As 2012 comes to a close, we asked several venture capital investors to reflect on the past year and give us their outlook for 2013. Continuing our series is Neil Sequeira, a managing director of General Catalyst Partners.

Sequeira speaks about the many IPOs held in 2012, competition between startups for capital in the year ahead, and how the market is ripe for disruptive startups that can replace legacy architectures.

Looking back, how would you characterize 2012?

It was a strong year. Through the first three quarters there were 40 venture-backed IPOs, including companies like Palo Alto Networks, Kayak Software, Facebook, Workday and others. These companies create important innovations and thousands of jobs, which reinforces how critical venture capital is to the overall economy. 

At this most familial time of the year, as recent events make us hold our children even closer, we might want to consider what kinds of environments are most conducive to having offspring. Alarm bells are beginning to ring in policy circles over the decline of the U.S. birth rate to a record low. If unaddressed, this could pose a vital threat the nation’s economic and demographic vitality over the next few decades.

In contrast to last week, when we examined the nearly uniform aging of America’s biggest cities over the last decade, the decline in the country’s youth population has been in relative terms. In 2000, roughly 21.4% of Americans were under 15; in 2010, that percentage had dropped to 19.8%. However, unlike in parts of Europe and East Asia, the number of American children did not decline – there were over a million more in 2010, a 1.7% increase.

The Ontario Securities Commission released a paper today intended to initiate a broad consultative process to consider a number of potential new capital raising prospectus exemptions.  

Specifically, the consultation paper canvasses the exemptions currently available in various jurisdictions, including the U.S., Australia and the U.K. These exemptions are generally based on (i) investor attributes (such as income and financial assets); (ii) relationships with the issuer (such as the family, friends and business associates exemption available in jurisdictions other than Ontario); (iii) investment size (such as Ontario's $150,000 minimum investment amount exemption); (iv) disclosure; (v) "crowdfunding"; and (vi) offering size.

With respect to "crowdfunding" (which is the popular term for funding a project or venture through small amounts of money raised from a large number of people over the internet via an internet portal intermediary), the potential for an exemption is examined using the provisions of the U.S. JOBS Act as a basis for discussion. Issues considered include issuer restrictions, investor protection measures, and the registration of funding portals. The paper also explores a potential OM exemption (which, unlike other Canadian jurisdictions, is not available in Ontario under NI 45-106) with a $1.5 million limit on the amount of capital that could be raised by an issuer in a 12-month period and a limit on a purchaser's annual investment of $10,000. The concept OM exemption is not intended to be a recommendation and was provided by the OSC for discussion purposes.

A question I often get asked by entrepreneurs is what is Flybridge’s investment philosophy – do we make our investment decisions based on people or on themes?  The glib answer is both, but as I’ve thought more about this question I wanted to expand the answer a bit to help entrepreneurs understand how investors approach this issue in more detail.

I think this question has become more acute as the much-discussed shortage of Series A capital (the so-called “Series A Crunch”) means that, going forward, too many entrepreneurs are going to be chasing too little capital.

Throughout the year, the folks at Lifehacker feature the coolest workspaces from all over the world, submitted by everyone from professional designers to journalists to photographers to DIY aficionados who've discovered a new, creative home-office hack. They've rounded up 20 of the year's most popular featured workspaces, including home offices hacked together with Ikea furniture, a DIY standing desk, and an office that attaches to a leather recliner. (Seriously.) Check out 18 sumptuous spaces above.

It’s midnight as I write this on my buddy Wolf’s couch here in São Paulo. Despite a long and exhausting day full of meetings, I’m restless, antsy, agitated… not even close to tired. This city has that effect on me. I’ve talked about this before, but the energy here is electric, the city is raw and real, humanity unleashed. I love that amidst the chaos of this city, more and more entrepreneurs are creatively addressing serious problems to create meaningful social (and economic) value. Oh, and lest I forget, I should also mention that people here are consuming. A lot. Walking through the mall these days makes you feel like a sardine. They’re packed.

Brazilians love to shop. Both offline and online. But I digress. In this post, I want to discuss a topic that is of relevance to anyone looking to raise capital down here. Over the past few days I’ve met with a number of startup founders in Sao Paulo. Many of them are singing a common refrain about how the ecosystem – particularly with respect to VC funding – has changed over the course of the past year and a half. I thought I’d write a quick post to share what I’ve learned, and offer a few thoughts of my own.

Amid rising concerns over post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental illnesses, two MIT startups are developing wrist-worn sensors that can detect physiological changes—including perspiration and elevated temperature—that may signal the onset of events like anxiety attacks.

The data collected by these devices can be fed into an algorithm that aims to learn what triggers anxiety, or when people may be about to engage in a risky behavior. One goal is to head off destructive behavior, from drug abuse to suicide and violent outbursts, and to help with treatment.

We’ve covered at length the debate over whether entrepreneurship is teachable, and my colleague Lauren Landry has catalogued the various approaches to teaching it at Boston’s many colleges. But one thing I’ve not yet heard suggested is that the academy devotes too much of its time preparing students for startups.

Yet, a post at the 4% Growth Project—an economic policy initiative, and think tank, of the George W. Bush Institute—raises doubt about the rise in entrepreneurship education at America’s universities. The author, himself a professor of entrepreneurship at Syracuse, makes the following point:

Tis’ the Season for harrowing crowds, spiked eggnog, and delicious holiday feasts. It’s also the time of year for distraction,procrastination, and a lull in business productivity.

Many companies see a lag in productivity and innovation during the holidays. According to a study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, 70% of organizations regard interruption of workflow as their top concern during the holidays. However, the key to business success in the long run, is to create a sustainable culture of innovation. With a little help from the 10 imperatives of Roberts Rules of Innovation, and a fun little jingle inspired by Doblin, may your holiday be both innovative and productive.

Nostradamus and the Mayans have prophesized that the world will end tomorrow, and this has gotten me thinking a lot about what I am doing with my life as an entrepreneur.

As an entrepreneur facing the end of the world, I believe there are 5 things that all other entrepreneurs should do in the next 24 hours.

1: Stop Working

If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve likely spent the majority of your time working hard and putting insane hours into your venture, much like I have done with the company I co-founded, RockThePost. I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t had much of a life outside of this, and chances are that you can relate.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. Christmas songs and holiday cards abound in pictures of pristine landscapes covered in fresh powder. But what exactly is that white stuff, anyway? In a little over two minutes, The Chemistry of Snowflakes gives us the answer. The film is the latest installment in the Bytesize Science series from the American Chemical Society. It’s an interesting look at a beautiful subject–and much more fun to think about than, say, the physics of shoveling.

The Internet is awash in gift guides. For every imaginable combination of adjectives and people (or pets, for that matter), there's a 20-item list of holiday gift suggestions. 

Those can be quite useful, of course, but what about the people in our lives for whom we are obligated to buy a gift, but may not be overly fond of? That too-chatty coworker. The obnoxious cousin you can't stand. Your mildly racist uncle. They all need gifts too. Fortunately, there's a wide range of less-than-desirable tech gifts, even if you're wrapping up your shopping at the last conceivable minute: 

We all tend to trust what we can see. If someone is always in the office early and leaves late, you'd probably assume he is a dedicated, hard-working employee. But he might actually be the least productive of his co-workers.

And that's why numerous experts have advised that companies should avoid management by observation, and instead focus on the actual work itself. But many companies have clung to cultures of "face time," in which staffers who log the longest hours are assumed to be the best employees. I, myself, have been guilty of that bias. Though as telecommuting becomes more widespread and the workplace becomes increasingly virtual, management by observation simply doesn't work anymore. Supervisors can't concern themselves with the "where" and "when" of work. Instead, they now have to concentrate on the "what" and "how."

People are finding it more and more effective to convey information with infographics rather than just articles. These are the most compelling pieces of information design we saw throughout the year--from explaining why you’re fat to showing the influence humanity has had on the planet.

2012 might be the year which we reached "peak infographic." You can’t have an issue or a piece of data without putting it into a picture so it’s easier for people to understand. While this has mostly resulted in a glut of ugly graphics that don’t actually do anything with data (and you’ll see some of these below), it’s still an incredibly simple way to get information to you fast. And this year, some of our most compelling content has appeared in the format. These are some of our favorites. You can see every infographic we’ve written about here.

On Thursday a consumer company that very few people have heard of cropped up as a potential acquisition for three of the biggest tech companies. Id8 Group R2 Studios is said to be in discussions with Apple,, Google and Microsoft, according to the Wall Street Journal‘s sources.

R2 Android app

The company’s only product debuted in early 2011. R2 is $99 software for Android devices that lets homeowners remotely control lights, thermostats, home theaters or other devices on a Crestron system. The founder of R2 is no stranger to the living room: it’s Blake Krikorian, the San Francisco-based founder of Slingbox, the set-top box that allowed owners to watch their TV or cable subscription services anywhere in the world.

ORLANDO, FLA., DEC. 20, 2012 — Additional Second Stage Growth Companies Encouraged to Apply

ORLANDO, Fla., Dec. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- GrowFL, the Florida Economic Gardening Institute at the University of Central Florida, proudly announces that more than 500 clients have been accepted into its program since it began in 2009, with more than 100 joining the program in just the last 6 months.

GrowFL serves second-stage companies that are poised for growth in both revenue and jobs with its unique high-end strategic research and business resources. Started as a pilot in Florida, it has quickly grown as a statewide economic development resource to help build and strengthen Florida's economy.

I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers. Maybe it’s time to look harder at the mantra of a new breed of gurus and successful entrepreneurs, including Steve Blank and Eric Ries, called “nail it then scale it” (NISI).

You can review all the specifics of this approach in a recent book by Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom, appropriately titled “Nail It then Scale It: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation,” but I will net it out here. I found their five phases of the process to be compelling, based on my own years of experience mentoring startups:

The UCT Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB) is teaming up with growth equity fund manager Knife Capital to launch a new education programme to promote the development of early-stage, high growth entrepreneurial activity in the City of Cape Town. Why Cape Town? Well, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) research at the UCT GSB, Cape Town is ranked as the most entrepreneurial city in South Africa, with early-stage entrepreneurial activity 190% greater than South Africa’s national average.

Around the world Silicon Valley is admired for its prolific startup ecosystem. Some regions attempt to emulate its success by design, while others try to distill its essence or dissect its makeup. While the various regions from which startup ecosystems emerge often shape the culture or challenges their communities face, there is undoubtedly knowledge to be gained from the relatively tiny spot on America’s West coast that has produced roughly 30 Fortune 500 companies. So what are the things we can learn from Silicon Valley and its successful startups that you won’t find in books? Which unwritten rules does its entrepreneurs live by?