Unless you literally run your business with your ears plugged and your eyes covered, you are aware of the importance of social media and its impact on both brand and bottom line. However, while social media is the topic du jour in mainstream news, on blogs, in books, at conferences and at your local Starbucks, we may still underestimate its overall promise and potential.

The socialization of business is comparable to the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland or the red pill in the Matrix. If ignorance is bliss, awareness is awakening. Where there’s insight, there’s opportunity – but with opportunity, there’s also a cost. In this case, that cost is financed through learning, change, adaptation and innovation.

Google Books is one of the most straightforward projects in the Google meta-project of cataloguing and indexing every piece of data in the world. The human race has, after all, only been literate for around five or six thousand years, which makes the task measurable, if not easy. The project is also interesting for many other reasons — social, technological, and logistical. The impact of all of the world’s literature being searchable online is incalculable, but the methods being used by Google to accomplish that are a fascinating convergence of legacy and high tech systems.

If Silicon Valley has an angel, it’s Ron Conway, the legendary early stage investor who has backed many of the greatest Internet start-ups including Google and Facebook. Last week at the Social Currency Crunchup at Stanford University, I had the good fortune to sit down with Conway for a few minutes
to talk about technology, entrepreneurs, investors and the next big thing in the Valley.

In his avuncular selflessness, in his apparent concern for everything and everyone but himself and in that reassuring thick shock of silver hair, there’s certainly something angelic about Conway. But dig a bit into Ron Conway and you get a sense that behind all that reasonableness there’s a remarkably shrewd operator who has minted a fortune for himself, his investors and his entrepreneurs. My sense – for what it’s worth – is that the guy has multi-million dollar eyes. He is a brilliant watcher, an acutely sophisticated observer of the tech space, a remarkably perceptive businessman who doesn’t miss a trick. That’s where his unique talent lies and that’s why he is amongst the greatest early stage investors of our times.

Leveraging talent outmigration for purposes of economic development is an idea whose time has come. The common cynical retort is that those who leave rarely come back home. This criticism ignores trends, preferring a static snapshot. We are only beginning to understand the scope of the opportunity. A developing success story in Atlantic Canada:

Gordon Pitts, in his bestselling book The Codfathers, chronicled the success of East Coasters in the highest echelons of business and the professions in Central and Western Canada as well as the USA - and there are many others waiting in the wings. This is where a three year old networking organization called East Coast Connected has a key part to play in playing an advocacy role for our region, as well as providing networking avenues to attract back home some of the displaced expatriates.

Whether your business is a pre-revenue startup or a Fortune 100 company, one of the most important skills necessary to become a high-performing manager is managing cash flow. Unlike a Fortune 100 company chief financial officer, however, the average entrepreneur doesn’t have a staff dedicated to managing cash.

Entrepreneurs need to know a few significant rules about cash flow management.

Philip Campbell, a Round Rock-based certified public accountant has written a comprehensible book about managing cash flow. In his 25 years as a CPA, Campbell has worked for very large accounting firms, large companies and small to midsize companies.

Developing countries are increasingly embracing innovation and entrepreneurship as a key component of their social and economic development. To this end, business incubators and other types of business development service organizations are playing an important role in providing infrastructure, business advice and mentoring, networking, financing, and security to millions of business entrepreneurs in developing countries that otherwise wouldn’t have the resources to grow and scale up.

To explore this area further, infoDev commissioned a study, with support from IFC, that had two primary aims:

1. Draw lessons from sustainable ICT business incubators to develop a model that could be implemented at scale in developing countries, particularly in the Africa region; and
2. Propose an investment framework for evaluating prospective and existing ICT business incubators, as well as innovative mechanisms for addressing the financing needs of the incubated SMEs.
   The report produced from the study includes:

A new article on Mckinsey Quarterly outlines the top 10 innovation trends in business that are being enabled by new technologies — and shows how they trends are re-shaping the challenges and opportunities for companies, society and their ability to reach sustainability goals.

These trends are significant for our innovation work at Volans, partly because they reflect a growing way of thinking about the pathways to scale of business solutions to social and environmental problems (e.g. think about telcom operators in Africa providing banking solutions to the poor instead of banks).

But also because they say something about the way we work, as we find ourselves increasingly designing and delivering projects by working collaboratively with others — something I find fascinating in terms of management, as the project teams look more like distributed networks and ecosystems than traditional, hierarchical institutions.

When entrepreneurs pitch their companies, they focus on a variety of things. Some make dazzling PowerPoints. Some make sure to include a nice graph predicting "hockey stick" growth. Some feature their team, their team's experience. Some actually do feature their product.

But few demonstrate it with quite the skill and success of Twilio's Developer Evangelist John Britton. Twilio helps developers add voice and SMS capabilities to their apps. And sure, you could explain how Twilio works. You can have slides that explain your product's capabilities. Or, as Britton did at a recent New York Tech Meetup, you can just do one better and code a demo live in front of your audience.

Less than a month after making news for collecting its second round of seed funding, Cambridge-based online clothing exchange ThredUP is heading for San Francisco.

The news was first reported by Scott Kirsner on Innovation Economy. ThredUP co-founder James Reinhart confirmed that he has signed a lease on office space in San Francisco, and he and five other employees will move, while two others remain in the Boston area.

There has been much discussion about VCs doing seed funding in the past year.  I’ve written about it myself (Is VC Seed Funding Dead?) and (Is There Really a Signaling Problem with VC Seed Funding?).

Short summary of my posts:

1. There is a structural reason that VCs are investing at early stages,
2. Many (Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, True Ventures, GRP Partners, Mike Hirshland at Polaris Ventures) do it the right way – we treat it as a normal investment and we don’t have a “options” strategy with our investment.  I’ve done
   
3. Many firms do it in a way that can be more detrimental to entrepreneurs.  They either do too many seed investments (for which they can spend no quality time with any) or they treat it as an option (“if you succeed come back and see us and we’ll match any term sheet you get”) – they view it as a sort of “right of first refusal.”
4. seed investments in the past year and they are 100% referenceable.

At Kevin Werbach's Supernova conference this morning: Wharton professor David Chu led Half.com founder Josh Kopelman, now of Conshohocken's First Round Capital; Marc Berejka of the U.S. Department of Commerce; and Andy Weissman of Betaworks in a discussion of how startup funding has changed.

They didn't say much about some obvious changes - the way there's less money in venture-capital funds than there was ten years ago, and fund returns are lousy, making it tough to raise more. Instead they focused on the online social networks and local groups by which "angel investors" and others with capital find good ideas and people they trust:

Kopelman: "The Internet has changed... the power system… When I cofounded my first company, Infonautics, in 1991 the ecosystem was v different… You would go to venture capital, and the (specialty VC trade) press would write about you." From places like Philly, as a result, "my ability to connect with VCs anywhere in the country was limited."

Since the economic downturn, small business owners seeking funding for operation and growth are finding it increasingly difficult to secure financing from banks and commercial lending institutions. As Project Director and Business Consultant for a non-profit organization and providing Technical Assistant to small businesses seeking funding through the SBA Community Express Loan program, several of the SBA lenders that I work with admitted being reluctant to lend but feel a little ease since SBA guarantees 80 percent of the loan programs.

What does this mean to small businesses? When traditional bank financing is unavailable, small businesses need alternative business financing sources to start or stay in business! To help, here are 7 alternative financing options for small businesses.

Whatever your entrepreneurial aspirations, there's a city to match your needs, accelerate your company's growth and improve your quality of life. Which is the one for you? Entrepreneur identifies 50 cities and 10 lifestyles energizing businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Even in harsh economic times, America is still the land of opportunity, especially for entrepreneurs with the vision, ambition and flexibility to follow that opportunity wherever it may lead. In an increasingly connected world, no longer are businesses or their owners tethered to one spot on the map: Whether you're sizing up a regional opportunity, looking for a change of scenery or simply desiring a certain lifestyle, there's a location and culture that's perfect for you.

The challenge is identifying which spot is the best fit. Entrepreneur selected 10 contemporary American lifestyles and 50 related cities to complement all kinds of business types. Whether you're looking for tropical breezes, crisp mountain air, crowded city streets or wide, open spaces, they're all here.

If you stop and think about it, you might think it a bit odd that everybody is still talking about the Great Recession when the economy has been growing for a full calendar year.

Except, of course, that it certainly doesn’t feel like a recovery, does it? That are two reasons for that: job growth and consumer spending, both of which are pretty tepid.

There are plenty of people who want to sing the praises of small businesses at a time like this, because they expect small businesses to pull our collective economic chestnuts out of the fire by creating jobs.

You hear the word ‘alignment’ thrown out a lot in business conversations. And while it’s a wonderful thing to aspire to, it’s hard to achieve – particularly in entrepreneurial settings between the venture capitalist and the entrepreneur. It’s there, after all, that the stakes are high and there’s the ever-present risk of dysfunctional behavior leading to a Start-Up Soap Opera.

Ever since I began the research for my book, I have been spending time thinking about why VC-entrepreneur alignment is so elusive. And so when the Kauffman Foundation asked me to give a presentation to their recent class of young VCs, I decided to take the opportunity to develop a few thoughts that teed up the key issues.

I concluded that despite all the aspirational rhetoric about VCs becoming more “entrepreneur-friendly,” there are structural reasons why VCs and entrepreneurs are not always aligned. In negotiating term sheets, performing the inside-outside financing dance, discussing exit scenarios – and many other elements of the start-up journey - misalignment between VCs and entrepreneurs is common, natural and inevitable.

A meta-study covering more than 300,000 participants across all ages reveals that adults get a 50 percent boost in longevity if they have a solid social network

A long lunch out with co-workers or a late-night conversation with a family member might seem like a distraction from other healthy habits, such as going to the gym or getting a good night's sleep. But more than 100 years' worth of research shows that having a healthy social life is incredibly important to staying physically healthy. Overall, social support increases survival by some 50 percent, concluded the authors behind a new meta-analysis.

The benefit of friends, family and even colleagues turns out to be just as good for long-term survival as giving up a 15-cigarette-a-day smoking habit. And by the study's numbers, interpersonal social networks are more crucial to physical health than exercising or beating obesity.

Interested in applying for the Kauffman Labs Education Ventures Program? Listen in on one of two upcoming informational teleconferences to learn more about the program and ask questions:

Monday, August 9, 2010 at 11 a.m. CDT/Noon EDT

Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 1:30 p.m. CDT/2:30 p.m. EDT

Just fill out the first page of the Education Ventures Program application,
and you will receive call-in information via e-mail.

Kauffman Labs for Enterprise Creation , an initiative of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, is searching for aspiring founders to launch high-growth, scalable companies in the education market. Through an open application process available to anyone over the age of eighteen with a transformative idea, Kauffman Labs will identify up to twenty entrepreneurial concepts for the education market and work with the aspiring founders to teach them how to establish their organizations.

During this teleconference, you will learn:

• Why Kauffman Labs launched the program
• How to apply
• How the Education Ventures Founders will be selected
• What qualifications are required
• What selected Founders can anticipate throughout the program

Following a presentation on the program and the selection process, callers will have an opportunity to ask questions.

If you know any driven entrepreneurs with an education idea,  pass this on.

A couple weeks ago, we brought you a sneak peak at The Little Book of Shocking Global Facts, a slim but striking volume filled with illustrations of unbelievable facts.

This October, the publisher, Fiell, is releasing a successor: The Little Book of Shocking Eco Facts, by Mark Crundwell and Cameron Dunn, with illustrations by Barnbrook Design. We've got an exclusive preview of what the book will look like; here's a taste:

Up top: In the mountain forests of the Colombian Andes, 1/3 of bird species have gone extinct in the last 80 years.

Most green technologies gather energy above ground, but like Jules Verne, we want to take you on A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Alright, not even close to the center, but deep down nonetheless, where naturally occurring hot water can be turned into clean energy above ground.

It is estimated that the amount of heat within 30,000 feet below the earth’s surface holds potentially 50,000 times more energy than all global oil and natural gas resources combined. According to the Geothermal Energy Association, up to 6,400 megawatts of new capacity could be created from the geothermal projects under development in the U.S. But getting to that energy is proving to be a challenge.

Last week saw the release of two significant reports on angel investing. In the US, super-angel Ron Conway presented the results of an audit his company, SV Angel, had conducted on the 500+ investments it has made over the past 12 years. Meanwhile, in the UK, Professors Colin Mason and Richard Harrison published an annual report on the state of angel investing in Britain.

At first glance, the differences between these two reports seem mostly about American vs. British style: the Californian Conway laid out his data casually before a TechCrunch conference, while the British professors wrote a formal, 100-page study that was distributed through a government website.

But closer examination shows that there is also a substantive distinction, and it’s a profound one. Whereas Conway’s short talk focused almost entirely on the performance of startups and the returns that angel investors like him have achieved,

Mason and Harrison used their 100 pages to talk about every other possible topic—levels and types of investments made, tax incentives, co-investment structures and much else—and made merely one passing, vague reference to how these investments actually worked out.