Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

Your bootstrapped startup is finally off the ground. You’re able to spend $6000/mo on AdWords to drive leads. Sure the conversion rates could be better, and sure it’s not the best ROI on Earth, but on the balance it’s making money.

You don’t have a huge budget, but you can plough some of your winnings back into advertising.

M&A activity within the 3D printing space is heating up – not because of a flock of different buyers but primarily because of one: South Carolina-based 3D Systems, a NYSE-listed (ticker: DDD | market cap: $4.3B) provider of 3D content-to-print products including printers and imaging software. In the past five years, 3D Systems has acquired at least privately-held 30 companies with 10 of those acquisitions coming in 2012 and 2013, including recently Rapid Product Development Group in May and Valhalla Partners-backed Geomagic in January. Meanwhile, other publicly-traded 3D printing companies including Organovo and Stratasys, which merged with another 3-D printing company Objet in 2012, have been less acquisitive, but given the increasing activity and innovation happening in 3D printing, these players may increase their level of activity as well.

Providing services ranging from sensor-driven thermostats to bracelets that can track how you sleep or eat, hundreds of venture-backed companies are now part of a category known as the Internet of Things (IoT).  The Internet of Things describes technologies that connect to the Internet and to each other through sensors, wireless networks as well as other “machine to machine” methods. Given the Internet of Things theme covers a broad array of technologies and use cases, it is actually comprised of five key sub-categories as detailed below (with illustrative companies provided for each)

A striking development in the venture capital business has been given a boost by the SEC's recent No-Action Letters in the case of AngelList and FundersClub. Let me quote at some length from an informative legal insight by Rob Rosenblum of K&L Gates, Rob having represented AngelList in connection with its No-Action Letter, and refer readers of this piece to the entire text of Rob's memorandum.

At an early stage company, there are many unknowns when it comes to doing business deals intended to drive adoption or revenue. Is the product ready for distribution? Will this deal live up to expectations? What if the partner does something that delays a launch? How much should we charge? Should we charge? What is the right thing to do right now?

Before you take money from a venture capital firm, you'll agree to a valuation — how much your startup is worth. That valuation will also affect how much of your company you own. Optimizing for a higher valuation can sometimes mean owning less of your company, so strategies for each founder can vary widely.

It’s pretty well established that non-science degrees are not necessary for a job. In fact, the degrees cost you too much money, require too long of a commitment, and do not teach you the real-life skills they promise.

Yet, I do tons of radio call-in shows where I say that graduate degrees in the humanities are so useless that they actually set you back in your career in many cases. And then 400 callers dial-in and start screaming at me about how great a graduate degree is.

Some months ago, Apple and Microsoft each parted ways with a high-profile senior executives: iOS software chief Scott Forstall and Windows president Steven Sinofsky.

The moves were just weeks apart and the stories were strangely similar: two remarkably effective and talented executives who were simply unmanageable. They were so chronically abrasive and divisive that they were more trouble than they were worth.

Here's another bit of good news about the health of the stock market: U.S. businesses are on track this year to raise as much money through initial stock offerings as they did before the recession. 

So far in 2013, the market has seen 64 initial public offerings, raising $16.8 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cites data from Dealogic. Just last week, investors got treated to 11 IPOs, marking the busiest week for initial stock sales since December 2007.

As we muddle through our days, the quest for happiness looms large. In the U.S., citizens are granted three inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the kingdom of Bhutan, there’s a national index to measure happiness. But what if searching for happiness actually prevents us from finding it? There’s reason to believe that the quest for happiness might be a recipe for misery.

The innovative thinker faces unique challenges.  The innovative leader faces even more.

Organizational leaders can be thought of as living in two worlds, simultaneously.  There is the world of immediate demands, performance requirements and measures — a world where they need to do this thing by this time at this cost to cause this result. Immediate demands and needs are not negotiable and leave little room for error.  At the same time, leaders  are called (or, better yet, call themselves) to consider how things might be better. They want to do this thing differently at whatever time at unpredictable cost to see if there happens to be a good result.   That is, they want to innovate and they want their organizational culture to be innovative.  They want to embrace risk.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has approved a research award to the National Parkinson Foundation (NPF) and Johns Hopkins University to deliver telemedicine care to people with Parkinson's disease in their homes.

E. Ray Dorsey, MD, Director, Johns Hopkins Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center is the lead investigator on the project, working with collaborators from across NPF's Center of Excellence network including Peter Schmidt, PhD, NPF's Vice President of Programs. The project will focus on delivering the benefits of neurologist care using telemedicine to people in rural, remote, and underserved areas. The project is based on an innovative care model combining technology, training, and team-based care to transform Parkinson's management.

The Tata Group, one of India’s largest diversified conglomerate, is fishing for high growth technology companies in Israel.

Late last month, the group announced that it will be the lead investor in a $20 million technology innovation fund based in Israel.

Tata Industries partnered with Ramot, the technology transfer company of Tel Aviv University to fund and “generate leading edge commercialization ready technologies.”

Elias Konstantopoulos gets spotty glimpses of the world each day for about four hours, or for however long he leaves his Argus II retina prosthesis turned on. The 74-year-old Maryland resident lost his sight from a progressive retinal disease over 30 years ago, but is able to perceive some things when he turns on the bionic vision system.

“I can see if you are in front of me, and if you try to go away,” he says. “Or, if I look at a big tree with the system on I can maybe see some darkness and if it’s bright outside and I move my head to the left or right I can see different shadows that tell me there is something there. There’s no way to tell what it is,” says Konstantopoulos.

For small business owners and staff who find remembering passwords challenging and find it difficult to manage the multitude of online passwords, a solution may be in the works beginning as soon as later this year.

PayPal Chief Security Officer Michael Barrett told those in attendance at a recent Interop show in Las Vegas that the end of the era of multiple passwords may be near, according to PCMag.com.

An alternative is being advanced by the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance founded in July 2012 by tech firms like PayPal, Lenovo, Agnito, Infineon, Nok Nok Labs and Validity.

Here's an oxymoron you never want applied to your company: It has a stale innovation strategy. Innovation is just as prone to insipid groupthink and cookie-cutter efforts as any other corporate initiative. That risk is why I latched onto a few contrarian ideas I heard at last week's InformationWeek CIO Summit, held as part of this year's Interop event in Las Vegas. Our Summit brought together a dozen original thinkers to discuss practical innovation efforts at their companies. Here are five innovation ideas that jumped out at me.

Britain’s innovation agency will have a record £440m budget this year to help enterprises turn ideas into reality and bridge the “valley of death” – the perilous process of turning scientific breakthroughs into commercial successes. David Willetts, science minister, said the extra funds for the Technology Strategy Board for 2013-14 represented an increase of more than £50m on last year. Investment will cover areas such as renewable energy, future cities, advanced materials, satellites, digital technologies and healthcare.

The universal challenge of every startup founder is to get everything done that needs to get done, and still have a life. Even outside of business, everyone wants to accomplish more, while working less. I’ve been a student of these techniques for some time, but some time ago I saw a great summary that seems to pull all the key principles together.

Stever Robbins, known on the Internet as the Get-It-Done Guy, outlines his strategies in his book “9 Steps to Work Less and Do More.” These are not aimed specifically at entrepreneurs, but I see how they can be applied there as follows:

As the provisions of the Affordable Care Act and HITECH Act are rolled out, providers and payers are looking for ways to address pain points varying from improving patient engagement and remote monitoring to helping consumers better understand their insurance options to making better use of patient information in the context of big data.

Some accelerators are helping members of the healthcare ecosystem and entrepreneurs find each other. These four healthcare accelerators are currently looking for applicants.

Version 2.0 of a plan to create an Office of mHealth in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should be out soon. The office of U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, Silicon Valley’s Democratic Congressman who authored the legislation, said the next draft will at the least fine-tune the way the office would work with other federal agencies.

But is the big-ticket item – a new office dedicated to adding more context and understanding of mHealth within the federal agency – the most interesting thing about the bill? I don’t think so. Read through the details and see if you agree.