The Megalobster
There may be nothing new under the sun, but there’s a lot of weird stuff in the water. Way more than we thought, according to the Census of Marine Life, a project 10 years in the making that involved 2,700 scientists in 80 countries who put together “a map of where we haven’t been,” according to Ron O’Dor, one of the program’s senior scientists. Using everything from fancy submersibles to old seafood-restaurant menus, the scientists produced more than 2,600 papers, the highlights of which were released in a 64-page report in October.

Among the “large, active and conspicuous organisms” that no one knew existed is a new species of spiny lobster, Palinurus barbarae, which was found by a Spanish fishing boat on the Walters Shoals in the Indian Ocean, 400 nautical miles south of Madagascar, and classified by South African marine biologists. It’s more than half a meter long. “This was a lobster that had never been described,” O’Dor says.

The editors asked Tyler Cowen, the economist who helps run the blog Marginal Revolution, to read the previous nine Ideas issues and send us his thoughts on which entries, with the benefit of hindsight, struck him as noteworthy. Do any ideas from this year’s issue look promising? “I recall reading the 2001 issue when it came out,” he says. “And I was hardly bowled over with excitement by thoughts of ‘Populist Editing.’ Now I use Wikipedia almost every day. The 2001 issue noted that, in its selection of items, ‘frivolous ideas are given the same prominence as weighty ones’; that is easiest to do when we still don’t know which are which.”

The official start date for your startup is the date you incorporate the business. This is obviously important for tax purposes, but may also dramatically influence how potential investors, customers, and competitors look at you.

My rule of thumb expectation is that it should take two months to set up the legal entity, six months to finalize the business plan, and by the end of the first year have a prototype product ready for customers. At this point every potential investor will listen. Timelines which vary dramatically from these will be questioned, and need to have good explanations.

For time and effort considerations, I tell clients that a sole proprietorship or partnership is the simplest setup, because it basically requires no legal forms. Incorporation as an LLC, a C-Corp or an S-Corp is more complex, but has the great legal advantage of limiting liability to the entity, away from personal assets.

The founder of ForeclosureRadar learned from his father's entrepreneurial example and found his opportunity in the real estate bust.

The gig: Sean O'Toole, 43, founded website ForeclosureRadar in 2006, just as the real estate bubble was getting ready to pop. His company tracks foreclosure auctions in California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and Washington.

An early technophile: "My parents bought my first computer for me when I was 10. It was the first Apple II, and that really defines my life thereafter. By the age of 12, I could program in three programming languages, and I dropped out of college at 18 to form my first software company."

The way entrepreneur David Moyal tells it, he grew up as something of an Israeli version of David Copperfield, with a sickly mother and a father who put him to work as a small child. "My father was a baker and chef at catering halls, so I did dishwashing with him," Moyal recalls. His father used to warn him that people who went into the military at 18 often did not come back and told him: "Live now because you may not live later," he recalls. Moyal started particularly early, in fact. By age 11, he had moved out of the family's cramped one-bedroom apartment and was working in construction. At 17, he got his mother's permission to join the Israeli army early and ended up not only surviving it but thriving afterward, when he moved to the U.S. and went into business.

Moyal, who lives in Manhattan and Newport, R.I., has had his hand in restaurants, fitness centers, and real estate, among other ventures over the last two decades. Today he owns three New York-based businesses. There's Next, a lifestyle magazine for gay readers; NYC Data Group, a data center storage company scheduled to begin operating in 2011; and 1800 Postcards, a commercial printer he acquired in 1999. Next had $2.5 million in gross revenue in 2009, while 1800 Postcards took in $16.9 million. He's getting ready to launch Postcard.com, which will allow consumers to call in orders for physical post cards to be sent anywhere in the world for 99¢ apiece.

Regions all over the world have spent millions—sometimes billions—of dollars trying to create their own Silicon Valley. They drank the same Kool-Aid and used the same recipe: start with a research university; build a fancy tech park next to it; give tax breaks to chosen companies to locate in the park; attract venture capital by offering matching investments; and watch the magic happen.

Unfortunately, the magic never happened, anywhere.

All government-sponsored (top-down) tech-cluster efforts—everywhere in the world—either have failed or are on life support (though some pretend they are not). That’s because they all used the wrong ingredients. It isn’t real estate, universities, or VCs that make innovation happen; it is entrepreneurs. To create a tech center like Silicon Valley, you need to first attract smart entrepreneurs from all over the world. Then you have to create entrepreneurial networks; instill a spirit of risk-taking and openness; and build mentoring systems. You also need to provide seed financing to startups. The money is easy; everything else requires a change in culture that usually takes decades.

There’s a lie that companies and entrepreneurs tell themselves in order to commit to an acquisition.

Oh, we’re not going to change anything! We’re just going to give you more resources to do what you’ve been doing even better!

Yeah! They bought us for a reason, why would they ruin things?

It usually works for a little while, but big company bureaucracy– whether it’s HR, politics or just endless meetings– almost always creeps in. It’s a law of nature: Big companies just need certain processes to run and entrepreneurs hate those processes because they stifle nimble innovation.

Selling your business is an emotional rollercoaster. It is a unique mixture of fear, uncertainty, excitement, arrogance and eventually relief.  Knowing the appropriate time to feel each of these emotions comes from experience, and understanding what to expect may be helpful when you eventually sell your company.

Over the years I’ve realized that receiving your first letter of intent or “LOI” is a very confusing part of the business sale process. Experienced sellers (there are not many of these) realize there is about a 40 percent chance that a LOI will actually result in the sale of your company.  In fact, the majority of LOIs never actually turn into a closed deal.  There are many reasons for this, and how you approach, think about and react to your first letter of intent will dramatically impact your opportunity for a successful sale.

It’s a big time of the year for tree-tailers, so Intuit thought they’d offer a closer look at the industry.

The idea for this post, and in fact the idea of applying lean startup thinking to raising money came from a conversation I had with entrepreneur turned angel investor Sean Glass a week or two back.  Sean said he wasn’t going to get round to writing a post on the topic, and so I said I would give it a go.

Those of you who are familiar with Steve Blank’s and Eric Ries’ work on the advantages of being clear about your product and market hypotheses and then minimising the time/resource to test those hypotheses will already have worked out where I am going with this – it makes sense to take the same approach to raising money.  In fact, the process of raising money has many parallels with selling a product to consumers or businesses – it is just that the product is equity in your company and your customers are angels and VCs. 

SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 17, 2010 ? The University of Utah overtook MIT to become America's No. 1 research institution when it comes to creating startup companies based on university technology, and it achieved the top ranking with a fraction of the research budget of other major universities.

The ranking, for 2009, is the result of the latest annual survey by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) of the nation's top research institutions. A year earlier, the University of Utah tied for first place with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was second to MIT for the previous two years.

The 19th annual "AUTM Licensing Activity Survey" ranked 181 public and private research institutions throughout the country. According the AUTM, the University of Utah created 19 companies based on university research in 2009, while MIT and the California Institute of Technology tied for second with 18 companies each.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Venture capitalists likely breathed a sigh of relief Thursday after the House of Representatives passed a tax bill that did not contain provisions over the tax treatment of carried interest.

VCs have been concerned that Congress could enact change to tax carried interest -- profits made after venture capitalists successfully cash out of their portfolio companies -- at higher ordinary income rates rather than at the capital gains rate of 15%.

Proponents of carried interest say it encourages firms to invest in young, risky companies and the results of not investing in these firms could be damaging to the economy.

What a great day! It was an experiment, a lab, a world premiere, and much fun! The 2010 Problem Conference in Quebec City.

More than 170 persons joined as active problem solvers in a packed room in the Quebec convention center on Dec 14. The idea of the event was simple: Turn a science conference upside down. Instead of sharing success stories, proponents of complex problems from various industrial sectors shared their problems and previously failed attempts to find a solution. During the day, attendees and problem solvers from very different backgrounds worked in three rounds to provide ideas for solutions (see here for a more detailed description of the idea).

While some companies count internet surfing as a sackable offence, it seems they may have got it all wrong.

Research found that a brief break to watch a genuinely funny internet clip creates a positive mood which in turn leads to greater creativity.

And scientists believe many people subconsciously tune in to classic clips like the couple recreating Dirty Dancing at their wedding just to get into a good mood so they can do their job better.

They may also need the lift from a spot of online humour to rejuventate their creative juices after a few dull hours tied to their desks.

Orange Alerts Public Works Last week, we concluded our survey of business tax incentives with this assessment:

In this Orange Alert, we look at a range of the best ideas we have found, or helped to develop, for providing incentives for business growth and job creation. We'll also share with you some of our recent research on how states can get more control over their current budget problems with smarter long-term capital investment strategies.

A few months back Peter Thiel—PayPal founder, hedge-fund manager, early Facebook investor, Silicon Valley big wig—announced an initiative to get kids to drop out of college for the good of the country. Arguing that America desperately needs new entrepreneurs, he unveiled the Thiel Fellowship, granting $100,000 to 20 entrepreneurs under 20 years old. "This fellowship will encourage the most brilliant and promising young people not to wait on their ideas," he said. Thiel's is hardly the first initiative aimed at encouraging entrepreneurship among the young. Just this year, for instance, Babson's school of business started a "Venture Accelerator" to help MBA students starting their own businesses at graduation. Something called the Young Entrepreneur Council—check out that Web site address—made waves by encouraging the young to ditch their résumés and head to their garages. Even the State Department launched an entrepreneurship program.

IT goes without saying: Holiday travel is brutal. Security lines are longer. Planes are more crowded. The battle for storage space heats up as travelers vie to stuff all those gift-laden bags in overhead bins. And if bad weather hits, your delayed or canceled flight may make you tardy for Christmas or New Year’s dinner — that is, if you even make it out of the airport.

This year, the experience may be even more intense. Over the holidays, 43.6 million passengers are expected to travel on United States carriers, up about 3 percent from last year, according to the Air Transport Association of America, the industry trade group.

There are many ways to distinguish people when it comes to their perspectives about life. One of the most basic and most obvious distinctions can be found in the way people respond to others' progress. In that regard, I have found two main types: entrepreneurs and sleepwalkers.

• Entrepreneurs use other people's progress as a driving force for their own and strive to become better at what they do.
• Sleepwalkers criticize others in every way possible because they get satisfaction from dragging them down.

Of course it's up to you what you want to be, but regardless of how you look at it, and no matter what you do for a living, thinking like an entrepreneur is no longer a luxury. It's a prerequisite for success, even if you don't run your own venture.

From smartphones to tablets to internet TV, check out our ultimate gift guide for the gadget lover on your Nice List.

A lot of things were invented this year, but only a handful will shape the future.

These 15 breakthroughs in medicine, transportation, and everyday products have the potential to drastically change their industries and your life.