The National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer (NCET2) announces a University Startup Showcase (USS) as part of its 7th annual University Startups Conference on March 20-22, 2013 in Washington, DC. Each year U.S. universities create around 600 new companies based on the almost $35 billion dollars of federally funded research conducted at universities. The USS will showcase the best university startup companies, as nominated by the country's major research universities, to leading venture capitalists, angel investors, strategic investors and SBIR program mangers. 

We invite U.S. universities to nominate their best companies in any field, including but not limited to: Chemicals, Materials, Electronics, Energy, Environmental, Healthcare/ Biotech, Industrial, Information Technology, Manufacturing, Media/Communications, Software/Services.

Companies should be ready for $100,000-$500,000 of funding and ideally have already been vetted by the nominating university, and received accelerator or proof-of concept funding from the university or from a university-affiliated funding source.

Marissa Mayer was Google's 20th employee. Now only 7 of the initial 20 remain at the search giant that made them all rich (excluding founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page).

Some have become entrepreneurs, others are angel investors, and a few are happily retired.

A Quora user compiled a list of all the original Googlers and where they are now. We did some additional digging to find out which roles they had, when they joined, and more.

I learned, in a recent national conference for County Commissioners, that economic development can be "anything you want it to be". This reinforced my opinion that we are doing it wrong, not just in Beaufort County, but in the entire state of North Carolina.

Some counties are taking almost all of their grants and running them through an economic development department. Some heath services grants are being combined with other grants to help justify new medical facilities in blighted areas. In the rust belt, some incorporated towns and villages as large as 15,000 people have lost as much as 84 percent of their population when manufacturing moved (over seas). In some of these communities only the young and old remained because of the lack of jobs. To these areas, money to tear down abandoned commercial buildings and dwellings has been important. Removing these buildings provided open ground, and an opportunity for new development. Grants coupled with "Brown Fields" regulations allowed derelict factories to be removed, and turned into green open space while providing a new plant site.

Germany is steaming ahead of traditional leaders France in research and development, says a new study by the French economy and finance ministry. EurActiv.fr reports.

In 1996, French companies pumped 1.69% of their added value into research and development projects, against 1.65% for their German counterparts, according to the study, published this month, EurActiv France reports.

Since the days of the franc and German mark, the trend has reversed, with German businesses investing 2.11% of  their added value in 2008 compared to just 1.47% in France - below the average of the other countries included in the study, amongst them South Korea, Spain, the US, Norway, and Japan.

A growing effort to personalize cancer medicine tries to link existing drugs to patients based on the specific genetic and molecular anomalies of a patient's cancer (see "Foundation Medicine: Personalizing Cancer Drugs"). But H3 Biomedicines, a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wants to personalize cancer drugs from the beginning by designing drugs to target specific patient populations.

The U.S. Internet's infrastructure needs to be redesigned to allow the NSA to know instantly when overseas hackers might be attacking public or private infrastructure and computer networks, the agency's leader, General Keith Alexander, said today.

Alexander spoke at the annual Def Con computer hacking conference in Las Vegas. It was a symbolic appearance that he said was motivated by a need to interest the hacker community in helping to make the Internet more secure.

Alexander, who is also commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, described the Internet as "at great risk from exploitation, disruption, and destruction."

This is the first in a series of articles I am writing to bring more transparency and honesty to the field of venture capital. While many of the themes may be contrarian or controversial, I have two primary goals: First, I want to help entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts understand what motivates investors. Second, I hope to draw attention to some of the fallacies venture capitalists use in their negotiations with entrepreneurs. Aligning the incentives of entrepreneurs and VCs will lead to much stronger relationships and innovation.

Entrepreneurs regularly come to Founders Fund asking us to lead or participate in their seed/angel round. They are often confused or shocked when I try to convince them that with very few exceptions, it is not in entrepreneurs’ best interest to raise seed capital from large venture firms and neither is it beneficial for large firms to invest in seed stage companies. Among the reasons: the structure of VC economics and unavoidable perception issues. Since this conversation happens frequently, I’d like to share my honest thoughts on why large funds should avoid angel investing -­‐ and also why Founders Fund nevertheless does so through its wholly owned FF Angel funds.

Acting U.S. Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank sounded the alarm at the lagging innovation seen within the United States, citing evidence that R&D spending and initiatives have sunk to the lowest levels in decades.

Speaking at the Third Annual Innovation Luncheon of the Global Women’s Innovation Network, Blank first gave the bad news: “The current federal share of research spending is half what it was in the Eisenhower administration,” and, today, “America ranks 14th in the world in terms of the percentage of college graduates we produce. We used to be number one.”  As if that wasn’t enough, “The World Economic Forum now ranks our infrastructure 24th. We used to be in the top 10.”

In business and startups, a “sense of urgency” is a good thing. Yet many entrepreneurs confuse this with a “sense of emergency,” which insidiously saps the life from their business. Urgency comes from a greater purpose focused outward, to make good things happen, while handling emergencies is a reactionary inward approach to saving ourselves from the daily crisis.

We’ve all known managers and executives that seem to thrive on emergencies, and often seem to instigate them. As a result, they are always too busy to proactively get to the urgent and strategic tasks, or provide the leadership and mentoring needed to motivate the team for the long haul.

State commercialization centers facing review

Texas officials are considering the future of the eight Regional Centers for Innovation and Commercialization.

Those centers are the first review in the process of making awards from the state's Emerging Technology Fund.

According to Gov. Rick Perry's office, the Texas Emerging Technology Fund advisory committee will be reviewing whether the current Regional Centers for Innovation and Commercialization contracts should be renewed or whether other entities should be allowed to provide proposals for running the centers.

In Central Texas, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce is responsible for the local center.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center has launched an initiative to help grow the state’s agricultural economy by creating more crop choices for North Carolina farmers. Following months of discussions with partners statewide, NCBiotech has established the Biotechnology Crops Commercialization Center, targeting potentially valuable crops adapted to the state’s diverse soil, climate and agribusiness conditions. Veteran ag biotech leader Alan Kriz, Ph.D., has joined NCBiotech’s AgBiotech Group as executive director of the crops commercialization center.

Kriz came to the Center after leading a team at Monsanto that maintained U.S. regulatory compliance for the company’s field trials. He has also worked for BASF Plant Science, Renessen, DEKALB Genetics and the University of Illinois.

A number of VC firms have hired specialists in the area of recruiting.  Others have partners with expertise in PR.  Firms have networks of advisors, too--with particular expertise in your area. 

Interacting with a venture firm these days can feel like ordering from Seamless.  Pick what you want off the menu and someone will provide that service for you.

It's happening on their side, too.  Given the proliferation of accelerators and incubators that pre-vet entrepreneurs, roll up their sleeves to help companies, and dress them up for demo days, the best and brightest are being showcased to look better than ever.  Need an even more Seamless-like experience?  Drop by AngelList, where startups have been vetted by a community of advisors and other investors.  This somewhat mimics real life, where many investors won't take a meeting with you unless they come through their "trusted network". 

The Pacific Ocean, about 5,900 miles and 15 hours–all these separate the Beijing office of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers from its Silicon Valley operations, giving the China-run business breathing space to work away from the media glare associated with a suit brought against the firm in the U.S. alleging gender discrimination.

Indeed, KPCB China is focused on deploying capital from its China Fund II, which it closed near the end of 2011 raising around $220 million, said Beijing-based Investment Partner Wei Zhou. 

Looking for some inspiration this Monday morning? Business Insider put together a list of the top 10 movies that could inspire any and every young entrepreneur. Whether you're looking for motivation, a true story or a fresh idea, Business Insider's list offers a range of films from the 1980s to 2000s that could bring the entrepreneurial spirit back to life.

You probably believe that big companies are anti-entrepreneurial because you assume they are slow growth dinosaurs that resist change, but history teaches us otherwise. Corporations have been run entrepreneurship-type programs for many years, like the fabled Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works” – a small group of employees working on revolutionary products such as famous aircraft designs including the U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird. Even today, some companies still refer to these projects as “skunkworks projects.”

Music is one of life's pleasures. It has the power to influence a person's mood instantly. Listening to upbeat music can energize us in the morning and soothing tunes can help us unwind at the end of a stressful day. In addition to evoking powerful emotions, music also helps with the learning process and the formation of memories. Some researchers find that listening to baroque music, for example, is especially conducive to processing information, because it engages neuronal activities on both sides of the brain. Irrespective of individual music tastes and preferences, hearing a familiar song causes the region in the brain that handles memories and emotions to light up. Strongly associated with the brain's rewards system, music can induce a strong dopamine rush. It only takes seconds for a person to perceive happiness, anger, disgust, surprise, sadness, or fear in unknown musical segments, as described in a study by the Department of Music Therapy of Heidelberg University and the German Center for Music Therapy Research. From cognitive to motor reactions, music-supported therapy can also help with rehabilitation after strokes or with providing relief for tinnitus patients. Are you interested in learning more? Stefan Koelsch's book, Brain and Music, provides a comprehensive survey of the latest neuroscientific research on the effects of music on the brain.

In 2009, Speedo’s research team began to brainstorm innovative ways to help swimmers go faster. The polyurethane bodysuits that contributed to an astonishing number of swimming world records over the previous 18 months had been banned. To think outside the box, the Speedo representatives met outside the lab, joining academics, coaches and research consultants at hotels, conference centers and even an English country house to spawn ideas, ideas inspired more by Captain Avenger than Mark Spitz.

Another day, another new incubator coming out of Germany (in fact, it feels like the whole of Europe has gone a little incubator crazy of late): German Startups Group is a new fund set up by Christoph Gerlinger and Alexander Kölpin, both of whom look well-placed to tap the local ‘digital’ startup scene in Berlin with investments of between €50k and €250k, although it isn’t ruling out applications from further afield.

Christoph Gerlinger was founder and CEO of games publisher Frogster before it was acquired by Gamesforge, while Kölpin is a co-founder of BerlinWebWeek and has worked with local startups in a marketing capacity as divisional director of location-markeing agency BerlinPartner.

The recent results of Zygna, Groupon, and even the mighty Facebook on the public markets in the U.S. have served to highlight a couple of major issues for European startups. One is a little jealously: there remain few viable IPO markets in Europe for tech stocks, hence why you see so many moving to the US – usually NASDAQ – when they get big, as happened with Yandex and Qlik Technologies. The second is annoyance: many solid European tech companies are now at a point where they have solid, revenue generating businesses, built on a lot more than hype and user numbers alone. And in the last year we’ve seen these companies start to look for ways to break-out.

For example, there are rumours that both the incredibly successful Wonga and King.com are considering floating on New York’s NASDAQ exchange, while Mind Candy is also alleged to be considering a float for its Moshi Monsters game.

The (one or two) venture capitalists who may be worried about taking some vacation time this summer have reason to relax, kick back, and have another dip in the ocean.

According to the latest venture capital returns data from Cambridge Associates and the NVCA, the performance of the industry as an asset class continues to improve.

How big are the gains? Not enormous. For the first quarter of this year, returns reached 4.7 percent – down, actually, from 5 percent in the year ago quarter.