Between 2007-2011, 226 Greater Cleveland companies collectively attracted $961 million from venture capitalists and angel investors, according to a five-year overview of equity investment in Northeast Ohio (www.jumpstartinc.org/results/reports) just released by the region’s Venture Capital Advisory Task Force and based on data collected by tech-based economic development organizations BioEnterprise (www.bioenterprise.com) and JumpStart (www.jumpstartinc.org). The regional activity represents a 133% increase in deals and a 26% increase in dollars when compared to the previous five years. Northeast Ohio also saw 37 venture-backed companies exit between 2007-2011, including Solon-based Memberhealth Inc. (2007) and DIY Real Estate Solutions (2010). 

“There is a dramatic change in the activity, the number of investable companies and the quality of the companies in the pipeline in Northeast Ohio from 10 years ago,” says Bill Trainor, co-founder and Managing Director of Mutual Capital Partners Funds I & II. “The activity we’re already seeing in 2012–both in investing and in exits—is reflective of the momentum shown in this five-year report and I predict there is another strong year ahead.”

Angel investors and venture capitalists don’t invest in non-profits. The simple reason is that it’s impossible to make money for investors when the goal of the company is to not make money. Yet I still get this question on a regular basis, so I’ll try to outline the considerations in common-sense terms.

A non-profit organization is generally defined as an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals. Examples include charitable organizations, trade unions, and public arts organizations. In the US, a non-profit is technically any company who qualifies as tax exempt through IRS Section 501(c).

The U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration (EDA) today announced a $750,000 grant to the NextEnergy Center in Detroit, Michigan, to help establish an Innovation Center to support the commercialization of advanced energy technologies. The investment will retain 75 jobs and create an additional 250 new jobs, according to grantee estimates.

"The Obama administration is committed to promoting the development of job-creating industries in the alternative energy sector," said Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Matt Erskine. "This grant will help NextEnergy commercialize products that are at the forefront of next-generation vehicle charging systems and create jobs in Detroit."

Current economic realities provide governors a unique opportunity to review their states’ economic landscapes and propose critical changes to consolidate and streamline their approaches to economic development, according to an issue brief released today by the National Governors Association (NGA).

Redesigning State Economic Development Agencies and the accompanying white paper focus on actions states are taking to redesign their economic development agencies to make them more effective. Three strategies that can increase the effectiveness of eco­nomic development agencies include:

• Engaging and sustaining private sector involvement; 
• Encouraging collaboration; and 
• Creating an evaluation system.

WEDGED between a strip-mall chiropractor and a cluster of optometrists in Rochester, N.Y., the offices of the DePrez Group of Travel Companies hardly seems like the kind of place where someone would begin a journey to the stars. 

But Craig Curran, the company’s president, says that’s exactly where he can take you — provided, of course, that you have a spare $200,000 lying around. Mr. Curran, you see, is a so-called “accredited space agent” for Virgin Galactic, an outfit founded by the multitasking mogul Richard Branson that is promising to take hundreds of high rollers some 60 miles up in a futuristic craft known as the SpaceShipTwo. And while the flight lasts only two hours or so, with a mere five minutes spent coasting in weightlessness, the bragging rights will go on forever.

Andemariam Beyene sat by the hospital window, the low Arctic sun on his face, and talked about the time he thought he would die.

Two and a half years ago doctors in Iceland, where Mr. Beyene was studying to be an engineer, discovered a golf-ball-size tumor growing into his windpipe. Despite surgery and radiation, it kept growing. In the spring of 2011, when Mr. Beyene came to Sweden to see another doctor, he was practically out of options. “I was almost dead,” he said. “There was suffering. A lot of suffering.”

EDEN FULL should be back at Princeton by now. She should be hustling to class, hitting the books, acing tests. In short, she should be climbing that old-school ladder toward a coveted spot among America’s future elite.

She isn’t doing any of that. Instead, Ms. Full, as bright and poised and ambitious as the next Ivy Leaguer, has done something extraordinary for a Princetonian: she has dropped out.

It wasn’t the exorbitant cost of college. (Princeton, all told, runs nearly $55,000 a year.) She says she simply received a better offer — and, perhaps, a shot at a better education.

Even before the Great Recession, Americans were not saving enough, if anything, for retirement, and policy experts were warning of a looming catastrophe. The economic downturn and its consequences — including losses in jobs, income, investments and home equity — have made that bad situation much worse.

And yet, judging by the presidential campaign, this clear and present danger is a political nonissue.

Medicare, of course, is an issue. But Social Security, a critical source of income for most retirees, is barely mentioned, though the parties have sharply different views on how to improve it. The Democratic platform correctly acknowledges that it can be strengthened and preserved, implying that a modest mix of tax increases and benefit cuts is needed. The Republican platform vows to “give workers control over, and a sound return on, their investments.” That sounds like privatization, which would be cruel folly.

As outlined in my previous post, sustainable innovation requires evolution and revolution. Over the long term, organizations need to be capable of both moving along existing growth trajectories and creating new ones when the old business matures or stalls. This can be depicted as recurring movement along innovation s-curves. In the case of a new venture, acquiring lean start up skills can significantly increase the likelihood of successfully passing through the s-curve for the first time. Yet, research shows, only a minority of startup ventures are able to manage this challenging journey. Unlike Google, most of them struggle or are incorporated by bigger companies before they scale up.  As Tim Kastelle points out, s-curves basically consist of the following stages (see figure):

Invention (Y): The time from when you first have an idea to the time when the idea is genuinely ready to spread. This can be, for instance, the application of a new technology or the development of a novel product.

For entrepreneurs — especially those just starting out — businesses succeed as much as they fail. I’ve seen this time and again as a mentor and entrepreneur. But statistics also suggest that the failure rate for new startups within the first five years is as high as 50 percent.

Of course, real entrepreneurs treat business failure as a milestone on the road to success. They count on learning from their mistakes, and use the experience to move to the next idea. But why not learn from the mistakes of others, without all the pain and suffering?

If you don't have these four traits, maybe you weren't born to change the world after all.

People often wonder how the kid who rarely talked or wasn't particularly popular in class went on to become a start-up genius. What was it about that person that helped him or her blossom into an icon of entrepreneurship? And how can you make sure you have what it takes?

The recent passing of Neil Armstrong reminded us about the power of a common goal to rally our country. Fittingly, even longingly, many Americans ask: What might that common goal be today?

If the Soviet Union challenged American values in the 1960s, then China - which is presiding over censorship of the Internet, human rights abuses and currency manipulation - now presents the greatest challenge to the American model of an open, free society. How can we win the battle of ideas?

Attention entrepreneurs: Keep your eyes peeled for a big bus in Maryland gold, black and red. It may be the chance you’ve been waiting for to get your bright idea off the ground. Startup Maryland, a statewide initiative to highlight and support entrepreneurs, kicked off a three-week bus tour on Tuesday starting in Ocean City and ending at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia Sept. 28. Pitch Across Maryland will be making stops in towns and cities to hold rallies celebrating startups and to give entrepreneurs an opportunity to network and possibly land a spot at a statewide business competition.

After my last internship at a digital marketing agency ended in May, I went to an NY Creative Interns mixer to find another one. There I met the co-founder of a startup that needed an intern to manage their social media and write their blog. I knew what a startup was, but not much else. I quickly found out that this wasn’t a traditional internship filled with coffee runs, but it was a crash course in what it takes to be an entrepreneur. In today’s freelancer economy, it’s a great idea for college students to get experience at a startup. These are my reasons.

1. They are close to your age. A lot of entrepreneurs are young, which allows for a certain rapport that you wouldn’t get in another internship. I love that I can talk to my bosses about what happened on my favorite web show, Awkward Black Girl, or that we listen to the same music.

United States Chief Technology Officer Todd Park will speak at the 2012 Social Good Summit, where he will discuss innovation in open government, spanning the Reagan era to today.

In March 2012, Park was appointed as the United States’ second chief technology officer by President Barack Obama.

A few common themes ran through the pitches from 13 young regional businesses, all looking to attract investors’ attention Thursday at Wichita’s Great Plains Capital Conference. They’re the sort of things investors watch for, say some experts who have venture-capital experience.

On Wednesday, Detroit served as the host city for Techonomy, the annual national confab billed by its organizers as “a one-day convergence of today’s brightest minds, gathered to reignite U.S. competitiveness, job creation, and urban revitalization in a technologized age.”

Held at Wayne State University, Techonomy was crawling with “thought leaders,” including Jack Dorsey, creator and co-founder of Twitter; Steve Case, co-founder of AOL; Mark Hatch, CEO of TechShop; Quicken Loans chair Dan Gilbert; executives from Ford, Salesforce, IBM, Autodesk, Facebook, and Cisco; representatives from the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; and many people from Detroit’s startup community.

Blowing up a new sales recruit isn’t hard to do, if you know how. From what I hear from my professional sales buddies, there’s a lot of it going around! Here’s the formula:

• Hire the right person and then put them in the wrong job. This will work best if your job posting bears little or no relationship to the human interaction the recruit will actually encounter on the job. 
• Be careful to assign new hires to rigid sales managers who have a knack for crushing any excitement or enthusiasm that may have lingered on after the onboarding pep-talk. This tactic will firmly establish low employee engagement before it ever impacts your retention metrics.

One big thing that excited lots of entrepreneurs and investors about the JOBS Act was the prospect of investor crowdfunding--the idea that small businesses could go online, make their pitches, and receive direct investment from accredited investors around the world, quickly.

So when the bill was signed into law in April, lawmakers drafted up a clause, "Title II," which would lift the ban on "general solicitation"--the legal hurdle that had prevented this sort of crowdfunding in the past. By lifting general solicitation, business owners could start using the Web to find new avenues of funding.

Ask anyone in the startup ecosystem what common questions they hear every day from entrepreneurs, and you’ll undoubtedly hear this answer: How and where do I find a co-founder?  Statistics show that having the right business partner(s) is critical to the success of the vast majority of startups, yet it’s one of the most difficult problems to solve.  Here at CoFoundersLab, we recognize this problem and our entire mission is to better facilitate co-founder matchmaking for entrepreneurs.  We do so via two free services: an online matching platform at CoFoundersLab.comand in-person ‘Co-FoundersWanted’ Meetups.  We’re committed to not just helping people find a co-founder, but rather the right co-founder.  We’re developing a robust, algorithmic, multi-dimensional matching platform that looks beyond simply complementary skill sets to other, deeper assessments like personalities, shared values, and vision for what the company can and will be.