SEATTLE, January 14, 2021 – Though the past year had a lot of uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the US VC industry demonstrated its resilience and long-term mindset, achieving new records in total exit value, deal value and capital raised by VC funds, according to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, the authoritative quarterly report on venture capital activity in the entrepreneurial ecosystem jointly produced by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), with support from Silicon Valley Bank and Velocity Global.

The term VUCA—short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity—originated with the U.S. Army War College to describe how the world was changing in the wake of the Cold War. Since then, its adoption has soared in an effort to describe our ever-evolving global environment.

And if there was ever a year that perfectly encapsulated what VUCA looks like, it was 2020. A global pandemic, calls for social justice, and a presidential election have disrupted not just every industry imaginable, but also the fabric of our daily lives. There’s no denying that we now live in a VUCA world, and despite the wishes of many, our new reality isn’t going to change.

Being an entrepreneur seems to be one of the most popular lifestyle aspirations these days. According to most definitions, anyone who starts a business is an entrepreneur, but most people don’t realize there are many startup types out there, and picking the wrong one can be just as disastrous as being stuck in a cubicle at work, or doing things with no interest and no skills.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Joe Biden named pioneering geneticist Eric Lander as the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy on Friday, elevating the post to Cabinet-level status for first time.

Image: FILE PHOTO: Eric Lander (right) at a news conference in Mexico City, next to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, on Jan. 19, 2010. REUTERS/Henry Romero/File Photo

When companies are looking for funding, they may be interested in working with an angel investor or venture capital firm. Some business owners may believe that angel investors and venture capital firms are interchangeable, but these two types of investors have different functions and can confer different benefits.

By every measure, 2020 was a big year for venture capital — at least for the established players.

U.S. venture capital funds set new records in deal making, exits, and fundraising last year, according to a new report from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. Deal value topped $150 billion for the first time, while exit value hit a record $290 billion after a surge of public listings in the second half of the year. Meanwhile, new venture capital funds raised $73.6 billion, surpassing the 2018 high of $68.1 billion, according to the report.

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The most recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have raised several ethical dilemmas. Perhaps one of the most important is whether humanity will be able to control autonomous machines.

As with the many other questions that still remain about the coronavirus, no one is precisely sure of the answer to one of the key questions: how many people will need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity—the threshold at which there are enough people immunized that it indirectly protects the rest of the yet-unvaccinated public—and fully end the pandemic. In December, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci estimated that the cutoff was at least 75%, and closer to 85%.

2020 INVESTMENTS HIT NEW ANNUAL RECORD DESPITE THE PANDEMIC 

US-based, VC-backed companies raise nearly $130B in 2020, up 14% year-over-year (YoY) from 2019, despite the impacts of Covid-19 around the world.

However, annual deal activity is down YoY, falling to 6,022 deals, a 9% decline from 6,599 in 2019. 

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In the 2019 PwC Global Crisis SurveyPDF, 69 percent of respondents said they expected a global crisis in the next five years, most likely due to a financial meltdown or technology failure. Little did they know how prescient they were. Just nine months after the survey was released, an entirely different and unexpected medical and public health crisis — COVID-19 — has fundamentally altered the world. If driving change in the uncertain and turbulent environment that existed at the beginning of 2020 was a complex challenge, the degree of difficulty has now been ramped up significantly.

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For many, mundane workplace practices that were once taken for granted: Commutes, watercooler chitchat, coffee breaks, small talk with the boss. Now, these formerly commonplace activities stir up feelings of nostalgia and a longing for the way things were.

With so much uncertainty in the world, now may seem like an inopportune time to talk about workplace creativity.  Creativity may feel superfluous, but it can actually help us stay sharp and adapt to our ever-changing world. Learning through play helps us to embrace uncertainty around change, provide support in our approaches to creativity, and ultimately, enhance our workplace collaborations and the innovative potential that creative leaders can cultivate.

The Covid-19 pandemic has crammed a great deal of pressure into our lives, but it has also created an unprecedented opportunity to revisit our own assumptions about how we should live and work. Managers and leaders have had to balance optimism with realism and find new ways to connect although they manage their employees from afar.

These exaggerated tensions and pressures can be a double-edged sword. Research suggests that whether people struggle or thrive with tensions, or competing demands, largely depends on their mindset. With a paradox mindset, tensions can be transformed into new ideas and improved performance. The paradox mindset suggests an alternative perspective, one in which we accept and learn to live with the tensions associated with competing demands.

As a business adviser, I often see entrepreneurs practicing what Tom Peters calls the “ready-fire-aim” go-to-market strategy to their detriment. Yet even I have been known to recommend that approach, in cases where you have a highly innovative product, speed is of the essence, and no clear existing market is available. In fact, you probably won’t get it right the first time anyway.

Certainly I believe the traditional ready-aim-fire strategy approach works best in most cases, and that should be your default. There is no substitute for talking to customers, analyzing your competition, and honing your solution to meet a target market segment. As a counter, here are some situations where it definitely makes sense to short-circuit the traditional approach:

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Most experts agree that halting climate change — and the global warming, extreme heat events and stronger storms that come with it — will require the removal of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. But with humans pumping out an estimated 37 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, current strategies for capturing it seem likely to fall short.

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Amalgam Rx, Inc., a leading Digital Therapeutics and Patient Support company, announces the acquisition of Avhana Health, a privately held clinical decision support (CDS) company, which has deep integrations with the leading electronic health records (EHR). Amalgam Rx will expand Avhana’s CDS tools to multiple therapeutic areas and combine them with other digital solutions to simplify doctors’ workflows.

In the 2017-2018 academic school year, nearly 342,000 students from the U.S. studied abroad for credit, according to the NAFSA.  However, a clampdown on international travel due to the coronavirus pandemic has left many students canceling plans and scrambling for alternatives to studying abroad for their upcoming semesters. Classes have been canceled and universities are recalling students stranded overseas on lockdown. 

If you planned to study abroad for the new school year but find yourself stuck at home, this guide will give you insight on alternatives to studying abroad during the ongoing pandemic. It will also provide an overview of the best credit cards to use when studying abroad, so you’re ready to save big when the travel ban lifts.

Around this time last year, in keeping with recent tradition, we reached out to our network of health and fitness experts to forecast some industry trends for 2020. It was December 2019, just as the first documented cases of a new respiratory illness were being recorded in Wuhan, China. We were innocent of the global health cataclysm that was about to transpire, one which would force many of us to reassess what we had long taken for granted. For some, even going outside for a run became a luxury. 

Here on the Review, we have an annual tradition that we look forward to each January. We press pause, pour ourselves a big cup of coffee, and pore over each article we published the previous year, with an eye for the very best pieces of advice that we’re still thinking about, one year on.

Since the Review’s genesis in 2013, we’ve interviewed hundreds of folks who are among the very best at what they do — and 2020 was no exception. We cherish the opportunity to carefully parse through the advice of the experts that were featured on the Review’s digital pages — from repeat successful founders, to events gurus, to top psychologists. (If you’re curious to see how this collection has evolved over time, check out previous editions from 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013.)

As coronavirus cases overwhelm hospitals, and every state is considered a "danger zone," knowing if you have the highly contagious virus is key. Who better to consult than Johns Hopkins, the private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, which has been on the forefront of tracking COVID-19 since it hit these shores? "Symptoms can begin between two and 14 days after you have been infected with the coronavirus," advises the university. "The most common symptoms are" the following. Read on—and to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss these Sure Signs You've Already Had Coronavirus. 

Many first-time entrepreneurs find themselves unable to bootstrap their startups, and also unable to find early funding at the venture capital level or even with angel investors. Their only recourse is that first tier of investors, fondly called Friends, Family and Fools. These are the only people likely to believe in newbies, with only minimal product evidence or business experience.

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