Saying “yes” is truly bred into our culture of embracing life with both arms, seeking opportunities and overachieving.

But we’ve only got 24 hours each day, and entrepreneurs -- and anyone who is driven and success-minded -- aren’t exactly reeling with free time. “The ability to communicate ‘no’ really reflects that you are in the driver’s seat of your own life,” says Vanessa M. Patrick, an associate professor of marketing at the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston. “It gives you a sense of empowerment.”

Hey Guys, Dale Partridge here.

I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes but self-proclaimed entrepreneurs practically grow on trees these days. I can’t read a Twitter bio or Instagram bio or LinkedIn profile or blog post without seeing someone refer to themselves as an entrepreneur.

Image: https://bizztor.com

Amazon may use its drone delivery service to analyze customer’s homes, offering ‘recommendations’ from its store or third-party services like gardening or roof repairs.

The patent, granted on Wednesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), shows how the drones would use cameras to take photos during its descent. The photos would then be sent to a computer system to be analyzed, and recommendations would appear as mobile notifications or banner adverts when the customer visits the storefront.

Image: https://readwrite.com

Earlier this week, Steve Case and JD Vance of Revolutions Ventures announced a $150M “Rise of the Rest” fund, building off the bus tour & pitch competition of the same name that Case started a few years back.

The capital came from a who’s-who of American business – Chicago’s Pritzkers are nearly outshone by Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz, Dan Gilbert, Meg Whitman, Tory Burch, John Doerr and – you get the point. It’s a large fund for “flyover country”, which sees few early-stage VCs focused on the region with more than $100M to spend. So how does this exciting new fund affect the tech economy, specifically in the Midwest? I’ve outlined the pros and cons here.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP recently issued a report examining U.S. venture capital investments by state. The study looked at the number of deals funded by state, the share of deals in the United States by state, and the total amount of venture capital dollars invested by state. PwC uses data provided by the National Venture Capital Association and CB Insights for its report.

Unfortunately, the report shows that Indiana has work to do when it comes to attracting venture capital dollars. As of Sept. 30, 27 Indiana companies had secured venture capital totaling $64 million. In terms of the number of companies funded, Indiana has a 0.7 percent national share of deals. The $64 million in venture capital funds represents a 0.1 percent national share. Overall, Indiana ranks 21st in the country year to date.

HALIFAX _ Nova Scotia’s government has plans to put another $25 million into two venture capital funds, with the expectation that other Atlantic provinces and private investors will join in.

Innovacorp Inc., a Crown agency that already has invested in a $65-million regional venture capital fund started in 2013, announced Friday it plans to put a second round of investment into startup firms in Atlantic Canada.

Unless you are a serial entrepreneur with a string of successes behind you, you need a business plan to convince investors that you can build a business out of the dream that has been driving your passion to change the world. Don’t believe that Silicon Valley myth that all you have to do is sketch your idea on the back of a napkin, and investors will line up to give you money.

Based on my experience as an angel investor and a mentor to dozens of entrepreneurs, having no business plan is the quickest way to define yourself as just a dreamer, or at best a hobbyist. Let me be quick to say that a plan doesn’t have be a book, and probably should start as a “pitch deck” of maybe a dozen slides which cover all the right bases. The details can be added later.

Researchers believe the Garden State may see a significant influx of snowy owls this year due in part to the regular population explosion of lemmings in the Arctic.(New Jersey Audubon)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sTjOnPDxxo&app=desktop

Be it the budding investors making millions of dollars from cryptocurrency or businesses hailing its high data security capability, my attraction for Blockchain grew exponentially when I learned devices could repair themselves in near time future. That’s a theory combining Blockchain and Internet of Things leading to a collaboration for a stunningly innovative world.

As for now, nothing is more magical than a platform where one could communicate with truly accomplished professionals. That’s true for people from various business communities. These people are losing time and resources by performing strenuous background checks before closing a deal over a business engagement platform.

Image: https://readwrite.com

The ability to adapt and learn quickly helps smaller IT companies compete against industry heavyweights.

How will the digital revolution transform the IT sector?

As firms focus on the need for business-driven technology solutions for their own transformation, little thought is given to how the digital revolution is transforming the very industry they rely on for help.

The explosive growth of the startup scene in China is as much a cultural breakthrough as it is a great leap forward in tech expertise.

“Innovation is about disagreeing with old,” said Jay Walker, the founder of Priceline.com and CEO of Upside.com, as well as a student of innovation throughout history. “In a Confucian culture, disagreeing with the old is a difficult problem. That’s the Chinese challenge.”

There are a lot of daily inconveniences we all have grown so accustomed to that they fade into the background of our lives.

What do you mean I actually don’t have to hang off my bed to charge my phone and use it at the same time? (Solution: 10 ft reinforced cord)

Image: The WeMo Smart Plug lets you control your devices and appliances from your phone and with your voice through Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.Amazon

Have you ever wondered if you have what it takes to build a billion-dollar company from scratch?

Successful entrepreneurs come from every imaginable upbringing and background. Yet they all seem to have some inherent abilities that give them their edge and set them apart from the rest. Is it something in their DNA? Is it an innate trait they've learned to hone and develop over time? Look closely, and all mega-successful entrepreneurs share a few similar traits. These characteristics push them forward and keep them excelling where others flop.

European leaders are working hard to provide the levels of financial support needed to facilitate innovation at all levels.

This week the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Commission (EC) are launching a range of new tools that can help pioneers in member states ‘and neighbouring countries’.

The ‘InnovFin – EU Finance for Innovators’ programme, led by the EIB, EC and Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Research and Innovation platform, will strive to close the ‘financial gaps’ faced by ‘innovative companies’. This will include lending to higher risk ventures that often face difficulties in sourcing funding.

Image: https://www.innovatorsmag.com

Bitcoin is hotter than ever. Is it time for the average investor to get some skin in the game?

Only if you’ve got cash to spare, says Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor and Shark Tank host.

“It’s still very much a gamble,” Cuban said of buying Bitcoin in a recent interview with MONEY. “It could go to $15,000 or zero and maybe both on the same day.”

The price of Bitcoin recently shot past $13,000, and experts are split on whether the cryptocurrency is a good investment or not. Several stocks are soaring on the rising fever, and the infamous Winklevoss twins have been minted “Bitcoin billionaires” thanks to its meteoric rise in valuation over the last year. There could be at least 200 Bitcoin billionaires in the world already, and some people are even selling off their own assets and betting on Bitcoin as a longterm strategy for wealth accumulation.

Women support women, a new study of 13,000 North American angel investors says.

As more female entrepreneurs have entered the business field in the past few decades, women have begun to reshape the nature of angel investing, according to a report by the Overland Park-based Angel Capital Association.

“Being an entrepreneur is one of the best pathways to becoming an angel investor,” said Marianne Hudson, executive director of the association, reflecting on the study. “On top of that, as women became angel investors, they were good at getting the word out to other women to join the angel community and particularly targeted strong education and networking programs to help women get started more successfully in this field.”

Image: http://www.startlandnews.com

New research from Deloitte has pointed the finger at biometrics for one of the big trends of 2018 as we start to forget our passwords.

The firm estimates that 15 million UK consumers now have a smartphone that incorporates a fingerprint scanner, roughly 36% of the user base, with 79% of this group actually using it. Should the numbers prove to be accurate, the convenience and speed has seemingly overridden the fear of the new, which is usually a notable barrier for most technology to overcome. The most common biometric application, at 96%, was to unlock the phone

When Carisa Miklusak launched AI-enabled staffing platform Tilr two years ago, she and her two cofounders decided on Cincinnati, Ohio as their company’s headquarters, thanks to the city’s large concentration of Fortune 500 companies. The decision was met with skepticism by some of her friends and former colleagues in New York City.

We often conflate high salaries with prosperity, but that can be deceptive. Someone who lives in New York or San Francisco might make more money than a counterpart in the same profession in Houston or Dallas-Fort Worth, but when the cost of living is factored in, their Southern colleagues may actually come out ahead.

At the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, we developed a Standard of Living Index to get a better sense of where workers are getting the most for their paychecks. We began with the Bureau of Economic Analysis regional price parities for the 107 metropolitan statistical areas with more than 500,000 residents, added the costs for purchasing the average house and weighted the index based on the national distribution of renting and owning (63 percent owning, 37 percent renting). Housing plays a disproportionate role in the difference in costs between the most and least expensive metro areas, as we will detail later.

Life science companies are joining with the UK government to co-invest in new projects, under a plan seen as demonstrating the country remains an attractive place to invest despite Brexit.

The sector deal between the government and the industry unveiled on Wednesday was accompanied by an announcement that the pharma company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is invest £40 million in the whole genome sequencing of the 500,000 volunteers whose DNA and associated medical records are held in the UK Biobank.

Image: https://sciencebusiness.net