Groundhog Day?

This month, Forbes reported that venture capital investments in healthcare startups hit record highs, despite the infamous dissolution of Theranos. While this implies it is still a buyer’s market, hundreds of quality early stage-health technology companies ready for funding are not securing investments. At Inova Personalized Health Accelerator (IPHA), we researched this trend in our Health Tech Early Stage Funding Report, which we published this month.

Amazon, the world’s largest internet retailer, has picked New York City and Arlington, Va., for its second headquarters locations. The move has prompted local colleges, including Virginia Tech and George Mason University, to make new investments and open new centers to tie in with expected economic and employment boom.

Image: Associated Press, Cliff Owen Crystal City, a locality in Arlington, Va., was chosen this week as one site of Amazon’s second headquarters. Nearby colleges and universities now want to be linked with the tech giant.

We should all plead guilty of email addiction. It’s made us anxious, stressed, and miserable. Yet, email is the most common form of communication in every industry, department, and country.

Last year alone, the total number of business and consumer emails sent and received each day was 269 billion, and that’s projected to grow to 319.6 billion in the next three years. We also spend about 2.6 hours each day reading and answering them, which amounts to 27 days of email each year.

It’s the question that every candidate who has been fired dreads. “So why did you leave your last job?”

A candidate that does their research before the interview will find many articles telling them to craft a compelling narrative. Fast Company contributor Judith Humphrey previously wrote, “The challenge is to create a story that positions you positively in the eyes of potential employers–yet remains true to the facts.”

After a highly competitive site selection process that had communities across the U.S. touting their qualifications, Amazon has selected New York City and Arlington, VA, as the locations for the company’s new headquarters. Amazon will invest $5 billion and create more than 50,000 jobs across the two new headquarters locations, with more than 25,000 employees each in New York City and Arlington. The new locations will join Seattle as the company’s three headquarters in North America.

Already anointed by The New Yorker as the “head of the resistance,” Gavin Newsom could well think he’s also king of California politics. He can both sell himself as the model of progressive virtue and also lord of the world’s fifth-largest economy, home to three of the world’s most powerful and influential companies.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

Growing up on the Indonesian island of Java, Madeline Kusnadi always dreamed of someday working and living in the United States. It was a dream born partly from watching American television shows like Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place.

“I have always idolized America since I was in sixth grade,” Kusnadi said.

Image: U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Career Center - At the U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, international students can participate in a course to develop “soft” skills for job interviews.

For the last decade, big tech companies have wooed top students from universities to sustain their pace of innovation. But these days, young talent just isn't interested, said John Chambers, who for years ran one of those tech giants.

Chambers, formerly chief executive of network equipment giant Cisco and starting this year the leader of venture capital firm JC2 Ventures, now has a vested interest in the startup world. And he regularly tours top universities -- Stanford, MIT, the École Polytechnique in France, the Indian Institutes of Technology in India in the last month -- to survey the mood.

Image: JC2 Ventures leader and former Cisco CEO John Chambers speaks at Techonomy 2018. - Stephen Shankland/CNET

Strategy execution still requires organisation design and development skills. But here’s what it may look like in a world of big data and AI.

The skills needed to be a top-tier organisation development and design expert have changed almost overnight. Until recently, the typical profile involved an education in one of the social sciences or humanities, a career trajectory anchored in the HR function and first-hand experience in several major organisational transformation projects. These are all still useful, of course. However, what’s new and invaluable appears to be the ability to understand how big data and algorithms can be used to re-design organisations.

The directory, called Scottish Health Research and Innovation Ecosystem launched today at the annual Life Science Scotland conference in Glasgow by Dave Tudor, Co-Chair of the Life Sciences Scotland Industry Leadership Group (LSS). It will help companies to engage directly with NHS Scotland to develop collaborative working projects.

An Entrepreneur is often pictured as a young adult, hardly out of college, with a dream (not necessarily a vision) to transform the world. While the stereotype has been confirmed through the astronomical success by a select group of individuals, the inconvenient truth still remains that most businesses fail. Confounding the stereotype, age (till a certain threshold), may be inversely correlative to entrepreneurial success.

Seth Goldman was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, and throughout his life, he dreamed of ideas to pursue. That tendency was enhanced when he crossed paths with Yale School of Management Professor Barry Nalebuff while pursuing his graduate degree in business administration. The student impressed the professor with his insights, and his willingness to productively debate ideas in class. A couple of years after business school, Goldman went for a run in New York City, entered a convenience store, and despite his thirst, was not impressed by the usual suspect beverages on offer.

New York City and Northern Virginia will be the homes for Amazon.com Inc.’s second and third headquarters, according to people familiar with the matter, ending a more than yearlong public contest that started with 238 candidates and ended with a surprise split of its so-called HQ2.

To live a long healthy life, all you need is a hug, a bike and a crossword puzzle.  I’m simplifying, but seemingly every week new research is published highlighting the health benefits of staying physically, socially, and mentally active.

Where these studies fall short is that they tend to look at each of these areas in isolation. A longitudinal study of men out of Harvard found that having strong social connections helped keep men alive and healthy well into their 80s and 90s. A study out of the United Kingdom found that doing crossword puzzles helps keep brains active and staves off cognitive decline. And there are no shortages of studies that link physical activity to physical health.

Within Entrepreneur Network partner Phil Town's portfolio of Rule No. 1 investing rules, there are four principles that begin with "M" to follow. One of these rules is management. Warren Buffett calls the management behind your investments as equivalent to in-laws. Communication with the management that controls your money is crucial. One of the main forms which management uses to correspond with its investors is shareholder letters. In order to draw out the right tidbits from your management's communication, look for the following within shareholder letters:

New Enterprise Associates has closed a deal to sell $1.3 billion of interests in about 20 portfolio companies to a new fund managed by a new venture capital firm headed by two former NEA executives, multiple sources with knowledge of the transaction have said.

The transaction has been funded by secondary investors at a price of about 90% of net asset value. NEA is expected to retain an investment in the new vehicle. Ravi Viswanathan, one of the new firm's leaders and a former NEA general partner, last week filed a regulatory document for a fund to raise $1.35 billion.

From the outside, the old rec center on a corner in Federal Hill looks the same, the kind of place where kids do arts and crafts, and play basketball.

But over the past five years the inside has been transformed into a hub for coders. Cinderblock walls are painted with blue computer pixels. Laptops, 3D printers and laser cutters hum, and everywhere are the funky, whimsical and practical creations that came straight from the minds of young kids.

There’s good evidence that fish oil supplements may lower the risk of second heart events — like a heart attack or stroke — in people with heart disease, but few rigorous studies have investigated whether the supplement can help people to lower their risk of having a heart event in the first place. And while some data suggests that people with lower levels of vitamin D tend to have higher rates of heart disease and cancer, the evidence isn’t solid.

Kevin Ryan is one of those startup titans, that when anyone hears he is raising money for a new company, they want it. With over $700M in capital raised, across 40 plus fundraising rounds and one of his exits going to Google for a cool $3B, he knows a thing or two about the startup game. In fact, he is considered one of the godfathers of the NYC startup ecosystem.

Image: Kevin Ryan

The cost of entry to the entrepreneur lifestyle is at an all-time low, but the challenge of winning and success is at an all-time high. Anyone can build a new web site, or publish a smartphone app for a few thousand dollars, but getting market penetration requires a lot more. Customers have come to expect disruptive change, so yet another social network is not the way to get traction.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com