Considering an accelerator for your startup? NuLabel CEO—and Betaspring alum—Max Winograd’s most recent column in Inc Magazine tried to simplify the question with a set questions that every founder should ask herself before joining an accelerator.

“An invitation to a startup accelerator presents several positive opportunities for young companies and particularly young entrepreneurs: a stamp of credibility; access to a plugged-in network of mentors and eager angel investors; seed capital; intense strategic, team, and product development support; and colocation alongside dozens of similar-stage businesses experiencing the same highs and lows that come with a newborn startup baby.”

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

A first-of-its-kind, regional startup accelerator and entrepreneurial talent program is in the works, connecting 20 regional academic institutions with Startup Milwaukee and the Greater Milwaukee Committee's Innovation in Milwaukee initiative. Representatives from nearly every university and college in the region met Thursday on Marquette University's campus for a first look at the program, which draws on students and local corporations with the end goal of serving students and furthering regional economic development.

Image: Scott Paulus - Michael Hostad, executive director of the Innovation in Milwaukee initiative, is leading MiKE's efforts on The Commons, alongside Startup Milwaukee's Matt Cordio. 

Manners may seem like an antiquated art form, but politeness can have a positive effect on productivity and business success. Here are some tips to wooing co-workers and potential business partners in good form:

Direct the conversation to the other person Getting someone to talk about themselves can bring them the same kind of pleasure as food or money. Asking about someone else’s interests and work during a conversation may open the person up and endear them to you. Writer Paul Ford suggested employing the line, “Wow. That sounds hard,” in social settings, but it works in business as well. People generally think their jobs are difficult, and will gladly unload their burdens onto you.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

The QR code has had a rocky road over the past two decades. Initially developed for the automotive industry in Japan in 1994, a QR code – or quick response code – is an optic label that contains information about the item to which it is attached, and can be read by machines. It has become widely popular outside its original intended use due to its fast readability. QR codes can also contain more information than the standard barcodes used on most products.

Image: http://memeburn.com 

With much of America at the beach or at the lake or otherwise vacationing this week, the Twittersphere and bloggers have little to yammer about, so today they’ve settled into a debate about Navdy.

Navdy is a device that will project virtually everything you now get on your mobile device onto the windshield of your car. Think of the windshield becoming a virtual movie screen that shows navigational data from your GPS unit, incoming phone calls, text messages and more. It responds to voice commands and gestures.

Image: Navdy Photo

While I wouldn’t call myself a “seasoned” traveler, I have enough stamps on my passport to fill a couple of pages. From my 2006 study abroad trip to Belgium, to a Ugandan volunteer trip, to my trip with Under30Experiences to Nicaragua, I’ve been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of various cultures and ways of life around the world.

During my travels, I’ve noticed various traveler types.  To many people, travel is about lounging on a tropical island beach with a steady flow of drinks. To others, travel is a non-stop itinerary full of bike tours, visiting castles and monuments, and engaging with the locals. And to many people like myself, there’s a combination of both.

As thousands of teenagers picked up their A-Level results last week, thoughts turned to what lies ahead. While some of us reach our late twenties still not knowing “what we want to do with our life”, a growing band of savvy young people are ploughing their own furrow and setting up their own companies while still in university – or even before they start.

Two young entrepreneurs who have been blazing the business trail have been rewarded for their hard work with a trip to Canada.

Millennials are so last year.

As the generation that inspired countless thinkpieces eases out of the public eye, marketers are honing in on the next wave of consumers: Generation Z. These folks, born in 1995 or later, make up 25.9% of the United States' population, contribute $44 billion to the American economy and differ from their predecessors in a few key ways.

In 2013, the World Bank commissioned a study that examined the global potential and long-term impact of crowdfunding—a relatively new practice of raising small amounts of money from a large group of consumers via the internet. The conclusion resulted in a staggering prediction: a $93 billion equivalent crowdfund investing market by 2025. And that, the study explains, is a “relatively conservative” estimate.

Clay Hebert would like to help you earn a piece of that $93 billion market.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Any startup using email as their primary mode of communication when it comes to managing projects should understand that it takes an unnecessary amount of time and energy. Web-based tools geared for project and team management offer a smooth way to kickstart your communications and keep you going without missing any important messages.

In this post, I’ve listed some of the top web-based collaboration software that can save you from the terror that is a cluttered inbox. Let’s have a look to understand the functionality of this collaborative software and its respective features:

Why Gainesville?

Photo Galleries

Chamber of Commerce's iG Forum Eight people who chose to move here, stay here to start a business or work to improve their community answered that question at the iG Forum on Wednesday inside the Hippodrome Theatre.

Josh Greenberg said he and his co-founders had aspirations of going to Silicon Valley when they started Grooveshark as freshmen at the University of Florida in 2006.

Image: Chamber of Commerce's iG Forum  - http://www.gainesville.com/

When crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo began taking off, some thought they would make venture capitalists obsolete. That has not been the case so far. And crowdfunding sites have actually served as an opportunity for professional investors to easily find new startups to fund.

A report released last week by research firm CB Insights found that about 9 percent of the 443 hardware projects that have reached the $100,000 threshold on crowdfunding platforms have also raised venture capital.

What makes an influencer?  Specifically, who influences the small business community? It turns out, on one level that’s an easy answer.  But on another level, it is much more nuanced and hard to define.  That’s according to several people we reached out to, for their definitions.  See if you agree with these seven experts.

Systems to manage the wealth of knowledge inside companies can help junior staff get a leg up in career advancement.

Knowledge management systems help connect workers to knowledge and other people regardless of physical distance.  They are wide-ranging and can vary from custom-designed knowledge repositories to web-based systems which comprise discussion forums, file sharing and organisation charts, to name but a few features.  There is no shortage of companies offering IT-based solutions to help harvest an organisation’s collective intelligence and these have only expanded in number since the advent of Web 2.0.  “Electronically linked communities”, “expertise locators” and “lessons-learned databases” will be familiar terms to Chief Knowledge Officers (CKOs)  ̶  those seeking to share wisdom throughout the organisation. But how much of an impact do these systems have on the careers of those using them?

To change organisations, leaders need to better understand their environment, distribute leadership to their teams and improve their self-awareness.

The demands placed on leaders today to be influential agents of change are unprecedented. Those who find themselves rising through the leadership ranks are often encouraged to drive their teams to new heights and play an active role in shaping their organisations to keep up with today’s rapidly evolving markets and business cycles.

In July, alongside the ÜberResearch team, we launched a Twitter competition open to PhD students. The task was to tweet how you would spend £10 million of science funding using the hashtag #uberresearchprize. 

We had hundreds of tweets and the top three, as voted by our judging panel, were then invited to write a blog post, delving into their original tweet. Over the next few days we will publish the top three blog posts here on our blog, announcing the winner on Monday 25th August. 

Over the past 20 years, Linux has ascended from a Finnish student's hobby to the world's most dominant operating system—one that runs everything from high-performance computing to mobile. Yet companies stillcan't get the Linux talent they need, at least for the price they're willing to pay for it.

To help meet this demand, the Linux Foundation today announced a new Linux certification program. But you have to wonder whether this is anything but a stopgap.

The latest hot-button subject in tech, hotter even than ephemeral apps, is diversity. Or at least, if not actual diversity, the act of releasing employee diversity statistics. From Apple to Twitter, almost all the big names in Silicon Valley are doing it. Google fell first in May, and with some pushing by activist organizations the rest soon followed suit.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

If you’ve ever unknowingly dropped some chocolate on your lap, you can sympathize. The sad truth is that the instant chocolate touches your hands--or face or clothes or any other extension of yourself--it begins to melt, quickly. And while melting in your mouth is a great feature of eating chocolate, it makes shipping and stocking it harder.

A coaching client of mine is managing partner at a very large law firm, and one of the issues we’ve been working on is how to cope more effectively with the intense demands on his time—clients who expect him to be available, firm partners and other employees who want him to address their concerns and resolve disputes, an inbox overflowing with messages from these same (and still other!) people, and an endless to-do list. Compounding this challenge, of course, is the importance of making time for loved ones and friends, exercise, and other personal needs.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net