During my early years of managing in business, I always assumed that if I hired and trained the smartest and most experienced people I could find, I would get outstanding productivity. I quickly learned that top performance also required the right initiatives and responsiveness on my part, high employee engagement, and a matching chemistry and culture with other team members.

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This is a golden age for venture capital and the startup ecosystem, as illustrated by PitchBook's latest PitchBook NVCA-Venture Monitor. So far this year, $57.5 billion has been invested in US VC-backed companies. That's higher than in six of the past 10 full years and is on pace to surpass $100 billion in deal value for the first time since the dot-com bubble.

This recently re-surfaced brainteaser has been making the rounds on the internet again. Apparently, reported Sharesplosion, if you can find the "C' that's hidden somewhere among the rows and rows of "Os" in under seven seconds, you're a genius (they claim that 99% of adults can't achieve this feat).

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As a startup founder, I’m constantly struggling to recruit top talent without breaking the bank. We can’t always match market salaries, but we need exceptional (read: expensive) talent in order to build from scratch. How do you recruit a developer making well into six figures, or an experienced salesperson with four kids in private school? At our company, Hatch Apps, we’ve learned to get creative.

Technology is disrupting every industry and area of life, and work is no exception. One of the main career implications of the digital revolution is a shift in demand for human expertise. For instance, LinkedIn’s talent research shows that half of today’s most in-demand skills weren’t even on the list three years ago.

Decisions–or, more accurately, indecision–can cause a drag on your time for days, weeks, months, or even years. But choosing well doesn’t always have to mean choosing slowly. As an experienced time-management coach, I’ve developed a handful of strategies for cutting down the time it takes to make tough decisions. First you need to lay the groundwork, then you can pick and choose your tactic, depending on the type of tough call you’re trying to make, and how much time you’ve got to make it. Here’s how it works.

Networks bring ideas and innovation to life – including connecting into the necessary investment dollars. When networks are narrow, so by definition, are the possible winning ideas. With venture investment out-pacing 2017’s decade-high total for capital invested (the Q2 2018 Pitchbook-NVCA Venture Monitor report just came out and it reveals that thus far in 2018, $57.5 billion has been invested across 4,000 deals) it is critical for capital to gain access to a wider, more diverse range of networks (aka ideas).

SeaBubbles is a French startup that hopes to become the Uber of the waterways. They call their all-electric hydrofoil water taxi 'The Bubble' and they are planning on launching their service in 50 cities within the next five years.

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Many early-stage businesses are now choosing equity crowdfunding to get to the next level. In 2017 alone, 165 deals across the UK and Europe were funded on Seedrs making it the UK’s most active funder of private companies (Beauhurst – The Deal 2017). But there are a few myths that could deter entrepreneurs from recognising it as an attractive route to raising funding:

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Venture capital flowing into technology companies continued at record highs in the second quarter as two reports said the U.S. tech market is at highs it hasn’t seen since the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.

The numbers come from both the 2018 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor and the PwC/CBInsights MoneyTree Report. Though varying slightly on numbers, both agree we’re in the middle of another venture capital boom.

Tiny specks form a massive ocean. The adage couldn’t be better represented than the scenario in the small and medium business sector today. In 2016, nearly 98 percent of all importers in the U.S. were small and medium-sized companies with fewer than 500 employees, and the percentage of exporters was only marginally lower at 97 percent, according to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council. An estimated $556.2 billion in goods were traded with 15 foreign countries by early 2016, with about 96 percent of the SME consumers living outside the U.S.

The 2018 Leading Metro Locations reflect the nation’s overall economic growth as the country enjoys the second-longest economic expansion on record, with many small and mid-size metros exhibiting economic strength.

SANTA MONICA, January 10, 2018 – Provo-Orem, UT, with its robust high-tech sector and broad-based job and wage growth, is the Best-Performing City in the United States, according to the Milken Institute’s Best-Performing Cities 2017 Index.

Raleigh, NC, with its comparatively low business costs and thriving research and development-driven industries ranked second in the nation. Dallas, which has added more than 50,000 high-skill professional, scientific and technical industry jobs in the last five years, came in third.

Many thanks to SEPAM for this – the Global Innovation Index published by Cornell University, INSEAD and WIPO.

There was a time when California’s Santa Clara Valley, bucolic home to orchards and vineyards, was known as “the valley of heart’s delight.” The same area was later dubbed “Silicon Valley,” shorthand for the high-tech combination of creativity, capital and California cool. However, a backlash is now well underway – even from the loyal gadget-reviewing press. Silicon Valley increasingly conjures something very different: exploitation, excess, and elitist detachment.

That women are seriously under-represented in Canada’s technology industry is hardly news, and a new report suggests one reason might be that they’re seriously under-represented at the companies funding the tech industry too.

According to female-focused accelerator Female Funders’ “Women in Venture” report, released Wednesday, only 14 per cent of partners at Canadian venture firms are women, which means the vast majority of venture capitals (VC) dollars – 67 per cent – are controlled by investment teams with no women in senior roles.

I’ve recruited countless graduates for roles in many organizations over the past decade, and I’m constantly asked what I look for. My answer is always the same: potential.

This is especially true for entry-level hires. Obviously, there’s no point in assessing recent grads the same way that you would more experienced candidates. Without much work experience or familiarity with the workplace, those candidates need to bring something else to the table–namely the ability to pick things up quickly and apply new ideas on their own. Here are a few concrete qualities that signal potential in entry-level (or any!) candidates–and what job seekers can do to show those traits off.

Think about explaining to someone 25 years ago what a social media manager, ride share service employee, or drone operator does for a living. Technology combined with population demands, resource scarcity, urbanization, and other factors have created an array of new jobs and radically changed others.

There was much celebrating in America last month when the US Department of Energy unveiled Summit, the world’s fastest supercomputer. Now the race is on to achieve the next significant milestone in processing power: exascale computing.

This involves building a machine within the next few years that’s capable of a billion billion calculations per second, or one exaflop, which would make it five times faster than Summit (see chart). Every person on Earth would have to do a calculation every second of every day for just over four years to match what an exascale machine will be able to do in a flash.

Image: https://www.technologyreview.com

For entrepreneurs, the idea of crafting a unicorn company from the ground up is usually the dream. After all, that means the business has a valuation of a minimum of one billion dollars, and that’s a significant accomplishment.

If you take a look at what it takes to become a founder of a unicorn company, there are numerous factors involved.

Hard work, dedication, and leadership skills are a must as, without passion and diligence, you likely won’t achieve success.

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