Venture capitalist Ashmeet Sidana believes that some of the best Silicon Valley companies owe their success to a technical insight.

After parting ways with Foundation Capital in 2013, Sidana decided to try out a new investing strategy — back founders taking technical risk, not market risk.

His firm, Engineering Capital, leads seed rounds in companies solving technical problems in the software and core IT infrastructure space. He raised $32 million for his first fund, and $50 million for his second, which he just began investing out of in Q2 of 2018.

Migrating applications and data to public-cloud platforms can be tricky. Companies can ease the transition with hybrid-cloud configurations that progressively combine private- and public-cloud features.

Moving processing workloads into the public cloud has helped leading companies to lower their operating costs and build modern IT environments capable of rapid, integrated, and highly automated development and operations. But for large companies with complex IT architectures, moving applications and data to public-cloud platforms involves working through a formidable set of technology, security, operational, and financial issues.

Email has been around for decades, and even though a lot of companies are moving to communication platforms like Slack, it’s not going away anytime soon. You’d think years of using the tool would make us proficient, but email is considered one of the biggest time wasters at work.

“Email is a to-do list you don’t control,” says Aye Moah, chief of product and cofounder of the productivity software provider Boomerang. “It’s an open protocol, and anybody who can get hold of your email address can impose on you and demand attention in your inbox.”

Yunchul Kim is an artist and electroacoustic music composer based on Seoul. In 2017, he was invited to live and work at CERN in Switzerland, home of the world’s largest laboratory for particle physics. His latest art exhibit was designed during his time at CERN and The Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool. The exhibit features art installation, Cascade, an 18 meter-long system of transparent tubing filled with fluid kept in continuous motion. Kim uses scientific methods to create art.

Image: Stills from video of Cascade, Yunchul Kim's latest fluid kinetic installation resulting from his residency at Arts@CERN and FACT, as part of the Collide International Residency Award.STUDIO LOCUS SOLUS

Organizational culture. It can be a free-flowing front of competitive advantage or an insurmountable obstacle to change. What it can’t be, is ignored.

It can’t be ignored because culture persists. Strip away everything else from a company—its strategy, operating model, and customer offerings—and its culture remains. That’s a major reason why 82 percent of the respondents to Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends survey cited culture as a potential competitive advantage.

Image: https://thebossmagazine.com

If a real Bugatti Chiron sports car will set you back $3 million, might we suggest to you this life-sized, functioning Lego version, which will only set you back 1 million (in Lego pieces). 

At the Grand Prix Formula 1 event in Monza, Italy, Lego unveiled a functioning sports car that looks as close to the original supercar from Bugatti as is possible when using more than 1 million Lego Technic parts, more than 2,300 Lego motors, and 4,000 gear wheels in the engine. It's just about as one-to-one as you can get with building blocks.

Image: LEGO GROUP

After promoting over 4,000 crowdfunding campaigns with my company, it has become very clear to us that a significant part of the success of a crowdfunding campaign lies in the pitch. It’s the way you present your campaign that makes it stand out.

Be it a wallet or a high-tech personal robot, the story must be compelling enough to entice your audience. On the other hand, a shallow or poorly explained campaign can have the exact opposite effect. Crowdfunding platforms exist so you can properly explain your campaign objective to a larger online audience. Your pitch is everything.

Boasting a whopping 12,380 miles (19,924 kilometers) of coastline, it’s little wonder that the US is famed for being a top beach destination. From tropical paradises to rugged coves, state parks and superb surf spots, there's a full spectrum when vacationing on the shores of this nation. With so many people traveling these days it can be hard to find a special place to relax. Here we’ve selected 10 of the country’s best hidden beaches; just try and keep them a secret!

Growing up, I wasn’t popular. As a teenager, I was over 300 pounds, extremely antisocial and introverted. I didn’t think I would ever become the cool kid, much less get paid for it. But I did.

I believe we never truly grow up; we’re just 8-year-olds who are taller with more advanced problems. Especially in the world of entrepreneurship, it’s easy to become lonely and disconnected. You probably have virtual teams. Your family, friends and peer groups may not understand the stress you carry. We all need relationships with people who get you.

Image: PEXELS

A road warrior always on the move. A digital entrepreneur with no office. An unsustainable path. What can be learned from Serengetee co-founder Ryan Westberg’s nomad-like existence, on the one hand, is a wakeup call for those who think they can run their business with just a laptop and phone, no office with humans needed. On the other hand, he demonstrates how you can reengineer your life to make it more fulfilling while still achieving success. It’s all about the substance of your existence.

Law360, Boston (August 27, 2018, 10:02 PM EDT) -- The word in the Bay State's legal market is "innovation," with intellectual property litigation, major deals involving local pharmaceutical and technology companies and new businesses making some of the biggest splashes over the past year for the four firms that make up Law360's Massachusetts Powerhouses for 2018.

New Jersey’s inaugural chief innovation officer, a longtime champion of transparency in information, said she’ll continue to rely closely on open data and input from her colleagues at the Office of Information Technology (NJOIT), residents and other resources as she begins her new position.

Although professional investors may discount the impact of crowdfunding, they can’t argue with the growth of this new industry in the last few years. According to statistics by Fundly, crowdfunding contributed $34 billion in funding last year around the world, including peer-to-peer lending. That exceeds the amounts contributed in the U.S. by either angel groups or VCs alone.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

“Can you get that to me by the end of the day?” isn’t a request many employees like to hear. But for many people, having shorter deadlines instead of longer ones — “Do you think you can do that by the end of the week?” — might actually help them complete a task and see their work as being less difficult.

Reijo Pold, head of new ventures at BGTA, explains what technology entrepreneurs need to bear in mind before they consider joining an accelerator programme based overseas.

Accelerator programmes are a great way for startups to speed-up their growth and scale-up, depending on the accelerator’s focus as they range from working with early-stage to relatively late-stage startups.

Fall is nearly upon us and that means – conference season! To get the most out of the “must attend” or “attendance strongly recommended” events clogging every precious spare moment on your calendar, I tapped into organizers, speakers, attendees and sponsors in my network to get their suggestions on how to make the most of an event whether you’re there to (a) meet employers (b) schmooze with investors (c) gain valuable insights (d) build relationships with colleagues or (e) simply satisfy your curiosity. As Ian Sanders, creative consultant so aptly shared with me when I reached out to him on this topic – “It’s easy to be cynical about the value of conferences, away-days and off-sites. But gathering people in one place is so important; it’s the glue that keeps people networks together.”

Image: https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has granted 24 awards for $125,000 in FY 2018 under the Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program. Recipients include state and local economic development entities, Small Business Technology Development Centers, Women's Business Centers, incubators, accelerators, colleges, and universities that provide support to small businesses developing and commercializing high risk technologies.  

Joseph Ansanelli, a partner at Greylock Partners, discusses the venture capital landscape with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

New businesses account for nearly all net new job creation.

That simple fact, supported by research from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, cuts through all the political rhetoric about building a growing economy, the holy grail of every state or region. Unfortunately, the Milwaukee area has lagged in most measures of entrepreneurial activity in recent years, falling to 33 out of 40 in the most recent rankings from Kauffman, which conducts research and advocates for entrepreneurship.

Image: Gov. Scott Walker talks about the Foxconn "ripple effect" in Wisconsin. Green Bay Press-Gazette  

The state of Maryland has matched a donation from the family of Google co-founder Sergey Brin to endow two professorships in computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park, the university announced Wednesday. The $1 million from the state will match a private donation to endow the Brin Family Endowed Professorships in Theoretical Computer Science. ...