You can’t swing a lightly inebriated jaguar by its tail without hitting half a dozen crowdfunding campaigns these days. Looking at some campaigns, it seems like it could be the ultimate get rich quick scheme: you dream up a harebrained idea, create a pretty video and BOOM. Make it rain. Except running a successful Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign is a lot more complicated than that. In this video, we take a closer look at some of the common pitfalls.

Recently I wrote a blog on a survey showing that the “skills gap” we hear so much about is a myth; that, in reality, there are plenty of workers out there to fill the demand for skilled labor. Besides, if all the manufacturing is moving beyond the U.S. border to Mexico and offshore to China, there should not even be a labor shortage for skilled jobs.

Image courtesy TheLeadSA/flickr.

Earlier this year, Ellen Williams, the director of ARPA-E, the U.S. Department of Energy’s advanced research program for alternative energy, made headlines when she told the Guardian newspaper that "We have reached some holy grails in batteries.”

Despite very promising results from the 75-odd energy-storage research projects that ARPA-E funds, however, the grail of compact, low-cost energy storage remains elusive.

Recent studies indicate that 1 out of every 11 adult women is an entrepreneur in the United States. With the rise in women entrepreneurs, higher education experiences followed. Thus, more women than ever are pursuing education and entrepreneurship paths over the more traditional, gender-specific roles.

Statistically, women get paid less than men for the same job. Yet, by obtaining a higher education degree, a woman can dramatically impact the pay she earns or the way she will move up the corporate ladder. I recently received my Masters of Business Administration from Florida Institute of Technology.

Image: Dominic Agostini Dominic Agostini Photography dominicphoto.com

As biotechnology gains prominence among investors, two hubs have emerged as hotbeds of innovation for the resurgent industry.

While the two-square-mile patch of South San Francisco bustles with over 70 biotech firms, including Genentech, Amgen and Exelixis, an equally influential geography has grown along the Lemanic Arc of Switzerland and into the heart of Basel, where pharma giants like Novartis, Actelion and Roche (which acquired Genentech in 2009) have their headquarters.

Image: https://techcrunch.com/

Each year INSEAD team up with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and Cornell University to produce an innovation league table for the countries of the world. It’s designed to rank the infrastructure and support environment for innovation around the world. The 2016 rankings have just been published, and given the desire of the EU to support ‘open science, open data and open to the world‘, it is perhaps no surprise to see European nations in the top 5 spots, and 7 in the top 10.

Regardless of where you are in that startup life, you need money to keep the lights on, the team happy, and the momentum going. Raising money may not have been your dream when you began building the company, but your ability to do so will determine how far it will go. Understanding the different needs at each stage of funding will equip you with the confidence to engage investors with a clear pathway to what you each will get out of the exchange. The five stages outlined below provide a foundation to get you started.

Everyone talks about how important the founding team is when VCs are looking at investing in start-ups but rarely do we VCs tell you founders exactly what we are looking for. This is because it is hard to say exactly— ‘I know it when I see it’ often gets thrown around. But the truth is that many of us VCs do have a list of traits that we are looking for in our founders.

Image: http://www.forbes.com

Message from Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke

The Internet has undergone astounding growth, by nearly any measure, in recent years. The number of Internet users increased from roughly 360 million in 2000 to nearly two billion at the end of 2010. The number of hosts connected to the Internet increased from fewer than 30 million at the beginning of 1998 to nearly 770 million in mid-2010. According to industry estimates, this global network helps facilitate $10 trillion in online transactions every single year.

As Commerce Secretary, I am proud to work with the American companies that have led the way at every stage of the Internet revolution, from web browsing and e-commerce technology to search and social networking. Along the way, the United States government has supported the private sector in creating the foundation for the Internet’s success. After establishing the computer network that became the Internet, the government opened the door for commercialization of the Internet in the early 1990s. In the late 1990s, the government’s promotion of an open and public approach to Internet policy helped ensure the Internet could grow organically and that companies could innovate freely. More recently, we have promoted the rollout of broadband facilities and new wireless connections in unserved and underserved parts of the country...

An executive director must prepare an organization for what lies ahead. This means understanding shifts in various verticals from organizational silos to discovering innovation opportunities. It also requires finding the right performance indicators that will increase those activities that create repeatable results.

Image: http://dmz.ryerson.ca

Innovation labs are all the rage these days. Most companies have one, are thinking about creating one or have had employees pushing management to start one. There are several innovation labs being launched monthly to great media fanfare. To name a few examples from last month (August 2016); Paypal launched a fintech innovation lab in Singapore; NCR launched an innovation lab in Georgia, USA; event company LiveBuzz launched an innovation lab; and Dell Services launched an innovation lab for SAP HANA.

The State Council is set to issue comprehensive guidelines to ensure sustainable development of venture capital in China. The new guidelines were approved yesterday at the State Council's executive meeting. Premier Li Keqiang, who presided, highlighted the importance of venture capital.

In our quarterly analysis of companies pursuing healthcare-focused applications of AI, we reported that deals leapt from less than 10 in 2011 to 60 in 2015. So far this year (as of 8/23/2016), companies in this space have raised over 55 equity funding rounds. Some of the recent deals include a $25M Series A round raised by London-based health services startup, Babylon Health, backed by investors including Kinnevik and Google-owned DeepMind Technologies (Babylon will reportedly roll out a Siri-like voice recognition interface this year), and a $154M Series A round raised by China-based iCarbonX.

Image: https://www.cbinsights.com

Things are looking up for the Internet of Things. 80% of organizations have a more positive view of IoT today compared to a year ago, according to a survey of 512 IT and business executives by CompTIA. “This reflects greater levels of attention from the C-suite and a better understanding of how the many different elements of the IoT ecosystem are starting to come together,” says CompTIA. Here are the highlights from this and other recent surveys:

Image: http://www.forbes.com

NASA released the first-ever images of Jupiter’s north pole on Friday after the agency’s Juno spacecraft completed a fly-by of the planet last weekend, revealing unique characteristics of the solar system’s largest planet.

The weather activity and storm systems depicted in the images are unlike anything seen before on gas-giant planets, NASA said. The spacecraft, which arrived at Jupiter on July 4, traveled about 2,500 miles above Jupiter’s clouds.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS  - The JunoCam instrument obtained this view of Jupiter on August 27, about two hours before closest approach, when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (195,000 kilometers) away from the giant planet (i.e., for Jupiter's center).

AUSTIN, Tex. — What if everybody had an ocean, across the U.S.A.?

A tentative answer to that question took shape on a recent morning in a giant artificial body of water within 160 acres of cactus-studded former ranch land here in Hill Country.

Every few minutes, about a half-dozen surfers paddled their boards into the shimmering celadon waves that approached. The surfers would then stand, turn and crouch to try riding the water as it crested over a reef and curled across the lagoon in head-high wedges before breaking, only to reform into mellow little rollers of the sort you might find in Waikiki.

Image: Doug Coors, the founder and chief executive of NLand Surf Park, said he would be happy to build a wave park in “every corner of every city.” Credit Drew Anthony Smith for The New York Times

A speaker at one of this year’s Envestnet | Yodlee Incubator bootcamps, Mike Grossman may well be the quintessential serial CEO. He has led five entrepreneurial, venture-backed SaaS companies over the past 20 years. Currently the CEO of cloud back-up provider Zetta, he previously helmed SugarSync, Attributor, Tempo Payments, and LiveCapital. Along the way he picked up some critical lessons, which he imparted to the next-generation CEOs taking part in one of this year’s Envestnet | Yodlee Incubator bootcamps.

Image: https://www.yodlee.com

Having a great idea for a business is one thing. Getting the financial backing to grow, scale and make it a success is quite another.

Most entrepreneurs approach funding in stages, starting by dipping into their own savings, going cap-in-hand to friends and family, taking advantage of government grants, crowdfunding and potentially seeking angel and venture capital.

Starting new businesses isn’t just for college kids from Silicon Valley – anyone with a passion and some elbow grease can do it. There’s no timeline or expiration date on becoming a successful entrepreneur. In fact, people starting businesses later in life may actually have some advantages over people that are still early in their careers.

How to harness the power of abundant thinking and believing in “pathological optimism.”

I deeply believe there is a fundamental difference between the way entrepreneurs, and the people who work for large companies, see the world. As I said last time, entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors have “abundant thinking”—they see opportunity where others see obstacles and stop signs.