Here we highlight selected innovation related articles from around the world on a daily basis. These articles related to innovation and funding for innovative companies, and best practices for innovation based economic development.
Venture capital isn't only for high-flying tech startups. It's a viable option for small businesses in every industry. That doesn't mean raising venture capital is easy to accomplish; only a small percentage of startups are successful each year. But if you meet certain criteria, and play your cards right, you may be able to pull it off.
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I know the word you are thinking of. But, actually, the word is ‘exit.’
Many have tried to explain venture capital (VC).
For entrepreneurs, VC is hope in a check. They hope that VCs like their idea (hence the fascination with Shark Tank) and hope that VCs will fund them, guide them and make them rich. Unfortunately, these hopes are misplaced most of the time. As I have noted before:
Well, here we are: rattled, unsettled and full of anxiety.
Less than 24 hours before a historic U.S. election, we are perched on the edge of a precarious precipice. And we are not alone. A recent SWNS OnePoll just arrived in our inbox showing that 67 percent of Americans want 2020 to be over as soon as possible and that more than half of respondents anticipate Election Day being the most stressful day of their lives.
Image: https://www.geekwire.com
Companies raising money through regulation crowdfunding can now raise up to $5 million, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission announced Monday.
Previously, entrepreneurs had a limit of $1.07 million for regulation crowdfunding. Regulation crowdfunding provides entrepreneurs with an exemption from the SEC’s registration requirements for securities-based crowdfunding, according to the SEC website.
Image: https://news.crunchbase.com
The outcome of Tuesday's US presidential election could have a monumental impact on how foreign-born founders and employees view the country's venture capital ecosystem.
Many in the industry feel that the raft of immigration restrictions imposed by the Trump administration has hampered opportunity among immigrant entrepreneurs. But if Joe Biden captures the White House, those concerns may ease.
Welcome to McKinsey Talks Talent, a podcast on the new science of talent, featuring McKinsey leaders and talent experts Bryan Hancock and Bill Schaninger.
Change is a constant. We knew that even in the prelapsarian days before the outbreak of COVID-19. But we didn’t know how fast that change could happen. In the grips of the pandemic, companies and their employees have had little time to devise new ways of working. And the changes will keep coming: artificial intelligence, automation, augmented reality—all the technologies we’ve been talking about in recent years will become fair game. In this episode, recorded just prior to the coronavirus crisis, Bryan and Bill speak with McKinsey Publishing’s Lucia Rahilly about how best to prepare for this new world of work. This is an edited version of their conversation.
In the conventional view, innovation is something that just takes place idiosyncratically in “Silicon Valley garages” and research and development (R&D) laboratories. But in fact, innovation in any nation is best understood as being embedded in a national innovation system (NIS). Just as innovation is more than science and technology, an innovation system is more than those elements directly related to the promotion of science and technology. It also includes all economic, political, and other social institutions affecting innovation (e.g., the financial system; organization of private firms; the pre-university educational system; labor markets; culture, regulatory, and tax policies and institutions).
In normal times organizations face numerous uncertainties of varying consequence. Managers deal with challenges by relying on established structures and processes. These are designed to reduce uncertainty and support calculated bets to manage the residual risks. In a serious crisis, however, uncertainty can reach extreme levels, and the normal way of working becomes overstrained. At such times traditional management operating models rarely prove adequate, and organizations with inadequate processes can quickly find themselves facing existential threats.
March is National Nutrition Month—a nutrition education campaign focused on the importance of making informed food choices and developing healthy eating and physical activity habits.
The food choices you make affect nearly every aspect of your health—from sleep quality and skin appearance to your mood. Your diet over the long term can also affect your risk of developing certain critical illnesses—including cancer.1
You know those days when it feels as though life is kicking you in the teeth? You get an unexpected bill for hundreds of dollars. You lose concentration and back into a parked car. You have a fight with your partner. You’re called into preschool because your child has been misbehaving. A beloved relative keeps forwarding you conspiracy theories, and you can’t take it anymore.
We’re surrounded by negativity everywhere we turn. The news we read, social media we peruse, and conversations we have and overhear. We absorb stress from our family, friends, and coworkers. And, it’s taking a toll.
A Joe Biden win and a blue wave have emerged as the preferred outcome for venture capital investors—earning full-throated endorsements from investors like Revolution CEO Steve Case and donations from the likes of SV Angel founder Ron Conway and Sequoia partner Michael Moritz.
The 2020 elections have struck a nerve with venture capitalists. Political donations from the VC industry have reached a record $69.7 million in the 2020 election cycle as of Oct. 23, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit that tracks campaign finance data. That total was nearly double the previous record of $37 million spent by the industry during the 2016 election.
Johns Hopkins University launched its popular COVID-19 map on Jan. 22 — just 2 days after the first person in the United States was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus.
Exactly 8 months later, Healio and others cited the university’s COVID-19 dashboard on Sept. 22 when reporting that the U.S. had surpassed 200,000 deaths from COVID-19.
The pandemic has shut down the economy, left millions of workers out of a job and driven companies out of business. Given the current economic conditions, this may not be the easiest time to raise capital.
However, despite widespread fear that venture-capital investment would dry up, deal activity fell just 6% in the first half of 2020, compared with the same period of 2019.
The Engine — which is a venture firm founded by MIT in 2016 — announced it has raised $230 million for the second round of funding. And with this funding, the venture firm will start making investments in startups focused on commercializing solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.
MIT had provided $25 million in anchor funding for The Engine’s Fund I — which exceeded the original goal of raising $150 million to close at over $200 million in 2017. And MIT is investing $35 million toward this new round of funding The Engine Fund II.
In the 20 years he’d lived in New York, Raimondas Kiveris had seen the city change immensely. “It was a completely different place, a different town,” says Kiveris, a software engineer at Google Research. This got him wondering what his neighborhood looked like even before that—before he’d lived there, before he’d even been born. “There’s really no easy way to find that information in any organized way,” he says. “So I was starting to think, can we somehow enable this kind of virtual time travel?”
Image: Google
Outside of Warren Buffett's mastery of investing, you have to agree that his simple life and business lessons are not only the stuff of legends, but also have a profound effect on people.
Some of it is pure common sense, like this slice of wisdom from the Oracle of Omaha:
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.
Two years ago, venture capitalist and noted Bitcoin investor Tim Draper publicly stated that Bitcoin will hit $250,000 by 2022. Yet, as Bitcoin continues to gain interest from investors, Draper revealed to Cointelegraph during an interview that a $250,000 price prediction may have been conservative: “I think it’ll certainly hit that. But a lot of people are thinking that $250,000 was a little too conservative."
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Draper#/media/File:Tim_Draper_in_November_2017.jpg
Sometimes I like to drop the comment socially that “I knew Bill Gates back when he was a regular guy.” I know that dates me a good bit, but it also shows that I have been hanging around startups for a long time. The honest truth is that I worked directly with him in the early days of Microsoft from my “safe” perch in big IBM, during the startup of the IBM PC.
At that time I couldn’t imagine a startup succeeding that was first called Traf-O-Data to process raw traffic data into reports, later changed to Microsoft to sell Basic Interpreters to microcomputer manufacturers. In retrospect, however, Bill Gates did a lot of things right as a startup that I still look for today in aspiring entrepreneurs and their companies:
Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com
Tokyo is fast becoming the city of choice for foreign companies, SMEs and startups looking to raise funds, gain a competitive advantage or expand. They come for the city’s many advantages, which include a growing venture capital base, world class infrastructure and an increasingly global and highly educated talent pool.
STARTUP GENOME RECOGNIZES TOKYO ECOSYSTEM
Tokyo’s emergence as a hub of innovation is being recognized by industry experts like Startup Genome, a policy advisory and research organization with a focus on leading edge ideas and economic growth.
