Pharmaceutical companies have come to the world’s rescue with Covid-19 vaccines, but these days no good deed by business goes unpunished. The Biden Administration is now under pressure to support a political campaign to break vaccine patents.

India and South Africa last fall petitioned the World Trade Organization to suspend intellectual property protections on Covid vaccines and treatments, which they say is necessary to expand global access. Fifty-five other countries plus an army of nonprofiits and labor unions have joined the attempted heist.

CLEVELAND — Americans across the nation are spending a lot more time thinking about racial equity and inclusion after George Floyd’s death, members of Cleveland’s community of technology companies are thinking about what needs to happen to make that space represent the community in which it operates.

Businesses, employees, governments and educational institutions need to work collaboratively to envision the future of work – according to a new Deloitte report commissioned by telecoms group Liberty Global.

Deloitte ran in-depth interviews with business leaders, policy makers and researchers across Europe – to set a clear direction for business stakeholders as they trudge through a period of unprecedented workplace disruption. 

About Our Guest: Mr. Bendis is the Founder, President and CEO of BioHealth Innovation, Inc. He is a successful entrepreneur, corporate executive, angel investor, investment banker, innovation and technology-based economic development leader, international speaker and consultant in the technology and healthcare industries. He also serves as the founding President and CEO of Innovation America, a national public-private partnership focused on accelerating the growth of innovation economy in America. He was also the founding Chairman of The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation and Founder and CEO of Innovation Philadelphia. He was recently asked to serve as the Co-Chairman of the AURP BioHealth Caucus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuX6nw-CVI4

The University of Maryland hosted a free webinar, Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Human Health, on Friday, March 19, 2020. This event featured a fireside chat with Dr. Robert Scharpf (Delfi Diagnostics) and Dr. Christie Bergerson (Exponent), moderated by Rich Bendis (BioHealth Innovation/BioTalk podcast). 

Together, the group shared insights into how artificial intelligence is impacting biomedical engineering and the wider world of human health, and spoke candidly about future applications for these and other biotech platforms. 

We invite you to view the recorded webinar below. 

The University of Maryland hosted a free webinar, Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Human Health, on Friday, March 19, 2020. This event featured a fireside chat with Dr. Robert Scharpf (Delfi Diagnostics) and Dr. Christie Bergerson (Exponent), moderated by Rich Bendis (BioHealth Innovation/BioTalk podcast). 

Together, the group shared insights into how artificial intelligence is impacting biomedical engineering and the wider world of human health, and spoke candidly about future applications for these and other biotech platforms. 

We invite you to view the recorded webinar below. 

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

For this week’s deep dive, the Equity team brought on Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia and Hustle Fund General Partner Elizabeth Yin to talk about equity crowdfunding. It’s been about a week since the SEC increased the equity crowdfunding cap from $1.07 million to $5 million, creating the perfect opportunity to go beyond the dollar amount and understand how the change impacts founders, venture capitalists, retail investors and future fund managers.

While you were talking ship memes and shrimp tails, Europe was making big moves in emerging tech funding. 

Europe formally launched its largest-ever VC fund: a $3.5 billion one run by the European Innovation Council. The ultimate goal: get in on still-emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and quantum computing.

Image: Arrival

WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. venture ecosystem ended 2020 with more than 10,800 companies across the country receiving venture funding and approximately 1,965 VC firms managing 3,680 venture funds with $548 billion in assets under management (AUM), according to the National Venture Capital Association 2021 Yearbook, with data provided by PitchBook.

The NVCA 2021 Yearbook is an annual publication documenting trends and analysis of venture capital activity in the U.S. from the past year and presents historical data and information about venture’s role in fueling entrepreneurship in America.

What did we learn during the pandemic, and what should we watch moving forward?

Those are two of the key questions that many professional conversations center on these days. On Thursday, they were approached by a group of digital health experts who came together for a virtual forum organized by the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore and Rockville-based BioHealth Innovation.

Image: Panelists at EAGB and BioHealth Innovation's Digital Health Forum. (Courtesy image)

Awesome innovation - harvesting wave energy

As an entrepreneur mentor, my mission is to foster the attributes in you as a startup founder that I believe will lead to success. I know from experience that my friends who are angel investors are looking for the same indications, although none of us has a scorecard, or even know exactly what we are looking for. Sometimes good things are easy to see in others, but hard to see in yourself.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Ben Bennett If you dream about owning your own successful beauty brand, then there's a good chance you’ve seen the dizzying funding statistics: Global venture capital to women-founded brands dropped to somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of all funding in 2020 according to data from Crunchbase, a slight tumble from an already discouraging 2.8 percent in 2019. Luckily, its early 2021 numbers show that Black and female-founded investment is increasing, but it's still too soon to get excited. So who's getting the biggest piece of the pie? "Still overwhelmingly white, male, Ivy League-educated and based in Silicon Valley," according to a 2019 study from RateMyInvestor and DiversityVC, reported by Crunchbase News.

Image: https://www.yahoo.com

Congratulations, you have initial customers and you got funded by a VC. You have now climbed on a rollercoaster that is gunning forward at a speed of around $300K per month, with tracks that are not yet fully laid out.

Getting along with your coworkers is a beautiful thing. It can make your workday less dreary, help you focus better, and make you more productive.

While making work friends can be awkward, one way to break the ice is to start complaining.

Complaining about work tasks means you trust the other person not to spill your secrets, and can lead to closer friendships down the line, according to The Cut. One researcher calls productive work gossip "pro-social," or gossip that can lead to warning your peers about difficult managers or other information that results in more productive work.

We all know entrepreneurs who have overcome adversity, like the current pandemic or personal setbacks, and achieved success. There are famous people like Walt Disney and Nelson Rockefeller, who overcame learning disabilities, and people like J. C. Penney and J. K Rowling who struggled through personal bad times before finding their true legacy.

Businesses have spent much of the past nine months scrambling to adapt to extraordinary circumstances. While the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet won, with a vaccine in sight, there is at least a faint light at the end of the tunnel—along with the hope that another train isn’t heading our way.

2021 will be the year of transition. Barring any unexpected catastrophes, individuals, businesses, and society can start to look forward to shaping their futures rather than just grinding through the present. The next normal is going to be different. It will not mean going back to the conditions that prevailed in 2019. Indeed, just as the terms “prewar” and “postwar” are commonly used to describe the 20th century, generations to come will likely discuss the pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 eras.

Every entrepreneur tries to maximize his startup growth by building and selling more product and services for the widest geographic area that he can support. This strategy is called “organic growth,” yet it alone may yield only a fraction of the potential you could achieve, unless you add the additional strategies of partnerships and M&A (mergers and acquisitions).

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Currently, there is a growing number of programs worldwide oriented to entrepreneurship. There is even a ranking from The Princeton Review that evaluates the main universities to study entrepreneurship at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Curiously, these lists of 50 universities at each level are made up of only North American universities with the exception of Tecnológico de Monterrey, which ranks fifth in the undergraduate category in its 2021 edition.

Recent extreme weather events and other natural disasters have accelerated consumer demand for solar panels and batteries. After the Texas power grid failure, web traffic to Sunrun (Nasdaq: RUN), the nation's largest installer of residential rooftop solar panels, jumped 350 percent in the state. Sunrun pioneered the solar-as-a-service model 10 years ago by making clean solar energy affordable, mainstream, and accessible for everyone. Join our Leadership Lessons series host -- Comparably co-founder/CEO Jason Nazar -- for another exciting episode as he chats with Sunrun co-founder/CEO Lynn Jurich. She'll share the most important lessons of her career, from her time as a venture capitalist to becoming an entrepreneur herself. Other topics include: