On January 8, 2018, as Amazon Inc.’s stock soared to an all-time high of $1250 a share, its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns 17% of the company, dethroned Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates to become the world’s richest person. Since then, the company’s stock has risen an additional 20 percent, increasing the entrepreneur’s net worth from $105 billion to $125 billion! To put it in perspective, that is more than the GDP of over 125 of the world’s 195 nations.

Image: https://www.dogonews.com

As an entrepreneur, you succeed in attaining the freedom to work whenever you want and wherever you want. Essentially, you are your own boss, but it also means you are responsible for your business and team, which means you need to continuously be on your toes. Hence, entrepreneurship is not just a job, but a way of life – something you need to embrace wholeheartedly.

Key performance indicators (KPI’s) play a vital role in startup ecosystem financing. In addition to helping policy developers visualize and benchmark growth, KPI’s enable economic development organizations and support providers to make highly informed financial decisions. Does your organization want to learn how to save money, manage risk, and stimulate economic growth? It’s time to learn how to use KPI’s in startup ecosystem financing.

Image: http://www.startupcommons.org

Every entrepreneur thinks he can relax a bit after his business model is proven, funding is in place, and revenues are scaling as projected up that hockey-stick curve. Unfortunately, the market is changing so fast these days that any upward climb can level off quickly, as the core business growth begins to stall. This S-Curve, with no correction, can quickly lead to disaster.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

We're No. 12! We're No. 12! That is not the chant that a proud American might have been cheering at the Olympic Village in Pyeongchang.

President Trump isn’t likely to break out this little tidbit of information in his Twitter feed, even though he could justifiably blame it on previous administrations. But, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, that is where the U.S. is now ranked when it comes to protecting intellectual property.

Courage is not a personality trait; it is a discipline.

I worked my way through college as a nurse’s aid in a spinal chord injury unit of a local Boston hospital. I had zero qualifications for the job other than being strong enough to lift a person from a bed to a wheel chair and back again.

The unit I worked in consisted of about 20 young adults, from 19 to 30 years old. Each one was a quadriplegic, meaning that he or she was paralyzed from the neck down. At best, some had very limited use of their arms, perhaps just the use of triceps or biceps, so that they could flex their arm in or out but not both.

Entrepreneurship is on the rise in Hampton Roads and there’s an event to celebrate it.

757 LAUNCH, from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. on March 30 at the Selden Market in Norfolk, will showcase three new resources to support area entrepreneurs and startups.

Those programs are: StartWheel.org, a website that connects entrepreneurs with community resources; 757 Accelerate, an accelerator program that will host its first cohort this fall; and 757 Seed, an early-stage seed fund that will invest capital in potential startups.

Image: Courtesy photo - Chris Shelton, executive director of StartWheel and lead organizer for 757 Launch said there are many reasons to start and grow a business in Hampton Roads. 

Most accelerator programs support a handful of companies, with 10 or so as the sweet spot. But a new Austin accelerator launching in April wants to support eight times that number.

MassChallenge, the largest startup accelerator in the world, will kick off its Texas program next month with a whopping 84 startups locked in for its inaugural class.

Image: MASSCHALLENGE TEXAS MANAGING DIRECTOR MIKE MILLARD. PHOTO VIA TWITTER 

The pace of innovation around the world continues to increase – and one of its drivers is corporate venture capital. Corporate venture capital (CVC), the investment of corporate funds in startups, has risen to its highest levels in history, with corporations currently providing approximately 30 percent of startup capital and CVC participating in nearly 20 percent of financings.

The innovation economy is often measured in hard numbers: amount of funding raised, employee headcount, revenue or square feet of office space. But there are intangible metrics that are often critical to a thriving startup ecosystem. As Atlanta has grown as a tech hub, so has the community support infrastructure for local entrepreneurs.

Below you will find some of Atlanta’s organizations, events and groups dedicated to supporting and growing the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. From meetups to pitch events to interest groups, there is a wide array of resources for those looking to strengthen their relationships in Atlanta’s tech scene.

Travelers today are more aware than ever of all the world has to offer. It’s thrilling to be confronted with so much possibility — but daunting, too. Each year, we curate a list of the best places to travel in the months ahead.

Our travel experts — from travel writers around the globe to T+L's A-List travel advisors to our own editors — offer their recommendations. Then, we take a look at what places are now at the forefront of the global conversation, whether for new hotels and museums or major international events.

What is the future of work? The New World of Work explores how technologies like automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence are shaping how we work, where we work, and the skills and education we need to work. Featuring conversations with experts from the McKinsey Global Institute and thought leaders from the public and private sectors, this series will help business leaders, policymakers, and organizations understand what changes are afoot and how we can prepare today for a future that works.

HIMSS on Friday revealed that it has acquired Healthbox for its innovation consulting and fund management services.

"Healthcare organizations look at us asking if we can help them think through concepts around digital health or how to bring innovation into their systems," said Hal Wolf, HIMSS CEO. 

Healthbox, in fact, specializes in two sets of services: innovation consulting and fund management. 

Image: http://www.healthcareitnews.com

One of the lessons I have learned over the years as a business executive, and now as a mentor to entrepreneurs, is that if you really want employees who enthusiastically take ownership of their work, you have to start treating them like owners, not renters. Owners feel they have skin in the game, and benefit from improved effort and results, rather than just getting blamed for problems.

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

“Fail fast” is a well-known phrase in the startup scene. The spirit of failing fast is getting to market with a minimum viable product and then rapidly iterating toward success. Failing fast acknowledges that entrepreneurs are unlikely to design a successful end-state solution before testing it with real customers and real consequences. This is the “ready, fire, aim” approach. Or, if the blowback is big enough, it’s the “ready, fire, pivot” approach.

You know those disaster movies where it's blue sky one minute, hellish storm clouds the next?

Well that was pretty much what happened in London on Tuesday.

Thing have been cold in the UK for a few days now, but the so-called "Beast from the East" well and truly slammed into Britain's capital yesterday.

Just look at this nightmarish photo, taken from a police helicopter.

It’s tax season, and that means small business owners everywhere are starting to worry about how and when they’ll file their year-end returns. Tax season is a stressful time for everyone, but especially for small business owners, who often have more complex financials to work with than individuals — but considering there are close to 28 million small businesses in the United States, at least you’re in good company.

I got my first glimpse of Apple’s newest product as the sun was coming up. It was just after 7 a.m. on a Wednesday in January, two days after Apple executives, including CEO Tim Cook, began moving into Apple Park, the company’s new spaceship-like headquarters in Cupertino. As I was escorted around the gleaming structure, it occurred to me that it embodied everything Apple’s products represent: a glimpse of the future, and yet also something familiar—not science fiction, but a tangible vision made real.

Image: Apple CEO Tim Cook, photographed with outgoing Fast Company editor Robert Safian, on January 10, 2018, at Apple Park. (Photo: ioulex)

It seems modern life has become a 24-hour frenzy of productivity, where to-do lists get longer and sleep is often sacrificed. Night owls and morning larks alike have had to adjust their internal rhythms to match the pace of the world around them. But decades of solid research indicate doing that may not be the best way to reach peak efficiency or make good decisions. Looking for a better way to manage the ‘when’ decisions in his own life, New York Times best-selling author Daniel Pink dove into the research and was inspired to write his latest book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. Pink, a former vice presidential speechwriter, joined the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111, to talk about his book and shed some light on why timing “isn’t everything, but it’s a big thing.”

Image: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

For the third year in a row, millennials who participated in the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Survey 2017 believe climate change is the most serious issue affecting the world today.

Nearly half (48.8%) of the survey participants chose climate change as their top concern, and 78.1% said they would be willing to change their lifestyle to protect the environment.

Survey respondents were also in near unequivocal agreement over the cause of climate change. Over 91% of respondents answered "agree" and "strongly agree" with the statement "science has proven that humans are responsible for climate change."