Andreessen Horowitz, a Menlo Park, CA-based venture capital firm, has launched its $450m second bio fund.

Bio Fund II will focus on investing in companies at the intersection of biology and engineering.

As with the first bio fund, this second vehicle will be stage-agnostic, investing across seed to growth. It will be interested in:

– computational biomedicine, applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to diagnostics and therapeutics;

– new bio utilities or tools that make it easier to read, write or edit and synthesize DNA, and execute biology (program and design organisms), as well as advance bioengineering itself; and

– network effects that play out across the entire healthcare value chain including payers, providers, and patients.

Entrepreneurial scientists help to transform the most complex problems in the world of research into businesses. To raise the number of scientists setting up businesses and find equal interests in research work and its entrepreneurial translation, a country must be equipped with laboratories where scientists can combine thought with action.

As research, investigation and cognition, history is a messenger of memory. Dipping into history between the Renaissance and the first industrial revolution, we can seize some examples of the distinctive features of the scientists who promote entrepreneurship and sometimes are themselves business creators. Their motto is ‘I think, I act and therefore I construct’.

You have to be extra tough mentally to start a new business venture. While thinking about it, I realized that it’s really not that different from the toughness required and trained into America’s elite military force of Navy SEALs, who are known to be cool under fire, able to sense danger before it’s too late, and never give up on achieving their objective.

I learned some good lessons along these lines from the classic book “The Way of the SEAL,” by Mark Divine. He spent many years with the SEALs, but has since started and built six multimillion-dollar business ventures. He now teaches these key principles to business leaders, focusing on the following lessons and strategies, which I recommend for every entrepreneur:

Image: http://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Amazon’s dominance is changing the power structure of publishing – a pattern that may be borne out in several other industries.

If digital disruption amounts to a demolition of the old order, consider digital platforms the bulldozers. By allowing producers and consumers to connect with unprecedented ease and immediacy, they have shaken entire industries to their foundations. Some examples: Taxi medallions in New York City have lost more than half their value in just a few years, owing primarily to competition from Uber and Lyft. In a recent Morgan Stanley survey, 49 percent of Airbnb guests said they had specifically chosen the home-sharing platform over a traditional hotel stay.

At the conclusion of its latest Entrepreneur Boot Camp, Ann Arbor SPARK awarded CampGig.com its $25,000 Best of Boot Camp prize and Breath of Life its $10,000 runner up prize. The winners were selected by an esteemed panel of experts, based on the business’s investor pitch.

A“This year’s Boot Camp cohort was a diverse bunch, ranging from online apps to a consumer product for newborns,” said Bill Mayer, Ann Arbor SPARK vice president of entrepreneurial services. “What was impressive is that the tech ecosystem in Ann Arbor has room – and support – for so many different entrepreneurial endeavors. It’s exciting to think of the impact these emerging companies, which were strengthened by the Boot Camp experience, will have on our regional economy as they continue to grow and evolve.”

Entrepreneurs born outside of the United States can now apply for a new category of temporary residency that would allow them to build their startups in the U.S.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is now accepting applications for the International Entrepreneur Rule (IER), an Obama-era policy that allows foreign-born founders to live in the country while growing their startups, provided they meet certain benchmarks for success. The rule is sometimes called a “startup visa” but it is technically a parole period. Only Congress can create new visa categories and paths to citizenship. President Barack Obama created the IER as a workaround when immigration reform died in Congress.

When it comes to rockets, size matters, and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos know it. The two billionaire entrepreneurs both own their own spaceflight companies. 

Musk's SpaceX is currently using its large Falcon 9 rocket to fly large payloads to orbit for NASA and companies around the world, while Bezos's Blue Origin is testing out its New Shepard rocket designed to fly humans on suborbital flights to the edge of space.

Image: http://mashable.com

There has been a veritable explosion in the use of initial coin offerings (abbreviated ICO, sometimes also referred to as a token generating event or TGE, or a WTFLOL) to fund startups. Calculating the total investment in these offerings is complicated, but Coindesk puts the total right now at about $3.8 billion cumulatively, with the bulk invested in 2017.

That total volume pales in comparison to overall venture funding, which was approximately $41 billion last year and has hit highs of as much as $60 billion. But it is much more in line with early-stage VC funding, with some analysts suggesting that total ICO volume is now higher than angel and seed financing.

Today’s business climate is fraught with a justified sense of existential dread. Its source is not new – competition and disruption have existed since the beginning of commerce. But today that anxiety is aggravated by bigger stakes, readily available funding, rapid information flow, and an unprecedented speed of technological advance.

Taken together, those factors and others are depriving startup founders and Fortune 500 CEOs alike the respite of a good night’s sleep.

A cross-licensing patent agreement is a contract between at least two parties that grants mutual rights to both parties’ intellectual property. The agreement may be a private one between two specific companies or a small consortium of companies. Or it may be a public agreement such as a patent pool, in which IP management is shared amongst a relatively large group of patent holders who share patents. Patent pools are typically industry-based, and companies active in the sector are free to join the pool.

The glamorous world of high-flying startups with dizzying valuations is out of reach for most entrepreneurs. Without the right contacts, connections, business network or past results, how can most business owners expect to raise large amounts of capital and set their sites on a horizon filled with terms like "Series A", "IPO" or "unicorn"?

The truth? Most entrepreneurs don't go that route. They bootstrap. They raise the capital they need through their own means and channels. Is it easy? Definitely not. If you don't have an income that supports you or if your debt outpaces the money that comes in month to month, your hands might be tied.

There are mornings when I look over my to-do-list and just keep staring blankly at it. Instead of getting to work, I keep checking my inbox, news feed, and making a fresh cup of green tea. Then I notice the dirty dishes in the kitchen.

I get the dishes cleaned up, but there are also those clothes sitting on the chair from last night, so I quickly get those hung up.

Gulp. New research has discovered that the average wine glass is seven times larger than it was in 1700. And we’re probably drinking more as a result.

As highlighted by The Guardian, University of Cambridge scientists measured the volumes of 411 stemmed glasses sold in England over more than three centuries. And what they discovered is a very clear trend line of growth, in which the average glass started at a mere 66ml and ballooned to 449ml in 2017. Keep in mind, these measurements were taken when the glasses were filled all the way to the brim (which is simply not how we fill a wine glass or ever have). But for a point of comparison, a 750ml bottle of wine could have topped off 11 glasses in 1700. Now, it could fill a measly one and a half glasses.

Aristotle famously described education as the ultimate predictor of a thriving society: “All who have reflected on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of nations depends on education.”

Aristotle has been proven right over the centuries. Yet today, higher education in America seems to be the subject of much criticism.

ADVERTISEMENT Surveys from Pew and Gallup have shown a growing skepticism among some Americans toward our nation’s institutions of higher learning. And congressional proposals to overhaul our tax code have targeted both degree-seeking students and our nation’s universities. 

The top VCs in healthcare have played an active role in shaping emerging fields in cancer therapeutics. 

Using the CB Insights platform, we compiled a list of 27 investors that, according to portfolio strength and exit history, are the best-performing VCs in healthcare.

Since reaching its peak in 2015 with 51 deals, smart money VCs’ participation in cancer therapeutics has been slowing down, evidenced by two consecutive years of decreasing investments in this space.

Image: https://www.cbinsights.com

Five hundred-ninety three miles away from Pittsburgh Technology Council’s South Side office, 16 of the city’s entrepreneurs chatted with investors at a two-day New England Venture Summit in Boston.

During the program in early December, a few Pittsburgh-based startups were selected to give talks in hopes of finding a backer. They had dinner with venture capitalists and networked.

But not in Pittsburgh.

When it comes to keeping and growing the technology and life sciences industries in New Jersey, a survey recently conducted by the New Jersey Tech Council revealed commonly proposed solutions: increased funding and decreased regulations.

According to more than 100 responses to the council’s Technology Community Survey, the top issues the technology and life sciences industries face are the cost of living, state taxes and regulations, and a lack of financial incentives from the state.

“It’s no surprise the tech entrepreneurs worry about New Jersey’s taxes and cost of living,” James Barrood, CEO and president of the Tech Council, said. “But, they also recognize important opportunities for the state to target incentives and seed funding for growth companies and entrepreneurs.

Many people feel like they’d like to start their own business — maybe they have a great original idea, or they can see a way to do something better than what the market currently has to offer. Yet all too often, these same people let their potential go unfulfilled because they think they’re not quite ready for the responsibilities that come with starting a business.

The truth is, nobody is ever truly “ready” to dive into entrepreneurship. You’ll probably never feel like you have enough money to get your startup off the ground, or you may feel like you don’t have enough knowledge or experience.

The top 10 funding rounds for Boston startups in 2017 represented more than $1 billion and then some — if you count the follow-on rounds that happened for a few companies.

The Boston tech companies that raised 2017’s largest financing rounds represent a wide range of sectors, from agriculture and cybersecurity to healthcare and manufacturing. The list, which does not include biotech or life sciences companies, was compiled using Crunchbase data.

Kaleigh Moore had been working for an Illinois nonprofit as a PR manager for around two years when she asked her boss to work remotely once a week. “I was mostly doing email and phone outreach or writing work when I wasn’t traveling,” Moore recalls, and “the 100-plus miles on my car each day and gas money were significantly cutting into my earnings,” which weren’t that high to begin with.