Box.net CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Levie started his company with friends he had known since high school.

In the following 3-minute video, Aaron shares the dangers and benefits of starting an organization with close friends, including the positive "hum" and a high level of trust that can build between group members dedicated to a vision.

Each year, the Intelligent Community Forum presents an awards program for Intelligent Communities and the public-sector and private-sector partners who contribute to them. The awards program has two goals: to salute the accomplishments of communities in developing inclusive prosperity on a foundation of information and communications technology, and to gather data for ICF's research programs. See the event calendar for upcoming dates.

JUNE

Call for Nominations
The process begins in early summer, when ICF issues a call for nominations for Intelligent Communities. Over the next 100 days, ICF receives completed nomination forms from hundreds of communities large and small, urban and rural, in developed and developing nations. Learn about award criteria, deadlines and nomination forms.

The Workshop was organised by the British Business Angels Association, the UK trade body for angel and early stage investing, with over 120 investors all getting together at the event held at the law firm Travers Smith.

Anthony Clarke, Chair of BBAA and MD of Angel Capital Group, opened by saying that the “BBAA welcomes the proposed new measures to support a new Angel co-investment Fund as a key means to leverage new investor groups and significantly increase the level of equity finance into the market place for early stage and start-ups”

Ohio’s Third Frontier technology acceleration program has awarded $25 million to several early stage investment funds in the state.

The grants come under two different Third Frontier programs, which are designed to funnel growth capital to young, promising technology companies through professionally managed investment funds. With state money flowing to the companies, the idea is that private investors will be more likely to throw their own money in alongside the public funding.

1. "Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time' is to say 'I don't want to.'" - Lao Tzu

2. "To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time." - Leonard Bernstein

3. "Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein." - H. Jackson Brown

4. "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." - Albert Einstein

The AIB Seed Capital Fund, a joint venture between the bank and Enterprise Ireland, invested €10m in seven companies during 2010. The fund has helped generate 250 new jobs to date.

The 2010 investments bring to more than 40 the total investments made in 30 Irish companies by year end. The fund’s investments are split about 55/45 between Dublin City and county and the rest of Ireland.

The investment to 2010 by the AIB Seed Capital Fund of more than €10m has leveraged in excess of €30m of additional capital from other investors, including Enterprise Ireland, and helped to create and support more than 250 jobs. In return for its investments, the fund has acquired an equity stake in each of the investee companies.

Coming into the New Year, we saw lots of reports that small business owners would be upping their social media spend in 2011. Reports suggested perhaps the “experimentation” days of social media were over and that businesses were beginning to treat it like a real marketing channel, with dedicated resources. To give us some insight into how small businesses are using the medium and where they’re finding success, eMarketer recently highlighted an Adology survey of 752 SMBs that showed which sites were working best and what businesses were getting out of them.

“Increasing the amount of economic development tax credits increases the opportunity we have to help businesses grow and create jobs,” said Governor Scott Walker. “As Wisconsin opens for business these additional resources will help us reach our goal of freeing the private sector to create 250,000 new jobs. Thank you to Representatives Robin Vos, John Klenke and Mary Williams, Senators Alberta Darling, Mary Lazich and Terry Moulton and all of the legislature for working so hard to transform Wisconsin.”

The legislation will increase the amount available for economic development tax credits from $75 million to $100 million.

* Forty high school seniors from across the country were named finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search 2011, a program of Society for Science & the Public.
* For the first time ever, California has surpassed New York as the state with the highest number of young innovators in the competition.
* Finalists will gather in Washington, D.C. in March to compete for $630,000 in awards with the top winner receiving $100,000 from the Intel Foundation.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Forty high school seniors from across the U.S. are celebrating their selection as finalists in the country’s oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition, the Intel Science Talent Search, a program of Society for Science & the Public (SSP). Finalists, who were announced today, will gather in Washington, D.C. from March 10-15 to compete for $630,000 in awards. The top winner will receive $100,000 from the Intel Foundation. For a list of this year’s finalists, visit www.societyforscience.org/sts.

Up to now my posts in this series have largely dealt with the structure of the VC industry, the background if you like. Now that the the fundamentals are explained I can turn to the more practical aspects of what it is like for entrepreneurs to deal with venture capitalists, starting with the question ‘How long will it take my company to raise venture capital?’.

The simple answer is that 6-9 months is a prudent amount of time to allow for raising money, although there is significant variation between companies (and over time). My advice would be to allow more time than you think you need and to be honest with yourself about the extent to which you can hope to be faster than average.

The European Commission will make its first move today (27 January) towards significantly overhauling rules governing public procurement markets in order to improve SMEs' access to national tenders and boost cross-border activity.

Michel Barnier, the commissioner in charge of the internal market, will launch a public consultation on reviewing public procurement rules, mainly aimed at guaranteeing "access of smaller companies to procurement markets, reducing red tape and promoting European cross-border procurement," according to an EU official.

Each time a new version of Windows is released, many computer users find that their hardware is suddenly outdated. For cash-strapped schools, upgrading to the latest hardware with each major software release is simply impossible. A New York startup called NeverWare is offering a possible solution—a server that lets even decade-old PCs upgrade to the latest Windows 7 operating system.

Once NeverWare's server, called the JuiceBox a100, is added to a school's existing computer network , it does the hard work of running the latest operating systems for numerous aging computers on the same network. To users of those old computers, it will feel as if the PCs are running the latest version of Windows, when in fact they are accessing it over the network. Their typing and mouse commands are sent to the software on the server, and the imagery for their display is sent back.

Peter Graf, the chief sustainability officer at software provider SAP, was sitting at an oval wooden table one day, finishing a meeting with a colleague, when he found he needed a pen to complete some paperwork. He started to ask whether he could borrow one, but then he stopped himself. His colleague—and the pen—were in fact 10,000 kilometers away.

Graf was sitting in a high-tech room, where three large high-definition screens, a sound system, cameras, and even matching lighting all add up to give the impression of sitting in the same room as remote users. Participants at one location sit at half of a meeting table; an identical, matching half appears in a similar room that might be across the globe. When a user appears on the screen, it looks as if everyone is sitting at the same table. The sound system can even make different speakers' voices come from different directions to better replicate what happens when everyone actually is in the same room. "It's a very different level of conversation," Graf says. "You can make eye contact."

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has launched the Young people’s video competition on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

Young people around the world are invited to submit a short video describing their vision of “Progress.”

The competition is open to young people (18-25 years) in every country worldwide.

In my experience, inventors aren’t interested or aren’t very good at building a business, and entrepreneurs aren’t usually good scientists. These people need to find each other, and can jointly make a great team for a new startup.

Historically, it’s also not often that a good inventor was also a good entrepreneur. Some now argue that even our entrepreneur heroes, like Thomas Edison, really cheated on the invention side. Only a few great entrepreneurs of today, like the young Bill Gates, seem to have elements of both sides. Even he had some great help from Steve Ballmer, a real marketing guy, and others.

What must Ohio do to create jobs?

John Kasich got his effort started last week. The governor outlined plans to transform the state Department of Development into JobsOhio, a nonprofit operation, led by business executives, free of red tape, sharply focused, ready to move swiftly in arranging incentives and taking other steps to retain and attract companies and jobs.

Listen to the governor, and it soon is clear: The competition is other states. They bear gifts of one business kind or another. The thinking is, Ohio must do better as this type of suitor.

Brian Pettey's Winfield company, Robotzone, built an 80,000-square-foot building and hired three full-time employees.

Todd Gentry just wrapped up Inno-Labs' second consecutive year of 300 percent sales growth. He, too, added three new jobs at his Winfield company.

And Nate Gregory's Wichita company, MoJack, is investing $3.6 million in new facilities and equipment and expects to add 40 new jobs this year and next.

John Flatley, a real estate developer and philanthropist, has founded an investment group called Flatley Venture Capital to back life sciences startups with potential treatments for the genetic disease cystic fibrosis. Flatley, who has a close family member with the disease, told me he launched the venture group within the last few months.

Flatley Venture Capital, unlike a traditional VC firm, isn’t primarily focused on making profits on its investments, Flatley says. The venture outfit aims to provide between $200,000 and $2 million to support biotech startups that might not otherwise be able to afford to develop their technologies for the cystic fibrosis market, which consists of 30,000 patients in the U.S. and about 70,000 worldwide—numbers that pale in comparison to the cancer and heart disease markets. Flatley only expects to break even with his investments from the fund, he says.