Startups and public companies alike often use equity to help attract, retain and incentivize talented employees and other service providers. The different forms of awards have proliferated in the past several years, though, leading to a confusing “alphabet soup” of jargon that often frustrates both the recipients of grants and the company itself. Many angel and venture capital investors continue to prefer seeing stock options and restricted stock awards in their portfolio private companies, as these are the most common and simplest to administer. 

Image: https://vcexperts.com

Everyone said this would be the most embarrassing moment in the band’s eight-year career.

Depeche Mode had decided to play the Pasadena Rose Bowl — capacity 60,000 — for the 101st show of their 1988 tour. To sell out would make it one of the largest music concerts ever played in America — highly unlikely for an English electronic band. Claiming they were popular enough to fill that stadium was an audacious act of bravado that critics were eager to see transform to humiliation as they played to a vast, near-vacant space, mocked by the each of the tens of thousands of empty seats.

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Raising money is a huge part of being a CEO, but nothing can fully prepare you for the experience of taking your company public.   Together with our team at Zafgen, I recently had the experience of taking our company public through the IPO route (here and here), and it went well by most accounts.  Despite choppy market conditions, we raised more than we had anticipated.  This will allow us to consider new ways of strengthening our programs.

The structure of the VC industry is changing. This matters not only to entrepreneurs raising capital — but it also impacts the finance industry overall, because companies are staying private longer (fewer IPOs) and public investors (including hedge funds, mutual funds, publicly held corporations) are getting into the VC game, too. So in that sense these changes affect everyone who is in the market.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Working backwards from where you want to be can give you purpose.

Most people are not working in a job they are passionate about all of the time. In fact, according to a recent Financial Times column by Lucy Kellaway, having passion for one’s job can be dangerous. One should at best care about and enjoy one’s job.  But even the best jobs can get mundane and routine and it is up to the individual to make his/her career continuously challenging, interesting and fulfilling.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Franco Savoni walked into a business-networking program thinking small Tuesday. And he did it with no apologies.

To help advance business at Elkay, an Oak Brook-based sink and faucet manufacturer, Savoni is checking out the work and products of smaller companies.

“There’s so much innovation (at small companies) that’s going on close to home,” Savoni, Elkay’s water-cooler products director, said during a reception for The Innovators Connection, a Chicago Innovation Awards program that connects startup companies with larger businesses that need products or services.

Your addiction to social media could net you a bachelor's degree.

Thanks to the rise of the unconventional careers such as professional blogger and social media manager, as well as new forms of technology, universities are constantly adding majors to the roster of diploma-worthy degrees. And millennials are ready to enroll.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

It may not be as sexy, but starting a new business that builds on an existing technology or business model is usually less risky than introducing that ultimate new disruptive technology. There are many levels of innovation that go beyond copying someone else’s idea, but stop short of pushing the bleeding edge.

Many of the major business successes started this way. McDonald's didn’t really invent the fast-food model -- it simply improved on the cookie-cutter White Castle process. Before Wal-Mart made the low-cost high-volume business model famous, there was Ben Franklin and Two Guys, which touted it way back following World War II.

For years the standard operating procedure for the medical device world has been: Bring good tech to patients and be rewarded by the market. Healthcare reform and particularly the consolidation of doctor practices is making this model obsolete. Now the challenge is more along the lines of “Justify your existence.”

Device companies have to revamp the traditional business model to show how their products save money and help patients in the long term.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Every day, and in many ways, an entrepreneur must lead and persuade others. Understanding what motivates people, how to inspire them to do their best work, and how to lead with purpose and vision is essential for any entrepreneur.

In this series, Daniel Pink discusses the art and science of motivation, and how entrepreneurs can leverage these insights to be compelling leaders.

Jim and Sarah’s conversation above is a very common conversation among entrepreneurs.

Next time, you encounter an entrepreneur who brags about how much money he has raised, ask a follow-on question: How much ownership do you have left in the company?

Image: http://www.sramanamitra.com

The right idea is key, but anyone who dreams of being the next Mark Zuckerberg must also have a good dose of passion and persistence.

Answer by Oliver Emberton, founder of Silktide

You don’t need qualifications, money, a planet-sized-brain or even a particularly good idea. All an entrepreneur ever does is create something that consistently makes money.

Think of a company as a machine you design and build. Here’s McDonalds MCD :

Image: http://fortune.com

No matter if you're an electrician, mechanic, accountant or surgeon, you have a specific set of tools to help you complete the task at hand. What about entrepreneurs? Do we have our own set of tools to help save time, make a living or run an efficient business? We definitely do.

Here are five tools that every entrepreneur absolutely needs to achieve success.

Gur Bittan envisions a future where you’re not just capturing a regular video of a child’s first steps with a smartphone; you’re doing it in 3-D, and sharing it with friends who can manipulate the video to watch it from different perspectives—even the kid’s point of view, providing you’ve scanned the scene from enough angles.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com - On display: Mantis Vision’s technology, which uses a projected infrared light pattern to capture 3-D images and videos, is included in Google’s Project Tango tablet, shown here.

Genome scientist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter is best known for being the first person to sequence his own genome, back in 2001.

This year, he started a new company, Human Longevity, which intends to sequence one million human genomes by 2020, and ultimately offer Web-based programs to help people store and understand their genetic data (see “Microbes and Metabolites Fuel an Ambitious Aging Project”).

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

Earlier this month, MoneyTree released its quarterly venture capital report, and the news was overwhelmingly positive. VCs invested almost $13 billion in 1,114 U.S. startups during the second quarter, which is the highest level of VC funding in 13 years.

That included a strong showing by the Midwest, which isn’t known for its VC investing. Michigan had a banner quarter for VC activity, with $121 million invested in 11 deals. During the same time period, Wisconsin saw a relatively respectable (although not spectacular) $27.8 million invested in eight deals. The Midwest typically lags far behind the coasts in terms of VC activity, and that was still the case in the most recent quarter.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Young entrepreneurs have a lot in common. They are extremely motivated, passionate, and determined to be successful at any cost. While these are all excellent qualities to have, they lead many entrepreneurs to put everything they have into their business while neglecting their own health and well-being.

Here are a few tips to help you perform at your peak in every aspect and develop healthy habits from the start:

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

In the not-too-distant future, creatives will rule the world.

I’m not just saying this because I consider myself a creative. The interconnected systems we use to function in business and society, whether in communication, transportation, design, finance, and more, are increasing in complexity, and so are the types of issues and challenges that arise from these systems.

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What do we consider “living the dream” today?

Personal freedom and having basic needs met top the list. In 2004--the birth year of Facebook, a second-term W., and Janet’s legendary nip-slip--we felt more optimistic about our dreams than we do now. How is that possible? And what are we doing to compensate for it?

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When you work in television, your performance review is a show’s ratings. A program can be critically acclaimed, but if the numbers aren’t good it risks cancellation.

Starting his television career in 2004 as a freelance producer for networks such as Discovery, National Geographic, and Smithsonian, Jon Blumberg worked on his share of winners, including Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch and MythBusters. He also worked on some losers and soon realized there was a strong element of business to the shows that were successful. Looking to become more balanced in what he could offer, he went back to school in 2011 to get an MBA.

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