Can San Diego become a better version of Silicon Valley?

Please note: I wrote “better,” not “bigger.”

Six years ago, I was asked to take over the reins at the San Diego Venture Group. The calls from the startup community were loud and clear: “We need access to capital.”

2021 got off to a grim pandemic start in the U.S. A huge surge in COVID-19 cases followed the holiday season, peaking at around 300,000 new cases on Jan. 8, 2020. More than 20,000 Americans lost their lives to the virus in a single week in January alone and over 146,00 in total have died since the start of the year. But six weeks later, the picture looks more promising. New daily cases have fallen sharply, daily deaths have fallen to levels not seen since Thanksgiving, and the pace of vaccine roll-out is speeding up.

Here's a look back at Kansas City's venture capital investment scene last year, including Merriam-based venture capital firm iiM LLC, which had a record year.

Goldfish may look small and cute in your home, but in the wild it's a different story. Releasing them into your local stream or lake is a bad idea. Following is a transcript of the video.

Right now, Washington state is fighting off an invasion! The culprit? Goldfish. Yup, you heard right.

Thousands of goldfish have infested the West Medical Lake and are crowding out the native fish population. How did this happen? The Department of Fish and Wildlife thinks that a few irresponsible pet owners are to blame. And while the goldfish may have cost the owners a few dollars, this mess is going to cost the state an estimated $150,000 to try to remove these feral fish.

Businesses must file annual federal income tax returns by a set due date. For partnerships and S corporations on a calendar year, the deadline is March 15 (e.g., March 15, 2021, for the 2020 return); for calendar-year C corporations and sole proprietors, the deadline is April 15 (e.g., April 15, 2021, for the 2020 return). Businesses that can’t meet the deadline may obtain a filing extension. There’s much confusion about the rules impacting filing extensions.

Entrepreneurs are inherently problem-solvers. After all, we start our businesses because we recognize a need that needs to be filled. Take me, for instance: Part of my previous job at an internet media company was to create tools for editors to build forms, surveys and polls. The problem was that at the time, the form-building landscape offered few good options. I decided to change that, and my company, JotForm, was born. 

Take a moment and think about your salary and wages. Your bonuses. Your stock options. What explains how much (or how little) you make? Is it your education? Your experience or seniority? Your organization’s performance, the cost of living in your area, your occupation, or your own individual performance?

The future of urban air mobility is often represented in utopian images. A wealth of fanciful renderings show flying vehicles taking off and landing vertically from glittering vertiports. The people in these portrayals live in fantastical futures of high-tech cities, maneuvering experiences that we’ve seen only in science fiction films.

Image: courtesy Teague

Establishing a positive organizational culture, one in which employees and managers support one another, should be a top priority for organizations. Expressing praise and gratitude is particularly important for keeping up morale. Gratitude makes people feel valued, and positive feedback has been shown to mitigate the negative effects of stress on employee performance. Neuroscientists have even shown that the brain processes verbal affirmations similarly to financial rewards.

Tweet Post Share Save Print While many people think of migraine attacks as little more than bad headaches, migraine is in fact a chronic condition whose symptoms can be far more debilitating than an ordinary headache. Migraine attacks are often accompanied by intense pain, difficulty thinking, changes in vision, dizziness, nausea, and increased sensitivity to light, noise, and smells.

Many policy decisions on the pandemic -- in Washington and locally -- are driven by an online data tool developed at Johns Hopkins University. Correspondent David Begnaud spoke to one of the people behind the site.

Image: https://www.kctv5.com

Most entrepreneurs have learned that it’s almost always quicker and easier to get cash from someone you know, rather than angel investors or professional investors (VCs). In fact, most investors “require” that you already have some investment from friends and family before they will even step up to the plate.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

"Corporate culture" is difficult to define. Often it's only implicitly understood and develops organically, rather than being explicitly expressed and planned from the top down. Your company's culture becomes its personality, and has a major influence on how the public perceives it, as well as how the employees, partners and other providers interact with the public and with each other.

The European venture capital industry is not sufficiently backing the kinds of fundamental innovations that will help the bloc keep up in the 21st century, according to members of the new EU-backed fund investing directly into startups.

The next big Amazon initiative is … crowdfunding?

That product launch concept isn’t new, but having the e-commerce giant put out tech concepts that’ll only be built if they reach pre-order goals is a novel approach for a company not named Kickstarter (or Taylor Stitch). There is some precedent here, however: Amazon has done these “Day 1 Editions” before and even their Prime Video division used to have viewers vote on pilots for TV shows before they were funded as full series.

Image: The Smart Nutrition Scale is part of three new Build It pre-orders at Amazon Amazon

Let’s face it, consultants have a bad image. Businesses want experienced people who get their hands dirty, rather than experts who give presentations, make recommendations, and disappear. Even consultants don’t like their job, since they don’t often get to see results, and too much of their time is spent looking for the next gig.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Cornell’s Center for Technology Licensing (CTL) has launched a fellowship program for Ph.D. graduates and postdoctoral researchers interested in a career in business development, commercialization or entrepreneurship.

The first two innovation fellows are Marie Donnelly, Ph.D. ’13 (life sciences), who started in September, and Brandon Regensburger, M.S. ’19, Ph.D. ’20 (physical sciences), who joined CTL in January.

I’ve always said that startups are all about execution. Sometimes I encounter self-proclaimed entrepreneurs who have been “thinking” about a concept for many years, and haven’t started yet. Some of these may be visionaries, but none are real entrepreneurs - yet. Elon Musk has built several innovative companies, including SpaceX and Tesla Motors, and is worth about $185 billion. I’m told he spent more time executing than thinking about any one of them.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Ohio State President Kristina M. Johnson wants Ohio State undergraduates to be able to leave school debt-free in the next 10 years.

Image: Ohio State President Kristina M. Johnson, seen touring campus on her first day on the job last Sept. 1, wants OSU to be the best land-grant university in the nation. COURTNEY HERGESHEIMER/DISPATCH

Most startups are happy to find any customer, and will hang on for dear life to every one. Only later do they realize that some of these cost more than they are worth, or lead into commitments they can’t sustain, but no business wants to violate the golden rule that every customer needs to be treated as if they were the only customer.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com