Running an equity crowdfunding business is a lot like operating a private equity firm, but on a mass scale. Private equity (PE) firms work with accredited and corporate investors as well as corporate fundraisers or startups. In contrast, a crowdfunding platform focuses on retail and high net worth investors and startups.

A PE firm rarely works with high net worth investors, not speaking about the retail investors with low capital. This has opened an opportunity for the crowdfunding platforms to provide opportunities for retail also known as everyday or non-accredited investors to invest in the early-stage startups.

Image: https://www.business2community.com

Its potential 1.7 million-square-foot campus in South San Francisco matches the biotech industry's growth.

Image: https://www.bizjournals.com

Boston Properties has entered into a joint venture with Alexandria Real Estate Equities to build a 1.7M SF life science campus in South San Francisco.

Boston Properties confirmed the deal in its Q4 2019 earnings call this week.

The project will involve about 640K SF of ground-up development, and the potential repositioning of about 1M SF of office space into new life science buildings, according to Boston Properties.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Coolcaesar at the English language Wikipedia

Gmail’s user interface. Facebook’s Newsfeed. Twitter’s timeline. Dropbox’s bottom-up revenue engine. In his 15-year-career, Todd Jackson has helped build some of the biggest products in tech that hundreds of millions of people use every day. He’s been the pivotal PM in hypergrowth, the seasoned director charged with redesigning critical features and the steady executive steering his team to IPO. But he’s played other parts as well. At his startup Cover, Jackson was the scrappy co-founder and CEO navigating the challenges of fundraising, product/market fit, and an acquisition. He’s also been an angel investor, veteran advisor and first call for dozens of early-stage consumer and SaaS startups.

Despite science’s best efforts to explore the ocean, the vast bulk of its depths remains unseen. The seas add up to more than 1.3 billion cubic kilometers—enough to fill a sphere one tenth as wide as the earth—and expensive tools such as depth-defying submarines and swimming drones would have to hit the waves in huge numbers to cover even a fraction of that water. But living creatures such as moon jellyfish already pervade the oceans, and now researchers at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University are trying to turn these flimsy organisms into controllable cyborgs.

Image: Artist’s rendering of moon jellyfish augmented with prosthetic devices that boost their speed. Credit: Rebecca Konte Caltech

MORE and more, government access to cutting-edge technology, skills, and business models involves tapping into the advances being made by outside players—essentially engineering a “reverse tech transfer.” Historically, government has fostered technological leaps, from space flight to GPS to vaccines, and the tech-transfer process then helped commercialize these new capabilities. Now, leading capabilities are often already commercial: Consumer facial recognition technology may prove valuable for law enforcement,1 commercial mapping tools have become part of the arsenal used by military special forces,2 and commercial genetic testing could offer public health data and insights beyond what research studies are likely able to recruit.3

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Almost instantly, via the Internet or on their smartphone in the store, they can find the lowest price alternative or their favorite features, without waiting for push marketing or listening to your best sales person.

Venture capital experts and investors are optimistic about the trajectory of capital investment in Florida.

Several experts spoke about the topic during a panel on Jan. 31 at the Florida Venture Forum’s Venture Capital Conference in Orlando. Investment in the Sunshine State and Central Florida in 2019 were at their highest in years, and those in the know see opportunity this year and beyond — especially for certain types of companies, namely, automation, financial tech and health tech.

Back in January 2018, Insider Inc. cofounder and CEO Henry Blodget kicked off Business Insider's "Better Capitalism" series at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos. He spoke about the ways America's approach to business over the past 40 years have led to rising inequality, with the rich getting richer and the middle class declining. This shift resulted in populist anger, he said, and slowed economic growth.

Some jobs have very clear lines between when you’re “on” and when you’re “off,” while in others the lines are blurred — or potentially nonexistent. That makes not being distracted by work, especially mentally, a major challenge.

This can lead to sitting at dinner while your daughter tells a story about her day, but instead of hearing her you’re wondering whether an email from your boss came through. It can mean exchanging the time you could have spent on sleep, exercise, or talking with your spouse glued to your laptop. And it can look like keeping your work life in order, while your finances or home are a mess because you don’t take time to pay bills, plan for retirement, or tidy up.

In June 2019, MLP Ventures’ The Discovery Labs announced renovation plans for GlaxoSmithKline’s R&D space in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania it acquired the previous year for about $50 million with the goal of turning the space into "co-working" ecosystem for healthcare, life sciences and technology-enabled companies.

A coronavirus outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, is posing a global public health emergency.

One way to understand the toll is through numbers: On Sunday, officials reported that the death toll has exceeded that of the SARS outbreak of the early aughts, but there is also an uptick in recoveries, The New York Times reported.

A picture can come further into view with visualization, and Johns Hopkins’ Center for Systems Science and Engineering has taken up that task.

The Center built an online dashboard that is tracking and mapping the coronavirus around the world, according to the JHU Hub. It was built by a team led by Center cofounder and civil engineering professor Lauren Gardner. Drawing on public health data from sources in the U.S. and China, the team is updating the map as new info becomes available.

Image: (Screenshot via JHU/Center for Systems Science and Engineering)

Being an entrepreneur is not easy work. Twenty percent of small businesses fail after just one year; that number climbs to 50% after five, according to a recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So before you even lay out your business plan, Tara Falcone, a certified financial planner and founder of ReisUp, a company dedicated to increasing financial education and access for all generations, says it’s best to ask yourself these three important questions to see if you are ready for the challenge.

Image: https://www.cnbc.com

“Innovate or stagnate.” It’s a stark choice that businesses across all sectors must confront daily. Although many decision makers at large companies recognize the importance of innovation, most fail to implement it in a strategic, consistent, and effective way. A recent study by McKinsey & Company found that 84% of executives agreed innovation was important for their growth strategy, but only 6% said they were satisfied with innovation performance. In this article, we’ll explore why innovation management is important for any company looking to remain competitive on the corporate landscape.

Innovation is a hot topic. Everyone wants to do it. And everyone wants a simple process that works step-wise – first this, then that, then success.

But Innovation isn’t like that. I think it’s more effective to think of innovation as a result. Innovation as something that emerges from a group of people who are trying to make a difference. In that way, Innovation is a people process. And like with all processes that depend on people, the Innovation process is fluid, dynamic, complex, and context-specific.

In 1946 the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or the ENIAC, was introduced. The world’s first commercial computer was intended to be used by the military to project the trajectory of missiles, doing in a few seconds what it would otherwise take a human mathematician about three days. It’s 20,000 vacuum tubes (the glowing glass light bulb-like predecessors to the transistor) connected by 500,000 hand soldered wires were a marvel of human ingenuity and technology.

Image: https://www.innovationexcellence.com

Most small businesses have now forgotten the last recession, and are back to “business as usual.” They don’t realize that business as usual is gone forever. With social media and smart phone apps, real product information spreads at astounding speeds. Entrepreneurs that are not listening, not engaging, and not changing are destined to be left behind even in the best of times.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Nathan Heller published an article called Is Venture Capital Worth the Risk? in the New Yorker. It’s a well-researched critique of the venture industry. The key question he poses is: has the industry become so large that it needs to be disrupted?

It’s a thought provoking question and a good opportunity to ask for feedback on how we can imrove. If you have ideas for how to improve venture capital for founders, please tweet me or send me an email with the link above. I’d love to hear them.

WASHINGTON—The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) today earned recognition as the world’s top think tank for science and technology policy in the latest edition of the University of Pennsylvania’s authoritative Global Go To Think Tank Index. This is the third year running that ITIF has earned the top spot globally for science and tech policy. The 2019 edition of the annual ranking also places ITIF among America’s top 50 think tanks overall—at number 27, up from number 35 in 2018.

“ITIF has been covering the intersection of technological innovation and public policy for a decade and a half, with a single-minded mission of championing policy ideas to accelerate innovation, bolster competitiveness, and spur productivity growth around the world,” said ITIF President Rob Atkinson. “We are honored once again to be recognized by our peers for the quality and influence of our work, and we remain committed to providing policymakers around the world with high-quality information, analysis, and recommendations they can trust.”

Marine mammals like whales and seals usually communicate vocally using calls and whistles.

But now a Monash University-led international study has discovered that wild grey seals can also clap their flippers underwater during the breeding season, as a show of strength that warns off competitors and advertises to potential mates.