D. Brent Walton was driving back from a large New York City trade show with handfuls of business cards, new connections from the visit, and during a conversation with his wife it dawned on them that he should put his business experiences in a book.

His effort, dictated to his wife on the way back, was initially targeted to other photographers, but the Palmyra studio owner said, “All of a sudden, we realized this applies to more businesses. That is how the book got started.”

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Most entrepreneurs have learned that it’s almost always quicker and easier to get cash from someone you know, rather than Angel investors or professional investors (VCs). In fact, most investors “require” that you already have some investment from friends and family before they will even step up to the plate.

“We think of ourselves as an incubator for new social solutions, and we work with partners who can help us engineer positive social change – faster, easier and with real impact,” explained Rose Stuckey Kirk, president of the Verizon Foundation. In a wide-ranging interview, we discussed the foundation’s focus on U.S. education, specifically measurement and teacher training, along with healthcare and energy projects, collaborating with nonprofits and other partners, leadership lessons, and much more.

Yesterday, Kauffman Foundation released a study that provided empirical support for the Boulder Thesis that I came up with in my book Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City.

The study is excellent if you are interested in this topic and can be read at ad “Think Locally, Act Locally: Building a Robust Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.”

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When I meet with entrepreneurs, I am often asked about the VC “pipeline.”

How many deals do we see? How many meetings? How often do we conduct due diligence? How many of those companies do we invest in?

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For as long as I can remember I have been preparing for college.

And not because I wanted to, but because I was “encouraged” (nagged) by my parents. It started in middle school. I had to get good grades so I could get into a good program at my high school, where I had to get good grades so I could get into a good college.

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Sedentary sponges have evolved some fearsome weapons for trapping and devouring small prey.

Too many communities have been left behind as the Internet revolution marches on. In areas of the U.S. underserved by broadband networks – where it might also be too expensive to own a personal computer – adults who went to school too long ago and have not pursued re-skilling programs, and students who do not have Internet access at home or at school, are in danger of never catching up.

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It’s hard enough for 30-year-olds like me to find any job in today’s job market. Finding meaningful work is even more challenging. One in four adults between 18 and 34 years old say they have moved back in with their parents after living on their own and according to the Pew Research Center, only 54% of American adults ages 18 to 25 are currently employed, the lowest percentage since the government began collecting data 60 years ago. Breaking from tradition, my generation may grow up to be less wealthy than our parents’ generation.

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Pitney Bowes has announced an accelerator program to incubate software start-ups based in India. The program, part of NASSCOM’s 10,000 start-ups initiative, will begin accepting applications May 1.

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A few years ago I attended a workshop called Situational Leadership by the great Paul Hersey. He’s the guy who wrote the book on situational leadership. I was really looking forward to the workshop because another lecturer in the class was Marshall Goldsmith (his website is filled with lots of great resources), often considered to be the world’s best executive coach, who has written about succession among CEOs—something I was going through at the time. But I’ll leave the succession topic for another day.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has announced a new $18 million fund for Ohio small businesses. This is federal funding designed to give Ohio small business and manufacturers access to credit. It comes through the U.S. Treasury Department’s State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI), which was part of the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010.

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What does a $500 million IBM deal with a major insurance company have to do with your small business’s IT needs? It could be important to small business owners who run a small IT company too. If you missed the news most important to your small business this week, don’t worry. The Small Business Trends editorial team has you covered. Here’s our roundup:

Netflix is like a crazy couch glue. You can innocently tell yourself, "Just one episode!" But you'll still fall into some kind of inexplicable time portal, and it's suddenly 3:00 a.m. and you're 10 episodes into Breaking Bad, desperately wondering what the heck is up with that pink teddy bear.

Image: MASHABLE, BOB AL-GREENE 

Imagine this: A cluster of academic and government-supported incubator spaces home to nearly 50 startups. A community of people making 3D printers available in classrooms. A suite of events (hackathon, career sessions and entrepreneurship symposium) to bridge connections between college students and tech companies. A company creating the latest hardware to charge your iPhone while in the great outdoors.

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I’m a 40-year-old living in a suburb of Washington, D.C., married with two kids, and I can’t write code. I spent my career flying airplanes in the military. I would not show up as a likely first-time tech entrepreneur on anyone’s radar.

I graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1995. Until 2004, I was on active duty in the Air Force. (After that I worked full-time in the Air National Guard until last year; even today I continue to serve part-time.)

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The tradition of predicting flu and tracking disease outbreaks has tended to fall exclusively on the shoulders of the Centers for Disease Control. Healthcare entrepreneurs have sought to supplement that info by using big data generated from social media channels such as Twitter to make assessments earlier. A new study by a couple of researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital identifies another website which could be used for this task: Wikipedia.

Influenza is attributed to up to 500,000 deaths each year globally, with up to 3,500 in the U.S. alone.

Senior Americans’ grasp of the Internet and mobile devices is more complex than most people may realize, according to a new report from Pew Research Center. About six in 10 Americans aged 65 and older use the Internet and about 47 percent say they have broadband access at home. But age and income make a big difference in that user base.

The report on seniors’ Internet use was based on a survey of more than 5,000 Americans aged 65 and older. For those in the business of developing health IT and mobile health tools for this demographic, here are some of the most interesting findings.

Despite the insistence of many that startups can thrive outside Silicon Valley, it clearly pays to be there, or in New York or New England if you want venture capital.

Nationally, VCs invested at a rate not seen since mid-2001, putting $9.5 billion to work in 951 deals in the last quarter, according to a report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. That was a 12 percent increase in total investment, with much of it flowing into large deals for later stage companies like Dropbox, which raised $325 million in February.

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Despite the number of popular dystopian novels written over the years, Americans have continually been optimistic when it comes to the future of technology. At least, the distant future of technology. We're far less sanguine about the technology that threatens to upend our lives today or tomorrow, as a new Pew Research survey suggests.

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