Jay Adelson was born in Detroit, raised in Southfield, high school at Cranbrook, college at Boston University, became a serial Internet entrepreneur, CEO of Digg, and at age 37, appeared on Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Last week, Adelson, now 44, was back in Detroit, scouting the local tech scene as cofounder of a year-old venture capital fund called Center Electric, focused on the Internet of Things.

So, you’re the founder of some start-up. While the PWC MoneyTree™ Report suggests that the vast majority of venture capital money goes into some form of technology, your company – your baby – might be in any industry.

You’ve gone through the usual funding sources. You’ve cashed out a good chunk of your own savings. You’ve obtained loans – or equity investments – from family and friends. Maybe you’ve even tapped the angel investor corps. But, you’re still burning cash and you only have so much “runway” left. You need more cash to make it past the elbow in the “J” curve or the “hockey stick.” And, with nowhere else to turn, you turn to the venture capital investors.

Angel investors are those critical investors who come in at the very earliest stage in startups. Recently, Marianne Hudson, executive director of the Angel Capital Association (ACA) came to Oklahoma to share the ACA’s perspective on current trends in angel investing. SeedStep Angels, which is managed by i2E, is a member of the ACA, the world’s largest association of accredited angel investors, having more than 13,000 investors in every U.S. state and five Canadian provinces. The ACA best practices and education helped get SeedStep Angels started and now SeedStep has active angel members across Oklahoma.

Our company has just turned eight years old, has a presence in all of Latin America, and currently has 36 members on its team. Our biggest obsession: productivity.

Since 2007 we have analyzed in detail each one of the tasks we carry out with the goal of scaling our earnings exponentially while keeping our number of work hours the same.

 Image: The MT team at work Image Credit: oMelhorTrato

SHANGHAI — For the second time in my life, I rode Shanghai’s Maglev (magnetic levitation) train to the airport for just seven minutes and 20 seconds. It was such a cool, speedy experience to take the monorail-like train from mid-Shanghai to the Pudong Airport. Riding the train is like taking a step into the future, a place where technology works magically. But at 268 miles per hour, it travels the 18 miles in such a short time that it feels like an island of technology. I had the same impression a year ago, but I rode it again and got another.

Image: A cooling robot at the Shanghai Maglev station. Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

When done correctly, blogging can provide a huge boost for your business. But there are plenty of decisions that need to be made and lessons that need to be learned in order for you to really be able to blog effectively.

This week, members of our small business community shared some tips on blogging and other aspects of running a business.

Read on for the full list in our weekly Small Business Trends community news and information roundup.

It's 82 feet high and holds more than 1,500 fish. It has a glass elevator that runs up and down the center of the tank. It is so big that it has to be cleaned by divers, three or four times each day. The AquaDom is inarguably the most badass aquarium in the world.

The AquaDom is located inside the Sea Life Center inside of a Radisson Blu hotel in Berlin, Germany. The massive tank cost an impressive 12.8 million Euros to build and was completed in 2004.

Below is the impressive AquaDom are other tanks that make up the Sea Life Center, including a walk-through underwater tunnel, interactive rockpools, and other magical ways to interact with your favorite sea life.

Image: A view of the AquaDom, the largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium in the world located in Berlin, Germany. IMAGE: JOERG CARSTENSEN/EPA

During this week’s roundtable, Christian Blume, CEO and co-founder of Cleverbridge was our guest from Germany, offering an European perspective to the question: “Is entrepreneurship only about the exit?” A very interesting discussion.

The Social Coin

As for the pitches, first up, Ivan Caballero from Barcelona, Spain, pitched The Social Coin, a CSR application that helps enterprises engage employees through their social work engagements. Ivan has built a very nice business with major enterprise customers and is at $250k in revenue. Excellent execution thus far.

Innovation in general has been an attractive field of research for me over the last several years. But healthcare innovation, specifically, has been of particular interest because of the changes and challenges this industry is experiencing. So, when I recently had the opportunity to stop in and examine the work of The Innovation Institute, a growing organization dedicated exclusively to healthcare innovation, I jumped at the chance. What I found is a new model for innovation that could serve as a guide, not only in healthcare, but in other industries as well. The Innovation Institute is headquartered in La Palma, California, with a second location—The Innovation Lab (where I conducted my interviews)—in Newport Beach. Here is my report.

Some entrepreneurs wonder if they should bypass traditional investors and go with crowdfunding, based on the assumption that it’s easier to raise money that way. While it’s true that some successful startups sowed their very prolific seeds through crowdfunding—eventually attracting larger VC money—it may not be the panacea you think it is.

So when the University of Central Florida Knights captured the Raytheon-sponsored National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition crown for a second straight year, the nation's top cybersecurity leaders wanted to learn more about the team's winning ways during a visit to the White House on July 28.

The competition requires students to keep a mock business running while fending off constant cyber attacks. More than 180 schools competed this year through a series of qualifying rounds, state competitions, regionals and finally, the national championship.

Image: Dave Wajsgras, president of Raytheon's Intelligence, Information and Services business, joins Coach Tom Nedorost and the 2015 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition winners from the University of Central Florida.

NEW YORK, N.Y., Aug. 1, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via PRWEB - World Patent Marketing, a vertically integrated manufacturer and engineer of patented products, is in the process of expanding WPM Prototyping, its engineering and prototyping division.

Prototypes are essential to the design, planning and marketing of any new invention product. There are four types of prototypes which are used to test different aspects of product development; Presentation, Proof-of-Concept, Functional, and Production Prototype. The prototypes are used as; Presentation pieces at trade shows and with investors, to test design specifications, to ensure that the product works, to sample production methods, and more.

Every entrepreneur needs a value proposition statement for his or her startup that can hook potential investors and partners in less than a minute -- the short time you might join them in an elevator on the way to their offices. This may sound easy, but every investor I know is frustrated by wasted time listening to rambling, emotional pitches that are not to the point.

One year ago, the Brookings Institution released a report on the state of innovation districts in U.S. cities, and the report's authors found that these districts come in different sizes with different attributes on a city-by-city basis. Their first steps were to identify key ingredients – economic, physical and networking assets – and find out what local stakeholders mean when they talk about "innovation districts."

Image: Image via TEDxBoston/Kendall Press/Flickr

Here's a sobering fact: Since 2008 the number of U.S. businesses closing each year has outpaced the number of businesses being created. That hasn't happened, even during a recession — in the past 30 years.

This is bad news for the economy and for workers, as fast-growing new firms contribute disproportionately to new job creation. Yet the number of high-growth firms — firms that increase employment by 20 percent a year for at least three consecutive years — as a percent of all firms dropped to 2 percent in 2012 from 3.1 percent in 1997.

European tech is heating up: In 2014, 13 startups became “unicorns,” with valuations of $US1 billion or more. It’s a huge jump from just a year before, which saw the birth of only three of the mythical creatures.

Fuelling this growth is an ambitious collection of European venture capital funds, investing capital into the ecosystem in the hopes of getting in on the ground floor of the next Spotify or Skype — as well as looking at other sectors, including health-tech, energy, and more traditional business.

How can cities truly embrace technology to improve their operations and provide better public services? Despite no shortage of focus on this question, cities—with their entrenched ways of doing things and cautious approach—have struggled on this issue.

A new report called the Citie Framework attempts to provide answers. It advocates a link between local communities of tech companies and innovative governance—a kind of "feedback loop," if you will. "While city authorities can’t create tech communities or entrepreneurs, what they can do is optimize the policy levers that are within their control to design the best set of conditions for innovation to flourish," it says.

Image: http://www.fastcoexist.com

Ranked the most competitive economy in the World for six years in a row according to the World competitiveness index. Switzerland has the happiest people in the World. Also, the World Economic Forum considered Switzerland’s environment as the most solid around the world. Switzerland’s economy supersedes over its European neighbours; its GDP growth is of 2%, against 1.3% in the European Union. Unemployment remains a mere 3.2%, against 9.6% in Europe. Moreover, its 2014 budget has closed with only a 34% debt to GDP ratio. So how does Switzerland stay stable regardless of the Unstable economical environment surrounding it?

Three months ago, I thought everything was over.

I just blew a deal for 100,000-plus students, on which I had everything riding. I just passed up a job with one of the hottest companies in EdTech because this deal was going to help MajorClarity take off.

In an instant, it all came crashing down. I couldn’t even get out of bed.

Image: Paramount PIctures