CHRISTCHURCH ART GALLERY TE PUNA O WAIWHETU, CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND 

Wall Street is becoming a bigger player in the tech startup scene, throwing gobs of money at companies, driving up funding rounds and creating outsized valuations.

Many of the biggest startup investments this year belong not to the storied Silicon Valley venture firms but to 401(k) managers such as Fidelity and behemoth financial institutions such as BlackRock.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Tech startups are raising rounds within a year more frequently in 2014 than any prior year. Burn rates going up? Or are they just taking advantage of an easy financing market?

If companies are burning more money these days (expenses > revenues), is that forcing them to raise money more quickly? We used CB Insights data to look at tech companies that raised back-to-back rounds less than 1 year apart.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

If you aren’t willing to take some risk as an entrepreneur, then don’t expect any gain. Yet everyone has limits, and every investor implicitly has similar limits on what makes a startup investable, or one to avoid at all costs. If you need investors, it’s important that you understand their filters, and even if you are funding your own efforts, you need to recognize the red flags.

Think back to when you started your most recent company. What were the biggest mistakes you made at the time? Or, if you’re in the process of starting a business today, what mistake are you most concerned about making? Expert Market has come up with this infographic listing 15 startup mistakes small business owners and entrepreneurs need to consider.

Image: http://smallbiztrends.com/ 

Raising equity capital is hard work -- and it always will be -- but now is an unrivaled time to be an entrepreneur seeking financing. Thanks to the general solicitation exemption adopted in September 2013 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, entrepreneurs have access to an unprecedented selection of tools and resources to help them raise investor funding for their startups, growth-stage companies or small businesses. 

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

As a startup mentor and investor, I am approached regularly by aspiring entrepreneurs who assert that business plans are a waste of time. They cite sources like the BusinessWeek story, “Real Entrepreneurs Don’t Write Business Plans” and this Forbes article. From my perspective, much of this advice is an urban legend and just plain wrong.

In October or November 1839, one Robert Cornelius, then 30 years old, set up his camera at the back of his father's shop in Philadelphia (below), removed the lens cap, ran into the frame and sat stock still for five minutes before running back and replacing the lens cap. In so doing, he had created what is believed to be the first photographic self-portrait.

Image: Self-portrait by Robert Cornelius (Image levels adjusted) IMAGE: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

The Pentagon's technology arm is prepared to invest up to $700,000 in a promising idea in the field of biological sciences and technology. The goal is to turn theoretical concepts into actual products, such as better sensors for prosthetic limbs and techniques to cope with infectious disease outbreaks.

Under a new initiative by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, inventors will be able to send in proposals without having to trudge through miles of red tape as they would have to in traditional government contracts.

Image: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org