The single most revealing moment in the coverage of JPMorgan's multibillion dollar debacle can be found in this take-your-breath-away passage from The Wall Street Journal:

On April 30, associates who were gathered in a conference room handed Mr. Dimon summaries and analyses of the losses. But there were no details about the trades themselves. "I want to see the positions!" he barked, throwing down the papers, according to attendees. "Now! I want to see everything!"

When Mr. Dimon saw the numbers, these people say, he couldn't breathe.

Only when he saw the actual trades — the raw data — did Dimon realize the full magnitude of his company's situation. The horrible irony: The very detail-oriented systems (and people) Dimon had put in place had obscured rather than surfaced his bank's horrible hedge. What he'd dismissed as a "tempest in a teapot" less than a month earlier had turned into a multibillion dollar humiliation. If Dimon had seen those positions — naked and unsummarized — back then, could his bank have saved itself and its CEO a lot of money and embarrassment?

Pennsylvania’s move this week to expand its telemedicine program to include more specialties reflects a broader trend of states using this tactic to improve healthcare access in underserved communities.

Some specialized markets have emerged. For entrepreneurs and investors eyeing the telemedicine space, here are six niche spaces to watch.

Radiology. Teleradiology is the largest and most established of the niche markets and it’s also the oldest. It started as an after-hours service, spurred by Nighthawk’s move to locate U.S. radiologists in Europe to cater to practices that need images read during nonwork hours. Virtual Radiologic or vRad dominates the market since it acquired Nighthawk in 2010 with a lot of small and midsized players across the U.S. Most community hospitals simply don’t have the resources to have a radiologist on duty after hours. Pittsburgh-based Foundation Radiology Group, a startup that raised $1 million last month, is beginning to offer centralized batch reading of screening mammography.

The first quarter of 2012 was the best quarter in more than four years for software and Internet company IPOs, according to a new report.

But in the aftermath of Facebook’s much-hyped and problematic IPO, can the momentum continue?

Tech-focused Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West has released a report called “Trends in Terms of Venture Financings in Silicon Valley” for the first quarter of 2012. The report examined 114 companies headquartered in Silicon Valley that reported raising money in the quarter one 2012. It compiles funding and investment information from  Dow Jones VentureSource, Thomson Reuters, the National Venture Capital Association, and Fenwick & West’s Venture Capital Barometer.

A unique, first-of-its kind program to help low-income inventors in the Denver region pursue patents was announced Wednesday in Denver by David Kappos, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The Colorado Bar Association, the Mi Casa Resource Center and the U.S. Patent Office will spearhead the program to connect low-income inventors with Colorado patent attorneys.

"It is the first time ever in the world that a group of patent attorneys have gotten together to set up a program by which inventors who have great ideas but don't have financial resources can get matched up with practicing patent attorneys," Kappos said.

President Obama’s technology advisors are looking for some “kick ass” fellows to work on the White House’s new digital road map for open government.

Announced on stage at Disrupt 2012, CTO Todd Park and CIO Steven VanRoekel detailed five new projects, each which will need a team of open government geeks to help move forward. You can view the first part of the application process here.

So, what are they looking for? Park told the audience that he’s looking for the first 5 people one would want to begin a startup with: a mix of people with technical expertise, an accomplished history, and a passion for disruption. Technical skills for some team members are definitely important (UI/UX experience, coding, etc). But, a history of causing some type of disruption is definitely key. If you’ve managed to make your industry more transparent, participatory, or collaborative, definitely indicate that on the second round application (which will be later emailed to applicants). Last, a passion for using technology for social change, especially open data, should probably make its way into the application.

The Obama Administration today released a Federal Funding Opportunity (FFO), announcing a $26 million multi-agency Advanced Manufacturing Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge to help catalyze and leverage private capital, build an entrepreneurial ecosystem, and promote advanced manufacturing and cluster-based development in regions across the United States.

The deadline for applications is July 9, 2012. Guidelines for applicants and eligibility requirements are outlined at www.manufacturing.gov/accelerator/index.html. An informational webinar for the Advanced Manufacturing Jobs Accelerator will be available for viewing on that site in approximately two weeks.

A total of 14 Federal Agencies are supporting the competition, with funding provided by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration and National Institute of Standards and Technology; the U.S. Department of Energy; the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration; the Small Business Administration; and the National Science Foundation.

With the signature Emperor scorpion shape and outline, a highly stable steel structure, tilting capabilities, integrated audio system, LED lighting and much more, the Emperor 1510 is the future of high-end home and office computer work environments. The Emperor offers functionalities that enable the user to experience unprecedented comfort and quasi total immersion through strategically positioned monitors, audio system and accessories. The result is a complete computer office, ergonomically optimized, with a minimal footprint that improves overall performance and productivity.

The transcendental conditions of success as an entrepreneur occur at the intersection of objective real world challenges and the subjective traits of the entrepreneur and CEO. The objective risks relate to the business case of the company and include such things as technology risk, market risk, and competition. These are all subject to discovery in a thorough diligence process.  Both these systemic and idiosyncratic risks of a start up are typically well identified –though perhaps poorly navigated –by early stage investors.  Less discussed however, and what I want to concentrate on here, are the subjective risks, those peculiar to the entrepreneur himself.

Most experienced venture investors will agree it is a far, far better thing to invest in a second rate company with a first string CEO than to fund an A rated company with a B player CEO.  This statement, which is practically a truism in the venture world, radically contradicts the idea that sufficient diligence of a company’s various objective risks suffices in early stage investing.   There must additionally be an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the CEO and these have nothing to do with resume items.

Since the signing of the Jobs Act on April 5th, demand for information and clarity on issuer compliance rules has skyrocketed. Entrepreneurs and startups want to know what steps should be taking now to successfully launch a compliant crowdfund investing campaign. The launch of http://www.crowdfundingroadmap.com is the perfect place to get quick answers and easy solutions to help companies get started now.

Silicon Valley is finally starting to have a real impact on the health care industry, and Practice Fusion, an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) company, is leading the way. In addition to replacing paper charts, its free, web-based product helps doctors with everything from appointment scheduling to prescription management. With major VC backing and vocal support from investors like Peter Thiel, the managing partner at Founders Fund and former CEO of PayPal, the company is positioned to scale quickly and dominate the digital health care revolution.

According to Ryan Howard, founder and CEO of Practice Fusion, the startup already has 150,000 users and 34 million patients under management. That represents about 10% of the U.S. population and averages out to about 70,000 patients a day. It’s also connected directly to over 70,000 pharmacies across the U.S.

The country’s top tech talent may gravitate to Silicon Valley and New York, but the White House is making a hard push for them to consider a “tour of duty” in Washington, DC.

In launching the government’s new digital roadmap and Presidential Innovation Fellows program, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park said Wednesday that the they’re looking for “badass innovators” to work for “a little startup called the United States of America.”

“We’re looking for a few good women and men to throw their hats in the ring,” he said. As part of the program, the White House will select 15 coders, designers and other innovators to head to DC for 6- to 12-month fellowships, starting in July. Park said the fellowship will focus on five areas: open data, health information, the online system MyGov, an RFP program targeting startups and a USAID campaign.

Have you delayed retirement because the recession was preventing you from getting a fair price for the business you worked so hard to build? Have you been contemplating buying another business, but couldn’t find the financing? Small business owners in both of these situations have a lot to be hopeful about if BizBuySell’s First Quarter 2012 Insight Report is any indication.

BizBuySell, an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of businesses, tracks business sales quarterly, and its latest report shows the number of businesses sold is continuing the steady rise begun in the third quarter of 2011. Almost 4 percent more businesses were sold in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011. What’s more, the 1,729 businesses reported sold in the first quarter of 2012 represent the largest number of transactions since the fourth quarter of 2008, making it the most active quarter in more than three years.

Pharma corporate venture was back in the biotech news today with the release of Burrill & Company’s June 2012 report.  An interesting article by Vinay Singh evaluated the impact of Pharma corporate venture capital (CVC) investing, and the key takeaway is that CVC-backed companies have a higher rate of overall success than those without their involvement.

While a similar takeway has been published before by Windhover’s StartUp about a year ago, these data suggests a fairly robust effect from a large dataset.  The analysis includes 2907 therapeutics companies that raised venture capital dollars between 2000-2010 across 5100 rounds of financing.  Corporate VCs were investors about 10% of companies, and this pool of 286 companies had what appears to be a markedly higher hit rate: a ~60% higher rate of licensing deals, M&As and IPOs.  The figure from the article is pasted below:

Q: What is the #1 skill an entrepreneur must possess to succeed?

The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC recently published #FixYoungAmerica: How to Rebuild Our Economy and Put Young Americans Back to Work (for Good), a book of 30+ proven solutions to help end youth unemployment.

1. Perseverance

Cash will run low, clients won't close, team members will leave, the product will have bugs, and the roof will fall on your head. There will be times when you seriously consider quitting. I've been there. But perseverance and dumbfounded self-confidence pushed me forward. Without perseverance, you'll never reach success. - Jun Loayza, RewardMe

This summer, Pegasus Global Holdings will begin building a city from scratch in the desert just outside of Hobbs, New Mexico, that will look not unlike Hobbs itself. The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation will be modeled on a mid-sized, mid-American town of about 35,000 people. Hobbs, located just outside the Texas border in the Southeastern corner of the state, is just a bit larger than that. The new city--CITE, as the locals and out-of-town developers call it--will similarly have a kind of downtown, a retail district, residential neighborhoods, and collar communities. It will have functioning roads, self-sustaining utilities, and its own communications infrastructure. It will not, however, have a single permanent resident.

After years of pursuing high-tech companies, Hobbs will be getting what might be one of the most impressive high-tech novelties around: a 15-square mile, fully functioning but empty town next door, unlike any other R&D facility in the world, that will be used to test everything about the future of smart cities, from autonomous cars to new wireless networks.

One of the predominant themes in innovation strategies around the world in recent times has been a concerted effort to fully integrate “innovation” in a state or region’s economic development efforts.  The approach has been variously described as “science-based economic development”, “technology-based economic development”, and more recently ‘innovation-based economic development” or IBED.  If you look at the most innovative economies in the US, Canada and abroad, you will probably find IBED at the heart of that region’s economic policies and strategies.  The core objectives of an IBED approach are:

• Improving the competitiveness of key industrial sectors 
• Strengthening a region’s R&D capacity 
• Integrating technology policies into overall economic development planning   
• Promoting the development of strategic sectors 
• Establishing the business conditions attractive to both domestic and foreign investment in strategic technologies and sectors   
• Accelerating commercialization of relevant research 
• Identifying gaps in the Innovation Ecosystem and creating programs and financing vehicles to address the gaps

The New York Digital Health Accelerator (NYDHA) held their coming out party on May 10th in NYC, hosting a packed house at TimesCenter, not to mention hundreds of interested onlookers via live streaming video.

I had the opportunity to interview David Whitlinger, Director of the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC), about the program’s origin and how it will nurture the companies it selects.

Lawmakers have barely unpacked, and state economic development leaders already say they likely will seek a supplemental appropriation.

“Direct financial assistance of $15 million … will not get the job done,” said Debi Durham, the state’s economic development director, pointing to “projects in the pipeline” for June and upcoming months. “We’re going to make a case through the summer and fall months that we need more funding.”

Durham and Gov. Terry Branstad requested $25 million in financial incentives to help expanding businesses and startups. Over the past 15 months, the agency has used incentives to spark $3.3 billion in capital investment, projects that are expected to create nearly 12,300 jobs, Durham said.

If you are going to be a real entrepreneur, it’s important that you know yourself well. After all, you won’t have a direct manager charged with giving you feedback, and your team probably will be afraid to tell you what they really think. Entrepreneurs need to recognize their own strengths and limitations.

In any case, your skills, talent, knowledge, personality, and strengths are your best assets as an entrepreneur. I’ve extracted many of the following points about knowing yourself from a book aimed at women professionals, called “Career GPS”, by Ella L. J. Edmondson Bell, Ph. D., but I see them applying equally well to every entrepreneur, man or woman.

Kickstarter may have provided millions of dollars in seed funding for startups such as Pebble Technology, but the company — which has raised more than $200 million for 22,000 products — has no intention of becoming a crowdfunding hub in the literal investment sense.

“We’re not gearing up for the equity wave if it comes,” Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen said in a recent interview with GigaOm. “The real disruption is doing it without equity.”

Fundable disagrees. The startup, which launched Tuesday, plans to take advantage of new crowdfunding laws that make it legal for startups to solicit investments publicly online and accept money from unaccredited investors.