MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwired - October 26, 2017) - Fenwick & West today released a first look at results of its Third Quarter 2017 Silicon Valley Venture Capital Survey, which analyzed the terms of 183 venture financings that closed in the third quarter of 2017 by companies headquartered in Silicon Valley. Valuation results substantially increased in Q3 2017 following the modest increases seen in Q1 and Q2 2017. While series B, C and D rounds in Q3 enjoyed larger average valuation increases compared to the prior quarter, later stage Series E+ rounds were up only 19% in Q3 compared to a far greater average increase of 55% in Q2. The life sciences industry notably recorded the strongest valuation results in Q3 2017, in contrast to Q2 when its valuation metrics lagged behind other industries.

As we learned while watching Planet Earth II, nature is a horrible, terrifying place packed full to the brim with creatures desperate to devour each other.

Well, good news: Blue Planet II is coming out soon, which means there'll be even more where that came from.

The BBC tweeted the following clip on Thursday, and we wonder if it'll set the tone for the series:

Image: http://mashable.com

Richard Branson is known as an adventurer, a billionaire and a prolific entrepreneur with an ever-expanding brand, Virgin. But as he explores in his new autobiography, Finding My Virginity, entrepreneurship is about much more than money. 

This issue of Entrepreneur is all about risks, and you’re known for taking many. But I imagine that what seems daring to others is actually, to you, very calculated. 

At the launch of the MIT Campaign for a Better World in May 2016, MIT President L. Rafael Reif called upon the Institute’s alumni and friends to join MIT in its effort to raise $5 billion to take on some of humanity’s most urgent global challenges. Propelled by strong support for the Campaign, the Institute ended fiscal year 2017 with $589 million in new gifts and pledges from more than 87,000 individuals and organizations — amounting to the highest annual fundraising total in MIT’s history and bringing the total raised so far in the Campaign to $3.6 billion.

Image: http://news.mit.edu

Matt Johnson was raised by entrepreneurs — his parents founded Denver-based landscape architecture practice Civitas — but he had no intention of creating a company himself. That was until, as part of his industrial design degree at London’s Royal College of Art, he invented conductive paint, with which he could create working electrical circuits on walls.

Image: Bare Conductive’s Matt Johnson, chief executive, Bibi Nelson, chief operating officer, and Isabel Lizardi, chief commercial officer © Adam Gasson

U.S. President John F. Kennedy once met a custodian mopping floors at NASA headquarters long after normal work hours and asked, ‘‘Why are you working so late?’’ The custodian replied, ‘‘Because I’m not mopping the floors, I’m putting a man on the moon.’’ If this story seems too good to be true, it does have a parallel in the historical events that illustrate how the United States created a remarkably successful space programme, and it offers an important lesson in leadership.

When your employees are directly and fully engaged, you will notice that their morale and overall level of job satisfaction are high. They are motivated to work harder and smarter for your company, and the result is high productivity and perhaps less employee turnover. However, some business owners and managers only focus on improving employee engagement sporadically. When this happens, you will notice that morale, job satisfaction and productivity plummet. Keeping employees fully engaged is a continuous responsibility if you want your company to be as successful and profitable as possible through the efforts of a happy, productive team.

General Electric Co. on Monday named Sue Siegel chief innovation officer, elevating the head of its venture capital subsidiary to its senior leadership team as the conglomerate undergoes a massive restructuring effort. Ms. Siegel begins immediately and reports to Chairman and CEO John Flannery, GE said in a statement Monday. She will continue to lead…

Entrepreneurs often get pegged as simply being gifted with a great idea in the right place at the right time. That may be true for some entrepreneurs, but the truth is, there’s little luck that goes into becoming a successful entrepreneur. It’s hard work and determination that has shaped even the most iconic entrepreneurs. I like to think of entrepreneurs as inventors. They must first have an idea to change something for the better or create something that the market has not yet seen. But after that, it’s all about hard work, testing, refining and doing it over and over.

While a new entrepreneur may not (yet) understand advanced financial and business terms and concepts, he or she understands one thing: the bottom line. Every business focuses on profit and loss.

But there are some other financial and performance measurements that can provide earlier signs of trouble -- or early indications of longer-term success.

Here are six business and financial metrics no entrepreneur can afford to ignore:

To many people, money isn't everything.

But that's not how millennials see it — at least when it comes to their career.

According to U.S. News & World Report's latest ranking of the highest-paying jobs for millennials, more than 1,000 surveyed Americans aged 20 to 34 said salary is the most important factor in making career decisions, followed by work-life balance, and stress level.

Image: Flickr/WOCinTech Chat

AOL co-founder and former CEO Steve Case told FOX Business on Wednesday the next big opportunity is in the third wave of the internet.

“The third wave is now happening. It’s really integrating the internet in seamless ways throughout health care and energy, food, agriculture, transportation [and] smart cities,” Case told Maria Bartiromo on “Mornings with Maria.” 

In his opinion, “we are kind of peak Silicon Valley,” and despite “some tough big brother privacy issues surrounded around cyber terrorism bringing down some of these smart cities,” a more inclusive innovation economy will begin to emerge.

The Louisiana Venture and Angel Capital Report was first released by Mark Graffagnini in 2012 when he began compiling Angel Investor Tax Credit information to determine the number of stage businesses obtaining angel and venture capital financing.

Graffagnini is now at Cara Stone, the law firm that released the 2017 report earlier today. “Louisiana companies raised a record amount of capital in 2016, showing signs that the trend in larger financings continues for Louisiana,” shared Graffagnini. ““The Report continues to serve as the benchmark by which venture and angel capital deal activity is measured in the state and policy is formed in Louisiana.”

Image: http://siliconbayounews.com

Today when we talk about business “clusters,” we’re usually talking about the technology industry in Silicon Valley, the financial sector in London or New York, or automakers in southern Germany.

But clusters go back much further than these examples. “Businesses have clustered into networks of various sorts throughout history,” writes the U.S. National Commission on Entrepreneurship. “The medieval guild system was a primitive networking exercise.”

Sometimes, a juicy cheeseburger and an order of hot, crispy fries simply call your name. (Greasy foods are so beloved that they have an entire day devoted to them; National Greasy Foods Day is October 25.) While it's fine to give in to your cravings now and then, it's important to know how your nutrition choices, and those greasy foods in particular, affect your health. Does greasy food cause acne? Why does it make your stomach feel weird? And why is greasy food bad for you, anyway? We consulted Ayla Barmmer, a Boston-based registered dietitian, to find out. Here's what eating greasy foods does to your body.

By most definitions of the term, an entrepreneur is someone who starts a new business, incorporating innovative changes to existing products, services, business models, and creating new markets. Yet very few achieve that great aspiration of really driving economic, social, and environmental changes on a global scale.

What does it take to get to that level? One way of identifying the right characteristics and approaches is to take a hard look at entrepreneurs who have done it. Peter Andrews and Fiona Wood, in their classic book “Überpreneurs” have profiled 36 leading candidates for this category, to extract a set of common characteristics.

Samsung’s incubator hub C-Lab, is known for producing things like a waistline tracking smart belt and a Bluetooth headset that attaches to helmets. Now C-Lab is spawning seven new start-ups created by Samsung employees that range from useful to quixotic. The projects will be spun off as as individual companies on October 31.

Of the seven featured, here are three of the more notable:

Defind. A kind of smart shoe fitting service that generates a 3D scan of your feet so you'll always get a perfectly sized pair of shoes.

Image: https://www.theverge.com

If you're a new parent, or prone to abstract theorizing, you've probably spent some late nights wondering what the future holds for job seekers. In 2040, the babies born today will be at the start of their careers. Will the job market they face look anything like now? Maybe, maybe not. Automation has already eliminated millions of manufacturing, foodservice, and retail jobs, and there's little doubt it will eventually reshape every other industry.

INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne hit the thought leadership lottery with the idea of blue oceans. Their 2005 book, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant Harvard Business School Press, which described the advantages of setting sail for new “blue ocean” markets devoid of competitors versus battling for percentage points of share in mature, commoditized “red ocean” markets, sold more than 3.5 million copies. The two professors, having found their own blue ocean, quickly ascended to the pinnacle of strategic consulting: INSEAD presented them with an institute and built blue ocean strategy into its MBA curriculum. Given all this success, the only truly surprising thing is that it took 12 years for Kim and Mauborgne to publish a follow-up.

Image: https://www.strategy-business.com

Diabetes has long been one of the most expensive medical conditions. In 2013 spending on care for people with the disease in the United States topped $100 billion. But it is also one of the most amenable to simple, low-cost behavioral interventions. At Geisinger, we set out to improve the health of diabetic adults by providing them with free, nutritious food and a comprehensive suite of medical, dietetic, social, and environmental services. This program, our Fresh Food “Farmacy,” has had clinical impacts superior to those provided by medications that cost billions of dollars to develop, and has done so at dramatically lower cost. Finding effective, less expensive treatments for diabetes is critical because of its enormous social and financial costs and its growing prevalence: One in 10 people currently has diabetes, and it is estimated that by 2050 the figure will rise to one in three.