Train your company not to play with Dead Snakes.

Recommended Article dei Three Powerful Conversations Managers Must Have To Develop Their People What's a Dead Snake? Former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale famously called problematic ideas 'snakes' and warned against Dead Snakes in a speech at Harvard. But in the context I'm talking about here (and to build on his ideas), it's a project or feature you’re building that's going nowhere. It might have looked very much alive. There might have been significant interest from a customer. It might have played a central role in your last board meeting presentation.

Venture capital is not an easy game. Not all venture capitalists have been successful investing in start ups in different fields such as infrastructure, innovation, biotechnology, information technology, or software. Investing in these types of businesses involves great risks and hard works, not to mention the huge amount of money that they have to venture in. Venture Capitalists assume enormous risks with high levels of uncertainty.

While venture investing outside the U.S. has come a long way in recent years, our analysis shows it remains an entirely different industry than U.S. venture capital. And when we say different, we mean totally different.

We looked at venture investment trends in 2007-2011 from PitchBook and compared them with VC exit results in 2012-2016 to very roughly compare investment in one five-year period with exit results in the ensuing next five years, roughly matching VC investment cycles.

Image: https://techcrunch.com 

The startup accelerator remains one of tech's most popular ways to get a business up and running. But which ones are the best for new startups?

With hundreds of programs to choose from -- the most popular receive more than 5,000 applications for each class -- and the average program taking 6% of equity in any hosted company, not all accelerators are created equal.

Image: Credit: Thomas Korte AngelPad founder Thomas Korte, left, meets with some of the accelerator's entrepreneurs.   

More than 70 Downtown Ann Arbor Companies to Open Their Doors to Community

Following the all-new Tech Talk from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., leading technology companies will participate in the third annual A2 Tech Trek on June 16, 2017, from 3 to 7 p.m. A2 Tech Trek, a free event, features open houses at downtown Ann Arbor’s technology companies and organizations. Ann Arbor SPARK, with support from the Michigan Economic Development Corp, Ann Arbor/ Ypsilanti SmartZone (LDFA), and PNC Bank, is hosting the event.

People say how “kids these days” don’t understand hard work and are terrible with money. Younger generations are easy targets for their older counterparts. But if a recent study is accurate, the upcoming Generation Z might prove their older critics wrong.

According to a study released by the Center for Generational Kinetics, members of Gen Z are already working, planning for college — and even saving for retirement. One of the biggest differences between Gen Z and Millennials is their approach to college planning and student loan debt.

Sometimes the best way to market your business involves having a really good story behind your product. There are some great examples out there of entrepreneurs getting really creative in their efforts to solve problems and create new products. Here are some unique product stories to serve as inspiration for your own ventures.

Tesla held its annual shareholder meeting yesterday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

Co-founder and CEO Elon Musk took to the stage to give a presentation about the state of the company and what he hopes to accomplish in the future through the development of the solar roof portion of the business, and the expansion of Tesla’s retail presence. Just to get a sense of the scale Musk has in mind, he has his eye on opening one store for every half million people.

Students need global understanding, now more than ever.

Despite recent signs of a retreat from globalisation in the United States and Britain, there has not been a broad-based pullback globally. Many countries are keen to stress that they remain “open for business” and China has even shown signs of picking up the baton as the world leader in free trade. In Asia, signatories of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have recently agreed to pursue the trade deal even without the United States.

The Santa Fe firm that co-manages Wisconsin’s Badger Fund of Funds specializes in regional investment programs.

From Mexico City to Utah, Sun Mountain Capital has established the fund of funds model and found success in advancing entrepreneurial activity.

Even in Wisconsin cities like Neenah and La Crosse, Sun Mountain has been able to find strong fund managers and raise significant capital to be invested in startups.

24-25 July 2017, Weill Cornell Medicine, NYC, NY.

TTS North America will take place at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, NY, and will focus on high-level, strategic business development, complemented by exceptional networking, learning, discussion, debate and deliberation.

TTS North America is one of 4 summits that make up the TTS Global Initiative. Numbers are deliberately limited to ensure exclusivity; the summit is *strictly limited to 150 high level leaders and decision-makers from all key stakeholder groups in early stage biotech innovation. The summit takes place under the Chatham House rule to ensure a quality of discussion, interaction, networking and business opportunity unlike any other event in our sector.

People from New Jersey are used to defending their state.

But, in fact, New Jersey has a history to brag about. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, the phonograph and the movie camera there. Many decades later, Bell Labs invented the transistor in the state.

Geography favored New Jersey. On one end, it borders New York City, and on the other end is Philadelphia. That means easy access to Wall Street financing, transportation and industry headquarters.

Image: Inventor Thomas Edison stands in his chemistry lab in West Orange, N.J., in 1904. Thomas Edison National Historical Park/National Park Service 

I know you. You're like me. You're a doer. You don't sit in an office all day, punching the clock. You punch your own clock. You live by your own rules, at your own pace. This is a freelancers world — you're just crushing in it.

You don't have a career, you have a lifestyle. YOU are the gig economy. You stopped counting coffees after your fourth cup. Sleep? Sleeping is for people who don't do. You do do, because you're a doer.

Image: IMAGE: MAX KNOBLAUCH - http://mashable.com

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” Shunryu Suzuki

Many times in my missives I’ve stressed the importance of paying attention, of always keeping your mind open to new ideas and new possibilities. I have encouraged you to stay alert to what…and who…is going on around you. Now, for a change, I’m going to be quiet (well, sort of…those who know me know how difficult this can be for me) and let others impart their wisdom on these truths.

When Amazon announced on Jan. 31 that it would invest nearly $1.5 billion to establish a centralized air hub in Northern Kentucky, the news confirmed what many site selectors were already thinking: Kentucky is ready for prime time.

More than 2,700 Amazon workers will call Hebron in Boone County home when all is said and done, as the world’s largest e-commerce retailer sets its sights on also becoming one of the world’s largest and most efficient shippers.

Image: The Amazon Prime Air hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport is a capital investment of nearly $1.5 billion and a potential employer of more than 2,000 workers. Photo courtesy of Amazon

Recently, The Wall Street Journal and Newsday, in a photographic spread, trumpeted the 70th anniversary of Levittown, the New York suburban development that provided the model for much of the rapid suburbanization that occurred after the Second World War in the United States. Levittown's production line building also set the stage for the similar suburbs of cities in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

Image: http://www.newgeography.com

The world’s most massive animal, the blue whale, is like a 100-passenger jet gliding below the ocean’s surface. Whales are among the largest organisms ever to exist, and now scientists say they may know when and why these majestic mammals evolved to be so enormous. In a study published in May in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers modeled the sizes of baleen whales that lived between roughly 35 million years ago and the present. The team measured the skulls of 63 extinct whale species from the fossil collection at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (skull size is a known indicator of body size).

When Bain & Company asked senior executives from 308 large companies how they form teams for their most important initiatives, most told us they assemble teams based on whoever is available. Only a small minority indicated that they consistently create all-star teams, comprised of their very best talent, to tackle their company’s highest-priority issues. This is an enormous missed opportunity: we found that the best companies are more than 25% more productive than the rest due to the way they deploy, team and lead scarce, difference-making talent.

President Trump announced Tuesday that he will keep Francis S. Collins as director of the National Institutes of Health. Collins was first nominated for the position in 2009 by President Obama. Shortly after he took office, Trump announced that Collins would stay on in an interim role, and many scientists have wondered if Collins would be offered the position or would accept it on a permanent basis in the new administration.

Image: https://www.insidehighered.com

Bruce Booth, D.Phil., a partner at Atlas Venture, astutely observed earlier this year that two key resources fueling the growth of biopharma were until recently somewhat geographically spread among the 10 or so regions of the nation where the industry began to arise a generation ago.

“In recent years, this has changed—Boston and San Francisco are now the preeminent biotech clusters.  And their gravity in the ecosystem is only getting stronger,” Dr. Booth concluded in a March 21 post on his Life Sci VC blog.

Image: Despite consolidation of capital and talent in the nation’s two largest biopharma clusters, all 10 regions ranked by GEN have significant assets that make them attractive to biopharma researchers, executives, and investors. (Wsvan/Wikimedia)