Last year biotech venture capital investing began to recover from its 2009 low, growing three percent in the number of dollars raised and eight percent in the number of deals which were struck. That represents a significant bounce-back from 2009, which saw biotech investing plummet 19 percent during the worst of the economic crisis.

With the help of data provided by the National Venture Capital Association, we've compiled a list of the promising biotech companies which were the most successful at raising money in 2010. Our top VC earner in 2010--Pacific Biosciences--is making its last appearance on this list; the sequencing compan

Moncton-based Tech South East Inc. is receiving support from the Government of Canada to deliver a series of workshops and seminars on business skills development to information technology companies. These courses are designed to help companies better position themselves for continued growth.

“As we emerge from the Global recession, our Government is proud to invest in projects that contribute to business development, greater employment and economic growth,” said the Honourable Rob Moore, Minister of State (Small Business and Tourism) and MP for Fundy Royal, on behalf of the Honourable Keith Ashfield, Minister of National Revenue, Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and Minister for the Atlantic Gateway. “Our government’s investment in Tech South East will help the region’s technology cluster to acquire and enhance the skills needed to be an efficient, effective and successful competitor in both the domestic and international marketplace.”

I hate self-help books. And any books or articles or “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” (or “Power of Now”) stuff that don’t really speak from experience and don’t really give you specific steps towards achievement.

When you have a gun to your head, with two kids, a mortgage, and your entire self-esteem at risk, you need PRACTICAL methods for moving forward. And you need them from someone who can speak from experience and say, “this works.”

Practical doesn’t mean: “incorporate your company, hire programmers, etc”. And it doesn’t mean “appreciate the moment”. Once that moment is over you have the rest of your life to worry about. Practical means building the basic foundation that I know for a fact creates wealth. I’ve had the gun to my head. And it even fired. But I dodged the bullet because of the below.

When an office phone rings, most people cringe. They'd rather deal with issues via email or text on their own time.

There's no denying that new, preferred forms of communication have tampered with the amount of phone calls people make. But dialing is definitely not dying, and it is still a vital form of communication.

In fact, Ofcom, a British telecoms regulator, has data that shows mobile and fixed phone minutes have increased in recent years (see chart on the top right from The Economist).

"The time people spend talking on a fixed telephone has gone down in recent years in nearly all rich countries for which the International Telecommunication Union has data," The Economist reports. "Yet in most, this fall is more than offset by the increase in mobile calls."

How many hours does the average person commute per year?

How much weight will you gain at your current job?

How many hours will you work in your lifetime?

The answer to all three of those questions is: a lot. These are just some of many depressing facts about the typical job today.

Babson College has partnered with MassChallenge to create Babson graduate student hatchery space in Boston’s Innovation District.

Babson businesses created by current graduate students receive space in the MassChallenge site at One Marina Park Drive (55 Northern Ave) on Boston’s waterfront.

As part of the Babson Venture Accelerator, Hatcheries provide a vibrant atmosphere conducive to sharing ideas and information among student teams, faculty, executives-in-residence and visiting entrepreneurs. The Hatcheries function like incubators where student entrepreneurs have access to professional and semiprivate workspace to grow their businesses. Student businesses go through an application process before they are selected. Teams are awarded space in the Hatcheries one term at a time.

Driving around Youngstown, Ohio, can feel eerily like exploring a decimated city in a war-torn nation. Brick buildings downtown look like hollow, bombed-out shells. Houses abandoned by blue-collar workers sit empty. Bruce Springsteen’s ode to the Rust Belt city sang of the steel mills that “built the tanks and bombs that won this country’s wars.” But those factories were shuttered long ago, their idle smokestacks looming over a crime-ridden town that for decades was better known as "Bomb City" and "Murdertown, USA."

But there’s life emerging beneath these hardened scars. In the shadow of the iconic 1919 Home Savings and Loan Company building downtown, a managed cluster of high-tech startups is injecting new energy into the city. It’s the Youngstown Business Incubator (YBI), a nonprofit corporation, and it’s not only redefining the industry of this hardscrabble valley on the eastern edge of Ohio; it’s changing the notion of what cities and states can do to spur innovation and investment. In the past decade, CEO Jim Cossler, who also refers to himself as “chief evangelist,” has revamped the model of an incubator from a klatch of unrelated businesses to a targeted group of niche entrepreneurs—in this case, business-to-business software firms. Unlike traditional business incubators, Cossler doesn’t “graduate” successful companies and send them packing. Instead, he keeps the portfolio companies on a single, mixed-use campus that promotes open source collaboration. He provides them with cheap or free rent, utilities and Wi-Fi to help them convert IT ideas into dollars and, in turn, jobs.

Research firm Forrester this morning announced its forecasts for the online retail industry in both the US and Western Europe this morning. No surprise: Forrester expects both markets to grow steadily over the next few years – not an unsafe bet by any means.

Forrester estimates that both US and European online retail (representing 17 Western European nations) will grow at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate from 2010 to 2015, reaching $279 billion and €134 billion, respectively, in 2015.

In response to my last two posts demystifying VC term sheets (specifically addressing exploding term sheets and no shop provisions and price-based anti-dilution provisions), I have received a number of questions regarding other terms and provisions in term sheets.

Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful to address each of the questions over the next several weeks –creating a comprehensive series of posts relating to VC term sheets. Beyond the most recent topics, I have also previously addressed valuation, liquidation preferences and stock options.

KANSAS CITY, MO--(Marketwire - February 28, 2011) - Despite decades of conflict, corruption and insecurity, Afghanistan has unrecognized and untapped economic potential in its private sector, according to "Bactrian Gold: Challenges and Hope for Private-Sector Development in Afghanistan," the second paper in the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation's Expeditionary Economics Research Series, which is reconsidering the United States' approach to economic development in areas affected by conflict and natural disasters.

To inform the debate over how best to develop Afghanistan's private sector, "Bactrian Gold" authors Jake Cusack and Eric Malmstrom interviewed more than 130 business owners and economic stakeholders in the Afghan cities of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat, traveling without security or organizational affiliation to better understand the Afghan people's perspectives.

I went to an Austin cake show today, and amid several superhero cakes, wedding confections and some impressive feats of fondant I stumbled upon an ode to Angry Birds. I don’t know who entered the cake, as the entry forms don’t offer personal details, but if I were judging this competition, it would get my vote.

It’s rare that a book so enhances your world-view that you think the author has taken up residence in your head. Henceforth What Technology Wants shall be known as my new playbook for understanding technology. It’s a must read for innovation junkies trying to sort the infinite possibilities of the 21stcentury. Many have tried to help us understand the meaning of technology. Few get below the buzzwords.

What Technology Wants captures the essence of our technological revolution and provides a lens to understand its origins. It provides a unique view from technology’s perspective shedding light on what technology wants and where it can take us. It’s a call to action reminding us of the opportunity and responsibility to remake our world in a way that deeply honors technologic potential around us. I expected the book to be great. Kevin Kelly has been an innovation hero of mine dating back to his days as the founding editor of WIRED. Every story during Kevin’s tenure at the magazine was a voice from the future that seemed to be speaking directly to me. It was a thrill to spend an entire day with Kevin when he came to the Business Innovation Factory recently to discuss What Technology Wants. Talk about being a kid in a candy store. My head is still spinning.

Most people believe that entrepreneurs learn from failure. Pick up USA Today, Entrepreneur, or any of a multitude of popular publications and you will find stories about how entrepreneurs learned from their mistakes to become successful the next time around.

Using examples of Apple’s failure with the Newton, Frederick Smith’s low grade on the Fed Ex business plan, and Bill Gates’ unsuccessful first computer business, many authors argue that entrepreneurial failure is no obstacle to later success.

IF you have a smartphone, you probably have apps on it to check the news, play games, help with shopping or further a hobby like travel or bird-watching. But chances are that you don’t yet have Bubblegum — a new app that lets you instantly dress up cellphone photos, tinting them in sepia or adding neon blue highlights, for instance, and then share the results on Facebook.

That’s because Bubblegum is an app for a nascent market: people whose smartphones have the new Windows Phone 7 software inside. The phones have been on the market for only a few months in the United States. (Four models, including the Samsung Focus, the HTC Surround and the LG Quantum, are each $100 at the Microsoft Store.)

I’m seeing a renewed appreciation of culture and values in business these days. Maybe it’s just another example of nature abhorring a vacuum, but I prefer to think it’s a natural evolution of the pervasive social networking communities, where people relate to and expect to interact with businesses and products they like. They drive the market, rather than the other way around.

Your values as you create a startup are the key to creating an enviable culture that attracts more customers, according to Ann Rhoades, in her book “Built on Values.” She would assert, and I agree, that you need to get it right the first time, because first impressions are critical, and changing your values and culture in the eyes of customers and employees is extremely difficult.

01 / Burberry

For deploying a potent combo of design and technology to burnish a storied brand
02 / Opening Ceremony

For its star-making prowess and curatorial eye for rising talent
03 /RentTheRunway

For creating a new high-fashion distribution model using rental
04 / J.Crew

For mastering the art of affordable American luxury, both online and off
05 / Createthe Group

For delivering novel e-commerce solutions that have taken the often fusty fashion world online

Is it worse to be swallowed by the sea or racked by famine?

As climate change tightens its grip on the world, institutions charged with protecting the most vulnerable nations could be faced with just such a question. Because there is no international consensus for ranking the possibilities of future devastation -- and because there are limited dollars lined up to help cope with climate change -- some countries already are battling over who will be considered most vulnerable.

The EWEA Annual Event - formerly known as EWEC is Europe's premier wind energy event. Over 10,000 wind energy professionals from over 60 countries are expected - including EU & national policy makers, leading market players and technical experts. With a unique combination of a comprehensive conference programme and a first-class exhibition, the EWEA Annual Event is recognised as a 'must attend event' among the international wind community.

We are not natively smarter than we were when our country was founded nor do we work harder. But look around you and see a world beyond the dreams of any colonial citizen. Now, as in 1776, 1861, 1932 and 1941, America’s best days lie ahead.”

I won’t rehash the rest of the letter. It is a must read. But if there is one thing that you take away from the letter it is this lesson – nothing stopped so many innovators and entrepreneurs more than the fear of failure. If you allow yourself to be constantly scared into thinking that the world is doomed you will never take that risk which might result in great reward. And perhaps worse, if you never fail you will never learn to get up, brush yourself off, move on and succeed in the future. This does not man you should wander through this world with great complacency and blind optimism, but if you deny yourself the ability to maximize your full potential you will always come up short.

Rand Fishkin has a good post in response to my marketing posts over the past two days. In it he makes this assertion:

For the first few years that I was in the "web world," 1997-2001, there was a dangerous and obvious bias in startups toward sales and marketing - and branding in particular. But, in the past few years, that pendulum has swung to the equally dangerous paradigm that product is everything.

And then he shows this great graphic: