Individual investment via the internet will be one of the key funding sources for business in the developing world. The World Bank says China will be the biggest crowdfunding investor by 2025 giving more than half the money raised in developing markets.

The crowd funding potential in developing markets will stand at $93 billion a year, which represents 1.8 times the total of 2012 global venture capital, according to a report by the World Bank.

Image Courtesy of cooldesign / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There’s no question that private investing in early stage businesses is a high-risk, highly illiquid endeavor. That doesn’t mean that investors can’t earn attractive risk-adjusted returns. To do so, however, they will need to use high-quality crowdfunding platforms to decide which companies to invest in. While there are many ways to judge crowdfunding platforms, there is one that stands out: How thoroughly does the platform vet the companies that apply to the site?

Image Courtesy of Vlado / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Starting a company has never been easy. Not having to worry about market research and resources can be the difference between getting off the ground and moving back in with your parents. This might explain the record number of startup accelerators and incubators in 2013. According to our projections, there will be at least 170 worldwide by the end of the year. But despite the increase, overall seed stage investment in startups has decreased from a year ago, mainly in North America. As the top few accelerators continue to dominate, new programs are struggling to attract the best founders and make seed investments in promising companies. In an environment where only one-third of startups find follow-on investors, most young accelerators and incubators seem destined to fail because of the overcrowded market for early stage funding.

After creating two successful businesses in five years, this 29-year-old entrepreneur has come a long way from the days of selling eggs and food supplies to schools, to the day when a customer asked if he could supply a tent for an event. Eric Kinoti is the proprietor of Shades System East Africa – a company that manufactures and supplies tents, as well as Safi Sana home Cleaning Services.

Shade Systems East Africa makes about Sh150 million per annum while Safi Sana Home Cleaning Services brings home about Sh3 million every year.

Image Courtesy of artur84 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The other day I read an interesting book called Entrepreneurial DNA, by Joe Abraham, the founder of BOSI Global, an operating partner to venture-backed and owner-operated companies. The book is based on Joe’s study of over 1,000 entrepreneurs. The research confirmed the discovery that all entrepreneurs are not all wired the same way. The book suggests entrepreneurs fall into four distinct types of entrepreneurial DNA’s that leverage unique strengths, weaknesses and tendencies typical in each specific type of entrepreneur:

Image Courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

One in three US startups and as many as 70% of venture capital firms face assertions of patent infringement, according to a new report conducted by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and the University of California Hastings.

The sector with the most disputed patents is IT, followed by life sciences and clean tech, and can prove a costly battle for startups to fight. The NVCA reports that the average cost for defending a patent can cost a company on average $100,000, with some cases running into millions of dollars. The process often lands a crippling financial blow on cash-strapped startups, with 60% of startup chief executives reporting a moderate-to-high negative impact on the company’s operations.

 Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Following a decade of rapid urbanization and strong economic growth, Africa is going digital. While just 16 percent of the continent’s one billion people are online, that picture is changing rapidly.

Evidence of what is to come can already be seen in Africa’s major cities, where consumers have greater disposable income, more than half have Internet-capable devices, and 3G networks are up and running. Significant infrastructure investment—for example, increased access to mobile broadband, fibre-optic cable connections to households, and power-supply expansion—combined with the rapid spread of low-cost smartphones and tablets, has enabled millions of Africans to connect for the first time. There is a growing wave of innovation as entrepreneurs and large corporations alike launch new web-based ventures.

Ruth Simon and Angus Loten of the WSJ had a couple of really interesting articles last week, by way of tracking just how people are using the new accredited crowdfunding rule:

• Fundraising Rules Murky Despite JOBS Act; and 
• Filings Show Some Firms Do Plan Ads.

By "accredited crowdfunding rule," I mean of course Rule 506(c), the new rule that lets issuers engage in general solicitation and general advertising, as long as all purchasers are accredited, the issuer takes reasonable steps to ensure each purchaser is accredited, and the issuer otherwise satisfies the applicable requirements of Reg D.

China’s transition to a tech economy based on innovations rather than copying continues to gain momentum. It doesn’t take a microscope to spot the signs.

Chinese engineering and managerial talent is multiplying, while e-commerce and mobile communication innovations are unfolding. A rebound in China’s venture capital market after the “Death Valley” of the 2011 and 2012 and the rise of angel investors, many of them multimillionaires from the first generation of China’s “techpreneurs,” are escalating the trend.

Image: www.forbes.com

Many metropolitan areas hit a bump in the road to economic recovery this year, a report released Monday finds.

The study conducted by IHS Global Insight for the U.S. Conference of Mayors finds a slowdown in economic growth, with the aggregate real gross metro product (GMP) for 363 areas examined projected to rise only 1.6 percent this year after climbing 2.5 percent in 2012.

Image Courtesy of Naypong / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If Tile has its way, the era of lost keys--and stolen bikes or laptops--is over. Along with an accompanying app, Tile, a small and discreet device that can be attached to whatever you want to track, keeps a virtual eye on all the important physical things in your life. The app works by using bluetooth to track Tiles, which uses a “getting warmer” display in the app to direct users to the missing object. For when things get left behind or stolen, Tile tapped the cloud to create a network of users whose apps can ping you the location of your stuff if they happen to be nearby.

Image: www.fastcompany.com

A six-year veteran of Yelp, Miriam Warren established the user-generated review company's London outpost and oversaw its European expansion, most recently into France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Poland, Turkey and the Czech Republic. Today she's in charge of bring Yelp to the rest of the world. How does Warren stay productive while racking up the frequent-flier miles?

Image Courtesy of Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Q. Got any job hunt tips for ex-founders/entrepreneurs?

The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Image Courtesy of Keerati / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1. MODERN MENTORSHIP MODEL

“Because this is the first digital generation, aspiring entrepreneurs have an opportunity to use social/mobile software they’ve grown up with to build a network of people navigating their careers together for the first time. This network opens the door for mentorship. Technology has completely revolutionized the traditional mentorship model!”

- Caroline Ghosn | Co-Founder and CEO, The Levo League

Metropolitan entrepreneurship issues are the focus of two new Kauffman Foundation reports being released today at the Mayors Conference on Entrepreneurship held in conjunction with Global Entrepreneurship Week.

At the conference, hosted by the Foundation in partnership with the city of Kansas City, Mo., mayor's office, mayors and entrepreneurship experts from around the country will discuss ways to promote startup activity and encourage higher levels of entrepreneurship in their cities.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is in the midst of an entrepreneurial revolution that is invigorating the region with new opportunities, increased employment and a robust rise in gross domestic product to one of the highest in the world, according to the 2012 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Sub-Saharan African Regional Report launched this week in Lusaka, Zambia.

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Over the decades that I’ve spent in career services, I’ve had countless students ask me for the best way to pursue an entrepreneurial career. The answer, of course, is there isn’t one right way: the path of an entrepreneur is notoriously full of twists and turns, and rarely looks the same for any two individuals. But there are a few suggestions I make to Penn students who dream of starting their own businesses.

Image Courtesy of Toa55 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Experts Believe Smart Policy Will Lead to Successful Adoption of this Next Wave of Global Innovation

Today, The Center for Public Policy Innovation (CPPI), a not-for-profit educational think tank, published a special report on the economic, societal, and environmental promise offered by the 'Internet of Everything' (IoE) and policy areas impacting this next wave of global innovation, worth an estimated $14.4 trillion over the next decade.

Image Courtesy of cooldesign / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“The defining difference between Silicon Valley companies and almost every other industry in the U.S. is the virtually universal practice among tech companies of distributing meaningful equity (usually in the form of stock options) to ordinary employees. Before companies like Fairchild and Hewlett-Packard began the practice fifty years ago, distributing stock options to anyone other than top management was virtually unheard of. But the engineering tradition that spawned Silicon Valley was much more egalitarian than traditional corporate culture.”

Image Courtesy of Photokanok / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The human population is exploding. Earlier this year, the United Nations released a new report that said the global population was on pace to reach 11 billion people by the end of the century — a full 800 million more people than were expected by 2100 (with a range between 9 million and 13 million), and a whopping 4 billion more than call Earth home today. The bump in the predicted number was made in part because birthrates in sub-Saharan Africa are not dropping as fast as predicted.

Image Courtesy of Sira Anamwong / FreeDigitalPhotos.net